So, I stayed.So, I stayed. Six months after I arrived, I was promoted to V. Another good thing about Uni-Tec was that they promoted by ability alone, not when a slot opened up. On the same day, a new man arrived, assigned to the cubicle directly across the 'corridor' from me. We became friends almost immediately. Kyle was a very likeable guy, ruggedly handsome with short, dark hair, grey-green eyes, a blade-sharp nose, firm chin, broad shoulders, trim waist and hips, and strong thighs and legs. He looked like a walking ad for a health club and/or a tanning salon. I kind of envied him that: although I wasn't ugly, or even just plain (a number of former girlfriends and most of the female programmers on the floor insisted that I was extremely cute), I had never had as nice a body as Kyle. I was rail thin, with strength that refused to show itself. I had a nice body, but Kyle had a perfect body. He had been hired away from an insurance company by much the same kind of deal that had drawn me, and almost a third of the other programmers here, into Uni-Tec. He got a car, and apartment, and a huge salary - Uni-Tec had as clients an auto firm and a real estate agency. He had been relocated, too, but he made friends swiftly and easily. I went almost everywhere with him, and had soon increased my own friend base by several powers (I normally made friends very slowly - Kyle was an exception). Being friends with Kyle helped make my job more fun. We were given space in and on the computer for personal use. Kyle and I began challenging each other to write games. Kyle was very imaginative, but I had an almost instinctive knack for compacting code. So, though Kyle could come up with great game ideas and innovations on old ones, I could make mine run faster and in less memory than he could. Between after-work with Kyle, and our games between official projects, I was happy with programming again. Six months more passed. Kyle made it to V very vast, and soon we were both climbing our way up the V sub-grades to VI and private offices at the same rate. |