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so myself. Now it looks like we'll have to postpone the big Take This Job and Shove It scene for a while." Larry exhaled loudly. "I'm really looking forward to that scene, Gwen. I have such fantasies," he went on dreamily. "First I'm going to come in real late that last day and wait until the Elf starts into his usual lecture on the unreliability of idiot savant programmers. Then, about halfway through, I'm going to tell him I really can't bear to cause him one more day of grief."
    Guinevere picked up a pile of papers on her desk. "And then you'll turn around and wave goodbye forever, leaving him with that month's payroll half done, right?"
    "Something along those lines." Larry straightened as his computer began talking silently back to him. "The bastard ought to be grateful to me. After all, Cal and I are going to immortalize the sucker."
    Arching one eyebrow, Guinevere slid him a questioning glance. "How?"
    Larry grinned evilly. "Know what we're calling the game?"
    "I think I'm getting a horrible premonition."
    "Elf Hunt."
    "Oh, Lord."
    Guinevere swung around to her terminal and began the laborious task of inputting a six months' backlog of sales figures. It was the clerical job Elfstrom had assigned her this morning, and she was fairly certain he'd done it out of sheer spite. The monotonous task was sure to deaden the brain of one of the less advanced species of worms, let alone a human being.
    There was a wide spectrum of jobs that needed doing in the brave new world of computers, and a lot of them lacked anything resembling challenge and creativity, advertising to the contrary notwithstanding. Many of the jobs were, in fact, just routinely clerical, the same as they had always been. They were also somewhat painful. Guinevere's lower spine already ached a bit from this morning's session in front of the terminal. Russ Elfstrom did not believe in wasting StarrTech's money on computer furniture designed to ease the strains of his employees.
    "You know, I'm really beginning to wonder what Cal's up to," Larry said wearily as he went back to work. "I can't even get him on his home phone. He's a natural-born loner, but sometimes he takes it to extremes."
    It was another voice that answered, that of Liz Anderson, a computer operator. As she walked back into the room she swung her purse down from her shoulder. "Maybe he took an impromptu vacation after the last time Elfstrom yelled at him. Cal worked hard on that new inventory control program, you know, and the Elf didn't even tell him he'd done a good job." She poured herself a cup of coffee from the machine that sat in the corner, smiled at Guinevere, and took a seat in front of some printouts on her desk. "For crying out loud, you act like he's a missing brother, Larry. What do you think happened to him?" An attractive woman in her late twenties, Liz was still carrying some weight left over from her pregnancy. She stuck scrupulously to diet colas and coffee. She'd even limited herself to half a doughnut earlier.
    "Maybe he ran off to California to join a commune," said Jackson. "He used to talk about how it was too bad he was born too late to be a hippie. I can just see him starting a whole new trend - computerized communes, complete with inventory control and automated donation-gathering procedures."
    Jackson, an energetic programmer fresh out of college and still wearing signs of acne, had traipsed in through the door. He was unpeeling the wrapper on a Twinkie.
    He was dressed, as Larry was, in a pair of jeans that were too short, white socks, sneakers, and a polyester shirt. He also had a pair of classic nerd glasses and the familiar nerd pack of pens and pencils in his left shirt pocket. He offered Guinevere a bite of the Twinkie as he passed by her desk.
    "No, thanks." She smiled. "Had a big lunch."
    "Cal hasn't run off to some commune, and you know it." Larry glared at his screen.
    "Yeah? Then where is he? Visiting his mother?" Jackson dropped into his chair and stabbed at