Not Safe For Work by Ingela Bohm

Author:Ingela Bohm [Bohm, Ingela]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Ingela Bohm
Published: 2015-07-05T22:00:00+00:00

Chapter 11

The room quiets down. I grip my papers tighter – I can feel them growing damp in my moist paw. I try a few relaxing routines – breathe in on 4, hold for 7 and breathe out on 8 – but my heart is still pounding. I will never get used to this.

“Everything okay?” the keynote speaker asks chirpily, hand on my shoulder.

“Yep,” I beam back at her. It’s so easy to lie. So easy to smile, to slip between the cracks. To conceal everything you feel. Especially when I’m standing in front of a room full of people, about to deliver the one thing I know everything about: my own program. This should be child’s play for me. Creating the program certainly was. Not that it didn’t take a long time, and not that I didn’t scratch my head more than I actually wrote code. But it was fun. It was play. And just rehashing what I did, the whys and the hows, to a gathering that thirst for my every word… it shouldn’t make me nervous. It should make me proud. This should be my element.

But it’s not.

Nothing is what it should be.

The keynote speaker brings me a glass of water and gestures at me to begin. I take my place on the podium. Put my notes on the shelf and take a sip of water. Then I pick up the remote to the projector. Exact, controlled little movements, so that I don’t suddenly shiver and the remote goes spinning off into the air, landing among the audience, making them laugh. Above all, this: don’t make them laugh at you. It’s enough that they won’t believe me.

If Jakob was here, he would tell me off. He’s always believed in my talent. Always predicted that I would become something big in my field. And in a way, he’s right. I have some pretty important customers. But it’s all been in the shadow. I’ve never been interviewed on TV, never got any credit for my work. That’s part of the deal. If I took credit, my clients wouldn’t be able to. If I come clean, they will quite possibly get the sack. Even though what we’re doing isn’t illegal. Because how can something be illegal when no one knows what it is, or even that it’s possible?

Well, I’m about to find out. I’m going to take away my own muzzle and tell the truth to my peers. Everyone who comes here signs a confidentiality agreement, so I shouldn’t be this rattled. They wouldn’t want the world to know, either. They just want in on the action. But how can I trust a room full of strangers? What if one of them is a reporter? What if they’re all spies? I have no way of knowing. My whole life could be a lie. Maybe everyone’s just pretending to be who they are just to fool me?

I squeeze my eyes shut for a moment and then look down at my notes. I must be in a very bad way if those thoughts come back to me.

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