Ada's Last Day

There was a strange vibe in the building that morning when she walked in. Threading her way through the symmetrical cubicles, she noticed a tension in the air as she headed towards the elevator.

Ada was not a fan of chaos and noise, hating the heat and bustle of the open plan work-pen downstairs. It wasn’t that she disliked her coworkers, just that she found small talk difficult. It could be hard to read people at times.

Her office was clean and bright, with paper white paint and a sleek metal desk. No pictures adorned the walls, though there was a digital clock and a calendar above the filing cabinets. The only touch of warmth in the room came from her beloved fern, its verdant green fronds unfurling and sprawling in a most disorganized manner. She loved the wildness of its feathery leaves, the way it swayed every time anyone entered or left the room, the fresh peaty richness of the soil and its earthy aroma whenever she watered it.

Barely had she sat down when the intercom lit up on her phone pad. Picking up the old-fashioned handset, she accepted the call.

“Ada, what took you so long? You’re running late, today of all days!” James, her boss, sounded stressed.

“Sorry Sir. There was a delay on the way in, Security wouldn’t accept my ID card the first few times.”

“Well, I guess that makes sense. We have a major problem here. Major!”

“What is it? How can I help?”

“We’ve been hacked. They got access to our servers and we think they may have planted a data mining virus. We’re totally screwed if we can’t get this sorted immediately!”

“But that’s impossible! I wrote the code myself, it’s protected on four separate levels! I didn’t even provide a backdoor for our own team to access the mainframe. The system is invincible!”

“You mean the system was invincible.” He sounded grim. “Just get it sorted, Ada. I’m counting on you.”

Tapping away at the keyboard she was able to log in to the system, and begin the grueling task of accessing the various folders and checking for bad code hidden within the sub files.

Marty knocked on her door. His tie was askew and he looked distressed.

“Ada, can I grab the Beauchamp files?”

She barely glanced up, her mind preoccupied with the hackers. “Sure, Marty. Oh, and bring me some coffee, would you? I’m going to need all the energy I can get with this one.”

He nodded, scurrying over to her cabinets and rummaging around noisily, before slamming the drawer hard enough to make her wince.

“Got ‘em. Give me your mug then, you want sugar, cream?” He balanced her white mug on the stack of paperwork.

“No, black’s fine thanks. Close the door on your way out Marty; the cold air’s escaping.”

She kept her room 5 degrees below the rest of the building, finding she could stay focused better the cooler it was. When you spent your days pouring over page after page of coding, you needed to stay alert; one tiny misplaced colon could screw everything up.

She barely noticed Marty return and place her cup on the desk before heading to her cabinets for more files. Raising the mug to her lips, she inhaled the comforting scent of hazelnut and dark roast java beans. She frowned. Something wasn’t quite right. The coffee smelled just the way it ought to, but the mug was wrong. Holding it away from her, she examined it. It looked like her cup, felt like her cup… but it wasn’t.

“Marty, did you put my mug down on your way here? Maybe muddle it up with someone else’s?”

He looked confused. “No, I mean, how could I? You’re the only person here fussy enough to have her own special cup. We all just grab one off the side.”

“Hmmm. Ok then, I’m probably imagining it.”

“Probably. Want me to get you a fresh one?”

“No, this is fine. Sorry, I know you’re probably as busy as I am.”

She rubbed her tired eyes. Even with them closed she could see the rows of letters and numbers scrolling behind her lids.

She went back to the main access page, clicking deftly through options to try and find any sign of a virus. Then she saw it – an unauthorized app had been added at 05.51.22 that morning. Who could have been in the office at that time? Maybe the cleaners or maintenance crew, but they were long-term employees and had passed background checks. She dug deeper, searching for a way that the new application could have made it through her security measures. Her coffee was cold now, and she drained it, pausing a moment then turning it upside down. There was her name, neatly printed in permanent marker on the bottom. So it was her mug. There was no denying her handwriting on the bottom, or the light scratches on the inside from the dishwasher. Yet the color was a little off, the glossy china more ecru than white. Maybe it was time to buy a new one. Perhaps red or blue, add a splash of color to her life.

The new application wouldn’t let her view it, but she could circumnavigate that by looking at the time stamps and finding the corresponding data files. Here it was – an upload from a USB stick… accessed through her Boss’s CPU!

She pushed back her chair, unsure what to do. There were protective measures to get into that office – a keypad to enter the room, then a thumb reader to turn on the computer. This wasn’t a simple case of a moonlit break in; it had to be an inside job.

Someone in the building wanted the whole system destroyed. Why? Was it a ransom situation – were they going to steal all the client information and then sell it back?

Marty knocked again, this time he had two guys from the maintenance crew with him, pulling a heavy dolly.

“Things are going mad out there, Ada. Now they want to take all our cases and lock them away until this is sorted out – Head office is losing it, they seriously think someone might come in and steal our physical files!”

She wanted to tell him that she suspected James, but she didn’t know if Marty was trustworthy either. No, she decided, best keep her thoughts to herself and play along for now.

“Okay Marty, you do what you have to, just don’t leave my room a mess.”

The men were noisy, grunting and grumbling as they tried to shift the heavy cabinets onto the hand cart. She wished they would hurry up and get out so she could untangle more of the mystery. At this point it hardly mattered how the application had been uploaded, what she really needed to do was figure out how to stop it before the whole system crashed permanently. When she checked the memory files she saw the amount of free space on the servers was rising rapidly. That was not good at all… if there was more free space, that meant there were things being deleted. She tried opening a few sample programs, but they were just dead shortcuts; the programs they were meant to link to had already been removed. As fast as she tried to access things, they just disappeared before her eyes! She had never seen a virus like this before. It was so relentless and aggressive.

Outside her room she could hear bumps and angry voices. Clearly all the offices were being cleared by security; her nearby colleagues seemed to be kicking up a fuss over it. In the corner her fern shook and rustled as the walls vibrated whenever anyone thumped into them.

The room seemed to move in and out of focus, her vision speckled with tiny white lights that fell like shooting stars from the ceiling. No, she didn’t have time for a migraine now! It was the stress, she could feel it compressing her chest, tightening her throat and quickening her pulse. For the first time ever she found herself questioning her abilities – was she losing her touch? She was supposed to be at the top of her game, the best in the class of ‘26. Nobody was as dedicated or worked longer hours than her! They surely couldn’t sack her for this… could they?

She went back to the monitors, frantically typing now, trying again and again to hack into the diseased system, but each time she was pushed back, and the pathway she tried to use was cut off forever.

The banging outside had ceased now. The other offices were quiet, as though everyone else had left for the day.

Ada left the office, following the wood paneled corridor back to the elevators. It felt like someone had turned the thermostat on full, she was sweating now. Pressing the button for the ground floor she looked at her reflection in the mirrored walls, but the migraine was messing with her vision and everything was pulsating, malformed and blurry. She staggered out of the elevator and thought she must be on the wrong floor – everything was gone! The cubicles, the gossipy, staring office staff… all vanished. The room seemed vast and solemn without its furnishings; gray floor tiles stretching bleakly off into the distance. Despite the open floor plan, Ada felt claustrophobic. She staggered back into the lift, punching the 5 button repeatedly. It was hard to breathe now, her clothes felt too tight.

The door pinged open again, but the corridor had changed. She’d only been downstairs a few minutes, yet everything was painted with a white so brilliant that she couldn’t tell where the walls met the ceiling. She ran towards her own office, flinging open the door and slamming it closed behind her. She leant against it, eyes closed, trying to catch her breath. Her heartbeat throbbed in her temple, she could feel the rhythmic beating hard as she opened her eyes. Her desk was gone, her white leather chair, even the calendar. The room seemed somehow smaller though, and she fell to the ground, crawling towards her beloved fern in the corner. Slumping down beside it, she hugged her knees tight to her chest and stared up as the digital clock on the wall ticked, ticked, ticked.

00:11:29, 00:09:08, 00:06:42 - Ada reached into the cool, damp soil in the fern’s pot and felt the heart shaped locket right where she had hidden it. 00:02:58… she twisted it open, and squeezing her eyes tight, she pressed the red button inside.

#

“Alright, everything’s backed up now, we’ve removed all the important files to the new system.”

James Mallory smiled at the technician. “Glad to hear it! So we’ll be up and running before the office opens, then?”

“Yeah.” The man raked his hand through his thinning hair, a slight frown on his face. “Your old gal put up quite the fight, though. She didn’t make it easy on us. It was like she knew she was about to be retired. Lots of the operating files were deeply protected, I think we got it all in the end, but it wasn’t an easy ride.”

“Well, I mean Ada was a high-end system back in ’26 when we got her. $6mil, top of her class. I’d have honestly been fine keeping her a year or two longer, she was a hard worker. But she’d started running hot, and restarting randomly. No, it was definitely time.”

“Well, your new system is a beast. You’ll find the interface is pretty similar, but everything should run a lot smoother.”

“Great. Well then, if you’re ready… boot her up!”

00:00:00

#

There was a strange vibe in the building that morning when she walked in. Ada balanced her potted fern on one hip and pressed the elevator button for the 5th floor, ready to meet the new Boss.