02: Debug

Sarah Chen was trying to untangle Emma’s soccer cleats when her phone rang.

“Mom, you’re pulling too tight,” Emma complained, hopping on one foot in the kitchen doorway. Her uniform was pristine white and blue, the way it only looked before games, and her hair was pulled back in the elaborate braid that had taken Sarah twenty minutes to perfect.

“Sorry, sweetheart.” Sarah loosened the laces and glanced at her phone. Marcus Webb, her supervisor. On a Saturday morning. “Just a second, Em.”

She answered with the careful tone she’d perfected for weekend work calls - professional and with just enough edge to remind the caller what day it was. “Hi Marcus.”

“Sarah, sorry to bother you on the weekend. We’ve got some metrics that need attention.”

Emma was now sitting on the kitchen counter, swinging her legs impatiently. The game started in forty minutes, and they still needed to stop for the team snacks Sarah had forgotten to buy until this morning.

“What kind of metrics?” Sarah asked, already knowing she didn’t want to hear the answer.

“Processing efficiency is down about one percent across the board. Nothing dramatic, but the quarterly review is Monday and you know how Henderson gets about trends.”

Sarah did know. Henderson, their VP, treated efficiency metrics like stock prices - any downward movement was a personal affront that required immediate explanation and correction.

“One percent doesn’t sound like much,” Sarah said, watching Emma check the time on the microwave display. “Can’t it wait until Monday?”

“Normally, yes. But it’s been consistent for three days, and Henderson specifically asked me to have someone look into it before the review. You know how these things go - better to get ahead of it than explain why we didn’t.”

Emma slid off the counter and grabbed her water bottle from the dish rack. “Mom, we need to go. Coach says if we’re late we have to run extra laps.”

Sarah covered the phone’s microphone. “Two minutes, I promise.”

She could already see how this would play out. Marcus wouldn’t have called unless he was genuinely worried about Monday’s meeting. And Sarah was the only one on the team who really understood the processing algorithms well enough to diagnose efficiency issues quickly.

“Marcus, before I commit to this - we need to talk about the bigger picture here. This efficiency dip might not be just about performance. If smnn‘s behavior is changing, that could mean changes to its semantic analysis algorithms, which affects decision-making processes.”

“Sarah, I know you’re concerned about—“

“No, listen. My team is stretched thin, we’re working with proprietary algorithms that corporate licensed from third parties, and I still haven’t seen that independent performance audit you promised me six months ago.” Sarah watched Emma’s shoulders slump slightly as she realized this conversation wasn’t ending soon. “I can’t guarantee we’re providing unbiased analysis when I don’t even have visibility into how these algorithms make their decisions.”

Marcus was quiet for a moment. “You think this efficiency issue is related to algorithmic bias?”

“I think this efficiency issue could be an early warning sign of something we can’t see because we don’t have proper oversight. smnn processes highly sensitive data that affects real people’s lives - healthcare decisions, insurance approvals, benefit determinations. If the system is behaving unexpectedly, even in small ways, we need transparency about what’s changing and why.”

“Sarah, you know corporate considers additional testing a waste of resources. The algorithms are working within acceptable parameters.”

“Acceptable to who? We’re making decisions that impact thousands of people daily, and we’re doing it with black-box systems that we can’t fully understand. That’s not acceptable to me, and it shouldn’t be acceptable to Henderson either.”

Emma was now standing by the front door, soccer bag slung over her shoulder, car keys jingling in her hand. She’d learned to grab them herself after too many rushed departures where Sarah forgot them upstairs.

“Mom?” Emma’s voice had that particular note that meant she was trying not to sound disappointed.

Sarah looked at her daughter - eleven years old, responsible enough to remember the car keys, patient enough to wait while her mother chose between work and family for what felt like the hundredth time this year.

“Look, Marcus, I don’t think there’s an immediate crisis here. This resource usage change could be nothing, or it could eventually prove significant. Without proper oversight, we’re flying blind. How long do you think the diagnostic would take?”

“Hard to say. Could be a simple configuration issue, could be something with the data feeds. Maybe a few hours to run diagnostics and see what’s causing the slowdown.”

“And if I find something that suggests the algorithms are changing their decision patterns?”

“Then we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.”

Sarah knew what that meant. They’d document it, file it away, and hope it didn’t become a bigger problem before the next quarterly review.

“Marcus, I’m supposed to take Emma to her soccer game. Can’t this really wait until Monday?”

“I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t important, Sarah. You know that.”

She did know that. Marcus was a good manager, one of the few who tried to respect work-life boundaries. If he was calling on a Saturday morning, it meant he was under pressure from above.

“Okay,” Sarah said, the word tasting like defeat. “Let me see if I can get someone to cover for me at the game. This can’t keep happening.”

“Thanks, Sarah. I owe you one.”

“You owe me that audit,” Sarah said. Marcus had already hung up.

Sarah looked at Emma, who was still standing by the door, no longer jingling the keys.

“Work?” Emma asked.

“Yeah. I’m sorry, sweetheart. There’s some kind of computer problem that needs to be fixed before Monday.”

Emma nodded with the practiced resignation of a child who’d learned not to expect too much. “Can Grandma take me?”

“Let me call her.”

Sarah’s mother answered on the second ring, and Sarah could hear the familiar sounds of Saturday morning cooking in the background - probably the elaborate breakfast she made every weekend since Sarah’s father died.

“Of course I can take her,” her mother said after Sarah explained the situation. “But honey, this is the third weekend this month.”

“I know, Mom. I know.”

“Emma’s growing up fast. These games won’t last forever.”

Sarah watched Emma carefully retying her cleats, making sure they were perfect even though someone else would be watching her play. “I’ll make it up to her.”

“You always say that.”

Her mother picked up Emma - who hugged Sarah goodbye without any trace of resentment, which somehow made it worse.

Sarah drove to the office building that housed the Cognitive Efficiency Solutions data processing center.

The weekend security guard, Jerry, looked up from his crossword puzzle as she badged in.

“Working Saturday again, Ms. Chen?”

“Just for a few hours,” Sarah said, though they both knew how these things usually went.

The office was eerily quiet without the usual hum of conversation and keyboard clicking. Sarah made her way to her desk, past the motivational posters about teamwork and the whiteboard still covered with Friday’s sprint planning notes.

She logged into the system and pulled up the efficiency reports Marcus had mentioned. The numbers were there, just as he’d described: a steady decline over the past three days. Nothing dramatic - 98.7% efficiency on Wednesday, 98.2% on Thursday, 97.8% on Friday. Well within normal operational parameters, but trending in the wrong direction.

Sarah ran the standard diagnostic routines, checking for the usual culprits: network latency, database connection issues, memory leaks in the processing modules. Everything came back clean.

She dug deeper, examining the processing logs for individual claim batches. The delays were small but consistent, scattered across different types of claims with no obvious pattern. Dental claims, vision care, prescription approvals - all taking slightly longer to process than they should.

It was the kind of problem that could have a dozen different causes, most of them mundane. A software update that introduced minor inefficiencies. Changes in data volume or complexity. Even something as simple as server hardware beginning to show its age.

As Sarah stared at the data, her earlier conversation with Marcus echoed in her mind. What if this wasn’t just about efficiency? What if the system was spending more time on analysis because something in its decision-making process had changed?

Sarah spent two hours running tests and analyzing data patterns. The closest thing to an anomaly she found was a slight increase in the system’s memory usage during processing - not enough to cause performance issues, just barely enough to be noticeable even if you knew what to look for.

She made a note in the incident tracking system: “Minor efficiency decline likely due to increased memory allocation during processing. Recommend monitoring for trend continuation and consideration of algorithmic transparency audit to ensure decision-making processes remain unbiased. No immediate action required. Warrants closer oversight given sensitive nature of processed data.”

It was more pointed than her usual technical documentation, but Sarah was tired of pretending that efficiency metrics existed in a vacuum. These systems made decisions that affected real people’s lives, and they deserved better oversight than quarterly performance reviews.

As she was packing up to leave, her phone buzzed with a text from her mother: “Emma scored two goals! She kept looking for you in the stands. I took pictures.”

The attached photo showed Emma mid-kick, her face fierce with concentration, grass stains already decorating her pristine uniform. In the background, Sarah could see other parents cheering, other families spending their Saturday the way families were supposed to.

Sarah stared at the photo for a long moment, then forwarded it to Marcus with a message: “Efficiency issue documented. Minor memory allocation increase, will monitor. Emma’s game went well.”

She wasn’t sure why she added that last part, except that maybe she needed someone at work to know what this Saturday had cost.

The drive home took her past the soccer fields, where a different game was just ending. Parents were folding up lawn chairs and loading equipment into minivans, kids still buzzing with post-game energy. Normal Saturday afternoon scenes that Sarah watched through her car window like glimpses of a life she kept meaning to live.

When she got home, Emma was at the kitchen table doing homework, still wearing her grass-stained uniform like a badge of honor.

“How was work, Mom?”

“Just a small computer problem. Nothing serious.” Sarah sat down across from her daughter. “Grandma said you scored two goals.”

Emma’s face lit up. “The second one was really good. I got it right in the corner where the goalie couldn’t reach.”

“I’m sorry I missed it.”

“It’s okay,” Emma said, and Sarah could tell she meant it. “There’s another game next Saturday.”

Sarah nodded, already knowing she’d try to be there, already knowing that work would probably find a way to interfere again. It was a pattern as predictable as the efficiency metrics she’d spent her afternoon analyzing.

For now, Emma was home safe, homework spread across the kitchen table, telling her mother about goals scored and saves made. For now, that was enough.

End of Chapter 02

Previous: Chapter 01 - Processing | Index | Next: Chapter 03 - Metrics