George shifted the car's transmission from drive to reverse, palmed the headrest of the passenger seat, turned his head clockwise from twelve to four, and backed his car into the farthest possible parking space from the entrance of the Public Utilities building. George reached for the ignition as Dylan, Danko, and Manuel reached the apex of Goin' to Acapulco; he held his hand in place as "goin' to have some fun, yeah!" played from the car's speakers. With a quick twist of his wrist the keys were free and the car's interior was silent.
George spent the majority of his day sitting at a desk in a windowless office staring at a computer screen. He welcomed any physical activity he could get. The desire was manifested in walks through and around the sprawling, newly-renovated, building, frequent trips to the bathroom or vending machines, general loitering, and parking as far away from the entrance as possible. As George navigated through the parking lot he began to plan his routes through the 50,000 square foot building.
The Public Utilities building was deceptively large. A mediocre building on the outside, one that goes unnoticed as you speed by at 55mph, but once inside you realize just how overwhelmingly big it is. This is due primarily to the building being one story and not very wide, but what it lacks in width it more than quadruples in depth. The building feels like it goes on for miles with each door leading to a corridor that leads to another set of doors that leads to even more corridors. Some doors reveal offices, other server farms or telecommunication hubs, storm shelters, conference rooms, open cubicles, locker rooms, kitchens, store rooms, and control centers.
George's office was sandwiched between his bosses office and the large conference room at the end of the hallway. It required a minimum of three turns to get to from any of the twelve outside entrances to the building. George interviewed for the position in the large conference room and had walked by the office twice. He assumed it was some sort of closet as any nameplate or room number previously assigned to the room had been taken down. Until recently the office had been occupied by a man named Richard Brown who stopped showing up to work after suffering from severe headaches for consecutive weeks. The corridor displayed no decorations aside from the blue and white nameplates with matching room numbers. The only object besides the three metal doors was a single bench sitting opposite the two offices. As George turned into the hallway he noticed two unopened boxes sitting on the bench and that his boss's door was open, so he poked his head in.
Good morning.
Good morning, how was your weekend?
Oh, it was good, too short you know, how was yours?
It always is. Mine was good too, relaxing, I tried to do as little as possible. I don't know if you noticed, but the surge protectors came in.
Ah, so that's what those are.
Yeah, I'm working on a map right now. Me, you, and Katie will split them up, so we can get it done quicker.
Ok, sounds good, just let me know.
Two weeks ago the office manager sent out an email to all of Public Utilities that informed of a recall on surge protectors. George and Bess, being the only two "technology" people in the office, were tasked with identifying the defective units and replacing them. George unlocked his door and pushed it open with the toe of his foot when he heard Bess leave her office, presumably to make copies of the map she had divvied up. Bess had been working for Public Utilities for over 20 years and was able to look at a map of the building and tell you how many surge protectors/computers/desks/keyboards/dirty posters/etc. where in each room from memory alone, the map was for George who was still learning the layout of the building, and Katie who had been confined to the control center for four years until she earned a promotion last year. George had just finished booting up his computer when Bess returned with the maps.
Here are the maps. I figured Katie could get the control center and the sewer collection offices around it. That leaves the sewer pump station offices and water distribution. Do you have a preference?
I'll take water distribution.
Ok, so I'll grab the sewer pump station offices. I've also made a list of all the offices that need replacements. We'll leave the boxes here and when you're done you can come back to grab some more and mark off the ones you've replaced. You can put the old defective ones in the box of the replacement. We'll just set them to the side until we figure out what to do with them.
Ok.
George began studying the map as he walked back into his office, excited at the possibility of spending a significant amount of time outside of it, especially in an area he hadn't thoroughly explored. He laid the map flat on his desk and ran the palm of his hands over it from the center out, smoothing any imperfections. Sure enough Bess had marked off three different sectors and located each recalled surge protector. The water distribution sector had been marked with green highlighter. George clearly had the lion's share of work to do, which was fine with him. George studied the map, ignoring the offices with no marks and noting the rooms with one or two green dots: B101, B105, B110-114, and so on. When he reached the top of the map George noticed something he hadn't seen initially: instead of a numbered office with a calculated green dot, there was a crudely drawn sketch of stairs on the outside of the map's perimeter. To the right of the stairs was an arrow pointing down followed by the name Henry, and next to Henry was one green dot.