“Want to come with me to DC?” Dar asked at the same time. They looked at each other, then started chuckling.
“We're sappy useless poster children for bad romance novels, you know that?” Kerry sighed. “I sometimes feel like our lives are set to Disney princess music.”
“Aw.”
“Though, I'll keep you company right up to the door to the senate chambers. I don't think my presence will win you any points at all in there.” Kerry leaned on the counter with her elbows. “I'd like to talk to Bridges team about implementation.”
“Sure.” Dar agreed. “Let's get the pooches, and sack out. Maria can make the arrangements tomorrow.”
Back in the bedroom, Kerry put Mocha down on the floor after wiping his dew drenched feet, watched him march over into Chino's bed and curl up in it, then did the same as she listened to Dar humming in the bathroom.
It was really late, and she was tired. Kerry got under the covers and turned out the bedside lamp, putting her head down as Dar came back in and joined her, making the water bed rock a little. She waited for her partner to settle, then she eased over and curled up against Dar's right side.
They had three hours to get some sleep and... Kerry paused, sliding her arm across Dar's stomach. “Hey.”
“Hey.” Dar replied, her resonant tones making Kerry's ears tickle just a trifle.
“Can we be late to work tomorrow?”
“Sure.”
“We own the company.”
“We do.” Dar agreed. “Once you teach Mayte how to handle your stuff, you can spend the day with your feet up on your desk writing poetry and no one's gonna say word one to you.”
Kerry had to stop and think about that for a minute. “Except that someone I know taught me one of the golden rules is to lead by example.” She felt Dar chuckle silently. “So I really can't do that unless you're going to use those poems as the basis of a new client offering.”
“True, but we can still go to work late tomorrow.” Dar said. “It's not always a bad thing to let the staff work things out on their own. Y'know.”
Kerry lifted her head and gave her partner a wry look.
“Yeah, okay, let's wait to see how we feel when the sun rises.”
**
As it turned out, the morning wasn't nearly as painful as Kerry had feared. They woke only a half hour later than the alarm would have normally sounded and with mutual shrugs, they got up and got about their usual routine.
“C'mon kids.” Kerry zipped up her light jacket, waiting for Mocha and Chino to come trotting over. “Let's go in the car, for a ride to the office. You ready?”
Chino twirled around in a circle and barked, while Mocha eyed her warily.
Dar got her backpack on her shoulder and joined them, her head bent as she texted a message on her Handspring. “Asking Mark if he heard anything.” She picked up Mocha and followed Kerry out the door.
They were taking Kerry's car and she hopped up into the driver's seat, after letting Chino up into the back seat where she curled up on the fuzzy dog blanket attached to the leather that conveniently kept her from sliding around.
“It's fun taking these guys with us.” Dar commented, as Mocha stood up on her knee and looked out the window. “You know what I was just thinking? For the demo I think I'd like to tie in to a simulated Internet node back here.”
“Like, fake traffic?” Kerry asked.
“Yeah, we don't really have any way of tying in for real yet.”
“I have a call in to AT&T and Level 3. They aren't happy, but they knew this was coming.” Kerry remarked. “Do we know yet where they're going to want the private circuits dropped, and who's paying for them?”
Dar let her head rest against the seat. “They're paying for them, but that's a good question. I have to find out who's supposed to order them, and make sure they're the right size.” She glanced at Kerry. “Good thing you're going with me.”
Kerry grinned.
“Same thing for Gerry's project, but that will be a mesh. We already talked about it. They're going to house the central database in the Pentagon.”
“Good.” Kerry headed west on the causeway. “I'll work with them in a remote support circuit for you.”
Dar grunted in contentment, then glanced down as her Handspring buzzed. “Ah.”
Hey boss. Pete's in with the big dude now, he's going to text me when he gets out. He told him he found an old config saved to a switch NVRAM.
She reached around Mocha and typed a response. If the dickwad kicks him out, have him come over.
You got it.
Dar thumbed through her messages, and frowned.
Now that it was the light of day, Dar realized her attitude towards the problem had changed a little. Maybe Kerry's uncertainty had affected her, but she had to acknowledge that there was a sense of irritation in her when she thought about having to dedicate her personal resources to a company that now really held very little affection in her heart.
It felt fickle. She wasn't entirely happy with her motivations. She felt caught between guilt and outrage and it was giving her a stomach ache. “Hey Ker?”
“Yes, o love of my life?”
“What do you think about us just getting a datacenter for test systems? Not ever hosting clients there?” Dar asked. “I don't know that I want to be in the services side of the house.”
Kerry considered that as she turned into Coconut Grove, and headed for the office. “You mean, just do what our web site claims – custom systems and solutions?” She asked. “Deliver it, and the only support we do is for the software itself?”
“Uh huh.”
“Hm. Let me think about it.”
“If we did that, there's no way ILS could ever come back at us, because we're really not doing anything they do.” Dar continued. “Matter of fact, I don't really want to do any of the stuff that they do, because I”m kinda tired of being on the hook for everyone's bottom line.”
“You're just deciding this now?”
“This router thing is pissing me off.” Dar admitted. “I was thinking about it since we got up and its just getting me madder and madder when I think about that warthog trying to weenie waggle to make his bones and then becoming a neuter when it comes to taking responsibility for it.”
Kerry pulled into one of the parking spots. “Colorful.” She said, as she put the car in park and turned it off. “Let's just get past the next seven days, then we can talk about it, okay?” She patted Dar's leg. “I am going to call Richard though and let him know what's going on.”
Dar got out and put Mocha down, then retrieved her backpack and got it settled. “Maybe we'll get lucky and it'll all go away.”
“Really think that's going to happen?”
“Meh.”
**
Dar rolled her trackball a little, moving the wire frame diagram across the screen and observing the results. She switched over to a command line session and pecked out a few commands, then switched back, issuing an approving grunt and rerunning the process.
It wouldn't be an elegant demonstration. Dar looked at the plain screen, which was a simple black background with fields in magenta, green and yellow. It used very straightforward instructional text, and the boxes and outlines around it were only there to make it look relatively functional.
She typed in a query and ran it against the test repository in the server room, and the screen chewed over it for a minute, then spit out a response.
“Hm.” Dar went back into the command line screen and revised some of the lines, then recompiled it, and tried the query again. This time the results were more acceptable, and she moved on to her next task.
She could hear Kerry talking with someone next door, and after a moment, she recognized the other voice in the room as Colleen's, their relaxed tones and the crinkle of paper meaning that lunch was probably going to be delivered to her any minute now.