Soda – Selben's Tales

Sweet, Sweet Danger

Selben glanced past the assorted boxes filling the narrow hallway for the fifth time in as many minutes. He could see the table in the office kitchen remained empty and sighed. Turning back to his work, he pushed the handcart full of computer parts. It was nearly 9am and the…

The Mentor-WP

I wrote this for a Reedsy writing prompt: Write a story about “The Mentor” — The mentor prepares protagonists for the trials ahead. Sometimes this mentor is a parent. Other times, it might be a wizard or a suburban Karate teacher. Whatever form they take, they are there to guide our…

The Ritual

The office was dimly lit with flickering fluorescent lighting on their last legs as Selben entered the office and sat at his desk one morning. Putting on his headset he looked up to see four mysterious robed figures technicians all stand in unison and walk out the door drawing twisted…

Magic Software

Selben was working at this temporary location solo while Soda was off having a baby (well, his wife was, but anyway!). It was a simple phone and local IT support gig while the regular employee was on a long vacation. While the office was large, IT support only consisted of…

Wifi Shuffle Comic

The talented Sara Rude-McCune of How We Stay Sane @ Work and Wreck-Lass adapted the short story “Wifi Shuffle” into a comic!

IT Newbie and the Full Lotus

The last empty box was disposed of. The cool morning air helped to keep Selben from sweating much, but he still looked bedraggled from the effort of bringing 40+ computer boxes out to the dumpster. Back inside, he slumped back down in his chair intent on returning to his normal…

Level 5 Critical Ticket

It was the holiday season, and the one of the supervisors of BiggerCo had approved time off for almost everyone, including himself. This left Sup2, the remaining supervisor, in a sticky situation. He was an old acquaintance of Soda, and quickly hired him and Selben on for some super short-term…

Reboot the Router: A SodaCorp Tale

Do you like to read in Chronological order? The index can be found here: timeline.selben.net This tale takes place while Selben and Soda were running rogue, switching from company to company as temps doing contract work. At this location, the company was decently sized, but only had two locations, about…

One Blank Report

A small, but booming, startup company needed IT temps, and Soda landed the contract for him and Selben. Expensive cars filled the parking lot of a large building, all so new that none had license plates yet. Selben tried to not feel intimidated by the shiny elevators, and glass doors…

The Greatest Tech Ever

After completing a month-long contract, Soda had landed them another short-term gig at a small startup. The company had run into a major data loss due to massive hardware failure and needed their backed-up data restored to their main system. Unfortunately, their “backup system” was in the form of paper…