Vaporware Read Online Free Page A

number
was.
    “Do
you want me to get it? I’m closer.” Michelle turned and took a step toward the
desk. The phone jangled again.
    “No!”
I coughed. “I mean, no.” Michelle shot me a quizzical look, and I wilted under
it. “It’s Sarah, and if you answer the phone, then I get to explain at great
length what you’re doing in my office, playing secretary.”
    “Jesus,
Ryan, I wasn’t offering to get you coffee.”
    “No,
no, I know that, and she probably knows that, too, but, oh the hell with it.
She just wants to know when I’m coming home, and the more time I spend talking
on the phone, the longer it’s going to take me to get home. If we just finish
this, I can get home sooner and tell her that I missed her call. OK? Let’s just
get back to it.”
    The
phone rang a third time, angrier and more insistent. Michelle gave a
half-smile. “Lying? There’s a great way to build a strong relationship, Ryan.
I’m glad to see you haven’t changed too much.”
    “Shared
house payments are a great way to build a strong relationship. Everything else
is secondary,” I retorted. But I kept my eyes on the phone and my butt in my
chair near the whiteboard and Michelle.
    For
a fourth time, the phone rang, then a fifth. Midway through the sixth ring, it
cut off. I exhaled, only half-aware I'd been holding my breath. “It’s kicked
over to voicemail. We can get back to work.”
    I
turned back to the board, pushing myself out of my seat, and a shuddering groan
echoed through the building. The lights, both the dim wall-mounted fixture on
the near wall and the harsh halogen floor lamp in the corner, flickered and
dimmed. A quick look into the hall told me that the same thing was happening in
the entire office. All the lights on the phone flashed red once and went dead,
and my monitor and desktop system abruptly shut down with a groan.
    “Brownout,”
Michelle said, looking under the desk.
    “Hey!”
I pushed my chair back and stood up. “What are you doing?”
    “Checking
to see if your UPS sucks or you just forgot to plug it in.” She pulled her head
back up. “Don’t worry, that’s all I’m looking at.”
    “Shelly—”
I started, but broke off as the lights came back up. The computer rebooted with
a ping, accompanied by the whine of an overstressed motherboard-mounted fan
trying its best to catch up. The phone lights gave one final, desperate blink
and then went out in unison.
    “Huh.
The brownout must have eaten her message. Oh well, I’ll call her when we’re
done.”
    Michelle
nodded distractedly, then glanced back at my monitor. “Hey, that’s weird.”
    “What
is?” I moved around to see, careful to maintain distance between myself and
Michelle, who was still crouched half under the desk. After a moment, she
uncoiled herself and stood up, about six inches too close for my comfort. I
shuffled back, hoping she wouldn't notice.
    She
pointed at the screen. There was the first screen of the presentation I'd
started giving in the meeting room. “I guess it didn’t shut down completely.
It’s open to slide number one.”
    “Impossible.”
I leaned in for a closer look. “For one thing, I had the presentation open on
the laptop,”—I paused to tap it, closed and hibernating on the opposite side of
the desk—“not the desktop. For another, it did shut down all the way. We heard
it stop and we heard it reboot. It should have gone to the login screen, not to
Powerpoint.”
    Michelle
looked at the monitor, a 36” flatscreen, then over at me, and then finally back
again. “Huh,” she said. “Why do you even have two systems?”
    “Legacy.
Eric likes keeping things old school. Doesn’t matter,” I said, a bit brusquely.
“Now let’s finish this, so for once I can get out of here on time.”
    “Optimist,”
she said and turned her attention back to the board. “So if we can keep this
sequence to fifteen seconds, will that be enough time to show off the gameplay
you