Immortalys II: The Expansion

Chapter Three: The Unpunished Crime

Friction realized, after a few days of working his new job in software regulation, that he hadn't been entirely truthful to Willow or Blainey about his thoughts on it. Willow asked him when he came home the first day, "How goes the new job?" and Friction, busy finding something to eat in the kitchen, absently replied, "Good."

In fact, it was great. He hadn't wanted to make Willow feel envious or lose confidence in herself, so he hadn't told her that it was the best job that had ever been offered to him, but that was how he felt. His coworkers were enthusiastic, his boss was fair and friendly, and the work was all computer programming, just like he was used to at home- except now his code was useful for others instead of just for entertaining himself.

He especially hadn't wanted to tell Willow about all the glories of being a computer programmer when she came home from the first day of her new job. She came into the kitchen and tripped over a barstool before noticing Friction was even there.

"Oh, hey, Friction," she said, rubbing her ankle.

"How was the first day?" Friction inquired.

Willow shrugged. "It was... work. I think I've identified what the issues are in the hardware, but now I've got to figure out how to fix them. I didn't want to stay there a super long time, you know, because Officer FitzEdmund is paying me for every hour I'm there, so I didn't want to, like, hang out there for the whole day..."

Friction laughed. "Willow, it's a job. As long as you're doing it and he promised to pay you, you don't have to worry about being that nice; you just work."

"Yeah," said Willow, "but I just didn't feel like I should have been there the whole day. FitzEdmund was always in a room close by, doing something, and I felt like he was watching me all the time. Maybe he was just making sure I wasn't breaking anything, but he sure did a good job at creeping me out."

"Oh." Friction tried not to laugh. "I see."

"Maybe you should tag along!" Willow retorted. "You'd see what I mean! It was creepy."

But Friction chose not to tag along, and the next day he happily traveled back to work. He was greeted with the news that the file his group had been working on had a deadline next week, so they would have to put in a couple of extra hours over the next few days. Friction, unperturbed by this, sat down at his Screen and began typing.

Friction and his five coworkers had a long desk all to themselves on the third floor of a rounded building overlooking the lake. The wall was entirely glass so they had a great view and ample sunlight (when there was sunlight to be had). Friction, however, wasn't entirely fond of his proximity to this great view, so he usually pulled one of the vertical curtains down from the ceiling to cover his section of the window. Today, thick clouds had blanketed the sky and fog had formed over the lake, so the expanse of tundra below was not as bothersome as usual to Friction. He didn't give the view outside a second glance as he opened up the files and began looking over his lines of code.

His morning was spent analyzing his part of the code, fixing errors or adding things to make it run smoother. Just before lunchtime, Friction and his coworkers huddled together around in the center of the room and discussed how they each went about problem-solving and trouble-shooting, each of them changing bits and pieces of the hologram above the table during their discussion. After that they enjoyed lunch together and talked about home and family and recreation; mostly, Friction noticed as they kept directing their questions at him, they just wanted to hear about how Canada worked.

The landscape outside quickly got dark as the afternoon progressed. Friction, having used a lot of brainpower already that day to get their code ready, felt himself becoming drowsy. He stared at the screen, zoomed in on the pale blue hologram above the desk, got a drink of water, and tried to concentrate.