Work Text:
Our alarm blares and we are awake, you bound out of bed with incomprehensible enthusiasm. We are quickly dressed and downstairs, eating mom’s cooking, then you are giving out loving goodbyes on our way out the door. The job is mine but you are always there, endless positivity an energy supply better than coffee or even Determination. We reach my workplace quickly. Lately my very thoughts seem to be naught more than coding, and I am sure it will follow me into our dreams. Our gaze meets our reflection in a window. It’s you! It’s us!
Game programming. I had thought myself for a gardener, or perhaps a permanent useless burden on everyone I cared about, and sometimes I am still not sure how I ended up here, other than your endless enablement. You claim it all started the day our brother wanted to play hacker, with a solitaire computer app, of all things. When he opened up the app, the coding had been the most convoluted thing I had ever seen, though of course dear life-wise brother has coding experience under his belt. His matter-of-fact breakdown of what each line and command meant had been captivating. Of course, when his boyfriend has stolen him away for bonding time (read: accidental arson) and he came back to discover I had wrecked the app seeing if I could make it play poker, he just laughed at us. Jerk.
I am sure that would have been the end of it had you not remembered the incident some years later and enrolled us in a high school programming course. You found it all mildly interesting, but politics were always your preferred preoccupation. I, however, was enraptured. You had endless patience for what I thought would be no more than a tolerated hobby, and our sister-in-law was more than happy to tutor me, though she would occasionally forget herself and ramble about topics way over my head, or completely unrelated. And through it all, you were my supporter, enrolling us in classes all through college, taking time for my study, and pushing me to apply my ability to a career.
Now we are here. Months into my job, has it really been so long? Has it really been so short? I am on my first project, a single bug tester on a new superhero game. I am not even working with the code, simply playing sections of the game over and over, looking for something that doesn’t work the way it should. Putting unseen coding through its paces, coding created by a team of developers somewhere in China probably, and then made specific by a team in this company. Bitterness is cloying on my tongue, but I swallow it with practiced ease. This coding has been worked over and reviewed so many times, but this job is important to me. I will do it well.
One day I will perhaps be promoted, one of the developers working copyrighted and protected information into pre-made coding, or even having a hand in its original crafting. That is the type of job not usually found in this country, but we have traveled before. Much of our life was spent in travel, in learning and interacting with many different cultures, finding and forging acceptance for our people. Programming is as much an international job as your own. With Determination, I may reach that point one day.
Until then, I find solace in doing my job well. I repeat this level over and over in every configuration. Eventually I will do the same to the next level, and each one after that. Repetition is mind-numbing, but we have plenty of practice in that sort of thing, do we not? Then something very strange happens. My character, who must swim to reach the next section, simply walks on top of the water, making continuing impossible. I quickly note down what is happening, and how I reached there. Once this information is down, I will attempt to replicate the error, see what leads to this. I have easily passed this section over and over, and I am sure circumventing the bug would be easy for any player, but it would still be aggravating, especially since the last save point was several minutes ago. This minor issue is justification for the existence of my job. Our soul glows warm, and I am filled with Determination.