Whid
By the time Arthur finally reached the top of his desk, he felt like he had run a Marathon. He tried to get himself together, but when he looked at his computer with his desperate snail-eyes, letting out a sigh, he could think about only one question: How the hell will he type on this thing?
Then there was this very quiet knock on the door.
“NO!” said Hubert immediately, glancing over from his desk with a look that was probably meant to be very stern. Then continued in a bit lower voice, to make sure that the knocking person can’t hear him. “No one should see us like this!”
Arthur just shook his head, sighed again, and then shouted as loud as he could: “Come in!” Hubert growled at him, which was very unfrog-like, and turned back to his code.
“Hi, I won’t disturb long!” The person walking in had a tiny tremble in his voice, giving away his lack of confidence even in this simple action of entering a room. He seemed a bit confused when he looked around. “Umm… Arthur? Hubert? I thought I’ve heard you…”
“Hi Paul! We are here!” confirmed Arthur. “We were just turned into animals.”
Paul’s confusion was definitely not reduced by this fact, but he nodded anyway. “I see. Anyway… I just wanted to apologize for the trouble I’ve caused this morning.”
“It was not your fault,” sighed Arthur.
“No-no, I was the one who pushed the changes. It surely was my fault.”
“He just said it was not!” Paul winced at the harsh voice coming from Hubert. Arthur just rolled his eyes.
“Umm… Thank you, guys!” said Paul, still not very convinced. “I just wanted to apologize, so I guess… I don’t want to disturb… so I will just leave you to your work now…”
“Wait-wait-wait! You have to help me!” Arthur finally had a plan how to proceed. “As you can see, I currently lack a few fingers, and we would really need to speed up with this project we are working on. Could you handle the mouse and keyboard for me, please?” Seeing Paul’s hesitation, he added: “It would be very important for us to finish this in 24 hours, and it should definitely make up for any guilt you are feeling right now.”
Paul felt like this was the moment of truth. He took a deep breath, and did a short calculation on how much money he earned here as an intern (= not much), comparing it to the fact that he could be the hero of the day (= priceless).
He nodded, and took a seat at Arthur’s desk.