Blake Schwendiman's Blog and Blook

Chapter 15

Wednesday, 09 March 2022 – 7:10 p.m. MST

In a corner office on the eighth floor of the Q-Morrow central building, Bryan Skaggs sat, transfixed with something on one of his many computer monitors. Bryan was the head of corporate network management and security. His office was disheveled, completely crammed with reference books, trade magazines and general paper junk. Empty fast food bags were strewn about. On the table against the window, Bryan had a five-year-old assembly of empty aluminum cans. He had originally planned to build a replica of Saruman’s tower from Lord of the Rings with the discarded aluminum, but he lost interest.

Bryan turned thirty-one years old last month. He had been working at Q-Morrow for nearly fifteen years and was the self-proclaimed master of all things network related. Most of the employees at Q-Morrow detested him. He was arrogant, condescending and generally unfriendly. Women tended to dislike him more than men, though, since he tended to be flirtatious around the office despite his bad personal habits. He had a tendency to wear the same clothes day after day – mostly out of laziness, partially because he spent many nights a week on the couch in his office. His hair was thin, long and stringy. It was unwashed and unkempt. But Bryan truly was great at his primary job, and that kept him employed.

Bryan leaned forward in his chair. He had recently requisitioned a new ergonomically correct chair to reduce his lower back pain. The staff in human resources joked amongst themselves that a better cure for the back pain would be to simply lose three hundred pounds, but Bryan had nearly carte blanche purchasing power in his department. No one questioned him.

On the screen directly ahead of him, Bryan had several recorded feeds displaying security camera video. In the late hours of the day, after most of the employees had left, he tended to spend an hour or two going through daily security recordings. He liked to find any clips of Valerie and copy them into a growing library of voyeuristic videos he kept. Today he found clips of Valerie walking through various parts of the company. He particularly enjoyed any clips that included Valerie’s legs. Today was a good day.

As Bryan copied the video clips to his personal library, a message flashed on a secondary view. It had been some time since he had been contacted by this particular client. Bryan had developed a nice side business selling proprietary Q-Morrow information. As network manager, he was able to locate just about any information he needed and easily cover his tracks. He had not been caught and was sure that nobody inside the company was even aware of most of the information he had passed along.

Bryan opened the new message. He knew that it would pay well. He read the message. It was an unusual request, but simple, and it did pay well. Bryan verified that had already been credited his normal fifty percent up-front fee, then he responded to the message.

This is a very good day. Three hours of Val’s legs and five figures in the bank, he chuckled to himself.