Reboot Pt. 01

"She really is," Sumita agreed, based solely on the one painting.

She wondered about this artist named Jenna who could stir up such feelings in her with nothing but oil on canvas. It made immediate sense that she was a woman. There was an indefinably feminine quality to the shapes and colors. Beyond that, Sumita felt the longing in the painting like a spear of fire. This artist, this Jenna, knew what it was to love a woman who couldn't quite love her back. Sumita knew absolutely nothing about her, but she felt like she understood Jenna, at least a piece of her. She decided that the rest must be fascinating.

One of the monitors on Sumita's desk flashed, pulling her out of her thoughts. The tools installer had just finished on the test box, so Sumita and Sarah went back to configuring Sumita's test environment. The process was mostly automated, but it required constant babysitting.

Sarah called it quits a little after six. "That's enough for today," she said. "We can pick up from here tomorrow morning."

"Okay," Sumita replied. "Thanks again for helping me."

~~~

Sangita sat across the table from her mother, who was looking indecisively at the menu.

"So many choices, and they all look good," Sumita said, and then flipped to the next page.

Sangita shook her head and smiled. She wanted to know how her mother's first day back at work went, but she knew better than to ask. Sumita would be useless for anything more than small talk until she'd made up her mind about what she wanted to eat.

"How'd you find this place?" Sangita asked. "I had no idea it was here."

The vegan Asian restaurant was a small, narrow space with about a dozen tables. It was situated in the middle of a nondescript strip mall that ran along a steep section of road a little ways south of Sumita's new office. There was a sign out front, but its purpose wasn't to advertise to passers-by. Nobody was looking. The sign was only there so that people who were going there intentionally knew they'd found the right place.

"Sarah told me about it," Sumita said. "She's my new coworker. She was really helpful today, and I think I'm going to be relying on her a lot over the next few weeks."

Sumita shut her menu with a decisive thunk and set it down on the table. Before Sangita could ask her mother anything about her day at work, a short, grumpy-looking Chinese woman showed up at the table to take their order: steamed dumplings, corn chowder, and fried noodles.

"So what did you do today, Gita?" Sumita asked when the waitress left.

"Dina and I climbed Cougar Mountain," Sangita replied. "The view was spectacular. Rainier's still completely covered in snow. After I got home and showered, I mostly just lazed around. One more week of freedom before I start at the hospital!"

Sumita smiled at her daughter. Sangita was really looking forward to her summer job, but she wasn't particularly excited about the hours.

"What about you?" Sangita asked. "How was your day?"

"Oh, you know," Sumita said. "Orientation was fine, and Sarah was very nice about helping me. I don't know, maybe I can actually do this. Anyway, it's not that big of a deal."

"Not that big of a deal?" Sangita asked, incredulous. "It's only the first time you've had a full-time office job since I was like three years old. I'd say that's a pretty big deal."

"I just don't want to let anybody down, that's all," Sumita said. "It was so good of Bhavesh to let me come back to work."

"Stop it, Mom," Sangita said, laughter bubbling up through her voice. "Just stop. They're lucky to have you, and the only one who can't see that is you. You're going to do great."

Sumita relented and described the little details of her day to Sangita until the food was ready: the nervous, over-dressed Chinese girl, the terrible photo they took for her new ID badge, the courtyard between buildings that she could see from her office window.

"... and no, there is no building thirteen," Sumita told her daughter just before the waitress arrived with the steamed dumplings. Sangita laughed.

The table got quiet while they savored the dumplings, and the soup showed up just as the last two dumplings disappeared. Sumita ladled out two cups of corn chowder.

"This is amazing," Sangita said after her first taste. "Dad would love this stuff."

Just like that, a black cloud descended over both mother and daughter, and the easy conversation turned to strained silence. Sumita and Sangita ate their soup, neither really tasting it.

"I'm really sorry, Mom," Sangita said after a while. "I just . . ."

"It's fine, Gita," Sumita replied. She sat up straighter in her seat and forced some warmth into her smile. "I know you miss him as much as I do. Just this afternoon, I thought about how happy he'd be about the weather for cricket, at least if it holds to the weekend."

"He really would," Sangita agreed, more wistful that sad. "He always did love the first match of the season."

They finished their dinner in relative quiet, and Sumita stayed quiet on the drive home. Winding up Lake Sammamish Drive, Sangita turned to her mother and asked, "Do you want to stop for ice cream?"

When Sangita was a little girl, Sunday play dates with Julie and her son Ryan had always ended in ice cream, and both mother and daughter still had a soft spot for the ice cream shop where they used to go. Sangita had that same look in her eye, equal parts mischief and pleading, that had won over both her parents countless times growing up. Sumita couldn't resist indulging.

"Sure," Sumita replied, and then fell silent again, thinking some more about Julie. It had been on one of those play dates that Julie had come out to her while the kids were busy on the playground. Then, at the very same ice cream shop, years after the kids had outgrown Sunday play dates, Julie had told Sumita about her new job in the Bay Area, and her best friend had gone from being a living, breathing presence in her life to an electronic ghost, seen in person maybe once a year. Still, ice cream was ice cream, and it never failed to lift her spirits.

After they got home, Sumita put an old Bollywood movie in the DVD player, one of her husband Rajeev's favorites. Sangita rolled her eyes and retreated to her bedroom. The movie was exactly the distraction Sumita needed, three hours of silly melodrama punctuated by even sillier song and dance numbers. After it was over, she poked her head into Sangita's room to say goodnight and then walked to her own bedroom on the other side of the house.

That was the hard part. She could get through the days, but it all came back at night when she went into her bedroom and tried to sleep. One ordinary morning ten months ago, she woke up next to Rajeev, just like any other morning. That night, she went to bed alone, a widow.

Sumita tossed and turned, as usual, but that night it felt different somehow. There was something more to it, more than just grief. She wasn't sure if the job was a good idea or a colossal mistake, but it was something new, and something was better than nothing.

When she finally fell asleep, she dreamed of the hallway in her new building, all those office doors, and she had to find someone, but she didn't have a name or an office number, and the hallway never ended.

~~~

Sarah spent some more time with Sumita the next morning, bookmarked a couple of wiki pages for Sumita to read later, and went back to her own office to work. Sumita went through the new hire checklist, filling out insurance forms and all the other administrative stuff that didn't happen at orientation. The next time she took a breath, it was almost lunchtime.

"Come on," Sarah said, appearing out of nowhere in Sumita's doorway. "I'll walk you around and introduce you to the team and then we can go down to lunch."

Sumita followed Sarah while they made a circuit of the team's hallway. The first office on the right was Carl, a guy nearly Sumita's age who looked like Thor in shorts and a tee shirt.

"You helped me out once," he said after Sarah introduced Sumita. "I was just a newbie, and I got assigned this load test bug that would only repro with like a thousand inbound connections. The data store just completely fell over."

"Yeah, I remember," Sumita replied. "I scrambled for a whole week to get the connections from the front end serialized and throttled."

"Well, we were doing some pretty stupid things back then," Carl said. "We ripped out that code in the next release and rebuilt the data access tier."

"No, it was actually good," Sumita said. "I mean, yeah, what you guys were doing was pretty terrible, but it made us handle that kind of load properly. It was something we'd never even thought about. You probably saved us from some horrible denial of service bug getting out into the wild."

"Glad I could be of use," Carl said with a smile and an ironic bow. "Seriously, though, it's good to have you here. I'll be down in the cafeteria in a few."

Sarah continued on, introducing Sumita to a whole bunch of new faces that all blended together in Sumita's mind. They were mostly very young and all male. "Are we the only women on the team?" Sumita asked Sarah.

"There's Kim," Sarah said with a shrug. "She's on vacation. So that's three out of forty two, I guess. Better than most teams."

Sumita had no good reply. In the twenty-plus years since she'd started at the company, the already male-dominated software industry had actually gotten worse.

The last office on the circuit was Bhavesh's corner. Bhavesh was the development manager for the team. He was also, despite the graying temples, still the exuberant kid that Sumita had mentored when he started at the company straight out of college. His face lit up when he saw Sumita, and they greeted each other with a heartfelt hug. It was a mildly unprofessional gesture given the office setting, but nobody seemed to mind.

"I'm so glad you came back to work," he said.

"Thanks for pushing for me with HR," Sumita said. "I didn't really expect you to."

"You were the easiest hire I've ever made," he said. "You'll get back into the swing of things in no time, and I expect great things once you do."

Turning to Sarah, he added, "I probably wouldn't have survived my first five years here without this woman."

Sumita looked away, blushing.

After five minutes of old war stories, which Sarah had the sense to only half-believe, Sarah and Sumita left to go to lunch. Bhavesh was invited but politely declined, as always.

"Meetings," he said. "I'm already late for the managers' meeting, then shiproom, then..."

"Fine," Sarah interrupted. "Go. You're making me really happy I don't have your job."

The cafeteria was a chaotic mess, not at all like the boring place Sumita remembered. There were ten different stations serving ten different things, all mixed up with seating areas and a lot of people milling around. Sarah went straight for the pizza ovens, and Sumita joined her. Pizza was usually a reliable vegetarian option. After about ten minutes, they picked up their fresh-baked individual pizzas, and Sumita followed Sarah out into the courtyard, where Carl and a few other devs had claimed two tables.

The rest of the group was already involved in a conversation about somebody or something Sumita didn't recognize. Sumita sat quietly waiting for her pizza to cool a little before starting in.

"Wow," she said after her first bite. "This is actually pretty good."

"Wait 'til you've been here a few months," a young, round-faced Indian guy said. "It gets old pretty quick, and it's way overpriced."

Sarah glared at him, eyebrow raised. "Seriously, Ravi," she said. "You're not in college anymore. I know they pay you enough that you can afford real food for lunch."

Everyone laughed, including Ravi.

"When I worked here," Sumita said, "the cafeteria food may have been cheap, but it was just awful. I mostly got stuff from the salad bar when I didn't bring my lunch from home."

Every face at the two tables turned toward her in unison, and Sumita was suddenly very aware that she was the oldest person there, and that she had first started work at the company when some of her new coworkers were in diapers. Even more disconcerting was the way they were looking at her, as if she possessed some secret knowledge from the company's legendary early days.

"The burgers weren't bad," Carl said after a moment, when he noticed how uncomfortable Sumita was with all the attention. "At least if you like eating grease with your grease."

"Not really my thing," Sumita said with an appreciative smile for Carl, and then the conversation slowly wound back around to other things.

~~~

After lunch, Sarah walked Sumita upstairs to meet the PMs (Program Managers) and designers. The third floor was open space, a vast expanse of long tables separated into blocks by clusters of meeting rooms or lounge areas filled with couches and whiteboards. Sarah led Sumita back to one corner, where the team's PMs and designers all sat together, almost elbow to elbow.

Sumita noticed that this group was at least somewhat better balanced - almost a third female. As earlier, the faces all blended together, except for one. The pretty girl from the photo on Sarah's desk was standing at a whiteboard, debating with a coworker over a few different sheets of paper. Her face brightened when she saw Sarah coming, and the coworker walked back to his chair.

"Hey, sweetie," she said to Sarah. "This must be Sumita."

Sumita extended her hand. "And you must be Meaghan," she said. "It's nice to meet you. Sarah told me you were an artist. She didn't tell me you work here too."

Meaghan brushed her hands to clear off the whiteboard marker dust and then extended her right hand to Sumita. She held her left hand lightly against her stomach. She was in baggy jeans and a loose white blouse, both a little too large for her frame.

"Art didn't really pay the bills," she said, "so I got an MFA in design and ended up here. It's pretty cool, actually, working on software that like a billion people use every day. That's a lot more than will ever see my paintings."

Sumita nodded her understanding. That was one of the exciting things about coming back to work for her as well.

Glancing toward Sarah, Meaghan added, "And if I hadn't come to work here, I never would have met Sarah."

Sumita blushed a little at the look Sarah and Meaghan exchanged.

"Um, anyway," Sumita said, "it's nice to meet you."

"You too," Meaghan replied.

Sarah introduced Sumita to the rest of the designers and PMs, and then they both went back downstairs to Sumita's office.

"So, ah, the open space," Sumita said to Sarah, closing the door. She got the feeling the subject was a little too sensitive for hallway conversation. "Are we going to be in something like that too?"

"Don't get me started," Sarah replied, and then took a deep breath. "The short answer is no - we'll still have individual offices, at least for the foreseeable future. Long term, who knows?"

Sumita breathed a sigh of relief. "I like being around people," she said, "but that was just way too much. How does Meaghan do it every day?"

"She copes," Sarah replied. "Some of the designers really like it, but Meaghan's more of an introvert, like me. It gets exhausting for her sometimes, being around so many people all day. That's one of the reasons she's thinking about not coming back after . . . never mind."

That was the hint Sumita needed. She didn't know exactly what to say, or even if she should ask at all, so she just blurted it out. "Is Meaghan, um . . .? Are you two . . .?"

Sarah's face twisted up with conflict, knowing what Sumita was asking, and then relaxed. "Yes," she said, smiling nervously. "Meaghan is pregnant. Carl knows, and Meaghan's boss, but we haven't told the rest of the team yet. It's just . . . it's kind of complicated and weird right now."

"Congratulations!" Sumita said. "I'm so happy for you. And I appreciate you trusting me. I certainly won't tell anyone."

"Thanks," Sarah said sheepishly. "I'm going to be a mom, but it doesn't feel real to me, not yet anyway. Meaghan gets the whole experience, the good and the bad, of a new life growing inside her. I just have to hang around and watch. I'm starting to understand what it's like for fathers."

"You'll be great," Sumita said.

Sarah snorted her disbelief and changed the subject. Sumita had been assigned three bugs, and Sarah showed her how to access the bug database, download the crash dumps, and find the symbols and source files. Everything about the setup had changed from what Sumita remembered, but once she got things loaded into the debugger, it all came back to her, like riding a bicycle. A bicycle that sometimes freezes or explodes for no reason, but still a bicycle.

~~~

Over the next few weeks, Sumita settled into her new job. She felt the Rajeev-sized hole in her life as acutely as ever. She didn't expect the hole would ever go away, and she didn't want it to. To make matters worse, Sangita had started her new job, and her schedule meant that Sumita only saw her on the weekends. Sumita's job gave her something that filled up her time, kept her brain occupied, and forced her to be around other people.

Some nights she went home close to tears with frustration because there was so much to learn and nothing ever worked the way it was supposed to. Some nights she went home in triumph after fixing a particularly tough bug. She was quite pleased to note that the ratio between the good nights and the bad shifted favorably after about four weeks, mostly thanks to Sarah's eternal patience.

The big surprise was in finding that, despite the age and cultural differences, she actually liked being around her coworkers, much more than she had in her earlier time at the company. Carl was as patient and friendly as Sarah whenever Sumita went to him for help, and he seemed to know everything about everything. The half dozen of the younger guys that she worked with regularly were all smart and eager to learn, and they were mostly nice people and pleasantly nerdy. The atmosphere reminded her a little of late nights in the lounge next to the computer lab in college.

And then there was Sarah. After just a few days, Sumita felt like she'd known Sarah forever, and Sarah and Meaghan welcomed Sumita into their circle like an old friend. Sarah always sat next to Sumita at lunch and afternoon coffee, and they often had their own side conversation when the guys went off on baseball or superhero movies.

Sarah and Meaghan had a longstanding Wednesday night tradition of take-out dinners out in Redmond, and Meaghan invited Sumita along after she'd been at work a couple of weeks. Sumita demurred at first, not wanting to intrude, but Sarah assured her it was fine. They'd go out, pick up teriyaki or burritos or something to go, bring it back to the office, and watch a TV show in a conference room while they ate. Sarah and Meaghan had just started working their way through Star Trek: The Next Generation, of which Meaghan had only seen a few episodes. Sumita was quite happy to sit through her favorite TV show from college again.

One of those Wednesday nights, Sarah mentioned that they were going to an opening at an art gallery in Seattle the next night, with a couple of Meaghan's friends in the show, and Meaghan asked if Sumita wanted to come along. Sumita hadn't any more interest in modern art than Sarah, and she wouldn't know anyone else there, but some instinct told her to go. At worst, she'd wind up spending the evening talking to Sarah and Meaghan, which was better than sitting at home alone.

~~~

Sumita lucked into a parking spot on Summit Avenue, less than a block from the gallery. She got out to feed the parking kiosk, which nearly swallowed her credit card, and then applied the parking sticker to the passenger window. She didn't really know what to wear to a Cap Hill art gallery, so she'd decided to go with the nicest of her standard work outfits, an indigo knit skirt and matching sweater. She kept her hair loose, a mass of frizzy brown curls cascading down her shoulders.