‘I had to do it, Guy. The whole network. I didn’t have a choice. About twenty minutes after I got in this morning it just kicked off. Every screen in the place started displaying pictures of this Indian woman.’
‘Question, Caedmon. What the hell am I paying you for?’
‘Guy —’
‘This is so not supposed to happen.’
‘I know. I’m really sorry. It’s a virus —’
‘Oh, Christ. Please, please, please, do not be about to tell me it’s eaten everything.’
‘No, it’s OK. All our data is backed up on to tape. It’s just a question of —’
‘Spare me the details. Just tell me how long. When’s it going to be up again?’
‘It’s going to be a while. Unless there’s a patch, I think I’m going to have to clean-install everything from —’
‘Caedmon.’
‘Certainly the rest of the day.’
An hour or two was what Guy had in mind. That seemed an appropriate amount of time for the situation to resolve itself. Instead he was going to lose a whole day. A vital day. Was he going to have to live for the rest of his life as the man whose company was brought down by a computer problem? A bloody technical hitch? It was like something from a bad b2b ad campaign. Don’t be the manager whose department caught the virus.
‘All day? What the hell is that? All day, Caedmon, is no good. It has to be quicker.’
‘I’m sorry, Guy. If I had an assistant — but it’s just me —’
‘Just you? We’ve got millions of computer people.’
‘They’re graphic designers, Guy.’
‘Oh.’
‘Look, even if some of the others muck in, it’s going to be a while. It’s not just Tomorrow* who are having problems.’ Caedmon mentioned the names of two rival agencies and a bank where his friend was temping. Guy allowed himself to be slightly mollified. He waved Caedmon out. ‘Go on, then. Get on with it.’ The gesture, he noticed, came out with a peculiar flourish. More ancien régime body language. Not a good sign.
By lunchtime his mood had worsened. Every time he walked somewhere he felt he was mincing. Switching on his laptop, he was confronted by a little pixelated woman and a snatch of screeching violins. He took the machine down to Caedmon, who nodded glumly and told him he would make it a priority. At two he sent most of the staff home. At three he took a call from New York.
The call confirmed that Pharmaklyne was going with another agency to brand its SSRI. Guy expressed his disappointment, thanked the product manager, and put the phone down. The first thirty seconds passed calmly. Then, shouting inarticulate obscenities, he threw the phone across the room. It felt good, so he followed it up with a promotional paperweight which somehow went off course and shattered the glass doors of the case where he kept his collection. When Kika came in to find out what was happening, she discovered him on his hands and knees among the shards of a bottle of Reservoir Dogs commemorative table wine. He screamed at her to get a cloth.
Kika helped him mop. Mainly Kika mopped and Guy paced up and down, trying not to mince and muttering fuckfuckfuck under his breath.
‘It’s a movie star, apparently,’ she said, gingerly picking up glass with her fingers.
‘What?’
‘The woman in the picture. She’s an Indian movie star called Leela Zahir. Ranjit said so.’ Guy looked blank. ‘Ranjit,’ Kika prompted. ‘Your senior copywriter?’ Guy nodded vaguely. At front desk, Kika informed the remaining loiterers that Mr Quiffy was really falling to bits.
As the stress ratcheted up, Guy brooded behind the closed door of his creative space, increasingly self-conscious about the foppishness of his gestures and ever more in need of someone to blame. Caedmon was the obvious target. Hourly he appeared in a more useless and ineffectual light. A problem by definition was someone’s fault, and who else’s might it be? There was, now Guy came to think about it, something smug about him, with his definitive collection of fanzines and encyclopaedic knowledge of early-eighties new-wave bands. Women in the office babied him. For his birthday they clubbed together to buy him a mountain bike. But when it came to a real emergency, when this happened, who cared whether your geek was popular? He obviously wasn’t up to the job. Guy called Kika and told her to get some computer-security specialists to quote for cleaning up the mess. Then he had a little chat with Caedmon. After that things went rapidly downhill.
Some time later he found himself standing in the middle of the brainstorm zone, screaming into his mobile phone. Little tears had formed in the corners of his eyes. Junior employees were watching like spectators at the site of a road accident. ‘Do it now!’ he was pleading. ‘Why can’t you just come and fucking do it right now?’
Disconcertingly, Caedmon had seemed unfazed at losing his job. He frowned and sauntered out of the meeting, saying he would be in the pub if Guy changed his mind. A few minutes later Kika came in to tell him that she had phoned five companies and none was available to help. ‘They said perhaps in a day or two,’ she explained. ‘They said they had to give priority to their existing clients.’ Guy told her she was useless and made some calls himself. He shouted, threatened, got nowhere. Apparently everyone had this thing. Possibly it was some kind of Muslim fundamentalist attack.
As the reasons for Caedmon’s nonchalance started to dawn, sitting down no longer seemed appropriate. For a while Guy flounced around the building with his phone pressed to his ear. Then he noticed he was flouncing and made an effort to stride with masculine purpose. It made no difference. No one would listen. No one would help. Like many business people he had a quasi-theological view of computers. They were important and mysteriously beneficial, but it was the job of the priesthood to engage with them. Finding himself with no technical support was like standing naked before the judgement of God. He had no idea how to proceed, no way of even gauging the seriousness of his predicament.
At this point he realized he was vocalizing. And that his staff were staring at him.
Kika persuaded him back upstairs. She sat him down on his Eames lounger with a glass of spring water. She switched on the TV and handed him his remote. As the flow of images worked its calming magic, she gently suggested he might try to unfire Caedmon.
There was no alternative. He made the call. Caedmon didn’t sound surprised to hear from him. Guy apologized. Caedmon said no sweat. He already had another job offer, and because of his notice clause (he named the section and subsection numbers) he would in effect be getting two salaries for a while. So it had worked out fine.
Guy apologized again. Then, experimentally, he begged a little.
Caedmon had the decency to keep any note of triumph out of his voice as he swiftly negotiated a bonus, an £8,000 rise and two extra weeks of paid holiday. When he announced that for the moment he was happy in the pub, and so would be unable to start again before the next morning, Guy made a superhuman effort to control his temper. He succeeded, more or less. Caedmon said he would be in the next day about nine.