Work was at Sedill Systems. Brad worked as a summer intern helping an engineer and also providing tech support to the secretaries on his floor. It paid well, but it was monkey work. Format these equations in Mathematica. Fix this PC’s network connection. Run tests. Listen to old people blather about the glory days of Sedill. Today, Sedill was a dying company. You could feel it in the average age of employee (rising) and the average value of stock options (falling). As an intern, Brad didn’t get any benefits, but on his first day, the HR lady had presented him with a form detailing who his next of kin would be if he were under a desk checking a cable and all four legs suddenly gave way under the weight of a monitor, binders, books on how to climb up the corporate ranks without seeming conniving, coffee cups, water bottles, and the rest of the office essentials.
One of Brad’s father’s friends worked for Sedill, but in a different section. The friend, Mr. Cross, had gotten Brad the job and so Brad felt badly for not enjoying it. He had wanted to work for the fledgling theatre that his drama teacher was starting in the city. He still remembered that morning discussion.
“Mom, I think I’m going to work for Mr. Gilson this summer,” it had begun.
“But your father already talked to Mr. Cross. You said you wanted him to ask about a job at Sedill.”
“Ask, yeah. I mean I was interested, but not committed to it.”
“Well, you have to take it. Your father asked, and Mr. Cross was nice enough to set it up without an interview or anything.”
End of discussion.
And so now Brad had his little ID badge with photo that looked like a fatter flatter Brad, and a microchip that let him through the elevators and doors on floors 1-5, but no higher. The first week had been interesting, but now it was all so much monkey work.
Louie worked on floor 4. He had a slightly more interesting project, but couldn’t tell Brad about it. “NDA, sorry man,” he had to say every five minutes. Louie loved nondisclosure agreements. They made him feel in the know. That was only reason Louie did stage crew, for the backstage feeling. Brad didn’t really care about Louie’s project, but that’s all Louie talked about, in broad general terms that hinted of lives to be saved or currently being saved in direct accordance to his work.
Brad putzed around until noon. There were websites to be read, emails to be sent, computers to fix, old people to listen to. This all felt like putzing to Brad. The first support call of the day was for a lady who had lost her word processor’s toolbar. After showing her how to reenable it in the program’s preferences, her face lit up. “Oh this is where I go to set the buttons on this thing!” Brad had to sit there while she asked him what each icon meant, in between repeated “Oh you kids and these computers.” By the time he got back to his desk, news of his prowess had spread through the floor so every five minutes a new person would show up at his cubicle. “I hear you’re the toolbar guy.” Eight consults later, he went to the cafeteria to the regular table by the fake palm wearily livening up the atmosphere and waited for the rest of the interns to show up.
There was Tasha. She worked in finance. She was stunning. She’d broken three hearts that summer (including Brad’s) and was on her fourth. Unintentionally, of course. She was supposed to be learning about corporate budgets but she was learning more about the power beautiful women have in tech firms. Ryan was a tester, fulltime. He held his NDA in as high regard as his GED. He was on permanent internship, but the company refused to hire him fulltime. He probably would refuse to work for them if they offered him anything. Every time Brad felt guilty for sucking up company resources, he looked at Ryan and felt better. Ryan would have been fired long before, but every time he came up for review, he’d find some earth shattering bug and present the engineers with not only a detailed report but also a pretty accurate roadmap for fixing it. Every time Brad felt like he was pretty smart, Ryan would poke a major fundamental hole in his project design and send him almost back to square one.
Then there was Louie. Brad and Louie had been friends since freshman history when they’d both been sick on a quiz day. Mr. Pelling put them out in the hall to take it the next day. Brad hadn’t studied the Native American section and Louie had only done that part, so they shared answers for that section, but they were laughing about it so much that it didn’t feel like cheating. Then they’d both done a school play together. Brad had a bit part and Louie was new on stage crew so they had a lot of time to kill backstage. Finally, they’d been to Yale’s gifted and talented high school program three summers in a row and had roomed together each time.
Louie was the first to arrive, which was unusual.
“How’d it go with your mom and the road trip?” he asked.
“Not well. I’m supposed to see what my dad says.”
“That’s no good.”
“Yeah, I’m going to get the ‘You’re just not responsible enough’ speech,” Brad said.
“All right, it’s time for plan D then.” Louie’s eyes narrowed at his own deviousness. “You’ll like this one. We need to go out to Utah to… do an outdoor show with Mr. Gilson.”
“No more plans centering around Mr. Gilson. If this backfires my mom won’t let me talk to him again. She’s already upset that he smokes.”
“He’s trying to quit though.”
“Not good enough. Smoking’s an evil sin, remember, along with cable TV and R-rated movies. My grandfather smoked himself to death.” Brad looked up at the ceiling. He remembered the funeral. He’d been eight. It was the first time he’d seen so many of his relatives in one place. “I have our plan,” he said as Tasha and Ryan entered. They were playfully punching each other in the arm.
“Number four,” said Brad and Louie together. They’d been number one and two, respectively.