"Going down?" I asked.
"Yup, just hold on," Jenny answered. I sat there impatiently for a half minute or so till she finally confirmed, " ... and down. All services have stopped."
"Starting build," I said, typing the command on the admin console. I watched the log scrolling down the screen as the upgrade process began. I waited a minute to make sure it didn't run into any immediate failures.
I was in the extra bedroom of my apartment. With no roommate, I was able to use it as a computer room, both for work and personal use. It was just past midnight on Saturday and I was logged in to my company's production software. Being in devops required me to work a lot of late nights like this.
My large work monitor showed the console, along with all the command lines I might need to correct any issues that cropped up. My laptop monitor showed the online meeting I was in, along with the image of the only other person assigned to this particular task. Jenny Young was another devops tech, one year junior to me. She had short dark hair with bangs and red colored streaks. Her face was round with perky lips that would purse adorably to one side when she was working through a problem. I thought she was incredibly cute.
I'd never actually met Jenny in person, though we'd worked together for six months now. I lived in Colorado, while she was near the company headquarters in Seattle. I'd only been into the office once for my orientation two years ago. But I'd gotten to know her very well through these late night sessions. We would have a lot of downtime as we waited for the update to complete. We talked about shared interests in gaming, anime, and sometimes music. She was a bit of a nerd like me, and both quick witted and funny. As a guy who hadn't had a steady girlfriend since college, she was the only thing that made this job tolerable some nights.
Tonight she was wearing a black t-shirt with the logo of a band I didn't know. She had a small bar piercing her nostrils, and a tongue stud as well, though I only knew about that from previous conversations. It wasn't usually visible. Her studio apartment behind her was a mess as always - bookshelves with titles scattered at random, odd bits of discarded clothing spread out on a futon that she also slept on, and the remains of some kind of noodle dish on the kitchen table.
She lived alone and never talked about a boyfriend - or a girlfriend for that matter. But I'd also never asked directly about her personal life. Not because I was worried about getting in trouble with Human Resources or anything - it just didn't seem relevant. We had a good working relationship going here and I didn't want to make it awkward. Besides, we lived hundreds of miles away from each other.
"Everything looking good?" Jenny asked.
"Yup," I replied. "Server one is building with no issues. So, nothing to do for the next twenty minutes or so." The system was made of four servers, each of which needed to build in the correct sequence during an update. If everything went well, they would do this on their own and be done in an hour or two. If not, that's where we'd come in.
"Thank god we are here," Jenny said with a smirk.
"I feel very useful," I concurred with a laugh.
As we settled in to wait I started browsing the web on my personal computer. The screens for that are just off to the side of my work laptop. I never did any personal browsing on the work system. That laptop was loaded who-knows how much monitoring software. Better to keep all my personal business on my own computer.
After a bit the build moved on to server two with no issues. We continued waiting with nothing much to do. I could have fired up a game, but I didn't want to get into anything too involved since I might have to stop right away. Jenny also didn't seem to be in a talkative mood. She was typing away at something off to the side - likely her own personal system.
After a bit I ended up going to PornHub. Not the best decision during work hours, but I'd been low-key horny all day. It's not like the screen was visible to my laptop camera either. I just had to make sure I didn't forget the camera was on and start jacking off.
After a while Jenny sat back and stretched her arms over her head. Then she said, "I'm going to turn off my camera for a bit," and reached forward to click with her mouse.
"No problem," I said, trying not to look embarrassed at having been interrupted when I was really getting into the video I was watching. I looked over as she withdrew her hand from the mouse. Then to my shock, she reached down and casually pulled her shirt over her head. She tossed it aside and stretched again, nonchalantly airing out her bare chest.
I was dumbfounded. She must have miss-clicked and thought she turned off the camera but really didn't. Her breasts were larger than I thought they would be - accentuated by her slim torso. My eyes were drawn up from her pierced navel, over the smooth slopes of those lovely mounds, finally to rest on her plump nipples nestled on flowers of areola. She started twisting her torso as she stretched, causing them to sway hypnotically left and right. I could still hear the porn playing in the video on my other monitor, and the combination made it even more erotic.
I needed to say something, but before I could she suddenly leaned forward and said, "Did server three fail to start?"
I blinked and forced myself to focus on the console. Sure enough, server two had finished but three had immediately crapped out with a fatal error. I started the process of checking the log, running on automatic and putting the whole issue of her exposure to the back of my mind.
In a few minutes I'd confirmed the problem. "Just a timing issue, I think. It tried to start before the post-checks were done on two. I'm restarting manually and that should fix it." I watched the console and log as it restarted, and sure enough it was soon past the block and going.
"They need to fix the scripts to prevent that. Happens every third time, I think," said Jenny, taking a swig out of a bottle of tea. She was still bare-chested and nonchalantly leaning back in her chair.
Now I had a real problem. I needed to tell her I could see her, but it had been several minutes. It seemed like it was too late for me to speak up. I thought about whether I could just pretend it wasn't happening. But this was an open meeting that others on our team could join, and they sometimes did during these sessions. I wouldn't want her to end up being exposed to others just because I was too embarrassed to say something. There seemed to be nothing to do but bite the bullet.
"Uh, Jenny," I said, making sure to lock my eyes off to the side. "You should know that your camera is still on."
In my peripheral vision I saw her freeze, then dart forward and grab the mouse. Suddenly her feed went black. I took a nervous breath and waited for the fallout.
" ... thanks," she said.
I was still staring at my other monitor, which was unfortunately still showing porn. "No problem," I said, nodding sagely.
"So ... took you a while to mention that."
"I got distracted by the server three issue."
There was a pause. "Okay. I buy that," she said. "You sure you weren't just looking for the screenshot button?"
I felt blood rushing to my face and kicked myself for not thinking of that. "No," I said with emphasis. "I was just ... flummoxed."
She laughed. "No one has ever been 'flummoxed' by my breasts before. Huh. I don't know how to take that. Is it a compliment?"
"Yeah," I assured her. I was running into unknown territory here. "You could stop traffic with those things."
Her laugh was louder this time. "Okay, that I
will
take as a compliment. And I'll keep it in mind if I ever need to run across a busy street".
I laughed at this too - more in relief than anything else. It seemed like we were going to gloss over this without making things awkward. I still regretted not grabbing a pic while I had the chance, but the image was burned into my brain all the same. I just needed to keep things professional until we were done.
Her screen was still black. "So ... as long as we are alerting each other to things, I think I need to tell you something, too".
Puzzled, I turned to the camera and said, "What?"
"I can hear that porn you're playing through your mic".
Shit
, I thought. I quickly hit pause on the video as she laughed. The blood rushed back into my face again. Her screen came alive showing her grinning at me. She had her shirt back on.
"I am
so
sorry," I stammered.
She smiled at me like a cat with a mouse. "It's alright. It's a long night after all. But I didn't want you to have someone else hear it and get embarrassed."
"God, like I'm not already embarrassed," I said, covering my face with my hand.
"I said don't worry about it. It's not like I haven't done the same thing sometimes."
I peered at her through the gap in my fingers. "Seriously? You've been watching porn all these nights?"
"Not
all
the nights," she protested. "I said 'sometimes'." When I continued to regard her doubtfully she added, "Girls like porn too, you know."
This was starting to get
very