Code by Night

The middle of my story always seems to be unique, but its beginning and its end are always the same. I am in my cubicle at work, papers full of little notes and anecdotes strewn about my desk, but my focus is instead upon the computer screen. A window is open in Roundtable containing several lines of code and I am tasked with tracking down the bug that haunts my reality. My problem is never syntax at this point in my career, as all my semicolons and periods are where they need to be. The plague is in the logic and what it's meant to do versus what it's actually doing.

I always come close, and sometimes figure out the answer, but then I think it doesn't matter. "This isn't the real code," I think, "you've been dreaming all this time." When that realization hits it always wakes me up.