Chapter 3: The Legacy Codebase from Hell

It was a typical, dull Monday morning at HeroTech Solutions. Kenji Yamamoto, known secretly to only a few as One Review Man, was slouched at his desk, scrolling lazily through Stack Overflow, trying—and failing—to find a problem worth his attention.

“Yamamoto-san!” a familiar, overly formal voice chirped from behind him.

Kenji turned slowly, his eyes half-lidded with boredom. Standing at attention was Kai Nakamura, the Quantum Android and self-appointed disciple, clutching a notebook labeled “Sensei’s Wisdom Notes.”

“Morning, Kai,” Kenji mumbled, yawning. “Find something interesting today?”

Kai stood straighter, his eyes gleaming eagerly. “Sensei, the rumor is true! They discovered a legacy codebase hidden in the deepest repository archives. It’s so ancient, it predates Git!”

Kenji sighed. “Sounds troublesome.”

“Yes! Precisely why it is perfect for you, Sensei!”

“Hmm,” Kenji murmured, uninterested, “Maybe I’ll check it out after lunch.”

Meanwhile, in the main conference room, Carlos Rivera was writing furiously on a whiteboard cluttered with incomprehensible notes.

“Listen up, people!” Carlos barked, his eyes twitching from excessive caffeine intake. “This isn’t your average spaghetti code. This is lasagna code—layers upon layers of undocumented chaos.”

Emily Chen raised her hand hesitantly. “Um, Carlos? Do we even know what language it’s written in?”

Carlos laughed bitterly. “Language? Singular? Oh, sweet summer child, this thing is polyglot hell. I’ve spotted COBOL, Perl, VB6, ancient PHP—there’s even some Visual Basic scripts embedded in Excel macros!”

The room gasped collectively.

Kai Nakamura entered the room, bowing politely. “Apologies for intruding. Yamamoto-san could easily unravel this. Perhaps we should—”

Carlos waved dismissively. “Kenji? He’s lucky, sure, but this isn’t some kiddie script. This is real programming archaeology.”

Emily nodded anxiously. “Yeah, Kai. This might be above Kenji’s pay grade.”

Kai frowned, confused. “But his PRs are flawless.”

Carlos chuckled sarcastically. “Sure, when he’s fixing trivial bugs. Trust me, kid, this is beyond him.”

After lunch, Kenji wandered lazily to the server room, where Kai was diligently scanning through the old repository. Lines of blinking lights reflected off the android’s intense stare.

“Sensei!” Kai greeted excitedly. “I’ve isolated the core logic. It appears to be an automated invoicing system from 1997 written in COBOL, with some Y2K patches in Perl.”

Kenji scratched his head lazily. “Sounds annoying.”

Kai nodded vigorously. “Indeed! Even Carlos-san is struggling.”

“Hmm,” Kenji mused, stretching. “Let me take a quick look.”

Kenji slumped into a chair and began typing casually. Kai watched in awe as lines of flawless, elegant code appeared instantly on the screen.

Half an hour later, Kai Nakamura burst back into the main conference room. “Carlos-san! Emily-san! Yamamoto-san has completely refactored the legacy system! It’s now written entirely in Rust, fully containerized and deployed to Kubernetes!”

Carlos spat his coffee out, nearly choking. “What?! That’s impossible.”

Emily’s eyes widened in disbelief. “He did it without even breaking a sweat?”

The room fell silent as Kenji entered, yawning casually. “Yeah, it wasn’t that complicated.”

Carlos narrowed his eyes suspiciously. “You got lucky again, Kenji. Probably just some simple translations.”

“Right,” Emily nodded, convincing herself. “Must’ve been a straightforward rewrite.”

“It was actually quite complex,” Kai interjected earnestly, “Sensei employed advanced concurrency patterns and optimized database queries.”

Carlos scoffed, waving dismissively. “Optimizing queries? Please. That’s just basic stuff.”

Kenji sighed quietly, accustomed to the skepticism. He shrugged and turned towards the door. “Anyway, let me know if you find something actually difficult.”

Later that evening, in a quiet corner of the office, Kai approached Kenji reverently.

“Sensei, I don’t understand. Why do your peers refuse to acknowledge your brilliance?”

Kenji leaned back, staring blankly at the ceiling. “Maybe because programming isn’t supposed to be this easy for anyone.”

Kai frowned thoughtfully. “Still, I wish they at least appreciated your skill.”

Kenji shrugged, smiling faintly. “It’s fine. If everyone believed I was that good, things would get even more boring.”

Kai tilted his head curiously. “Are you saying boredom is your only opponent now, Sensei?”

Kenji nodded slowly, his expression oddly melancholic. “Exactly.”

Suddenly, Emily burst into the room, panicking. “Kenji! Kai! Something terrible has happened—the legacy system rewrite inadvertently activated some ancient debugging scripts. It’s spawning recursive cron jobs across all servers!”

Kenji stood slowly, his eyes lighting up slightly. “Finally, something interesting.”

Kai smiled hopefully. “Sensei, allow me to assist you. Perhaps I can learn from your technique.”

Kenji nodded, cracking his knuckles gently. “Sure, Kai. Let’s squash some bugs.”