【42】All Your Fault

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Despite my best attempts at finding a solution, I still had nothing on Monday

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Despite my best attempts at finding a solution, I still had nothing on Monday. And anyhow, the cold war between Lex and me was still on. It felt childish to resort to ignoring the shit out of him, but I really needed to keep a straight head.

Maybe if I ignored him for long enough, I'd grow indifferent to him. But clearly, I was far from reaching that point. The entire day, I was particularly aware of his presence, next to me. It was as if every cell in my body had turned its focus on him. Things were getting worse by the hour. I had to find a solution.

I was being a coward, and I knew it. Avoiding my issues and pretending they didn't exist was wrong, and it wasn't something I usually did. But in this particular case, I had so much to lose, I couldn't dive headfirst into the matter.

By the end of the day, about fifteen minutes before it was time to leave, someone knocked on the door, and it was the first sound I'd heard in at least three hours. As it turned out, Lex and I were mutually good at not talking to each other. And was coming from a rather talkative person. A talking machine, as my brother had so gently put it. But when it came to Mr. Bossman, the norms didn't apply.

"Come in," Lex ordered, not looking away from his work. Since I wasn't a cold machine like him, I turned around to see who it was. The door opened to reveal Oliver. I smiled at the sight of my friend, and he grinned back.

"Hi, guys," he said, coming toward the desk. "Lex, I crossed Karen in the hallway, she asked me to give you this," he explained, handing Lex a thin folder of papers. "She said it's for the Hello World Con."

Since the subject interested me greatly, I stopped what I was doing to pay attention to their exchange. The Hello World Con was a mix between a congress and a convention held in the Silicon Valley, where companies, firms, and corporations from all over the country gathered for three days of intense nerding. There were conferences regarding advancements in programming, demonstrations of tools and software, as well as lectures and such. It was somehow the nerdiest convention held in the US, including all the Comic Cons.

Apparently, it was a tradition that Lex went with two people from the dev team. From what the guys had told me, it was epic, and they drew straws every year to determine who could go. The last ones to go had been Brian and Mace, and they spoke about their time there with stars in their eyes. The straws hadn't been drawn for this year yet, despite the convention happening in under two weeks. We were waiting for Lex's go. I wished I could win a spot, but it felt like I hadn't been here for long enough to deserve one.

Going to the HWC had been a dream of mine since way before I'd started working at Kelex. It was an event praised among coders, and I usually watched a few videos from debates and conferences every year. Maybe next year would be my chance to witness one in the flesh.

Alexander took the folder Oli was giving him and skimmed through it. "When you get back downstairs, you can tell your colleagues everyone is going this year," Lex said, putting the papers aside.

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