ref: b9fbb17c04e4ccfb2021dac818e514351ca8f646
dir: /troff/0205.ms/
.LP \& .ce .sp |4.25i .PP .ps 12 .CW ░ There had to be at least two projects. Maybe more. SL figured he couldn't be the only one in charge. Probably he wasn't the only one multitasking, either. He thought that he might get away with some overlap in personnel if only he selected for competence, and managed the contractual language deftly, but he was careful not to sashay too far down that road\(emcompartmentalization was next to godliness, and, counting himself, there would already be one person aware of what he was up to. .PP .ps 12 "I'm from the projects," he would whisper under his breath whenever he wasn't reciting other dialogue. .PP .ps 12 "I'm from the projects," Aij recited hesitantly but firmly into her shoulder mic. She heard a heavy mechanical click and then the door to her lab slowly swung inward, its substantial weight grinding dumbly against the concrete floor. Aij strode across the threshold and was immediately detained by a representative of the lab's security staff, who, ever eager to apply contractually precise measures of force, stepped hard on Aij's Birkenstocks, causing her to stumble several paces backwards on her now sandal\-less, black\-stockinged feet. .PP .ps 12 "You're not on my list," noted the rep. .PP .ps 12 "Hey, \fIasshole,"\fR Aij said boldly, stomping back into her sandals. "I'm just coming back from lunch. You waved me out of here yourself an hour ago." .PP .ps 12 "Ma'am, you're not on my list." .PP .ps 12 The rep's hand hovered mere centimeters above his holster. The confrontation had escalated quickly. .PP .ps 12 Aij decided it wasn't worth the paperwork. She retreated into the big chamber outside her lab and put in another ticket for her manager, who would be unhappy to hear from her again, so soon after her last plea for unnecessary help. .PP .ps 12 But it .I was .R her lab. .PP .ps 12 Was. .PP .ps 12 Aij had been promoted. Upcycled. Which of course meant no more access to her old materials. A neat solution to the dominant paradigm of the Peter Principle\(emcut off from her old sphere of influence, she could no longer tamper with the resources safely locked inside of it. .PP .ps 12 Aij quickly surmised that her new assignment was congruent to what she'd been working on before. Or maybe it was symmetrical\(emshe was bad with visual metaphors. Stipulate that the two projects were related. Aij realized with a familiar sinking feeling that much of her effort had already been duplicated, here, by other fledging .I savants, .R each singular adept toiling alone, happily churning out innovations in blessed isolation from, and in total ignorance of, the rest of the company. She wondered if any of them had ever suspected there might be a higher power coordinating the whole abysmal procession. .PP .ps10 But these were programmers. .PP .ps 12 Probably, she realized, nobody cared. .PP .ps 12 In this way, Operating Location Detachment 9 stood itself up with a minimum of fuss. Even if some of the contributors wondered about the underlying scheme, nobody said a word. SL was at first incredulous, but as the years scrolled endlessly by, everything continued to \fIjust work.\fR Mostly as intended. Best practices advised that one shied away from interrogating one's effortless successes too closely. Maybe the bigger picture really was an irrelevance in the greater scheme of things. Maybe his guys really were doing all right. .PP .ps 12 It certainly looked good on paper.