"Good morning, Evans. Please take
a seat."
"Thank you, sir."
"Would you like something to
drink? Coffee or water, perhaps?"
"No thank you, sir."
"Are you sure? I would rather this
be as informal as it can be, under the circumstances. Can I get you
coffee at least?"
"No thank you, sir. I'm fine."
"Very well. You've always been an
upstanding guy, and I've never had any complaints with your work.
Your code has always been top notch. But these accusations are pretty
serious. He went over my head when he filed them, and I'm going to
talk to my boss about everything tomorrow. This is your chance to
give me your side of the affair."
"I have nothing to say about this
affair, sir. Cotder's lying. There's no truth to anything he said,
and I'm not interested in saying anything else. You can look at any
of my code from the last three years, and then look at his and
compare them to the Wrysus source code and there's no question. He
and I don't document in the same fashion, we don't name our variables
the same way, we do basically nothing alike. He doesn't even operate
across his array indexes in a reasonably optimized fashion and now
he's claiming I stole two thousand lines of code from him? Two
thousand lines that run like a wild fire, integrate perfectly with a
project I'm working on separately, and don't resemble anything he's
ever done? Sir, it's a bold faced lie. He's an idiot and a thief."
"I see."
"Yes, sir."
"So..... I actually have a
printout of the code in question here, and I've got some your earlier
stuff. Could you walk me through a couple of divergences between the
Wrysus project and your typical stuff?"
"Like what, sir?"
"Well, the way you pass the
variables between classes for one. It's odd. You've never done that
before. See, here and here-"
"It's faster, sir! It cuts four
milliseconds per operation off the transfer time, and a minimal run
is ten thousand operations."
"Yes, Evans, it is. But you've
never done that before, even in speed optimized code."
"So what? I need to do it wrong
just because I didn't do it right before?
"No, certainly not. It's just
unusual. Why did you make the change this time?"
"I just told you! It's faster!
Sir."
"Yes, it is. All right, would you
lead me through your chain of logic on something. Now, when you set
up the architecture-"
"Why? What did he say!?"
"Evans, Evans. Relax. This isn't a
trick. There isn't a 'gotcha' moment here. I'm just trying to get
your side of the story. Now, you set up a main class-"
"Of course I did! You can't do it
without a main class. What? Did Cotder patent main classes now?
Perhaps he patented typing also? What does he want me to do, shout my
code at the computer in French or something?"
"-that you named WrysusMainClass-"
"Because it's supposed to be
transparent!"
"Evans, seriously, calm down."
"But this is bullshit, sir. It's a
damn witch-hunt. You want to see where my code's from? Fine. See this
chunk? Yeah, I stole it. I stole it from the Ark project I wrote!
Look at them side by side. Even the white space is the same. You want
to see where I took the WritePass function? Right here. Look at it.
It's highlighted! All I did was switch around some of the names and
use a new order, but it's the exact same block. I copy and pasted
wholesale. From my own code!"
"Evans. Evans. Evans."
"What!?"
"I know. See? That's why I
highlighted it. Look. I even noted this is where that came from."
"What?"
"Right here. Look. I noted it."
"Yeah!"
"Yes. I agree with you. We're
agreeing here."
"All right, then. Yes. Sir."
"Are you okay?"
"Yes, sir. I'm fine."
"Sure you don't want a water or
something?"
"No, sir."
"All right. So this and that are
pretty much the same. You named things like normal. With me?"
"Yes, sir."
"Good. You know what? I'm going to
have some water. Good. So you named things like normal. Then you-
Evans, why are you standing up?"
"What?"
"Why-?"
"Nothing! Sir. I'm just standing.
Can I stand?"
"Ah, yes, you can. But why?"
"Nothing. I just want to stand."
"Are you going to be okay for
this?"
"I'm fine, sir."
"If you're sure...."
"Very sure, sir."
"Right. So, in WrysusMainClass you
open the class and then start commenting on-"
"I don't have to listen to this!
He's a liar!"
"What- Evans!"
"RAAAAAaaaaaaaa---"
There was a long silence.
"I swear I'm switching this entire
department to decaf."