Free sci-fi short story
The Database
by Dan Sugralinov
An office IT guy finds a mysterious Excel file that rewrites reality — one cell at a time.
Mark Fink couldn't stand his last name, but since nobody ever called him by his first, all day long what he heard was:
"Yo, Fink, hustle down to accounting — their printer just died!"
"Fix the network, Fink!"
Even his girlfriend, on her way out the door for good, left him with:
"You really are hopeless… Fink."
He worked at a small company. Easy work — make sure the Wi-Fi held up and the router didn't drop. Nobody respected him, everybody pushed him around. On that January day, he understood he'd had enough.
He jiggled the mouse to wake the computer. He always kept his desktop clean — but now an Excel shortcut sat squarely in the middle of it: Database.xlsx.
Before opening it, Mark checked the path — the shortcut led nowhere. The file it pointed to didn't exist. Trojan, flashed through his mind. The antivirus didn't back him up.
He double-clicked the shortcut.
This workbook contains links to one or more external sources that could be unsafe. If you trust the links, update them to get the latest data.
Inside that file is a full roster of everyone at his company — salaries, diagnoses… and one column he really shouldn't touch.
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