It Was Too Much

A timid looking, middle aged man stumbled into Roland's office and stuttered, "What is it you wanted to see me for, s-sir?"

"Louis, what the hell happened to the system?"

Louis, the most senior technician on shift, knew that was why he had been summoned by Roland. Of course, the system hadn't suddenly broke when Roland arrive at work; he and his team had been putting out fires all morning.

"Sir, we've been working on it all morning; we'll have it up and running as soon as possible."

"We're a tech company that currently doesn't have a computer system, what will people say when they find out?"

"Sir, with all due respec—"

"Don't. Whenever someone says 'with all due respect,' they're normally about to say something disrespectful or disregard respect.

"Just get to the point and say what you want to say."

Louis' eyes darted about the room, not knowing how to react. After a short moment of hesitation, he looked at Roland. "Sir, our team is doing all we can. We first fixed the systems vital to daily operations, then we worked on locating the source of the crash, so we could come up with a comprehensive solution.

"The fact is, sir, you are the source."

"What?"

"The crash was caused by your system. You ran a program that was too resource intensive, and since the overnight staff didn't spot it until it was too late, the system was overloaded, and, well, the camel's back broke."

Roland didn't respond immediately; he was deep in thought.

'I know the system—I designed it—so I know it can handle my software. I even ran it a few times when I first made it. Since that's the case, something else was draining the system's resources, something that I'm not aware of.'

As the CEO and owner of the company, as well as a programming genius, no major changes were implemented in the system without Roland's say so. He knew of no processes that would have stopped the program from working properly, let alone destroying the whole system.

Given all that, it could only mean that there was software in the system that he was not aware of.

"I want a detailed report of everything that happened before the system crash. All the process running, all the programs opened in the hours before, all the network connections, I want everything.

"In case you can't tell, I'm not convinced with your analysis; if you value your job, find out the real cause. Also, I need you to retrieve the results of the program I was running while you're at it; they just might prove to be the key to finding out what happened."

Louis simply stood there, not knowing whether he could leave or not.

Roland rolled his eyes. "You're not in school, read the atmosphere. You may go."

Without needing to be told twice, Louis rapidly scuttled out of the door and back to his office. At the same time, Roland started work on his own computer, trying to recover the data from his scan.