Whose shoes are these?

REDMOND, WA–It will come as no shock to many industry watchers that Microsoft does things at its own pace, but the recent discovery of temporal anomalies at the company’s main Redmond campus may raise a few eyebrows. Researchers from the University of Washington in Seattle, responding to reports of phenomena that defied explanation, set up a battery of equipment to test the flow of time in and around areas of intense Microsoft activity. What they discovered were shifting pockets of temporal displacement and a mystery far deeper than any they could have imagined.

“The effects ranged from fast-growing petunias and nose hairs to locales where time actually appeared to have reversed itself,” explained lead investigator Dr. Malcolm Harkees. “most fascinating of all were the effects we observed in Microsoft employees.”

One observation of what Harkees calls Internal Microsoft Time (or IMT) was that people exposed to it were completely unaware of its bizarre effects.

“We encountered folks who told us with absolute conviction that Microsoft was a leader in Internet search technology. We found it pretty hard to keep a straight face.”

It turns out that much of what some outside observers have taken to be swaggering arrogance can actually be traced back to the effects of temporal displacements. Harkees cited numerous examples of the bizarre phenomena, including missed product launch dates and systemic screw ups that previously were impossible to explain.

Dieter Rothbern, Senior Technologies Integration manager, took the news with a sigh of relief. “You don’t know what it’s like botching every product launch and not knowing why. It was getting to be such a regular thing that I even began doubting our competency as an organization.”

For a company that prides itself on efficiency and professionalism, Microsoft’s almost comical frequency of inexplicable bungling had begun to take a toll. In recent months, vacation requests had increased by 37% while enrollment in company-sponsored self-esteem workshops was at full capacity–both activities that had been ridiculed previously by many employees. But while the effects were ubiquitous, the cause of the temporal phenomenon was less easy to identify.

“We used triangulation techniques to discover where the effects were greatest. That’s when we found The Vault,” Dr. Harkees revealed.

The Vault, long-rumored to be a secret, buried crypt, where founder Bill Gates would retire to enjoy his collection of rare antiquities and to search his soul for answers to burning corporate questions, turned out to be a hidden security bunker buried deep beneath the main campus.

“We found the door in a coat closet beneath a pile of children’s shoes and a teddy bear named Leo. Turns out that was a clue.”

Obtaining entrance to the hidden vault, however, wasn’t easy. The research team bided its time measuring local effects in the corridor outside the closet until a temporal bubble manifested itself as a localized feeling that it was lunchtime. While the security staff scampered off to the commissary, the UW

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