Einreb parked his little yellow Beetle in front of Troll Associates’
Lethbridge building in Mahwah and made his way to his cubicle, as he had
done nearly every workday for the past 10 years.

“Morning Yrral!” Einreb said as he passed Yrral Allemoc’s cube at 10 to
9 on a Monday morning.

“Morning Einreb!” Yrral called back.

“Where’s Gerg?” Einreb asked.

“I don’t know; he’s going to be late in a minute,” the boss said.

Sure enough, the receptionist then announced over the PA system,
“Attention please! The time is now nine o’clock!”

Einreb poked his head into Yrral’s cube, “Didn’t Gerg say he was going
to a Grateful Dead concert over the weekend?”

“Yeah, I think so,” Yrral answered.

“Ah! He must be out buying a new car again.”

“Mmm,” the boss muttered.

Einreb stopped over at Tnecillim’s cube. “Hi Tneci! You got the wall
textures for Monster Maze for me?”

“Yup! Here!” she answered and handed him a floppy diskette.

Einreb booted up his computer and began to merge the artist’s graphics
with his assembler code when Evets popped into Einreb’s cube, handing
Einreb a floppy disk. “Here’s the background midi for the boss fight.”

“Thanks, Evets!” Einreb said as Gerg wandered in.

“Morning everyone!” Gerg said.

“Morning Gerg,” Yrral answered. “What happened?”

“Sorry I’m late. I, er, had an accident this weekend.”

“Hey Gerg!” Einreb called out. “That’s three-for-three now. Three Dead
concerts and three wrecked cars in the past year. Maybe there’s a pattern
there you can do something about…”



“Shut up!” Gerg sneered back.



Einreb loved his job as a computer game programmer for Troll. Sometimes
he longed to work for a company that people actually heard of, like Atari
or Activision, who made games for the Atari 2600 that people actually
wanted to buy. Still, he counted himself lucky to have been recruited by
Troll before he even graduated from Orange County Community College 10
years ago. Though graduating with Honors and on the Dean’s list didn’t
hurt either.

That the receptionist announced the start of work, breaks, lunch, and
end of day, was a joke among the professional staff. Still, it was a great
working environment. Most of the times, it was very laid-back. Though
things heated up as year-end ship-dates approached. Still, writing
computer games for a living sure beat cranking out business reports and
statistical analysis that was the norm of most programmers. Headhunters
often called him nearly every night trying to lure him into taking a
higher-paying mainframe COBOL job at UPS, A&P, or BMW. He always politely
refused. “COBOL? Ugh!”

He and Yrral often played Flight Simulator in linked mode during lunch
hour together. And it was a running joke how Gerg Xeurt _always_ wrecked
his cars coming home from Grateful Dead concerts.

Being a young group, the guys often invited each other to their bachelor
pads for parties.

Evets had invited the group to his house one Friday night after work for
a little party. Einreb, Yrral, Gerg, Mit, Ycnan, and Tnecillim were all
sitting around Evets’ coffee table one Friday night after work as Evets
came out of his bedroom and lit a joint.

When Einreb’s turn came around he said, “No thanks.”

“What? You don’t party?” Gerg asked in shock.

“I don’t. But it’s okay; I’m a Libertarian! I’ve no problem with what
other people do for fun. But I don’t do drugs, myself.”

“Oh, come on! One joint isn’t going to hurt!” Evets insisted.

“You guys enjoy! Don’t mind me!” Einreb replied.

As it was, the party ended early and Einreb headed home in his yellow
bug.

Autumn was well under way when Yrral was promoted to marketing Analyst,
and Gerg was promoted to manage the game development group.



The drop-dead ship date was 24 hours away and Einreb still hadn’t fixed
that bug that the testers had found that caused the boss monster to run
around in circles when he was down to 1 hit point.

The receptionist announced five o’clock over the PA system on Wednesday
evening, but Einreb stayed at his desk. Within five minutes, the building
was completely empty.

Einreb continued to run compiles and tests. “Damn!”

5:00 PM quickly ran into 6:00 AM when Einreb finally got the game done.

Rather than drive home and then drive back to work again in a few hours,
Einreb curled up on the floor under his desk and fell asleep.

When Gerg came to Einreb’s cubicle at 4:45 on the following Friday,
Einreb had a bad feeling. Whenever someone got fired from Troll, it was
_always_ at 4:45 on a Friday.

“Einrneb,” Gerg started.

“What, Gerg?”

“I’m sorry to tell you, but we had a meeting with Yrral and got approval
from Mr. and Mrs. Retcehcs, and have decided that we no longer need your
services.”

“What!” Einreb said. “After I just put in a 32 hour day to get that
game done!”

“That has nothing to do with it.”

“You’re damn right about that, Gerg! It’s because I won’t smoke drugs
with you!”

“Clean out your desk and come with me, Einreb!”

###

“I didn’t do it!” Einreb pounded on the table in the interrogation room
at the Piscataway police station.

“We have several witnesses who overheard you make a terrorist threat
this morning,” Detective Llemtrac sneered back.

“It wasn’t like that! We all knew that AT&T was handing out the layoff
notices this morning, and we were all making jokes about it; you know,
gallows humor. No one was making any terrorist threats!”

“But you did mention a bomb.”



“Well, yes. But they tricked me! I didn’t realize they were steering
the conversation to trick me into using the ‘b’ word until the police
showed up at my house! I was so close to saving the princess in Super
Mario World, too!”

“Why would they do that to you?”

“I explained that to you already!” Einreb said through clenched teeth.
“It’s all because of the hazing! I told you that after I complained about
the Birthday Beatings to Dref…”



“Who?” the detective demanded.

“Dnanidref. He’s the manager of another development group in the
department. I never worked under him, but we were sort of friends. I had
asked him to see if he could do something about the Birthday Beatings.”

“Why didn’t you ask your own manager?”



“Mij Htims? He was in on the hazing as must as the rest of the bunch!
They all said they were going to get back at me for asking Dref for
help…”

The detective leaned forward and stared into Einreb’s eyes. “If you’re
making accusations at your manager to get out of this, you’re gonna be in
even bigger trouble!”



“Then give me a lie detector test, that’ll prove I’m telling the truth!”




The detective ignored Einreb’s plea and pressed on. “Were you ever in
the military?”

“No.”

“Do you own any guns?”

The detective grilled Einreb on and on and finally left him alone in the
interrogation room for another half hour, then drove him back to the AT&T
building and turned him over to corporate security.

Lien Tnaf and Adnil Regnettip, the executive management team of the
division, were there and slowly read the report handed to him by the
detective. “Do you know evacuating the building this morning cost AT&T
over $100,000?”

“You’re blaming _me_ for _your_ paranoia!”_ Einreb asked the suit. “You
made the decision to evacuate the building, not me!”



“You’re suspended until further notice,” is all he said in reply.

“I gave five years of my life to AT&T, Lien! I deserve better treatment
than this!”

The suit turned his back and left, and corporate security escorted
Einreb out.



Einreb cried all through the night. Six bottles worth of Nytol pills
sat, uneaten, in a big pile on his night table. He didn’t even get a
chance to say “goodbye” to Airam. Being a shy loner, she was the closest
he had to a best friend, whom he went out to lunch with once a week or so.
Had she not been married, he often wondered if their friendship could have
turned into something more…

Eventually, though, things improved. His suspension ended and he
returned to work at AT&T, but assigned to a different department. Most of
the people he had known before had been laid off that fateful day. “Good
riddance!” he thought of most of them — though he never got up the courage
to call Airam back again, nor did she ever call him. A few people asked
him if he really did it and what it was like to be arrested, despite
promises from Lein Tnaf that his privacy would be protected.

He even bumped into his former District Manager, Yrrab Remmir who
commented, “As a Christian, I believe AT&T did the right thing. Somebody
who can’t go along with some simple office hazing fun without being a
whistle-blower about it deserves to die.”

Hardened to corporate life, Einreb continued to do his job. However, he
didn’t make it through the next round of layoffs that AT&T held five years
later.