By Humphrey Archer
This is one of a collection of stories that are tragedies with technical details surrounding the fatal (ornear-fatal) event that are drawn from real cases in the US OSHA incident report database or similar sources and are therefore entirely realistic, even if seemingly outlandish.
Micaela was the supervisor of a 15-person demolition and reclamation crew, and today was the first time in her life that she had come face to face with a mummy.
Bruce and Todd were bosom buddies back in the 1970s. Bruce had dropped out of college when his father had been laid off from the car plant and the money to fund a degree in computer science had evaporated along with most of his father’s pension. Todd was from a wealthier family and went on to complete his degree and get a job as a computer programmer at the hospital. Bruce had not been idle, though; with the hope of a degree gone, he had found a job with the hospital as a computer operator. It was not as fancy as being a programmer, he thought, but he had hands-on work with the big mainframes that paid reasonably well and would fund some studies after he had been there a year . He was dating one of the other operators
He was pleased when Todd was employed as a programmer at the hospital, but he soon found that they had both changed over the last 4 years. Where Bruce was settling down, planning marriage, and not much into parties anymore, Todd was still a frat boy focused on parties, hemp, and hustles. Todd made full use of his access to the mainframe and the facility, and soon had a number of side hustles going. He had set up a small fridge and microwave oven in a storeroom behind the mainframe room and sold candies, chips, and cigarettes at a profit. He had two other schemes that were less obvious but far more lucrative. Todd had hacked into the security camera system of the hospital, as well as the telephone system and the email server. What he assembled from that access were dossiers of people with compromising materials: steamy calls between illicit lovers, clips of petty office thievery, and emails filled with details of liaisons and lust. He even had a clip of a security guard and an operator stealing a quickie in the paper store. Todd had used some of these for his own entertainment but leveraged the best for payment or favors. Todd wasn’t content just to troll for victims, though; he actively enticed some into compromising situations, such as receiving counterfeit electronics or stealing office equipment.
