Short Stories

THE STATE OF THE UNIVERSE

Cynthia O'Neill knew that the infamous Max Gotthardt would come in person to investigate this latest disaster. She straightened her desk a little and folded her arms.

He'd said he would be there in ten minutes, and she could have set her clock by him. Exactly ten minutes from the moment she'd sent in her call, he knocked at the door of her office.

"So, I finally meet the legendary Cynthia O'Neill," he said as he entered the room. Even though he glared at her, she noticed that he had lovely blue eyes, and light blonde hair, cut very short. Her first thought as she saw him was that he dressed like an engineer, but she modified that as she studied him. At least there was no gap between the cuffs of his pants and his shoes, and he didn't wear a pocket protector. There might be hope for him. "The queen of destruction."

"How nice of you to attend to this personally," said Cynthia. She tried to keep her tone cool. "It isn't every day I have my computer fixed by the God of All Repairs. Aren't you afraid to be in the same room with me? You know, like the positive forces and the negative forces coming together and destroying the universe?"

He placed his toolbox on the desk beside my computer. He didn't smile. "You have been personally responsible for half the work of my department since I've been here."

"And you have been responsible for hours and hours of extra work on my part."

"What? It took you that much longer to come up with ways to destroy things?" He pulled a pair of latex gloves from his pockets and carefully put them on.

"No. I don't try to destroy things at all."

"Oh, so you're saying you're just careless, is that it?" He knelt on the floor, checking the plug and the outlet.

"Not at all. Things just break around me. It's just something that happens. The normal state of things in the universe is falling apart, or about to fall apart."

He stood up so quickly that he nearly bumped his head on the bottom of her desk. His blue eyes were alight. "That's not true! The normal state of things in the universe is operational! The universe operates according to rules, and if you keep the rules, then things work! If you don't follow the rules, then things break, and people like me have to fix them for clumsy people like you!"

She was beginning to get angry in response to his anger. "There are no other people like you, and I'm not clumsy!"

"All right, then, tell me how you managed to kill this computer."

"I don't think it's actually dead."

"Great. Just comatose. What did you do to it? It's brand new. They just installed it last week. How could anyone, even you, destroy it that quickly?"

She shrugged. She knew he wouldn't believe her. "I just logged on."

"With what? A sledgehammer?"

"I just logged on," she repeated. "Then it started flashing all these lights and it just shut down. No one could get it to work again."

He looked hurt for a second. "Who'd you ask to work on it?"

"Renee and Jack."

"You were supposed to call us first." Now he definitely sounded hurt.

"Why? So you could browbeat everybody for letting things break? No, thank you. I hoped that Renee or Jack would be able to straighten it out without getting you involved at all."

"Well, obviously they didn't, did they?" He rubbed his hands together with a certain grim satisfaction. "Let's see what you did to this baby." Very gently, he lifted the monitor off the computer, and unplugged various cords. Cynthia watched him out of idle curiosity. She knew perfectly well that if she tried to do anything of the sort, she would cause an even greater disaster, but still, it was interesting to watch. She expected that he would know what he was doing; that was his reputation, or part of his reputation. She hadn't expected the degree of tenderness he displayed towards the inanimate object.

"If you were half as gentle to the people who work for you as you are to the machines you work on, your life would be a lot easier," she remarked.

He stopped and turned to look at her. "What are you talking about?"

"Do you know what the people who work for you say about you?"

"They say I'm damn good at what I do," he replied proudly.

"And they say you are hell to work for. They say that you expect them to work perfectly all the time. They say you aren't the least bit forgiving of human error, or human fallibility."

"So what are you? The Mother Confessor of the Maintenance Department?" He'd already turned back to the computer.

"In a way. I break things, you fix things. You break people, I fix people. Which one of us does more for the company?"

"I do," he said distantly. He ran his fingers over the components of the computer. Cynthia noticed that he didn't actually touch anything. He hadn't even opened his tool box. "Look at that," he said, more to himself than to her. "What did you do?"

"I told you."

"I don't believe you. The only way you could have done that was by opening up the computer and taking a soldering iron to it."

"I didn't do that."

"Of course you didn't. If you picked up a soldering iron, you'd set the whole building on fire."

"Probably."

"It doesn't make sense. I can't understand how that could have happened."

"Can you fix it?"

He gave her a sidelong look. "Of course I can fix it." Then he turned his concentration back to the machine. While Cynthia watched in fascination, he stroked his fingers over one set of circuits. She heard a short snap, and then Max stood up, pulling off his gloves. "There," he said, replacing the computer's cover and plugging the components back in without even looking at them. "That's all right now."

He plugged the computer back in, and Cynthia watched with pleasure as the screen lit up as if nothing had happened. "Try it," said Max.

"Are you sure you want to watch this?" she asked. She couldn't help smiling.

"Yeah. I want to see how you do what you do."

"All right then." She logged in to the system, aware of Max' presence behind her. She could feel the warmth of his body near hers. He's actually quite good looking, she thought, and there was something quite appealing about his competence. It bordered on the miraculous, in her opinion. Still, he did have that attitude, and that was a problem. "I bet when you were growing up, all the things in your house worked perfectly all the time," she remarked. She expected an immediate reply, and was surprised at the length of the silence. She turned to look at him.

Max ran his hand through his hair, looking at something by the outlet, avoiding her eyes. "They did after I got through with them," he said.

But not before? Cynthia wondered. "It must have been hard, being responsible for keeping the universe working, wasn't it?"

Now he looked at her, his eyes uncertain. "What do you mean by that?"

She thought he looked much more human, and much more appealing, when he wasn't so sure of himself. There is hope, she thought. "How old were you when you started making everything work perfectly?"

He took a step back. "I always could," he said warily. "I always had to." He ran his hand through his hair again. "Well. That's fixed now. Good. Try not to screw it up again." He turned and left abruptly.

Two minutes later, he returned. "Forgot my toolbox," he said, retrieving it from the desk. He paused a second. "Do people really complain about me?"

"All the time."

He looked uncertain again. "They don't say anything to me."

"They wouldn't, would they?"

He stood, irresolutely, his toolbox dangling from his hand. "No, I guess not. Well, okay, I have to get going. Try to keep things working, okay?" This time, when he left, he didn't return.

She wondered, in the week that followed, if she'd scared him off. Things broke, of course, and people came from maintenance to repair them, but Max didn't come back. The other maintenance people seemed much more cheerful than she'd seen them for months. She wondered about that.

When the printer started smoking for no apparent reason a week after her encounter with Max, she pulled the plug and called maintenance. This time Max reappeared. He carried his toolbox, of course, but he also brought a small paper bag.

"Here," he said, handing her the bag as he leaned over the printer. "This is for you."

She opened the bag gingerly. "A tool kit?" she asked. "A little tool kit? What, you're tired of having people come and work on my stuff, is that it?"

"No. I just thought that . . . someone who's as good as you are at fixing people might have a knack for fixing things, as well." He carefully studied the printer, avoiding her eyes.

"I haven't fixed any people lately," she said.

"Well, that's a matter of opinion," he replied. He reached into the innards of the machine, concentrating. "There it is. It shouldn't be doing that, you know."

"No, it shouldn't. It does, but I know it shouldn't."

"After I worked on your computer last week, I thought about what you said. About the people who work under me. I watched them, the way they acted around me. And I realized that you were right." He turned to look at her. "What's the normal state of people in the universe?"

"On the verge of breaking, but fixable," she said, smiling.

"Even me?" His voice wavered a little. He stepped away from the printer, watching her as if he were afraid she would snap at him.

"We could try," she said.

"I would . . . like to try," he replied, a touch shy.

She reached for him as if it were the most natural thing in the world, and at that moment it was. Without another thought, she took him in her arms and kissed him. He kisses well, she thought, like a man who knows what he's doing. Competent there, too.

Max' knees buckled, and she had to grab him to keep him from falling. He pulled away from her, looking dazed.

"Max?" she asked. "Are you all right?"

"Wow," he stammered. "I've never . . . never felt so . . . so disordered. . . in all my life."

She laughed. "Come on. I know just the thing for that. Let's go to the coffee room and get a cup of coffee."

He walked alongside her. "You know," he said, his voice still a little husky, "maybe we're meant to be together for some reason, some deep rule of the universe."

She smiled as she took out the cups. "Maybe so," she said. She reached for the coffee pot. Suddenly sparks shot out from the coffee machine.

He took the carafe from her. "I can fix that," he said, smiling.