Time to Control (25 page)

“What?
 
Yes, I am, just—would you get back
here?”
 
He pulled me down onto his
lap, in a sitting position this time.
 
“I look forward to you being uncovered over my knee.
 
But I want us both to be perfectly sober
at the time, okay?
 
I don't want
alcohol impairing us.”

“Well, I kinda need it to reduce my
inhibitions,” I admitted, playing with one of his cuff links.

“You need to be drunk to be
spanked?
 
Schroeder, I'm not--”

“No, I need to be drunk to ask to
be spanked.”

“Oh.”
 
He shifted me on his lap so that he
could readjust himself from what the conversation and subsequent thoughts were
doing to him.
 
“Babe, you don't have
to ask.”

“Then stop teasing me!
 
For crying out loud, you've been giving
me a whack almost every day, but stopping there.
 
Even me playing up the alcohol and being
a brat tonight wasn't enough to make you spank me.”

“That's why you were acting like
that?”

“Yes, damn it.
 
You got me all fired up earlier in the
bathroom, and then I get a single swat right before leaving.
 
I like when you pay me attention there,
all right?
 
I don't want to have to
say that again, because it's embarrassing.”
 
I hid my head in its usual spot under
his chin, glad that I stayed back from tears.

He kissed the top of my head, and
wandered one hand down from hugging me to cup my rear.
 
“For what it's worth, I rather like your
bottom, too.
 
It's a cute butt.
 
Rather perky.
 
Nicely rounded, with just enough
padding.”
 
I wiggled in
embarrassment, and he gave me a squeeze.
 
“It pinks nicely too, as I remember.
 
Flushes as prettily as your other
cheeks.
 
Yes, those that are flaming
red right now.”

He bent his head down to whisper in
my ear.
 
“I want to make your other
cheeks flaming red, but not tonight, okay?
 
We'll find a time.
 
I
promise.
 
Deal?”

“Deal.
 
Want to travel instead?
 
We can stock up the house in London
more.
 
I love shopping for furniture
back then – we get such a good deal.
 
Dining room table and chairs for twenty bucks?
 
Sure beats a thousand here!”

He kissed me.
 
“Babe, we shouldn't time travel tipsy
either.”

“Well you're no fun,” I
grumbled.
 
“You don't want to do
anything tipsy.”

He kissed me again, and slid a hand
up my skirt.
 
“Oh, there's things I
like to do tipsy.
 
Shall I show
you?” I was pleased enough to demand an encore.

***

Eddie shoving me out of bed woke me.
 
“Go answer your phone already,” he
muttered, throwing the pillow over his head.

I shoved him back onto his side of
the bed, but got out anyway and went to find my phone in the living room.
 
“Hello?”

“Hey, it's Matt.
 
You probably already know this, but the
websites are down.”
 
I froze in the
middle of turning on the lights in the living room.

“No, what do you mean, they're
down?”

“I've only been able to access one
or two, and those didn't even fully load.”

“Hmm, network problems, maybe,” I
mused out loud to myself, flipping on the light in the bedroom.
 
Eddie groaned from under the pillow.

“No, I can get online without a
problem.
 
It seems to just be
internally where things aren't working.
 
Oh, and I lost all my sales leads, too.”

“What?”
 
I quit moving slowly and started quickly
rummaging through drawers to find something to wear.
 
Eddie heard the tension in my voice, and
threw the covers off.

“I'm not seeing any of my contacts
in the database.
 
I came in early
today because I had a guy on the East Coast wanting me to call him at seven
his, and now I can't find his number.
 
It's like there's nothing in the database anymore.”

“Is it giving you any errors?
 
Like a few weeks ago when the database
server was down?”
 
I cradled the
cell phone between my ear and shoulder and threw on panties and jeans.

“No errors – I could get into
the contact management system without a problem.
 
I take it this is all news to you?
 
I thought you should know, that's why I
called.”

“Yeah, give me a few, and I'll be
right in.
 
Sorry you'll be late in
calling that guy.”

“Not a problem.
 
You'll fix it, you always do.”
 
I shut the phone without saying goodbye,
and tossed it onto the bed.
 
Eddie
was already out and getting dressed himself.

I ducked into the bathroom, using
the facilities quickly and brushing my hair and teeth.
 
Servers didn't care how I looked, but
bosses did.
 
And Kinerian, because
today was the --

“Fuck!”
 
I slammed the hairbrush down on the
counter with a curse.
 

“Babe?”
 
Eddie stuck his head in the door.
 
“Don't forget a shirt.”

“It would have to be today of all
days that the servers go down.
 
Just
my luck.”
 
I put on the bra and
t-shirt Eddie handed me, and went looking for the phone in the covers.

“Kyle, wake up, damn it,” I cursed
into the phone at my sys admin.
 
“Why I am getting calls about the servers not responding?”

“Huh?
 
I haven't gotten any alerts.
 
Hold on,” I heard him fumble his
cellphone, probably looking for missed calls from the monitoring software.
 
“No, nothing.”

Eddie took the keys from my
hand.
 
“I'll drive,” he mouthed to
me, and I nodded and followed him out to the car.

“Well, we're not getting complaints
about things working.
 
Get to the
office.
 
We can't let things be not
running smoothly today.”

“What's going on today?”

“Just get your ass in,” I snarled,
and dialed Josh, the next on my list.
 
He, as well, had no idea of anything going wrong, and couldn't
understand why it was bad today.

“Just chill, Schroeder.
 
I'll be in in an hour, and we can get it
fixed.”

I looked at the clock on the dash
before closing my eyes.
 
“We have
less than two hours until the press release comes out.”

“What press release?”

“Is everyone living under a rock?”
I screeched into the phone, and Eddie winced next to me and put a hand on my
knee to calm me down.
 
“The buyout,
moron.
 
It goes through today.”

“Oh, how about that.
 
I knew it was some day around now, just
not when.
 
This is a good thing,
right?”

“If the servers are up, yes,” I
snarled.
 
“I'm at the office
now.
 
Just get here as soon as you
can.”
 

Eddie dropped me off in the front
of the building, knowing that I didn't want to take the time to walk from a
parking space.
 
Please let there be nothing really wrong,
I thought as the elevator
slowly ascended.
 
Please let Matt have just played a practical
joke on me.

One look at my office computer
proved otherwise.
 
The only time I ever
rebooted it or turned it off was over the weekends, and it was currently
powered up, the amber glow of the monitor mocking me in the dark office.
 
I quickly logged in and fired up a web
browser.

Sure enough, most of the websites
weren't responding.
 
My fingers flew
across the keyboard, and I logged into the production web server to find an
utter lack of files.

“What the hell...” I breathed.
 
“We've been hacked.”

I navigated around the directory
structure to find that some files did still exist.
 
The headers of three of the websites
were still there, and checking those sites, were still responding.
 
A sneaky suspicion hit me, and I started
ransacking through the stacks of paper on my desk.

“Will light help?”
 
Eddie flipped the light switch as he
entered my office.

I ignored him, but found what I was
looking for now that there was light to see by.
 
“What page was it...page ten.
 
Aha!”

“Aha what?”

I again didn't respond, but went
back to my keyboard and went hunting in the database.
 
Flipping my attention between the
document next to me and the monitor, I ignored the ringing phone of yet another
person waking up and seeing there was a problem.

“Son of a
bitch
!” I finally yelled, sitting back in my seat, covering my face
with my hands.

“Schroeder, I've been patient
enough.
 
What is going on?”
 
Having given up on waiting for me to
speak, Eddie came around the desk and peeled my hands off of my face so that he
could look me in the eye.

“I don't have time to explain.
 
I have to restore the data.”
 
I pushed him away, and leaned back over
my keyboard.

“How can I help?”

“Stay out of my way.”
 
He wisely retreated out of the
room.
 
“Okay, restoring from the
backup tapes will take ... four hours or so.
 
Copying from staging should only take a
few hours, and then we can be restoring to a different drive at the same
time... yeah, that'll work...”
 
My
blood chilled when I logged into the staging server to see it completely void
of all website and database files.

“Oh, this is not funny
anymore.”
 
A quick look at the
development server showed that it was deleted too.
 
“Son of a bitch!”
 
I cursed again, and threw my stress ball
out the door, barely missing Eddie on his way in with a can of Coke.

“Okay, enough.”
 
He trapped my arms on the arms of my
chair, and moved his face an inch from mine.
 
“Take a deep breath, and calm down.
 
What is going on?”

“I--”

“Schroeder, breathe.”

I took a couple deep breaths.
 
“There, happy?”

“Not yet.
 
Calm down.”

“I can't be calm,” I forced out
through gritted teeth.
 
“Some
bastard deleted all the data.”

“Can you restore from backup
tapes?”

“If you'd get out of my way, yes.”

He gave me a warning look, but
removed his hands from holding me down. “Drink, you could use the sugar.”

I frowned a few minutes later,
having had problems accessing the server dedicated to making backups.
 
“Want to see the server room?”

Eddie jumped up to follow me since
that room hadn't been on his tour when he was here before.
 
He looked around in the tiny room while
I logged into a console.

“Why are there sprinkler heads above
the rack?”

“They were there when we got here,”
I answered absently.
 
“This room
wasn't meant for servers, if you can't tell.
 
The sprinklers are supposed to be
disabled.”
 
He shuddered; he surely
hoped so.
 
Water and expensive
electronics didn't mix very well.

“Bloody fucking hell.”

“Schroeder?”
 
He hadn't heard me swear this much
in...well, ever.

“He deleted the entire operating
system.”

Eddie considered several nouns in
that sentence, then picked the one that seemed the worst.
 
“He?”

“Didn't you read the technical
documentation I gave you?”
 
I asked,
exasperated.
 
“Alan obviously
did.”
 
I got up from the console and
headed back towards my office, speaking to him over my shoulder.
 
“We mapped it all out for him.”

“Mapped what out?”

“Please tell me you're not that
dense.
 
I thought you were Mr. High
and Mighty Technical Consultant?”
 
I
snapped my fingers in his face.
 
“Keep up.”

Realization finally dawned.
 
“You said all but a few sites were
down.
 
The documentation said that
you monitor based on not only a website responding, but giving back a certain
phrase in text.
 
He specifically
kept that phrase in place, and deleted everything else so that the monitoring
wouldn't go off.”

I nodded, and slid back in my
chair.
 
“He did the same with the
database.
 
Truncated all the tables
but the ones we look for individual records in, and kept those specific
records.”