Administrative Assistant

Administrative Assistant (Pt. III) - Altered Behavior

With a coffee in one hand and a messenger bag slung over the opposite shoulder I pushed through my company's large tempered glass entrance door. I wiped at my eyes, pawing at the grogginess that refused to lift.

I turned the familiar sharp corner to the office and the fog in my brain instantly cleared. Anxious adrenaline shot through my veins. Rachel was sitting behind her desk typing on a retro mechanical keyboard, her well manicured fingers a blur as they whizzed across the keys. Color me impressed. Her smooth brown locks were pulled back into a messy bun. Two wisps of hair dangled down in front of her ears, perfectly framing her lovely face.

My back straightened and my pace quickened as I walked past her, mustering only a shy wave and a nervous, "Good Morning."

I continued for several more steps, my heart beating like the wings of a hummingbird, before Rachel's voice stopped me in my tracks.

"Stephen!" Her sweet voice floated on air, the gentle words seemingly gliding into my ear.

I pivoted hard and faced her. Goddamn, she looked so good.

"Come here!" She beckoned with a finger and I obliged, taking the couple paces to reach her desk.

"Hey! What's up Rachel?" I nearly choked on the sentence before I was able to force it out.

She smiled at me and blinked her wide vibrant blue eyes, "I just wanted to say thanks again for the ride last night. I had a really good time!"

"Oh, really?" I coughed out, "I mean...uhh yeah, so did I! If you ever need a ride home again, just let me know."

Rachel leaned over the desk, quietly biting down on her lip, "Actually I was thinking, could you give me a ride home again toniiiggghhh..." She paused, her sentence screeching to a halt, her shiny lips frozen.

Thinking she was just having a hard time get the sentence out, my eyes naturally wandered down to her swollen chest. She was wearing a pastel gray sweater that while not revealing, was certainly tight in all the right places. The garment elegantly outlined the soft curve of her buoyant breasts.

"...tonight?" Rachel's voice snapped back into the air.

"Sorry, can you say that again?" I looked at her curiously, not processing her disjointed sentence.

She leaned further over the desk, the fabric of her sweater stretching against her ample bosom, "I said. 'actually I was thinking, could you give me a ride home again tonight?"

"Oh uhh yeah, of course! I'm probably looking to get out of here around 5 o'clock. Does that work for you?"

Rachel's tongue slipped out of her mouth, teasing her upper lip, "Yes Stephen, that works fffooorrr..." Her speech abruptly ended, her face once again impossibly still.

This time I was worried she might be having some sort of episode, whether it be the onset of a seizure or something related, "Rachel. Are you okay?" I waved my hand in front of her face garnering no reaction, "Rachel!" I snapped my fingers a couple times right in front of her eyes.

"...for me!" Her face came alive, pulling back into a vibrant smile as the words finished coming out from behind her polished ruby lips.

With slight trepidation I replied, "Okay, so 5 o'clock it is then...Are you okay Rachel? It seems like you went blank there for a second?"

Rachel cocked her head to the side for a moment, staring directly at me, before opening her mouth to display her dazzling white smile, "I can be a bit of an airhead sometimes. Sorry about that."

Hmmm. I thought to myself, that sounded vaguely familiar.

She interjected again, her eyes narrowing and her tongue pulling at the corners of her mouth, "But yes, I will be ready at 5 o'clock!"

Is Rachel coming onto me?

"STEPHEN!" My boss' voice reverberated through the office, "Get in here now!"

I smiled at Rachel and whispered, "Okay, 5 o'clock! Bye!"

I spun around and trotted down a few rows of desks and into my boss' office; his anger was thickened the air.

"Close the door!"

"Yes sir." I mumbled, before pulling the door shut and plopping down into a small chair opposite his desk. My coffee bobbled, a bit spilling over and burning my hand. I winced but said nothing.

"The CMC server has been hitching up all morning Stephen. I can't get any files to any of our clients, and they're coming at me from all directions today." He sighed, lowering his shoulders and guard, "Look I'm sorry to yell at you. I know the issues with that server aren't your doing...But, you're the only one here that knows anything about it now that Kim left. Can you please get down there and see what's up? If I'm not able to get these file transfers working today...well we may lose the Mavis account...and let's just say that would be very bad for the both of us." He cocked an eyebrow at me, "You feel me?"

My boss could be very charismatic when he needed something done. A trait of a narcissist if I had ever seen one, "Yes sir, I'll get right on it."

He clapped, "Great! If you could, give me a status update by lunch?"

I nodded my head, "Sure thing."

--

--

Deep down in the bowels of my company's leased office building sat the Capacity Management & Communications Server. Built from what looked like a dozen or so vending machines strung together with miles of cable, the home-brewed server ran almost all day to day processes here and at half a dozen satellite offices around the world. Just about every bit of data entered by or received by Ingenium employees passed through this jumbled mess of a machine.

I stepped over a cluster of power cables, added ad hoc throughout the installation of the server, the bundles of wire snaked out towards large cement walls seemingly at random. Somewhat in the center of the large boxy network cores sat a small dormant screen with an even smaller keyboard underneath. I tapped on the keys prompting the HMI screen to light up.

The first thing I did was check the overall memory usage of each network core. They all seemed nominal to me, but truth be told it was hard to tell. The bandwidth moving through the server at any given time was so sporadic that we never determined average or "normal" data throughput. I just decided to do a pretty standard clean up of the system, hoping that would alleviate whatever hiccups were occurring within its complex electrical architecture.

My fingers moved quickly, clicking in rhythm against the keyboard's stiff keys. I cleared the memory cache and ran several defragmentation scans across dozens of different file types. I reset the file path for several queries that constantly ran in the background, attempting to spread their computational burden evenly across each core.

11 of the 12 cores evened out, averaging about 60% usage a piece. That was slightly high, but well within their advertised sustainable capacities. However, Core 9 was being stubborn, bucking the trend of the other 11 with volatile memory usage peaks reaching as high as 89%. That was a little too much; any redirected traffic through the core would almost certainly cause major stuttering or corruption of the data stream.

I took a step back, running my fingers across my chin, "Hmmmmm" I thought out loud. "If I wirelessly connect from my desktop I might be able to reset that core alone."

Direct diagnostic wireless connections to the CMC server were forbidden by my company's IT policy. But...IT wasn't down here fixing it, lord knows they weren't capable of that, I was.

"Fuck it." I sighed. Fiddling through my pocket I pulled out a discretely profiled thunderwire drive. The small, thumbnail sized drive was wirelessly capable. A few months earlier I had loaded on some networking software that should interface neatly with the CMC Server's dated operating system. I had just never used it, until now.

I plugged it in a port just underneath the obtruding keyboard. It blinked green three times verifying a successful connection with the server's OS before blinking red twice signifying it was searching for a particular wireless connection key. After the two red blinks it went dark, just as I had programmed.

Satisfied with my work I jogged out the room, high-stepping through the chaotic mess of cables. As I hit the concrete stairs that led up to my office I heard the auto-lights in the server room shut down. I took the stairs two at a time, butterflies eating away at my stomach as I day-dreamed about giving Rachel another ride home that evening.

--

--

I glanced at Rachel as I entered my cubicle. She saw me and flashed a friendly smile. I smiled back.

The cushioned air suspension of my office chair sunk as I plopped down, logging into my desktop and fired up the executable programmed to pair with the thunderwire drive plugged into the CMC server. In near instantaneous succession, the encrypted connection key was broadcast, the drive accepted the handshake, and I was given remote access to the server's OS. Now under the hood of the server from the comfort of my desk I booted up a few side-chained programs that drilled down into the hierarchy of the server's data structure, giving me both more resolution over all of its processes and full control.

This was exactly what IT wanted to prevent from happening, "Ah Fuck It." I chuckled under my breath.

I drilled down through several layers until I was looking at just the controls and diagnostic readouts for Core 9. It's usage rate remained high, still hovering around 90%. I thought, "The other cores should easily pick up the slack if I reset this guy, I should just do it."

'CLUNK!'

The loud noise emanated from Rachel's direction. I wheeled my chair backwards and peaked around the corner of my fabric lined cubicle wall. She was staring at me while getting down from her chair and crawling onto the floor under her desk. She whispered at me, over-emphasizing the movement of her lips and tongue so I could understand her, "I dropped my purse. Do you see it?"

I leaned in looking closely, wanting to help Rachel in her search, but I was soon distracted.

While on all fours, she spun around 180 degrees so her back, or more accurately, her ass was facing me. She was wearing a tight black office skirt, and from my angle her creamy plump derriere was on full display, her pink thong elegantly stretched between her exquisite butt cheeks.

I was beginning to think that Rachel wanted me to see this. Thank God my cubicle was the only one that had line of sight with her and no one else could see this.

She stretched forward, adjusting the positioning of her legs, altering my view. Nestled just beneath the sleek curves of her rear, the thin pink fabric of Rachel's thong contoured against her sex's puffy lips. Even behind the semi-opaque undergarment, her vagina looked simply remarkable.

I felt a growing pressure beneath my slacks, and I pulled myself inside my cube, not wanting to have an erection at work.

I tried to put thoughts of Rachel's supple backside out of my mind and focus on the task at hand. I found where I was in my work and decided to finally reset Core 9.

I watched the server's readouts hiccup for a split second as millions of data-packets moving through Core 9 were transferred throughout the remaining cores.

'CLUNK!'

The hollow sounding noise came from Rachel's direction; I wheeled my office chair back and looked to see what happened.

It looked like she had foolishly tried to stand up while still underneath her desk and had bumped her head against the hard mahogany. In fact, it looked like she was now stuck in that position.

I hopped out of my chair and jogged over to her, wanting to make sure she was okay. I crouched down next to her where I swore I heard the sound of straining servomotors.

"Rachel, are you okay? Is something wrong?"

The sound of whining servomotors shifted pitch, picking up in intensity before sputtering out several times. While slowly pushing the heavy desk upwards with the back of her head, it became obvious Rachel the sound of straining electronics was emanating from within her.

That's certainly odd, I thought to myself.

With the edge of the desk roughly a foot higher than where it had originally been positioned, Rachel was able to finally dislodge herself and stand up. Immediately, the desk fell down.

'CLUNK'

I tapped her on the shoulder, "Rachel, what's up? Can I help?"

She turned her head to face me, a faint grinding mechanical noise accompanying the movement.

"Oh. Hi Stephen! I was just down on the ground trying to find my..."

Her large round eyes blinked several times in rapid succession. It was the first time I noticed her luxuriant eyelashes. They were long, dark, and voluminous.

Her face reset. She smiled.

"Hi Stephen! How are you?"

--

--