Amanda click-clicked, adding a few more blocks of code in the vain hope of meeting a deadline that didn’t matter anyway.
Software engineering required decent tools, clear requirements, and a measure of ordered calm. Ever since the private equity money had showed up, Amanda had none of these available and she took out her frustration on the keyboard, smacking away angrily with one eye on the clock. For no good reason, her boss’s boss had declared that the new app needed to be ready to demo by the end of the week.
Tap, tap, click, click. “Screw it,” she said, and pushed back her chair. After six already, and it wasn’t like they were paying overtime. She raked her fingers through her short hair, stood up, stretched, and looked around. She saw Ethan and Daniel hunched over their respective screens, looking miserable. She tried to get their attention but . . . AirPods (Ethan), and a noise-canceling headset (Daniel).
“Screw it,” she said again, and headed for the elevator. On the way down to the parking lot, she mulled over what she already knew was true: She was ready to quit. All she needed was an exit plan.
She’d been all set to pull the trigger two months ago, and then Tab has gone out on mental health leave. (“Should have thought of that,” she’d told her friend Megan at the time.) The higher-ups offered her Tab’s title and a slight pay bump, and felt she had no choice but to stay. Bad decision. A month later, still miserable, she’d been on her way to the office — with the resignation letter ready on her laptop — when the transmission in her Prius crapped out. A major expense, and it caused her to pause her plans again.
Three days ago, she’d finally had enough. Word had come down from the investors that the deadline for the new app had been bumped up. She’d asked her boss a few reasonable questions, like “why?” and “how are we supposed to do that?”
“Just get it done,” McCallen had told her.
Well. Bye-bye, then. Except that very night her microwave had crapped out. She ordered a new one but it had set her back a couple hundred bucks. Without another job offer in hand, she just couldn’t afford to take the leap. Which meant the app had to be done by Friday. Which was impossible.
The elevator hit the lobby and she stepped out. Right in front of her, a glowing red sign declared EXIT, with an arrow pointing left. “I’d love to,” she mumbled. But how?
***
She pulled into her driveway, admiring her little bungalow and thinking at the same time that she shouldn’t have bought it. If she weren’t tied to the mortgage, she could maybe quit her job. But she’d still have to pay rent on an apartment.
“Trapped either way,” she said aloud as she stepped up onto the porch. The new microwave had been delivered and she lugged the box into the house. Wrestled the old microwave out to the curb and then plunked the new one down in its place. She changed into pajamas, put on some classical music, and decided to microwave the Chinese takeout that had been sitting in the fridge for two days.
Amanda plated the stale rice and dumped the congealed kung pao on top of it. She stuck it in the microwave and considered the control panel. There seemed to be more options than on her last box. In addition to the number pad there were buttons for Popcorn, Baked Potato, and Reheat. Those looked familiar, though she had never used them. She saw Timer and clock, and another: Alt. Dim. Her old one hadn’t had that, she was pretty sure.
She flipped through the instruction booklet: 40 pages long, but two-thirds of it was French and Chinese. In the slim English section she found a diagram. That spot on the panel should have been marked Conv., for convection.
“Weird,” she said out loud. “Can microwaves convect? Is convect even a word?”
It still didn’t explain what Alt. Dim. meant. Probably they’d upgraded the controls and not printed a new booklet yet. She set the timer for two and a half minutes and just out of curiosity she pressed Alt. Dim. before hitting Start.
The bell went ding and she popped open the door. Instead of steaming two-day-old kung pao, there squatted a frog. Or sort of a frog. It was the wrong color, an iridescent blue-purple. Also it had feelers on its head, maybe antennae? And an extra eye between the usual two.
“What are you?” she said. It seemed like not a good idea to pick it up, so she tore a piece of cardboard off the lid of the box that the microwave had come in. She slipped it under the . . . frog? and set it on the counter. Three eyes blinked in unison and then the frog (?) became sparkly and evaporated, a thousand points of white light twinkling and then dissolving into nothing.
Amanda knew she’d been working long hours lately. She called her friend Megan and was lucky to catch her at a rare moment when she wasn’t actually crying. Mark had broken up with her two months ago, right after a trip to the Dominican Republic where Megan had expected him to propose. She still hadn’t recovered.
“I think I’m losing it,” Amanda said.
“Me too. Another bad day at work?”
That, for sure, but there was more. “I think I just evaporated a frog that wasn’t a frog. It came out of my microwave.”
“I thought your microwave broke.”
“This is the new one.”
“Send it back. What do you mean evaporated? And why were you microwaving a frog?”
“I was microwaving leftover Chinese. And it wasn’t a frog.”
Amanda wanted to explain but decided that she would actually sound insane. She didn’t want to alarm her already fragile friend. If she wasn’t losing it (put a pin in that for now, she told herself) she was at the very least seriously stressed. She didn’t like working under pressure.
“It’s complicated,” she said. “I’ll call you later.”
“Wait.” Megan cleared her throat. “I’m texting you a picture.”
Uh oh.
Amanda’s phone went ping. “This was on the beach, in the DR?”
Megan sniffled in the affirmative.
“He looks . . . distracted,” Amanda said. Actually, he looked like a man who would rather be almost anywhere else.
Megan cried for a couple of minutes. Then, Amanda hung up and put a black piece of tape over the Atl. Dim. button, so she wouldn’t push it by accident. Microwaved a bag of popcorn (no surprises there, at least), and hunkered down to watch a couple more episodes of The Crown.
***
Next morning, she rode the elevator up to the sixteenth floor. Ethan was already there and she asked him how his part of the project was going.
“My part?”
Amanda reminded him what he was supposed to be doing, knowing full well that he already knew, that he was needling her. “It’s got to be done this week, the whole project,” she stressed. She had the title, senior engineer, so she could tell him what to do. Ethan had a master’s to her bachelor’s degree, so he could ignore her.
Ethan smiled, shrugged. Needling her some more. She’d actually been coding three years longer than him, knew exactly what needed to get done, but his M.S. made him smug. She wanted very much to punch him in the face.
She turned to see Daniel tapping away, but he had his big padded headphones on. No point trying to engage. She sat down at her desk, fired up her screen, and went to work. Tappiity-tap. Click-click. Two hours later a chat from McCallen popped up in the corner of her screen. He was looking for an update. She typed, “royally screwed.” Then backspaced a bunch, logged out, and went to lunch.
Amanda parked in her usual spot at the Burger Hut and felt awful about having a usual spot at the Burger Hut. She’d been coming here too often, a special treat becoming a comforting habit, becoming (maybe) a chemical dependency. The exact mix of salt, fat, and sugar that went into the Hut Jr. with Cheese seemed to make work marginally more tolerable.
She went into the restaurant and ordered at the kiosk, following the prompts she already knew just a little too well. Push the Sandwiches button and select Hut Jr. with Cheese. Next screen, customize: Extra pickle, no onions. Make it a Meal? Tap yes, small fries, with a diet soda to mentally offset the burger guilt. Next screen: Add Chili? with a picture of a small bowl of the stuff, topped with onions and cheese. Why did they always offer that? Who wanted a bowl of chili with their burger? She pushed no and reached into her purse for her wallet.
But another screen popped up, unexpectedly, asking: Alt. Dim?
Sure. Why not?
Amanda tapped her card and stepped to the side. When her number flashed above the counter, she took her bag and her soda and went to eat in her Prius. She didn’t want to be seen eating at the Burger Hut, even by strangers. The bag felt a little heavier than usual and she wondered, not unhappily, whether she’d accidentally ordered the large fries.
She got in the car, closed the door, and looked in the bag.
“Well,” she said. “That’s not right.”
She reached into the bag and instead of a burger she got a round, stainless steel sphere, about six inches in diameter, smooth and flawless. It reflected in a rounded way the back seats and the ceiling and herself staring into it. Then it became translucent, and she was still staring at herself but also beyond herself. She noticed the landscape first: A long rolling meadow leading to a waterfall and in the distance — a city, medieval looking with spires, pennants flying. The windows in the towers sparkled in the sun.
Then she saw herself staring back at her, but the girl in the globe looked different. Her bob had grown out and her thick black hair fell in waves over her naked shoulders. Her eyes looked bigger somehow, or deeper: Full of humor and wisdom. The girl in the globe smiled and her cheeks dimpled in a way Amanda’s never did. She turned away and started walking down across the meadow, buck naked. She had a fantastic figure.
The globe turned stainless steel again.
***
Megan showed up at seven-thirty that night with a bottle of chardonnay and a puzzled frown. “You sounded weird.”
“Everything’s weird,” Amanda said and shut the door behind her. She opened the wine and told Megan first about the microwave.
“Definitely not a frog,” Megan agreed. She peeled off the tape and underneath it the button said Conv., just like it was supposed to. “You’re sure about this?”
“I’m sure,” Amanda insisted. “It was there.” Then she told her about going to Burger Hut for lunch.
“First, ewww.”
The chardonnay tasted good. “I know. I’m not proud of it.”
“Second, I thought I heard they were giving out Pokemon cards or something with the junior meal?”
Amanda explained again about the metal ball.
“Of course. Also, bullshit. I’m guessing the magic ball also mysteriously dissolved into sparkles or whatever?”
Amanda jumped up and ran to the bedroom. She returned carrying the Burger Hut bag.
“If that’s a burger and fries, you know I am calling in professional help, right?”
“Totally fair,” Amanda agreed and, feeling a twinge of doubt, stuck her hand in the bag. Her fingers closed gratefully around the cold metallic orb.
They sat side by side on the sofa and stared. “That’s us,” Megan said. “Where are we?”
It was no place Amanda recognized. She’d snuck a few peeks while at work, and had stared at it for a while longer waiting for Megan to come over. When she looked closer, she saw the sky was blue, or blue-ish, a shimmering almost metallic sky that held blue and yellow at once without ever becoming green. The few clouds were stratified, like wafers. Multi-colored birds soared with intention across the sky. The grass stood tall in the meadow, maybe waist high, and the buildings that made up the city each had their own character. They were far away, but through the haze she could make out rounded balconies on some; on others, elaborate turrets topped with flags and gold finials. On one, she spotted something that looked like a shimmering rooftop pool, the rippled surface reflecting golden darts of sunlight.
The girls in the globe were smiling and laughing together. Amanda had her dimples, and Megan looked fresh and clean, without the dark circles under eyes that she’d had ever since the breakup. They were both wearing bright-colored tunics now: Amanda’s a peachy color that seemed to glow with its own light, Megan’s a deep-deep violet that made Amanda think of how a midnight sky might look in a dream. A nice dream.
“I don’t know where it is. I don’t even know if it’s real.”
Megan topped off both their wine glasses. “Maybe it is real,” she said, almost to herself. “Maye it is real. Maybe that’s really us, and this crummy place is what’s imaginary.” She turned to look at her friend. “I don’t get it. But I know this much.”
Amanda waited.
“I’d rather be there than here.”
They clinked glasses and drank until they’d killed off the bottle.
***
Wednesday passed with a grinding tedium at the software factory. That night Amanda looked at the globe for a long time. Thursday she got up early. They still needed to finish the app in time to put it into demo mode. That was supposed to happen Friday at lunch time. A representative from the private equity people would be there, no doubt to ensure the first success of their investment.
When she came in Thursday morning she caught Daniel in a rare moment when he didn’t have his headphones on. “They’ve laid off a third of management. They haven’t given us the upgrades we need,” she complained. “And this deadline is impossible. What time did you go home last night?”
“I didn’t.” He said it with absolute seriousness. Because, she realized, he was serious. “I worked until three in the morning, and it didn’t seem worth driving across town. I slept in my car and shaved in the bathroom this morning.”
Amanda felt sick. “They don’t pay you enough for that.”
Daniel nodded. “But I can’t afford to lose this job, and we need to launch the app tomorrow. If Ethan screws this up, I’m personally going to run him over.”
A lot was hanging on Ethan. The app was a three-legged stool, and without his piece completed it would topple over. It would crash. In the big picture, Amanda could have cared less. It was a financial services app, using AI to help lenders qualify (or disqualify) potential borrowers more effectively. To Amanda’s mind, lenders were supposed to know how to do that. But the equity investors saw a big potential market, no doubt betting that even big financial lenders were both as lazy, and as terrifyingly uncertain about their own competence, as pretty much everyone else.
Whether they needed the app or not, Amanda knew her team needed to get it done by the next morning. They all needed their jobs, and as senior engineer, the responsibility fell to her.
“I also would like to run over Ethan. Maybe back over him too, just to be sure,” she agreed. “But let’s finish the project first.”
And with that they got back to work.
At seven o’clock Ethen declared he was heading home. Amanda said he’d first have to merge his code with hers and Daniel’s: They needed to lock it all together. Ethan said it wasn’t finished yet. He’d get it done in the morning. “It’ll all be fine,” he said.
“It won’t be fine. We need to finish it tonight, make sure it’s working.”
Ethan popped out an AirPod. “What?”
“We have to finish it tonight.”
“Nah.” He reached down and powered off his computer. “Tomorrow’s cool.”
Did he not understand? Did he not care? Amanda was just about to lose it on him when a message popped up on her computer, McCallen calling her into his office. She looked at Daniel, asked him to please handle Ethan, and strode down the hall.
“Everything on target?” McCallen wanted to know. “The equity guys are gonna shove me out if it isn’t done tomorrow. Probably —” he said pointedly, “— they’re going to shove us all out.”
Amanda plunked down in the visitor chair. “It’s Ethan,” she said.
“I never should have hired him. Big fancy degree! So what? Any chance this will actually go smoothly tomorrow?”
Shrug. “Are you going to throw me under the bus if it doesn’t?”
McCallen at least had the grace to consider for a moment before he answered. “What would you do in my place?”
She nodded, smiled. “Can I list you as a reference?”
“If I’m still here. If not, we can connect on LinkedIn.” He said it with a straight face. And McCallen had been in close contact with the equity people all along, so he presumably knew the score. Amanda had a strong hunch they’d set her up to fail, and maybe McCallen too, so they could make a clean sweep and bring in their own people. She wanted to ask, but upon reflection there didn’t seem to be much point.
Daniel worked until after ten that night and then told her his part was done. If Ethan could plug in successfully, it would be ready to go. “If not . . .” Shrug. “What about you?”
“Almost there,” Amanda said, and stayed on for another half hour double-checking her work. It was solid. She shut down her computer and headed for the elevator. Punched the button for the lobby and then noticed something off. The building had forty-eight floors but instead of “48” the top button said Alt. Dim.
She rode down to the lobby and called Megan. The security guard at the podium asked if everything was alright and she gave him a half-nod. “Working late on 16,” she said. “A friend is coming to help.”
“She got a badge?”
Amanda looked at him. Her own badge was at the bottom of her purse, or maybe shoved in the back of her underwear drawer. She’d never had to use it.
“Visitors need a badge to come in after six,” the guard said.
“I’ve got a deadline tomorrow. She’s just coming to help. But this really has to be done tomorrow. It’s a pretty big deal for my boss.”
He scratched his belly through his blue uniform shift and stared up at the ceiling thoughtfully. Panic starting to creep in, Amanda rooted around in her purse. Wallet, keys, loose aspirin . . . and way down at the bottom she finally found the lanyard with her ID card. She waved it at the guard. “I could sign her in as a visitor,” she said. “And you could use my card.”
Scratch, scratch.
She took a couple steps forward and caught a glimpse behind the podium. The guard had a comic book propped up across the video screens that she guessed he was supposed to be watching. He got flustered then, shook his head like he was arguing with himself, and finally admitted that would probably be alright. A couple minutes later Megan came in through the glass doors and the security guard had her sign in on a clipboard, with Amanda vouching for her. He still looked uncertain as Amanda hooked her arm into Megan’s and they strode away across the lobby. As they got in the elevator together, Amanda saw he’d gone back to reading his comic book.
Amanda pushed the button for 16 and the elevator started to rise. She showed Megan the other button. They looked at each other and grinned. They put their fingers on the button together and pressed.
When the elevator stopped on the sixteenth floor, they watched the doors slide open and closed. Then they continued to ascend. Amanda watched the number-counter above the door: 35. . . 40 . . . 45 . . . 46 . . . 47 . . .
When the doors slid open she felt a gust of warm, moist air flow across her face. The breeze from the alternate dimension smelled of lilac, honey, other things Amanda couldn’t identify. The wafer clouds floated across the sky above, and before them the tall-grass meadow stretched out toward the waterfall. They could hear the waterfall now, and the elaborate songs of the multi-colored birds swooping back and forth above the meadow.
They stared so long that the doors started to close. Amanda stuck her foot in, bouncing the doors open again, and they looked at each other. A moment’s hesitation — but it was just a moment. Megan nodded, Amanda took her hand, and together they stepped out into the meadow.
Wearing their flowing tunics, glowing peach and deep-deep violet, they took their first steps through the tall grass. Neither turned to watch the elevator doors sliding closed behind them.
###
About the Author
Adam Stone’s fiction has been published has in Bewildering Stories, Freedom Fiction Journal, Whiskey Island Review, A Verry Small Magazine, and AIM: America’s Intercultural Magazine.
