Chase finished decoupling his code just in time for the 8:30 meeting with Tre. No one else from his team was at the office yet, so he was able to concentrate enough to work quickly. Working alone and uninterrupted gave him the opportunity to catch up.
He had just finished double checking his logic one last time before closing his laptop, yanking out the power cord, and heading to Tre's office.
Tre was on the phone, but he saw Chase and waved him in.
"I'll call you back," Tre said into his phone before hanging up. He looked at Chase and said, "So good of you to show up today."
Chase sat down in a chair on the other side of Tre's desk and nodded toward his coffee mug, "Ceramic coffee mug? Seriously?"
Tre shook his head and said, "What?"
"You know those cups are stupid," Chase said. "They don't hold heat."
"They don't hold heat?"
"No, they don't. That's why the sides are always hot and you need the handle. The coffee gets cold fast because the heat escapes. Once you pour a cup you have a window of two or three minutes to drink it. It's stupid."
"Are you aware that all over Europe they drink coffee this way?"
"Oh, well then I take it back!" Chase said sarcastically.
"What do you want?" Tre asked.
"First, let me apologize for the dev server," Chase said. "What I did was wrong."
Tre looked at him and began shuffling through papers on his desk, "Chase, you cut the power cord with a pair of scissors."
"I know," he admitted, remembering his promise to Dr. Chandrian. "I'm sorry."
Tre shook his head, "Sorry is not good enough. You didn't show up at work yesterday—no call, nothing. What?" Tre's attention turned to his door.
At attractive woman stood at his door in mid-knock. She had white slacks and a dark blue blouse with a visitor's badge clipped to it. Her thick blonde hair went past her shoulders, and had just enough curl to bounce as she moved.
It was Avery. Chase did a double take, not recognizing her at first. He was surprised that she got here so quickly, but more surprised at how pretty she looked. Perhaps the traumatic events of yesterday fogged his memory of her—or perhaps he just couldn't see her clearly in the smoky bar last night—but she was gorgeous. Despite wearing just a light shade of lipstick and little else in the way of makeup, there was no doubt that she had the attention of every man in the office.
"Excuse me," Avery said with a smile. "I am so sorry to interrupt. I am Chase Madison's court appointed case manager, and I need to speak with him, urgently."
Chase winced, his thoughts being pulled back to the situation at hand. He had expected that she would find him eventually, but not this soon. And he also imagined that she would be fuming mad.
Tre's body language softened. Chase wasn't sure if it was Avery's accent, her polite mannerisms, or simply her beautiful green eyes, but Tre was completely assuaged by her.
"Please, come in," he said, standing up and offering his hand. He introduced himself, and she took a seat next to Chase.
"You should be here for this," Tre said to Avery. "I am about to fire him. After that, he's all yours."
She didn't protest, and Chase didn't blame her, although he found it odd that she was so calm. No dirty look, no evil eye, not even a stern expression.
He opened his laptop and showed it to Tre, "before you fire me, look at this. All of the Poseidon code has been decoupled."
Tre didn’t look at the screen.
"Look," Chase urged.
Tre sighed and took the bait, grabbing the laptop from Chase. He scrolled down, examining the code in detail.
Chase took the opportunity to address Avery. He wanted to whisper that he was sorry, but when she looked at him he could see the hurt. She was not angry, she was disappointed. Putting himself in her shoes, he realized that she was probably in trouble with her boss now, just like he was. Except, her trouble was his fault too.
"Listen, I'm—"
"I know," she interrupted. "You're sorry."
"This looks pretty good," Tre said, with a lilt of surprise in his voice. "Is this all checked in?"
"Yes, it's all in," Chase said.
Tre looked at him, "How did you get all of this done? You weren't even here yesterday to meet with Kalpana?"
"I came in early today to finish it," Chase said, glancing at Avery.
"How did you get the animation to work? I don't understand," Tre said in confusion, staring at the screen. "Decoupling fixed the lag, but the animation doesn't pop at all."
"Do you really want me to explain it?" Chase asked.
"Yes, of course I do."
"Okay. First, I took the design that you gave the team and tore it up. Then I took the ripped pieces and put each one into the shredder. Then took the shreddings and burned them all."
"Are you finished?" Tre said in an annoyed tone.
"Almost," Chase said. "I took the burnt paper and flushed it all."
"Very funny. Now, answer my question. How did you do it?"
He shrugged, "I took the data and interpolated what each data point would be for any given date and time."
Tre shook his head, "The team already tried that. The animation still popped because there's only four quarters of data per y—"
"Any date and time," Chase interrupted, stressing the word 'time.' "That means for May 13th at 5:23 pm I can tell you the exact data point for each category."
"Okay, so?"
"So May 13th at 5:24 has a slightly different value," he explained. "That's why the animation works."
Tre leaned back in his chair as it seemed to sink in, though he still didn't completely understand, "But how can you interpolate non-standard domains? Dates and times have staggered ranges like 0-12 and 0-59?"
"My interpolation algorithm converts all of the date-times into whole numbers," Chase explained. "So midnight on July 1st, 2014 converts to 2014.5 exactly, but May 13th converts to some ungodly number with a crapload of decimal places, depending on the time of day."
Tre squinted as if trying to focus on the idea, "What made you even think to do it that way?"
"I don't know," he shrugged.
"Well, good work," Tre said, nodding appreciatively. "Send it to the server team and have them install it."
"No," Chase said. "They don't know how to install it. Every time I send them a package they get it wrong and I end up having to walk them through it on the phone."
"Then walk them through it on the phone."
"What's the point of that? I can do it myself in half the time, and it will be right."
"You don't have access," Tre reminded him.
"I will when you give it to me."
"Stop already. You know this is the way it's always been done."
"Ah, the way it's always been done," Chase said with an exaggerated smile. "The universal excuse for idiotic policy!"
"Watch it, Chase."
"Oh, I'm sorry, I meant it's brilliant. Restrict access to the designer—the guy who created it. That's like telling the people who built your car they can't have access to fix it," Chase quipped. "Have them get on the phone and explain it to the guy who invented the wrench!"
"I'm not going to argue with you Chase. You know the separation of duties, you do the building and they do the deploying."
"Yeah, I know. It looks really good on a PowerPoint."
"Enough!" Tre barked.
"Tre, I always wind up doing both jobs because they don't deploy it correctly. It's not only stupid; it's a waste of time and company money. "
"Send it to the server team."
"No."
"What do you mean, no?" Tre said threateningly. "How much money are you making again?"
"Here, or somewhere else?"
Tre turned to Avery as if Chase were not there, "Do you see what I have to deal with? He's giving me no choice but to void his contract. I don't want to lose him, but he has no respect for the system."
"Suspend him," Avery suggested.
"Pardon me?"
"Suspend him," she said. "He'll have time to think about what he's done. Plus, this way you do not permanently lose an expert. If problems arise and he is the only one who can fix them, he's still under contract."
"You don't have to defend me," Chase said to Avery.
"I can't suspend him," Tre explained to her. "He's not an employee, he's a contractor." He turned back to Chase, "But I can fire him, since he didn’t show up for work yesterday."
"I was arrested," Chase said.
"Is that supposed to help?" Tre asked, unsurprised. When Chase hesitated, Tre came to his feet and said, "You're fired. Get out."
Chase stood up, "But I just fixed your system!"
Tre nodded, appreciating the irony, "Yeah, thanks for that. Now leave."
Chase felt anger boiling within him, "Not without giving you a piece of my m—"
Avery jumped up and stood between them. She put a hand on Chase's arm to calm him, and said, "Wait."
Chase looked at her, "Get out of my way, Avery,"
"No," she said.
She stood toe to toe with him, firm and unyielding, looking boldly into his eyes. But that is not what gave him pause. He was struck by how her resolute expression clashed with her soft, attractive features. Her pale green eyes had locked onto him as if ready to take him down by force, if necessary. There was a strange unpredictability about her, reminding him of the fact that he still didn't know who she was.
What was she doing here, anyway? Nearly as tall as he, good looking, intelligent, she seemed capable enough to be doing anything, why was she wasting her time here—with him?
At his hesitation, she added, "Don't do anything you'll regret. Perhaps with time, they may hire you back. Let's just go."