It's Called Sarcasm [1] ⌲ Twombly

07 | charles xavier

"Good morning, Interns!" Chetty says through the screen on Lyle's computer. "Today marks the first of several challenges through which your team will show their merits. While internally dogfooding a new product, a number of Googlers reported a bug that disabled their audio. All two million lines of that code are in the source files. Your job? Find the bug."

And with that, it was like nerd hell broke loose.

"We should check the user reports," I say, moving straight to my laptop.

"Check the logs and scan for red flags." Yo-Yo states.

"See what exceptions were thrown." Stuart throws in as he moves to the white board.

"I always start by using strategies to sift through the code." Lyle adds.

"That's a good idea, maybe we should start with that." I say.

"Code, right? Codes. Right?" Billy says. "So at the end of the day we're looking to kind of break the password here, right?"

"Uh huh, sure." I say, not really listening as I scribble notes down beside Stuart on the expo board.

"Maybe the answer is in the question." Nick adds.

"Maybe it's something with bug."

"Eureka."

"Bug like fly. The fly! Is Chetty a cinephile?"

"Oh my God," Stuart mutters under his breath.

"Just focus," I whisper back, not taking my eyes off the equation I wrote.

"Yeah, yeah." He mumbles back.

"Boggles my mind that no one has a notebook out." Nick says, looking around at us. "You guys are focused on writing this giberish! Maybe it's helpful, maybe it's not, but I guarantee you what we're saying is helpful."

"Guys," I say, coming to my feet. "We're looking for a bug. Not a password." I explain. "They're two different things." It's no use. They're too busy talking about staying positive to hear me. What is this, an after school special?

"Fly. Fly. I like that." Billy says as he continues to write on the expo board. "Y-L-F. It's a word scramble, it's life!"

"Can you tell them to shut up?" Stuart hisses into my ear.

"Hey, I'm the passive aggressive one in this friendship, you tell them." I say back, earning an eye roll.

"For some reason I can't get fly out of my head and now I'm going Lopez, Jennifer Lopez." Billy rambles on.

"Will you please stop?!" Yo-Yo snaps back at them.

"No, we're working!" Nick replies.

"No, we're working!" Yo-Yo says, gesturing to the rest of the group.

"And that's a sharpie, by the way, genius." Stuart says, looking over at Billy who yes, indeed held a sharpie in his right hand.

Billy stares at the board for a minute. "That's my fault." He says, licking his hand and then trying to rub the sharpie away.

"Hand sanitizer." I say, not bothering to look up from my notebook.

"Excuse me?"

I sigh, looking up. "Put some hand sanitizer on a tissue and use it to get the marker off, it's really not a hard concept." I say, shaking my head and looking back down at my journal.

"Hand sanitizer, got it!" Billy says, grabbing a tissue off the desk.

I sigh and look up at the two older men. "Look, guys, you're both nice and all, but you're not exactly helping. All you're doing is saying a bunch of words really fast that mean nothing."

"Thank you," Stuart says, leaning back in his chair.

"Look, to find the bug, we need to review the code and find the programmer's mistake. It's the only way." I say, raking a hand through my dark hair.

"But what if it's not the only way?" Billy questions. "You said that someone programmed it, yes?"

"Yeah...?"

"Well, that means someone in this building wrote that code. Let's give him a name. Let's call him Tony." Billy continues. "Let's say Tony likes kayaking. Me and Nick become friends with Tony-"

"Nick and I." I correct.

"-we throw some beers back, we do some kayaking. Tony's bombed on open water, next thing you know, we're gabbing about audio bugs!"

"I actually think it's a great idea." Stuart chimes in. I look at him, surprised to say the least.

"Great! Finally!" Billy says. "Dark and stormy feeling us!"

"Oh yeah, feeling you big time, buddy." Stuart says. "In fact, why don't you two go and find the programmer? Doesn't that sound like a good plan?" He says, looking at me and raising his eyebrows. I finally clue into what he's doing and nod enthusiastically.

"Great, great idea!" I say as the rest of our group nods.

"Yo-Yo, who's our man?" Nick asks.

"Um..." Yo-Yo starts. "His name is Charles Xavier."

"Charles Xavier. Nick, write it down." Billy says. I look over to Stuart and we exchange an amused look.

"He's a professor. At Stanford." I throw in. "Just a few minutes away, actually."

"Guys." Lyle warns. We ignore him.

"He's in a wheelchair" Stuart says.

"Got it. Stanford, wheelchair, what else?" Billy asks.

"Oh, he's bald!" I blurt, shooting my hand into the air as if I was in a classroom asking a question.

"He might be with his best friend who wears a metal helmet." Stuart adds. "He's a genetics professor."

"More, more, what else?" Nick asks.

"He has a British accent." I add.

"British! With my ear, we're done." Nick says, then making his way out of the room.

"Keep searching. Think fly, think bug." Billy says.

"Of course." Stuart says with a nod.

"Absolutely. Back to work, guys."

***

"We're terrible people." I say as I work along side Stuart on my computer.

"Oh yeah, the worst." Stuart agrees, and I can hear the grin in his voice.

"Horrible."

"Mechanical."

"Completely mad."

We share a look before bursting into laughter, throwing our heads back as we do so.

"Do you two have any shame whatsoever?" Lyle asks, raising his eyebrows at the two of us.

"No."

"None."

Lyle sighs. "Okay then."

I grin back over to Stuart. "You know something, Stewie?"

"Hm?"

"I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship."

A/N- I'm actually getting stuff done, that must mean the world is ending