“Not really possible, on being arrested.” Dar said.
“No, I know, but you know?”
“I know.”
“Anyway, so, of the two hundred people in ops IT, a hundred and fifty quit.”
Dar's eyes popped wide open. “What?”
“That's who's here at Dave and Busters. They all just walked out.” Mark said. “Its like old home week here – they saw me and went nuts.”
“Holy shit.” Dar covered her eyes, then glanced at Kerry. “Most of the IT department at ILS Miami walked out.”
“Jesus!” Kerry sucked in an audible breath.
“Not only that.” Mark said. “The dipshit told everyone that this whole mess was your fault.”
Dar sighed. “That was expected.”
“That's why people walked out.” Mark said, a smile evident in his voice. “My whole old gang just said fuck you and wrapped their creds around that guys neck and left.”
“Wow.” Dar wasn't sure really what to say to that.
“And, they booted out the big cheese.”
“Alastair?”
“Yeup – told him to take a hike, and he said he was more than happy to.” Mark said. “That's why, I guess, he hasn't called ya.”
“Holy shit.” Dar repeated. “What the hell are they going to do?”
“Beats me. Beats Pete. He's the only one who stuck it out and he only did it because he's got this hard on to prove that jackass wrong and make the thing right”
“Uh huh.” Dar thought a moment. “Does he want me to help?”
Mark muffled the call. “Yeah, I”m here.. hang on I'll be right back in there.” He uncovered the mouthpiece. “Sure he does, but he's scared.”
“Understandable.”
“He's got a wife that's nine months preggers, and about to pop. They're living on his salary – he said that was the only reason he agreed to do my gig, it gave him a bump.”
“Mark. If something happens to this guy because of something we did together, I'll take care of him.” Dar said.
“I know. I told him that.” Mark said. “But he's scared they're going to see that online forum thing. He wants to talk to you in person, see if there's something you can tell him to do.”
“Oh. Sure.” Dar said. “You want to bring him by the office tomorrow morning, early? I don't seriously think there's surveillance watching us.”
“Can I bring him by your place tonight?”
Dar glanced at Kerry who was plastered to her chest listening, watching the blond head nod. “Sure.” She said. “I”ll leave your name at the ferry.”
“Great. See ya soon.” Mark said. “All right! I hear ya! I”m coming back!” He closed the line, and Dar hit the release button on her end.
“Holy crap.” Kerry commented. “This is nuts.”
“Total nuts.” Dar exhaled, shaking her head. “Let's just hope I can give him some useful advice.”
“Ugh.”
**
Dar was back in her office, with Kerry perched on one end of the desk, and Mark and Peter sitting on the couch. She leaned on her elbows, mostly just listening as the young, tow haired man in jeans and a hoodie talked.
“So.” Peter exhaled, taking a sip from the glass he held in both hands. “That's how it happened. Nobody really.. I mean, we looked at what he wanted us to do, but no one realized what it would.. I mean, do.”
“Uh.” Dar grunted softly.
“So then.” Peter continued. “He made us reload all the routers from scratch. So we didn't have anything left to roll back to, and he said, he wanted to make this work, so he dumped the repository so we couldn't reload from backup.”
Kerry leaned forward a little. “That is criminally idiotic.”
“Yes, ma'am.” Peter nodded. “I tried to argue with him.”
“What you shoulda done is copy the repository off to an offline storage before you dumped it.” Mark said. “What a fucking moron this guy is.”
“Well.” Dar spoke up for the first time in a while. “If what he thought was, that the configs were so proprietary he couldn't wrap his head around them, it would make sense to do it from scratch so he knew everything.”
The other three in the room stared at her.
Dar folded her hands. “I”m guessing he thought he could put his own configuration in, and it would work.”
“Uh.. I suppose, ma'am.” Peter said, meekly.
“I might have done the same thing.”
“Yeah, but the difference is your stuff would work.” Mark said. “Because you actually know how to do this.”
“That's true. But I'm guessing he thought he did too, because though I think he's an idiot in terms of management, no one is stupid enough to take down their whole company and put all their clients at risk a couple weeks into a new job.”
Peter nodded. “What pissed everyone off is, he tried to blame us first, then you.” He said. “He refused to man up and say it was him that caused the problem.”
Dar pondered that. “So. What does he want to do now? He want this fixed, or he want to sit there and have his ass on fire until he ends up having to redo everything which is going to take probably a month?”
“Up till today I'd have said he wanted to rig it.” Peter said, promptly.” But after everybody walked out, I saw him in ops and he was really freaked out. He told me I wasn't supposed to tell anyone but he needed to get this stuff working because some big customer was yelling.”
“Okay, that's good.” Dar said. “Because if he was going to stick to his original plan it would have never worked. The layout's not designed for anything but the metrics we had.”
Peter exhaled, and nodded. “I sorta thought maybe that was it.” He said. “That guy thinks you did something.”
“Well, I did.” Dar said, with a brief smile. “But everything I did is written down in the design documents. He didn't erase those too, did he?”
Peter shook his head. “No, he said he read those, that's why he wanted to make that change, said it would make things better.”
Dar studied his face, then she sighed. “All right. Ker's on the money. He's a moron.”
“We're you really trying to give him the benefit of the doubt?” Kerry gave her a puzzled look.
“Yes.” Dar leaned back in her chair. “If he had half a brain, then I could call him up and we could maybe just get this taken care of. But that kind of idiot doesn't back down – at this point, he can't. He has to go all the way with it or he's done.”
Mark nodded strenuously.
“Yeah.” Peter agreed. “But at this point he's freaking. I think he'll let me get in there and try to fix stuff if you can tell me how.”
“Should you?” Kerry asked, seriously, half turning to face her partner. “I know there's the issue with the military contracts, Dar, but honestly, should you go in there and make this right? Considering that they already are trying to blame you?”
Dar hitched her knee up and circled it with both hands, pondering in silence as the rest of them waited. “It's a valid question.” She finally said. “I don't feel like I owe them anything, at this point.” She took a breath and released it. “But I will be damned if my legacy at that place is going to be a colossal fuck up they're trying to paint my name on.”
Everyone nodded in agreement, even Kerry. “I get it, hon.” She said. “So let's figure out how to get it done.”
“That's the hard part. I don't have any copies of the configs.” Dar said. “I left everything in the repository so we'll have to depend on my memory to rebuild them.”
“Sorry about that, ma'am.” Peter looked glum. “Mark's right. I should have copied everything off before I deleted it.”
“You guys really just made those changes without copying the config on a notepad at least?” Mark sounded incredulous. “What the hell, man?”