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Message-ID: <55357asstr$1171671001@assm.asstr-mirror.org>
From: "Victor Echo" <victor.echo@gmail.com>
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Subject: {ASSM} Fall In Washington (MF, Rom)
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Date: Fri, 16 Feb 2007 19:10:01 -0500
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This is the sequel to Purple Silk.

(c) 2007 Victor Echo

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents
are either the product of the author's disturbed imagination, are used
fictitiously, or are used with the permission of Victor Echo, and any
resemblance to actual persons, living, dead, undead or mostly
harmless, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely
coincidental.


Fall In Washington

Washington D.C. in the fall is unlike any other city.  Instead of the
sighing winds bringing the smell of fires, we have the vitriol of a
quarterback controversy.  Instead of the crisp crunch of leaves on the
sidewalk, we have the sounds of laser printers as the federal
government rushes to spend any money left over by the end of September.
Fall in Washington is also one of extremes in temperature.  On one day
it could be a high in the mid to upper eighties and the next it is
barely out of the sixties.  We have forty degree temperature swings in
a single day, making dressing a challenge, especially when it is forty
degrees in the dark of the morning and eighty by five o'clock.

One thing Washington shares with its other urban counterparts is the
commuter.  However, most commuters in Washington tend to start their
day at times most farmers would feel were indecent.  Even The Who did
not start until 5:15.  So, I found myself on the first train into the
city from my dormitory community.  Normally I work or read.  One thing
about Information Technology is there is never enough time to read and
always too much to read.  This morning, however, I was content to sit
back and listen to music and relax to the rolling gait of the train.

From the train station in Washington, at this hour of the morning I
normally walk the two miles to my office, but this morning, I had
places to be, so I made my way to the subway, following the crowd down
into the earth like being swallowed by some massive animal.  At this
hour, you are sharing space with the security guards and the first
shift of folks at the Pentagon and other early birds that generally
are getting out shortly after lunch.  I did not have such luck, my
day being closer to ten hours than eight by the time everything is done.
Today was going to be longer, but I was not bemoaning the hours today.
In fact, I was looking forward to them.

I arrived at my stop and ascended to the street.  I debated getting
coffee and decided against it, instead crossing the park to her hotel.
I crossed the lobby, not really paying attention, my mind a little
distracted, rode up the elevator and walked down the hall to her door.
I was about to put the key in the door when I saw the envelope with my
name on it.

Darling,
Good morning.  If you think I am going to be doing anything before 8 AM
you really have lost your mind.  So stop standing there and get your
ass into bed.  Please.

I have learned that it is never wise to argue with a woman, especially
one who is telling me to get into her bed.  I let myself in as quietly
as I could.  I know that normally she is not only up at this hour but
usually at her desk, so the luxury of sleeping in was something I was
more than prepared to grant her.  I secured the door and put my bags
and clothes on the floor and walked over to the bed.  Her hair was not
long enough to be "sleep tousled" but it was more unruly than normal.
I slipped under the blankets and in behind her, putting my arm across
her hips.  She must have been waiting because she settled back against
me, goose bumps rising on her warm skin as it contacted my cooler skin,
grabbed my arm and pulled it up between her breasts like a teddy bear
and drifted back to sleep.  I was more than happy to lie there with
her, even though I did not feel the least bit sleepy.

I guess I was tired, or perhaps it was the environment.  I had lost an
hour of my morning, not that this was bad, and I was awakened by her
motion as she climbed out of bed.  I took the opportunity to roll onto
my back and burrow under the covers, striving to retain as much of the
heat as I could.  A good thing because in the short space of her
absence, her skin had cooled to the point that it was my body that
had goose bumps when she climbed back in next to me, her head between
chest and shoulder, one arm across my body.  I gently ran my nails up
and down her back as she settled in.

"Good morning," she whispered, tilting her head up to the point where
I could kiss her.  It was a little thing really, a brushing of the
lips as if she did not have the energy yet to hold up her head.  "I
see you got my note."

"Yes, I got your note," I replied, kissing her hair.  "Good thing you
left it, I was able to head off the brass band before they started
tuning up."

"You didn't have a brass band," she said, lazily running her fingers
over my chest.

"And what makes you think that?" I asked as I rubbed her shoulders.

"Because," she said, this time with more force, turning onto her
stomach and looking me straight in the eye, "if you had a brass band
out there, hotel security would have thrown you out before you crossed
the lobby.  They have a very strict policy on brass bands.  I checked
before I gave you my key."

It was amazing she could keep a straight face through all of that.
Two heartbeats later we both broke up laughing and I gathered her up
into my arms, rolling us on to our sides and kissed her.  Where she
had not been fully awake before, there was no question she was now and
kissed me back.  What started as a tease for her doubting my sincerity
rapidly expanded into a full scale questioning of my being and she was
doing her best to explore every avenue.  I have to admit, she was very
thorough.  Not liking to be left behind, I offered a counterpoise to
ever thrust she made.  Her skin was warm against mine by the time her
inquisition was complete, our breathing irregular, but our hearts happy.

"So what is the plan for today?" she asked glancing across my shoulder
at the clock.  "And what time does the day start."

"I seem to remember a note saying that nothing was going to happen
before 8 AM, and it looks like we still have more than plenty of time
to worry about other things before that.  Unless, of course, you would
like to start sooner, which can be arranged."

She was emphatic with her negative response, kissing me and rolling me
onto my back.  Like I said, who was I to argue with her?  And if the
day started later than 8 AM, I was not going to loose any sleep over it.

"So what are we going to do today," she asked me as she started
pulling clothes out of her bag a little later.  Freshly showered, she
seemed to be deciding between pants and a skirt.

"You want the khaki's," I indicated as she started to pick up her skirt.
I had pulled on blue cotton pants and a golf shirt.  We had to build a
server and probably move it from its current location to our basement
computer room several blocks away as I understood it.  If we were
really lucky we would have a cart to move it with.  She looked at me
with a questioning glance.

"Much in all as I would like to see you in your finery darling, we
have real work to do today," I said as she put her skirt away.  "We
also have to move the beast before we build it, or move the parts and
build it in the computer room, whichever is easiest."

"Wasn't the box moved yesterday?" she asked.

"It was supposed to be, but given the reliability of the help we have
at the moment, I am not banking on anything.  In fact, I am betting
that no one even has the property pass to get it out of the building."
We had been working up to this day for the better part of six months.

Summers in Washington are not a contrast.  The sun shines straight
down on the top of your head from the moment you get up until you got
to bed at night.  The temperature is somewhere between roast and broil
and if you are really lucky, the humidity is less than the total
saturation point of air and you feel like you need to be glazed in a
lemon-butter-ginger sauce instead of a port wine glaze.  That
happens once or twice between June and August and August is the worst.
August is the month when all the movers and shakers, move and shake
their fannies to another part of the country, leaving the trolls and
other members of the cave dwelling federal workforce to fend for
themselves in understaffed offices and other power centers in the city.
The low man on the totem pole is left in charge and nothing is really
accomplished.  It is the perfect time to get work done because there
is no one around to disturb you.

I had been tasked with solving a software distribution problem.
Redmond produces some wonderful toys but they seem to take an eternity
to implement, especially when you are busy chasing down patches, hot
fixes, hardware, and other miscellaneous parts to make the whole mess
work reliably.  And I neglected to mention that the whole project was
unfunded.  We had the software, part of the corporate license, but the
rest was on a shoestring, and it was thinner than the network fiber
connecting the server to the switch and no where near as strong.
When life hands you lemons, find someone to throw them at.

It had taken me the better part of four months, working by myself,
with my compatriots in the department and a couple of very expensive
consultants to get the system to the point where I would dare call it
operational.  The goal was not just supporting the headquarters though.
No that would be too simple.  We had to support all the field sites
too.  Some ten thousand users scattered across all 50 states and a
couple of dependencies.  And they were not really in big clumps
anywhere.  Most were little more than ten or twenty people in a broom
closet, or in an annex in somebody else's building.  We did not even
own the network beyond the headquarters where all this data would be
flowing.  That was not my concern, although I was going to get the
grief if the system bottlenecked somewhere.

We were at the point were we had achieved success at headquarters.
Now it was time to build the first server to support the field as well
as to start training the staff to support it since I was really a
special projects person.  I created, I designed, and then I passed it
over to someone else to run.  Normally I did not get to choose the
person I handed off to.  However, for this project, I had put my foot
down and made a choice.  OK, so I had not put my foot down, I simply
did what I was told for a change and subtly found an engineer I
thought was up to the task after the first one assigned to the project
flamed out as less than helpful and certainly not ready to learn the
skills needed to feed the beast.  The fact that the engineer was
female, good looking and had a brain was just an extra benefit I was
willing to live with.

Today, however, Washington was pulling out all her curves.  What had
started as a cool morning was rapidly becoming hot, and the sun, less
direct than a month ago was still shining down from a sparkling blue
sky, and it would still be hot if we had to move a file server six
blocks through town on a cart.

We crossed the lobby and walked out into the warm fall air.  I was
tempted to take her hand and continue walking into Virginia wine
country with its rolling hills, a picnic lunch and no cares or concerns.
Instead, I took firm hold on my resolve and we crossed the park to the
office and walked down the stairs to the dungeon that was my office
space.

After a few introductions, I leaned that the server had indeed, not
been moved to the computer room where it was supposed to be.  My boss
watched my blood pressure rise as he got on the phone to yell at some
selected people for not doing what was asked of them.  While he was
doing that, I walked around to the network staff and got the necessary
addressing information and such so that once I actually got the server
in the rack I would be able to put it on the network.  I also picked
up a couple of cables just in case and walked back to my office.

"They have the box and the property pass waiting," the boss said as I
walked back into my office.  "All you have to do is pick it up."  I
expected the evil grin.  He did not disappoint me.  Of course, it was
not like he was being vindictive; we have worked together long enough
to know how to make the best of a bad situation and this was the best
we could hope for.

"Want to go for a walk?" I asked her.

"Sure.  I didn't get my coffee this morning anyway," she replied and I
went to get the cart that would make moving the 100 pound server
easier.  It cost more than most cars, you would think it would come
with wheels right?

Once again we left the building, stopping at the local outlet of the
Seattle Coffee Company for a little fuel to keep us going through the
morning.  We were more than awake by the time we crossed the six odd
city blocks to our other building.  After a few minutes wrangling, we
had the server on the cart, another junior technician and were on our
way back to our office.  We did not take the stairs this time.  The
elevator, down two levels was a much more intelligent idea.

"And that should do it," I announced as I connected the last cable.
It had taken an hour to get it hoisted into the rack and wired.
Someone was going to catch it when I got back upstairs.  For now, we
had miles to go and half the day was almost gone.

"Where do we start?" She asked.  I almost laughed out loud.  We had
spent a week reviewing the installation documents that I had spent a
considerable amount of time writing.

"Funny girl aren't you," I replied, passing her the system disk which
she deftly inserted into the drive and booted the server.

"How long is this going to take?" Our observant trainee inquired.

"It takes what it takes," we replied almost in unison, each laughing
at the other.

"Why?  Got a hot date?" I asked.

"Actually, yes," he replied, blushing slightly.

"Go," I said.  "This is the boring part and I expect you will get
enough of this before everything is said and done."

I did not have to tell him twice.  We were alone with several million
dollars of steel and silicon.  She had begun the configuration process,
setting up the arrays and disks to our agreed on parameters and had
begun installing the operating system, a process about as exciting as
watching paint dry.  She had just submitted the last command when I
stepped up behind her, placing my hands around her waist.  She leaned
back into my chest, placing her hands on mine.

"I really hate this part," she said.

"Why is that?" I asked, bending down to kiss her ear, causing a little
shiver to course through her body.  The server room was noisy, but it
was not cold.

"I feel like I am wasting time while it copies all these files, but it
doesn't take long enough for me to do anything else," she complained.

"Hmmm, well maybe I can come up with something to distract you while
the files copy," I said, kissing ear and neck slowly.

"How many people have access to this place?" she asked.

"Probably a dozen or so, but they are all keys which we should hear,"
I replied, kissing the other ear and side of her neck.  She simply
pulled my arms tighter around her and dropped her head forward,
allowing me to kiss the back of her neck.

"You are not supposed to have this affect on me," she said in a half
whisper, not letting go of my arms or asking me to stop.

"No?  And the affect you are having on me?" I asked in response.

"You know what I mean," she said.  Yes, I knew exactly what she meant.
I did not know what either of us could do about it, but I understood.

"Tell me to stop and I will," I replied.

She raised her head gently so she would not bump me and spun in my
arms, pulling her own free and wrapping them around my neck.

"No," was all she said before she kissed me and I kissed her back.  I
pulled her close this time.  She did not want me to stop.  We stood
there, fans blowing, a din of white noise so loud that you had to
almost yell to make yourself heard half way across the room and were
in our own little world, our kiss wandering down whichever path we
chose, each taking the lead and then willing to be lead, the glow of
L.E.D.s on disk drives our light.

"Files are finished," I said, looking over her shoulder.

"Hmm, guess I better do something about that," she said, turning again
in my arms.  I let her go and she stepped to the console, pulling me
behind her.  We had both installed our fair share of these beasts and
knew the sequence fairly well.  A few key strokes, and the system
processed, a few more and some more processing and a few more and it
loaded the rest of its files.  She was right.  There was not enough
time to do anything, but it seemed to take longer and longer each time.

"Why is it that I don't get to kiss the back of your neck," she asked
as I was kissing her neck between key strokes.

"Generally, because I am taller than you are and you cannot reach it,"
I replied.

"Sit down," she said, after telling the server to finish its
installation.

I looked around for a chair I knew was in here.  I had spent a week in
this room installing a couple of new servers.  I had brought a book
then, but this was more fun.  I pulled the chair over and sat down as
instructed.  She came around behind me and ran her hands through my
hair, kissing my ears and neck, making the small hairs on my neck stand
up, along with other parts of my body.  It was my turn to shiver.

She spun the chair around and sat on my lap, facing me, still running
her hands through my hair, tipping my head this way and that so she
could get expose the part of my neck she wanted to get to.  For my
part, I supported her by holding her back, gently rubbing in small
circles.

Her kisses on my neck soon began to trace over the top of my chest.  A
subtle flick of her fingers and the top button on my shirt was undone,
giving her more of my skin to nuzzle.  It was not as much as if I had
worn a shirt that buttoned up the front.  I resolved to remember to
think better about my wardrobe choices.  I let my hands drift down to
the small of her back where her shirt had come out of her pants and
traced my fingers over the soft skin of her back.  She growled low in
her throat before kissing me.

"That tickles," she said breaking out kiss.

"Oh.  Too bad," I said kissing her again.  "Files are done, I said as
the server started to sing.  Who was the genius to put a sound card in
a file server?

She pushed our rolling chair over to where she could reach the system
and ejected the CD, reaching for the directions at the same time.  I
raised her off my lap so I had both hands to type and entered the next
series of commands to bring the beast to life.  Passwords, remote
access, IP addresses, the little things that turn a server from a giant
paperweight into something useful, although personally, there are times
when I consider the paperweight more useful.

"Here," she said, passing me the patch disk.  It does not matter how
great the operating system is, at some point, you have to patch it and
add things to it that were never included in the initial compilation.
I had another CD worth of patches and fixes and utilities that had to
be installed.  And this is all to get the system to the point where we
could begin installing the application.  It was going to be a very long
day.

"You planned to stay through tomorrow afternoon right?" I asked,
installing one of the smaller tools.

"Yes, why?  Do I need to stay longer?" she asked.

Yes, yes, a thousand times yes, I thought to myself.  Instead I said,
"no, we should be able to finish up by noon tomorrow if we don't run
into issues getting the base system installed today.  It takes about
six hours to get everything in and set."

"Are you sure?" she asked and it seemed almost hesitantly.

"No, I am not sure," I replied.  "But, we have to do what we can in the
short period of time we have and get you back home.  I would be lying
if I said I wouldn't come up with some excuse to keep you here, but
that isn't fair to either of us."

She turned and looked at me.  "Every time I come up with a possible
reason to dislike you, you prove again why I love you," she said
kissing me.

"Remind me of that next week will you, when I am trying to figure out
why I feel so empty without you here," I said, starting another process.

She reached around me and gave me a hug.  It was my turn to hold on,
and I did.

"OK, that's the big one started.  We have about forty-five minutes
before it finishes.  Shall we go and get something to eat?" I asked.

"Sure.  Something quick and portable and after," she said, kissing me
again before taking my hand and leading me out of the computer room.

The sun was still shining, the Earth, rotating slowly about her axis
as we arrived outside again.  Again I was overcome with the desire to
skip the rest of the afternoon and find somewhere else to be.  She set
a quick pace across the park, this time, no question in either of our
minds about what the goal was.  In an instant we were across the lobby
and through the door of her room, our clothes scattered and our limbs
entwined as if one person had been born with too many appendages.
Mouths seeking and hands touching, our passion build in a manner as
organized as the process of building the file server and as chaotic as
any software project before ultimately culminating in the crystalline
moment of achievement.  Our breathing slowly returned to normal, our
kisses small and delicate, and our bodies tired and warm.  There would
be time for longing, but that would come later and our solace would be
the time we had now.

I have heard it said before that the ache of longing is not always a
bad thing.  There are those parts of the human psyche that always seem
to need.  Whether it is a gentle touch and a caress of a lover or the
nurturing of a parent, there is always some need.  It is the degree of
the need that determines whether the individual is deemed healthy or
not.  And this, of course, is subjective because we, as human beings,
have not yet learned to put into words the base emotions that we feel
and experience every day and that we each feel differently.  If
Woodrow Wilson Smith, in his attempts to explain Love to his family
cannot do so effectively, even with 5000 year of experience to assist
him in the process, what hope do we short lived individuals have to
even begin to understand it within ourselves, let alone comprehend what
it means to another individual.  More importantly, if we cannot
understand Love, how are we going to begin to grasp such things and
Need, and Longing and Desire?  Perhaps Plato had begun to lay the
foundations of this by describing them as Forms, something to be
admired but never achieved.  For my part, I really did not care what
the philosophical or mental health professionals had to say on the
subject.  I knew that when she was gone, there would be longing, a
small hole in my heart where her physical presence belonged.  I also
knew that I would have to fill that hole with the memories we were
creating and would continue to create.  The memories would never fully
fill the hole, but it would be enough.  It would have to be.  It could
be worse.

I turned to look at her, running my fingers along the plane of her
face, through her hair.  Memorizing every turn, every bend, every fold
of skin.  Her face told of worry and concern, stress and pressures that
occasionally came to the surface.  I might only know a small part of
what she was going through when she was not with me.  Most of it she
would not tell me, claiming a lack of words or not being gifted with
the ability to tell a story.  I do not always need a story.  I can
take separate statements and form them into the history, but without
all the facts, I often wondered if I was misinterpreting the statements.
It was enough to offer her my love and caring support.  If that little
bit made her world better, then I was not going to begrudge not knowing
all her secrets.  In time perhaps she would tell me, for I suspected
there were a number to tell, but this was neither the time, nor the
place to ask.  I let my hand wander where it would, across her shoulder,
along her arms, the touch, less sexual then caring, trying not so
much to touch her body but to touch her and to remember this moment.
Perhaps I did touch her because she looked at me, and tears formed in
the corner of her eye and in an instant she was in my arms, the tears
coming unabated.  I held her to me and she held to me and I let her
cry, tears in my own eyes.

Sometime later, after our emotions had stabilized and our bodies had
once again had their release, we strolled back to work, stopping to
pick up a sandwich and a soda and a rose from a street vendor.  Purple
roses are tough to find at the best of times, so we took it as an omen
when we saw a dozen of them.

She sat on the chair, lazily swaying back and forth as I started the
next process.  Unlike the morning, the afternoon went rapidly by and
in no time, we had a functioning system, ready for life to be breathed
into it in the form of inserting it into its place in the hierarchy.

"So that's it?" she asked as I finished up mating it with others of
its kind, the software meshing as it was designed to do.

"That is it.  Pretty simple once you work out all the rights and
pathings and such," I said.

"Sure, simple he says.  And how long did it take you to get it to the
point where you consider it simple?" she asked me, a gleam in her eye.

"Two months, but they were very long," I replied, kissing her quickly.
"And it was before I knew you," I added.  That brought a smile to her
lips and earned her another kiss.

"Come darling, we must away to the upper office where we can verify
that this beast is behaving, get you some dinner and get me back on
the train."

"I have a better idea," she said.

-- 
Pursuant to the Berne Convention, this work is copyright with all rights
reserved by its author unless explicitly indicated.
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