Remote work part 2

 “Before you go in you need your keycard,” said Iris.  She reached into a pocket and pulled out a credit-card sized piece of white plastic and passed it to Ashley, who turned it over.  There was a picture of her with Interwork’s name and logo beneath it on the other side.

“How did you get my picture?” she said, turning it over again in case there was anything else on the first side.  There wasn’t.

“Camera in the entrance phone,” said Iris.  “While you were typing in the entrance code.”

“Oh.”

“Don’t lose this,” said Iris.  “Every doorway permits two way passage but a door only has to let you through one way.  The card is how you open the door to get back.”  She smiled at Ashley as though expecting her to say something, but Ashley couldn’t think of anything so just said, “Thank-you.”

“Good,” said Iris.  “Then off you go, and enjoy your remote working experience!  Oh, and that card is also your internet connection key.  Just keep it next to your laptop and you shouldn’t have any connection issues.”

“Thanks,” said Ashley again, feeling slightly stunned.  She looked at the beach through the doorway, and then at Iris who grinned and nodded.  Feeling as though a camera crew were going to leap out at any moment and tell her this was some bizarre prank she walked through the doorway.  Onto sun-warmed white sand that crunched and moved beneath her feet.  The smell of salt was in the air and the beach was noticeably warmer than the reception area had been.  A seagull squawked somewhere behind her and she turned, wondering if she’d see a projector or something else that was creating the illusion of the beach.  Instead there was an expanse of sand leading up to wiry green grass that swayed gently in a breeze that barely reached her.  There was no doorway.

“Uh, Iris?” Ashley turned around, and then around again, going through two full circles.  There was no doorway, no door, and no sign of how she could get back to the reception area.  Feeling slightly nervous now she looked around for a third time, now paying attention to the beach around her.  The shower station caught her eye and she remembered Iris’s admonition to wash her feet before returning.  She walked over to it, caught between enjoying the tropical feel of the beach — it seemed incredibly real — and a growing tension that she was trapped somewhere and she had no idea where it was or why.

The shower station was a ceramic-tiled tray with a slender concrete post behind it that supported a copper pipe leading up to a shower head.  The tiles were blood-red, which felt ominous, and the shower head was broad and rectangular and looked like standing underneath it would be like being caught in the rain.  There was a button on the side of the concrete post that, she guessed, would turn the shower on.  She looked round the back of the post and there was a little white sign mounted on it with a black rectangle drawn on it.  There were the three curved lines that indicated a wireless input and, with a sudden feeling of hope that lifted her spirits, she pressed the keycard against the sign.

The doorway was in front of her, the door swinging towards her as it opened, as though it had always been there and she’d somehow just forgotten to see it.  She heaved a huge sigh, her whole shuddering with relief.

“Did you forget something, dear?”  Iris appeared in the doorway holding a red bucket and a floor-mop.

“No!  No, just figuring out how everything works,” said Ashley.  “Er, I’ll go and… um, sit down!”  She turned, lifting the card off the sign, and when she turned back there was no sign of the doorway again.

“Right,” she said to herself.  “This is real, for some value of real at least.”

She sat in a deckchair after adjusting it to an upright position so that she could use the nearby table.  The parasol kept the sun off her, which was a relief as it had mediterranean strength, and her keycard indeed seemed to grant her internet access so long as it was no more than a hand’s distance from her laptop.  Her email connected with ease and downloaded four messages from over the weekend; the most recent was a reminder from Dave that the stand-up would be done over video conference at 10.  She checked her access to Interwork’s server and found it was slightly faster than she usually had in the office.  Everything seemed to be in order and she was about to close it down and start on the proposal for Three Red Mills when she noticed a directory on the server that she’d not seen before called Re-org.  Immediately curious, she clicked to open it and was only slightly surprised when it did.

“Dave’s getting careless,” she murmured.  There were several files in the directory: Headcount.xls, Re-org.doc, Seating.xls, Salaries.xls, and Termination.tpl.

“Not just moving us to a new floor then,” she said.  All the files appeared to be accessible so she clicked on Seating.xls.  If this turned out to be a mistake she’d rather not be caught having viewed one of the files with interesting names.

Seating.xls was a seating plan for the new area.  The first thing she noticed was that it wasn’t big enough: there were maybe desks for a third of the current project management team.  The second thing she noticed was that Jenna was now seated next to Dave and had a new title.  Then she realised that her own name was missing.

“I suppose I knew something like this was coming,” she muttered, closing the spreadsheet and opening the template.  The termination letter was as bland as she’d expected: no reasons, no detail, just a summary ‘thank-you and good luck in your next job’.  She looked at the clock in the corner of the computer screen: ten minutes before the stand-up.  Dave would certainly be at his computer.

She messaged him before she could lose her nerve.  ‘Hey Dave, what’s with this re-org folder on the shared drive?’  Almost immediately the messaging client put ‘typing…’ next to Dave’s name.

‘What do you mean?  There’s no re-org folder.’

‘Sure there is’ she sent.  She screenshotted the file list and added it to the message.  ‘Typing…’ flickered on and off next to Dave’s name several times as though he were starting to type and then deleting everything.  Finally a reply popped up.

‘You shouldn’t be able to see that.  Did Jenna give you access?’

Ashley frowned at the screen.  Why would Jenna have access to this?

‘No.  It was just here when I logged on.’

‘Can you see it now?  F5 to refresh.’

‘Yes.’

There was a pause now and then, ‘I’ll have to ask IT why you can see that.  Please keep it to yourself for now, ok?  We can talk after the stand-up.’

‘Sure thing.’

She closed the client and opened up the video conferencing tools bracing herself for a half-hour of ‘what I did last week’.  Then she looked at the seating plan again.  Jenna’s new title was Project Director.