INFRINGED

Jeff usually is a silent type of employee when working within the boundaries of his desk. In this last working day of the week, however, his quiet demeanor took a three-sixty: ever since he logged in earlier, he has been either humming to or singing along with the song that is playing on his YouTube playlist.

"Another summer day...has come and gone away...in Paris and Rome...and I wanna go home...hmmmmmmmm," sang Jeff in a controlled and low voice that is audible only to their team.

"Home? Michael Bublé, bro?" asked Nine, staring at Jeff after the first stanza of the lyrics.

Jeff faces Nine to answer, but to his astonishment, everyone from the IT group - even Beer - have their eyes locked on him with their jaws almost dropping to the floor. "Yes it is. I like his version the most - very soothing in the ears," he replied after giving the rest a short look – one pair of orbs at a time.

"Nice song. I listen to it too whenever I feel tired - and not just physically - but I like Westlife's version more."

"I've heard that: it has more soul to it while Bublé's is more of a jazzy one."

"I only heard Westlife's version recently; fell in love with it on the spot."

"You have a nice voice, Jeff," praised Yacht, his face showing signs that he wants to hear the rest of the song.

"I think you could perform that piece during our year-end party: it is a company-wide event held every December," said Beer as a follow up.

"I don't really sing in front of a crowd, boss."

"Think about it, Jeff. With that talent and your good looks, you could be an instant star here in CBOT."

"Will do, boss, but no promises though."

"Fair enough," said Beer back, spreading a gaze to the other members of his team who are stunned. "Okay guys; show's over; back to work." His statement, however, is met with silence, with no one budging. "Guys!" he exclaimed, this time, with a single clap loud enough to get the others' attention. "I said show's over, and you may get back to work."

"How about a short break boss?" asked Jump, who is craving for a dessert.

"Go ahead but be sure to get back immediately."

"Gotcha." Jump invites the others and ends up bringing almost their entire group with him downstairs - except for Jeff and Beer. When they have left, Jeff approaches Beer's desk.

"Boss?" asked Jeff.

"Yes, Jeff, what is it?" Beer gave the other a short glance before turning back to his monitor.

"I might stay a couple of hours later - running a report and troubleshooting something in the server room," answered Jeff with one hand on his pocket whose pointer and middle fingers are crossed.

Beer unhands the keyboard and mouse to look at Jeff: the issue is something that has put their team on alert the whole day. "Yeah, the server has been acting strange today. There were seven CBOT branches that reported lagging and several transactions that stopped midway."

"Everything normalized two hours ago, and the transactions that stopped have been corrected. The lagging has been intermittent since. Maybe there are extra jobs running there that shouldn't be. I'll terminate those and run optimization scripts."

"Might as well do it now even if it is the weekend tomorrow, so, hopefully, the issues we received today will have been fixed come Monday."

"I'm thinking the same."

"Approved. Don't forget to file it as overtime in our tool."

"Nah, no need to: it won't take long. Once I am done, I'll scram."

"Up to you, but you can file it. I'll just officially approve the request on Monday in HRIS," said Beer, referring to their Human Resource Information System where they apply for leaves or any other vacation.

"Got it. I have no other task to do, boss, can I go there now? To finish early?" bargained Jeff. His mind has just screamed when he got the nod from Beer.

"Sure. Go on ahead."

"Thanks boss." Going back to his desk, Jeff takes with him his laptop and thumb drive, which contains the executable version of SaturnRabbit.

At the door of the server room, Kao greets him with the usual "Good day, sir." – in that specific order that changes only every once in a blue moon. As he is supplying his numeric code, Kao observes with one hand under his table: his pointer finger is touching a red button that will trigger an alarm. The other is in the holster of his pistol.

After sealing himself in, Jeff makes his way towards the mainframe and immediately goes to work – his official work – executing in its database the optimization scripts: these are codes that run simulations a number of times to test if the server will be able to keep up or stop because of the immense load. After he identifies which processes takes up most time in running, as well as those unnecessary ones, he terminates them one-by-one. As for the reports, he used it earlier only for an excuse, so that Beer will allow him to stay longer. In reality, though, there is none to retrieve.

"And now, for the main event of the evening," said Jeff after his "official work" is done. He, then, draws out of his pocket a small gadget – a black slick rod made of plastic that has a print of 512 GB on one side. He inserts it into one of the USB slots on the CPU.

"Let's track it from my terminal." He opens his laptop and launches a web browser while waiting for the Auto-Run prompt to appear on the mainframe's screen. "https://JeffSaturTheGreat.web," he continued as he types the URL into the Web Address Field box. However, when he presses Enter, he gets an error message on the window - Webpage does not exist.

"Okay." Looking back to the screen of the mainframe computer, Jeff now sees a small window prompt on the screen: it has a one-sentence text – Execute SatturnRabbit.exe – and has Yes and No buttons. Pressing Yes, the prompt window disappears, and a black screen launches on the screen.

Jeff faces his laptop and presses F5 on its keyboard, reloading the webpage https://JeffSaturTheGreat.web. To his gaiety, he gets a different result this time:

With a smile on his face, Jeff does the Eject action for his thumb drive then pulls it out of its slot.

***

"Twenty billion." said Top, looking at a window from Charybdis that is on his screen, showing the total amount that she has on her as of the moment. He seems not so happy with figures he is looking at because of the blank expression on his face. A knock on the door disrupts his concentration, and he immediately closes all the windows in the screen. "Come in," said Top when only his desktop and the icons on it are visible.

The door opens, revealing Gameplay wearing the same outfit that Top is wearing – crimson necktie, purple shirt, black coat, pants, and leather shoes. At first look, they could be mistaken for a married couple. He strides inside beaming a cheerful aura as the door closes behind him, stopping only when he is a step away from the table.

"There he is," greeted Top with a smile, delighted that his man has finally arrived. Standing from his seat, he gets to where GP is and gives him a kiss.

"Congratulations," said Gameplay after they break away from each other, with one hand on Top's shoulder while another is at the waist. "Although I have to leave early, Top?"

"I know. You have to do an induction to Chef Plan: he will take over Cocotte while we're away."

"That's right. I'll be going back by 8:30; we will close at 9; we'll start at 9:30. This will not be a problem because he is already familiar with my task as Head Chef."

"I'll stop by your house later, then."

"Spend the night with me, okay?" GP gives a quick smack to Top's lips, which the other is unable to avoid.

"Yes please." Top caresses GP's face with his thumb.

"I'll give you my gift later." GP does a wink to excite Top.

"This one." Top puts a palm on Gameplay's butt and gives it a light press. "And that," he continued, glancing down on their feet but fixing his eyes on the bulge that is not his. He looks at GP after to demand an answer to his indirect questions.

"It's a surprise; I wouldn't want to spoil it."

Pinching his boyfriend's cheek playfully, Top swoops in to try and land another kiss, but a sound of an alert suddenly fills his office, making him stop midway. With it, he feels a vibrating sensation from his pocket.

"They need you now, I think, to start the program" said Gameplay, fixing Top's tie.

"Let's go." Top takes GP's hand and starts walking to the door.

------

Author's Note

There is one video online that showed Jeff singing Michael Buble's song "Home", and he sounded so good there. I can't remember thought, if the video was from YouTube or not.

On a more pressing matter however, SaturnRabbit is just waiting on the wings: once that timer hits zero, what do you think will happen? How will Top react? What will be Jeff's next set of actions after. This will be exciting - I tell you.

Stay tuned for release of the next chapter - An Omen Coming True - soon.

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