Sherry was busily unwrapping a variety of packages that she had received from all those online orders. She was positively glowing as she held up a hot pink cashmere sweater. I had to admit that it would look great against her flawless dark olive complexion.
"Too bad it all has to go back," she said as she pulled the Coach purse out of its box and began exploring the pockets.
"Why does it have to go back?" I asked.
"It wouldn't be right for me to keep it." She said.
"I think I may have misjudged you, Sherry." I said looking at her with a whole new respect. "Why wouldn't it be right?"
"Ordering this stuff is just part of the job. Keeping it is not. I am getting paid to work on this project and although the pay isn't that great, the experience is priceless. To keep these purchases would be like accepting extra pay and would suggest that the experience isn't sufficient additional compensation. I don't feel that way so acting that way would be insincere. I may act a little superficial sometimes, but I am never insincere."
I had to sit down. It was making me dizzy looking at Sherry way up there on the high road. "Clearly, I have completely misjudged you."
"Most people do," she said, "but it is their problem, not mine. I have developed polished social skills because it helps me get along with a wide variety of different kinds of people. I can make nearly anyone comfortable around me. Many people take that as being shallow. I view it as a courtesy that I grant out of respect to others."
"Go on"
"Nobody likes anyone who is dark, brooding and overly serious. It puts a burden on other people."
I shifted uncomfortably in my chair. She continued.
"It is every person's responsibility to not be a burden to those around you. Everybody should work on being enjoyable, pleasant and rewarding to be around. Then with some people, although certainly not most people, you will find common interests and begin to explore more serious issues. At that point you should drop your pretense and be more serious. But serious or not you should always be sincere."
I thought to myself that behind that very lovely face and those tight jeans was a person with an amazingly astute insight into human character. How could I have missed it? I felt myself starting to brood, but instead decided not to be a burden.
"That's very interesting, Sherry. So I guess you'll just have to pack all these things up and send them back."
"No problem. But I'll do that tomorrow. Today I am going to enjoy having them." She smiled sweetly and went back to exploring the pockets in the Coach pocketbook.
I was humbled. I felt like offering to buy something for her, but I knew that anything that I did would just take the luster off the moment. I turned to my computer with the honest intent of catching up on my email.
But, I never got to my email. Before my fingers even touched the keyboard, Angel came charging in.
"I thought you were going to come by the lab last night. I waited till midnight."
"Well, I got carried away and had a few too many."
She looked like she might go off on a temperance lecture, but then changed her mind.
"I found the back ups of the missing web pages. The backups were all in perfect order. Professor Haggerty just told me they were messed up when they were all exactly where they were supposed to be. Those pages weren't online for very long though, because they only showed up on one of the backup tapes. Professor Haggerty lied and tried to make me the scapegoat."
"I wonder why he did that" I said, getting increasing more uneasy over the situation.
"I don't know but I have a clue that might have something to do with the answer."
Angel was in her element now. Hot on the trail of vindication.
"I loaded the missing web pages onto a temporary directory on the server so that Patience could move them back to the production directory where they belong. While they were in the temporary directory, I looked through the pages to see if I could figure out what was going on. All of the pages were in perfect order except for one faculty member whose pages were missing entirely. It was almost as though somebody deleted that person's pages right before the back up and then deleted the whole directory after the backup."
"Yeah it sounds like somebody was trying to cover their tracks for some reason. Whose pages were missing?"
My mind reeled with the implications but did not fully grasp them. Apparently Frank had seen his web page online and deleted it. Since he was the system administrator he could override any security we had on the machine. Then, thinking that might be too obvious, he went back and deleted a whole directory as a cover up. But in between a backup had been taken. When he found out that a backup existed he needed to cover that up also. So he told Angel that she had screwed up the tape sequencing thinking that we would give up looking for the backup.
That explained everything. And it explained nothing. Because the looming unanswered question was - Why ?