DAR LEANED AGAINST the console, bracing her elbows on the surface and folding her hands together as she studied the screen. She was aware, in a disconnected way, that there were a lot of people watching her, but her attention was absorbed by the thin tracing lines and flickering statistics in front of her.

The barebones diagram she was studying was a scaled down version of what she was used to looking at in her office, with fewer colors and sketchier details. It was enough, though, for her to see the imbalances caused by the outages and the need to route around them.

Any individual outage was not a problem. Dar had built more than enough redundancy into her design to cope with that. In fact, multiple outages were usually not a problem either. But the combination of multiple outages of their own, and the suddenly heavy demand from everyone trying to route around outages themselves was giving her usually robust network fits.

Giving Dar fits. "Damn it." She put her hands back on the keyboard and rattled off a few commands. "We need to get those damn nodes reconnected north of the city," she muttered. "I've got everything coming south and it's crunching the hell out of us."

"Ma'am?" One of the console techs timidly leaned closer. "Are you talking to us, or just to you?"

Dar glanced up, watching everyone quickly pretend to look at something else. "Well." She drummed her fingers. "I was talking to myself, but if you've got any good ideas cough them up." She waited, but the crowd remained respectfully silent. "C'mon, people. I don't bite."

Don came forward, with an air of martyred bravery. "Well, uh, ma'am--"

"Whoa." Dar held her hand up. "First of all, I'm going to be around for a while. Stop the ma'am crap and call me by my name, please."

Don's eyes widened, and his nostrils flared visibly. "Uh," he said. "Okay, Ms. Roberts. If you say so."

Dar gave him a wry look.

"Anyway." Don glanced at the big board behind them. "Um, what exactly are you doing? It's hard for us to make suggestions when we don't really have a clue what's going on."

Everyone held their breath when he finished, but Dar merely chuckled. "Good point," she agreed, settling back in her chair. "The network is imbalanced because of the outages. We're pulling too much, especially on the commercial side." She pointed at the big board. "That's why all the lines are purple tending to red, instead of blue like they usually are."

Heads swung toward the board, then back to her. "That makes sense," one of the techs said. "But what can we do about it?"

"I think a lot of people are using more data bandwidth than usual too," one of the female techs added. "Sending emails, and listening to the internet with all that streaming video going on."

"Agreed," Dar said. "Same thing we're doing, since some of the traffic is us on the big bridge," she said. "That global meeting place isn't a text screen and a bunch of black and white pixels."

"Wow," the woman said. "I never even thought of that."

"Can we ask our customers not to do that?" Don spoke up. "How can we? This is something where people really need to communicate with each other, like what we're doing. That global meeting is an amazing thing."

Dar folded her hands. "Very true. So no, we really can't ask them not to reach out to each other. So that's why I'm rooting around in the bits and bytes to see if there's anything I can do to optimize what's going through." She went back to the screen and reviewed the results of her last command. "Let's see--"

She focused on the black screen again, studying the flows. Then a memory surfaced, and she cursed to herself, flipping through parts of the configuration, searching through the code with rapid, impatient flicks of her mouse.

"Boy it's really getting stuffed," Don remarked. "I bet we get calls any minute."

"You'd think folks would just remember what's going on," the female tech on Dar's other side muttered.

Ah. Dar found what she was looking for. "I'm such a jerk sometimes."

"Ma'am?" Don turned and looked at her.

Dar sniffed and rattled her keyboard, muttering under her breath.

"Air Hub, are you picking up the feed from the ATC? They're on the line here saying you're dropping it." Kerry's voice crackled over the speakers. "And, LA Earthstation, stand by, I managed another 24 transponder channels for you from Hughes."

"Miami exec, this is LA Earth. We're standing by. We've got half dozen requests for upgrades from the government side."

"Miami exec, this is the Air Hub. Stand by please we're checking."

"LA Earth, this is Newark Earth, save a few for us, please. We have two dozen to your half," a harried voice answered. "Miami exec, any extra for us?"

Kerry's voice sounded apologetic. "Newark, we're trying. They're absolutely saturated The only reason we got west coast space is the airlines are moving again and the requests from Vancouver have slacked off."

"Miami exec, understood. Also be advised we were asked about our power trucks. The City wanted to know where we got them from. I told them they would need to talk to you."

Dar kept typing, one ear twitching at the flow of complaints. She could hear the strain starting again in her partner's voice, and resolved to attend to that critical issue next.

"Miami exec, this is Roosevelt Island," a new voice interrupted. "I have a cross-connect request here for new service? They said it was priority."

"Roosevelt, it is. Please provide them service at my request," Kerry answered. "We've provisioned a ten mg slice for them. It's data services for AT&T. Tunnel them through to our common carrier point in Philly, please. They're expecting it."

Dar looked up at the big board, her eyes lifting a little.

"Okay, ma'am, will do."

Dar wrenched her attention back to the screen, a set of changes already inputted, waiting for her confirmation. She hesitated then saved the changes without executing, and stood up. "Be right back."

"THEY THOUGHT I was crazy. " Nan set a large cardboard box down on the desk Kerry was using, as its occupant was retrieving another cup of tea. "They were saying what are you going to play with it--is it for a LAN party? Can you tell us where?"

Kerry chuckled as she returned, dropping back into her chair and rocking her head back and forth to loosen the tightening muscles in her neck. She glanced at her screen, then shifted her attention to the box and watched as it was opened releasing the scent of new computer equipment into the air.

Plastic off gassing mostly, but also a hint of the chemicals inside. As distinctive as a new car, and occasionally as expensive. "Bet they did," Kerry said. "If they only knew."

"If only," Nan agreed. "I told them I was buying it for my brother for his birthday," she admitted. "They wanted me to adopt them."

Kerry chuckled. "Nerds."

"They were glad for the sale." Nan opened the Styrofoam bag the machine was carefully encased in and slid it free, lifting it with both hands and placing it on the desk. "I was the only one in there."

Kerry folded her hands together and peered at the laptop. "Sexy," she said. "I think she'll like it."

"Like what?" a voice at the door surprised both of them.

Kerry looked across the room to see Dar entering, a cup in her hand. "Hey boss," she said. "How's it going?"

"It's going." Dar's nose twitched and she made a beeline for the desk as she spotted the boxes. "What do we have here?"

Nan's eyes widened and she stepped back from the desk, picking up the boxes and wrapping and getting hastily out of the way.

"Hm. I like the color." Dar hitched one knee up and took a seat on the desk, handing her cup over to Kerry as she reached over to take hold of the laptop. "Drink that. You're froggy again." She picked up the laptop with one hand and set it on her thigh, opening the latch and lifting the screen.

"Thanks." Kerry accepted the cup. "I've been drinking tea but it's not helping." She sipped the cold chocolate milk as she watched her partner. Then she shook her head a little, and glanced up at Nan. "Sorry. My manners went south there for a minute. Nan, this is Dar Roberts."

Nan cleared her throat. "Hello."

"Nan's been nice enough to run around for us the past two days. She went out to get your new toy, hon." Kerry unobtrusively gave her partner a nudge, distracting her from an apparently fascinating encounter with the laptop's BIOS.

Dar's eyes lifted and met the woman's. "We've spoken on the phone," she said after a moment. "You do the inventory recaps."

Nan blinked. "Um--yes, yes I do. Nice to meet you in person finally," she stammered a little. "I hope the machine's okay. It's pretty much the best they had."

Dar bent her head to study the machine's screen briefly. "I think it'll be fine," she said. "Good choice," she added, with a smile. "Thanks for doing my shopping for me. "

Nan smiled back. "Anytime."

"Okay." Dar got up and circled the desk, dropping to her knees and peering under it. "Got a cable, Ker?"

"Oh, wait, hang on-- I can do that--" Nan scrambled forward, hauling up as Kerry lifted her hand and waved her back. "But--"

Dar's head popped up over the desk's surface, and her eyebrows hiked. "What?" She rummaged in Kerry's briefcase and disappeared again, with a grunt. "I hate these kinds of jacks. What moron had them installed here?"

Kerry scooted out of her way a bit, and leaned on the top of the desk. "Miami ops, this is Miami exec. How are those transfers coming?"

"Miami exec, this is Houston Ops," another voice broke in. "We have a bulk backup request from Cheyenne Mountain to secure storage, and a database parse. "