Clickclickclick, taptaptap,click,clack,click, tappitta-tappitta-tap... Neffydd's talloned fingers were tapping along, with unprecidented speed, as her mind raced to pour out the ending to one of her eppic stories.
clickitta-tap-taptaptap... WHIRRrrrrrrr... BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! whirrRRRR!
The monthly generator test had gone off without a snag... except...
"What the..." Neffydd muttered as she toggled the switch on her aether-com. "Oh... You have got to be kidding me!"
"What?" Andure, her ancient gnome of a co-worker asked as he, too toggled the power on his unit.
"It's not re-connecting." She growled while glaring at the offencive device.
"Oh..." He turned his back on and waited... and waited... and waited... "Mine either." He finally announced.
Neffydd unplugged her unit's power and aethernet connection, held the power button to the count of twenty, replugged everything, toggled it on... and nothing. DAMMMMMIT!
She had been one, ONE, sentence from finishing.
"I think I'll go on my break," Andure announced, "When I get back it should be fixed."
Yes! Neffydd thought to herself Because these things regularly fix themselves in your absence!
Thirty minutes passed, Neffydd tried to reset both units to no avail. Andure got back and the coms were not magically fixed. Big surprise... So he called the support tech desk. The support tech, being a generally helpful fellow, told the duo that in order to repair their units they would have to reset them.
Neffydd wanted to rip her glossy brown hair out. Neffydd pulled plugs and pushed power buttons, again, instead. She had been on the tech's end of the line before, she knew that this was just a step to really getting somewhere.
This step was not working so the support tech called an on-site repair tech, who promptly told everyone that The Pit's central communications hub was not important enough to warrant a night visit and she would be there in the morning, good night.
This did not fly very well. This reasoning had no wings at all.
But wait! There's more!
The Night Supervisor called into the office, "Can you look something up for me?" She asked in her usual, harried voice, "My connection's not working." Then the fourth floor, and the third floor, and the peace officer desk... calling in to report the disconnection.
Andure placed another, more urgent call to the support tech desk. The support tech was absolutely delighted to contact the surly repair tech. The repair tech called in again, requesting to speak the the Night Supervisor again, thinking that we were over exaggerating the severity just to get her to repair our computers. Boy... was she set straight!
While this was taking place, Andure and Neffydd devised a plan. She would take an auxiliary desk at a console that had no external line and was half way across The Pit, while he would man the phones and public address system. In the case of an emergency, Andure would page, overhead, and Neffydd would use the terminal to enter the information so all the pagers would go off.
This was a silly work-around, for an extreme circumstance, so Neffydd logged into the remote terminal and chatted with a passing fellow about the "crisis".
While she was chatting, Andure started paging: "Code Two! Code Two!" Neffydd swiveled her seat to face the terminal, inputted the information and sent it to the appropriate pagers before her fellow could finish his chatter.
"Wow!" he said, wide-eyed, "Good thing you thought of this!"
Yes, the buddy system relay worked. A person got their proper care.
Thankyougoodnight!
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