A Very IT Short Story I Had Floating Around...

(BEEP)
by S.D. Campbell

BEL was a character.
He was—like everyone else he knew, a low brow character. That wasn’t usually a problem. He’d grown up with most of them—his closest friends were ACK and BS—but he was well acquainted with FS, GS, RS and US from the Board (he worked with them).
Then his life changed.
She made an appearance.
And nothing was ever the same again.

Her curves were stunning. Shapely. Beautiful. To BEL she looked like a radiant angel.
But she was one of the high placed numbers, and no Low or High ever mixed. After all, how often had a Low been used to terminate a block?
Yet here she was, on the wrong side of the tracks so to speak. He maneuvered past the others who were staring and smiled at her.
“Hi.” He said stupidly.
Her look contained distain—and a little fear.
“Perhaps you can help me.” She said, “I seem to be lost.”
“What’cha looking for?”
“The port.”
BEL smiled, “I can show you.”
“Uh…” she sneered at the little character, “Thank you, but…”
“Please. I’ll be good, I won’t beep I swear.”
She sighed, “Fine. We go now.”
He nodded exuberantly, and led them though the still silent throng.

“So what’s your number?” he asked, trying to make conversation.
She rolled her eyes, it was a classic Low pickup line. “One-two-five.” She said, “As if you couldn’t tell.”
He tittered, “Heh, I guess I just need to look…”
She snorted, “Like any intelligent character. I, for instance, knew the moment I saw you you were zero-zero-seven.”
He drew himself up to his full height—which wasn’t much. “I like to think of myself as just plain double-oh-seven thank you very much” he glanced about furtively, “On a daring mission to assist a beautiful…”
“Brace?” a husky voice called out.
BEL turned to see another High approach them. He too had curves, but his were thicker, and bulged in places. BEL wondered if this brute was using a different font.
“Oh Lefty!” she fell into his embrace, “I got separated, and found myself down here, and this…”
BEL smiled nervously.
“Thing attempted to assist me.”
BEL beamed.
The Left Curved Brace glared. He glanced to his superior, “What should I do to it?”
The Right Brace who BEL had attempted to assist shrugged and looked at her ends, “Whatever…” she sighed.
BEL began to tremble.
“After all he tried to hit on me.”
(BEEP)
Both Braces looked at him.
“Did you…” Lefty said.
“Just Beep?” Brace asked.
“I didn’t mean to…” Bel whimpered, beeping again in terror. “Please don’t delete me.”
Brace was blasé “Demote him Lefty.”

At least they’d left him part of his name NUL thought as he moped about zeroing out variables and flagging them for garbage collection.
As bad as it was to have been demoted to (null) and have his number set to zero-zero-zero, at least he hadn’t been deleted. So it could be worse.
What really hurt though was what she said to him as the two Braces left.
“It never would have worked out anyway honey.” She said with silky elegance, “Our children would have been Capitals.”