The air conditioning is leaking in the justice department. We enter. Access is only allowed with passes or by showing a passport. Everyone, except for those in work pants. We just need to say that we’re here to fix something, and they’ll even take us all the way to the holy of holies—the server room, where the air conditioner is actually leaking. And it’s leaking quite a bit. They’ve placed a plastic container down below to collect the water. We turn off the air conditioning. The system administrator says it’s unnecessary. It should always be below 40 degrees here. We assure him it’s just for a short while. We take apart the unit, trim the pipes, and apply a coupling with glue. Everything’s in order. The outer casing fits a bit crookedly. It’s a cheap piece of equipment. But we can be happy—it was bought on a budget.
The second leak is from the ceiling installation in the sysadmin’s office. It’s a standard sysadmin room—clutter, computers with inventory numbers, spare parts. In the center, there’s a half-collapsed workstation with eight monitors. It looks like something out of “The Matrix” or a spaceship. In the middle of the table, there’s a Spock figurine from “Star Trek.” We took off the cover… no, we can’t fix it right away. We need to replace the pump. Not today.
As they were leaving, they noticed the justice officials playing poker in their cafeteria downstairs. Instead of money, they were using chips. They were playing with enthusiasm. It made me think.