by J.R. Dyer

"All right Dot," Bob said, "let’s do it."

"I’m not sure I’m ready," she said hesitatingly, "I mean, what if it hurts my--"

"Relax, Dot. You’re overthinking things again. Just relax and let me do all the work. It’ll be great, trust me."

"But what if I don’t get it right?"

"Don’t worry so much! I’ll talk you through it. Now just open up your woman port so I can put my man plug in it."

Dot blinked. "Excuse me?"

Bob held up the end of a cable connected to one of the Principal Office’s memory banks.

"For the Direct Cable Connection?"

"Oh! Oh yeah, that." Dot flipped open a panel on her notepad, exposing a data port. Bob plugged the cable into the port and turned back to the memory bank, making preparations for the data transfer.

Dot looked at the back of the working Guardian dubiously. "But don’t you mean male and female plugs, not man and woman?"

Bob dismissed her with a wave of his hand as he continued working at the memory bank. "Yeah, yeah, yeah. In any case, it’s a good thing we had the right kind of cable here or this could’ve been a lot harder."

"Aren’t they all the same?"

Bob chuckled. "Not even close! I mean, what if the connector had been too small for your port? It wouldn’t have been able to get the job done."

The corner of Dot’s mouth twitched slightly. "So, size really does matter, then?"

Bob nodded as he worked at the connection. "You bet it does! But not just with small ones, you know. You can also have a male connector that’s too big for the female port. Can’t do anything if it just doesn’t fit. Might even break something."

Dot’s mouth twitched upward again. "Bigger isn’t always better?"

Bob nodded. "Exactly! And don’t I know it…I always seem to end up having the oversized connector whenever I do this."

Dot smirked sarcastically in spite of herself. "I’m sure."

"What was that?" Bob looked up from his work a moment.

"Nothing!" Dot’s face instantly snapped back to normal.

"Oh, OK." Bob turned back to the memory bank. "Anyway, like I was saying, it’s very important to have the right connection. I mean, imagine if we’d had two male connectors!"

Dot bit her bottom lip. "Male/male doesn’t work for you?"

"Sure doesn’t. They just don’t go together. Can’t connect ‘em unless you can find some other port to plug. If you’ve got two females, though…"

Dot snorted, suppressing a smile. "Female/female does work for you?"

"Definitely! You see, when it’s two females, there’s this double-ended adapter you can get…you know, sort of like two male connectors put together…and you can use that to put the two of ‘em together. It can be a little tricky getting the connection right, sometimes, but that’s why I’m always sure to keep plenty of reference pics around."

"I’m sure you do." Dot bit her lip again, fiercely resisting herself.

Bob continued, oblivious. "Of course, back at the Supercomputer, there’s tons of connectors and adapters. Pretty much any kind you can imagine, all over the place. People are really into connecting over there. In fact, there’s even these hubs where you can connect with any kind of adapter and transfer data with multiple sources. Male, female, it just doesn’t matter! Everybody’s connecting with everybody!" Bob sighed. "Wish we had one of those around here…"

Dot quickly slapped her hand over here mouth and turned away.

Bob looked up at her quizzically. "Dot? Is something wrong?"

"No…it’s just…" She snickered involuntarily. "I’ve got to get out of here!"

With that, Dot ran out of the room, desperately trying to get away before she exploded with laughter, while Bob looked after in a state of complete and utter confusion. He looked around the room for some clue as to what had just happened, but all he saw was Phong, who had apparently come in sometime after he’d begun setting up the DCC.

"Oh, hey Phong. What’s wrong with Dot?"

Phong looked at Bob a minute before administering his wise comments.

"Pervert!"

With that, Phong turned up his nose and left, leaving Bob even more confused that he had been before. After a moment, however, the Guardian merely shrugged and returned to his work.

"Guess I’ll just have to do it by myself, then…"