Chuck vs. the Load Balancer – Chapter 2
Author's Note: All right, I know that I said this story would take some time in posting, but this was ridiculous. First my computer died and took all of my outlines and two thirds of this chapter with it. Then I was on vacation with no access to my new computer. That said, I hope that those of you waiting for the next chapter of this story find it to be worth the wait.
I am not making any money on this story – it is being done for fun on my part and to explore a what-if question that I have been kicking around in my brain.
All of that said, please enjoy!
A thought about load balancers:
By balancing application requests across multiple servers, a load balancer reduces individual server load and prevents any one application server from becoming a single point of failure, thus improving overall application availability and responsiveness.
- From the Citrix website about load balancing
Lunch September 18
Morgan yawned. "Man, I am tired…", he thought as he yawned a second time.
The night before he and his best friend, one Charles Irving Bartowski – or Chuck to his friends, had spent the night playing Duck Hunt on an old Super Nintendo system and binged on pizza and grape soda. During the game and in between bites of cheap pizza and even cheaper soda, they had discussed various topics. Morgan smiled as he again considered the debate on whether the PlayStation or Xbox were the better gaming system – in Morgan's mind it really didn't matter, just get both and the debate was solved. The only reason they had stopped the Nerd Bacchanalia was Ellie, Chuck's older sister and former object of Morgan's unrequited affections, had been woken and in a monumental fury had told them both to stop and go to bed.
"Ahh… good times", Morgan grinned as he walked past a Buy More customer trying to get his attention. Morgan of course just ignored the woman who was hoping to get his advice on a washer / drier set.
"Sorry Ma'am, I'm not with the appliance group. You need to go talk to Fernando over there," Morgan impatiently directed the somewhat frantic and completely pesky woman.
Morgan's eye scanned the store starting at the white ramparts of the in-store bastion to all things Nerd: the Nerd Herd desk. It was Chuck usual location, however, the only Nerd Herder manning the desk was Anna Wu, who smiled and waved at Morgan. He grimaced back at her, and continued to his scan of the store.
Finally, Morgan's search came to rest on the front doors of the store – his eyes sliding into place just in time to see Lou Palone entering with a large bag from her sandwich shop. Lou saw Morgan, and smiling made her way over to him.
"Hiya Morgan, have you seen Chuck?"
Morgan smiled at the petite brunette. Her big brown eyes seemed to brighten for some reason that caused him to mentally shrug.
"Oh hey Lou, I was just trying to figure out where our birthday boy has disappeared to myself."
Lou smiled back at Morgan, "Well then let's go Chuck hunting. I brought lunch for the three of us."
Lou laughed at the joy that shone through Morgan's brown eyes (that she had also noticed were flecked with gold colors – almost like he was a lump of gold she had fished out of a river). She always adored the way he always got excited when she brought the three of them lunch.
Lou, Morgan, and Chuck had been friends, well actually Lou had been included with the duo since Chuck and Morgan had initially walked into her sandwich shop three years ago when she opened it in the strip mall that contained the Buy More and Large Mart. She had just broken up with her boyfriend for a second time and the friendly bantering between Chuck and Morgan had intrigued her. Lou had been pulled like a moth to a flame by the open friendliness and acceptance the two young men had shown her.
She had initially been somewhat attracted to Chuck, but between the rather extreme height difference and the often distracted look he seemed to have when he thought no one was looking Lou rethought things. Now Morgan, well, that was a different story. Lou had fallen for the short bearded man as they grew closer as friends. She knew he still had some ways to grow and mature, but his unwavering loyalty to his close friends and family, and his ability to just accept her into that circle of friends had captured her heart immediately. Lou could wait though until Morgan got his act together, though in the last year that seemed to be closer and closer now. As the trio's friendship deepened and grew, they had begun to have regular lunches together. Lou's crush on Morgan never abated, even during the tumultuous Anna Wu period.
The two friends began their search for the elusive birthday boy. Since they were still near the entrance they began their search at the Customer Service desk. Knowing it was a long shot, as neither expected Chuck to be there, they weren't surprised when he wasn't. They moved down the center aisle toward the hub, the veritable nerve center of the Buy More: the Nerd Herd desk (Morgan desperately hoping that Anna had left or was otherwise engaged). They were in luck, as Anna was no longer sitting at the desk having been replaced by the tall nerd who was the subject of their search.
"Hey guys, what's going on?" Chuck was grinning as he watched his two friends approach the inner sanctum.
Lou returned Chuck's smile, and held up the bag – "I brought lunch for the birthday boy, can you take a break?"
"For the two of you? Absolutely! Come on, let's head over to the break room." Turning his head slightly, Chuck spoke in a more authoritative voice, "Hey, Jeff and Lester – I'm heading to lunch, please man the desk and keep the perviness to a minimum, if you can. All right?"
Chuck jumped over the desk without waiting for a response, knowing that he wouldn't get one from the two Nerd Herd slacker corp. Once again grinning at his friends they all fell into step chatting amicably about everything and nothing – standard fare for the trio.
Eventually making it to the break room, Chuck pulled out a chair for Lou before grabbing one for himself.
"So, oh Mighty Purveyor of All Things Sandwichy – what has your brilliant lunch meat mind created today?"
"I have in my hand your birthday present Chuck – your own sandwich: The Chuck!" Lou couldn't help grinning at the shocked look of her friend.
"Wow… that is… just wow! This is so awesome Lou, thank you so much. Hey Morgan, I have officially made the big leagues, I am now a sandwich!" Chuck grinned at his two friends, feeling happy and slightly overwhelmed at the kindness these two people had shown him through the years.
"Now if only Morgan would get a clue and ask Lou out!" Chuck thought to himself watching the other two of the trio banter back and forth as Morgan began to beg for his own sandwich, to which Lou laughed and imperiously demanded more devotion on his part in order to prove his sandwichy worth.
Chuck just shook his head and as he began to open the sandwich, made up of rye, pastrami, muenster, and to his surprise and tastebuds' happiness: coleslaw, he took a bite.
"MMMM Lou, you are truly an artist, the coleslaw was a stroke of genius!"
Lou smiled around her sandwich, and Morgan looked over at Chuck, "Hey Chuck, you wanna share that?"
"Sorry Buddy, nope", Chuck drug out the "p", "this is much too good for children!"
Morgan looked like he was going to defend himself and just as he opened his mouth, Chuck's head exploded in pain. Chuck yelped in pain, dropped the Chuck on the table, and grabbed his temples in an effort to stave off the massive headache. He dropped his head onto the table, barely registering Morgan pulling the sandwich out of the way and Lou quickly standing and moving behind him gently rubbing his shoulders – both of them knew about Chuck's headaches, something that he tried to keep quiet about as he had constantly refused to go see a doctor about them. Morgan moved to the breakroom door and pulling the shade closed he locked the door and turned the lights off before quietly making his way back to Chuck and Lou who was still silently rubbing Chuck's shoulders. In the semi darkness of the break room, the two friends looked at each other and conveyed silently the worry for their tall friend – the headaches had been a constant threat that Chuck dealt with, but recently they seemed to be coming more frequently, and it was beginning to truly worry them both.
Chuck didn't see this as he currently was concentrating on the semi-coolness of the table top against his head, his fingers putting pressure in various locations on his skull, Lou's gentle touch on his shoulders, and last but not least the images flashing in front of his closed eyelids. He had had these occurrences, or flashes as he called them, ever since he was ten years old and saw something in his father's office. Besides the two people in the room, the only ones who knew about the occurrences were his sister, her boyfriend, and his dad – though none of them knew of the images, just the headaches. Ellie, his sister, had even gone into neurology in order to try and heal her brother. His father had tried to recreate the computer that Chuck had initially seen, and sometimes after those sessions, the occurrences would disappear for a while. The last one had been a couple of months ago, and at the end his father had hugged him, and whispered, "Hang in there Chuck, help is on its way, just hang in there a little longer." But in the end, nothing had been able to help him.
This was the first occurrence Chuck had had since that last session with his father, and he was surprised as the images he was seeing. A hummingbird flashed first, and then a woman in what looked like a street fight, until she pulled a gun shot the man she was fighting then calmly aiming the gun at what Chuck presumed was a camera, the hummingbird flashed again before the images went to a solid black allowing Chuck to release the breathe that he hadn't even realize he'd been holding. As he allowed his tensed muscles, Lou stopped rubbing his shoulders.
"Wow, Chuck… that was a bad one. I haven't seen one last that long in a while. Are you OK?" Morgan took a seat next to Chuck concern masking his usual jolly face.
"Hmm, what? Yeah, yeah, I'll be OK Morgan, just give me a minute."
"Oh Chuck, how bad was that one?" Lou queried.
"That was a doozy, sorry about that… I hope I didn't ruin lunch."
"Chuck! Stop, we're worried more about you than some sandwiches that I threw together." Lou glared at Morgan, who known about these occurrences since he was a kid and decided his friend was OK enough for him to continue to eat and was in fact in the process of reaching for his sandwich – that was until Lou's death glare.
Chuck took a couple of deep breathes and closing his eyes went quickly through the meditation exercises that Ellie and Devon, her boyfriend, had taught him so he could regain his composure after an occurrence. Finally, feeling back to normal Chuck looked at his two closest friends, "OK, Morgan get the lights and the door before Jeff or Lester comes up with some perverted idea of what's going on in here, and let's get back to these most excellent sandwiches!"
Chuck and company got back to having a great lunch, but he couldn't get his mind off what he had seen. The beautiful blonde fighter seemed to pause and look into his very soul right before shooting the camera. That look of utter fierceness and something else intrigued Chuck and he vowed to find out who she was.
The Birthday Party September 18
The party had been a hit, at least Ellie thought so. As she stood with her arm wrapped through Devon's, she surveyed the crowd in the courtyard, there was Lou one of Chuck's friends talking to one of the resident's in the ER that Devon had invited. The clumps of her and Devon's friends were scattered around the courtyard, and everyone looked to be enjoying themselves, everyone but the guest of honor, who was missing.
"OOOO if he is in the apartment playing video games with Morgan, I am going to kill him!" Ellie muttered under her breath.
"Hey Babe, you know if he is – you could always ground him!" Devon quipped in an effort to calm his suddenly irate girlfriend.
"Zip it Devon, I'm going to find him – I'll be right back."
Ellie quickly made her way to the apartment that she shared with Devon and Chuck. She opened the door preparing to lay into her brother and that bearded friend of his. Though the sight in front of her brought her up short: Morgan was sitting on the couch alone playing a video game chatting to a few of Ellie's co-workers. What surprised Ellie was the distinct absence of her brother.
"Morgan, where is Chuck – he's missing all of the party?"
"Oh hey Ellie, yeah… Chuck tried to hang on as long as he could, but he had an occurrence at work during lunch and it must have been a doozy cause he was kinda out of it for the rest of the afternoon. He told me to tell you he was going to bed and that he was sorry about missing this great party."
Ellie smiled softly at Morgan's protective streak, "Thanks Morgan, I'm going to go check on him real quick."
Ellie made her way quietly down the hall towards Chuck's room. The door was closed but there was a faint light that seeped out from under the door. Ellie softly knocked and opened the door to peek in. She smiled as she noticed that Chuck had fallen asleep on top of his comforter, so she quietly got a blanket from his closet and gently laid it on top of her sleeping brother. She turned to see that the light she had noticed was coming from Chuck's computer monitor which was still on and was showing that Chuck had received an email. She debated about whether to turn it off and let her brother sleep, and finally decided if he woke up in the middle of the night the small light source might help keep from banging his shins or toes into anything.
Turning to leave Ellie bent over her brother's head, kissed the top of it softly, and whispered, "Happy birthday little brother, I will figure out how to stop these headaches somehow. I love you Chuck."
CBCWCBSW
A few hours later, Chuck woke with a start. His eyes snapping open and his body was immediately alert. He listened for any noise that may have been out of the ordinary. There it was again… a hum from his computer, like the CPU was getting taxed running some massive game. Chuck frowned, his computer should never being doing anything like unless Morgan had been doing his research…
"Damn Morgan, watch porn on your own dang computer!" Chuck quietly snarled fearful of waking up Ellie or Devon, somehow knowing instinctively that it was the middle of the night. He swung his long legs over the side of the bed, his hands coming up to cup the sides of his head. He realized that he had been dreaming of the blond woman that was in the flash he had had at lunch. Since the flash she was an almost constant in his thoughts – she was obviously dangerous, that was more than evident, but there was something else about her that kept gnawing at Chuck's psyche.
In an effort to do something to get the mystery woman off of his mind, Chuck sat in front of his computer and logged in. The CPU spinning stopped as Chuck pulled up the list of programs running, and whistled softly at the email that was sucking memory like a thirsty camel.
"What the hell is going on?" Chuck thought as he pulled up his email. There was a new email from Bryce Larkin, his old roommate, with the subject line: Happy Birthday!
"I wonder what Bryce is doing nowadays and why he sent this to me, we haven't talked in a couple of years…" Chuck looked at the attachment, and grinned realizing it was a Zork module. He clicked it to open it and read the line about the troll, as he typed the response of "Attack troll with nasty knife" the screen flashed in front of his eyes with the message: I'm sorry Chuck. Before going blank and Chuck's irritation quickly began to mount as the CPU began to spin again, and then the monitor flashed pictures like his dad's did when Chuck was getting some help from him. These images flashed longer than any of the times with his dad, it was a good thing Chuck was sitting in his chair as he would've crashed to the floor by the time the images stopped and the smell of ion wafted from his overtaxed computer.
"Dammit Bryce, I just built that computer…" Chuck groaned as he slipped to the floor.
Help Arrives September 19
Chuck had barely made it to work on time – actually it had helped that Ellie had checked on him before leaving for her shift at the hospital. He felt like he was waking from a huge hangover, and had grabbed a large coffee before making his way to the shower. While there he had another flash about a general's speaking engagement, and while it had hurt, it was nowhere near as bad as the previous day's one had been.
He had been getting his Nerd Herd badge on when Morgan appeared at the Morgan Door.
"Morning Chuck, ready to head out? Oh, and can I get a ride?"
Chuck grinned at Morgan and nodded, "Sure buddy, let's get out of here."
CBCWCBSW
Getting to the Buy More had been fine, though the added traffic had caused Chuck to blurt out something about the protection duty of the general causing the abnormal jams. Morgan just looked at his friend as if he had grown a second head.
Once in the store, the two buddies had parted ways and Chuck had made his way to the Nerd Herd desk to look over the daily reports that came in from headquarters. Groaning at the notice about the Demova virus – knowing he would have to let the rest of the Herd know.
Getting the patience up so he could talk to the Herd, he let them all know about the virus and dismissed them to carry on, though in the case of Jeff and Lester that meant them finding a hidey hole and slacking off for the rest of their shifts.
Morgan came over to chat about the party, while Chuck kept his head down trying to figure out what if anything could be done about the virus.
"Stop the presses" Morgan exclaims, "who is that! Vicki Vale!"
"Vicki Vale, Vick, Vicki Vale, Vick, Vicki Vale…" Chuck mutters to himself as he reads through the reports. Then in his peripheral vision, he notices a slender hand attached to a slender wrist. Chuck's eyes travel upwards to see a beautiful blonde woman a grin on her face that somehow travelled to her beautiful blue eyes that sparkled with mirth.
"I hope I'm not interrupting", the blonde said suppressed laughter in her voice.
"Uhh, nope, not at all… it's… uh… that's from Batman."
"Oh cause that makes it better right?"
"Ha… ha…" Chuck seemed lost, though his thoughts were tickling the back of his mind with something about this beautiful woman in front of him.
"Hi I'm Morgan, and this, this is Chuck." Morgan said, leaning against the Nerd Herd desk in as slick a way as possible, hoping to portray his coolness to the woman.
"Well it is nice to meet you Morgan and Chuck."
Chuck quickly stood up and asked, "How can I help you…?"
"Sarah."
Chuck grinned at her, "OK, how can I help you Sarah?"
"I'm here to get some help with my phone," she said as she placed the phone on the desk.
"Ahh, the Intellicell. Yeah, absolutely… this is an easy fix. The screw in the back can come loose, so we just tighten it up a little and it should be good as new Sarah." Chuck performed the steps as he explained and handed the phone back to Sarah, who smiled at him.
"Wow, you nerds are good!"
"Thanks, please let me know if you need any other help and we would be glad to lend a hand!"
Sarah smiled at Chuck, "Thanks, I just moved out here from DC, so I may take you up on that."
With that Sarah held out her hand to shake Chuck's hand, Chuck smiled back at the blonde not believing he would ever see her again. At the moment their hands touched, both of their eyes rolled to the back of their heads and they passed out. Luckily for Chuck that meant landing on the desk, and luckily for Sarah that meant Morgan was able to let his inner-hero shine as he grabbed her and gently started to lower her to the floor, except that her hand was still gripping Chuck's hand, causing Morgan to hold on to her not having the coordination to pull the clasped hands apart without dropping the blonde.
"Help, I need some help over here!" Morgan called. Looking at the two people who were still in a dead faint their hands gripping one another like they were grasping lifelines.
Post Chapter Author's Note: I don't usually have a second AN, but I wanted to make sure no one got mad at me for using the second sandwich Chuck and Lou discussed as the Chuck. The first one, made with turkey, muenster, on egg bread just sounds too boring. That and I personally love coleslaw on a pastrami sandwich, if you haven't tried it you really don't know what you're missing!