A Fluffy Tale 2: Warm & Fuzzy Read Free

thought after a week he’d have lost some of his new
boy nerves, but apparently not. “Come on in, we don’t bite. Much.” Daniel’s
eyes widened as if he believed Spen was serious. Good grief.
    “Guys? Meet Daniel, Tony Noble’s new
assistant. He’s going to work with us implementing Cross-Channel.”
    A chorus of “Hi, Daniels” broke out and the
kid went red again, although he waved back and said “Hi” in a reasonably
confident tone. His kem squeaked and jumped down to the floor, having spotted a
bunch of new playmates, and all the office kems, including Myko, rushed over to
begin the traditional love-in. Daniel started to move towards them, but
stopped.
    “Sorry—do you mind Kani doing that?”
    “Can hardly stop him, can we? Don’t worry
about the kems. Come meet everyone. This is Jyoti, my deputy. That’s Devi,
Luke, Amanda, Wendy, and Joshua. I have a couple of people off sick so I want
to wrap this up pretty quickly this morning. I can give you all the
documentation to read and you can come back with any questions. Is that okay?”
    Daniel nodded and took a seat where Spen
indicated. “Right. Not sure what Tony told you?”
    “Um, he said Cross-Channel would make it
easier to keep track of training projects, and trainees to get feedback and
access training materials online. The trainers would build up a dataset of
documents, which any of them could edit and refine, and become a resource for
the entire company. It sounded like a great idea.”
    “It is, but we’re working with a
notoriously IT-illiterate group, not to mention trainees with their own
problems. Did Tony mention our target clients?”
    “A bit. You’re working with the long-term
unemployed?”
    “And people with drug problems,
disabilities, language difficulties—anything and everything. So one,”
Spen checked the points off on his fingers, “we have to get our people trained.
Two, we have to make sure access and security are as we want them. Three, we
have to get the software installed and configured. Four, we have to train the
people training the trainees. And five, we must keep Tony’s ego stroked.”
    That forced a laugh out of Daniel, though
he looked down quickly, long pale eyelashes brushing reddening cheeks. “He did
mention a few times how important this was to him.”
    “Yeah, I bet. But anyway, let me show you a
demo. It’s all accessed in a normal browser. Which one do you prefer?”
    “I don’t really have a preference.”
    Spen frowned. “Okay. Which one do you use
at home on your computer?”
    “Uh.”
    Jyoti caught Spen’s eye and raised her
eyebrows. “You do use the internet at home, don’t you? Which operating system
do you run?”
    “Redbird.”
    “ Redbird? ”
Spen leaned back in his chair. “Are you sure? That’s not something you find on
most home computers.”
    “No, I know. I was using it in my course at
Uni, and I like it. It’s easy to program in.”
    Spen’s brain did a one-eighty. He’d been
thinking this kid was too dumb to even operate a simple web browser, and now he
found he was comfortable programming in a high-level, highly specialised OS
with its own rarefied language and uses. “So the browser...?”
    “Wrote it myself,” Daniel admitted. “I
don’t really use the commercial ones, but I know how to,” he added earnestly.
    “I bet. What did you study at Uni?” Spen
asked, mentally revising his estimate of Daniel’s age again.
    “Electrical engineering, but I dropped out
last year.”
    Something in the set of his jaw as he said
that, warned Spen not to ask why. “Uh, right. Okay, then, you might find some
of what I’m saying a bit simplistic—”
    “No, no...I mean,
you’re writing web applications and interfaces for general users in an open
environment and I haven’t done much of that at all. Just treat me like I’m an
idiot.” He gave a deprecating smile as he said that.
    “I will if I have to,” Spen agreed, but
smiling too. “Okay. Demo.”
    For the