Imperfect Affections

CHAPTER24

Leon

The sun filters through the gap in the curtains when I wake up at six on Monday morning. The light already has an autumn glow. Somehow, it seems thinner. Whiter. In winter, the sky over Johannesburg is a paler blue. The cold air smells crisper and the sunsets are deep reds and vivid oranges due to the higher amount of dust in the air. The region gets summer rain. I recall the characteristics of the seasons with all my senses from when I was living here as a child, but it’s only now that the city feels like home.

The reason for that is sleeping tranquilly next to me.

Turning my face, I drink in Violet’s beautiful features. Her face is relaxed in her sleep. She looks soft and vulnerable. My wife is a stunning mixture of softness and strength, both on the outside and on the inside. She’s a puzzle I’m finally figuring out. I know her ambitions and her dreams. I understand what made her so defensive and unapproachable. I get why she can’t say she loves me. But I’ll be damned if I don’t love her obsessively, adoring every part of her, even the scared part that demands she always keeps a small distance between us.

I get up quietly, letting her sleep. After showering and dressing, I take the envelope from my jacket pocket, the one that holds the tickets to Zanzibar. I booked the trip online while she was napping yesterday. It’s the honeymoon we never had. She wasn’t made to exist in one place with her feet firmly on the ground. She was made to explore universes. She was made to fly.

I grab a pen and write the words I owe her on the flap of the envelope before leaving it on my pillow. Bending down, I brush my lips over her forehead. Her skin is warm. She smells of sleep and woman and caramel. I straighten before I change my mind about pulling the covers off her naked body. In the doorframe, I turn to steal a last glance at the small shape of her body under the comforter.

We barely left the bed this weekend. I wore her out. She needs her rest. Not wanting to wake her by making noise in the kitchen, I stop at the bakery on my way to work for a quick coffee and a bagel.

When I arrive at the office at seven, a few bleary-eyed junior programmers are guzzling coffee at their desks. Gus has always been a slave driver, but he’s been extra tough with deadlines this week.

Gus and Elliot walk through the swing doors shortly before eight.

“See you in fifty,” Gus says to Elliot where they split to go to their respective offices. “You’re going to knock his socks off.” He adds with a smile, “I’m proud of you.”

Elliot wears a smug look, but he doesn’t glance in my direction. He enters his office and shuts the door.

I get some coffee and make myself comfortable.

Carter pitches up at nine. He rubs his palms together and cuts straight to Gus’s office. A moment later, they join Elliot in his office. I pop in my ear pods, lock into the app that gives me remote access to Elliot’s computer as well as his webcam and microphone, and sit back to enjoy the show.

The three men’s faces come onto my screen.

“It took you long enough,” Carter says, his face zooming in as he leans close to the screen. “Let’s see what you’ve got.”

“You’re going to love the extension,” Gus says. “Elliot did a fine job.”

Elliot opens a demo of the second phase of my program. The software launches with the original frontend design, but like the first program Elliot stole from me, he renamed it from Violet I and II to StarDating. Elliot jumps into a presentation, explaining how the enhanced features will analyze the accumulated data and deliver demographic reports, which will allow the company to mass target individuals with tailor-made packages.

“Knowing each person’s purchase behavior and brand preferences will allow us to match them with a suitable partner,” Elliot says.

“Resulting in a higher conversion and subscription rate,” Gus adds.

“Fucking brilliant,” Carter muses, following Elliot’s cursor over the screen with his gaze.

They bet their asses it’s brilliant. From here on, however, things are going downhill. I trigger the bug that sits in the demo. The ravenous little monster wakes, eager to feed. Following the labyrinth of paths from Elliot’s backend to the intranet, it worms itself into the company network. Thanks to the demo program that overrides the main server and mirrors normal functionality, the worm can crawl undetected through the maze of coding.

Its first target is the program Elliot installed to trigger a warning at external prodding. A mediocre program at best, it’s not difficult for my worm to swallow it before moving to the data on the main system. The incriminating video is next. The worm gobbles up everything in its path while the demo pack simulates a healthy operating system. I designed the demo to display a false frontend with functional interactivity, hiding what’s happening under the surface until it’s too late to prevent the system from crashing.

“Strange,” the rookie programmer in the front mumbles. “I lost my keyboard connection.”

His neighbor squints behind the thick lenses of his glasses. “Eclipse isn’t responding.”

Before they can raise an alarm, Elliot’s face appears as a Pac-Man on every screen in the building, complete with the original sound from the game. The floorplan of the office is the maze, and the workstations are the dots. One by one, the dots disappear as Elliot’s head chomps on them, signifying the real-time blackout of each workstation.

“What the fuck?” Gus yells loud enough for the sound to reach me through the closed door.

The staff jump to their feet, their expressions panicked as they look on with owl eyes.

Elliot is whiter than a poodle that’s just stepped out of a doggie parlor. He stares at the screen with a slack jaw and shock painted on his face.

“Fuck,” Carter says, stepping back as if the virus in the system is contagious.

Gus slams a fist on his desk. “Who the fuck did this? He’s a fucking dead man.”

Elliot lifts his head and meets my gaze. Violence churns in his eyes. He’s clutching the chairback in front of him, his thin arms shaking.

“I want my money back,” Carter says, backtracking to the door. “This is a breach of our contract.”

“Wait.” Gus holds up his hands. “We can fix it. It’s just someone’s idea of pulling a prank.”

“Sorry.” Carter shakes his head as he opens the door and exits. “I don’t do business with companies that don’t provide efficient firewalls.” He points at the computer on Elliot’s desk. “That’s no prank. You’ve been hacked, my friend.”

He turns on his heel and jogs away, my guess is to go and safeguard his own system. If Starley Solutions is infected, all their clients who have a backdoor into the system may be affected.

“Fuck.” Spearing his fingers through his hair, Gus yells, “Fix it, damn you.”

“I can’t,” Elliot exclaims with a pinched face.

“Get out of my way, you useless piece of shit,” Gus says, shoving Elliot hard enough to make him stumble. Diving for the keyboard, Gus punches in a string of commands.

Elliot catches himself and stares at his father with a wounded expression.