Test 19/20 failed: Memory access violation.
I let out a loud exhale as my fingers twitched in front of the keyboard. Someone else walked by.
“Um, Siava, are you all right?”
I fought to keep my hands under control as they strained for something, anything to latch onto and ruin. Bad hands. Do not strangle her. She is your friend. Friends are good. Friends are helpful. Friends are calming.
“Ah, Selene! No, everything is perfectly fine! It’s only the tenth time that this stupid program breaks on me and I don’t know why but there is absolutely nothing wrong whatsoever! Whichever garbage Xunilean engineer designed this stupid framework needs to go to hell but I’m fine! Perfectly fine and sane and sane and fine!”
Selene looked concernedly from my twitchy fingers, which were now gripping the keyboard tightly — no, bad hands, don’t break the keyboard — to my beaming face. “Yeah, no. You’re about to blow up. Come get a drink with me?”
I shook my head, returning to my computer to hammer away lines upon lines of troubleshooting code with the strength of determination and coffee. “You don’t understand. This is going to work. All I need is one more try! I’ve spent hours on this, I’m sure I can fix it I know exactly what went wrong I’m going to finish it tonight—”
My monitor suddenly went black. I turned to see Selene moving her hand away from the power button of the workstation. The fury of a thousand suns burned within me, and adrenaline pumped throughout my body, demanding I settle the matter immediately with the one who dared take me away from my work. I stood up and glared at my ex-friend. “Selene.”
She put her hand on my shoulder, applying just enough pressure to turn me in the direction of the break room. “Siava. Look, I’m sorry, but it’s past midnight! The buses and subways aren’t running today, so you’re my carpool home, and everyone else has gone already!” She gestured at the rest of the darkened cubicles.
“That does not mean you get to take me away from my work,” you traitorous woman, I added mentally. “I only needed a couple more minutes.”
“Calm down,” Selene said soothingly. Only now did I notice that she had already packed up all my things — maybe she wasn’t the worst person in the world after all. “Even if you spent hours more, there’s no guarantee you can finish before daybreak,” she yawned, “and I’d like to get at least six hours of sleep tonight. So we’re leaving, right now.”
Now that I had stopped looking at that accursed screen, my blood pressure returned to slightly more regular levels. I sighed. “You’re right, sorry. I guess I was just a little worked up.”
I started picking up my things that Selene had very nicely finished packing up for me. She smiled. “That’s the spirit. There’s no need to worry about anything. It’s a good idea sometimes to come back to something later, after you’ve had a break.”
We were already in my car and on the highway when she asked, “You did save your work before I turned your computer off, right?”
As my car headed down the ramp off the high-speed road, any onlooker would only see one person in the vehicle.