TUNA LIFE by Erik Hamre Page A

their mobile phone camera. As they did this they had to hold up something that the software could use as a stable reference, so that all future measurements were correct. Frank was an impatient man, so he had used whatever he had available at the time. And by accident this had been a can of tuna from John West. He had forgotten to update the software before sending the app off to iTunes for approval. So now the can of tuna had become the standard. Ken had thought the whole thing was funny, and had renamed the app Tuna Life . He had even created a logo that symbolised the new name, a tuna fish eating a smaller tuna fish. He reasoned they could always change the name later, when they had received confirmation that the app worked and appealed to consumers.
     
    Three days after the launch, an agitated Richard Smith called Andrew: “Andrew, have you checked the servers?”
    “No. Not in the last hour,” Andrew replied. “I’ve been to gym.”
    “Check them. I think they’re about to break down.”
    “What are you saying?” Andrew asked, quickly grabbing his gym bag and car keys, before heading for the gym’s exit door.
    “We’ve had more than twenty-five thousand downloads in the last hour, and it’s impossible to access our website. Get hold of Frank. He needs to fix this immediately.”
    Andrew didn’t know whether he should laugh or cry. He had understood that they were sitting on a possible winner when he had tested the app a few days earlier. The technology was incredible. After the install you could take a picture of any piece of clothing and instantly see how you looked in the same outfit. The software reconfigured everything you took a picture of and produced an incredibly real end-result; it actually looked like you were trying out the same outfit.
    But how had they managed to get twenty-five thousand downloads in just under an hour? The app had only been available on iTunes for three days, and even though they had experimented with various social media platforms, they hadn’t experienced any great interest yet. Last time Andrew had checked the figures, and that was only three hours ago, the app had only been downloaded a paltry nine hundred times.
     
    Andrew called Ken from the car on his way over to Frank. He was in the middle of a lecture at Bond University. They were about to start dissecting a corpse, and learn about acute amputation of fingers. He almost sounded enthusiastic when he said he couldn’t come. Andrew had to sort it out himself. This was one of those lectures where you got graded on your attendance, and he had already missed a fair few lectures designing the Tuna Life app.
    Andrew said it wasn’t a problem. It was Frank he needed anyway.
     
    At seven pm Andrew finally arrived at Frank’s house. The gate was open so he walked straight up to the front door. He was about to knock on the door when he noticed the massive Mahogany door move. Gently he pushed it open, and called out Frank’s name. Nobody answered. Cautiously he entered the house. He walked straight to the kitchen before proceeding out into the garden. Nobody was there either. He stopped and listened. It sounded like there was music playing from the basement. Fuck you Frank, he thought. Frank was probably stoned out of his head, sitting down in the basement smoking a joint. Andrew turned around and ran down the staircase to the basement. All the lights were on, and loud techno music was playing from the expensive Bose system. But there was no sign of Frank.
    Andrew hooked up to one of the computers and organised some extra capacity on the servers. It would buy them some time, but he needed to get hold of Frank.
     
    Two hours later, Andrew was still sitting in Frank’s basement. He had been forced to drive to three different electronics stores and buy all the fans they had. Frank’s air-condition system wasn’t sufficient, and the overworked servers needed cooling. At least he had avoided the Tuna Life homepage being down