Just Another Day

A day in the Quality Control office of a Fucking Seismic Crew

Extract from ‘Killing Time in the Desert’

The first thing I became aware of was the bleeping of my alarm. As I reached over to turn it off, my hand fumbled on the items scattered over the small desk, causing them to fall on the floor. The clattering gave me a false sense of urgency to turn off the alarm, that was when full conciseness kicked in and I realised where I was…Fuck, the world didn’t end last night.

My head was pounding and I smelt like an ashtray. It had been another long night in the bar, waking up hung over in the desert was a normal occurrence now. As I shook myself awake I promised myself the same thing I had every other morning, I wont drink tonight, but as they all say out here, “you have to do something to forget”.

I stumbled into the office, and greeted the other one who was already plodding through the menial daily tasks. He grunted to acknowledge my presence and then proceeded to swear incessantly at the computer. I sat down and began my days work…looking at wiggly lines on a computer screen. I had only been awake for 10 minutes and was already into my days work. Breakfast, the first official break of the day, seemed like an eternity away….

I got through the mornings work with no problems, just the regular boredom. Just before breakfast the other one told me the generator would be turned off for service so we needed to shut down all the computers. As we shut everything off I appreciated the relative silence of the room. I never realised how much noise a few computers made. My brief moment of bliss was quickly disrupted by the desire to get to the mess so I could burry my hang over with some breakfast.

After the generator was powered back up, I had to baby sit the other one turning on all the computers. We got to our processor, it s a rather interesting name – Subkha, apparently meaning slat flat. We powered up the main disk array. It came up with no issues. Then we powered on the processor. I watched the start up as the other one began doing something. All of a sudden the computer stopped mid way through the boot up. I called the other one over to have a look. When he saw the screen and his face went pale as fear gripped him. His only response was a vile string of swear words. After a minute or so, I suggested that we re-set Subkha. We weighed up the options, it was the only choice.

The other one went in and hit the power switch, we waited, and then turned it back on. It began booting up as normal, we stared at the screen. The wait was intense, seconds seemed like hours, it appeared to be booting as normal, then the screen blinked and my heart skipped a beat. Subkha locked up again. I looked at the other one, he slowly clenched his fist and yelled another string of swear words at the computer. It was such a let down, I felt like a prisoner waiting for the parol board to approve an early exit, only to be kept in jail by an eleventh hour decision. But there was no time to reflect on this defeat, we had to try something else, the data, and the hopes of nearly 250 men form 13 countries were at stake. If we couldn’t get this system up and running soon then there were chances of re-shoots, massive amounts of money lost. As the other one mumbled swear words and paced around the room thinking of the options, I knew the only option was another reboot, but this time with out the main disk array.

He agreed, we went back to the processor and turned it off. He then used his claw like hands to find the power switch for the disk array and shut it off. I hit the power button and held my breath while the other one continued to swear.

It was booting up as normal, just like the last time. I wasn’t sure what would happen, the butterflies in my stomach had decided it was time to migrate. Then all of a sudden the system checks were complete and it was prompting a password. I was ecstatic, the tension of the last 40mins seemed to melt away like an ice cream on a hot summers day.

Me and the other one simultaneously decided to log in and check the system. It all seemed normal. All we had to do was get the disk array back and we would be fully functional. To do that though, we had to shut Subkha down again. There was no other choice, we were using a system that was new when dinosaurs were just an idea in the evolutionary path. As the other one typed the shutdown command his finger hovered over ‘enter’. He aggressively spat some more swear words and then lightly tapped the key. Subkha was going down once more.

Once Subkha was off, the other one re-booted the disk array. Then I had to turn on the processor, I swallowed hard and pushed in the power switch. Immediately Subkha came to life, beginning with its system checks. I went and sat by the monitors and once again waited. At every flicker of the screen I winced, the possibility of having it die again was unthinkable. I turned my head away, I could no longer watch, then the other one yelled another swear word, but this time in some sort of excited tone. I turned to the screen to see it prompting for a password. It had worked! I plugged in the password and everything came up as normal. The noose around my neck was now nothing more than a frayed piece of twine. There was a moment to savour this victory, but the workload had mounted due to the down time. We had to work and work fast.

The remainder of the day flew by, it was all a blur. Checking this, processing that and running endless jobs. By the time the observers had finished shooting for the day I had only just caught up. After the final days jobs were set to run in the evening I walked slowly to the bar. All the other workers from Crew 52 had finished and were now recovering from their eventful and hellish day on the line or in one of the multiple work shops. I vaguely remembered the hang over I had this morning and the promise I had made myself, I opened the fridge and got a beer. As I finished it a second one appeared in front of me. I started to drink it an thought, you had to do something to forget.

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