reassured. Like if she was getting help. She had been able to get on with her work
much quicker then she had expected. She was just starting to tell Gwendoline about it
when Ida came in.
Gwendoline had some reputation for dream telling even with the users and when she
saw Ida Gwendoline first thought she was coming for another dream session, because
she started saying: “It’s a nightmare.” and then began to cry. Consequently
Gwendoline and also Johanna and Hilde who still were in Gwendoline’s office looked
at Ida with compassion. It must have been a terrifying dream!
But it was no dream; it was about a life nightmare.
Olga Sredcova was one of those who made a lot of people cry. It was not that Olga was
a bad person. Of course no one could understand why her rather nice and dashing
looking husband hadn’t divorced her long ago. And how she could have such two
adorable little girls. She couldn’t possible behave with them like she did at work.
Indeed, in her private life, she had quite a lot of friends and buddies. She was of those persons who just shouldn’t work. Work turned her into a self-contradicting tyrant.
She had succeeded in emptying her WG of all Housefoncs. They had fled to milder
climates. She was always looking over everyone’s shoulder, nagging, checking, taking
apart the work done on one’s screen, giving instructions which did not correspond to
those of the House, those of her MOU, not anyone’s, such as by the way those of the
CHD. She wanted to show she could understand and do everything better, and thus had
to dismantle all existing structures, only to prove she was the one to finally have put
things right. She drove everyone completely crazy. Newcomers who already had much
on their hands with all the new things they had to learn, became completely befuddled
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when Olga went to explain what they had to do. Obfuscation, deviation, knots, such
were her laws. She was always giving lessons to everyone, but they did not teach a
thing, they just led to more confusion. Now only trainees or freshly hired staff were
made to work with her, those later ones fled as soon as they could. She even prided
herself that she had made everyone cry in the service.
It must be said to Olga’s excuse that she acted like this with absolutely everyone.
Strange excuse this was, but she did not only slash at the little newcomers or interim
personnel, she did the same with her boss and over-boss, she had even had had the guts
to give a lesson de morale to several of the Scientists. She told one of them she had
discovered a mistake in the atomic number of the new element he had just discovered.
The Scientists were those the House stood for. In fact its reason of being. Even the
HO1 had not escaped one of her speeches, because having once declared that he found
Marijuana innocent, and was smoking some from time to time.
Ok those later ones, Scientists and HO1, had no problem answering back, and several
times already Olga had been into rather big trouble. But the little trainees and young
staff in their trial period didn’t dare to oppose her in the least. Ida, a month old only in the House, certainly didn’t. The day the WG’s annual report had to come out Olga had
managed to contradict every single of CHD’s advises and instructions in what regarded
its making. Elements 112, the programme used to create that kind of reports was very
complicated and demanded quite a lot of experience in order to be at ease with it. Ida,
the new girl, did not know how to go about it right now. Walking at the same time
north and south while holding her right foot at her left ear was sheer impossibility. The situation was hopeless. She was sure her contract would be terminated on the spot a
few hours later, when she still wouldn’t have managed to produce a single paragraph.
The rules of form and structure a report was supposed to follow were complicated
enough as such, but with Olga’s explanations everything had become to resemble a
four-dimensional maze. She began to cry and cry and when she had reached the bottom
of her despair and was beginning to eye the window of her office on the sixth floor she
suddenly had a memory of the last sentence Johanna had said to her on the Welcome
Course the CHD was giving:
“And remember, Ida, if ever there is the slightest problem, ANY problem, come to us.”
She had emphasised the word ANY so strangely that Ida realised only just now that she
had not meant only Computer problems.
So Ida decided that she had to go and see the CHD. She went and found Hilde,
Gwendoline and Johanna, who listened with sympathy.
“I’ll come with you,” said Johanna, determined, and stood up to follow Ida.
Gwendoline and Hilde looked at each other, nodding. They knew what was going to
happen now. This was Johanna’s field, defending users against ferocious bosses, work
monsters and slave masters. Johanna just couldn’t stand seeing someone picked at. Or
harassed, mobbed, as it is called in modern office life. Especially if it was a little one.
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She would put on a fight Olga would remember. And loose. Only to listen to Johanna,
once gone on one of her speeches in order to convince someone even nicely, made one
agree with her, just to stop her from speaking further. One couldn’t help it, one just sat back and said “yes”, feeling helpless. Only Maurice didn’t. He countered with another
speech. Their manner in this was very different, if not opposed. Where Johanna was
passionate to the extreme, Maurice, though passionate himself, remained poised.
Where Johanna was all emotion, Maurice was all composure. They fought a lot like
this, and the CHD was used to their scenes, but somehow they all had the impression
that the two liked each other, just for the rhetoric and were just training in order to gain some kind of maybe political experience. But Maurice wasn’t present and Johanna
went alone.
She found Olga still at her desk, feeling in her right. Johanna began talking to her about giving contradictory orders, Olga insisting they were not, and the tone of the
conversation began to rise.
“It’s not the question who is right,” pointed out Olga. ”It’s the question who is the one who knows most. I had to listen to my elders just the same.”
“That’s not the point. The point is that there is work to be done. And the trainees can’t to their work, if you contradict our instructions.”
“Your instructions, my instructions. This comes to the same. Those trainees never pay
attention to what I say.”
“They might be paying attention much more if you were not contradicting the rules all
the time. Olga, no need to invent rules, we have already far to much of them.”
“I’m not inventing rules, and we have no more rules. I’m just paying attention to
mistakes. I love to find mistakes, because things must be a hundred percent right.”
“They are not mistakes, it is you who seek and see mistakes everywhere.”
“Johanna, don’t get over excited. You have a problem. You work too much.”
Johanna didn’t want to point out to her yet that she preferred to have that problem than Olga’s. Well not so much that Olga had a problem, Olga WAS a problem.
“Trainees should just obey. Trainees are nothing yet,” said Olga with more than just a
bit affectation.
At this Johanna went like a lion at Olga Sredcova. Not shouting, but in a gentle
persuasive manner, the soft method, the most dangerous of all. She purred like a big
wildcat. You could feel her feline energy flowing all through her, ready to eat you up
alive:
“Those trainees are like little children. As helpless and as precious. Do not touch the
little ones, they are sacred. They are our voice and future. Our window to the world. I
will have no such ways here. Those are not the ways of the House. Not our ways
anyway.” And she talked and talked, and Olga just couldn’t place a word anymore.
Johanna hypnotised her prey. Johanna was also always right, there are people like that.
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But some are more right than others. Olga began covering her ears with both hands;
this was Chinese torture, one word dropping on her forehead after the other. Slowly,
slowly. When would this Jo ever stop talking? She felt really bad now. Olga ended
sitting up numb on her chair, and crying even harder then Ida had. She would certainly
remember this little sitting all her life. She cried so hard that Gwendoline had to go and comfort her; a fact that Johanna better not be informed of, she thought Gwendoline
much to good for her own good. But Gwendoline liked Olga too. Olga then told
Gwendoline about her CLA, who was harassing her too. It was the typical picking
order.
Gwendoline went back and told Johanna who listened carefully, stood up and went to
see the boss too. She marched to his office and one could hear her clear soft voice
again. Johanna was not afraid of anyone, and certainly not of men or bosses. They
rather seemed to be afraid of her. Johanna had a lot to say in the House. It was better to say yes to her from the start, otherwise she would keep on talking for hours and one
might remain truly convinced. And Johanna would have convinced the pope to preach
for the pill. Her speeches quickly became discourse, sermon, oraison, biblic and took
over the universe, and you were swallowed by it, one couldn’t resist, one had to agree
Consequently Olga’s boss began agreeing with her immediately. Just to see her leave
just as quickly. Jo’s speeches, when she was not happy about someone, were worse to
face than an army of trolls. How she could manage to have time left for philanthropy
on her sixteen hour days was a mystery. But if she had convinced Olga was another
story. Because Olga was not the pope, Olga was Olga.
Johanna returned with a satisfied look on her face anyway and went back to her sixteen
hours workday. The next versions of their in-house programmes, Kaleidoscope IV and
Elements 112 swallowed up a lot of time. Johanna had taken over Elements from the
previous MOUSA of MOU XII. Of Kaleidoscope IV she had been the project leader
from the start on. Kaleidoscope was her baby, more than her son Nicky maybe, but let
him not hear that. If Maurice loved only two things in life, computers and women, in
that order; then one would believe at first sight that Johanna loved only two things in
life, her work and her son, and in that order. But it was not quite so. All good things
come in threes, and there was a third thing they loved even more. For Johanna it was
more obvious.
In-house or tailor made programmes. Jo just couldn’t stop. Those tailor made
programmes were her passion, a passion like some women have for beautiful clothes.
They trusted it would help them in their search for a passionate man. Jo trusted it
would help her achieve her main ambition, and this was not men. At any rate she was
happily married already.
Johanna knew how badly the House needed a structure. No one knew what to do
anymore. Kaleidoscope IV would help people structure their actions and thoughts! It
would give clear instructions. The choices it presented would be the only ones possible.
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Users would not have to wonder anymore what to do next! There was more to a
programme like Kaleidoscope. It had another meaning than just to structure a company
and help it with what it was doing.
In-house programmes mirror the work of a company like few things else do, but they
can also shape its work. First you were making an image of the company, and then,
when you were the only one to know a programme well, one could add and modify
modules in such a way that the company would end up adapting to the in-house
programme. First the programme adapted to the needs of the company, then the
company would end up adapting to the needs of the programme. And in the end it’s
creator could shape a company to one’s own needs. The one who knows a protocol best
is the one who can change it at will. Jo had decided that there would be only one word
and not thirty-three for one meaning, and this was a necessity for the unusual situation of the House, troubled Babylonians they were.
Kaleidoscope would first mirror the company, here the House, and describe its
structure. It would first use the companies terminology, but would then create a new
one. New words expressing new units of thought. And creating words is one very
subtle form of strength. It means power. The power of making definitions. The power
of words. Her words. And the ways of the House would finally lead to where she had
decided they would. It was Johanna who had written most of Kaleidoscope. Or rather
she had made her squad of programmers write it.
A programme like Kaleidoscope did not make sense in itself, it gave a sense, it gave a
direction. It was a way. A way out of chaos. It told people how to do things, and in
what order. It was a protocol, like the handshaking protocol in telecommunications, or
a royal protocol which would define the order of precedence. One could not understand
one word of it, but one could just apply it and follow its rules, rules which Johanna
hoped to be writing soon her alone. It was formulas made power. A powerful protocol
all made of codes. But Jo would use it to protect people, the little users. Jo protected all people, seeing them a bit as children. Jo considered that the poor little users had to be delivered from their horrible sufferings and even that their misery had to be replaced
by at least some pleasure.
Her little users, children with the big blue eyes, looking at her with trust, hoping for some warmth and protection. She never missed a compliment, if she could make one.
She wanted to strengthen the self-respect they deserved. They were her children and if
someone attacked them she would jump at him. Eyes blazing, teeth fletched, claws out;
like a lioness protecting her offspring. It was a deadly serious game at times.
The fun side she left to Hilde and Gwendoline, who were fervent adepts of the learning
by pleasure principle. She knew that Hilde and especially Gwendoline loved their users
to distraction. Jo loved to work. It could maybe have been any work. Jo needed to
work. But it was not only about pleasure and or protection and work. Johanna
positively hoped to use those formulas and protocols to obtain some advantages for
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herself too.
CLA’s, directors, general directors and HO1’s would phone, ask how the programme
was working, and what were the rules, and nod, say yes - yes - yes to all of her
answers, not realising once that CHD (or Jo) had invented it all, nor who was now the
master.
Jo loved society games; especially war games like ‘Risk’ and friendship breaking
‘Diplomacy’ and she loved to win. Playing games was her only childish aspect,
otherwise she was, unlike many here, a grown-up, just like her son. The secret was out:
Jo’s greatest love was power. And Kaleidoscope was all about power, the power of
words, the power of organising, it was power short. What luck that Johanna was a good
person.
It’s lunchtime
Power smiled to Lexi at lunchtime too, but it ended rather badly. Myra’s ominous
prediction had come true:
“Do tretice vseho dobreho” - All good things come in threes. Especially those not so
good.
Lexi had jumped with joy at the invitation she got from HO1, for a initiation at practice at the beautiful Bohatian golf course. After the practice HO1 had suggested she’d
follow him on the green to have a look at the real thing, which she had done gladly.
Sven was the only one she told about what had happened then:
“He got hit by a golf ball. It’s really serious. He has another concussion. You know the speed those little balls can take and he got hit on the forehead.”
Sven just thought it, but he bit his lips bloody to keep his mouth shut this time:
If I understand well he’ll not die directly from his virus then. The golf fever. Once
one catches it, you can not get rid of it easily. Like malaria, it keeps coming back. His life has been hanging between Practice and Hole 19 for years already. I didn’t think a
ball would do it, but simple practice or Hole 19. I don’t want my Lexi to catch such a
thing. Sven had no respect for people who played golf. Sven was pure nature
and for him Golf was artificial nature. Nor did he have respect for Saab’s, BMW’s
and other cars of the kind. But better not make Lexi more nervous than she already
was.
“I expect he’ll get well soon,” he said gently. “Those people are though.”
At the same time he had all the hard time in the world to not burst out laughing. Lexi
really did have a spell of bad luck with the HO1 and he even more with her. But they
kept holding on. Maybe there was something to it after all.
The afternoon was not so good, and she got a lot of calls about which’s solutions she
didn’t have a clue. Gwendoline was giving a course, Hilde was on a meeting and Myra
was down with the flue. She was all alone with questions flying at her at the speed of a golf ball and she had to duck her head all the time as to not get hit.
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Filter in Outlook
“That all of this still keeps going on and doesn’t go bust,” said Francia, to whom she
had just barely managed to reset a filter in Outlook so that her emails were there again,
“is the proof that God exists. God likes this MOU, that is for sure, and the whole House with it. Did he not, it would have gone completely busted long ago. Thanks so much
Lexi: So, next time I don’t see half of my mail I will remember to right-click on the
headings of the columns, like From, Subject, Date, choose ‘Customise Current View’
and the clear the Filter.”
Send a distribution list to a colleague
Like Ana-Maria phoning her to ask how to send a distribution list to a colleague.
Fortunately beau Borisss, who’d just come in to get a new mouse, wireless if possible,
but of course they didn’t have that, heard the question on the loud speaker and sensed
her confusion. Without speaking out aloud he took her mouse and demoed to her how
to do it just by mimicking it.
He opened a new Email.
“Open a new Email,” said Lexi to Ana-Maria’s intention.
Lexi still felt like a if golf ball had flown at her head too. Hard Lexi felt with the HO1, no doubt and rubbed her head for him. But she didn’t miss Boris either. He was
gorgeous.
When he chose Insert from the menu bar Lexi had but to admire his fine fingers.
Pianist fingers. But above that he had muscular arms, showing them a bit off, sleeves
turned up, and fine golden hairs were dancing on them. Lexi would so much have liked
to count them, one by one, and tried to imagine what tool she’d use. Fingers? Pen?
Tweezers. Boris pointed the cursor at the menu item:
“Choose Insert,” translated Lexi obediently.
The good-looking Russian chose ‘Item’ from the Insert Menu. This began to look good
indeed. He was so special. This guy was somehow missing the usual protective halo
most people had been forced to create around them, because others hadn’t been nice to
them. Lexi, specialist in martial arts and self-defence had never seen such a thing. Had Boris never experienced any hard blow? But Boris smiled and mimicked:
“Then choose Item.”
Lexi had to grin, her natural good humour was back.:
“Then choose Item,” she repeated.
Boris grinned too and browsed to the Contacts folder and there clicked on a
distribution list. The distribution list obediently became an attachment in the Email
message.
Lexi translated this into words. Ana-Maria was enthusiastic.
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“This is so easy. Lexi, you’re so grand. And how does my colleague get it down again
into her own contacts?”
Boris demoed on the screen what she had to answer to the user and she managed to
understand while trying to guess what aftershave he used. Must be his own scent. It
was too good. There was no dust around this guy, just untainted strength and
friendliness. And what a smile:
“Getting it down? Oh, that’s easy! Your colleague must just grab the distribution list
and drag it into her own contacts.”
Boris continued to mimic having a hard time dragging an imaginary distribution list
towards him like if it was a mule who refused to oblige. The muscles on his arms
swelled. Lexi was trying not to giggle out aloud. Ana-Maria didn’t notice:
“Lexi you’re great. I’m quite sure I asked the teacher from this outside school if it was possible and he answered that it wasn’t. You explain so much better. But of course you
know that. You and this CHD of yours is really a dream of a Helpdesk, thanks so
much. You are a marvel, unparalleled.”
Lexi listened to the violin concerto with some guilt, but was still to shocked to answer honestly. She did, however, thank Boris with effusion, while keeping silent about her
intentions to count the hairs on his forearms.
The next call was about a problem sending an Email to people in a distribution list.
“The Email just doesn’t want to go away, I don’t even have an error message.”
Boris wrote down the answer on a paper:
“The distribution list contains an error. Like a contact with only the name but not
the Email address to the right of it. Or a name which is in it twice can do it too.”
Lexi spelled this out aloud too. “And thanks so much for calling, Alberto.”
“That was indeed the cause. Thanks so much,” said Alfredo, the caller. “Lexi you did it
again.”
But privately he wondered why the hardware genius was suddenly getting so soft.
Lexi didn’t realise this herself, but it was true, a bit more, and she would be turning
into software. With the help of Boris, a user, but why not, if he smelt so good. So
masculine, all fine muscles and subtle strength and exuding natural after-shave.
But still it was a bit annoying, to get help from a user just like that. Gwendoline had
once told her she loved it: when the user began explaining to the Helpdesk. She came
back to ask Lexi if she had an idea just like that about why the mouse of Gerhard’s
laptop wasn’t working.
“He must plug it in before booting the PC,” said Lexi, happy to finally be able to play
her helpdesk role as one could expect. Gwendoline went, checked and saw that Lexi
was right.
At the end of the day Lexi felt even better, after a call from HO1’s assistant, telling her
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he, the HO1, was allowed to go home the next morning. How thoughtful of the
assistant of having called her…
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I did do nothing
Maurice came to see Hilde as usual early in the morning.
“Hilde have you heard the news?”
“What news?”
“About Mrko Mrnsk. Have you not been to see Tello this morning?”
“No as the matter of fact.”
“Mrko Mrnsk is in prison. In Kenya.”
“To good to be true! What happened?”
“He went on a safari trip with his wife, and shot some people.”
“A shooting safari, that’s just like him. What, he shot people? Which people? Locals?”
“Yes, a whole tribe of Notus.”
“The what? A tribe?”
“Yes, the Notus. Tello told me: “He shot elephants, lions and tigers, and the Notus.”
“What are the Notus then?”
“Well, as you guessed, some locals. When he pointed my gun at them they shouted:
Notus! Notus!”
Maurice went away grinning. Hilde had believed him again, for a moment. Wishful
thinking. She always did this, and could bite her fingers off, she really felt ridiculous.
One day she would take some sweet revenge. The Not-us, what more!
Hilde was sure Mrko Mrnsk should really be put in a place where he couldn’t do
anymore harm. But she was sure he did not feel any guilt about nothing. He was like
the users, whose favourite slogan is: I did do nothing.
Save your documents
“I did do nothing. I just sat there and suddenly the document disappeared. I
happened all by itself. But now it’s gone. Can you get it back for me?”
“Did you save it?”
“No I had no time to do this. We have to give it in before five o’clock this afternoon
and pressing Ctrl + S just would have taken me too