The Sandwich Saboteurs

Joe who did not drink his daily cup of joe, and his misadventures

         

Book 1: The Sandwich Saboteurs

         
         It was a dark and stormy night. Joe was always a light sleeper, and a thunderbolt woke him up in the early morning dusk. He woke up, and instinctively reached for his phone. "Ugh, not again," he said, as it wasn't where he had thought it was.
         He searched his room for it, and finally - there it was - under the dresser!
         How in the world did it get there? he thought. Is it fine?
         It looked fine - 3:24 AM, April 25, 2017, 63o and sunny.
         And then he saw the notification. "Nooooooooooooooooo"


         

Chapter 1

         Joe woke up in his bunk bed in Pasadena, California. It had been his 7th birthday the other day and he had gotten a special present: three different cheat sheets on how to beat all of his friends at Pacman, along with a Pacman arcade of his very own. He played on it all night, and with his new cheat sheets, stayed up until four in the morning playing. He even managed to get to the Double Apple level on his first day ever playing it. Finally, his mom cut the power, and he had to go to bed. But when he woke up the next day, the screen was black and wouldn't turn on; even when the electricity was turned back on. He cried that whole day long and his mom took it to a repair shop where she heard the verdict: hacked. They both had the same thought: How do you hack a Pacman arcade? The better question was, why would you hack a Pacman arcade? And who would commit such a pointless, heinous deed?
         "We've been having a lot of these hackings lately and none of our usual fixes have worked, but we'll get back to you later!" said the software employee.
         LATER?!? He was infuriated for the rest of the week, but had forgotten about it when his mom had given him a brand new iPad. Until now...


         Joe got home from work. It had been a very long day. He worked at Samsung, where he tried to create the new Galaxy S25 Mini(T), and his boss had been crabby all day long. This made everyone else crabby as well, and even lunch break, the best time of the entire day, had been an unfortunate time indeed. But multiple prototypes had broken due to a faulty part that he had made, and his boss had demoted him. He was glad to come home to his wife, Annalise, and his three kids Shelby, Doug, and Noelle. Shelby was his oldest and the reasonable one. Doug was a chip off of the old block, the only boy and the tech geek. And then there was Noelle, who went by Ellie and was more than a bit crazy.
         Ellie kicked him in the shin while enthusiastically yelling, "Look what I learned!!!"
         "Oof! Who taught you that?!?".
         She had surprising strength, despite her small stature. His shins were vehemently quoting their Terms of Use at him.
          Annalise said, "Now, now, don't hurt little daddy, Ellie..." Again she was flouting the fact that she was taller than Joe. She brought that up a lot. It was starting to get annoying.
         Joe went to his bedroom with a scowl on his face and pulled up his email, looking for something interesting to brighten up his day.
         Boring, spam, nada.
         But then, he got a phone call.
         "Are you kidding me?!?" he exclaimed as he answered the call.
         It was from his boss, who said, "We're having a software glitch which we've never seen before. Could you come back and try to help us troubleshoot?"
         "But you just demoted me!"
         "Well, I'll un-demote you!"
         "Fine," Joe said with a disgruntled sigh.
          He headed back to work, another thirty minute ride on the bus for a $4 fare. "Oh, phooey," he griped.
         Finally, he got there, where his boss yelled, "Somehow, somebody got a new virus into the system, which deleted our entire database because you took so long, and removed it from our recycle bin as well!"
         "Well, how am I supposed to fix that?"
         He got fired. Again.


         

Chapter 2

         April 19th, 2003. The day Apple went out of business. Apparently, all of its systems had failed at once, including their recovery system, and refunding all of its now nonfunctional electronics drained the rest of their assets. Joe's iPad was also now nonfunctional.
         "Seriously?!?" his mother had exclaimed as she got him a new Android tablet, which for some unknown reason isn't named anything other than an Android tablet.
          These were getting expensive to keep replacing, and she was getting very frustrated.
         "Lame," said Joe. He had liked his iPad better than this generic tablet.
         Everything costs so much to download and he didn't even have a credit card, so all he could do on it was just do generic Chrome things. But he had to deal with it, so he did. Eventually.


         "Well, that was unfortunate," Joe said as he headed back home, unsure of how to break the news to Annalise.
         How was he supposed to find a new job when he didn't have a car and the bus fare costs $4 each way? All he knew about was technology, and as far as he knew, McDonalds didn't have any openings for tech geeks right now. So he just sat depressed on the living room couch, ready to scroll through Netflix videos for a couple hours. But when he got to the Netflix sign in screen, it displayed, "We are experiencing technical difficulties, please wait."
         Man, they keep just tacking it on.
         So he grumbled and he griped and he microwaved some popcorn and he waited an hour and a half, but the screen still didn't go away. Well, what left was there to do except watch the news? He turned on CBS 58, to find the one and only Limu Emu (and Doug) promoting home and car insurance.
         Shelby popped in, exclaiming, "I need car insurance!" Doug entered the room, shouting, "It's me!" and Ellie cried, "Can I have an emu? Please, daddy?"
         Joe, overwhelmed, wondered, "Why does Shelby have a car all of a sudden?" The news returned, finally, with the big headline story - NETFLIX CRASHES, MILLIONS OF SUBSCRIBERS DEMANDING REFUNDS. In desperation, he languidly cried, "Why, Lord? Why must this happen to me?" He got no answer, of course, except from Annalise, who said, "Use your inside voice, please!" Incredulous and exceedingly frustrated, he exercised the only rights he thought he had - he tried to go straight to bed, though it was only five in the afternoon, but Annalise made him stay up for dinner anyway. Then he slept, though fitfully. It's hard to sleep well when one is a light sleeper with noisy children.


         

Chapter 3

         Joe was outside and he was supposed to be playing with his baseball stuff due to the fact that his parents were done with "the ruckus he was making" , but he had gotten bored playing baseball by himself since his buddy Jonny was at swimming lessons. Joe was a grade ahead of him in swimming, and so Joe had his swimming lessons on Thursdays, not Tuesdays like Jonny. Nevertheless, Joe was determined to find something interesting to do, so he wandered around the backyard. Kickball? No. Football? No. Hockey? How could you even try anything with only one person? And so he was about to go in to play some Mario Kart when he caught a flash in the corner of the backyard. A bunny! They had a lot of bunnies, and they kept eating the tulips. But today, for Joe, it was something to do. He got up and chased the bunny. Not the smartest creature, it kept running around their yard instead of wriggling out the gate, and Joe thought of an idea. He picked up a rock nearby, aimed carefully, and threw it right at the bunny's head with fatal accuracy. It crumpled immediately, the rock having pierced its skull. It looked so innocent, a cute little look on its face, but blood pouring down its head. It was a very gruesome sight, amplified by Joe's fear of blood and the guilt of having killed a living creature, and he started screaming for his mother, but there was nothing she could do; he had already lost his supper.
         It was three in the morning when Joe woke up, startled from his nightmare about getting chased by a horde of angry geese who were trying to peck his brains out. It was as disturbing as it sounded, and he had been screaming for the last half an hour in his sleep. Annalise was not happy with him at all.
         Joe went to the TV to watch the Early Early Early Morning News with James Farrell, but his TV wouldn't turn on. So he pounded a couple of times, and it finally turned on!
         "Yes! Finally, something is working in this house!"
         Annalise overheard this and yelled, "What do you mean I'm not working? Do you not want breakfast, or what, shortie?"
         Joe rolled his eyes and sarcastically murmured, "Never mind."
          However, even though his TV turned on, now, when he turned to the EEEMN station, it said "No signal".
         "Just to spite me," he grumbled.
         So he bought a new antenna. For 500 dollars?!? This is ridiculous! Also, why does same day shipping cost 50 whole dollars?!? Inflation these days...
         He went back to bed. He couldn't fall asleep, however, and so he just waited outside in the biting rain for the antenna with a lukewarm cup of tea.
         It finally arrived, and he waited expectantly for it to be installed.
         It was finally done!
         He turned on the TV. Will it work? Will it work? Will it work? Come on... come on... No! No! Comply, you-you stupid thing! Augh! As you could deduce, it still didn't fix the problem.
         He gave up and went online to go find some job offers. He found one at NVIDIA working on AI. It didn't pay very well and it was a while away, but a job was a job, and he was happy with it.
         He soon forgot about his tech issues and went on with his day, ignorant and happy.
         Ignorance is bliss, after all...


         

Chapter 4

         The fateful year was 2005. Joe was browsing on Google on his tablet when he found this great website advertising that it blocked every single ad that pops up without looking like an adblocker. However, it blocked a bit more than ads...


         At break the next day, he was chatting with his favorite coworker, John, and they discussed interesting subjects like philosophy.
         "I think we don't exist," quipped John.
         "So you think we're just in a simulation?" questioned Joe.
         "Well, is a dream a simulation?"
         "Yes."
         "Ummmmmmm, then we must be just imaginary!" exclaimed John.
         "Like in a story book?"
         "Ooh, the possibilities with that! There could be a story book inside a story book inside a story book inside a story book inside a story book inside a story book inside a story book..."
         He dragged on for over 5.237 minutes, until Joe cut him off.
         "Well, back to the point, you think we're just imaginary? Isn't imagination a simulation?"
         "No way, Jose!" retorted John.
         Jose, another coworker, walks up, "You called?"
         "Huh?" confusedly quipped John.
         "You said Jose!"
         "Oh, I wasn't talking about you."
         "Anyway..." continued John.
         "We were talking about how we were imaginary", Joe put forth haphazardly.
         "Well, if we're imaginary, then we can do anything without actually doing damage, right?"
         "That sounds fun!" remarked Joe.
         He put that theory to use, and chucked his office computer out of the window, where it shattered on the pavement below.
         "OW!!!" yelled someone from below.
         His boss walked in.
         "What happened to your computer?" he queried suspiciously.
         "Erm..." mumbled Joe, "it kinda just, umm, fell out the window..."
         "Sorry to say, but gravity doesn't work like that, mister. What really happened?"
         He got fired again.








         

Chapter 5

         His mom got him a new Microsoft PC. Well, when one has a computer, obviously the first thing one must do is download Polytopia. So he did so. He needed parental permission, and he got it, so all there was left to do was hit Install, and wait for it to load.
         "Nice!", he remarked to himself.
         He waited a couple of minutes, and his screen displayed a new message - Payment Required.
         "Okedoke, I can do that." And in fact, he could, due to the debit card his mother had given him for his birthday.
         "Great..."
         It continued to load, so he waited. And waited. And waited.
         30 minutes later...
         "Well?!?" he exclaimed angrily. He was getting impatient, and rightfully so - it said the maximum loading time would be 10 minutes, and it had already been half an hour! Well, there was nothing to be done.
         So he plugged his PC in and walked away. An entire Brandon Sanderson book later, and it still hadn't loaded. He tried troubleshooting, but nothing worked, so he was about to give up, when suddenly, the screen changed.
         "Oh?"
         But it had just changed from a green background to a blue background. A progress bar had appeared, however, and was displaying 1% complete.
         This was new - he could tell how close it was!
         He stared at the computer screen for the next couple of hours, watching the progress bar inch forward, cheering it on, urging it to speed up, whacking the touchpad when it didn't move for a few minutes, until it was time for dinner and it was still only at 68%.
         After supper, he returned to his vigil, eyeing the marker to see if it was any closer. It wasn't.
         And so, two slices of cake, 3 short fantasy books, 2 computer guides, and 2 owner's manuals later, it finally reached the pinnacle - 100%!
         Pandemonium erupted in his upstairs room - finally! It was done!
         And then there was the notification on the screen - "Could not finish installation. Please try again later."
         "What?!? How could this happen? I waited so long and... and..."
         It was by then so late that the only thing to be done was to go to bed.


         Two firings in two days? This was not going well. Well, there was nothing to be done about it, so he depressedly sat on the couch and watched Jeopardy.
         Bah, stupid commercial breaks, he thought, until he heard just what he needed, "You need Indeed."
         "Indeed I do!" exclaimed Joe.
         "Don't we all" quipped Annalise from the other room.
         He quickly opened his computer and pulled up Indeed. Almost immediately, he found an opening at AIR Technology Services as a computer technician.
         His boss had an employee relations meeting on his first day. He liked to meet all of the new employees and give them a tour to show them how things worked, what the passwords were, how to use the coffee machine, stuff like that.
         Thus, Joe warily entered his boss's office.
         "Hello?" Joe probed.
         "Hello! I'm Greg. You're Joe, right?"
         "That is correct."
         "So, I hear you are experienced with this sort of programming?"
         "Yup."
         "Are you familiar with AgDA?" Greg queried.
         "Agda? Of course I'm familiar with AgDA! I've used it since 6th grade!" Joe exclaimed.
         Greg was ecstatic. He had waited so long to find somebody, anybody, who could help him with AgDA so that he could get that elusive contract from IBM Watson. IBM couldn't find anybody, either, and was thus going to pay him the big bucks for someone who could help them.
         Joe, not paying attention, didn't notice Greg's jubilance, and thus confusedly quipped, "Well?"
         Greg jumped out of his office chair to embrace Joe, who squirmed uncomfortably.
         "You're the one I've been looking for for so long!"
         "And?"
         "How does a raise sound?"
         Joe thought for a moment. I haven't worked a single hour yet! Why is he giving me a raise? Well, free money is free money, and Joe was fine with it. More importantly, Annalise was happy with him, and he got a well deserved hardy pat on the back. Oof.


         

Chapter 6

         On his 12th birthday, October 13, 2007, his mom got him an Oppo phone, the new OPPO AI03. It was the newest model, and had lots of cool features. It handled his texts super quickly, it had 4G upload speed, it had a touchscreen, and it even connected to the internet! It was so great, and it worked! ...for about 2 weeks. Then it just shut down and wouldn't wake up. His mom, ever the optimist, reminded him that he would get really good at electronics troubleshooting, but really, she thought he was doing something wrong with how he was using them. He thought she might be right, but, he thought, phones don't just do that. Nobody on the internet had a fix for a phone that just inexplicably shut down because it doesn't happen to normal people! Maybe it was just luck. Maybe he would have been luckier had he not been born on Friday the 13th... Maybe his mom just was an unwise buyer, and bought faulty devices just because they were cheaper. But still... was it sabotage? No, why would someone pointlessly sabotage some random person's phone with no useful files on? They didn't even take anything! Well, some things can't be helped, apparently. His mom replaced it, though she wasn't very happy about it.


         Everything was finally going well. A week had passed since his last tech problems, and life was good. He liked everything about his new job - his boss, Greg, was nice, his coworkers were friendly, it paid well, and his knees didn't give out when Ellie tried to tackle him when he came in. Even if his lunchbox kept opening at random and spilling all of his lunch.
         Greg stopped by his office one day during work.
         "Coffee?" he asked.
         Joe politely declined, stating, "I prefer tea."
         Greg was shocked. His name was Joe - how could he not enjoy his daily cup of joe?
         Joe didn't say anything either; they just stared at each other until Joe finally broke the silence, querying, "So, what is the purpose of this conversation?"
         Greg had not been expecting Joe to get to the point so quickly, but he still managed a coherent reply, "Um... well, I was going to talk about the recent influx of customers with technology issues. There's never been so many technology issues in all of my 12 years as an employee here!"
         Rob, who was always sneaking up on people, skulked into the room, but Greg exclaimed, "Hey! Get out of here!"
         Joe said the first thing to pop up into his head. "Do you think it's intentional? Sabotage, perhaps?"
         Greg, interested, replied, "Why? Why such a broad spectrum of issues? Wouldn't any reasonable hacker limit their attacks to one sector? It isn't even ransomware; what would they be getting out of it?"
         Joe, an avid reader of money-making books, proposed, "Maybe they're trying to create a monopoly. If they were a tech company themselves, driving all of the other tech companies out of business would be very beneficial for them."
         Greg thought this was ridiculous. Who in their right mind would go to so much work for such little reward? You could get money so much easier. "It has to be accidental. It doesn't make sense otherwise."
         "But how would this all happen accidentally? You're right about the nonsensical factor, but how else?"
         Greg, having no answer, left the room, flummoxed.


         

Chapter 7

         Joe stumbled into his best friend, Jonny, one day after school went out for the day. Jonny appeared to be crying, and Joe, a rather empathetic fellow himself, was worried.
         "What's wrong, Jonny? You're not weeping about the end of the Mistborn series, are you?"
         That ridiculous thought seemed to help Jonny compose himself, and he blurted out, "My phone broke, and my mom can't fix it!"
         "That is bad. Perhaps I can help you with that."
         "I sure hope so..."
         Joe, having much experience on the subject and the owner's manual, went to troubleshoot, and soon found the problem - Jonny's search engine kept overriding everything and playing weird music. Joe had never run into anything like this before, so he did what any reasonable fellow who knows anything about technology would do - he factory reset the phone, and it worked... mostly...


         Joe was going about his day as normal, when Greg walked in.
         Irritated by the interruptions and figuring it was Rob again, Joe muttered incomprehensibly.
         "Huh?" queried Greg.
         Joe muttered louder, but still far too indistinctly for Greg to understand.
         "What did you say???" a now annoyed Greg queried.
         Joe yelled, "What do you want with me?!?"
         Greg, perturbed, and in a bad mood, declared, "You're late for the employee relations meeting! It started 5 years ago!"
         "Years?"
         "Minutes! Seconds! Whatever!"
         "Okay, okay! I'll go to this ridiculous meeting!"
         And so Joe went to the meeting.
         He was not very optimistic about this meeting, but he grabbed some chai tea to get him through it.
         (at the meeting)
         Needless to say, Joe did not want to be there. He hid in the corner, drinking tea and reading his book, Keeper of Lost Cities 3, Everblaze. It was a lot more interesting than talking to coworkers, to say the least, and so he ignored the friendly coworkers when they attempted conversation. As they say, nothing helps a bad mood like spreading it around, though, so he became rather cheery in the corner. It certainly helped that the book was superb and his tea was still warm. It was a very good quality mug, after all, inscribed with the useful words, "'Leaf me alone'", and most people respected it. Occasionally he had to whack Rob on the head with the book to get him to leave, though Rob would typically sneak back, thinking Joe wasn't watching. Rob always was skulking around, catching snippets of conversation. Who knows how he always managed to keep his suit and tie spotless, but Joe surmised that without the suit and tie, his wallet disappearing would only be the start of it.
         Anyhoo, the meeting ended, but Joe didn't notice it, enthralled by his book and his steadily cooling tea. It took him 15 minutes to realize that everybody else was gone, and he only realized that because Fred, his manager, went up to him and tried to introduce him to his rich aunt, Angelita, who wanted him to call her Angie. Fred knew everybody, and was trying to 'expand Joe's comfort zone'. Needless to say, Joe was not very happy about it, but he supposed he had better meet somebody at an employee relations meeting. This made Fred feel very successful - he had gotten Joe to meet somebody! "That never happens!", he thought to himself.


         

Chapter 8

         First day of high school! Woot, woot! High school is always an interesting experience, but at least he was issued a new school chromebook. Despite it being annoyingly pokey, and completely incapable of running decent programs, he had a lot of fun with it. Being a tech geek, he was able to take care of GoGuardian within a week while still retaining the teacher functions so they didn't have to fix his computer and could still look at his screen during classes. He even managed to override the one google account limit on it and could download whatever he wanted, but, having gotten bored quickly, and being a tech geek, he decided that it would be entertaining to see how long it would take his computer to crash when he crafted a ridiculously complicated program on it and ran it. It lasted surprisingly long, 45 minutes. So he made a more complicated one, and more complicated, and it kept taking shorter and shorter to crash, and longer and longer to reboot, but what was that to him? He just kept trying to reach the point where it only took his computer 30 seconds to crash. And then 15 seconds. It didn't bother him in the slightest that it was taking his gmail 2 minutes to load on a good day. It's true that he wasn't particularly keen about how his EdPuzzle videos kept freezing up, but it was worth it to him. 15 seconds, 10 seconds - could he make it to 5? The rebooting time was reaching 5 minutes, but the wonders of copy paste were helping him narrow the gap. He was so close; he just had to wait until it rebooted again and he'd have it! But it never woke up. He whacked it, pressed reset until the button jammed, looked up every possible solution on his phone, but it didn't wake up.
         His mom was not happy with him, to say the least.


         Joe was working at his desk, content despite the many calls he had on hold lined up for his specialized technology expertise. He had his tea, heavily sugared as always, his headphones on, listening to jazz funk (which might be why he had so many calls lined up), and nobody bothered him, for the most part. However, his early morning tranquility was shattered when Fred sidled up to his desk, looking to utilize the most nefarious torture device of modern human society - pleasant conversation. Joe figured Fred was about to talk about why Joe was so far behind with the phone calls, but no, Fred had an even more devious plan in mind, one that was made clear when he emitted a cordial "Hello". Being forced by 'proper etiquette', Joe replied in similar fashion, though reluctantly.
         Fred, looking to start a conversation politely, asked Joe what he thought of the dark, cloudy weather. Joe, thinking that he knew where this was going now, mumbled his strong dislike of the lack of sun and the coldness. He'd always known he should have lived in Arizona, but had never mustered the courage to actually go there, and had just stayed in Watertown anyway. Fred, though, was a morning person, and chipperly replied to the nonexistent query, "I think the weather is beautiful! We'll all be working overtime, and everyone will make more money!"
         Joe replied, "I agree with the sentiment, but not the reasoning." He suspected that Fred had had more than his usual one cup of coffee and was highly caffeinated.
         Fred, not getting the point, asked, "Don't you like more money?"
         Joe, not getting that Fred wasn't getting the point, incredulously exclaimed, "Don't you get the point?!?"
         Fred, getting that Joe hadn't been getting that he hadn't been getting the point, succinctly stated "No."
         "Oh. That explains things."
         "Doesn't everything?"
         "Hey!" Joe exclaimed playfully. "I'm supposed to be the philosophical one here!"
         "Well, I wasn't just going to let you have a monopoly on it, was I?"
         "Anyway... why are you here? Are you just here to torture me with quote unquote 'pleasant conversation'?"
         "What's wrong with a little pleasant conversation? Pleasant's literally in the name!"
         "Everything."
         This took a bit to sink in with Fred, who then got back to the point. "Anyway, have you been experiencing hacking lately? I hear it has been a major problem lately with most of our employees. According to my latest survey, 78% of employees say they've been hacked in the past year, up from 3% back 4 years ago."
         "That's a big jump!"
         "You're talking!"
         "Have many of them experienced multiple instances?'
         "58% of them."
         "That's too much for it to be simply accidental!" Joe blurted.
         "That's what Greg said too!"
         "I know. He told me that as well."
         "That adds up." Fred remarked.
         "Reminds me of my Pacman arcade which got hacked back when I was 7."
         "You had a Pacman arcade when you were 7?"
         "Yeah"
         "And it got hacked? You're sure you didn't break it accidentally?"
         "That's what the technician said - that it was hacked."
         "How do you even hack a Pacman arcade?"
         "That's what I thought!"
         "Man, you were a tech geek at age 7!" Fred reminisced.
         "It happens to the best of us" Joe stated with a hint of malice in his tone of voice.
         Fred backed off questioningly. "You said you'd had multiple hackings, though. Care to explain?"
         "This might be a while, then..."
         "I've got the time."
         "Anyway, I've had many other experiences with hacking. My iPad broke, my Oppo phone broke, Polytopia broke, my friend's phone broke, everything broke!!!"
         Joe was rather worked up.
         "That is a lot of hackings." Fred stated.
         "Ya think?"
         "... Well, as before, so again... care to explain?"
         "In your own words, as before, so again - it might be a while."
         "I've got the time."
         "But do my callers?" said Joe, surprisingly observantly.
         "Fair, fair. Have fun customer servicing!"
         "I'll try..." mumbled Joe as Fred left.


         

Chapter 9

         It hadn't been a great day at work. He'd procrastinated a bit too much, and thus had had to stay at work until 7, which led him to have to drive home, exceedingly hungry, through pouring rain. Needless to say, such an experience was tiring, so Joe went to bed early, after a nice, cold, filling supper.
         However, Joe was a very light sleeper, despite years of experience with kids. Thus, he couldn't go to sleep due to the persistent thunder. He kept tossing and turning, and thus just eventually got out of bed, acknowledging the pointlessness of continuing to try to fall asleep. However, he was still sleepy, so he tried all the tips and tricks of falling asleep - warm glass of milk, reading, exercise, and eventually, when he went back to bed, he fell asleep.
         (Some time later...)
         Joe woke with a start. A thunderbolt had woken him up in the early morning dusk. He woke up, and instinctively reached for his phone to see if it was time to get up yet. "Ugh, not again", he said as it wasn't where he had thought it was.
         He searched his room for it, and finally - there it was - under the dresser!
         How in the world did it get there? he thought. Is it fine?
         It looked fine - 3:24 AM, April 25, 2017, 63o and sunny.
         And then he saw the notification. "Nooooooooooooooooo"


         

Chapter 10

         Joe decided to get to the heart of the problem - the notification. So he read it. The notification, from 0 [phone], said, "Nice files! I sold them all and then deleted your copies. If you want a copy, send $5000 to my number, 0 [phone] through PayPal. Thanks in advance!"
         "What kind of a fiend would write such an infuriating ransomware message?" Joe thought to himself, panicking. Then he thought about what Greg would think - all of their secret files, stolen? They would go bankrupt within days! Wait a second... he didn't even have any company files! They had just hacked him for nothing! What a blunder on their part! So, with a smirk on his face, he went to work per the usual. But when he got to work, he was told to go to Greg's office right away. So, he did the reasonable thing: he went straight to Greg's office. Greg got right to the point, a trait Joe greatly admired in him. However, Greg was not happy.
         "I got a message last night, saying that all of my files were stolen. From you! You thought I didn't have your phone number in the system?!?"
         Joe, scrambling for a response, realized that he had sent Greg a hurried message that last night about his own notification.
         "I sent you that because of this" and he showed Greg the notification.
         "Well, that's annoying." said Greg and promptly fired him.
         "But I don't even have any of your files!" Joe exclaimed.
         "And? You would have! Your account could still be hacked! Do you know the chaos they could do with that?"
         "No"
         "They could bankrupt us! Don't you realize you have admin access?"
         "I hadn't."
         "Haven't you been working?!?"
         "Yes!"
         "You're fired! I already told you! Get out of here!"
         Joe, ever prudent, did get out of there when the threat of getting kershmommeled with an office chair arose, though he was not happy about it in the slightest.
         Indeed was again Joe's best friend, and he got a new job the same day. Why is Indeed working so well, when everything else techwise is breaking? Well, he went straight to work, even though it was seven in the evening and his shift started at eight in the morning.
         His new boss, rather confused, mumbled, "Working overtime, eh?"
         "Ummm..." That was a hard question, and, he realized, Annalise would not be happy with him for missing dinner. So, he went home to attempt to minimize the damage. He got whacked and his supper got cold, but, what can you expect? "Not to get whacked!" Joe would say, but I digress...


         

Chapter 11

         Joe was peacefully working at his job the next morning, when he saw a familiar face - Fred! What in the world is Fred doing here? It's the middle of the day! Is he going to reinstate me? But no, it was not for reinstatement that Fred had come, as Joe was soon to find. Fred was downright gloomy, which made Joe's heart bump a little. Oh boy, I'm really in trouble now! But, it was not he who was in trouble, it was Fred!
         "Haven't you read the news?" Fred queried upon seeing Joe's puzzled expression. "It was on the front headline - 'Technology Companies Hacked!' NVIDIA is bankrupt, but it wasn't just us! Google, Microsoft, IBM - all taken down in one fell swoop! They're claiming it was done by a group of Norwegian hackers, but they have no proof."
         "Seriously? How will I keep my job if every single tech company crashes?!?"
         "You're talking? I had a great job before!"
         Joe realized it was getting a bit heated, and tried to settle it down. "Do you think they're right? That it was the Norwegians?"
         "Of course not! My mother was Norwegian!"
         "Interesting. I didn't know that."
         "How would you have?"
         "Fair." Joe admitted.
         "Didn't he accidentally leave you his phone number, though?"
         "He didn't for you?"
         "No... don't you know how to trace phone numbers, Mr. Tech Geek?"
         "Not without advanced software!"
         "Well, have I got the person for you!"


         

Chapter 12

         And so they drove off towards Watertown.
         "Where are we going?" asked Joe.
         "Why would I tell you?" answered Fred, driving at a quite rapid pace.
         "Because you're driving me somewhere!"
         Fred ignored him.
         So, Joe sat sullenly in the passenger seat until, a couple hours and 7 CDs later, they pulled into a very fancy blacktop driveway to a very fancy mansion.
         "Whoa." Joe was stunned by the luxuriousity of it all. "Is this your house?"
         "No, it's Angelita's. You remember her, right?"
         Who? Oh, his aunt! "You didn't mention she was so rich!"
         "Why would I have? You didn't ask!"
         Fair. Joe thought.
         So they entered the mansion, when suddenly Fred remembered that he had forgotten to notify Angelita that he was coming. So, when he entered through the unlocked front door, "She always leaves the front door open. She's lucky she hasn't been robbed yet!", they were met by an eerie silence.
         "Why is everything so dusty?" questioned Joe.
         "I don't know! Dusting day should have been only two days ago!"
         "Then where is she?"
         That was, indeed the question, as Angelita was nowhere to be found. Fred checked the calendar, but there was nothing on it for that day.
         "She writes everything on the calendar!"
         "Then why has the calendar been blank for three days now?"
         They were pondering over that when Fred's phone pinged.
         "Seriously? You forgot to silence notifications?" Joe rhetorically queried incredulously.
         But Greg didn't answer. He was too busy staring at the screen with a growing sense of horror.
         Joe, naturally curious, peered over his shoulder and read it aloud to himself.
         "'We have Angelita. Hand over the money (via PayPal, of course). Thanks in advance!' Are they trying to get us to want to murder them?"
         "That doesn't seem particularly unlikely."
         "GAHHHHHH!!!"
         "And that is why we hide the knives."
         "Why would they even kidnap her? We're not a threat to them!"
         "How sure are you about that?" a dark voice threatened from a dusty corner.
         Greg screamed. Joe didn't. He knew that voice - it was Rob.
         "How did you manage to stalk us when we were in a car?!?" Joe exclaimed.
         "I hid in the trunk." stated Rob.
         "Classic Rob." muttered Fred. "Were you the one who said Angelita was kidnapped?"
         "Angelita is kidnapped?!?!?" Rob exclaimed, starting to panic. "How will I explain to her that I ate the rest of her pancakes if she got kidnapped?"
         "My aunt gets kidnapped and you're worrying about pancakes?!?" Fred yelled.
         Joe saw that it was getting heated, per the usual, and intervened. "Why don't we do something about it?"
         "How can we? We don't know where she is!"
         "You know her computer password, right?"


         

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

         "Finally!" Joe exclaimed.
         "Finally what?" a grumpy Fred queried.
         "I got into the computer!"
         "Ugh..."


         

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

         Three hours later, Joe had finally found what he was looking for, and he could hardly contain his excitement. In fact, he couldn't at all.
         "Fred! Fred! I did it!"
         But Fred was asleep. After dousing him with cold water, Fred was so grumpy that Joe wished he were still asleep. But he told him anyway.
         "I figured out where they're keeping Angie!"
         "Don't you dare call my aunt Angie! You barely even know her! Anyway... where?"
         "She told me to! Besides, she's in South Sandwich Island."
         "Where?!?"
         "South Sandwich Island! It's an island-"
         "Of course it's an island!"
         "Near Antarctica, occupied by the UK!"
         "Antarctica?!? Can't they pick warmer areas?"
         "That's what I was going to say!"
         "Well, how will we save her?" asked Fred.
         "Umm... we could loot her house!"
         "..."
         However, they did decide this was the best course of action and filled 2 suitcases with dynamite, a couple pistols, three packs of butter, a canister of Febreeze, a laptop with a built-in hotspot, two pairs of sunglasses, a dagger for Rob, a lighter, and a purple rubber duck.
         "Why the duck?" asked Fred.
         "Why not?"


         

Chapter 14

         They took Angie's private jet in order to avoid customs.
         "Why does she even have a private jet?"
         "Why not?"
         "Do you even know how to fly a plane?"
         "..."
         Luckily, Rob knew how to fly a plane, "Is that because you've stolen planes before?", and they flew off to South Sandwich Island. It was a fourteen hour flight, which was added on to by them having to purchase gas twice and them finding out that South Sandwich Island doesn't even have an airport, and they had to sail there. By the time they finally arrived, it was three in the morning two days after they had started, and they had jet lag. So, they booked a hotel with some of the money that was in Angie's dresser, and slept for the rest of the morning.
         

~ ~ ~

         The food was terrible in the cheap hotel. They all knew it, but they had expected better sandwiches, considering they were in South Sandwich Island. Nevertheless, they went off to the coordinates that Joe had traced Angelita's phone to. There they found a big factory.
         "How will we get in?" asked Fred. "It's not like we can just waltz into a factory without permission without garnering attention!"
         "Garnering?" asked Joe.
         "Never mind about garnering! Rob, what do you think?"
         But Rob was already gone.
         Oh, great. Where is he off to now? But Fred and Joe couldn't figure anything out, so they just waited for Rob to return.
         15 minutes later, Rob reappeared with a box of donuts.
         "Seriously? Donuts?" Joe rolled his eyes at Rob.
         "Open it and you'll see." stated Rob with a twinkle in his eye.
         So Joe did, and what did he find but three factory ID cards and 5 chocolate donuts.
         "DONUT!!!" yelled Fred and immediately gobbled down 4. "Gralf smarf gnarf spalf schlaf."
         "Seriously? Chew with your mouth closed!"
         So they entered the factory without attracting attention. Unsurprisingly, since it was a tech factory, it had free wifi, so Joe was able to follow the signal upstairs to where her phone was.
         "This seems almost too easy!" mouthed Joe to Rob, only to find that Rob had snuck away again. "Seriously? Why does he have to disappear so often? Couldn't he at least te-"
         But his soliloquy was interrupted by a beeping sound from his phone.
         "She's - or her phone, at least - in here!" he exclaimed pointing to a supply closet.
         "Shhhhhhhhh!" Fred shushed Joe pointedly.
         It was locked, though. Joe and Fred were wondering how to open it when Rob reappeared, a key ring in hand.
         "It had an immobilizer circuit, so I couldn't just pick the lock."
         He opened the door.
         "Aren't they going to notice that their keys or IDs are gone?"
         "I took care of that - knocked 'em out." pridefully stated Rob
         "For how long?" nervously added Joe.
         "Erm..."
         "Well, I guess we'd better hurry then."
         So they entered the closet, where they found nothing except the phone.
         "This looks like a trap." muttered Joe.
         "Doesn't everything..." muttered Fred.
         "Hey! I'm supposed to be the philosophical one here!" exclaimed Joe.
         "Shush!"
         So they picked up the phone, and, unsurprisingly, an alarm went off.
         "Seriously?" exclaimed Joe.
         "You say 'seriously' too often," said Fred. "Besides, where's Rob?"
         "I don't even know anymore. He probably didn't want to get arrested. Speaking of which, we should probably run!"
         So they fled, checking Angie's phone as they went.
         "Does she have a homing device on her or why can her phone track her?" queried Joe.
         "How should I know? You're the tech geek here!"
         "Fair..."
         They went up some stairs, up an employee elevator, up an escalator, up up up...
         "Why can't they go down for once?!?" exclaimed Fred, panicking.
         "What, are you afraid of heights?" queried Joe incredulously.
         "Yes!!!"
         "Well, aren't you more afraid of the security guards chasing after us?"
         "AHHHHHH!"
         They were indeed being chased by security guards, who were quickly gaining on them. They ran faster, but they were no match for the burly guards.
         "Fred, you dropped something!"
         "I know!"
         Suddenly, there was a great clamor on the steps behind them. Crash, bash, smash, "OW!" could be heard, but Joe didn't turn around for fear he might lose momentum.
         "What was that?"
         "They slipped on the butter I threw down the steps and crashed into each other!"
         "Too bad there's more coming the other direction!"
         It was all too true - they were trapped.
         "What'll we do?" exclaimed Joe.
         "Um..."
         Then a rope ladder fell from a panel in the ceiling and they heard Rob's hurried voice yelling, "Get up! I found her!"
         So they did, and they found her as well. Rob had cut her free from the pole she had been tied to with his dagger, but when they turned on the light they found that the only way out was down, back through the ceiling panel where the guards were.
         "We're trapped." stated Joe.
         "You said that last time, and Rob saved us!"
         "Well, now Rob's trapped too!"
         But Rob had, per the usual, disappeared, seemingly into thin air.
         "Why? Oh, why, Rob?" they pleaded in unison.
         He had taken the bag as well. So, unhindered, the guards walked up to the panel and, being over six feet tall, simply pushed it open and hauled themselves in. Fred and Joe trembled in the corner, trying to hide, but they were no match for the heat scanners possessed by the guards, who walked up to them.
         "So you thought that little butter trick would save you? Too bad you're no match for TALL PEOPLE!"
         His friends all started chuckling and slapping their knees at that while Joe and Fred just glared at each other.
         "Whose idea was this anyway?!?" whispered Joe angrily.
         "Well, we wouldn't have had to try to save her if you hadn't gotten hacked!"
         "You think that was my fault?" Joe yelled as he tried to stomp away, but realized there were guards in front of him. "Ope. Fred, you got anything?"
         "How would I? Rob took the stuff! All he left was the rubber duck!"
         Out of the corner of his eye, Joe noticed one of the security guards fall to the ground. Oh boy, now I just have to stall until Rob takes them all out. Ope. he thought as reality struck. He had to stall. He was not good at stalling.
         "What's going on here?" said a burly man, presumably their boss.
         "We caught some intruders, sir." was the rather robotic reply from the security guard.
         "Intru-" He was cut short by a feathered dart in his neck as he crumpled to the ground. The security guards looked, startled, and finally noticed that there were only three of them standing, the rest felled by tranquilizer darts.
         "Judging by the angle of the dart in the neck, the attacker should be about... there!" stated one of them, pointing directly at Rob.
         Ever cool in a crisis, Rob tossed Joe and Fred their pistols and threw his dagger at the one who had just talked. He hit, and that guard also fell, but the other two guards knocked the dagger out of his hands and stole his tranquilizer gun, which was what had been toppling the other guards.
         "Have a taste of your own medicine, mister." one of them, Bob from the name tag, said as he aimed the tranquilizer gun at Rob, and, unsurprisingly, hit. Fred, ever a sure shot with a pistol, one-shotted Bob, but his accomplice threw Fred down the ceiling panel.
         "Owwwwwww..." Fred moaned from below.
         Joe was panicking. The guard had Rob's dagger, and did not appear to shy away from the opportunity to be rid of him once and for all. So, he tried diplomacy.
         "If you leave my friends alone, I'll let you go!"
         The guard simply glared at him.
         "Please, just go! I don't want to have to deal with you!"
         The guard grinned maliciously. "Oh, you have far bigger problems to deal with than me. There are hundreds of us, and only five of you."
         Joe couldn't think of a response, and his hand with the pistol was trembling as the guard backed him into the wall.
         "You're toast, Joe" On the last word, he oozed contempt with a sneer in his eyes.
          His thoughts went to the pistol in his hand, but he couldn't kill a human! It was bad enough with the bunny. But the guard left him no choice.
         "You leave me no choice but to deal with you."
         "Or, I could extend the same offer - I let you go, but I keep your friends. You don't have to kill me. You know how much it will hurt. And it will all be your fault."
         Joe could see the fear in the guard's eyes behind that mask of contempt and hatred, could see how the man didn't want to deal with him either, could see how he was only trying to kill them because he had to. He knew what the guard knew, that he hated the sight of blood and especially the knowing that he was the reason that the blood was there. He knew he had a choice. And that made it all the worse for him when he shot him.


         

Chapter 15

         Rob's dagger clattered to the floor as the guard fell facefirst. Joe couldn't tear his eyes away from the morbid scene. The guard's last words were haunting him. It would all be your fault. And it was my fault. I had a choice. And I chose to become a murderer. He felt the nausea bubbling up in his chest, and couldn't do anything about it. Great. Now the floor is Christmas colored, he thought rather morbidly. But Fred's moans of pain, gradually growing in volume, jolted him out of his thoughts and back to the present. He carried Fred up to the loft. Fred didn't appear to have broken any bones, but he had a really bad concussion. And then Rob was still slumped in the corner. Joe looked frantically for anything to indicate how long Rob would be out for while paranoidly jumping at every sound. Finally, Joe found the tranquilizer gun. What kind of tranquilizer gun has a warning label? he thought. It read, "Victims will fall asleep immediately and, due to the slightly faster acting poison, will never wake up." That was not what Joe had been hoping to see, and it took all of his willpower not to scream in anguish. But, he had a job to do. Angie had to be saved, and his friends had to be transported out. So, he got right to it, lifting Rob up out of the corner, when he noticed a slip of paper by Rob's right hand, which held a pen. The note read:
          There's a panel on the left wall. Press on it and rotate it left, and you'll find Angie. Also, the antidote for the tranquilizer darts is inside the laptop. Please administer it quickly. The helicopter is on the roof. Hurry!
         What helicopter? Joe thought. Well, that was beside the point. First, Joe had to figure out what Rob meant by 'left wall', as left is a relative concept, but only 1 wall had a panel. Then, when he opened the panel, he found yet another unconscious person. Great. Just what I needed. Apparently, they had felt the need to knock out Angie so she wouldn't realize people were coming to help her. Then, he opened the laptop and found a packet, which he quickly administered to Rob, who started wheezing in his sleep. Then he got to the helicopter section. A. Where did he get a helicopter and B. How do I get onto the roof? Also, won't more security guards be coming soon? This did not cause him to become less paranoid, and he started to panic, even when he saw the helpful sign which said "Bathrooms - -> Conference rooms - <- Roof /`" How was he even supposed to go up there? And then he saw the stairs. Oh, boy.
         

~ ~ ~

         Bump, bump, bump, bump, bump. At least when they were unconscious, they couldn't yell in pain at him, or he'd be insane by now. But, his arms were not happy with him. Boy, was Fred heavy. Boy, was he hungry. And wouldn't the other guards have noticed by now? That their comrades were... deceased? Because of me. Many children have lost their fathers today because of me. It's not their fault they got involved in the wrong group! None of them wanted to kill us, it was just their job. We just looked like common criminals to them, and we killed them without a second thought. The nausea was back, but he somehow managed to swallow it down. Suddenly, he was jolted back to reality by the fact that the stairs had ended, and he had tripped trying to step on an nonexistent stair. There it was - the helicopter. Oh, what a glorious sight! And who was driving it but Greg.
         "Oh, you don't know how glad I am to see you!"
         "I actually do."
         "You get the point. Anyway, I have a bunch of unconscious people here. Mind lending a hand?"
         He did not, in fact, mind lending a hand, and they got the people loaded up fairly quickly and the gear thrown in the back.
         "We should take out the base so they don't do that again" stated Greg.
         "How?" asked Joe.
         "With the dynamite, duh!"
         Joe stared at him blankly.
         "You know, dynamite? Lighter? Boom?"
         Oohh. That's what he meant.
         "Yeah, I guess so."
         "Then we're going to have to fly closer and you're going to have to throw the dynamite out the window. Got that?"
         "Yup." Blood. Death. All your fault.
         

~ ~ ~

         He doesn't know how he did it, but when he regained his senses, the factory was far off in the distance and Greg was telling him how he had done it. Of course, he had to ruin the moment by throwing up again.
         "Come on, not the helicopter!"
         "..."
         "Anyway..." glaring at Joe, "now we just have to sneak the unconscious people into an airplane without people questioning us!"
         Oh, great. "Yerp."
         They drove all the way to the airport before Joe realized, "Don't we have a private jet? That's how we got here."
         "You could have told me that before!"
         And so, they flew back to Wisconsin and checked Fred, Angie, and Rob into Froedtert.
         "Yay, health insurance!" Joe sarcastically remarked as he waited rather impatiently for one of them to wake up. The hospital didn't even have good literature! How were you supposed to entertain yourself on children's literature when they didn't even have "Frog and Toad are Friends"? Anyhoo, Rob started wheezing a little less, and opened his eyes.
         "Whe-where am I?"
         "In the hospital. You were unconscious, wrote a whole note, have preposterously good handwriting, yadda yadda." Joe rambled.
         "Did we win?"
         "You could say as such, but we certainly aren't finished with them yet. They sent me a lot of angry text messages about it before I blocked them so they couldn't track my location."
         "Smart."
         "I know."
         "I know you know, I was just saying it so that you would say I know because I knew that was what you would say."
         "Huh." That was a long statement for Joe to process. Honestly, he was quite surprised that Rob had that type of mental capacity right after regaining consciousness. It could be a useful trait in the future. "I guess I'm just predictable, then."
         Rob was rather surprised that Joe had managed to decipher his long and confusing statement. "Yup."
         "But the most predictable move is often the best move."
         "Fair, but still... not the most useful trait."
         "Who knows? I could be changing! After all, I did bring the rubber duck!"
         "Which accomplished abso-fruitly nothing..." mumbled Rob.
         

~ ~ ~

         The others awoke later in the day, Fred with a splitting headache and a sore back, which he made known very vocally, and Angie just woke up. No ado, no loudness, although she was a bit disappointed at the loss of her butter.
         "How am I supposed to make cookies when you throw all the butter down the steps?"
         "Broski, you literally have an entire mansion! You can afford more butter!" exclaimed Joe.
         "I ain't no broski! And, anyway, that's beside the point!"
         It was not, however, beside the point, though, and everybody knew it. The point was that Angie was in a hospital and was not allowed to make cookies, even if they had brought the ingredients to her - there were no ovens in the hospital, at least not for public access. Somebody has to make hospital food, after all.
         "Judging by the fact that I'm still alive and not a hostage, I suppose that means you deleted that last guard and somehow got all of us out of there?" queried Fred.
         Surprised at how good Fred was at guessing, Joe could only say, "Yeah"
         "Huh. Nice. I'm also assuming Greg told you to blow it up?"
         Wincing, Joe managed another "Yeah".
         "Not a pleasant experience, I see. Well, what do we have to blow up next?"
         "I don't know, but we'll do it together."