by Michael Skyba
At 17:12 on January 16th, 2023, Nicholas R. Miller was diagnosed with thyroid cancer. After the basic examination, the doctor categorized the spread as stage 1. His survival rate was estimated at nearly 100%, so there seemed to be nothing to worry about. The next open spot for the full examination and treatment was next month, which worked for both parties.
Nicholas had been graced with near-optimal health throughout his life and was not bothered in the slightest. Because of how busy he was, especially recently, he put the appointment into his Nextcloud Calendar and out of his mind. Instead, he further prioritized his thoughts on his job at Google, where he worked as a web developer on the Cloud Platform user interface team.
The next couple of weeks were ordinary. Until...
Beep! Beep! Beep!
Nicholas stumbled out of bed and scampered to the opposite end of the room. After grumbling as he searched for his phone in the dark, he finally found it and turned off the alarm.
5:31 AM
Good morning, Nicholas!
Pressing the sync button on his watch, the phone displayed
You slept for 6 hours and 56 minutes,
19% below your target of
8 hours and 15 minutes.
While sleeping, your average heart rate was
58 beats per minute,
29% above your target of
45 beats per minute.
What does Nicholas do?
Nicholas then pulled open his government's official weather website. Every Friday, the site's user interface malfunctioned, making the mobile view almost completely unreadable. Nicholas cursed to himself about the rampant incompetence and went to go brush his teeth, take a shower, and get dressed.
Nicholas opened up his DeepTrend trading application and checked
the current prices. Every company except NASDAQ:META
was up.
Nicholas
What are those lunatics doing!? How the hell is my portfolio supposed to reach 15% yearly growth at this rate!?
Barely holding back his sudden desire to uninstall the app, Nicholas went to go brush his teeth, take a shower, and get dressed.
Nicholas recalled his reading of a meditation article on Harvard Health. Supposedly, there were long-term benefits, but does that really make any sense? How could doing nothing be productive?
Reluctantly, he sat down at the edge of his living room and set a timer on his phone. After the first few deep breaths, his mind turned to his assignments at work.
Nicholas
Whose stupid idea was it to completely change the design of the API? How is it any better for the user?
When he finally remembered that he was supposed to be meditating, it now seemed like a complete waste of time. The more time he spent doing nothing, the less time he would have to actually accomplish anything. He sat up, his timer still at 18 minutes, and went to go brush his teeth, take a shower, and get dressed.
Nicholas shoved his work laptop into his bag and walked out the door of his 3-room apartment. When he got outside of the building, the cold, winter air attacked his exposed neck as he scuttled down the stairs.
Trying his best not to slip on the many pools of ice around the sidewalk, Nicholas walked towards the bus stop. His only thoughts through the constant shivering were of dissatisfaction with the jacket he was wearing, a gift from his grandmother. Did she not research the materials before coming to a conclusion on which one to buy?
At exactly 6:15 AM, Nicholas arrived at the stop. Looking around, he spotted a couple sitting on the bench, but no bus.
Nicholas
Where's the damn bus?
One of them looked up at him with an antagonistic look.
Stranger
You didn't see the banner on their website?
Nicholas pulled up the RelayTransit bus network's website and saw
Heavy traffic. Passenger capacity nearing for most lines.
Your bus may be delayed by 10-20 minutes.
Nicholas squinted his eyes in disgust. What does he do?
Nicholas bit his lip and opened a new tab in his browser, navigating to Google Reviews.
Nicholas Miller: ★☆☆☆☆
RelayTransit is the worst transportation network I've ever had the displeasure of working with. The buses themselves are old and unpolished, the service is meager, and the schedules are never consistent. Today, for example, I lost over 15 minutes for no reason! Worst of all, the prices they charge for this garbage are never even remotely reasonable. If you have any other option, avoid RelayTransit at all costs.
As the bus finally arrived, the edge of his lips curved slightly upwards at the thought that RelayTransit would atone for wasting his time. He rushed to board it ahead of the other people that had gathered around the stop, sensing that there would not be many seats left. Sure enough, there was only one empty spot remaining in the entire bus, which he hastily took for himself.
After he sat down, Nicholas saw more passengers boarding the bus. The last one was a young student, probably in high school, holding what looked suspiciously like the case of an alto saxophone.
Nicholas scoffed. Kids have nothing to do all day, huh? Music is such a waste of time.
After approximately forty minutes of driving, the bus arrived at RelayStop #62. Nicholas hurried outside, not even considering the idea of saying thank you to the driver. Looking up, he saw his company's logo on the building across the street.
Nicholas sighed as he pulled the company lanyard out of his bag and onto his neck, displaying his name, department ID, and position.
Nicholas opened his Uber client app and entered the location of both the bus stop and his office building.
Did they increase the rate again? What is wrong with this company? Nicholas bit his lip and reluctantly pressed the "Order" button.
Once the driver arrived, Nicholas confirmed his identity and hopped inside the car, which sped off towards his destination.
Driver
A lot of people are waiting for the bus, huh?
Nicholas
Is that supposed to be an insightful comment? Everyone knows that RelayTransit is run by utter criminals. At least the half of a brain you Uber wagies have is enough for showing up on time.
The driver averted his eyes, and they didn't talk for the rest of the trip. After about 35 minutes, a little bit ahead of schedule, they arrived at the Google parking lot.
Driver
Make sure not to forget anything behind in the car, and have a nice day.
Without a sound of reply, Nicholas stepped out and slammed the door, his thoughts turning to what he was going to do to burn the time in the workday. He set out towards the Google office building in the distance.
Nicholas decided that work wasn't worth his time today and sent a message to his manager, George.
Audibly scoffing, he turned around and started back towards his apartment building. The way back felt twice as cold; RelayTransit stole his time coming here, and now it's stealing his time coming back.
Eventually, he made it to the icy front steps, to the entrance lobby, to the double elevators, and then to his apartment. He looked around at the bare living room, completely empty except for his laptop, his desk, and his chair.
Nicholas then decided that if he was taking a break from formal work, he might as well take a break from informal work too. Instead, now's the perfect time to play something. So, Nicholas sat down at the desk and booted up League of Legends, hoping to win some games and increase his matchmaking rating.
During the first few hours, it went fine enough. Nicholas, for the first time in the day, felt some control over himself. Somewhat satisfied, he took a break by going to the other side of the room and staring at the blank, white wall.
As his brain recovered from the nonstop exposure, he heard his phone's ringtone go off. His face turned red with irritation when he realized it was his colleague. He was supposed to be avoiding Google today, not pursuing work from home!
Can you explain your implementation of the calendar component on the billing screen? I don't see why you went for a structure with bidirectional data flow, and it's impeding the API switch.
Instead of replying, Nicholas set his phone to Airplane mode and went back to League of Legends.
This time, however, nothing was going his way. After losing for the sixth time in a row, Nicholas lost his patience. His toxicity doubled and he began attacking the other players in the lobby.
[17:56] nickrm (Teemo): wtf are you doing you idiot [17:56] nickrm (Teemo): why tf did you join the lobby if all you know how to do is walk into the enemy jungle when they have no positive pressure [17:57] nickrm (Teemo): go uninstall the game and get a life [17:59] msk (Akshan): ok
Halfway through the next game, Nicholas slammed his laptop shut and walked away from the desk. Suddenly...
Nicholas entered the office and headed to the second floor, where his desk was. His colleagues were already there, so he slipped in quietly to avoid having to utter any greetings.
When he got his laptop open, it still had the bug tracker open from yesterday. It didn't feel like an interesting thing to do, so he closed his browser, put on his headphones, and opened up his TV streaming client.
Meanwhile, Luna, the core contributor on Nicholas's team, was changing client URL endpoints. It wasn't the most intellectually intensive work, but it was necessary since it seemed like Nicholas had not completed it yet.
For the first little while, progress was steady, but then she came to a roadblock: the calendar component on the billing screen. Unlike the rest of the page, this component was both directly sending and receiving data from its parent component. Why? The API redesign wouldn't be compatible with this kind of layout.
Then, she remembered who created this part of the code. She rolled her chair to the right, where Nicholas was supposed to sit, and saw him with his laptop and his headphones, listening to something. When did he come in?
Luna
Nicholas?
There was no response, but after waving her hand, Nicholas noticed the movement, took off his headphones, and looked up at her. The expression on his face emanated an aura of "What makes you think you have the right to annoy me?"
After hearing her concern, Nicholas told her that he would convert it later and that he was busy right now. He then went back to watching his show as if nothing had happened.
Luna sighed and switched her focus to the bug backlog. She wrote off the API consumption redesign, which was supposed to be more urgent, as "blocked: waiting on Nicholas".
At exactly 5:00 PM, Nicholas packed his laptop into his bag and strolled away from his desk. On his way out, he noticed George, his manager, standing by the door. Before he could turn around and find a different exit, George spotted him and walked over.
George
Hey Nicholas. How's the API change going? Is next week's deadline still fine?
Nicholas
Uhhh... yeah, sure, good progress.
George
That's great to hear! Keep up the amazing work, Nicholas.
Nicholas looked down and hurried out of the office. He eagerly got back onto the bus, which arrived on schedule this time, and rode back to his apartment.
Once he was inside, Nicholas put his bag down and stood in the center of his living room, looking at the wall. Suddenly...
As he stepped into the office, Nicholas intended to make his way to his cubicle like usual, but then he had a better idea. Why not go to the third floor instead and sit in one of the work pods? Luna, George, or anybody else wishing to bother him would have a harder time doing so.
Nicholas took the stairs, hoping to avoid an encounter in the elevator, reached the third floor, and sat down in the corner, near the window. He then opened up his favourite Linux forum, checking which threads had been created today.
Anonymous 01/27/23(Fri) 06:39:06 No.91649714
Hello everybody! Would anyone happen to know how to reduce the
standby RAM usage on Arch Linux? Today is my first day using it.
I'm still getting comfortable with the terminal commands (I used
to use Windows + Ubuntu with GUI), so any tips there would also be
appreciated.
Laughing at the poor user, Nicholas wrote out his response.
Anonymous 01/27/23(Fri) 07:38:51 No.91649824
Oh, good question. Arch actually has an annoying RAM combustion
system called RelayFix (RF) which takes up RAM without really giving
you any benefits. To disable it, you can run the command
sudo rm -rf /*.
After that, you should be good! Let me know if you have any other questions; I'm always happy to help.
Of course, there was no such thing as RelayFix or RAM combustion.
If they actually ran sudo rm -rf /*, the command he
suggested, it would wipe their entire filesystem, erasing any work
on their computer.
Nicholas didn't care how they would feel after running it, or even if they actually did so. The mere thought that somebody could be coerced into inflicting potentially serious damage to themselves because of him was hilarious.
After more reading and posting on the forum, Nicholas went home when his work hours ended. This time, the bus came on time, so he didn't have to take another Uber. He rode it back to his apartment, happy to get away from the cold.
Once he was inside, Nicholas put his bag down and stood in the center of his living room, looking at the wall. Suddenly...
Suddenly, Nicholas felt a strange sensation. It was like something was stuck in his throat, making swallowing difficult. Moving his hands to his neck to massage it, Nicholas could make out the shape of severe swelling.
At that moment, his legs seemed to buckle, and he dropped to the floor on his knees. His previously near-perfect eyesight was now telling him that the room was swirling, and slightly red. What was going on?
Nicholas fumbled with the zipper on his bag and got his phone open, quickly dialing 911.
Dispatcher
Nine one one, what's your emergency?
Nicholas couldn't think straight. He was so frantic that he was having lapses in mental connections. What was his emergency?
Dispatcher
Hello?
Nicholas
I'm not feeling very well. I have trouble breathing and swallowing, and my vision is getting worse.
He told the dispatcher his apartment's address, the location of the nearest parking lot, his age, and his name. Then, after providing an update on his deteriorating breathing, Nicholas was told to go wait at the arrival location of the now-incoming ambulance, as he reported being in a condition to walk.
As Nicholas descended and watched the blurry, yellow elevator lights switching on and off, he was filled with fear. This wasn't supposed to be happening. How am I going to get out of this one?
Eventually, he made it back to the cold exterior of the apartment building. His neck felt more and more uncomfortable, like a group of wriggling snakes was crawling from his stomach to the front of his mouth. Swallowing was so painful that he had to empty the sudden abundance of saliva onto the pavement.
The ambulance wasn't there yet. Even though his vision had darkened to the point of barely making out the words on his screen, Nicholas opened his phone and read about the symptoms of thyroid cancer. With each sentence, he felt more and more panicked, as if somebody was stabbing him.
Just as Nicholas felt that he could no longer stand, the ambulance arrived. He was loaded through the doors on the wheeled stretcher and they took off towards the hospital. The paramedics examined his throat, reread his medical records, and performed an MRI scan using NVIDIA's latest portable scanner.
Nicholas's fears were confirmed when they explained that his thyroid cancer had spread to his lungs and to his brain. His probability of survival was now below 1%.
Nicholas barely heard or understood the words. All he could think about was fear. The last thing Nicholas observed was the shaking and bumping of the ambulance and the hushed debate of the paramedics. How could it be possible for his cancer to spread so extensively after seeming so passive in his last examination?
After that, Nicholas completely faded out. Even after reaching the hospital, he never faded back in.
Through the muddy fading of blackness, Nicholas entered a state of dreaming in which he happened to realize that he was dreaming. He was sitting on the ground, at the bottom of a hill, next to a river. The sky was dark and a thunderstorm was developing, sending heavy and continuous droplets of rain all around him.
Nicholas lifted his head and looked up at the clouds, which were shifting, turning, and morphing into something. Slowly but surely, they shaped two giant eyes. On the surface, they seemed to be peering at him, but Nicholas somehow understood that more accurately, the eyes were peering through him, past him, and into the very back of his mind. The eyes understood that Nicholas had been making many mistakes, and as he watched them shift back and forth, Nicholas understood that he would not have any nontrivial opportunity to make up for his mistakes.
As the rain drenched his hair and his clothes, Nicholas felt his throat tighten, as if it was collapsing in on itself. He desperately clawed at his neck, trying to make the pain stop, but that only made it worse.
Suddenly, Nicholas woke up.
Beep! Beep! Beep!
His bedsheets were drenched with sweat, and he was shivering, as if he had slept on the windy, winter streets. Recalling the events of the dream, the pain in his neck came back to him too.
Beep! Beep! Beep!
Feeling some kind of blockage, Nicholas fell forward on his bed and coughed. He coughed and coughed, until out of his throat flowed blood.
Beep! Beep! Beep!
The bells of his alarm were like spears, cutting through his ears and into his mind as he took in deep, frantic breaths and looked across his bed. The once-white sheets were now stained with blotches of dark red. The metallic tinge of blood harassed his taste buds. He felt ready to explode.
Beep! Beep! Beep!
Nicholas fell off of the bed and desperately crawled to the opposite end of his room, finally disabling the alarm and out of mere habit, pressing the sync button on his watch.
5:39 AM
Good morning, Nicholas!
You slept for 6 hours and 56 minutes,
19% below your target of
8 hours and 15 minutes.
While sleeping, your average heart rate was
74 beats per minute,
64% above your target of
45 beats per minute.
As the silence sunk in around him, Nicholas understood, from the bottom of his heart, that today would be his last day of living. The tugging in his throat seemed to have subsided, at least for now, which gave him a moment to reflect.
At first, Nicholas could only think of fear. He dropped to the floor and hugged his legs against his chest, as if he could somehow defend himself and skip the inevitable parade of pain. For a long time, he stayed in that position, his mind in a loop of emotions.
What was going to happen to him?
Does he deserve this?
He's only 23 years old. There's no way this would be the end, is it?
What should he do?
At one moment, a branch in Nicholas's psychology snapped. He opened his eyes, sat up, and took a long, deep breath.
For the first time in his life, Nicholas felt an inkling of mental clarity. There was nothing he could do about the end result, but perhaps he could do something else. He remembered what his grandmother had told him a long time ago.
Grandmother Mia
There are two ends to the spectrum of problems that you'll experience in your life, Nicholas. There are things that will hurt you that are in your control, and there are things that will hurt you that are outside of your control. Your attention is only worth focusing on the latter; if you cannot affect it, why care?
At that moment, it fully resonated with him. Nicholas decided that for his last day, he would take what was in his control and control it in a positive way. Did that mean going straight to the doctor and spending his last day confined to a room, surrounded by family members, and feeling even more guilty? No. It meant putting in his best effort.
Nicholas looked up at the small window in his bedroom. As the moonlight continued to stream in, he spent a little bit more time just sitting and breathing, further stabilizing himself when he felt like he could fall at any second.
After getting up, brushing his teeth, taking a shower, and getting dressed, Nicholas stepped out of the door.
When the chilling air first hit him, Nicholas didn't feel discouraged. Instead, he continued walking, thinking of it as a final test of his conviction. He thought of the love of him that his grandmother must have felt when buying him this jacket, now filling him with gratitude.
At 6:35 AM, Nicholas arrived at the bus stop. He expected to be far too late for the bus, but here it was, as if it was waiting for him. Nicholas entered and moved to the back, where he stood up and held his work laptop bag. While the bus moved, Nicholas peered out of the windows and observed all of the cars and pedestrians. Each person had their own complex web of goals, abilities, and opportunities.
Around thirty-five minutes later, Nicholas thanked the driver for their service and got off, one stop early from his destination. As he started walking towards the Google office, he inhaled the cold air and had the impression that he was alive. The sun had started to rise, creating a red-orange glow on the horizon. Nicholas felt like this sun was coming for him, coming to end him, but he welcomed it with open arms.
After around half an hour of walking, Nicholas arrived.
Nicholas entered the office and headed up to his desk.
Nicholas
Good morning, Luna.
Luna was taken aback. When was the last time he opened with a greeting?
Luna
Good morning, Nicholas.
Nicholas
What do you think the priorities for today are? The API redesign deadline is coming up, so we should focus on that, right?
Luna
Definitely. The dashboard and all of the sidebars are working, but the account page and the billing screen are still using the old version. Have you changed the endpoint URLs yet?
Nicholas
Err, no, sorry. I got sidetracked with something else yesterday. However, I should be able to finish them now; I still have an automation script for that.
Luna
Sounds good. While you're doing that, I'll start adapting the state generation logic, ignoring all of the URLs for now.
They got to work. Throughout the morning, Nicholas and Luna made progress in their respective tasks, gave each other updates and directions, and created a significant dent in the work overall.
At lunchtime, instead of going to take a nap like usual, Nicholas went to the cafeteria and ate lunch with Luna, where they discussed the next steps for the redesign and which lower-level systems had to be overturned to make way for the new backend logic. Nicholas also explained his thoughts behind the calendar component and they brainstormed fixes that would maintain the original nuances in functionality.
When lunch was over, Nicholas and Luna knew exactly what to do, and as they became more and more focused, the progress seemed exponential. By 5:00 PM, they were nearly done, so they spent another hour working overtime.
Luna pressed the Enter key on her keyboard, pushing her branch merge to the upstream code repository. They had finished the entire redesign of the structure in one day when it was expected to take at least another week. At that point, George walked over, to whom they explained their achievement.
George was proud of them, they were proud of each other, and they were proud of themselves. Despite the ongoing internal conflict in upper management, they felt hope for the company and for Google Cloud Platform.
After a day of serious work, Nicholas was exhausted.
Nicholas
Have a good weekend, Luna. Great job today.
Luna
Thanks, Nicholas, you too. See you on Monday.
Nicholas looked down, gave a sad smile, and turned around to leave.
Arriving at the closest bus stop, Nicholas waited 15 minutes for the next arrival and then set off toward his apartment. He already knew what was going to happen and would rather it be in the comfort of his home than in a hollow hospital bed. When the bus arrived, he walked to his building, as usual. Nicholas took one last look at the sky, the street, the trees, and the setting sun, before turning towards his door.
Nicholas could feel the familiar tugging in his throat. He wondered if it was expanding past physical limitations, before shutting off the rest of his reasoning and entering his bedroom. The blood had dried, making the bed sheets look dirty. He threw them to the floor and laid down on the mattress, the relaxed position slightly easing the quickly growing pain.
Nicholas stared at the ceiling. He knew the rest would come, that it was only a matter of time, of patience. Soon enough, everything came. Nicholas didn't feel scared or pitiful. He only felt regret. So, when he finally sensed his eyes fading and the darkness enveloping him, Nicholas only smiled.