Money day today here at work: the first day my client will see something I've actually written, and foolish as it is, first impressions count. Naturally, I'm trying to cram as much goodness into the time before the demonstration meeting as possible.

Settled into my seat in my client office, I prepare the mystic incantations which will make the software available to demonstrate in its new home. For reasons - not necessarily good ones, but reasons - this process is unusually manual and error prone, and so I have summoned up all my focus.

(My client office is a splendid place to focus - the place was clearly built to allow thinking people the alone-space needed to do great things. Sounds all seem muted and distant; the colors, concordant and serene. It's a rather nice feat of architecture, and I can forget that others exist while I work there.

I'm vaguely self-conscious about doing so, though, since The Awkward Incident. When the lady down the hall dropped by one day, the one with her dreadlocks colored cranberry and her sled-dog eyes, she apparently had to stand near me for many seconds before I noticed I was sharing the planet. I jumped a foot in the air in fright when I did - I start conversations in the most unusual ways. Anyway, I try not to go so far away now while I'm in that space: this morning, however, my focus demanded it, so I snapped my attention back to my task whenever it tried to take a tangent.)

I figure I can perform all the necessary rituals in ten minutes - if I get all the steps right, don't need to backtrack, make sure everything checks out... I know I need my time for other things to make my day work, and so I bear down to make this part meet the minimum. I sit bolt upright with narrowed eyes as I do each odd but explicable thing I need to do.

I come at last to the final piece, the risky piece, the part where without any reasonable safeguards, I tamper with a machine that Cranberry Girl and who knows how many others are relying upon minute to minute. Should be safe, should be, if I do it all correctly. I doublecheck the old files I've chosen, and press Shift-Delete to remove them. (Recycle Bins are for pussies.)

I see the Confirm Delete dialog begin to come up. (Confirmation prompts are for professionals.) My eyes sweep the chosen files one more time.

I hear the ninety-five decibel emergency warning klaxon go off. Three times it whoops, throughout the library-quiet building.

I freeze for three seconds, and then without batting an eye, I press Esc, and stand to leave my office.

They do evacuation drills where I work, mostly on nice mornings it seems. My timing is spectacular.

For those three seconds, though, there was no way you could have convinced me it wasn't my fault.