Finally arriving at the automatic doors of the office building that contained around twenty or so companies, with Revolutionary Data Devices taking up four floors near the middle of the building, Jonathan slowed his movements. He found it difficult to walk into work with pride. While he was a fairly smart individual, he kept himself rather isolated from his co-workers, and found the job to be fairly trivial.

His ideas to improve the data transfer rates of the internal network fell on deaf ears as did his ideas on how to streamline business applications and processes so that the efficiency of the network would be increased. As he sat as his desk, he looked outwards into the sea of small, confined cubicles. Even the department head only had a small ten foot square office in a corner. There wasn’t even enough room to have clients or meetings in the office, and so the conference room was the only private area where more than two people could talk.

Activating the display on his terminal, Jonathan looked at the saturation of the network, pulled up a task list for the day that included checking on various data links, and sighed with relief at the lack of meetings for today. Only a week ago, he had a day where nearly every department wanted him included in their meeting, feeling that his presence allowed for Jonathan to “understand the needs of each department better”, but in the end, he felt like he had wasted a good eight hours of his ten hour shift.

Jonathan swiped through various business applications, checking to make sure they were running well, and then went online to interact with various social sites he was a member of. His first major task away from his desk was just before lunch, and so he had a fair bit of time to fill before then. The strong disconnect he felt with those around him made it all the more relaxing to join the social networks online and interact with people he would never meet in real life. It was always interesting to him that he had met very few people in the city he lived in, but was connected to hundreds around the world through three social portals.

“So, anything interesting happening today?” A voice from behind Jonathan shocked him, as though electricity had filled the room. It was his boss, or to be accurate, his bosses boss.

Jonathan turned around slowly while deactivating the large, projected display. “Not too much. There might be some issues with one of the main routers for this floor.” Taking a deep breath, and with a little attitude, he continued, “but I’ll be taking a look at that very shortly.”

Ian Strong lived up to his name and was a towering behemoth of a man, and was an expert at intimidating the staff beneath him. Some people mocked him, saying that he only had been promoted because he intimidated those higher up the corporate ladder than him. Jonathan was anything but intimidated. Disliking Ian due to his inability to grasp the easiest of ideas when it came to technology, Jonathan wanted as little to do with him as possible, but Jonathan’s boss had stationed him on that floor to be at arms reach for the marketing and business development personnel that Ian managed.

Looking down on Jonathan, who was still sitting Ian ignored the tone, “just make sure you get it fixed pronto, okay buddy? I don’t want my computer to start acting weird again.”

Jonathan wanted to explain that the oddities in how Mr. Strong’s computer ran had nothing to do with the network, but instead with the dated software that Ian insisted on continuing to use, but he knew his explanation would fall on deaf ears.

With a fake smile, Jonathan nodded his head, “not a problem, sir. I’ll get on that before lunch. There are just a few higher priority issues to work out. Your network connection should stay rock solid.”

Mr. Strong slowly walked away, nodding to a few other people on the floor before grabbing an energy drink from the beverage area, and returning to his office.

Turning back on his display, Jonathan bid his friends goodbye after letting them know what had happened. Some made jabs at Jonathan in a friendly way before wishing him well. He would have to find time later to check in with them. His escape to the Internet was always where he would rather be.

Getting out of his office chair, he saw hundreds of people typing, interacting with data sets, video conferencing with people, and co-ordinating on some marketing materials for upcoming products. He sighed, as they all looked so useless to him.

Grabbing his kit, he went to the network room at the end of the hall. Racks and racks of small grey, black and white boxes sat stacked up from floor to ceiling. Their lights blinking rapidly all around him. He turned on a monitor, and selected the router that he was tasked to repair.