System Crash
The celebration at Bigal's felt oddly routine—like a school victory party grown up. Rhonda had insisted on hosting it in the café's private room, though Arnold suspected she'd chosen the venue for its strategic proximity to his office. The walls still held old photos of their childhood hangout spots, now framed alongside Patty's business awards.
"To the next big thing in educational technology," Gerald raised his glass. "And to whatever's going on between its creators."
"Nothing's going on," Helga said too quickly, adjusting her glasses. She'd changed from her investor meeting blazer into something more casual, but Arnold noticed she'd kept the shade of blue that matched his shirt. Not that he was looking.
"Right," Rhonda drawled from her perch at the counter. "That's why you both keep stealing glances when you think the other isn't watching."
"The investment metrics—" Arnold started, but his defense was cut short by a notification chime. Everyone's phones buzzed simultaneously.
Phoebe, who'd been quietly analyzing something on her tablet, looked up sharply. "We have a situation. Jamie's trying to delete her account."
Arnold saw Helga go still. Jamie—their teenage test user who reminded them both so much of a young Helga, who'd written that poem about hiding behind masks.
"What happened?" Helga was already gathering her things, engaged in doctor mode.
"Someone shared her private poetry without permission," Phoebe reported, scrolling through data. "There appears to be a security breach in the sharing protocols."
Arnold felt his stomach drop. The sharing protocols—the ones they'd been too distracted to review during their "professional" practice sessions properly.
"Pull up the code," he said, moving to look over Phoebe's shoulder. "It has to be in the function I renamed—" He caught himself.
"Which function?" Helga asked dangerously. "The one about unspoken feelings?"
Their eyes met across Phoebe's screen, years of covert emotions suddenly very relevant to their technical crisis...
"We need to get back to the office," Arnold said, already reaching for his laptop bag.
"Phoebe, can you—"
"Already pulling up the full diagnostic data," she nodded, fingers flying across her tablet.
"Gerald, get Rhonda's design team to disable the sharing features temporarily."
"On it." Gerald pulled out his phone and then paused. "Though maybe you two should take separate cars, you know, maintain those professional—"
"Not now, Gerald," Helga snapped, but Arnold caught the slight tremor in her voice. The same tremor she'd had reading Jamie's poem about hiding behind masks.
The rain had caught them unprepared, and Arnold found himself shrugging off his jacket to hold over them both as they rushed back to the office. Helga's attempt to maintain objective distance faltered as she moved closer under its shelter, her warmth at his side achingly acquainted.
Inside, the evening light cast long shadows across their workspace—her chair still angled toward his desk, coffee cups from that morning's celebration still sitting between their notes.
Arnold pulled up the development environment, his fingers flying across the keyboard. She'd rolled her chair closer to his as they worked, their knees occasionally touching under the desk as they leaned toward the screen together. Every small contact sent a jolt through him that had nothing to do with static electricity. Her clinical expertise guided his technical solutions, the nostalgic scent of her fragrance mixing with the pastrami smell from downstairs.
"Here," Arnold pulled up the code, trying to ignore how Helga leaned over his shoulder, her scent making it hard to focus.
"The privacy settings are tied to the user authentication module, which connects to—"
"ProcessUnspokenFeelings," Helga read, her voice tight. She'd moved to stand behind him, one hand resting on his chair back, fingers just inches from him. Even in crisis mode, he found himself acutely aware of her presence, the way she unconsciously leaned closer to study the screen, causing a few strands of her to graze his shoulder. "Really, Football Head?"
"I was going to change it," he defended weakly.
"To what? HandleHiddenEmotions? SecureSecretPoetry?" There was something raw in her voice now.
"Because we both know how well that works." Arnold turned to face her. "Helga—"
"Jamie trusted us," she cut him off, but he could see past her anger to the fear underneath. The same fear he'd glimpsed whenever her own poetry was discovered in grade school.
"She trusted our system to keep her feelings protected, and now—"
"We'll fix it," he said firmly. "Together. Like we fix everything else."
"Do we?" Her voice was barely a whisper. "Fix things?"
Before he could respond, Phoebe's voice came through the speaker: "Login attempt from Jamie's account. She's trying to delete everything she's written."
Helga straightened, professional mask slipping back into place. "Pull up her activity log. If we can see which poems were shared—"
"All of them," Phoebe reported.
"Someone found a backdoor in the sharing permissions. Everything marked private became public." Arnold watched the color drain from Helga's face. Her hands gripped the back of her chair—her chair, because somewhere along the way, they'd stopped pretending this wasn't their shared space.
"Like finding pink books hidden in a locker," she said so quietly he almost missed it.
"Helga..." He reached for her without thinking. She stepped back.
"We need to focus on Jamie. On fixing the code. On maintaining appropriate—"
"Maybe that's the problem," Arnold heard himself say. "trying so hard to maintain boundaries is what's breaking things." Their eyes met across his desk—her territory now as much as his, despite all their careful professional distance. The same desk where they'd practiced their investor presentation, where they'd designed sharing features meant to protect vulnerable feelings, where they'd spent weeks pretending they weren't falling back into old patterns.
"The code," Helga said but didn't look away. "We need to..."
"Yeah," Arnold agreed, though neither of them moved. "The code."
His screen filled with lines of code as Phoebe sent over the diagnostic data.
Beside him, Helga paced, her phone to her ear. "Jamie? It's Dr. Pataki. Listen, I know what happened—" She stopped suddenly, listening. Her face went pale. "No, wait. Before you delete anything—"
Arnold's fingers flew across the keyboard, trying to trace the security breach. There—in the sharing permissions—was a single line of vulnerable code, something he'd written late one night while thinking about pink books and hidden feelings.
"I found it," he called to Helga. "The privacy settings are cascading incorrectly. When one poem is shared, it's triggering—"
"Jamie, hold on," Helga's voice cracked slightly. "You're right. It's terrifying when private thoughts become public. When you feel exposed. But running away, deleting everything... that's not the answer. Trust me, I know."
Arnold's hands stilled on the keyboard. He knew that tone—he had heard it decades ago when she'd tried to take back confessions made in moments of crisis.
"The poems," Helga continued softly, "they're part of you. Even the scary ones. Especially the scary ones. And sometimes... sometimes the people who see them understand more than you think."
Their eyes met across his desk. At that moment, they weren't Dr. Pataki and Mr. Shortman, respected professionals maintaining painstaking limitations.
They were just Arnold and Helga, who'd spent a lifetime figuring out how to be honest about difficult feelings. "I can fix the code," Arnold said quietly. "But maybe... maybe we need to stop trying to hide everything behind security protocols."
Helga's hand tightened on her phone. "Jamie? There's someone else here who understands about hiding feelings in poetry. Someone who..." She took a deep breath.
"Someone who used to find my secret poems when we were your age." Arnold's heart stopped. "And you know what?" Helga continued, her voice steadier now.
"He never once made me feel bad about them. Sometimes, the scariest thing about feelings isn't that people will see them. It's that they'll see them and not understand. But the right people... they understand." Through the speaker, they could hear Jamie's shaky breathing. "The sharing permissions," Arnold said softly.
"They're not broken because of bad code. They're broken because we've been trying too hard to keep everything locked away. Maybe... maybe some feelings need to be shared."
Helga's eyes met his again, and this time neither looked away.
"What do you say, Jamie?" Helga asked, but her gaze stayed on Arnold. "Should we try being brave together?"
Jamie's voice came through the speaker, small but steady: "Did... did you keep your poems? From back then?"
Helga's eyes flickered to the worn pink book visible through her office doorway. "Every single one."
"Even though he found them?"
"Especially because he found them." Helga's voice softened. "Sometimes the people who discover our secrets become the ones who help us tell our truth."
Arnold's fingers moved across the keyboard, adjusting the code. "What if," he said, both to Jamie and Helga, "we created a new kind of sharing system? Not just public or private, but... trusted spaces. Where you choose exactly who sees which pieces of yourself?"
"Like poetry books labeled as math homework?" Helga asked wryly.
"Like volcano caves with views of other landscapes," he countered quietly.
They heard Jamie take a deep breath through the phone. "Can I... can I choose who sees my poems?"
"Of course," Helga said. "We'll build it right now. Together."
Arnold pulled up the development environment, his fingers flying across the keyboard. She'd rolled her chair closer to his as they worked, their knees occasionally touching under the desk as they leaned toward the screen together. Every small contact sent a jolt through him that had nothing to do with static electricity. Her clinical expertise guided his technical solutions, the familiar scent of her perfume mixing with the pastrami smell from downstairs.
"See this function?" he asked, pointing to the screen. "It's not about hiding feelings anymore. It's about choosing when and how to share them."
"Very therapeutic," Helga murmured, close enough that he could feel her breath on his neck.
"I learned from the best."
Jamie's voice broke their moment: "Dr. Pataki? Those poems you wrote... did you ever let him read them? On purpose, I mean?"
The air in the office grew thick with unspoken words. Arnold felt Helga go still beside him.
"Not yet," she said finally. "But I believe some poems just need the right moment to be shared."
Arnold's hands hovered over the keyboard, over functions that had always been about more than just code. "Ready to test the new sharing permissions?"
"Together?" Helga asked softly.
"Whatever you say, Helga."
Half an hour later, Jamie's poems were secure again, protected by new sharing settings that let her choose individual readers for each piece. They could hear the relief in her voice as she tested the system. "So now only Sarah can see the thunderstorm poem?" she asked.
"Only Sarah," Arnold confirmed, watching the code execute properly. "And the door poem?"
"Just Mark," Jamie said quietly. "He... he understood it." Helga's smile was soft. "Sometimes the scariest part is finding out we're not alone in how we feel."
After walking Jamie through the rest of the security features and making sure she felt safe in the app again, they ended the call. The office fell into loaded silence, broken only by the distant sounds of Harold's evening dinner prep downstairs.
"The code's stable now," Arnold said, though neither of them budged to pack up. The evening had drawn them closer somehow, the crisis creating a bubble where their careful walls seemed less important. He could still feel the phantom warmth where her knee had pressed against his. "No more unintended sharing."
"Right." Helga stood by the window, silhouetted against the darkening sky. "Though some sharing might not be... unintended."
Arnold's heart stuttered. "Helga—"
"We should probably review the rest of the code. Make sure there aren't any other... vulnerable areas."
"Tomorrow?" Arnold asked carefully. "Nine AM?"
"With coffee," she agreed, gathering her things. But at the door, she paused. "Arnold?"
"Yeah?"
"Thank you. For understanding. Back then, and... now."
She was gone before he could respond, but he noticed she'd left something on his desk—a worn pink notebook with its math homework label faded but still visible.
His phone lit up with one last message:
Jamie: *Dr. Pataki says poems are braver than their poets sometimes. I think she might be right.*
Arnold smiled, looking at the notebook Helga had deliberately left behind. Several hours from now, they'd have coffee, review code, and perhaps finally read what she'd been trying to tell him all along.
But right now, he had some poetry to catch up on.