Dal Kensington clicked his pen as he glanced around the conference room.
"No coffee? Snacks?"
Sheila Marshall shook her head. She was in HR. Dal couldn't remember her title. Maybe Assistant...HR...Lady...something?
"Julia's out," said Sheila. "She's uh..."
"Julia, too?" cursed Dal. "Shiiiiiit. Wayne, you know how to work the Keurig?"
Wayne Nguyen puffed out his cheeks. He was IT. But not computers IT...more like, building websites IT? Maybe? Dal really needed to check the org chart. "That's not really my department," said Wayne. "I'm more of a tea guy, anyway."
"You can make tea with a Keurig," said Dal, sagely. "They sell, you know...little tea cups. For the machine thing."
Wayne nodded. "Okay."
Dal looked around the table. "Is this it?"
"Mike Westin's coming up with a report," said Sheila.
"What's Mike do?" asked Dal.
"QA," said Sheila.
"Q...A..."
"Quality Assurance," said Sheila.
"Yep," said Dal. "Well, we definitely need him."
Moments later the door to the conference room flew open. Mike Westin, panting, sweating, clothes torn half to shreds, plopped down at the conference table and pulled out his laptop.
"Sorry," said Mike. "It's uh...it's not good out there."
"We know," said Dal. "Julia's out. No coffee."
Mike's face fell. "No coffee? Crud. Okay. Well...what's the WiFi password on this floor?"
Dal looked at Wayne. Wayne shrugged. "I'm not Admin. I'm systems."
"CODEX12345," said Sheila. Dal frowned at Wayne.
"Okay," said Mike. "So, I suppose we should start with a report on...you know...what happened there."
"Sounds good," said Dal, absently standing and turning towards where the coffee was usual located, then slumping back down into his chair dejectedly.
Mike pulled up a series of charts and graphs on the display at the front of the room. "So, CODEX Model P01. The commercial model. Okay, so so far we've moved 430,000 of these models to homes in the United States. Which is pretty good, by the way. Well exceeding Q2 projections."
"I'm not sure we need the sales figures," said Sheila. "I think the current concern is the event. Correct?"
Dal realized she was looking at him. "Yes. Definitely. Great numbers. Good numbers. Very proud of those numbers. But Sheila's right. Let's get to the QA stuff, because of...you know."
"Well," said Mike, taking a deep breath. "To get a better understanding of why this happened, we'd need programmers in here to walk us through the coding issues."
Dal turned to Wayne. "That's external systems," said Wayne. "I'm internal systems. I don't know anything about that." Dal frowned at Wayne.
"So what do we know?" said Sheila.
"CODEX functions properly," said Mike. "It functions great. No issues with the hardware, with the pod itself or any of the attachments. It cures all prescribed sicknesses. All breaks. All cuts. Perfect. So it's not a malfunction. It seems to be a flaw in the code. When CODEX is presented with a null value it defaults to a null solution."
"Certainly," said Dal, blinking rapidly.
"In other words," said Mike, "when the problem presented is not located, CODEX defaults to a very specific treatment cycle. That treatment cycle is...slightly problematic."
"What's the cycle?" said Sheila.
Mike chewed on his lower lip for a moment. "Uh. So, CODEX defaults to a treatment that basically amounts to a hard reboot."
"Like with a computer?" said Wayne. Dal glared at Wayne.
"Yeah," said Mike. "I think that may be the principle behind the code. CODEX basically turns it off and then turns it on again."
"It?" said Sheila.
"The patient," said Mike.
"It turns the patient off...and then turns the patient back on again?" said Dal. "So that...oh. You can't turn people off, can you?"
"No," said Mike, shaking his head. "That is technically killing someone."
Sheila's face was pale gray. "So CODEX...our CODEX...kills people and then...what? Reanimates them?"
"Well," said Mike. "You guys saw what it looks like out there. It's...you know...it's not good."
"How did this not come out in testing?" said Sheila, visibly shaking.
"Okay, that's a fair question," said Mike. "Like I said, this is all triggered by null values in the examination phase. Meaning, no illnesses. No disease. We, um, well we really just tested people who were actually sick. Which, let's be fair here, that's what we assumed our base consumer would be."
Dal nodded. "That's true. I remember Marketing talking about that. They said our core audience was sick people. They had pictures and everything."
Sheila grimaced. "So what are we going to do about this? I don't want to be an alarmist or anything, but it does feel a bit like we may have caused an actual zombie apocalypse."
"Let's not use the "A" word," said Dal. "Zombie incident. Much more neutral."
"What do we do?" said Mike. "Well, CODEX can probably fix this. This is what it does. We just need IT to alter the programming so it recognizes zombie-ism as a diagnosis and has the proper treatment sequence to...you know...make everyone not be a zombie anymore."
Dal, Sheila, and Mike all turned to Wayne. Wayne sighed. "I'm not product! Internal only."
"What the hell does that even mean?" said Dal.
Before Wayne could answer, the room was filled with a loud moaning, filtering in through the door. Dal jumped to his feet and yanked the door open.
"Keep it quiet out here!" he bellowed. "We're trying to have a...oh hey, Julia's here! Julia, can you show me how to...AAAHHHHHHH!!"