Before

Click. Click. Tap. Clack.

"Dammit! I hate these projects!" With a crash, a mouse crashes into the popcorn plaster walls commonly found in cheap buildings. A heavyset white guy stood up from his seat in front of a computer filled with lines of code faster than his size would imply he could.

As his chair toppled backward from his sudden ascent, he grabbed fistfuls of his unkempt curly hair and groaned out of frustration while staring bleary eyed at his computer. "The last 4 hours I've sat here making no progress on the boolean strings. I really, really need a blunt."

Releasing his hair, the fat guy walked over to a small coffee table sitting in the middle of the living room, grabbed a small plastic bag with 'Swisher Sweets' on it, then retrieved a sandwich baggie of weed that had been lying on one of the couch cushions. He sat down on the couch, taking the previous position of the bag of weed, then proceeded to roll himself a blunt.

The man sitting on the couch is Reese Argall, one of the programmers for the UI's (1) of Modern Solutions newest model of smart watch, the AuxCom (2). Modern Solutions were working on a revolutionary AI that was able to operate on a scale unheard of before by the technological world, able to efficiently and effectively operate independently, without any connection to a proxy server or shared database, a personal AI for each AuxCom that existed separately from the rest of the AI's.

The development of the AI had finished, but in order for it to become profitable, it had to be able to be easily used by the public, so several programmers were hired to code an entirely new UI to allow the user to easily interact with the AI. But because of the unique aspects of the AI and its vast differences from the majority of current AI meant that the programmers had to trailblaze programs specifically for the AuxComs, meaning they had to make everything from scratch.

Reese was hired to help program the UI along with several others, but unlike the others he was hired due to a recommendation from a friend of the manager of the hiring process, saying that Reese was an experienced programmer. All of the other newly employed programmers had spent years in a technical college learning to program or had built up years of experience coding, while Reese only had an understanding of highschool level programming from the year of beginning programming he took. If it wasn't for the fact that the managers friend owed Reese a favor and sent the recommendation, he wouldn't have even been considered for the job.

Because of his low level of understanding towards programming language, and programming in general, he struggled with trying to play the part of an experienced programmer when working in the MS office surrounded by people who actually knew what they were doing. He applied to work from home, claiming the workspace at MS was stressful for him and that he'd be more productive if he was away from the office after his colleagues asked him questions that he wasn't able to answer a few weeks after being hired.

In all honesty, Reese knew he was in over his head after his first day when some senior programmers explained to the new employees what exactly they were hired to do. Unfortunately, he wasn't able to quit because he needed the money from the job in order to pay his bills, and no other job offered high enough wages in order for him to come up with the funds to pay them.

Reese had been looking for a job for 3 months before finding the job at MS, and hadn't been able to pay any of his bills during that time, so he had three months worth of bills to pay in order to continue living in the small two bedroom apartment he owned. Having received an eviction notice saying he needed to make a payment on his rent before the end of the month and the letters from the utility companies telling him they would cut off his power, water, and other utilities unless they received a payment, he became desperate for a job, so even though he knew he was horribly unqualified to be working as a programmer for the AuxCom, he had no choice unless he wanted to become homeless. So, he called up a card that had been sitting around the house for months, and got the owner of the card to give him a recommendation letter. The man owed him a favor after he ran into Reese a few months back with his car, and promised to do one thing for Reese if he didn't call the police or insurance companies on him. Since Reese hadn't really been injured and only seriously winded from the impact with the car, he agreed to the man's proposal, and received the man's business card and found out that the guy was a professor at a technical college nearby.

As he was stressing out over finding a job, he found out MS was hiring programmers and that the pay offered was high enough for him to completely pay off all his debt in a few months, and remembering that card, managed to blackmail the professor into writing a recommendation letter for him. It wasn't until he gave the letter to the interviewers along with a forged résumé that he found out the professor was a friend of the hiring manager, effectively earning himself a job after the manager gave a call to the professor.

But even with the job, you have to know what you're doing in order to make any money. Because of his stress over being unable how to code and his worry that his supervisor would want to look at his progress, he began drinking and smoking in order to cope with it all.

He had both smoked and drank prior to this, but never as heavily as he did now. And as he finished rolling up the blunt, pulling out a lighter in order to dry the wrap, he looked at the blank TV screen and gazed at the reflection looking back at him. A 200 pound, 23 year old white and Hispanic mix looked back at him, with sad brown eyes, brown curly hair needing to be picked out, skin so light that it could be mistaken to be white if you didn't pay too close attention, with a stained white tee and a pair of worn jeans on him, holding a blunt and a lighter. Refocusing on the blunt, Reese lit the end and took a long drag on it, blowing out a large cloud of smoke into the air and watching as it dissipated, feeling some of his frustration from the last few hours leave with the smoke as he enjoyed the small comfort smoking weed gave him.