MACHINE AND OPERATOR

Simon Avery was sitting on the floor and was crouched between shelves of rack mounted computer servers. He worked for the IT department. Laying next to him was his small black leather bag that kept his laptop and various tools, things like needle-nose pliers and a soldering gun. The room hummed as he sat there, and he wasn’t sure what he was looking for just yet. He watched the glow of the computer lights, row after row after row… illuminating pictograms that he was all too familiar with.

The department boss had sent him a voice-mail earlier that morning mentioning something about general network error codes, with dropped or missing packets or something. He couldn’t remember exactly what he had said, but he dealt with this kind of problem all the time.

He took out a network analyzer patch cable that he kept in his bag and connected it to the unit directly in front of him. He then hooked it up to his laptop and waited. He needed to gather and log some of the incoming and outgoing network traffic. He might then have an idea what his boss had been telling him. He starred again at the pictograms indicating connection status and watched the activity indicators too.

He noticed as small flickers of light danced deep within the green and blue glow of the solid-state bulbs. It was like looking into a hologram. It was almost hypnotic. He then did something very…