Roommates

Traceback (most recent call last):
File "/home/user/project/main.py", line 45, in <module>
start_application()
File "/home/user/project/app/entry.py", line 112, in start_application
initialize_services(config)
File "/home/user/project/app/core/init.py", line 27, in initialize_services
db.connect()
File "/home/user/project/app/db/connector.py", line 88, in connect
self.\_connection = self.\_engine.connect()
File "/usr/local/lib/python3.11/site-packages/sqlalchemy/engine/base.py", line 2280, in connect
return self.\_connection_cls(self, self.\_wrap_pool_connect(self.pool.connect, None), close_with_result=False)
File "/usr/local/lib/python3.11/site-packages/sqlalchemy/engine/base.py", line 2309, in \_wrap_pool_connect
return fn()
File "/usr/local/lib/python3.11/site-packages/sqlalchemy/pool/base.py", line 364, in connect
return \_ConnectionFairy.\_checkout(self)
File "/usr/local/lib/python3.11/site-packages/sqlalchemy/pool/base.py", line 778, in \_checkout
fairy = \_ConnectionRecord.checkout(pool)
File "/usr/local/lib/python3.11/site-packages/sqlalchemy/pool/base.py", line 495, in checkout
rec = pool.\_do_get()
File "/usr/local/lib/python3.11/site-packages/sqlalchemy/pool/impl.py", line 146, in \_do_get
self.\_dec_overflow()
File "/usr/local/lib/python3.11/site-packages/sqlalchemy/pool/base.py", line 1143, in \_dec_overflow
self.\_overflow -= 1
TypeError: unsupported operand type(s) for -=: 'NoneType' and 'int'

I think it’s been eleven hours, but I am not sure. If I had to guess, I would say I last got up from my chair around 5pm. The bottom right of my computer screen reads 3:41am. My code still isn’t working. For eleven hours, roughly, my back has been curled, ass hardened, and soul vanishing. The only parts of my body that have recently budged are my fingers, and heart, I guess. My eyes are dry, but not in need of lubricant – they have been stuck at the same angle, agape at the code. The code I write is no longer mine. I imagine it was when I started, but not anymore. I am now at the behest of my program, which seems to have developed a will of its own. The program’s intentions are unknown to me, but they must include either eluding correctness or dominating me. Perhaps both. Perhaps these are one and the same. Perhaps I am now the code’s.

My body is stiff and numb. I don’t feel much. Besides my fingers, the rest of my body seems to have lost the ability to perceive through skin. I have never before felt so ready to empathize with a plank of wood. I should probably get up and drink water. I count down from three and stand up.

As far as the next 13 seconds go, I am foggy on details. I remember hearing lots of crunching and grinding. I briefly (yet viscerally) dreamed of an anthropomorphic laundry machine fighting another heavy-duty-machinery-person, clanging and ringing and screeching and all. I now find myself lain down on the floor piecing together my incident. I once again try to stand up, this time with no problem. As I regain my senses, a dry mouth reminds my need for water. I turn to my dresser and reach for an oversized metallic flask. As I pick it up and begin to twist the cap open, my heart sinks as I realize with greater and greater certainty that the bottle seems to possible weigh as much as it does when it is empty. A complete uncorking of the stainless-steel cap confirms my initial suspicions, and my heart fills with despair: I have to walk to the kitchen to fill up my bottle.

It’s not that I’m lazy. Well, I guess in certain domains I am, but I’m definitely capable of taking five steps out of my room. It’s just that, the kitchen, and living room, and whole rest of the apartment, really, are a barren wasteland. Alice and Bob are the reason for this state of affairs.

You see, A. and B. are my two roommates. Bob, a devout hedonist, is a professional consumer. He orders packages from the web at unprecedented rates – faster than he is able to process them and put his shit away into his master bedroom. The waste he has single-handedly introduced into the world is equivalent to three metric tons according to my models. Everyday, he is faced with the possibility of nourishing seven hungry villages in Zimbabwe or feeding his gambling addiction. I need not tell you which cause he finds more moving.

Alice, on the other hand, is a chronic lounger. She has a talent for flicking her thumb up on her phone to swipe through ultra-short-form internet video content that, as far as I can tell, she doesn’t even seem to watch in full. She is the LeBron James of sitting-on-the-couch-and-doing-absolutely-nothing, and it drives me friggin’ bonkers. It doesn’t help that she, much like Bob, lives a purely consumptive existence.

I turn to my bedroom door. Hand on doorknob, eyes closed, I say a mini prayer-directed-at-no-particular-higher-power, and hope that I do not run into Alice or Bob into the kitchen. I count down from three and walk out.

It feels like I’m in a different country. I do not yet see nor hear anyone. The hallway with all of our rooms is empty and I can see the living room is too. The probability of a run-in has dropped, but not yet to zero – I still have to take a few steps and turn right to see the kitchen in full, behind the wall forming the hallway. I slowly skate over to the kitchen, my socked feet delicately gliding across the hardwood floor. I still hear nothing. I push off my back foot one last time and my final stroke places me past the wall hiding the kitchen, which I turn my head to look into and find, at my horror, Alice standing there, boiling some noodles alive. I am startled, to say the least, but Alice is calmly unaffected. She quickly glances up and greets me with a warm smile:

“Hey!”

She knew someone was coming into the kitchen, and she seems to have known it was me.

I’m embarrassed about the gliding and getting startled, and so try to play it off cool.

“um Hey how’s it goin’?”

“I’m good, just cooking some ramen. Can I make you some?”

“Uhhh no thanks, I think I’m all set.”

“Ok”

“…”

“…”

“Actually, I guess some ramen would be good if you don’t mind.”

She smiles and gets out a new bag of the stuff.

We converse for a bit, she fixes me a bowl of the stuff, and I head back into my dungeon with some hot food. I place it on my desk and sit down smiley.

For a moment, I sit there blank, thoughts and smile suspended.

I suddenly and violently rematerialize. I become aware of my smile and the corners of my lips sink six feet below the ground.