North American Vampire Council & Past Calling (Hypernaturals 12 & 13)

Prison Money

I finished up my part of a small coding project and submitted it to the client for code review. I gave that a mental sigh. I have no time for coding projects like this anymore, but it is my work, and I stubbornly stick to it.

I told my employer that I would not be as available due to other commitments because of fucking-Helen. They tried to hire me on full time instead, with a solid salary amount, with all kinds of bonuses around project completions and such. Plus benefits! They have no idea I live with two doctors and we have our own medical clinic above the garage. Why would they know that? Most people don't have that kind of thing.

Most people are not co-opted by their spouse Vampires either.

Morgan still has her life, so she does not have time to pick up my programming slack.

I like being a contractor. They assumed I was holding them up for more money, but I am not. Morgan and I charge a fair, higher-end rate. In counter to their proposal, I told them to send Morgan and me really hard shit, and we'll fix it. That is their worry: They don't want to lose Morgan and me on the programming team. We have already refactored their entire online bill-paying infrastructure, although that is mostly 'paste' that holds together all the different packages they use. We worked around a lot of bugs in those packages along the way, and the never-ending parade of more recent versions from various software makers means we have to always look and see if they fixed bugs and take out our bypasses and compensations and add new ones sometimes. In one case, we had to add a post-processing module to massage fallacious output for one calculation an insurance add-in package made, and I expect that bug to be fixed it is so egregiously bad. We added code to our code to check and see if they fixed it by comparing the correct results to the package result and NOT over-writing it if it is suddenly correct.

Our code is all heavily documented, so if we can't do something, someone else can come along behind us. They do not want that: The client prefers we do it. That is how people work. They know we know this code, and they know we get the job done, and that we do it right.

It's also an anchor for me. A part of my normal life and a thing I can share with Morgan. Something only we do. No Council.

Not counting the encryption stuff we are doing for Council and that we roped Olivia into helping with. Even then, it is still us, and Olivia is happy to be working with Morgan even if it's not romantically. The main thing for me is that Helen has no part in it.

Morgan and Helen are sitting in the living room doing whatever they are doing. As I passed through the room, Helen said "Adrian?"

OK. Weird. Verbal communications.

I stopped. Turned. "Yes?"

I wanted to say 'What?' in a really sarcastic way, but since Helen thinks I am being a baby over this whole thing, I am not giving her ammo. That would lead to 'oh, grow a pair' or the like, and fuck that.

Our entire married life is now barely talking and going through the motions. She trims my beard. I wash her hair. Done. One agreement between us is still functioning. Rachel takes the hair job now and then, and Denise (oddly, as she was against me having it at first) the beard. Jessica and Morgan will do it too, but often let Denise have it. Perhaps a form of justice over her initial resistance to it. Denise has not complained about my long hair or beard for a while now, even as my hair is longer than hers. When we run around with the top down in her Jeep, I borrow her hair ties to keep my hair out of my face. The closest to comment about my hair is that she needed to be sure her stock did not run out.

Angel keeps saying "Still angry..." Every time she sees me. I am better about not bringing it to bed though.

"Here." Helen handed me a legal-size envelope. I wondered what new hell Helen is raining down on me now. Some new subcommittee she wanted me on?