Page 7 of Technically Abducted
I catch Tev'ra's reflection in one of my monitors, his tall blue form standing awkwardly in the middle of my living room, trying not to touch anything. His pristine uniform looks absurdly out of place among the organized chaos of my apartment. He's holding his hands close to his body, like he's afraid he'll contaminate himself if he makes contact with any surface.
But it works. This chaos works.
"There," I say, hitting enter on the final command. "Rosa, try logging into the system now."
"It's working!" Her voice is almost crying with relief. "Oh Finn, you saved me. If this wasn't fixed before opening... How much do I owe you for the emergency call?"
"Don't worry about it right now, we'll talk details later." I hang up and immediately dial Juniper.
She answers on the first ring. "Finn? Is that you? I've been calling—"
"I know, I'm sorry. Emergency came up. Give me your admin login again and I'll have your flash sale running in ten minutes."
While she explains what she's seeing on her end, I glance back at Tev'ra for the first time. He's standing near my door like he's afraid to touch anything, his golden eyes wide as he takes in my apartment. His perfect posture and glowing skin look completely out of place against my lived-in mess.
"This is your... workspace?" he asks, his voice carefully controlled.
"This is my life," I reply, pulling up Juniper's site. "Welcome to human innovation in action."
The database fix is even simpler than Rosa's—just a server timeout that reset the connection parameters. I have it running in five minutes.
"Juniper, you're live. Flash sale should be processing orders now."
"You're amazing! Thank you so much. I'll send payment right away."
Two down, one to go. I check the third number that called—a new client, probably referred by someone else. I'll call them back once I make sure my existing systems are stable.
Only then do I let myself really look at Tev'ra.
He's examining my setup like it might be contaminated. His gaze keeps moving from the tangled cables to the empty food containers to the complete lack of any personal decorations. No photos, no artwork, nothing that says "Finn Sullivan lives here" beyond the technology.
Because that's all there is. The tech is my life.
"You work from this... environment?" he asks, and there's something like horror in his voice.
"This environment is optimized for my workflow," I say, settling back in my chair. "Everything I need is within arm's reach. Multiple systems running simultaneously, redundant connections, backup power supplies. It's actually a pretty sophisticated setup."
"It appears..." he pauses, clearly struggling to find diplomatic words. "Chaotic."
"Controlled chaos," I correct. "There's a difference. On your ship, everything is so clean and perfect that there's no room for anything unexpected. Here, I can adapt on the fly. See that cable running along the wall? That's a backup ethernet connection in case my wireless goes down. Those pizzaboxes? They're protecting my spare drives from dust while keeping them accessible. Every piece of apparent mess serves a function."
Tev'ra's skin shifts to a different color pattern as he processes this. "You have designed inefficiency to create... efficiency?"
"I've designed flexibility to create resilience," I say. "Your systems work perfectly until they don't. Mine work imperfectly all the time, so when something breaks, I'm already adapted to work around it."
I gesture to a tangle of wires running from my UPS battery backup to various essential equipment. "See this mess? If the power goes out, I've got the most critical systems backed up for four hours. That rat's nest of adapters by the wall? That's so I can hook up any client's legacy hardware without having to order special parts. And that?" I point to what looks like a random pile of circuit boards and components on a side table. "That's my parts bin. I can Frankenstein a solution out of that pile faster than most people can submit a help desk ticket."
Tev'ra approaches the table cautiously, studying the jumble of electronics with evident fascination. His fingers hover over the components without touching them, like he's cataloging each item in his mind.
"There appears to be no organizational system," he observes.
I laugh. "Oh, there is. It's just organized according to how often I need each part, not by some arbitrary classification system. The stuff I grab most often is on top."
My phone rings again. Unknown number.
"Sullivan."
"Is this the computer guy? Someone gave me your number, said you do emergency repairs?"
