Modern Frustrations

Pe'esyew enjoyed their job as much as anyone else did. They assumed. They had never asked their colleagues but they could not imagine that they did not also enjoy frustrating the yuezers. It was positively delicious.

With a thought Pe'esyew shifted into the flow of the other Bietz, flickering their way to work for the day. They paused briefly in the Ceepew to collect their assignment for the day, the third floor was running a little low and Esesdee had identified the yuezer Steve as a quick and easy energy source. Pe'esyew was in position when Steve rolled into work already looking frazzled. His shirt was missing a button, a broken thread telling the story of a harried morning, and the cup of coffee he was clutching as if it was the only thing keeping him from murdering someone had the wrong name on it. Steve had picked up Stephanie’s drink, a decaf mocha with soy milk, not his triple shot long black.

Oh, this was going to be easy.

Steve was waiting impatiently for his computer to log on. Pe'esyew waited until the second the screen changed to the desktop of his profile before freezing it. The instant groan of frustration and heated glare sent a shiver of delight down Pe'esyew’s spine.

The frozen log-on was one of their favourites. The yuezers always forgot that it would lock their account and even re-starting the computer wouldn’t fix it. Exactly on cue Steve pushed away from his desk and spat a curse they couldn’t hear at the ‘your account is locked’ message scrawled innocently across his screen. A boost of energy shot through them and they knew they were easily going to meet their target that day.

#

A week later Pe'esyew was back lurking in Steve’s system. The yuezers had installed a new bank of servers and the Bietz were having to work overtime to meet up with the transmorph demand.

Steve was going to be in for a rough week. Snooping through his calendar, deleting a meeting from later that day as they did it, Pe'esyew snickered to themselves Steve had a report due later that week and it was going to be such a shame when the file corrupted two hours before the deadline and he would loose half of it.

Hmmm… what other small annoyances could they pepper throughout the day to make the explosion that much sweeter? Removing a few functions from the internal messaging app, and then altering the email sorting macros had a steady muttering of curses flowing throughout the day.

By lunch time Pe'esyew knew they had primed Steve for a boost of annoyance to transmorph to fill the gap until the report was due. Neither of the screens flicked on when he wriggled the mouse. Taking a deep breath, Steve tried again. When that didn’t work he unplugged both screens, waited ten seconds that he counted under his breath, and plugged them back in.

Nothing.

This time the swearing wasn’t under his breath and it had his boss shooting a reprimand at him.

Steve picked up his phone and stabbed an angry finger against the screen. Pe'esyew couldn’t see who he was calling, but they could take a guess.

The IT guys.

The small team were the worst part of Pe'esyew’s day. They had put in some good work to get Steve to his current level of fuming and they were going to come in with their inability to be ruffled and calmly move Pe'esyew along. With only a few hours left in the workday, there was no way they were going to meet their quota for the day.

Except the IT guy wasn’t one that Pe'esyew recognised. Maybe there was a chance, not all of the newbs were as truly, deeply calm as they wanted their new boss to believe. Those ones only ever lasted a week. Possibly two.

Excellent.

Pe'esyew hunkered down and waited for the fight to start.

Except there was no fight. The New IT guy walked over, smiled serenely at the world and Pe'esyew could feel themself being pulled back into the ether. What sort of bullshit was this?

Even the good ones normally had to at least touch the computer to send the bietz on their way.

The last look at the two yuezers was of Steve sagging in relief as his computer ‘magically’ started working again the New IT guy smiling kindly at him.

Fuck.

#

It. Kept. Happening.

The only reason the bietz weren’t unforgivably behind was that the New IT guy couldn’t keep in multiple places at once and they quickly learnt that while he was always quick to respond to Steve he wasn’t quite so prompt with everyone else. Smirking satisfaction rippled through Pe'esyew remembered the explosion of energy they had gathered when Steve’s report had corrupted exactly on time. Even the New IT guy couldn’t do anything to save that!

The challenge of finding glitches that even the New IT guy couldn’t fix was adding an extra buzz to Pe'esyew and their colleagues' workdays. Pe'esyew slipped back into Steve’s computer. It was becoming harder to rile the yuezer up, but when they managed it it came with such sweet satisfaction.

Doing a sweep of the system to see what they were going to alter or glitch that day they were astounded to see that the calendar appointments Pe'esyew had deleted the day before were back. What was going on?

A deeper snoop showed a back-up of the calendar that was beyond Pe'esyew’s remit to change! It. Was. On. Pe'esyew knew Steve would be sending in his expense reports that afternoon. Pe'esyew inserted a bug into the submission portal that would only show up for Steve and stop him from being able to send in the receipts. Oh, it would show up as if it had been sent but would never arrive at the other end. It was a tricky bit of glitching that often wasn’t worth the hassle, the company was so many years behind the current tech that they still allowed people to email the receipts in as well, but hopefully, the tech-illiterate Steve wouldn’t realise until too late and would miss the submission window.

Just in case, they changed Steve’s log-in details to the meeting he had in ten minutes and directed the password reset emails to the man’s junk mail. Petty was fun after all. Rather than moving on to someone else, Pe'esyew took their break to wait and watch the muttering explosion that would follow not being able to get into the meeting he was meant to be presenting in. A trickle of frustration started, the slow but unstoppable changing of the tide. Soon Steve would be drowning in it. The flow never grew though. The trickle was still there but it wasn’t growing. Instead, the frustrating yuezer sighed with a secret smile and dialled his phone.

The New IT Guy turned up quickly. He didn’t start working on the problem meeting straight away though. They watched as he lent against the edge of Steve’s desk with a smile, hands shoved in his baggy jeans, and they chatted. The tiny flow of frustration from Steve dried up leaving nothing but the vague positive emotions that the bietz could do nothing with and so had never bothered to tease out into separate feelings with names.

Bored and knowing they weren’t going to wring any more frustration to transmorph from Steve that day, Pe'esyew moved on.

#

Each time he was assigned to Steve, Pe'esyew found themself waiting a few extra minutes before moving on to the next yuezer. They were finding that a new highlight of their day was watching the two men interact. Missed glances and shy smiles. As he watched some of those odd feeling positive emotions began to sort themselves into little labeled boxes.

They were each a little bitter to the bit that didn’t make them uninteresting though. The other byete didn’t understand when they brought it up to them. All except Geepeew. They fritz a little in excitement when Pe'esyew brought it up.

The next day Pe'esyew found themselves with company when they were waiting for the New IT guy to come and fix the latest bug Pe'esyew had left for Steve to find.

“Oh, that is attraction,” Geepeew explained from behind them.

“Hmm.” Pe'esyew hummed in vague interest.

“That thing they are doing with their faces.” Geepeew continued. “They are attracted to each other. It is a thing the yuezers do. They will start touching each other soon.”

Together they watched as the New IT guy nudged Steve with his elbow, drawing a brighter smile from Steve.

It seemed that each time the New IT guy touched Steve and Steve smiled at him, the attraction that Geepeew had identified completely overrode any frustration Steve had been feeling about Pe'esyew’s latest efforts. The more the attraction grew, the less often Pe'esyew got any sort of frustration for his efforts and the once abundance source of transmorph had fully dried up only two months after the New IT guy first met Steve.

Nine weeks after the New IT guy arrived, [hub] had completely stopped assigning any of the byete to Steve and Pe'esyew was finding that he was missing ruffling the yuezer. Geepeew floated over to Pe'esyew in the [breakroom]. “How are Mark and Steve?”

“Who is Mark?” Pe'esyew turned to them.

“Mark!” Geepeew answered as if that illuminated who they were talking about. “The IT guy.” Their frustration was Pe'esyew a little zing of satisfaction and energy.

“Oh, is that his name?” Pe'esyew turned away feigning disinterest. “We wouldn’t know.”

“Have you not been to peek?” Without warning Geepeew wrapped around Pe'esyew and dragged them into the ether, racing towards Steve’s computer.

Steve was sitting morosely at his desk, half-heartedly glaring at the sleeping screen. With a sad sigh, the man wriggled his mouse to bring the system back to life and harshly typed in his details. Except he paused before putting in the last character of his password before purposefully hitting enter. A small, pleased glint returned to his eyes when the error popped up. And he did it again. And again. Until his system returned a locked message and his small glint bloomed into a bright smile and he swiped up his phone.

There was no frustration from the IT error flowing into their systems

It didn’t make sense.

Until the bitter twang of attraction flooded through Pe'esyew with a sweet aftertaste of a flavour of frustration that he had never felt before. The smile stayed firmly on Steve’s face as the New IT guy, Mark apparently, turned up. His smile was firmly in place with a whiff of his attraction-frustration drifting through Pe'esyew’s awareness.

The next day Pe'esyew returned to Steve’s computer without Geepeew in tow. They watched as throughout the day Steve went from vaguely satisfied to morose again. By the time he was logging off for the day his shoulders were dragging and he didn’t look any of his colleagues in the eyes as he bid them a quiet good bye.

Something fluttered uncomfortably in Pe'esyew. Knowing they had already wasted one day of transmorphing and they were going to struggle to meet their quota, they still returned to Steve’s computer the next morning. They set a few minor bugs before flicking through the photocopier. It was always a big burst of frustration, but they couldn’t use it too often or the company would replace it and the new models were better at keeping byete out.

Each morning Pe'esyew threw a few bugs into Steve’s computer before going about their assigned work. Sometimes he stayed long enough for Mark to turn up and the two yuezers to smile at each other and a frisson of attraction-frustration to zing through Pe'esyew before they left.

Another month passed and one morning when Pe'esyew flickered into Steve’s computer they were met with a new sight. The two yuezers were smiling happily at each other beside the desk, their ankles tangled as they shared a morning coffee. The attraction-frustration again transformed, this time into attraction-satisfaction. Allowing the positive-bitter zing to wrap around them and Pe'esyew went on their way.