The Nightmare People

4.

Smith stared at the screen, trying to see why the routine didn’t work. He didn’t hear Einar come up behind him.

“So, Ed,” Einar said suddenly.

Smith started, and his hand hit the keyboard, transforming line 16186 into gibberish.

“How’s it going?” Einar asked. “You over whatever you had last week?”

Smith said, “Uh… oh. Yeah, I guess. Sure, I’m over it.”

What had that line said, anyway? He had lost five characters that he had typed over, or possibly six, and the line had no notation attached that would tell him what it was. He’d always been sloppy about documenting his work.

What was it he wanted this line to do? “How’s it coming?” Einar asked, distracting him again. “Still on schedule?”

“I think so,” Smith said, trying to ignore Einar without being rude about it. He needed to concentrate on the program. Was that supposed to be the line that specified the data string for the page header subroutine? No, that was 16180.

This wasn’t working; he couldn’t think clearly.

“What happened there?” Einar asked, peering over his shoulder and pointing at line 16186.

“Bumped the keyboard,” Smith said.

“Oh,” Einar said. “Well, I guess I’ll leave you to fix it, then.”

“Right,” Smith said.

He had the old line 16186 on disk somewhere, he realized, and he set out to retrieve it.

He wished he weren’t so tired, but the lack of sleep and the unusual hours he had been keeping were catching up with him – not to mention the strain of trying to concentrate on his work when the nightmare people were always lurking in the back of his mind, worrying him, intruding on his every thought.

He called up the file he wanted, and only after he had done it did he realize that he had forgotten to save the changes he had spent the last half-hour on.

“Damn!” he said.

Choong Fu, at the next terminal, straightened up from his own keyboard and glanced over at Smith. Smith waved at him half-heartedly, then went back to the screen and started over.