“Two miles is close enough to walk…”

Audrey sighed as she peered out at the rain-soaked street.

Her phone buzzed with the DMs going back and forth between her team and a few of the engineers on the work chat. As Audrey donned her rain jacket and Wellies, she sent one last message in the chat…

“I’m heading in now.”

“Just switch it off and on…that’s it. Off…on…check in.” The task seemed easy enough, but Audrey quickly realized that she had actually never visited the office where this server was located. She grasped at her smartphone in her bag to pull up directions. The phone screen radiated under her crimson umbrella as she typed in the address.

“2.2 miles isn’t too bad…”

She approached the gleaming skyscraper with skepticism. The lobby lights were off. Audrey tried yanking on the door, but it didn’t budge. A head popped up from the security desk and opened the door remotely. BUZZ

“Can I help you?” the night guard gestured Audrey to approach.

“I need to head up to floor 13 and fix a server. I’m with SysEng.” she inquired.

“Do you have your badge?” challenged the guard.

“I’ve never actually been to this office yet…”

“Sorry…you’re going to need to get permission to enter after hours.”

Audrey blankly stared at the guard. “Who would I ask for that?”

The guard wobbled in their chair. “The admin office is out for the holiday. You can reach them on Tuesday.”

“Tuesday?!” Audrey gawked. “That’s next week! I need to head up there tonight!”

“Let me call them” the guard grunted. They fumbled around the desk for a moment, moving papers and stickies. The guard sighed heavily, “I need to grab their number from the security office. I’ll be right back.”

Audrey watched them rise as slow as the sunrise and amble over to the elevators, beeping their badge to get past the security turnstiles.

As they disappeared into the elevator, Audrey slumped onto the reception desk, defeated. Ten minutes passed and Audrey was mentally stuck between continuing to wait for the guard and quitting her job to become a horse rancher in Montana. She began wandering around the lobby, admiring the uninspired art and community accolades. A door marked Mailboxes caught her eye.

She opened the door to a short hallway with rows of small mail receptacles on one side…and a service elevator on the other.

Audrey pressed the up button. She waited, paranoid that the guard would come back looking for her. The door opened with the loudest DING imaginable. She entered quickly and pressed the number thirteen. The elevator slowly rose.

Stepping off the elevator, she inspected the office door. A small piece of cardboard propped it open. Carefully, she stepped inside. Distantly, from the other side of the floor, she heard the faint sounds of a vacuum and Aretha Franklin’s I Say a Little Prayer being sung by a very gruff, masculine-sounding voice.

She pulled her phone out and sent a DM.

“I’m here. Can someone unlock the IDF?”

The door clicked. She stepped into the noisy room.

“It’s rack B, third box from the top.”

Audrey took a moment to orient herself, found the server, and shut it off with the flick of a switch.

Twenty seconds.

She turned the server back on. The lights on the front blinked.

Yellow.

Yellow.

Yellow.

Yellow.

Yellow.

Green.

“We’re good…”

Audrey left the IDF and headed to the service elevator. As she pressed the down button, the reception door opened and the night guard stepped into the office. Instinctively, Audrey held her breath as her eyes followed the guard as he walked across the floor. The guard turned towards reception and picked something up…Audrey’s red umbrella.

The service elevator’s DING pierced the silence.

Audrey, frozen with indecision as the guard turned towards the sound, jumped into the elevator and began pressing the door close button as rapidly as she could.

The guard, taking hurried steps toward the elevator, was only briefly visible before the doors closed. Audrey hoped that she could get to the lobby before the guard. Once the doors opened, she sprinted through the mailroom door and out the glass front doors. She ran down the street, not looking back, until she ran out of breath.

The rain had picked up and Audrey was standing on the sidewalk, bereft of an umbrella, laughing into the sky as the clouds soaked her.

After an exceptionally moist walk home, Audrey stepped foot in her apartment, shoes squishing. She quickly disrobed, headed to her bathroom, and took one of the most satisfying showers of her life. As she towel-dried her hair, she rummaged through the freezer and found her secret stash of Thin Mints. Gazing out the window, she munched on a cookie and thought about which 90’s sitcom she was going to partake in before her long weekend.

Her phone lit up with a notification.

She cautiously picked up her phone and felt the blood drain from her face as she read the notification…

“Are you still around? The server just went offline again.”