I'm busy you fuckers

Jay sat, staring fixedly at his University owned terminal. It was old, it actually smelled weird, but it was Jay's favorite place to code because it was in the deepest corner of the lab where, theoretically, he would recieve the minimum of distractions. Jay had been working for hours on a project for his Computer Algorithms class and he simply could not get it to work.

Actually, Jay had completed the assignment within fifteen minutes of it being assigned. Jay, while strange, is a very good programmer, and it wasn't all that hard of a problem. Unfortunately Jay had shown his answer to K, who had finished the project within two minutes of the project being assigned. K had nodded his approval.

"Yeah, that's how I did it," K told Jay, who groaned. You see, Jay is not a programmer like K. Programming doesn't not come as naturally to Jay, so he really has to work hard at it. Unfortunately, he also refuses to do any project the same way K does, because, inevitably, K's answer is perfect and everyone in the class who gets the answer the same is viewed with suspicion. So Jay always has to do things differently, because if he gets it to work differently from the way K did it, Jay feels he really learned the material well. Getting to annoy teachers and TAs was just a bonus.

K wasn't really aware that the reason Jay worked so hard at programming was partially to be different from K. K also wouldn't give two shits if that was his reasoning. All K really knew was that Jay's answers to computer problems were creative, bizzare, or just plain incomprehensible. But they almost always worked, which pleased and sometimes amused K, which immensely pleased Jay. Jay's work was almost universally hated by his professors and TAs, but that didn't slow Jay down in the slightest. Professor Bissell, one of Jay and K's favorite professors, had laughed so hard he fell down after seeing one of Jay's projects. When Professor Bissell let class out immediately after getting his breath so that he could continue to laugh, Jay became something of a hero, and Jay tried that much harder to make his projects needlessly complex.

So Jay had actually been working on this project that he had completed in fifteen minutes for several hours so that he could get a different answer from K while possibly irritating a different professor. He hadn't expected coming up with an alternative answer to be so difficult and now the project was due in under an hour so Jay was starting to get impatient. Being bothered now was the last thing he wanted.

"Hi Jay, what's up?" asked Megin, a friend of his. Jay tried to ignore her, staring fixedly at the line he was positive was the problem.

"Uh... Jay?" Megin didn't give up that easily. Jay sighed.

"Hi Meg," he said, reluctantly turning away from the programming dilemma.

"Am I interrupting something?" Megin looked slightly pouty, which was a sign that Jay needed to talk to her or else he'd have to listen to her whine about it later.

"Nothing I can't ignore for a minute or two," Jay told her. "What's up?" Megin beamed.

"Well, I was wondering if you'd read the passage for our english class," Megin told Jay. When Jay nodded, she continued, "What did you think about that part in the middle when the two pigs were talking?"

"I actually didn't like that part at all," Jay told her. "Whatever concept it was we were supposed to get from that set of dialogue was way above my head. I couldn't even find it funny it was so confusing."

"Good, I thought I was the only one who didn't like it," Megin smiled at him. "I just thought it was such a convoluted mess that it-" Megin did continue talking, but Jay just stared at her blinking and thinking. Megin noticed after a few minutes.

"Jay... You're staring," she blushed slightly.

"That's brilliant!" Jay congratulated Megin, and turned to his terminal to type furiously. "If I just clean up this mess... and that... Yes! I think that will work!" Jay turned to smile at Megin. "I think you just made my life much easier!"

"Well, I'm always glad to help!" Megin smiled a cheery smile. "Even if I have no idea what you're talking about."

"You don't need to understand, just understand me equals happy," Jay laughed.

"Ok, I guess I'll let you get back to it!" Megin told him with a happy smile and walked away.

"See ya," Jay called after Megin, turning back to his now much improved program which he compiled. And it didn't work. "Aw, son of a..." Jay went back to scouring his code for these elusive damn errors. He sat, scrolling up and down in his code for several uninterrupted minutes.

"Hi Jay," interrupted Jason the shadowmancer. He and Jay were not the closest of friends, but they still got along well enough.

"Mmm..." Jay replied not looking up from his code. Jason gave Jay a sidelong glance, then slid into the seat next to Jay and logged into the network. Jason busied himself with email, which let Jay sit and continue his seemingly futile search. A moment or two later, a new mail notification appeared on his screen, and without thinking about it, Jay switched to his mailer to check the new message. It was from Jason.

Jay, do you have that stupid pig book on you? Jason

"Yes, I have the book," Jay sighed, his concentration defeated, and dug into his backpack for the book. After locating it, he turned it over to the slightly smug looking Jason. "Why do you need it anyway?"

"Normally I wouldn't read the stupid assignment at all, but I heard there was going to be a quiz on it today, so I thought maybe I should actually read the stupid book," Jason replied.

"Well, don't get your hopes up, the chapter sucks," Jay reported with a smirk.

"Every chapter of the book sucks as far as I can tell," Jason grumbled. "I swear, whoever wrote this book was insane. He can't put two subjects together in the same sentence without it exploding in his face."

"I'll say, he..." Jay started to reply laughing. Then he paused, realizing something. "Two subjects in the same place... Yes!" Jay turned triumphantly to his terminal once again, typing furiously.

"What's wrong with you?" Jason asked curiously. Jay ignored him just long enough to finish what he was doing.

"I think you just helped me figure out what was wrong with my stupid algorithms project!" Jay grinned at Jason. "That's the second time that book has helped me figure something out!" Jason gave Jay a strange look.

"You're insane," Jason told him, not in an unfriendly manner. Jay just laughed as Jason got up. "I'm going to go suffer through this crap now. Later."

"See ya," Jay waved to Jason before turning back to the project. He compiled and... fuck, it didn't work. "Aw, not again." Jay growled to himself and went back to staring at his code, searching desperately for that error. He glanced at the clock and found that he only had fifteen minutes to finish the project. Jay sighed, but kept searching. That error had to be somewhere.

Several minutes later, Jay found an error and corrected it, but didn't bother to compile since he knew it wasn't the error he needed to find. But he was almost certain that the error was near that line so he double checked the logic of that section of code. He had nearly finished mapping all of it out in his head when...

"Hey Jay," came Omar's friendly voice.

"What?" Jay snapped, not looking away from the code.

"Woah, sorry, what's up your ass?" Omar sounded irritated.

"Sorry, Omar, I didn't mean to snap at you," Jay sighed and smiled weakly at his friend. "I just can't figure out what this fucking code error is and it's driving me crazy."

"More crazy," Omar corrected with a laughed. Jay didn't bother to deny it.

"You need something? I really need to get this done in like ten minutes," Jay asked hopefully.

"Nah, I just wanted to see if you and blondie would be at coffee tonight," Omar told Jay, glancing at Jay's screen.

"I think that's the plan," Jay confirmed. Then he frowned noting Omar's raised eyebrow. "What's up?"

"Well, I'm no computer guy, but does it matter that you misspelled continue?" Omar asked pointing to one of the very lines Jay had been inspecting. Jay stared at Omar in amazement. Then he turned and looked at that loop.

"Son of a bitch! I did misspell that!" Jay laughed. He turned to Omar with a big smile, "Thanks dude! I never would have caught that in time!"

"Wow. I helped you do something computer related. That's a switch," Omar laughed. "Ok, I'll catch you at coffe tonight."

"Sure thing," Jay replied as Omar left the computer lab. Jay noticed that K was gathering his stuff behind the tech support station in the lab, which meant his time was low.

"Work dammit," Jay demanded of his program before compiling. And now there were more errors. "Oh god fucking dammit." Jay frantically looked through his code again, trying to find these tiny errors. The fifteen tiny errors. He heard K walk up behind him.

"We're going to be late," K said.

"I know, I know, I just have to find these last few errors," Jay said, again not looking away from the code. K sat in the chair next to Jay, and looked at the code Jay was staring at.

"Compile it again," K commanded, and Jay complied without thought.

"Ok, why did I compile it again?" Jay asked of K.

"Because now you should be able to find the line that is missing a semi-colon," K explained. Jay glanced at the compiler messages.

"There's no missing semi-colon," Jay insisted. K gave him a look.

"Look harder," K told Jay, who sighed a frustrated sigh and looked at the error list more closely. Then he noticed an error out of place. He pointed to that error and glanced at K for confirmation, who smiled and nodded.

"Ha ha!" Jay said triumphantly, fixing that error and compiling again. Success! But when Jay tried to run his project, it looked like nothing was happening. "God dammit."

"Well, now you're really close," K told him while checking email for probably the hundredth time this day. "Just finish up those two logic errors and you're in the clear."

"Logic errors?" Jay asked, killing his project's process and looking to his code again. In six minutes they would be late for class. K probably didn't mind, but Jay was insistent about being on time and usually managed it. No pressure.

"Your second loop," K said after one minute of searching. Jay glanced at him, then the loop.

"Nothing's wrong with the loop," Jay said, confused.

"Nope, nothing's wrong with the loop," K agreed. "Just one question. When will i ever equal seven?"

"Well it..." Jay started to say. Then he smacked himself in the forhead. "Right, if I always add by two, it'd be awful hard to get to any odd number, huh?" K grinned and nodded. Jay compiled and ran the program again. Again it seemed to freeze. "What now?" Four minutes to go.

"Check your final loop," K suggested. Jay glared at the final loop.

"Ok loop, you don't like me, and I don't like you, but if we work together, we can go our separate ways," Jay told the loop. It didn't bother to reply. Jay looked closely. Three minutes to go.

Two minutes.

One minute.

"Oh," Jay said ruefully. "I suppose it would help if I actually incremented my counter, huh?"

"Now you've got it," K laughed as Jay frantically tested (successfully) his project, printed it, and ran to get his print out. K met Jay on the way out of the lab.

"So let me get this straight," K said, sounding curious.

"What?" Jay asked.

"We were asked to make a simple functional red-black tree in code," K said.

"Right," Jay agreed.

"And you decided it would be a good idea to make a wildly over complicated red-black tree actually builds the red black tree in a directory structure in the directory that you run the program in and eats up huge amounts of memory?" K asked. Jay laughed.

"That's fairly accurate," Jay admitted. K laughed and shook his head.

"I think the TA might kill you for this one," K told Jay. "Especially if he tries to run it with the values the professor said our projects had to work with and it takes as long as I think it's going to take."

"Exactly thirty three minutes and thirty three seconds?" Jay waggled his eyebrows.

"Sounds about right," K shook his head, smiling.

"He might," Jay admitted. "But no one else will have any project nearly as creative as mine." K laughed.

"Yeah, he's gonna kill you," K told him. Then they walked into the classroom. When K turned in his single page print out, the TA grunted. When Jay turned in his six page print out, the TA groaned and glared at Jay. Jay grinned. Mission accomplished.