Peter felt his temples pulse and held his fingertips to the sides of his head. It did absolutely nothing to stop the throbbing.
“That won’t help,” a slightly tinny voice said through his laptop’s speakers. A two-dimensional version of June tilted her head. “Try at least little circles.” She motioned, nearly spilling the coffee still in hand across her blazer. “Oh, blast.”
“Blasting might help,” he said, hope lifting his spirits, if not the headache. “As would a stroke. I really don’t believe this.”
“Your minion claimed doesn’t just have a wild imagination, I assume?”
“Intern,” he corrected absently. “The same one, I suspect, who caused the feckin’ problem to start.”
“Your Irish is showing.”
He grinned, and managed an exhausted wink. “Aye, lass, and innit a shame you’re two hundred klicks away?”
“Professional continuing education is important,” virtual June said primly. “This conference is great, actually. You can show me how much you missed me later. Now, show me the closet?”
“Server room,” he muttered with a sigh, and felt the throbbing return with a vengeance. Peter hefted the laptop to his chest and turned toward the closet on his left.
“Is that our connection?”
He caught a glimpse of a frown as she twisted her head, clearly hoping he’d turn the camera toward the door.
“No, lass, that’s the cloud storage having thunderstorms.” He set the laptop on a printer that had been disconnected so long it carried a thick layer of dust. “Bit tense to open the door, really.”
“Well,” June said, biting her lip. “What’d the minion say he did before he reported this problem?”
“He didn’t.” Peter’s words were sour as he contemplated the door, with its flashes of lights and soft booms of thunder escaping through the inch-high crack at the bottom of the door, exactly as if the server farm now had its own thunderstorm. “He also ran away. His latest project was setting up a mythology database, though, if it helps any.”
“Mythology,” June said slowly.
“That’s your thinking voice, love.”
“Mmm-hmm. Why don’t you come and join me for the rest of this conference?”
“Can’t,” he said. “I’m the only mage with the right skill set around. Whatever’s in there will eat everyone else alive.”
“It might also eat you alive.” Virtual June had lost all semblance of teasing, now, and despite the connection being worse than usual, he thought she’d also gotten paler. “Because after whatever your intern downloaded for that project, my best guess is that those are the thunder gods duking it out in there.”
***
I picked up a spare this week: When the cloud storage started having thunder storms…
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