[Short Story] The Night Call

The black cell phone buzzed on the nightstand, blurting the shrill tone of terrible Samsung default.

Erik groggily pulled himself up from his bed and answered the phone.

"Hello?" Erik nervously asked, opening up his laptop and logging into his company's remote terminal.

"Hello. " a man answered back. "This is Johann from the Voelker-Wilhelm Brokerage Agency. I am having a critical software problem. I need to talk to Burkhart."

"Yes, Burkhart is my manager, and he placed me on call tonight. I would be happy to assist you in any way I can."

"No. I'm having a problem, and I need to talk to Burkhart. We have a problem with the overnight processing syst- are we having problems with overnight processing? - well I guess maybe not. And Burkhart is familiar with the particular set of issues. We should have arranged this earlier today."

Erik hesitated. This was very specifically supposed to be his job today, but the customer was not having it. He knew that Voelker-Wilhelm was the most important customer his company had, and, as this was his first time entrusted with the responsibility of answering late-night emergencies, he needed to handle this situation swiftly, and particularly correctly.

"Alright Johann, I will call Burkhart and he will get back to you."

"You have my number, right?"

"Yes, on the caller ID, of course."

Erik jotted down the number on the screen while Johann repeated his number anyway.

"Got it. I'll be calling him right now. Thank you for your patience, good bye."

He ended the call, and flipped through his contact list to Burkhart's number. He anxiously paused, musing whether or not this was the right decision, but given the white glove service that Voelker-Wilhelm demanded of them, he reassured himself that this was probably the only thing he really could do. The phone was answered swiftly, the loud noise of dance music and people chattering in the background.

"Evening Burkhart. This is Erik."

"Hi Erik."

"Well, Johann from Voelker-Wilhelm called and demanded you call him back in regards to a critical issue."

"What's the issue they're having?"

"He wouldn't say. I tried to ask him but he would not specify what the issue was, or if there even was an issue, just repeatedly demanded that I call you for an overnight process issue that you are apparently familiar with."

Burkhart paused for a while, giving a sigh.

"Well, Erik, unfortunately I am at The Wild Goose right now celebrating the holiday. I have no computer and can't answer the phone for a little while. Sometimes they will prefer having a senior resource. Call Konstanze, and she should be available. If she's not available, call Michel, and if he's not available, call Claudette. Whatever happens, message me, keep me informed."

"Alright, I will do that."

Erik sighed and dialed Konstanze's number. Konstanze did tell him that if anything happened that night, not to hesitate calling someone else, and so he did so anyway.

Before Erik could say anything, Konstanze teased him.

"Well well well I didn't expect you to call the very first day! What's going on?"

Erik stammered. "Well, Voelker-Wilhelm called and demanded to talk to Burkhart about an issue with the overnight process because he is well versed with them."

"What are they having a problem with? Who even called you?"

"Johann did, and he wouldn't say. He just kept asking for Burkhart, and wouldn't really talk to me. I called him, but he's at The Wild Goose, and isn't in the position to reply, so he told me to call you, to call Johann."

Konstanze paused. "Oookay. Well, what's his number?"

Erik repeated the number he recorded on the screen, and thanked Konstanze for helping.

Konstanze then called Johann.

"Hi Johann, this is Konstanze."

"Hi Konstanze. I need Burkhart or a senior experienced engineer on call in case the overnight process on goes wrong. And I need their personal number."

"Well, Burkhart isn't available right now. But I am such an engineer and can help you. You can contact me at this number."

"Okay, thanks Konstanze."

Erik relayed that Konstanze was taking care of the issue to Burkhart, and Burkhart, in turn, having since left the Wild Goose Club, told was now available to join a call from them, though he still had no computer on him.

An hour later, in the dead of the night, Johann called Konstanze.

"Hi Konstanze. The overnight process is completely stuck now."

"Okay Johann, let's arrange a remote session so we can see what's going wrong."

"No. We do not want a remote session. I just want you to call into this conference call number."

"Oookay. Hold on. I'll get Burkhart in as well."

Both of them joined the conference call. Burkhart took control of the situation.

"Good evening Johann, I understand you wanted to talk about the overnight process being frozen."

"No. The nightly process is running smoothly."

Konstanze interjected: "But you told me that it wasn't."

"Yes. But it's running fine now."

"What was it hanging up on?"

"I don't know. Otto told me that there was a problem."

"Can we talk directly with Otto?"

"No. Otto isn't currently available. Also, I just got word that specific calculating processes are not calculating correctly."

"Can we examine it?"

"No. It's working really slow though."

"Well Johann, that's pretty typical. It's the last day of the month, and there's a higher than usual activity because the system has to close all the books."

"I'm noticing some numbers are off now."

"What numbers?"

"I couldn't tell you."

"What do you want us to do?"

"Oh you don't have to do anything now."

"What?"

"I just want you to be aware of the problems. No engineering solutions just yet. We'll have Otto create all incidents for you that we see in the morning."

After several hours of waiting for the overnight processing system to slowly finish - the progress line by line being relayed through the phone by Johann - Konstanze, and Burkhart were finally relieved from the emergency call, having not been actually summoned for any particular emergency nor really solving any such thing.