Tuesday (A Short Story)

Tuesday

  Brian Hartman

  Copyright 2010 Brian Hartman

  Tuesday

  7:25 AM

  Dave paced nervously in his chair, glancing at his watch. He wasn't late yet, but he'd called the cab 20 minutes ago. All-American was usually pretty quick with his pickup, so he was wondering what the holdup was. Probably, Jeff hadn't gotten in yet. Doug, the dispatcher, always gave Dave's ride to Jeff. Dave shifted the weight of the laptop bag on his lap, and adjusted the strap around his neck.

  Summer's ending. Dammit.

  It wasn't exactly “chilly”, but Dave couldn't feel the same warmth he'd felt yesterday. A few more degrees, and he'd need a jacket. The thing he hated most about this time of year was the variability. In the morning, he'd need a jacket. In the evening, when he was being picked up, it'd be warm enough that he'd look like an idiot wearing a jacket. And his jacket couldn't fit in his bag.

  Dammit.

  He checked his wallet. $25.

  The cab finally pulled up at 7:50. He opened the door on the passenger side and climbed in.

  “Hey, Jeff.”

  Jeff got out of the cab and took Dave's chair, folding it up.

  “Hey, Dave! How ya doin', buddy?”

  “Not bad. Any day above ground's a good day, y'know?”

  “Yeah, I hear that. Sure's hell beats the alternative, huh?”

  Jeff put Dave's chair in the trunk and got back in, starting the car and driving. He pulled a CD case out of the glove compartment.

  “Here ya go, buddy. The new CD from Nonetheless.”

  “Oh, cool. Thanks.”

  Dave handed Jeff ten dollars.

  “Thanks, man.”

  “No problem. Lemme know what you think. Ryan and his friends worked hard on this.”

  “Sure. I'll let you know. You must be proud.”

  “Yeah, I'm a proud papa. What can I say? He busts his ass for that band.”

  Dave didn't say anything.

  “Thanks, Man. I'll see ya tomorrow.”

  “No problem, buddy. Take care.”

  The cab pulled up to the building's entrance. Dave got his ID ready and slipped the CD into his laptop bag, opening the door. Jeff pulled the chair out of the trunk and rolled it up to the car door.

  Dave rolled up to the door, clicking the automatic door button, and the door creaked open. He rolled in, slapping his ID against the card reader, opening the inner door. He rolled down the ramp, across the lobby to the elevator, anxious to get to his seat.

  At the entrance to the office, he used his ID again, and rolled into the library. No one was there yet, so he had to use his key to open the door to the office. He rolled to his seat and unpacked his laptop, clicking it into the docking station.

  Opening his e-mail, he didn't see anything unusual. Just the normal crosstalk he'd gotten used to being cc'd on. The agenda for today's site meeting was also there. He saved it to his C drive.

  Looking at his work queue, there were a few things that were due today. Most of them were done, but he just wanted to look them over. He hated handing in search results before they were due. He never felt like they were done done. He didn't want to hand anything in before he'd assured himself he was incapable of finding anything else. He was still kind of new to Dialog searching. Not “new” as in he'd never done it before this job, but “new” as in not confident enough that he'd submit something as “finished” without wondering a hundred times if he'd screwed up the search and would get fired for it.

  Being paid for searching was a nerve-wracking business. There wasn't really any way to know you'd found everything. Even Bonnie, his mentor in his group, had told him that. You just did the best you could with the deadline you had. If you missed some PDE5 inhibitor, you missed it. Sometimes it hasn't hit the databases yet. Sometimes, there's a typo in the article, and you'd never get it, no matter how many correctly-spelled synonyms you put in. It happens. The thing that Dave always feared was not knowing something because he screwed something up.

  Work didn't start for another few minutes, so he checked on his tech forum posts to see if anyone'd answered them. No one had, so he started to work on his Word macros.

  Right now, the problem was the looping. The way the macro worked, it made one change at a time to each alert. First bolding titles, then italicizing the journal names, and so on, on down the line. It wasn't the quickest way to do things, but it was modular. If anyone wanted the formatting changed, all he had to do was change one part of one macro, or in the worst case, add one macro. He didn't have to scour through thousands of lines of code. But right now, he had to figure out the looping. The macro was going through the document too many times. It was only supposed to go through the document once for each function, then stop. Instead, it was going through five, sometimes ten times, depending on how long the document was.

  Dave fired up Google. Unfortunately, most of what Google offered up didn't make a lot of sense, at first. They all talked about for loops in VBA, but he already knew how to do that. What he needed was a way to loop through sections of a document. Then, he got it.

  He needed to count by paragraphs.

  For Each Paragraph in ActiveDocument.Paragraphs.Count...

  After that, it was just a matter of looking for the right things in each paragraph, and changing them. Done.

  Bonnie came in next. She was older, probably in her sixties, although Dave never asked. She was his work hero. She'd been with the company something like 40 years, most of that time doing searches. That's really what Dave wanted: To be in the same job, doing the same thing, for many years. It made no difference to him if it was the same thing day after day. He worked to live, not the other way around.

  “Hey, Dave. Good morning.”

  “Hey, Bonnie.”

  “How ya doing?”

  Dave smiled. “Can't complain. Any day your keycard work's a good day.”

  Bonnie laughed. “Hey, I like that. Hopefully, we won't have any reorgs for a while.”

  “Yeah. I kinda like it here.”

  “Yeah. It's a good group.”

  Bonnie walked into her doorless office.

  Now that Bonnie was here, Dave could go get something to eat. Bonnie could handle any researchers that happened to wander in looking for something.

  He rolled down the hallway to the cafeteria, just to get something from the vending machine. It was an almost straight shot, with only one turn, but he still wasn't used to it. His sense of direction still sucked, even at thirty.

  He fed the change to the vending machine and got some fat-free chips. Not really a breakfast, but it'll do. He pumped his wheels on the way back to his desk. He hadn't been working at Johnson & Johnson for too long, and he didn't want to be late. That looks bad – even after 9 months.

  As he rolled to his desk and started opening the chips, Rose walked in. She hadn't gotten two steps into the office before she announced the news.

  “A plane just hit the Twin Towers. It was on the radio.”

  Dave looked up from his booting computer. “It's gotta be a Cessna or something. I read once that a plane hit the Empire State Building during World War II. It's gotta be something like that.”

  As Rose docked her laptop, she said, “I don't think so. They're saying it was a jet. A big plane.”

  “But that's not possible. How could that happen? No passenger jet pilot's going to hit the World Trade Center in broad daylight, on a perfect day. How could that happen? You think he passed out'r something?”

  “I don't know. But they're saying it's a big plane.”

  Dave went to the CNN website. Nothing was ther
e yet, though. They must be updating it. It's gotta be a Cessna, though. What else could it be?

  He forgot to get something to drink, so Dave went down to the cafeteria again. As he passed him, a guy said, “Another plane just hit. They're calling it a terrorist attack.”

  “Is that real, or just a rumor?”

  “I don't know. That's what I heard.”

  “The one that's a confirmed hit. Is it a Cessna, or a passenger jet?”

  “No, it's a passenger jet. United or American. I'm not sure which.”

  Dave made it back to his desk and refreshed CNN. Sure enough, there it was: Two planes. Both towers smoking. What the hell?!

  And just like that, America was under attack.

  What in the hell does it mean? Somewhere in his brain, Dave could hear bombs falling, could see the office on fire. It was clear as day. He could see the start of World War III.

  There was still work to be done, though. Nobody else was reacting yet. They all had lives. Jobs. Rents. Mortgages.

  Great. World War III just started, and I'm in a frigging office....

  It was still a work day.

  There was a site meeting planned, so Dave did his best to get ready for