Jerry was 23 years old, and at all of 5' 2-1/2" tall and 115 lbs, not an imposing figure by any stretch of the imagination. He had pale skin from years of indoor activities that centered around computers and games, black hair with dark eyes to match. He kept his hair fairly long to cover his ears, which stuck out. Not considered an attractive fellow, he had pockmarked skin from a several years bout with acne problems in freshman and sophomore high school.
He was a product of the system, born to a middle aged prostitute in jail for assault who died during childbirth. He was never adopted due to a slew of infant and childhood ailments, all of which he overcame. Because of this, his entire childhood was in foster care. A few good homes, but mostly bad. Having always been small in stature, even compared to girls his age, and never really being "part of the group," so to speak, because of constantly being bounced from one foster home to another, he was always treated like a secondary thought by the adults, and tormented relentlessly by most of the other children. School was no different, not even college. Jerry learned to be as invisible as possible. With no social life to speak of, he worked and he studied. He saved money and he became pretty adept at both hardware and software in computers. Holding down part-time jobs and devoting all his free time to computers, he managed to complete high school by 16, and college just a few months after his 19th birthday. Ultimately completing a bachelor's degree in computer science.
After college, Jerry found a job at a fairly large company that did server installations along with operations and maintenance. His talents allowed him to quickly find a position that allowed him to work from home troubleshooting problems. He was so good at what he did that he was able to negotiate a decent salary, enough to finance a small house in a rural area, about 45 minutes outside the city. It was a nice little 1000 square foot, two bed, one bath home on 10 acres of densely wooded land. Even though the driveway was 300' of gravel road that made a turn to get to the house so the home couldn't be seen from the road, there were no houses to see from the mailbox at the end of the driveway, the nearest home being nearly 2 miles from his in one direction, and a two lane state highway lay 3 miles on the the twisty country road in the other direction without a house on it. As rural as it was, he was only a few miles from a cell tower and had great internet so he could do his job. The home had a partially finished full basement with a corner shower with just a drain on the concrete floor. Next to it was a sink and toilet along with the washer and dryer. About half of it was carpeted and there was still a cable run where the previous owner had a TV for a second living room. The entire basement was free span for all but a single support pole in the middle of the room, not a single wall, not even around the toilet and shower.
Jerry turned the basement into his home office/living room. He practically lived down there, coming up only to bathe. He had a full size refrigerator and a microwave. And since he lived on sodas and microwavable foods, he didn't really ever have much use for dishes or a need for the upstairs kitchen. He'd gotten to where he wasn't even comfortable upstairs, so he stayed in the basement, on his computer working, watching movies, or playing Xbox. It's where he felt most comfortable. He even quit sleeping in the bedroom upstairs in favor of the couch in the basement. Safe from the assholes of the outside world. The automatic front gate at the end of the drive was controlled from his computer, as were the security camera, speaker, and microphone mounted on a pedestal next to the gate. There were cameras and microphones both outside and inside the house, everywhere but the nervecenter, his basement. It was the first place in his life that he felt safe, truly safe.
Sandy had finally made it to department head. She had been picked to take over the maintenance department, the most lucrative department in the company. Staffed by the IT guys who keep all the software and hardware on the servers happy, they get paid well to do it and the company charges a lot for the service. With salaries being the only real overhead in the department for the most part, as hardware failures were rare, the department had the highest profit margin in the company. It was a coveted position, and she knew she deserved it, just like the owner did. One of the first things she intended to do was find out who the top performers were based on time spent to solve issues and who took the longest, giving her an idea of who was most useful and who was dead weight. Jerry's name popped up at the top of her list, the second name on her list was a distant second based on her criteria. Not only that, but he constituted 12% of all problems solved in a department with 42 technicians.
She was impressed by the numbers and wanted to meet the brilliant man, hoping he was as physically attractive as he was proficient at troubleshooting complex computer issues. She liked smart men and seldom met men she felt were on par with her. He might be, she thought to herself, and he might be cute too. She logged onto her computer in her new office and pulled up his personal file. He had no photo, no emergency contact, no work history, just an education history, and he was hired at 19. How do you get hired at 19 with a bachelor's degree? He was also the only technician working on a negotiated salary, all the other techs were hourly, but not this guy. Who was this mysterious man, she had to know. After asking around about him she found out that he had not been to the office in over three years.
After contemplating it for a bit, she decided to send him an email and ask him to come in so she could meet him under the pretext that as the new department head, she wanted to meet and get a feel for all the people in her team. It was bullshit, but if he never came in anyway, how would he know, and this would let her meet the mystery man. The email simply asked that he be in her office at 3 on Friday, so that if things went well, maybe Friday night would be fun and interesting.
Jerry read the email and groaned. "Fucking management," he mumbled to himself. Why couldn't they just leave him alone. He knew it would be easier if he just went. Small price to pay for the job he had, he thought to himself. It wasn't like he didn't enjoy a lot of freedom for a very comfortable salary. "Friday it is then," he said as he moved on to the next email.
Friday came. He requested an Uber and headed out to meet it when it was close. He hated being late, it just draws unwanted attention. He arrived about 10 minutes before the requested time and announced his arrival to Sandy's assistant. She asked him to have a seat as she picked up the phone on her desk, hit a button and spoke into the handset, "Your three o'clock is here," she paused and smiled at him, "yes ma'am," she said and hung the phone up.
"You can go in," she said and motioned to the door.
He stood back up and headed through the door. As he walked into the fairly large office, he saw Sandy standing at the corner of her desk. She was tall, much taller than him, and in heels. She was wearing a black knee length skirt and a loose white blouse. She had an athletic build, her breasts were about a B cup, her waist fairly thin, wide hips and toned calves. Her eyes were a dark brown and her hair was straight and dark brown, pulled into a ponytail high on the back of her head. She was probably a decade older than him, but very attractive, and with those heels, easily 6'.
Sandy was a far cry from the 68 year old Robert Parsons who had just retired, opening the position. Sandy was a woman you didn't want to take your eyes off of, and Jerry couldn't, she was beautiful.
"You must be Jerry," she smiled, "I'm Sandy, please sit," she gestured to the chair in front of her desk as she turned and walked back around the desk to her own high back office chair. He watched her ass as she made her way back around the desk. Her smile was odd, nothing outright, but he could feel her, what, disappointment maybe? He figured it was him, and he was right. Sandy wasn't sure what to expect, but this little long haired man in a black tee shirt and hoody certainly wasn't it.
"Oh well," she thought to herself, and decided to go ahead and run through this and make it look as real as possible.
"So I just have a few questions for you. It looks like you don't have an emergency contact. Do you not have anybody? Nobody you live with, a relative, girlfriend, no one," she asked.
"No, nobody I want to put on there. I'm an orphan raised in foster homes. There's nobody to call," he said flatly.
"Oh, I'm sorry, I just like having a point of contact for people, sometimes just to check up on them when they're sick or whatever, but that's fine, I understand," she smiled at him, seeming almost bubbly. Sandy had a way of always coming off like that, until she turned the bitch on, and even that was usually delivered with a smile.
"Is this your first job? I see you have no work experience on your resume and you were hired at 19, with a bachelor's degree? Can you tell me about that," she asked, looking truly interested.
