Mark Albet sat quietly at his desk, staring at his monitor. Occasionally he would use the scroll wheel on his mouse to scroll down a page or two, carefully searching the source code. Mark was the project manager for Sandleton Technologies, a provider of database solutions for large companies. He was in charge of fifteen other programmers, and today they were all trying to find a serious flaw in one of their largest client's code. They had spent nearly a full day trying to figure out why credit card information was being stored without encryption for certain customers of this client.
Mark was clean shaven with neatly trimmed sandy brown hair. He was in his mid-forties and fairly thin. Every day he wore a long sleeved, white shirt and black or brown pants to work. On days when he expected to meet with someone he wore a tie, but today he didn't have one. He always kept a spare in his desk drawer for unexpected company, but he really hated wearing one, so the employees under him were never required to wear one either. He always told them to keep a spare on hand in case they were also required to meet with clients. This was for the male employees, the female employees were just instructed to dress tastefully. Since he had no idea what was considered tasteful for a woman, he left that up to the women to decide.
Sarah came rushing up to Mark's desk with an excited look on her face. "Mark! I found it! It's not even our fault!" Sarah exclaimed loudly.
Sarah was Mark's assistant, technically second in command. Whenever Mark was away, meeting with clients or just taking a day off, Sarah was in charge. Everyone in the office knew that Sarah was probably the most intelligent and gifted programmer in the whole office. Mark was only in charge because he was a better leader. He had a way of not only getting people to do their job efficiently, but he could convince them to enjoy doing it.
Sarah was a short woman, five foot four, with long, somewhat curly, red hair which she always kept in a ponytail at work. Her green eyes were a sharp contrast to her hair and light complexion. Sarah was an athletic looking woman who looked like she could probably hold her own in a fight. She also happened to be quite beautiful. She liked to flirt with everyone, male and female alike; it was just the way she was. This, coupled with her stunning good looks, was very distracting to Mark but as he always told everyone 'He was very married', meaning he was still in love with his wife of twenty years, Jennifer.
Today Sarah wore a particularly bright, red dress that went to her knees. It was very tasteful in Marks opinion, except for the fact that Sarah had left the top two buttons undone. This meant that every time she bent over to speak to someone or if someone was standing above her, they would be unable to miss her ample cleavage. However, Sarah was allowed more latitude than anyone else in Mark's office. Partly because she was Mark's friend, but mostly because everyone knew they would be lost without her.
Despite his attraction to Sarah, she was Mark's best friend, both at work and outside of it. Sarah had been to Mark's house several times for family get-togethers with whomever she was with at the time. Jennifer and Sarah actually got along very well. Though Jennifer didn't quite have the same friendship as Mark had with her, Jennifer considered Sarah one of her closest friends. Both of the women knew that Mark would never cheat on Jennifer, especially not with Sarah. They would often joke about it, leaving Sarah's current date feeling left out and uncomfortable.
"What did you find?" Mark asked calmly. It was never a good idea to act as excited as Sarah, it would only cause her to get louder.
"It wasn't us!" Sarah exclaimed again with far more enthusiasm than most people had for source code, but Mark was used to it. His friend was very excitable. This was one of the many things that made them such good friends. Mark had a hard time being in a bad mood whenever she was around.
"Hurry up, cutie! They need this by the end of the day!" Sarah looked at Mark with a silly smile, raised one eyebrow, and then rushed back to her office. Reluctantly Mark followed Sarah to her office. It wasn't that he didn't believe her, nor did he object to going to her office. He just knew that Sarah was going to make a big deal out of it and he would come out feeling like a fool for not seeing it as easily as she did.
Sarah's office was right next to Mark's, though you would not be able to tell whose office you were walking into without the name tags. All the offices on this floor were positioned along a long hallway with each office laid out identically. Once inside, it became clear that this was Sarah's office. Unlike Mark's bare, businesslike office, Sarah had many tiny figures on shelves as well as a TV with a gaming system hooked up to it. Everyone in the office knew that Sarah was what most people would consider a geek. She loved her sci-fi books, movies, and games almost as much as she loved her job. This was endearing to most of the other programmers in the office, they felt comfortable with her, more so than with Mark.
Mark didn't need them to feel comfortable with him, he was the boss. He needed them to respect him and trust him, and for the most part, everyone did. If their office was a family, he would be like the father and Sarah the cool, older sister.
Sarah plopped down in her chair and spun it quickly toward the monitor. She slapped her hands down on the desk on either side of the keyboard to stop herself and then pointed to a window on the screen. "Look at this!"
"Wait, this isn't ours," Mark said curiously as he leaned toward the monitor.
Sarah had a session opened to the client's computer and on the screen was what would look like garbage to most people. The window contained scrolling text that flew by quickly. Mostly, it was a bunch of names and numbers, but Mark saw the pattern right away.
"Someone is intercepting the customer's credit card information and saving it unencrypted, after our software closes the customer's order," Mark said slightly more excited.
"Exactly! They have a credit card logger on their system. But the people who wrote it messed up. They shouldn't have saved it in our database; they should have created their own. Maybe it would have taken me another day or so to find it if they had, but nope, not these jokers. They just didn't take the time. Honestly, they might have gotten away with some numbers." Sarah sat back in her chair after clicking another window. Then with way too much flourish, she raised her right hand, and with her index finger hit the enter key, and the scrolling stopped. "Aaaaaaand-They're GONE!"
"Oh Sarah, sometimes I think you have more fun stopping hackers than creating the programs." Mark shook his head with a smile, then put his hand on Sarah's shoulder. "I'm glad I have you, no telling how long it would have taken me to find it."
Sarah looked up at Mark and batted her eyelashes. "So, you owe me a prize?" Sarah asked.
"Fine, I owe you dinner. I'll tell Jen. Is it just you or do you have another friend?" Mark asked, feigning indignance.
"Actually, I'm dating this waitress I met last week, Melissa, do you mind?" Sarah wasn't really asking, Mark had never refused Sarah bringing her current lover. Sarah asking was more of a courtesy to let Mark know he had to set another plate.
"And what kind of food does Melissa like?" Mark asked, making a silly face. He loved to tease Sarah about her constant string of lovers.
"Umm-actually I have no idea, so how about you grill steak. Everyone loves steak," Sarah said coyly.
"No, you love steak-And what happened to Daniel? Dave? What was his name?" Mark felt a little embarrassed that he couldn't remember Sarah's lover from a month ago, but only a little, it was hard to keep up with Sarah's love life.
"Dan. Oh, he had a cat thing," Sarah proclaimed, as if that said everything Mark needed to know.
"A cat thing?" Mark asked, matching Sarah's phrasing. He was not sure he really wanted to know the answer. "He hated cats?"
"No, no, no, he wanted me to dress up as a cat." Sarah shuttered.
"You mean in bed?" Mark just couldn't stop asking questions, and each time he did, he regretted that he couldn't shut up.
"Yes, in bed, and that's not the worst part. The things he said while we were f*****g-"
"Stop! That's enough! And you know I hate it when you call it that." Mark didn't want to hear any more.
"Fine, when we had s*x. Happy? You know, not everyone makes love." Sarah made a kissy face. "Not all of us can find our Jen."
"You know I hate it when you call it that too." Mark crossed his arms and looked like a father who was disappointed with his child.
"I know, that's why I said it, cutie." Sarah stuck her tongue out at him and stood up. "You know you love me," Sarah said as she held out her arms widely, waiting for a hug.
"You know I'm not really a hugger," Mark replied.
"I know you say you're not, but you owe me, buddy," Sarah said looking pouty.
Mark uncrossed his arms and feigned reluctance as he bent over to hug her. Before it became awkward, he let go and started to walk out. "Nice work," he said as he headed for the door.
"You have that thing with Jen today?" Sarah asked.
"Yep," Mark said as he stopped at the door and turned to face her again.
"Mind if I catch a ride? The house you're looking at is in my direction, and I kinda forgot that Lisa has to pick up her kids from soccer today. And I kinda forgot I have a date with Melissa tonight, so going to pick up Lisa's kids would make me late." Sarah clasped her hands in front of her and acted like a small child asking for another piece of candy. "Please!"
"Ok, you are kinda on the way to the house." Mark then turned and walked out the door. After a few seconds, he leaned in the doorway once more. "Oh, s**t, it's nearly four thirty. You need to call Jerome and tell him that you fixed it, then we need to get going."
"Alright, got it, you go let everyone else know they can stop looking for the bug," Sarah said as she sat down and picked up the phone on her desk. Despite Sarah's silly attitude and playfulness, she was very good at her job.