SSH, Professionals at Work

[Wendy Kingston]

Consultation work was a mixed bag. Some days, you were working on something you actually wanted to do - in Wendy's case this was security, occasionally penetration testing, maybe just some high-level troubleshooting. Other times, you wound up working for weeks on some military project, locked into an NDA with half a dozen weirdos who knew little more than you did about whatever you were doing and who lacked the skills to communicate effectively. That was the case with this month's job. The Client payed very well, but the security restrictions were incredible. Professionally, Wendy could respect it. Practically, she was sick of having her code scoured over by paranoid techs who wanted to make sure she wasn't overstepping her bounds or leaving catastrophic back doors. As though the coding of a ship's onboard computers were that simple to sabotage.

Still, programming was honest work. Not her forte, sure, but Wendy had picked up a few tricks - and for the most part, her job was more to make sure that the ship couldn't be broken into by people with the same rough skillset she had. This meant a lot of coding, test environments, breaking things, and starting over. Going until her thoughts started running numb and slow. She'd been working from this secret little office for almost three and a half weeks straight, respecting management's frowning on outside contact, but Wendy's cabin fever was starting to reach a breaking point.

With a loud sigh, she pushed herself back from her terminal and slipped her goggles up, letting her eyes adjust to the dim glow of corporate fluorescents - quite a difference from the striking neon and crisp edges of the network. Blinking as her eyes adjusted, Wendy looked around for the two women she shared her work space with, belatedly realizing that one of them was gone and her things were cleared out. The other - an Alien in a gas mask of some sort - was nowhere to be seen.

Curious.

 

[Tanith Alde]

She should have expected it, really.

Anyone with a bit of foresight would have realized they'd be expected to work in a team, especially on a larger project such as coding a ship's central computation system. Still, that didn't mean the reality of it didn't hit her like a bag of bricks from the ether. Yaemi had never been a people person, though not for lack of trying. In a way, it was her own fault she'd turned out that way. She'd neglected socializing growing up, having preferred the company of her own machines to that of more flesh and blood types. So in a way, she'd never really come to consider how other people thought. Something that was rapidly turning into a problem for her, now that she was stuck in the middle of a group assignment.

She knew where she stood with her projects, be they artificial or virtual intelligence. She knew because she'd programmed them herself, they thought the things she'd taught them to think about. Staring at another living creature was about as informative as staring at a durasteel wall, she didn't have the slightest clue of what was going on in their processing centers. Er, brains. So throughout the beginning of the project she'd found herself repeatedly slamming into said durasteel wall whenever she'd run into a section of coding she herself hadn't written, or that hadn't been assembled in the specific way she interpreted and pathed data and information.

It was a trying affair.

Coding wasn't exactly a casual affair either. They were tricking a bit of metal that'd been filled with lightning to think in a set of predetermined values. A slight hitch in the code to take hours to unravel, even with Yaemi's technical intuitions. And throughout these past few weeks of work, she'd hardly even spoken a word to her fellows, outside of what was absolutely necessary.

Today she'd realized there was a good chance her coworkers hated her. One simply had to look at the data available. The constant walls that were thrown up in the path of her work, the inconsistency in pace, the lack of water cooler breaks she could have sworn were a standard part of office life...one just had to look at all the pieces put together. That was fine, it wasn't like she was trying to make friends or anything, despite having hardly looked up from the terminal in front of her in all their weeks of cooperation.

She'd taken a break from her work, one of the three mandated ones she was required to take per working day. She was using that time to hide out in a bathroom stall, hands grasping her helmet in a gesture of despair, trembling slightly. She had to get out of there. But she couldn't, she had work to finish. The odds were good, in her opinion, that if she walked back into that small little office that her day's work might have been deleted in some attempt to discredit her. Or perhaps she'd find a thumbtack on her seat cushion, meant to puncture her suit and kill her. Perhaps they'd plant a bug in her code to cause her to waste the day's progress, while they took all the credit for later solving it. Or maybe they'd spiked her coffee. All of these possibilities seemed equally plausible to her. Not once did she consider that they might simply have been as busy with the work as she was, or similarly unskilled in making friends.

Eventually, time on her break was going to run out, and she'd have to return.

Taking a ragged breath, she stood up and exited the bathroom. If she was about to die, or be fired, she might as well do it on her own two feet. It wasn't like she had much to live for anyhow, defined by her work as she was. She was still trembling as she walked back into the office, walking past [member="Wendy Kingston"] without a word. Under her visor, looks could have killed.

She slid back into her chair after checking thoroughly for any needle-based traps, turning toward the terminal on the desk. The bright glow of letters and code reflected off her polished visor. Bright eyes moved rapidly from side to side as she scanned line after line of code. Code that'd been untouched since she'd left it, some fifteen minutes ago.

What the-

She blinked, in almost non-comprehension. No tampering. No booby trap on the chair. Even her coffee looked undisturbed, the straw in it still sitting at the exact angle she left it. Lifting it she found it still slightly stuck to the desk from a minor spill. Further indication it hadn't been messed with.

Her tension only grew further, mind racing to try and figure out where the sword of damocles would fall from. She glared over the rim of the terminal over at her brunette coworker. Though do to the lack of features visible through the fog beneath her visor, it could easily be mistaken for a smile.

Just what are you planning?

 

[Wendy Kingston]

Her cubicle mate - the last one, it seemed - returned from whatever she did on her breaks and offered what Wendy was fairly sure was a polite smile. The Office Smile, most likely, more an expression of pursed lips and perhaps a nod of acknowledgement at shared suffering. The sort of expression that had driven her, furious and screaming, into the private sector to work for herself. And yet here she was, coding under cheap buzzing lights at a terminal that was years out of date, amidst a forest of people who were not getting paid enough - like she was. At least Wendy could console herself that she was making at least triple doing this job as a consultant than she would have been getting as an office drone. She hoped Yaemi was, too.

It was hard not to respect the woman. Like Wendy, Yaemi was a professional. She kept to herself, she worked efficiently, and she did good work. Wendy would know - part of her job was to build the shield in front of Yaemi's code, and the rest of it was knowing where a would-be attacker would want to stick knives in it. Yaemi didn't make the second part very easy. Her comments were comprehensive, her script was tidy, and her talent as a programmer was evident in every line. The Deilokin was young and cagey, but she clearly knew what she was doing. She likely had one hell of a career ahead of herself. Hopefully she'd keep building things - she had a real talent for it. Maybe she'd even open up one day; Wendy only knew her name due to some perfunctory introductions on the first day of the project.

Wendy smiled faintly and adjusted a picture she kept near her terminal, fussed with a small row of notepads and pens, and turned her mug to face the proper direction. When everything was in its place, she happened a glance at Yaemi to find that the Deilokin was finishing her usual post-bathroom OCD spree. Programmers could be a quirky bunch - but then, she'd been fairly similar when she was young and thought herself an invincible Goddess of the Holonet. She decided to extend a metaphorical hand of friendship.

"Do you have anything lined up after this contract, Yaemi?" Wendy asked, turning her chair the slightest bit towards the young woman, her goggles hanging around her neck. "Or is it back to classes?"

 

[Tanith Alde]

Classes?

Who does this woman think she is? Is she trying to question my credentials?!

She fixed Wendy with a rather blank stare, looking up from her works pace terminal. "I have a Master's Degree from the Deilosian Academy of Theoretical Engineering with credits in Propulsion Systems, Material Design, Component Engineering, Programming, Artificial and Virtual Intelligence Design. I've taken courses in Nanotechnology, Subspace Mechanics ,Regulation Treatment and Interaction of Chemicals, Radiation, and Biotechnology Applications....." The list she rattled off kept going for quite some time. It was about and comprehensive and droll as it was impressive.

That'll show her who she's messing with.

This just confirmed her earlier theory though, this woman was clearly trying to run Yaemi out of work, or at least out of this office. She was positively bristling at that sort of slight against her. It was because she was younger than her, wasn't it? She wasn't some old hag jealous of her accomplishments.

Unbeknownst to Yaemi was the utter lack of hostility, and the kindness intended by her coworker [member="Wendy Kingston"] .

It was a good thing Yaemi was a professional. And a bit of a coward. Or she might have taken matters into her own hands, and laced Wendy's work with scrap code whenever she got up. Unfortunately, or for Wendy fortunately, the Deilokin wasn't the bravest soul around. In fact, facing her down long enough just to give her credentials seems to have been a bit of an exercise in will for the young woman. Her gaze quickly slid back onto the glowing monitor after her little outburst, and remained there for the next several minutes, as she attempted to busy herself with work, almost angrily slamming down line after line of code.

Just you wait, I'll show you what happens when people underestimate me.

 

[Wendy Kingston]

[member="Yaemi"] listed off her qualifications in response, and to be fair, they were pretty impressive. Wendy hadn't expected the bragging, or at least what she considered to be bragging, but hey. If she had that many degrees before she was twenty, she'd be rattling them off at the drop of a hat, too. She only had the one degree, and she'd only gotten it when she'd already had considerable experience in the field of cyber security. "That's impressive!" Wendy complimented genuinely, offering a smile.

It was easy not to take the boasting as an affront. Anyone who'd spent that much time in lectures and books was bound to be a little awkward and maladjusted.

She offered a small smile, then turned back towards her terminal. Her break wasn't really over, but she could do two things at once - especially if one of them was just looking up Pointer references. "I've been considering an offer from Silk Holdings, but I don't know that I feel like spending six months on the Mara corridor." Wendy confessed cheerfully. It was a dangerous place to be, these days. She didn't need that kind of trouble. "If you like, I can put you in touch with the agent I've been talking to. The project could probably use someone like you." She explained. "And I've seen your work - it'd be fantastic to go into it with somebody I know can carry her weight."

Always help out the new generation, Wendy reasoned. She had only gotten where she was from oldheads helping her get a leg up, it was great to pay that forward.

 

[Tanith Alde]

Was she being pitied? Yaemi was legitimately beginning to loose grasp of the situation. Wendy, who she now determined must be her nemesis, had gone from attempting to eliminate her by driving her to the point of insanity through a thousand individual little slights and aggressions was now offering her some kind of work. Was this just a trick to try and get her out of the way? No. Maybe she was recording, offering her the job to then take it to her superiors to show some sort of disloyalty.

I'm onto your games, Kaz'ra.

Again came that skeptical narrowing eyes over the top of the terminal, so easy to mistake for a pleased grin.

"I'd have to say I'm far too busy to take up anymore work." She informed, with no small hint of smugness. "I'm tasked with a variety of projects aside from this one. I keep thoroughly busy." Perhaps an unfortunate side effect of the electronic filter her voice had to go through to transmit properly, but the tone of that statement could just as easily turn from smug to whining about overwork. She was a young, bright girl, it couldn't be good for her to be cooped up with work like that all the time.

By Yaemi's standards, this particular exercise was almost a vacation. They were working on a ship's central computing system, not some weapons program, or Kill-Droid Processor. Just the simple electronic core of a vessel, it was hard to even know which one given all the red tape and bureaucracy. And yet despite this, it'd been perhaps the most stressful project she'd worked on to date, and all because of -her- presence. Always with the smiling, and the looks up at her whenever she passed by. The disdain Wendy held her in was clear as day, to the Deilokin. Even if that same disdain was likely the further thing in the world from [member="Wendy Kingston"] 's intentions.

Perhaps some recon was in order, as the military types said. Knowing your enemy was the first step to defeating them. "Do you have any family? You look old enough to have them, shouldn't you be spending time with them instead of working?" What to Yaemi was a cutting jab at her imaginary opponent, though in reality likely came off as good-natured inquisitiveness, with awkward phrasing.

 

[Wendy Kingston]

Wendy chuckled and shook her head, offering [member="Yaemi"] a small smile. "It's just me and my husband, Alex." She confessed. "We've talked about having kids, but with our careers as busy as they are..." She shrugged and turned the small picture she had at her desk towards Yaemi, so she could see. The subtle indication that she was maybe too old to be doing this sort of work (Or looked it!) wasn't lost on Wendy, but she chalked it up as cultural differences. Yaemi was a young woman with a young woman's mindset, and who knew what kind of pressure a Deilokin was under? At least she seemed to be smiling.

Cheerful and confident. Wendy liked her already.

Letting the topic of additional contract work drop, Wendy returned to her work with a bit more vigor. She wasn't competing, she had nothing to prove, aside from maybe that she could keep up with a young ace at the top of her game. After all, Wendy reminded herself, Age and treachery eventually won out over youth and enthusiasm. Not that she was feeling especially treacherous. The next couple of hours flew by as Wendy set about securing the complicated AI Yaemi was constructing, testing the practical limits of her security system and adding a few things in where she noticed gaps - wordlessly covering any weaknesses in her cubiclemate's work, adding annotation where she felt Yaemi could learn from it.

Her watch buzzed again. Wendy took a breath and stood, gathering her things. "Heading to lunch, Yaemi - would you like to come with?" The elder admin offered.

 

[Tanith Alde]

Oh, Lunch. That was a thing.

A thing that Yaemi often neglected, focused on her work as she was. She tended to subsist on a variety of NutriShakes and caffeine-heavy beverages. It was simply more convenient, given her species inability to properly process the Atmosphere of Type-1 Environments that most other species tended to inhabit. Though when she could get the chance to be out of her suit, she tended mostly to binge on junk foods. Primarily starvation with the occasional bouts of unhealthy food binges tended to define the Deilokin's diet. Interspersed with a balanced variety of pills to help stabilize her mood, and a rather unbalanced cocktail of self administered chemicals to keep her more or less functioning.

But lunch could be a valuable opportunity to probe [member="Wendy Kingston"] for weaknesses. She needed to prepare a proper arsenal for the inevitably treachery she was going to receive from her coworker. She could already see her Modus Operandi with the little corrections she was constantly making, the little annotations that followed them. She was clearly trying to paint Yaemi as inexperienced and incompetent, and she just couldn't let that fly. When the time came, she'd be ready.

"Where would you like to go?"

She asked, tilting her head in an obvious gesture of studying the redheaded woman.