Restore from backup, p.1
Restore from Backup, page 1
RESTORE FROM BACKUP
By J. F. Gonzalez and Mike Oliveri
A Macabre Ink Production
Macabre Ink is an imprint of Crossroad Press
Digital Edition published by Crossroad Press
Smashwords edition published at Smashwords by Crossroad Press
Digital Edition Copyright © 2017 Cathy Gonzalez and Mike Oliveri
Restore From Backup first published in 2007 by Bad Moon Books
Afterword first published 2007 by Bad Moon Books
“Algorithms of the Heart” first published 2016 in Clickers Forever by Thunderstorm Books
LICENSE NOTES
This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to the vendor of your choice and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
Meet the Author
J. F. GONZALEZ was an author, editor, and noted genre historian whose works included PRIMITIVE, BULLY, THE CORPORATION, SCREAMING TO GET OUT, THEY, SHAPESHIFTER, RETREAT, OLD GHOSTS AND OTHER REVENANTS, BACK FROM THE DEAD and dozens more. His novel SURVIVOR is hailed by critics to be a seminal work of extreme horror. His collaborations with other authors include HERO and THE KILLINGS (both with Wrath James White), and the popular CLICKERS series (with Mark Williams and Brian Keene). To learn more about his legacy, visit jfgonzalez.org
MIKE OLIVERI is a Bram Stoker Award winning novelist and comic book writer whose works include THE PACK: WINTER KILL, THE PACK: LIE WITH THE DEAD, BRAVO FOUR, WERWOLVES: CALL OF THE WILD, TO FIGHT WITH MONSTERS (co-written with Brian Keene), DEADLIEST OF THE SPECIES and many more. His short fiction has appeared in numerous anthologies and magazines. To learn more about him, visit mikeoliveri.com
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Dedication
For my parents, Jesus and Glenda Gonzalez, with love
J. F. Gonzalez
For Tim, Patrick, and Lillian. Don’t worry. Daddy’s computers can’t kill the world. (Yet.)
Mike Oliveri
Acknowledgments
Mike Oliveri would like to thank Jesus for pushing this puppy through, Brian for pairing us up, Dave at Crossroad Press, Rich for the IT training (I am the master now), and Melissa for more than I could ever list here.
Both authors would like to thank Tom and Elizabeth Monteleone for pointing out what we knew all along.
J. F. Gonzalez would like to thank Mike, Brian, Cathy and Hannah, and all the IT guys and gals in various IT related jobs past and present for unknowingly providing much of the inspiration and background of this novella.
RESTORE FROM BACKUP
Table of Contents
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
AFTERWORD
ALGORITHMS OF THE HEART
CHAPTER ONE
One would think that a man who spent his days rescuing users from the perils of their desktop PCs would at least be adept at something like maintaining an email address book. Lyle Harrison, at least in this particular case, embodied the oxymoron “Luddite technician.”
He dug up Carl Sanders’s telephone number from the well-thumbed Rolodex he still maintained from his college days. Melissa teased him about it all the time, but he carried the Rolodex from job to job like a good luck charm. From professors and frat brothers to bars and pizza joints, the numbers and addresses were all in there. When he sought his first job following graduation, he flipped through the cards and stumbled on the number of a high school friend he hadn’t heard from in years. On a whim, Lyle had given him a ring. One thing had led to another, and before Lyle knew it he’d landed a fat job at Anderson & Associates.
That lasted until two months ago. He’d survived the bulk of the cuts when the bottom fell out of the IT industry, but thanks to the recent trend to move technical jobs overseas to reduce labor costs, the layoff axe found the back of Lyle’s neck. Another six months of this and he’d be able to tear the unemployment office’s address out of his Rolodex; no sense calling them after they stop handing out checks.
The phone rang. Lyle lifted the cordless handset and glanced at the Caller ID display in time to see Melissa’s cell number scroll across the screen. He thumbed the talk button. “Hello.”
“Hi, babe,” his wife responded in a worn voice.
“Are you still at the hospital?”
“Yeah, still in the pediatric wing, still waiting on test results.”
“That figures,” he replied evenly. Inside, he wanted to scream. He quickly changed the subject. “How’s the little guy holding up?”
“Gabe’s good. He’s sleeping again. All this excitement has really worn him out. They gave him some more ice cream for lunch, though, so he’s not complaining.”
Lyle couldn’t blame him. Three middle-of-the-night ER visits in five days would take their toll on anyone, especially a kid just creeping up on his first year. Last night had been especially bad, and while the doctors managed to get Gabriel’s wheezing under control, they had to use a sedative to calm him down. It broke Lyle’s heart to see his son like that, and it sure didn’t help matters that his health benefits were long gone.
“Well that’s good. Have you eaten?”
“The nurses brought me lunch with Gabe’s. They’re a lot better than the night shift. How about you? Having any luck?”
“I’m getting ready to call Carl.”
“Carl? I thought you didn’t want to pester him again?”
Lyle harrumphed. “I don’t. I feel like a leech. But at this point, I don’t feel we have much choice.” As he spoke, his fingers found the card and fished it out. The blue pen had faded some but was still easily legible.
“I’m sure he’ll understand.”
“What did the school say when you called in sick?”
“They already had a sub lined up, just in case. They understand.”
Maybe so, but her sick time was far from unlimited. Her salary and benefits carried them through, but without his health insurance to provide dual coverage, Gabe’s medical bills would tax her meager income to its extreme. Lyle feared that even if he found a job, he’d be denied coverage based on his son’s pre-existing condition—whatever that was.
“Well, I better let you go. I’m going to try to catch some sleep while Gabe’s napping.”
“Okay, hon. Do you want me to come down there?”
“No, that’s okay. You do what you’ve gotta do. We’ll be fine, and I’ll call you as soon as I hear something.”
“Alright, then. I love you.”
“I love you, too.” She clicked off the line and he set down the phone.
Gabriel’s physician had ordered a spirometry and the usual battery of X-rays and blood tests. One would think at least some of those results had come back. At least cystic fibrosis had been ruled out (thank God). He didn’t know if he would have been able to handle that one.
He glanced at the clock. Almost one o’clock. He thought about driving down to the hospital anyway, but he had Carl’s work number in hand so he decided he may as well call. He just hoped Carl had fared better than he had in the IT slump.
Carl answered on the second ring. “Yeah?”
“Carl! How you doing? It’s Lyle!”
“Hey, Lyle, how’s it going?”
The instant recognition in Carl’s voice steadied Lyle’s nerves, and for the next ten minutes they talked as if they had seen each other only yesterday; in reality, it had been almost two years—not since Melissa got pregnant, if Lyle remembered correctly. The obligatory “how is everyone?” question came around, and Lyle tried to keep the worst of the doom and gloom out of it as he relayed his situation.
“What have you been up to?” Lyle asked.
“Same old shit, really. Sometimes I wonder why I got my degree in Computer Science in the first place, what with our jobs being handed to the dotheads.”
“Yeah, I hear that,” Lyle said, thinking this is it, this is where you start your beg and pitch session. “Speaking of which, one of those dotheads just got handed my job. I’ve been out of work for two months.”
“Are you serious? Damn, that sucks! I’m sorry to hear that.” The sincerity in his voice felt genuine, giving Lyle a pang of guilt.
“I can’t find anything, man. Place I worked at moved the whole fucking IT division to India—programming, networking, help desk, software and web development, all of it. Shit, I think they would have laid off the technical writers if they knew they could find anyone fluent enough in English to write technical manuals.”
“That’s a shame,” Carl said. “And it’s all gonna bite us on the ass sooner or later.”
“Yeah. Listen, if you hear about anything on your end, could you let me know? Keep me in mind?”
“Sure thing, man. Anything I could do to help, no problem. You still do web development?”
“Oh yeah. I thought about doing it full time, but since the suits took all the fun out of coding HTML it’s not a great market to get into.”
“You can say that again. Hey, you do any networking?”
“A little.”
Carl paused. Lyle could almost hear the gears turning in his friend’s skull. He pictured Carl at work, feet kicked up on his cluttered desk in some cramped cubicle somewhere in a Manhattan skyscraper, cell phone to his ear, fingers twirling a pen. “Listen, I may have something for ya. They’re looking for network administrators—Unix and Windows Server. I know you’re all big on Unix, but how are your Windows Server skills?”
“Pretty decent,” Lyle said. He’d farted around with Windows Server enough at his last job to be Microsoft Certified, but no fucking way was he dropping fifteen grand into Bill Gates’s pocket just for a little piece of paper with Microsoft’s blessing to handle their product.
“I figured,” Carl said. Lyle could hear him shuffling some papers around on his desk. “I mean the shit isn’t exactly brain surgery, right?”
“Exactly!” Lyle laughed. Maybe he’d made the right decision after all.
“Alright, you’re going to give Anita Martinez a call.” Carl rattled off a phone number with a 976 area code. “She’s our West Coast IT Division Manager. Tell her I told you to call her. I’m going to send her an e-mail right now, so she’ll be expecting your call.”
“Who do you work for?”
“Kaiser Development Systems.”
“And you know for a fact they’re hiring?”
“I see the job boards on our intranet. A new posting just went up this morning. Network Administrator, Unix and Windows Server, TCP/IP skills, IIS, yada yada yada, and all the other associated acronyms.” They laughed. Last time they talked, Lyle bitched about how the IT industry—how the entire business world, it seemed—was being overrun by acronyms. Corporate and technical glossaries were filling entire volumes on their own.
“Really, I think you’d be a perfect fit,” Carl continued. “I’m doing something similar and I’ll tell you, it’s a piece of cake. I’m getting sixty a year just watching the little network lights blink, you know?”
“Sixty?” Not wonderful in the Grand Scheme of All Things Technical, but still eight grand more than he’d made at Anderson.
“Yup. And the benefits are great, too. Full medical and dental, no deductible. They’ll pay for shit other plans won’t pay for, like chiropractic care, and they start you off with three weeks’ vacation a year, they match your 401k contributions, and their pension plan is—”
“You don’t have to tell me any more, I’m sold.” Completely. Some of those bennies made the salary more than workable.
“Good. Now leave me the hell alone and call Anita.”
Which he did. He pushed the off button to disconnect, then immediately hit the talk button and dialed the number Carl had given him.
“Good afternoon, Kaiser Development West. May I help you?”
“Yes, I’d like to speak to Anita Martinez, please.”
“Who shall I say is calling?”
“Lyle Harrison.”
“Thank you, Mr. Harrison. One moment.”
On came the hold music. “The Girl from Ipanema” if he remembered right. He hummed along as he leaned back in his chair and stretched.
“Mr. Harrison,” a woman said abruptly. He sat up and reached for a pen. “I was just now reading an email from Carl Sanders about you.”
“Ah, perfect timing, then.” He hoped. “He gave me your number.”
“So I gathered.”
He winced. He hoped this wasn’t starting things on the wrong foot.
“So you’re looking for a job,” she said. “Tell me about yourself.”
He did, keeping to an old professor’s advice to toot his own horn. Carl had said she was an IT director, so he didn’t bother to water down the tech stuff the way he would for a personnel department drone. She interjected once or twice, asking him to elaborate on specific projects he’d worked on, or to explain how he had resolved certain problems. They spoke for fifteen minutes, keeping it all business, and she closed by asking him to email a current résumé to her. He jotted down her address, they said goodbye, and he made sure the phone was hung up before letting out a grand sigh of relief.
He felt good about the call. For the first time in weeks, he felt optimistic. He decided to go down to the hospital anyway, and smiled most of the way there.
CHAPTER TWO
The next few weeks were so hectic and nerve wracking that Lyle thought he would be committed before all was said and done.
The hospital discharged Gabriel, but he still went through another battery of tests. He had another breathing attack, and while they sat with him in the hospital, their pediatrician called and said the results from the last tests came in and it was official—Gabriel was diagnosed with a mild case of asthma.
Lyle and Melissa took the news with great relief, but Lyle noticed Dr. Walker’s puzzlement as he sat down with them in his office. Melissa held Gabriel, who batted at a toy she waved over his head. The joy and happiness pouring off of her was intoxicating, and if Dr. Walker’s puzzled expression hadn’t caught Lyle’s eye, he would have been drunk with the same kind of joy. As it was, he turned to Dr. Walker curiously.
“Is everything okay?”
“Yes, everything’s fine,” Dr. Walker said. He flipped through Gabriel’s file, that look of puzzlement still on his face; lips pursed, brow furrowed in concentration as he read the reports, searching for something. “It’s just remarkable.”
“What’s that?” Lyle asked.
“Does Gabey like to have SpongeBob fly through the air and dive-bomb his face like this!” Melissa cooed in baby-talk voice. She made a mock dive with a plastic SpongeBob toy toward Gabe’s face. He laughed hysterically.
“It’s remarkable that whatever it was your son came in with three or four weeks ago has been downgraded to a simple case of asthma.”
Lyle knew what Dr. Walker was getting at; he remembered those early conversations with him and the other specialist he had brought in to examine his son. “You thought it was a rare strain of cystic fibrosis, but the first blood tests ruled that out.”
“Yes, and it also ruled out asthma. As did the CT scans and X-rays.”
Lyle glanced quickly at Melissa, who had just tuned in to the conversation. “For a while there we were both pretty scared,” Lyle said. “The fact that you guys didn’t know what it was—”
“Was it just a misdiagnosis?” Melissa asked. She propped Gabe into a sitting position on her knee and bounced him gently as he chewed on SpongeBob’s head and drooled.
“Oh, no, not at all,” Dr. Walker replied, banishing the very idea of somebody in his profession making such a mistake. “Asthma would have shown up on an X-ray. Very easy to spot. And allergies would have shown up in the blood work and nasal smears. The eosinophils count was normal and, if you remember, his first X-ray and CT scans were clear. He had all the symptoms though—wheezing, shortness of breath, rattling cough.”
