Chapter 4

Swinging by his cubicle, Marty looked through his desk until he found the pain-killer. His head throbbed a little as well, so he took a couple (without water) before heading back to the break room.

Glancing at the the wall clock, he saw that it was already 10:30 am. Where had the time gone? He'd shown up before work so he could get some things done, now his work schedule had already started. He'd have to start the search later. The good thing is that he could start it after George showed up for work (if he even did) so it wouldn't look suspicious to be running the search using George's access. George certainly had done things on Marty's workstation in the past. Well, primarily because Marty was standing over him and telling him what to type. The network administrators had learned in those days that Marty had taken him under his wing and was trying to make sure he was successful. Like Marty was a big chicken, keeping track of her chicks and making sure they didn't get wet in the rain by hiding them under her outstretched wings. Marty mused. It was more like he was a giant turkey, with George manipulating things so he didn't ever have to remember how to do things or actually do any work himself, just depend on Chump Marty, the turkey.

Marty remembered the day that Year-end Bonuses were awarded. He had been looking forward to it because he had been carrying a double load the entire year, doing his work and George's work at the same time. Surely management would notice the heroic efforts he had made to make sure that there were no outstanding trouble tickets longer than a 24 hours. And there were only three that even got close to 24, most had less than twelve hours. The help desk Bobs were proud of their record, and knew that Marty was the reason they had done so well. The year before, no one had taken care of George's tickets, and some tickets had simply been automatically invalidated after ninety days of no action. Somehow George thought that after he put a help ticket into the system, that the system itself would take care of followup, and even solving the end-user's problem. Marty thought that attitude came from watching too many science fiction movies with computers that talked to you, and seemed like they read your mind, they were so helpful. Of course, the classes at the university quickly disabused Marty of that idea. But George had never gone to school past high school. Marty actually believed the rumors that George had been under academic probation his entire senior year.

The crazy thing was that George didn't seem on the surface as someone who was mentally deficient. Mary could even understand it if he was incapable of doing his job. It was just that he was lazy. His work schedule started at the same time as Marty's but since that dreadful day of Bonuses last year, he had no one to tell him that he was getting to work late. A Supervisor! How could Mr. Wurczock have actually appointed him to supervisor? Sure Gladys had semi-retired while she was having a baby, but didn't he know that Marty was one of his hardest workers? I guess it just goes to show that people see what they want to see. Rather than see that Marty was carrying a double load, he chose to notice that Marty worked a ten hour day and completed 10% less help desk tickets than George did. Never mind that Marty actually did the work behind all of George's help tickets, and sometimes ended up doing double work for them, because first he had to undo all the chaos that George had created in trying to fix the ticket to begin with, and then had to actually fix the problem that George had originally begun to work on. I guess that the work on Smarty Artie was actually worthwhile.

Marty chuckled to himself. It was a bit daring creating an artificial intelligence to begin with, but naming it after his alma mater's mascot was sheer genius. Smarty Artie the Artichoke, well, he had added the "Smarty" part. Making a computer smart was just about as much work as making an artichoke smart, let me tell you. Of course it really wasn't smart per se. It was still really dumb. But it could do some amazing stuff with finding patterns. Even if you didn't know what patterns were there. Maybe once George came in, he could have more success in finding out what patterns would be most helpful in tracking down the elusive Mizz Farensweerd and her blurry fonts. But he doubted it.

Coming into the break room, he was again captivated by two visions of loveliness. Well, at least of pulchritude. Junie was still sitting at the desk, stretched back with an icepack on her head, and Julie had obviously just finished the coffee, as she was leaning over the table, putting the cup of java in font of Junie. Marty could never get enough of gazing at the two women, (trying not to leer, but still trying to get as much of an eyeful as he could.) Fishing his digital Camera out of his pocket he quickly took a couple of pictures, forgetting that the flash would give him away.

A flash of anger appeared on Julie's face at the intrusion until she saw it was Marty. "Marty! I know you said you would help make up the fashion portfolio, but the flash is going to hurt Junie's eyes! Don't you know you should be more considerate?!?". Junie just groaned as she held the ice to her forehead. "I'm going to get quite a goose egg from that fall", she said. "Well, at least I will be able to tell the two of you apart, at least for a few days" Marty said, as he handed her the pills. "These should help the pain a bit" he said.