Chapter Seven
Fritz was not allowed to leave the
building, but he knew that there must be tech support somewhere in the
building. He scoured the building, avoiding asking anyone for instructions,
until he found the office of the tech support guy according to a map in the
main entrance lobby.
The tech guy lived in the basement.
Fritz found this eerily amusing, although he was not in the mood for jokes. He
descended the desolate staircase that ran like a backbone through the building,
looking in every one of the six directions all the way down so as not to be
caught unawares by either an intruder or Stephanie.
The Tech Support Lab was located at
the end of a hallway that was inexplicably painted red. He had never been on
this floor before, and it creeped him out. He knocked on the door. He wasn't
sure if he should raise his voice to ask if anyone was there. There were only
two other doors in the corridor, one also to his right, now facing back the way
he came compulsively, and the other to his left, the two displaced at irregular
intervals, the latter closer to him. He did not know what was behind them.
He lowered his voice, trying his
best not to sound panicky. “Hello? Hello?” He sounded like an idiot, of course.
No one answered.
He returned to the staircase. He
expected to see someone on the stairs, but he did not.
Returning to the lobby, he asked
the receptionist where the “Tech Support guy” was. The receptionist seemed
mildly disconcerted by what he had said. He revised, “Tech Support person,” grinning awkwardly.
She told him that he was probably
away on lunch. He asked if she could leave him a message. She agreed to,
avoiding his eyes and losing herself in her computer. He envied her.
Come nine o'clock, Fritz had given
up on finding the Tech Support person. Anxiety gnawing at him, he decided to
work on his laptop. He would stow it every time he saw his supervisor come near
the aisle bordering his cubicle. He knew that he probably looked unpardonably
suspicious to the security cameras, but he knew he could do nothing about that.
Whenever the supervisor came by, he called the Tech Support number that he got from
the receptionist. He got no answer, but it made him look busy. The second time
the supervisor passed by, he crawled under his desk and pretended to be
examining the computer. The third time, he had extricated several screws from
the computer, pretending they had fallen out, and showed them to his
supervisor. The supervisor returned, several minutes later, to Fritz's shock,
with a case of tools with which to put the screws back in.
Fritz did not even see Stephanie
leave the building at nine. He could only presume she had. He had determined to
try her door at 9 in the evening. Another fruitless visit to the receptionist,
who had gone home, rendered him five minutes late in doing this. Her door was
locked, however, so he presumed that she
had gone home.
Come ten o'clock, he reckoned that
he must have been one of three people remaining in the building. There was
definitely no one else on his floor.
Dm.A.A.
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