The I.T. Guys

Phyllis was working late in the top-ranking senator’s office. Some coal executives from Kentucky had brought him a souvenir from his home state. Forty-year-old bourbon evaporated off their tongues like a fresh breeze in celebration of the evisceration of clean air standards.

“Senator, I’d like to thank you for that bill from the bottom of my heart,” the taller executive said as he raised his glass and nodded towards him.

“Hell, you wrote it,” the senator grinned. The smile combined with his wire frame glasses made him look the spitting image of Granny Clampett.

“Yeah, but you have just the right touch.”

Phyllis was startled when two men wearing overalls suddenly charged into her small reception area carrying toolboxes.

“Can I help you gentlemen? The Sergeant at Arms didn’t notify me of any maintenance to be done here.”

“No ma’am. We’re here to see the senator,” the younger-looking one said. “This is a terribly inefficient means of communication,” he added in a whisper to the older one.

“I’m afraid the senator’s office is closed. I’m not sure why the Capitol Police let you through. I can make you an appointment. There was a cancellation so I can fit you in on the twenty-fourth of April. Your name, please?” she pulled up the senator’s appointment book on the screen.

“I’m Major F Lydian,” the older one said.

“Are you a military veteran?” Phyllis asked.

“No, I’m a combination of frequencies from the eighth dimension transcribed as an avatar in three-dimensional spacetime.” Phyllis stared at him blankly.

“Search her memory for terminology that she will recognize that approximates our function,” the younger one suggested. Major F peered deep into her eyes. Phyllis felt her mind go blank for a second, then Major F spoke again.

“We’re the I.T. guys. We need to perform emergency maintenance on some of the processor cores that have become corrupted. If we don’t take action, the entire processor could overheat and fail.”

“What processor?” Phyllis asked. “We don’t have any problems with our computers.”

“What you call ‘The Earth’ is a data processor with seven billion cores,” Major F explained. “You are one of the cores. Due to your proximity to the senator, you have become corrupted too. This will fix that.” He put a core extraction wrench on Phyllis’s head, but it was disguised as a MAGA cap. He pressed a button and her brain disappeared from her skull. It sounded like a gavel when her hollow forehead hit the desk.

The pair went into the senator’s office and removed the turgid reptilian brains from the trio gathered there. Across the globe, I.T. guys removed all of the cores that were no longer serving the system. Brains were removed from fossil fuel executives, pharmaceutical pricers, slumlords, weapons manufacturers, bankers, violent criminals, racists and bigots. They were easily replaced with upgraded green cores and the Earth was able to resume it’s function as a multidimensional navigation system without overheating.