Chapter 1
Jerry Bennett didn’t know why the shipping company he worked for insisted on always having the latest and greatest electronics in the office. Last year, all the computers had been upgraded to the newest version of Windows, and for weeks afterward, nothing seemed to work right. Customer invoices weren’t sent, bills of lading disappeared, shipments hung up in loading bays waiting for authorization that never came. The moment they seemed to get all the kinks worked out of the system, the e-mail client they had switched to stopped working properly. Then their accounting program was updated and that, too, went kaplooey.
Some days he wondered if he wasn’t getting too old for this crap. He could remember when bills of lading were handwritten in triplicate. Sure, the pink copy on the bottom was sometimes too faded to read, but at least the document didn’t disappear into cyberspace. It remained in a file somewhere for all eternity.
Not any longer. All their old documents had been scanned or re-entered into the computer. He couldn’t go to the file cabinet, pull out a drawer, and root for an old invoice or waybill. They didn’t exist. Or rather, they did, but as bits of binary code on a hard drive somewhere, encrypted with a password that changed weekly, and even though he received an update via e-mail from IT each week, he never remembered the long combination of numbers and letters that would unlock their files.
Was all that really necessary? Who could possibly want to steal shipping documents that were filed away and forgotten twenty years ago?
Then last week, it was announced that all the company computers would be upgraded again. Not even Windows this time—they were going Mac. Jerry wasn’t even sure what that meant, really, but the quick overview they were given of the new system hurt his brain. In some ways it looked similar, true, but the guys in the IT department had pressed the need to learn keyboard shortcuts and Jerry just couldn’t get it. What was wrong with using the mouse? “Too slow,” they told him. “Next question?”
Too slow, my ass,he thought. At forty-three, he liked to think he was still in the prime of his life. He was active after work—spent his evenings at the gym, and his weekends hiking or rafting. Whenever he went out with friends, his rugged good looks still drew attention. He never sat at home Friday or Saturday night. He dressed well and enjoyed his bachelor’s life. How many times had a restaurant server written her number—or his—on the bottom of Jerry’s receipt? Jerry fooled around with men and women, and none had managed to tie him down yet. So how could he be getting too old to figure out how to do his job?
When he came into work Monday morning, a brand new MacBook Pro sat on his desk. It looked so…so small. He tossed his briefcase into his chair and stared at the thin sliver of shiny aluminum. It looked insubstantial, and when he lifted it, it felt virtually weightless. How could they replace his hulking desktop computer, which used to sit under his desk so it wouldn’t take up too much space, with this thing? There were no cords connecting it to anything, no mouse, nothing. Did it even work?
Carefully, he set the MacBook aside and opened his briefcase. Inside was the thick, Windows-based laptop he used whenever he had to take work home. He pulled out the tangled cord and crawled under his desk to plug it into the power strip, then ran the cord up behind the desk before plugging it into the laptop. There was a small mouse in the briefcase, too, which he plugged into the laptop before turning it on. The MacBook sat to one side, neglected. He’d use this old thing until they pried it from his cold, dead hands.
* * * *
Unfortunately, when Jerry turned on the laptop, he knew right away something was wrong. For starters, it took way too long to boot up. Two minutes went by, then three, and the Windows logo flickered a few times but didn’t go away. A full five minutes passed—Jerry’s gaze kept bouncing from the screen to the clock above his desk and back again—and finally the startup image went away, only to be replaced with…nothing.
Absolutely nothing.
No desktop, no icons, no toolbar along the bottom, nothing. “Shit,” he muttered, hitting the spacebar, then the Enter key. Still nada. He tried the three-finger salute, ALT+CTRL+DEL. No dice. Under his breath, he cursed, “Fucking piece of shit.”
Another minute or two went by before he conceded defeat. Picking up the telephone beside him, he dialed the four digit extension to the IT department. A woman answered. “IT. Help you?”
“My computer won’t start,” he said.