Harod turned, surprised not by a sudden sound in the humming semi-darkness of the network closet, but rather by the odd absence of sound. Kneeling in front of a quiescent two unit rack mounted server, he placed his hands on the top of the metal box. Like Jesus healing a leper, he thought whimsically. The server's hard drive picked that moment to start spinning. Harod blinked thoughtfully and rising, padded off down the row, pulling a yellow scrap of post-it note out of his shirt pocket. The sound of Harod's footsteps didn't impinge above the whirring of fans and clucking of hard drives because he was wearing slippers. Shivering a bit in the air conditioned room, he peered myopically at his own handwriting scrawled on the paper.

"Let's see, D-13-C means this row, thirteenth rack, third server down." The lack of LEDs did indeed indicate that the indicated server was down. Harod emitted a wry chuckle at this almost involuntary witticism. After some preliminary percussive maintenance consisting of pushing the power button and whacking the side of the server with his open palm, which the recalcitrant box endured stolidly, he uncased his belt mounted multi-tool and tilted a screw driver attachment up out of the myriad of other tool ends.
"Time to earn my pay," he muttered with a grimace. Smoothing back the stray hairs attempting to escape his bungied pony tail, he bent to begin the delicate task of disentangling the spaghetti of cabling that inevitably happens when servers are left in place for any length of time. The server unplugged from power, and Ethernet he started unscrewing one of the mount points. Harod started at a scuttling sound from behind him. Whirling, he held his screwdriver enabled multi-tool out in front of him, peering fearfully this way and that in the gloom. Regretting the fact that his pocket flashlight remained on its recharge bay at his desk one floor up, he waffled for a moment about whether he should check investigate the sound directly or turn on the master light switch outside the room.

"Screw it, it's probably a rat from the sewer."

There was a sparking, sizzling sound that made Harod feel like a spitting cat. All the hair on his body spontaneously lifted up from his skin. Thinking that this particular sound could only herald an electrical fire, Harod ran towards the door, absently stuffing the multi-tool in a copious thigh pocket. Waving his access card at the scanner and shouldering the heavy door open, he spun in place and grabbed a hold of the fire extinguisher mounted conveniently on the wall next to the door. A strong yank and twist and he was back inside the room before the door could finish closing.

He came to an abrupt stop upon re-entering the server room, his eyes scanning blurrily along the rows of humming machinery. "Duh," he uttered and set down the fire extinguisher. He pulled a slim case out of his pocket, extracted the eyeglasses from within it and donned them. "Better." Leaning, he picked up the fire extinguisher and noted that it was current on inspection. "OK." A bright actinic flash from the periphery of his vision cause his eyes to snap up from reading the metal tag on the red cylinder clutched under his arm.

Instead of the electrical fire that he was expecting, he saw a glowing oval shimmering about a foot above the floor, its edges seeming to blend into the background like something produced in a computerized image manipulation program. The surface was iridescent and swirling with a hint of mathematically generated pattern in it. Something looking like a large insect popped out of the oval almost immediately followed by another like apparition. The two winged creatures zoomed about the room in what looked like a furious dogfight. 

It was impossible to tell which one was the first or second to appear, but one of them noticed Harod and sped up to him. It shrilly cried, “Help me!” and was immediately tackled by the other, sending them both tumbling to the floor. Harod compulsively turned the nozzle of the fire extinguisher on the embattled pair and triggered a gush of foam. The intercession seemed to have no impact other than to coat a bit of the floor and the two adversaries in the output of the red cylinder still clutched under Harod’s arm. Another effect appeared almost immediately. One of the little creatures appear to decide that its argument with the other had just now been extended.

Issuing a thin war cry, it wobbled airborne and rushed towards Harod, mayhem no doubt upon its mind. As it grew larger in Harod vision, he noticed that it wasn’t an insect after all but rather it appear to be a little man with insect wings and a wicked looking barbed spear. Harod swung the fire extinguisher up to block the incoming missile of tiny mayhem and heard a thump as it impacted the steel cylinder. The little winged man dropped the floor and was promptly dispatched by its nemesis who had been watching intently. Harod watched in horror as the other little man thing repeatedly stabbed the stunned creature repeatedly with the spear it had liberated from the first one.

“Um, I think it’s dead,” he admonished. Both of the winged creatures were clothed in what appeared to be Victorian ball finery, albeit on a very small scale. The surviving apparition paused in its gory work and piped, “better safe than sorry.” Giving it one final vicious poke with the spear, the creature swept into a credible bow and voiced, “I am in your debt, noble monster. Yon rogue would have slain me as I did him.”

The silence grew tangible and Harod belatedly realized that some sort of response was expected. “Well, I.. uh,” he stammered.

The patiently waiting winged one interrupted, “You needn’t be modest. Go on, name your reward.”

Harod didn’t know what to think. I’m asleep at my desk, he thought. This is not happening. On a whim, he decided to play along, reasoning that since this was his dream, he might as well play along. “Well, I’d like to be able to fix things easier, for one.”

“Done.” The little guy seemed to be waiting for some further request.

Harod pondered his current state of amorous lack. Despite good hygiene and having what he thought were intriguing conversation topics (website interface design and the folly of artificial intelligence research), the ladies seemed to lose interest in him after the first few minutes. In some cases, they even refused a friendly offer of a free drink.

“And, ah, I’d like to be irresistible to women.”

“Very well.” With that, the little man flew back into the portal, leaving the gruesome remains of combat behind.

“Wait, I…” Harod watched as the oval shimmered out of existence, leaving only a bank of servers with flashing LEDs in its wake. Harold looked down towards the corpse of the second creature in time to see a wisp of smoke and the substance of the creature rapidly melting into insubstantiality.

Harod carefully put down the fire extinguisher, removed his glasses and numbly rubbed his eyes for few moments. He then got down on hands and knees and vainly tried to find the exactly spot on the tiles where the end of the battle had taken place. The foam had by this time collapsed into powdery residue and there was no sign left of the brief scuffle. Bewildered, he sat down stared at nothing, trying to find some mental equilibrium. I don’t think I can tell anyone what just happened, he thought. Maybe I imagined it. I am rather tired. He crossed his arms on his knees and put his head down with his eyes closed. The sounds of the server fans and hard drives seemed to swell and Harod thought he could almost hear them muttering in the dark to each other. For a time he rested there, taking comfort from the familiar sounds in the cool darkness. 

Raising his head, he remembered that he had a server down that still needed attention. He stood up, returned the fire extinguisher to its case on the wall outside the server room, and hit the bathroom in the hallway for some paper towels to clean up the mess from his fire extinguisher shot. Humming to himself as he cleaned the floor, it seemed to him that the tenor of server sounds changed slightly almost as if in response to his humming. Ruefully shaking his head, he vowed to make some coffee before he got into the guts of the machine he was about to take upstairs. 

Soiled paper towels disposed of and dead server clutched awkwardly under his arm, he returned to his desk on the second floor. Plunking expired machine down, he went to the coffee machine and pushed the appropriate buttons for a small coffee. The machine obediently whirred into life, grinding beans from the reservoir on top of it and making chunking noises in its bowels. Harod grabbed for a paper cup and got it under the spigot just in time to catch the stream of hot black liquid issuing from it. Watching the coffee gush of coffee, he reflected on the contrast between it and the flow of fire extinguisher flood from earlier. With a shudder, he recalled the murder and realized that his coffee was ready.

Shaking off the grim imagining, he leavened the coffee with a liberal helping of powdered creamer and sugar and went back to his desk. Rapidly removing the mount and case screws, he popped the case and gazed into the guts of the machine. Harod listed in his mind the possible sources of the problem. It could be a shot power supply, bad mainboard or a shorted cable, he thought. Easiest first, I guess. Pulling the flashlight off the charger, he pointed it into the open metal cavity before him. He immediately saw something very wrong. The wires leading from the power supply to the mainboard were neatly severed. Harod had never seen such a thing. Frayed cables, burnt cables, loose cables, yes. Cut cables? No way. 

“I gotta get a picture of this,” he muttered under his breath. Opening up his filing cabinet, he rummaged around in the junk drawer for a moment. Finally extracting a battered digital camera, he powered it on and snapped a picture of the wires. Dropping the camera back in the drawer, he fixed the cables with a soldering iron and some electrical tape. That’ll hold it, he thought. He paused with the soldering iron in his hand. I didn’t plug this in, he mused. Apparently he had just defied physics by melting metal no heat.

He closed the case and noting that his shift was almost over, took the server down to its placed in the server room and screwed it into place. The machine powered on just fine. He went to the master KVM connected console in the front of the room and watched the power on self test, BIOS load, and OS load scroll up the screen. A song went fleetingly through his mind as he watched. He sang under his breath,” I’m not crazy, you’re the one who’s crazy…”

Harod went back to his desk upstairs and got ready to leave. He logged his hours, wrote a short handoff memo and surfed livejournal, awaiting the shift change. The door made the low electronic unlocking noise that signaled someone swiping their badge in front of the door sensor. His coworker, Tom, clumped in and sat down. They made brief eye contact, Harod waved, Tom grunted something vaguely like “morning”. Harod wrapped himself in his leather duster and sailed out the door, tired and bemused by the events of the night.

The front door of the building closing behind him, the morning sun smiting his eyes, Harod winced and swapped his glasses for a pair of battered five dollar sunglasses from his coat. Not for the first time, Harod congratulated himself for scoring the apartment so close to work. If I had a car, I could live anywhere I like, he thought, except then I’d have to deal with traffic and parking.

As he approached the brick and mortar 1920s apartment building, Harod noticed a movement in a third floor window like a curtain being hurriedly twitched into place. He unlocked the massive front door and stepped inside. The smell of waxed linoleum and generations of residents enfolded him. The steps creaked familiarly as he trudged up them toward his second floor flat.

As he reached the top of the first flight of stairs, Mrs. Crenshaw, the resident manager, eased her considerable bulk down the stairs toward him. “Oh, Mister Jones, I wonder if you could help me with my AOL,” she wheezed. The tired smells of ancient cohabitation grudgingly receded under the onslaught of entirely too much essence of begonia perfume wafting from the overweight and middle-aged woman tottering forward.

Harod briefly entertained the temptation to lecture her on the soul sucking morass that America Online represented, but acceded to the reality confronting him in the representation of a middle American luddite before him. She batted her eyelids at him in a bovine fashion, perhaps intending it to be a coquettish affectation.

Harod’s mind reeled in horror from the intrepid idea that suddenly this creature fancied him.