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racks, install the software, configure it, and then run a burn-in test.
    When a department needed additional servers in a rush, then they could request an exception. The exception process would take servers that had already been bought for another group, and were already in the processing pipeline, and divert them to the department that needed them urgently. Then replacement computers would be ordered for the first group, who would have to wait a little longer.
    Diversion requests were not the norm, but certainly they weren’t uncommon either. No, the puzzling part was not the request itself, but that Gary would submit such a request in email. Only the official procurement application could be used to order, expedite, or divert servers. Gary should know that.
    He put his hand on the phone to call Gary, and then took it away. A call to Gary would eat up at least fifteen minutes. He had learned over time that regardless of what the procurement rules were, whenever John tried to explain them to anyone, they would just argue with him. The higher up in the company they were, then the more they would argue as though their lofty organizational heights carried with it some kind of potential energy that could just roll over the rules. A quick email would save John from getting his ear chewed out.
     
    To: Gary Mitchell (Communication Products Division)
    From: John Anderson (Procurement)
    Subject: Email Procurement Forms
     
    Gary,
     
    We can’t do a server reallocation exception based on an email. I couldn’t do that for 5 servers, let alone 5,000 servers. Please use the online Procurement tool to submit your request: http://procurement.internal.avogadrocorp.com, or have your admin do it for you. That’s the only process for procurement exceptions we can use. We can easily approve your reallocation exception if you follow the existing process, and provide appropriate justification.
     
    Thanks,
    John
     
    John worked through his backlog of emails as he gradually drained his coffee cup. The hundreds of new messages in his inbox would give the casual observer the impression he had been gone from work for a week, rather than just the late start he had gotten dropping off his kids. He took another sip of coffee, and continued to work through emails. The rest of his day, like every other, would consist of endless cups of coffee and endless emails. Gary’s email might have been a little unusual, but it was quickly forgotten amid the deluge of other issues.
    * * *
    A few hours later, on the other side of the campus from John Anderson, Pete Wong brought his lunch from the cafeteria in Building Six diagonally across to Building Three, pausing briefly on the windowed sky bridge. The sun had come out, and he raised his face to it for a few moments. Looking down, he saw the light glisten on wet streets, perhaps one of his favorite parts of the rain. He remembered as a kid he would run outside on rainy days when the sun broke through the clouds, pretending that fairies had covered the street with magic dust. A crowd of laughing people, marketing folk from their attire, entered the skybridge, distracting him from his memories. He continued through the sky bridge, and then down four flights of stairs to his office. Out of the sun, and into the fluorescent gloom of basement offices.
    At one department meeting after another, Pete had been assured that his Internal Tools team, responsible for delivering the IT tools used inside the company, would be relocated just as soon as there was available above ground office space again. Pete shook his head thinking about it. It was no surprise to Pete that the Internal Tools team was stuck in what effectively amounted to the dungeons of Avogadro Corp. Everyone in the company used their tools every day to get their jobs done, from ordering office supplies to getting more disk space to filling out their timecards. But because they didn’t develop the sexy customer-facing products, they were the absolute