The Development Officer has an idea. It finds its way to a post-it note. The post-it note does not exist in the physical world per se - it's a small program on the Development Officer's laptop. "That's all right," she thinks, "the idea does not exist in the physical world either."
"That's where you're wrong," says the Production Manager. She is facing quite an unhappy group of developers this morning. She doesn't have time for the Development Officer's half-baked, hare-brained ideas. She quickly fires off a memo to corporate. The memo also doesn't exist in the physical world per se - it's an ingenious application designed for the office's internal network by the Computer Guy.
The Computer Guy, whom everyone called "Jesse," took too many pills last night. He has a terrible habit of taking his friends' prescription medications if they happen to leave them at his place. Or if he happens to be at their place & finds some in their medicine cabinets. He used to take the time to look up the pills in a Big Book Of Pharmaceuticals, but now he just takes them, often in small handfuls, & waits to see how they affect him. One result is: he sometimes does not remember what he did for hours before the effects wear off.
He does not know, for example, that he hacked into his own system - he may have thought he was testing its security, although he obviously knew more about it than any intruder would - & sent out sensitive documents to everyone in the office as well as some who worked from home & others who were subscribed to his Doctor Who mailing list. But thanks to the pills he took around 11:30 pm the night before, he does not know it was he who breached security.
The Chief Financial Officer has spent the morning "putting out fires," as he puts it, so when he finds the Development Officer's idea, sent among a flurry of emails while angry workers storm in & out his office all morning long, he finds the timing so ludicrous that he believes she must have somehow been responsible for the late-night security problem.
The Chief Financial Officer orders Jesse the Computer Guy to surreptitiously search the Development Officer's computer under suspicion of the crime. He tells Jesse, "You know the stakes are high - if you can't find something, make sure you still find something." Jessie the Computer Guy is still a little too messed up to really understand what he's being asked to do.
In the small hallway outside the break room, the Production Manager, who has in the past believed that the Computer Guy has something of a thing for her, corners Jesse & asks about the investigation into the hacking. The Production Manager has not been included in the investigation by the Chief Financial Officer because many of the leaked documents show her in a favorable light toward the employees - defending popular projects, authorizing overtime, supporting (as Production Managers often do) her employees - & while the Chief Financial Officer does not exactly suspect her, he does not entirely trust her at this point in time.
Although the Production Manager is somewhat correct - the Computer Guy doesn't exactly have "something of a thing for her," he just enjoys looking at her breasts - she is not prepared for him to confess that he's been asked to do something unethical, if not illegal, to put the blame on the Development Officer. This gives the Production Manager an idea - & it's not one she commits to a post-it note that does not exist in the physical world.
Later, after the Production Manager has been promoted to Production Director, & the Chief Financial Officer has been suspended pending a criminal investigation, the Development Officer overhears Jesse the Computer Guy tell an intern, whose breasts he enjoys looking at, that it's not entirely true to say that things that are "on a computer," like mp3 files or text documents, "don't exist in the real world," as they are composed of physical things called "bytes," which, he points out, used to be kept on very tangible items like floppy discs, & which now need to be stored on a "hard drive" inside the computer.
The Development Officer suddenly suspect the Computer Guy of hacking his own system &, although she can't understand why he'd do such a thing - he didn't benefit in any way from the episode - she still tells her suspicions - in person - to the new Production Director & the interim Chief Financial Officer.
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