Dwight the Yellow

Prompt: Write something with the color yellow as a domanant theme, topic, or idea in honor of the July 21, 2022 promotions to Preferred Author.
Written for "The Whatever Contest." "The Whatever Contest -- Closed for Now" 
Word/Line Count: 967
Fiction

"Morning! How's the prospect for getting the rest of that code today?"

The voice was perky and feminine, cute. That would be Amanda, then. Dwight turned his head and grinned. "Looking bright."

Amanda's cheeks dimpled in that way she had, pushing aside a lock of chestnut hair. "Great, thanks. Keep keeping it mellow, Yellow."

Dwight forced a laugh. She moved gamely along to his next co-worker. "Linda! Got the interface together yet?"

Dwight made his way to his desk, sidling past the printer to the cube on the corner with an ad poster for a green and yellow can of cheap soda, a gift from the team. They said you never get a second chance at a first impression, and "they" seemed to be right. Just under a year ago, he'd finally gotten a position at GenSoft. It was his dream job, his payback for six years in college. And, like every new member of the team, they asked him to make a slide and introduce himself.

Dwight cleared his voice, a sound that echoed in the microphone, rising to a high-pitched squeal while he fumbled to turn off the speaker on his laptop. Everyone in the XR division was there - dozens of people, not just the small team he'd be working with directly. A chuckle floated out from the sea of faces while Dwight reopened Powerpoint. "Hi, everyone! My name is ... yellow?"

The wrong slide had come up. No - it wasn't a slide, it was a web browser tuned to a music video. He barely remembered the song and didn't remember searching for it, but there it was, blaring through the speakers: "Mello Yellow."

He coughed out a nervous laugh, closed the laptop, and called out, "Thank you, everyone!"

Dwight was working on the most exciting projects of the decade for one of the world's most innovative new hardware companies, and everyone in the company knew his name. Well, maybe not his real name. He was a joke. And he wasn't even sure if anyone knew the joke wasn't deliberate - he certainly couldn't ask. Maybe they knew, and it was another layer of the joke - the word yellow was for his cowardice. Never let them see you bleed. He hadn't had the nerve to make a presentation since, either. But for now, he had a more immediate problem - Amanda was waiting for his code.

Diving into a problem always helped. Software design was like solving a puzzle. In his mind, all the inputs stacked up at the top, all the outputs at the bottom, and the code was a sieve through which data flowed, first one way and then the other. First, he wrenched out the foreground objects, then selected the NPCs, then filtered out the appropriate position context, and then - hours flowed by.

Dwight was startled by a motion glimpsed from the corner of his eye. It was Amanda, and she was standing at the entrance of his cube. "How's it going?"

He blinked, then rubbed his eyes with his knuckles. "It's done, actually. Sorry, I meant to ping you on Teams, but I wanted to get a new placement algorithm done too. I think I'm there, but I need to run a few tests. Want to have a look?"

He hit a button, and 3-D figures arranged themselves on his monitors, running side-by-side over the terrain, separating and coming back together as they made their way over rocks and between trees, adjusting their speed slightly as they went to stay near one another, but never colliding. When they finished, the action froze, and the code window popped up. A window representing a week of unplanned overtime - but he wanted this done right.

Amanda's eyebrows rose. "That's pretty good. Jim was going to take a crack at it, but this is definitely a better approach. It looks organic, and the performance is better than he was projecting. Do you want to share this with the team tomorrow? We should let marketing know too - this will make a great cut for the ad."

Dwight froze, transfixed by her expression. Yes, she was serious. A presentation. Tomorrow. "Sure, Amanda. Sounds great."

"Fantastic. See you tomorrow, Yellow."

Tomorrow. Fantastic.
~~

Dwight faced the team over his laptop, his eyes bleary, his hands shaking from caffeine and fear. "Hi, I'm Dwight Irons, and I've been working on some improvements to the scripting engine I'd like to share. Please stop me whenever you have questions."

"Mellow Yellow!" a voice called out from the back. Chuckles. Please, let there not be any questions.

Dwight had written down every word of the speech, then erased it, then re-written it, then repeated the process a dozen times. Then he practiced the presentation aloud - then again, and again until he realized he'd forgotten to sleep.

When the first question came, Dwight had to correct himself twice. Then he started his speech using words from the previous slide. Laughter. Dwight winked as if he'd planned it. Then he continued, one word after another, just as he'd memorized it, his consciousness disappearing into the rote repetition and the faces fading into a blur. And then it was done. Clapping. Approval. More questions, answered correctly this time, he thought. Dwight didn't even remember sitting down, but the fatigue hit him in a dizzying wave. Was it done? Was it acceptable? He didn't know.

Then Amanda was there, standing above him. "Great job, Yellow! Marketing loved it! Hope you like working on the scripting engine, because it's yours now - they love your vision. But hey, you look beat - we can talk about the rest tomorrow."

Dwight smiled, a beaming smile overflowing with pride and gratitude - and relief. "Thank you, Amanda. That's wonderful news - it means a lot to me. And please - call me Dwight."

She grinned. "Sure thing, Dwight."