The Night The Lights Went Out...

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!

Six hr, Six min, Six sec AKA One Hell of a Time

Neffydd's head hurt but it wasn't very bad so she ignored it. She got to The Pit of Hell just a little over two hours ago and was already bored.

For the first hour she had sat at a reception desk in a higher level than her normal office, directing people toward the only office that was still open so late. She had that assignment because her boss couldn't get the schedule right and had tried to schedule four staff members to use two computers.

For the next half hour she had sat in the break room after escorting her co-worker, the fairy, to the door. She was avoiding the petty posturing and sniping of the other two of her co-workers, a pair of aging harpies, who each thought the other was inept and bossy.

When one of the harpies left for the night Neffydd finally got a chair in front of a computer but still had nothing to do. She had to do her best to look busy or Della would tell her boss about how lazy Neffydd was. Never mind that the phone that Neffydd was supposed to be answering wasn't RINGING!

She listened to Della rant about this and that. She read a story. She checked her messages. She wrote some. She drank something that was supposed to be stimulating, but only made her have to pee. She chit-chatted about how pizza really did still have calories...

Only six hours, six minutes and six seconds to go until time to fly the coup.

Waiting

Neffydd stretches until the hitch in her spine between her wings pops and loosens. The flutter-flies in her stomach won't settle down like she wants, but they had every right to be as excited as she. This weekend is going to be AWESOME!

It's pretty late at night and she's talking to Warder Sullens and Katryni over the aether-com. He has just finished helping Aine put Lilly down for bed, (occasionally quite the arduous task,) and now has time to find the inventory lists Neffydd forgot to bring to work with her and send her copies to print out.

Just a couple more hours until she can be rid of The Pit of Hell and start her weekend! YAY!

Right after her shift, Neffydd is going to take a short nap, fix-up the lists she just printed, then be off to the market to gather the food-stuffs that they need for the long weekend at the Tournaments. She's going to stop by the nail salon to get her talons shortened and the paint color changed then at mid-day She'll go to Katryni's place to help her organize for her weekend thrift sale and after that Neffydd will sew until they scream at her to stop!

Friday morning will consist of a grand rush to get everything organized in a way that makes all the things able to fit into two vehicles, then off to the east to set up their household camp. Tourney = AWESOME!!!

Neffydd can barely sit still enough to type and the clock seems to be staging a peaceful rebellion... it refuses to advance quick enough no mater how Neffydd curses at it. She takes another sip of a minty hot beverage and wiggles some more.

There's a song running around her head and occasionally bumping into her Hum Impulse so that every-so-often she keeps humming the same few bars over and over again. She decides to turn on the radio to kill the brain-song and save the rest of her preciously small amount of sanity.

Only a couple more hours now...

Work?

Meanwhile, at The Pit of Hell:

"Good evening and thank you for calling, The Pit of Hell! My name is Neffydd, How may I disservice you?" The spiel is so ingrained in Neffydd's head that she doesn't even have to think about the words...

"Do ya hash a fishes?"

"Pardon? We have what?"

"Should ew hatz a issues??"

"Issues? I don't understand..."

"TRASHER ME DO AMID DANCE!!!!"

"OH! Sure! I can transfer you to Admitting. Have a nice night!" Click-click-click-click-tap.

Never mind that there are no fishes in Admitting; plenty of issues, but no fish.

Andur the Gnome was working in the next seat over... Andur has verbal diarrhea most nights and had already gone through the nights events once before Neffydd had shown him that there was a new flash game that he could access on The Pit's Aether-com. He was now clicking happily & would only be spouting out gems like: "Deader than a door mouse..." and "Soon business will pick up!"

SIGH...

Maybe it will when the Zombies get their godsdam act together...

But for now Neffydd sits in a particularly uncomfortable chair every night waiting to leave while occasionally doing what she's being paid obscene amounts of mullah to do, drinking copious amounts of thick, bitter, stimulating beverages and reading other people's blogs.

INTERNET! FOREVER...