Kevin slowly opened his eyes and found himself lying on the floor in a brightly lit but empty room. His senses were struggling to assess the surroundings after what felt like a drug-induced bout of unconsciousness. Or was it?
“Have a nice nap?” a deep voice from nowhere rang out.
Slowly Kevin regained control of his consciousness and became aware of his location. Then his mood changed from confusion to that of annoyance as he realized where he was.
The mysterious office suite underground beneath the hospital where Kevin worked.
“Just what do you think you’re doing?” emanated the voice from a speaker on the wall.
Kevin was confused. “What do you mean?”
“You have a crew working throughout your hospital.”
“Oh yeah,” Kevin smiled. “We’re upgrading our network.”
“You are?” the voice sounded shocked. “Why?”
“Well, we’ve been behind the times for a little too long, so it’s definitely time to upgrade the network to something faster and more reliable.”
“We had an agreement, remember?”
There was a long, uncomfortable silence as Kevin struggled to recall just what that agreement was.
“You agreed to never upgrade your network no matter how tempting the newer technology it may be. Does that ring a bell?”
“Oh, right,” Kevin nodded as he remembered that vaguely worded agreement. “But I hadn’t heard from you for a while, so I figured you didn’t need our network anymore.”
“We’ll always need your network!” The voice shouted. “Our work is neverending and our mission will continue indefinitely. Don’t you realize that this is a matter of national security? Of course we need your 100 megabit networking hardware with Cat3 network cables. Our proprietary protocol only works with your antiquated network and for you to upgrade to newer technologies completely defeats the purpose of our mission. You must prevent the upgrade from taking place, or else.”
“Or else what?” Kevin asked, his voice shaking.
“Or else our agreement will be terminated along with yourself.”
Suddenly there was a loud buzzing sound from the speaker that jolted Kevin awake. After quickly examining his surroundings, he realized he was in his office in the Information Systems department of the hospital where he worked. He had been sleeping at his desk and had a most peculiar dream.
Or was it a dream?
Kevin stood up and opened the door to his office. He could hear the excited chatter of the department’s employees as they clearly looked forward to having a faster, better network. One of the employees saw Kevin and smiled.
“Great news, Kevin!” Robert said. “We’re set to switch the first floor to the new network tonight and if all goes well, we can start dismantling the old network tomorrow. Does that sound good or what?”
Kevin didn’t hear a word of what Robert said. In his mind he was struggling to assess his situation and how to resolve it.
They’ll kill me if we go forward with the new network. How do I stop this?
Or was this all just a dream?
What should I do?
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