"Look, Tim," the voice on the screen rang out, echoing off the walls of my customized Mercedes Benz Sprinter van. "It's not that we're unhappy with the work you've done so far, it's just that the last update introduced a 0.3% slowdown on trade processing. I know that's not much to you, but it adds up. Over the year, that's a few million dollars in lost value by being slower than the competitors."
I ran my hand through close-cropped brown hair, sighing as I stared at the figure on the monitor. A well-dressed middle-aged man in a suit stared back at me, his image traveling over two thousand miles from an office in Connecticut to my van parked in an empty clearing on a mountainside in Oregon. "Frank, you gave me an impossible task, trying to add those new features without impacting performance and you should be happy it was only a 0.3% impact. Yes, I hear you about the trade slowdown. Which do you want? The features, or the speed?"
"Both," Frank growled, the anger palpable through the video screen. Frank was the Chief Information Officer of a major hedge fund and my primary contract at the company, which is why he was the one barking at me on the call instead of some middle manager peon who would normally manage a contract like this. "Which is what we fucking pay you for." He wasn't wrong, I admitted to myself. This contract alone was worth five million dollars, paid in monthly installments over twenty-four months. I had a hard-won reputation as one of the best contract software engineers working in high-frequency trading and that was saying a lot. I ran through the code in my head one more time, weighing options, while Frank continued ranting on the screen. My eyes ran over the window, staring at the trees outside - a dense forest, filled with Douglas fir trees, mountain biking single-track only twenty feet away.
"Fine," I snapped, cutting him off mid-sentence. "Give me three weeks, I'll have to rewrite a good chunk of the core algorithm in assembly, which will make future updates harder, but I should be able to squeeze out the performance. Anything else? No? Good." People were the worst, always whining about their needs, refusing to follow logic. That's why I tended to avoid them as much as possible, preferring to communicate over the Internet, staying remote, the life of a digital nomad. He'd offered more than once to bring me onboard as a full-time employee, but contract work was so much easier. Nobody cared who you were, just that you did the job. They didn't try to be your friend.
"No, that would be great," Frank began, "Nothing else on my -." I hung up the video call with a disgusted sigh, powering down the computer and standing, stretching my back after sitting. I needed to work this frustration out if I was going to spend the next three weeks rewriting the code to satisfy the client and a little mountain biking was just what the brain had ordered. I glanced down, taking in my appearance, and stepping quickly over to a built-in dresser, pulling out riding gear instead of my coding clothes. A few minutes later, I stepped down from the van, glancing around.
At 6'0", I was on the "tall but not unusually so" scale for a guy, but my 170 pound frame made me thin and lanky, not muscular. I'd tried, once in high school, to add some weight, but I never liked the feeling of working out in the gym and so I quit pretty quickly. Plus, there were too many other people around, and I'd rather be alone. I walked around, opening the back of the van and sliding my pride and joy from a customized compartment. The Specialized S-Works Stumpjumper EVO gleamed in the afternoon sunlight that dappled through the trees and I grinned, excitement building as I locked the van up, leaving my cell phone and wallet behind.
I walked the bike a few paces away, powering up the Garmin bike computer and loading a pre-planned route I had been hoping to run. It would take me a solid hour and a half to bike from my parking spot to the top of the trail, then the real fun would begin. I grabbed the GoPro from my riding kit, setting it on a nearby log, making sure it had a great view of the van and my bike. "Hey chat, it's me, Tim. Ha, ha. There is no chat, it's just me rewatching my glory days on this video when I'm old and wrinkled. Anyway, let's get ready to ride a modified Alpine trail out here in Willamette National Forest."
With that, I clipped the GoPro onto my handlebars and set out. Filming my intros was a silly ritual, and I always grimaced a little when I did it, staring at my bland features reflected in the action camera's lens. But some part of me always - irrationally - insisted on doing it, saying it was important to commit these runs to digital memory. Bland was definitely the word of the day, I thought as I started to peddle, beginning the fifteen mile trek to the start of the run. More than one girl had said that in high school, much to my younger self's dismay.
Even when I got older, and got some measure of money, I found I couldn't escape that - it was bland looks, bland personality, etc. My parents had died in a plane crash when I was seventeen, leaving me with their substantial wealth - plus the settlement from the airline. As a result, I skipped college and just blew the money on a top of the line custom camper van, a $15,000 mountain bike, and my computer systems. The last five years had seen me traveling the country, writing code and hitting gnarly single-track. I was determined to keep pushing harder, to see at what point I'd fail, where things would break. I wasn't quite sure why, at least not something I could verbalize, but it soothed my brain to exhaust myself both physically with the biking and mentally with the coding. It was the only way to find peace.
A little over an hour later, covered in sweat, I pulled to a stop at a trail-head on top of the mountain and unclipped my feet, stepping off the bike for a brief moment. I drank some water from my hydration pack, chasing it down with an energy bar, as I double-checked my position on the bike computer. It had been a long climb, but I was finally here, ready to begin the ride. The view from here was incredible, with mountains in all directions, falling away to deep valleys, fir and pine trees coating every available surface. With one more flash of a thumbs up to the action camera on my handlebars, I remounted the Stumpjumper and pedaled forward, beginning the descent back to my van.
Frank's ranting from earlier intruded into my brain as I rattled down a rock scree, weaving between a handful of towering pine trees as I crossed back onto the dirt trail, disrupting my calm. I blew a breath out through my teeth, anger rising within me. This was my zen time, my chance to flush away humanity, and I did not want that asshole intruding into my brain. I blew through another switchback, placing my inside foot down briefly to stabilize the bike as I whipped around the curve, then ducked under a down tree that crossed the trail as I picked up speed again. Only by going fast enough, pushing myself right to the edge, could I regain that measure of calm.
Glancing to the side, I could see the hillside falling off inches to my right, at least a hundred foot drop to the trail below as it continued down toward the valley floor and my van, somewhere down there. I focused ahead once more, hopping over a tree branch, the grade increasing as the speed picked up, weaving between trees as I continued. 0.3% slowdown, Frank's voice echoed in my head and I cursed out loud, screaming at the quiet forest around me, "Fuck you, Frank!"
"And fuck your 0.3%!," I continued, my rear tire sliding as I went around another switchback with a little too much speed. I yanked the bike back onto the trail, recovering from the slide, as I breathed a sigh of relief, only to wince as I realized I'd over-corrected and was going straight at a tree - and then over the side of the mountain beyond it. I had just enough time to close my eyes and grimace before I felt a sensation of flying, a bone-shattering crunch, and darkness.