21 Instances

2. I got to meet Fil and CS2 today

I mean I came here to code and it takes two weeks to even see the specs in the meantime the Quad doctors tell me I have to be tested no I didn’t that was their own idea and Oppie was on vacation they sampled every part of my body made me watch media that almost melted my eyes off and they put me in a vat of freezing water to see if I can teleport out of it huh that’s crazy fortunately Oppie gets back that day and makes them stop he says it’s an idea the docs got from some place called Awwshitz Oppie knows everything and after he fills me in on Awwshitz I feel so depressed I don’t want to do anything that’s the day I meet CS2 and Fil I don’t know why they use made-up names everyone knows who they are security gave me a fake name but I’m too depressed to remember it I just tell them my real name and both of them glare at me fortunately Oppie shows up he tells them my fake name is my real name it’s a reverse psychology trick they both buy it Oppie can get people to believe just about anything and CS2 stands for Chief Scientist 2 I don’t know what happened to Chief Scientist 1 maybe he froze to death in the ice vat or maybe they think he should count for 2 people he’s so big not fat I mean he’s chubby but mainly he’s just big-boned and tall and has a huge head even his hair and beard are huge next to him Fil looks like a starved prisoner of war he’s tall too but he’s thin as a skeleton and he’s wearing a ragged blue shirt like refugees on media wear and tight jeans that make him look even thinner later I’ll find out that he wears those clothes every day I think the same ones they get dirtier and he smells worse but it’s easy to see that he’s one of those guys that no one can tell what to do he doesn’t talk he gives orders he gives me at least 100 about how to write the code and then he leaves and CS2 starts in he tells us about the invention of transistors why is he telling us this we both already know Oppie tries to tell him that but CS2 talks right over him and explains how mainframe computers gave way to mini-computers he even tells us the names of all the companies that made them why is he doing this those companies don’t exist any more he gets to the microprocessor thank god but I thanked god too soon he has to tell us about microcode and how it can be vertical or horizontal he explains the entire design of a microprocessor and then how they got made faster and smaller and started being used in sets and multi-cores and he makes sure we know their names and the names of the people who invented them Oppie keeps trying to get him to tell us about QuarkTime which is the proprietary software that he is supposed to be telling us about but CS2 is a master talker he knows every trick it gets worse he starts in on the philosophy of programming I groan out loud he glares at me and he’s big so I smile and act like a sheep he restarts the sentence he was saying I mean from the beginning I’ll soon find out he has a perfect memory for his own bullshit he throws in some details about philosophy in general how it got started by some guy named Sockrats not kidding me and Oppie are sitting there slack-jawed he’s been talking for hours our brains are fried I’m not sure I can ever write code again and Oppie looks balder than he was when we got here CS2 smiles and starts talking about the history of history oh god no and now he’s telling us stories about his grandma and that’s doing it I feel like I’m getting a lobotomy then they’ll probably drown me in the ice vat that must be his plan but we get saved the lights in the room turn off then turn back on but red lights they’re blinking and making a circle on the wall like police lights do Nan opens the door she’s Oppie’s assistant it breaks the spell CS2 stares at her with his mouth open she gets us out fast and shuts the door on CS2 he’s restarting his last sentence Nan keys her handheld and locks him in it’s great to be rescued but I’m paralyzed because of what she’s wearing it looks like the costume a superhero would wear it’s a new style people are wearing and she’s so good looking it hurts to look at her she has a perfect body I mean completely her face is perfect too and she has perfect thick black hair perfectly cut it’s no use looking down because then you see her perfect round behind and legs and feet I look up at the ceiling and put my right hand on Oppie’s shoulder to guide me she’s sensitive about everything especially her body if she catches us looking she gets upset she worships Oppie she can’t do enough for him she’s super competent like the way she just rescued us from CS2 Marcus is 15 I don’t know why Oppie even hired him or why he isn’t in school instead of hanging around my office he tries to hide where he can spy on Nan I didn’t get any info at all about QuarkTime and CS2 disappears for a week after he tried to talk us to death but Oppie got the specs they don’t tell me much either apparently it’s a super database of some kind there’s no front-end none at all Oppie can’t believe it either it looks like it wasn’t in the deliverable Quad bought from CS2 and Fil oh this is so crazy but at least there’s a framework that you could use to write a user interface Oppie says work on that what a disaster.