Core Drive: A Westworld Story

Reverie 2015-E: Joy

"No seas tan hijo de puta!" Joy yelled at her computer screen as the program displayed yet another error with her code update. She sighed and removed her glasses, stretching back into the chair until they both groaned. The pounding of her temple was less severe now that she wasn't gawking at the computer monitor.

The hiss of her office door opening alerted her to a presence. She was too wired to look.

"No rest for the wicked I see," Robert Ford's familiar voice said. His hands falling to rest on her shoulders to work at the knots.

Joy inched her shoulders lower, out from under his touch. When she opened her eyes, she saw Robert work his jaw muscles.

"Sorry," he tucked his hands into his waistcoat pockets. "Old habits."

Tension of a different kind hung in the air now.

"It's alright, Robert," she reassured him, fixing her glasses back after wiping them down.

He moved to stand by the window overlooking the construction site for the rest of the Mesa Hub. "Two years. Can you believe it?" he said. He was doing the thing where he talked to himself by talking to someone else—using them as an echo chamber.

Joy hummed as she began inputting and double-checking new lines of code.

"In two years our vision will be realised: Westworld!" he turned to look at her with a proud smile on his face.

"Our  vision?" Joy stopped typing.

Robert arched a brow, a skittishness coming over him. "What I mean is—"

"Did you forget why I quit the first time around, Robert?"

"No—I simply meant that—"

"A glorified theme park may be your vision, but not mine. Never mine." Joy ran the code authentication program, and like clock-work, it brought up several new errors. She groaned, sliding the keyboard away from her in a fit, swearing at the room: "Esta puñeta no sirve!"

Robert cleared his throat, removing his glasses to have a look at the monitor. Joy rolled her chair back to let air breathe between them. Her headache growing worse.

Robert worked over the keys, and in short order, the program ran smoothly. No errors. No strings of unbalanced functions.

"How did you—?" Joy looked up at Robert with that star-struck look that first landed them in their current precarious situation; awkward, with too much history to remain just amicable.

"Some of your strings weren't complete. You still have that habit of not closing your double brackets," he smiled with a reminiscent look in his eye.

Joy was reminded of that young boy with bright ideas she'd fallen for. Nights and days spent locked up in a small basement room that acted as their start up offices. Three paper signs with different names stuck on the door because neither Robert, Arnold nor Joy could agree on a single one. Instant noodles, Earl Grey tea and the smell of Arnold's menthol patches had been their constant. Their unchanging variable. Until it did. Until Robert and Arnold sold their code as a commercial product; a fucked up leisurely commodity for people to enact heinous fantasies with no repercussions. The board had eaten that shit up quicker than their initial A.I pitch.

Joy shifted in her seat, wiping her wide-eyed look away. Robert's expression changed to one reserved for the workplace.

"You're stressed," Robert said. "We're understaffed and I gave you too much to—"

Joy played with a strand of her hair, "It can't be helped, Robert. We're on a tight schedule."

"Still, take some time off. I'll get Percival to pick up some of the slack. He's been too comfortable ever since Delos cut that senior staff bonus check," Robert smirked.