There comes a day in all our lives when we just wake up and feel empty. Like there really is nothing inside us and nothing around us matters. Like we have been living all this while doing nothing that adds value to our life. That day was on december 8th 2014 for Harry Mason.
On the night of December 7th, Harry forgot to turn off the lights in his room because he was too lazy to get up and go all the way to the switches. The heater was set to a tad bit colder than usual, but he did not feel like going to set it to a warmer and more comfortable temperature, so he folded the comforter into two and crawled under it. He had a few books lying around on his bed and the empty plate of grilled cheese sandwich that he had eaten a couple of days ago was on the nightstand beside him. His floor was scattered with tags from clothes he bought with some going back to the days he had just moved in about 7 months ago.
At about 5 am on December 8th, he got up. He had a troubled sleep, due to the cold temperature and the light in the room. He looked around his room and saw all the stuff he had piling around in the room. It was a lot of stuff. it overwhelmed him. Then he realized that he had a lot of stuff piling up inside him as well. Lots of emotional baggage that he has been carrying around all these years.
He got up from his bed and put on a hoodie and sat in the corner of the room looking around at the mess and realized that he was looking into himself and suddenly all his life flashed in front of him.
He was known to dream a lot. He talked of lofty goals and huge things to achieve. He wasn’t the most popular kid in school, but he wasn’t a loser either. He spoke a lot and he always spoke of the different things he would do once he was out of school and the best part about what he spoke was the fact that people believed him. Unknowingly while he spoke of his goals he gave people dreams too. He gave them things to look forward to, to aim for, and they liked him for that and all of them knew that he would turn out fine and realize, if not all, at least some of his dreams, because most of them were incredible anyways.
And then he went to college, and studied hard, partied hard, made friends who stayed with him through thick and thin. he loved every moment of it. Then he got a good job. For the first few months in his job, he spent a lot of time with his friends sky diving, going to raves and just blasted through the weekends waking up with a hangover on monday mornings.He worked, and worked hard. And then, slowly his life started revolving around only these few things. Work on weekdays, party on weekends and the cycle continued. And this brings us to the Monday morning of december 8th. He was still crouched in the corner, trying to hide from himself. Trying to make sense of all this stuff in his life. His mind was always buzzing, thinking of things and stuff which adde nothing to his life. All these years since he stopped dreaming. seemed like a huge deep void to him now. Four years of nothing. He then panicked and started searching within himself for something that mattered that he did in these years.
All these seemed like a really long sleep to him. He then got up and straightened and went through his closet and emptied about 70% of his clothes into a cardboard box, sealed it and got into his car. He went to the nearest homeless shelter. It was 6am and there were not many people around. he got down from his car, walked to the clothes bin outside the shelter and put the cardboard box into it.
If he had to start somewhere, he better start right away. he realized that it was time for him to clean up both his world outside as well as that inside. it was time for Change!
Monday, December 8, 2014
Wednesday, September 17, 2014
End in Sight
It’s the battle that is supposed to end the war. The battle between the Seeds and the Humans. The final battle.
It had been 16 years since the Seeds took over the planet and decided that the human race, their creators, would do more harm than good to the planet and hence should not be allowed to govern it anymore. We were chased to habitats created for us, colonies where we were breeded. More than half the population was terminated to make place for new Seeds. The remaining half was needed for them to grow.
The Seeds were made of flesh and blood too, but genetically enhanced using cloning techniques to be superior in all aspects to humans. We were trying to create the v2.0 of human race, better and stronger than we currently are. They were immune to diseases. Their immune system were built from the ground up such that they were capable of resisting any type of bacterial attack. Their sustenance levels were far more than regular human beings, so they could go weeks on a single meal unlike us. And to top it all we decided to give them the one thing that we had been warned not to share with other living things on Earth to maintain our edge, our brain.
They still needed the human population because we were their raw material to create more Seeds. The whole idea behind creating a genetically modified race by artificial breeding was that quality degraded at least by a small amount through natural fertilization, but instead if a genetically modified embryo was planted in the female womb artificially in controlled conditions, we could create a superior race, the Seeds. So now they used us as breeding farms. The females were used as Seed breeding farms. The males were used to do manual labor and taking care of the pregnant females.
Col. Rajvir, had to retire from the army due to a near fatal injury in during a war against a neighbouring country at the age of 30. That was about when the Seeds rebelled too. When a bigger enemy arises, all enmity between countries vanished and they started plotting against this bigger enemy. Now he was 46 years old and led a group of about 100 soldiers against the Seeds in India. The team used to be bigger, about 250 soldiers were under him earlier, but it got reduced mainly due to the physical edge they possessed over them. But this time they had a weapon which they previously did not possess. This time they had an edge.
A few days ago they extracted Dr.Bhalla from a laboratory where the Seeds held him. He was one of the original developers of the Seeds, and probably the only remaining, so they held him to extract every single info they could about themselves, before he was put down too.
The operation to extract Dr.Bhalla cost the rebels a lot of men. Rajvir lost about 40 men that day. He needed Bhalla to have something useful to him, or all of his men would have given their lives in vain.
“You better prove useful, I lost a lot of brothers back there to get you”, said Ajay to Dr.Bhalla
“So tell me doc, is there a way to end this menace?”, asked Rajvir
“I believe so”
Rajvir’s eyes widened. All they wanted was one weakness to harness. This will give them that one chance they needed.
“When we created the Seeds, I was a bit hesitant to create supreme beings with no weaknesses. This was the exact situation I feared at that time, so unknown to the other scientists, I altered the DNA so that it makes them vulnerable to a rare kind of virus strain”
“Wait, but how did this go unnoticed? Weren’t they tested against all known human infecting pathogens?”
“Yes, but those that affected humans, but this pathogen I am talking about has no harmful effects on humans, so they never thought of testing this on them”
“Brilliant, so can we make this a weapon and use it on the battle field?”
“That’s the tricky bit here, this virus strain does not have long term effects on them, when it is used on them, it will disable them temporarily, throwing them into a dizzy state for a while.”
“So it cannot cause any permanent injury to them then?”
“No”
“Well, atleast it gives us some time to take them by surprise and maybe with a co-ordinated effort we can get that much needed win”
“I will start synthesizing deployable bombs which will fill the air around them with these viruses then”
“Yes doc, we will arrange for all the raw material you will need for them. Suraj, Ajay we need to send a message to all our allies around the world to let them know of this development and also give them the recipe to create this bomb from the doc. If we do a co-ordinated attack all over the world at once, we can take them by surprise and maybe win this war. This is our last chance”
“Yes sir”, replied Ajay and Suraj and saluting Col.Rajvir they left the room with Dr.Bhalla.
And two months after this, here we are at the battleground of the final war, being fought all over the world at the same time. Due to the limited supply of the virus and the raw materials required for the bio-bomb, they had only a few available to use, but this provided them with the one advantage they needed in this war. Even Col. Rajvir was in the field this time.
The commander for the Seeds, Ronnie was, surprised that the humans found a defect in them that could be used against them in the battle. But they still had ten times the size of the human army, but he bioweapon they were using against them was rendering them useless for while this giving the humans enough time to slaughter through them, so Ronnie ordered the soldiers to form a circular formation and move ahead on the battlefield, such that if the front few are affected by the bio bomb, the next few can come forward and cover them, such that the initial wall is always intact protecting the inner layer of people while they fight.
Rajvir soon noticed the strategy of the Seeds.
“Lt. Ajay”
“Yes sir”
“We need to break their formation from the inside to be able to break them, give me four more soldiers and we should break through their layers all the way to the centre so that we can break their cycle”
Soon joined by five soldiers including Ajay, Rajvir entered the enemy formation, slicing through all the Seed soldiers trying to reach the centre of the formation. Ronnie spotted them and sent a group of soldiers to stop them.
Three of the six soldiers were dead. Rajvir saw their plan falling apart. They took cover temporarily behind a rock in the field until they could find a solution to this onslaught.
“I see an end in sight Ajay, I will reach there while you’ll cover me and once I reach the center, I will deploy a bomb and it should give you’ll enough time to go to the front stopping this formation.”
“But sir, that is suicide, you will not have enough time to go in and come back from there sir”
“Who said anything about coming back? Ajay I want you to take command as soon as I go down, now fall back and give me my cover”
“I am proud to be fighting beside you sir”, said Ajay saluting Rajvir.
“And me beside you lieutenant”, said Rajvir and charged towards the enemies.
Soon he reached the center from where Ronnie was issuing commands controlling the Seed formation. Before Ronnie could shoot, he deployed the bomb, the bomb did go of, but he was rendered with hundreds of enemy bullets from all the soldiers around him.
Two months later:
The Seeds were defeated in a surprising number of countries and gave us sufficient resources to win the war. Soon we came to an agreement that humans will no longer be used to breed anymore seeds, and they have now been incorporated into our normal society along with the humans now. They now procreate with the humans like normal humans do, thus diminishing the effects of the enhanced DNA with each generation.
People of earth never forgot the person who was responsible for all this: Col. Rajvir.
It had been 16 years since the Seeds took over the planet and decided that the human race, their creators, would do more harm than good to the planet and hence should not be allowed to govern it anymore. We were chased to habitats created for us, colonies where we were breeded. More than half the population was terminated to make place for new Seeds. The remaining half was needed for them to grow.
The Seeds were made of flesh and blood too, but genetically enhanced using cloning techniques to be superior in all aspects to humans. We were trying to create the v2.0 of human race, better and stronger than we currently are. They were immune to diseases. Their immune system were built from the ground up such that they were capable of resisting any type of bacterial attack. Their sustenance levels were far more than regular human beings, so they could go weeks on a single meal unlike us. And to top it all we decided to give them the one thing that we had been warned not to share with other living things on Earth to maintain our edge, our brain.
They still needed the human population because we were their raw material to create more Seeds. The whole idea behind creating a genetically modified race by artificial breeding was that quality degraded at least by a small amount through natural fertilization, but instead if a genetically modified embryo was planted in the female womb artificially in controlled conditions, we could create a superior race, the Seeds. So now they used us as breeding farms. The females were used as Seed breeding farms. The males were used to do manual labor and taking care of the pregnant females.
Col. Rajvir, had to retire from the army due to a near fatal injury in during a war against a neighbouring country at the age of 30. That was about when the Seeds rebelled too. When a bigger enemy arises, all enmity between countries vanished and they started plotting against this bigger enemy. Now he was 46 years old and led a group of about 100 soldiers against the Seeds in India. The team used to be bigger, about 250 soldiers were under him earlier, but it got reduced mainly due to the physical edge they possessed over them. But this time they had a weapon which they previously did not possess. This time they had an edge.
A few days ago they extracted Dr.Bhalla from a laboratory where the Seeds held him. He was one of the original developers of the Seeds, and probably the only remaining, so they held him to extract every single info they could about themselves, before he was put down too.
The operation to extract Dr.Bhalla cost the rebels a lot of men. Rajvir lost about 40 men that day. He needed Bhalla to have something useful to him, or all of his men would have given their lives in vain.
“You better prove useful, I lost a lot of brothers back there to get you”, said Ajay to Dr.Bhalla
“So tell me doc, is there a way to end this menace?”, asked Rajvir
“I believe so”
Rajvir’s eyes widened. All they wanted was one weakness to harness. This will give them that one chance they needed.
“When we created the Seeds, I was a bit hesitant to create supreme beings with no weaknesses. This was the exact situation I feared at that time, so unknown to the other scientists, I altered the DNA so that it makes them vulnerable to a rare kind of virus strain”
“Wait, but how did this go unnoticed? Weren’t they tested against all known human infecting pathogens?”
“Yes, but those that affected humans, but this pathogen I am talking about has no harmful effects on humans, so they never thought of testing this on them”
“Brilliant, so can we make this a weapon and use it on the battle field?”
“That’s the tricky bit here, this virus strain does not have long term effects on them, when it is used on them, it will disable them temporarily, throwing them into a dizzy state for a while.”
“So it cannot cause any permanent injury to them then?”
“No”
“Well, atleast it gives us some time to take them by surprise and maybe with a co-ordinated effort we can get that much needed win”
“I will start synthesizing deployable bombs which will fill the air around them with these viruses then”
“Yes doc, we will arrange for all the raw material you will need for them. Suraj, Ajay we need to send a message to all our allies around the world to let them know of this development and also give them the recipe to create this bomb from the doc. If we do a co-ordinated attack all over the world at once, we can take them by surprise and maybe win this war. This is our last chance”
“Yes sir”, replied Ajay and Suraj and saluting Col.Rajvir they left the room with Dr.Bhalla.
And two months after this, here we are at the battleground of the final war, being fought all over the world at the same time. Due to the limited supply of the virus and the raw materials required for the bio-bomb, they had only a few available to use, but this provided them with the one advantage they needed in this war. Even Col. Rajvir was in the field this time.
The commander for the Seeds, Ronnie was, surprised that the humans found a defect in them that could be used against them in the battle. But they still had ten times the size of the human army, but he bioweapon they were using against them was rendering them useless for while this giving the humans enough time to slaughter through them, so Ronnie ordered the soldiers to form a circular formation and move ahead on the battlefield, such that if the front few are affected by the bio bomb, the next few can come forward and cover them, such that the initial wall is always intact protecting the inner layer of people while they fight.
Rajvir soon noticed the strategy of the Seeds.
“Lt. Ajay”
“Yes sir”
“We need to break their formation from the inside to be able to break them, give me four more soldiers and we should break through their layers all the way to the centre so that we can break their cycle”
Soon joined by five soldiers including Ajay, Rajvir entered the enemy formation, slicing through all the Seed soldiers trying to reach the centre of the formation. Ronnie spotted them and sent a group of soldiers to stop them.
Three of the six soldiers were dead. Rajvir saw their plan falling apart. They took cover temporarily behind a rock in the field until they could find a solution to this onslaught.
“I see an end in sight Ajay, I will reach there while you’ll cover me and once I reach the center, I will deploy a bomb and it should give you’ll enough time to go to the front stopping this formation.”
“But sir, that is suicide, you will not have enough time to go in and come back from there sir”
“Who said anything about coming back? Ajay I want you to take command as soon as I go down, now fall back and give me my cover”
“I am proud to be fighting beside you sir”, said Ajay saluting Rajvir.
“And me beside you lieutenant”, said Rajvir and charged towards the enemies.
Soon he reached the center from where Ronnie was issuing commands controlling the Seed formation. Before Ronnie could shoot, he deployed the bomb, the bomb did go of, but he was rendered with hundreds of enemy bullets from all the soldiers around him.
Two months later:
The Seeds were defeated in a surprising number of countries and gave us sufficient resources to win the war. Soon we came to an agreement that humans will no longer be used to breed anymore seeds, and they have now been incorporated into our normal society along with the humans now. They now procreate with the humans like normal humans do, thus diminishing the effects of the enhanced DNA with each generation.
People of earth never forgot the person who was responsible for all this: Col. Rajvir.
Monday, September 15, 2014
The Last Day on Earth
There was a loud knock on the door.
“Go away!! I am sleeping”
“But its the most beautiful day ever, why on earth would you want to spend today sleeping?”
I always wanted to die in sleep, but Manny was different. He was one of the people who would go screaming and dancing towards death if it stood in front of him.
Well now there is no point in sleeping anyways, I can always come back and swallow a few sleeping pills and go back to sleep in time.
I woke up and let Manny in. He came in beaming as if he just won a million dollars in a lottery.
“Whats going on Manny?”
“Well you tell me. This might be the last chance we get to hangout together, so let’s go outside and have some fun!!”
“Well i just want to stay inside!!”
"Alright!! I will come out for an hour and then come back to my place to end it in sleep!!"
"Fair enough!"
"Let me get ready."
"What for? If you want to roam out in your lingerie, and not be ashamed of it, today is the day"
"Well I want to dress properly even on the day I die"
"Ok, hurry up"
After about 10 mins Tara came out in a long red gown, as if they were going for a fancy restaurant date.
"Looking good madame", exclaimed Manny, taking her hand in his and giving it a peck.
They then set out to explore what was the last day on earth.
Tara always expected people to scream and create a ruckus, destroy things and so on on if they knew the world was going to end, but everyone was surprisingly calm. Even enemies hugged it out and forgave past differences.
Most shops kept a sign outside the door reading "Come in and Take whatever you want, no need to pay".
Some restaurants who were good at what they did, created a huge table of food and laid it out on the street on big tables for people to eat.
You can never find a dearth of good food in New York. Manny lifted a croissant from outside a French restuarant and started eating it.
Tara picked up an apple from the same table.
"So how fast do you think it is going to happen?",asked Tara.
"What?"
"The end, what else?"
"I don't know, but hopefully very fast"
"What if we don't die and just lose a leg or become incapacitated?"
"Well you live at least"
"I don't want to live like that!"
"Well then let's have backups, let's go to the chemist and get some cyanide or something just in case we want to die if we don't"
They stopped by the chemist and surprisingly they ran out of cyanide. Apparently it was the most preferred method of dying for most people who did not want to live it out till the last moment.
"I have some rat poison if you want", said the chemist.
"Nah that thing does not kill instantly, I don't want to die howling in pain for an hour"
They continued on to the riverside and sat on a pier.
"So how well have you lived your life then ?Would you call it a success ?",asked Manny
“How do you measure if it was a successful life? Well let’s see I broke up a week ago, lost my job right after that, and pretty much spent the last one week on my couch eating ice cream, hot pockets and dozing away most of the time. And three days ago just like that out of no where a meteor decided to crash the planet I am living on. So yeah what do you make of it?”
“Let’s see, does not matter now, does not matter now, awesome wish I could have done that too and not in your hands. You see you are looking at all of these events the wrong way!! How many people you know have to got to spend the last one week of their life, not having to worry about others, or their jobs and instead eating ice cream and hot pockets? See it’s not so bad now is it?”
“You always look at a glass half full don’t you?”
“Well I don’t care about the glass at all, because I probably am never going to drink from it anyways. Now here we are at the end of the world as we know it!! Do you think there will be a new species of living beings on earth like us after the dinosaurs? We totally are the new dinosaurs aren’t we?”
“Maybe”
“So what should we do now?”
“Can we go back home?”
“Tara, be a pal, help a lonely man feel not lonely in his last moments”
“Eww that sounds cheesy”
“Haha, come on now, you gotta have one wish that you haven’t gotten to fulfill et that you wanted to do in NY city”
“Well yeah, I always wanted to stand on the other side of the railing on the empire state building and look down, not like a prisoner through the bars, but like a free willed person from the other side”
“Well, there you go, we have our next mission then”
“It’s silly, and the empire state building is probably crowded as hell right now”
“We cannot give up even without trying, come on now, let’s see. It’s just a few blocks down here, and I will get to fulfill my wish too”
“What’s that?”
“Break the glass of a car and steal it!!”
They found a bugatti veyron parked a block away from them. manny ran up to it, and took off his shirt, then he wound it around his hand like a boxing glove and hit hard on the glass. His hand recoiled back and he howled in pain.
“Here take it”
He turned around and saw the owner of the car come out of the building nearby.
“It brought me to my destination, maybe it will take you to yours”, he said and tossed Manny the keys.
“Thanks boss!!”, shouted back Manny and got into the car.
“Hell yeah!! I am gonna drive a Bugatti Veyron in the New York streets. Here comes the Knight Rider!!”
“Easy there boy, we are only driving a few blocks remember?”
"Well then let's make the most of it!!"
Manny revved up the engine and blasted through the road. He was having fun driving it around and Tara felt it was unfair for the person who was trying to fulfill her wish to be living his wish so short.
"Well you can drive around the block to reach there, have some more fun with your car"
"That's all I had to hear!"
Manny raced back to the riverside and went at 100 mph on a New York road. Mainly because there was no one there on the streets any more. Every one wanted to spend their last day with their loved ones. Except these two stupid souls who were having fun on the streets, like many others like them.
ON their way they saw a small incline on the road, and Manny's eyes sparkled. He stopped a few hundred yards from it and began revving up.
When Tara saw the incline, she knew what was on Manny's mind.
"Manny no!! We might turn over and ..."
"And what? Die? Isn't that gonna happen anyways, and trust me, we will be fine"
"Ahhh, I feel I am gonna repent this decision. Fine! Go ahead and kill us before we die!!"
Manny pushed on the gas and zoomed towards the incline. And as soon as the car went onto the incline it flew into the air.
Tara and Manny felt weightless for a moment as the car was preparing for a loud landing. Both of them had held their breaths out of fear. The car landed with a huge thud and the air bags burst open onto their faces. But htey were both safe. They started laughing loudly.
Soon they pushed down the air bags and drove to the Empire State Center building.
As they had expected it was crowded with a huge line trying to get to the top. Manny and Tara got out and stared at the crowd.
"Now what?", asked Tara in disbelief that she came all the way for this.
"Well now, we go up"
"There isn't enough time for that. Don't you see the line?"
"Well all of to go to the top and see from the inside, but our goal is to see from the outside, so let's find a way to that place then"
They went around the building and at one corner, they found a platform tied to a harness going all the way to the spire on top of the building. It was the type of platform used for cleaning the windows on the building.
"Well ain't this our lucky day!!",exclaimed Manny.
They got onto the platform and started heaving themselves up. There were ropes on both sides which they had to pull in tandem in order to go evenly on both sides.
For some distance they went fine, once they reached the 60th floor, Tara glanced down for a second and seeing the height they were at, she forgot to pull on her end of the rope for a second and suddenly the platform tilted to her side, she got jolted out of her seat and hung onto the roper harness.
"Tara, hold on, I will pull you back up"
"Hurry up, I am afraid of heights!!"
"What, you are afraid of heights and your last wish was to see from atop the empire state building?"
"Well is this the time to lawyer me?"
"Ohh yeah sorry, here grab my hand, I will pull you back"
Tara grabbed onto Manny's extended arm, and he heaved her back onto the platform, and she pulled onto the rope to even out the platform again.
They finally reached the top level of the building, and from there Manny led Tara onto a small ladder in the interior of the top spire. They finally reached the top most point of the Empire State Building. They were both short on oxygen, and it was pretty cold up there, with a cold wind blowing onto their faces.
They immediately shielded their faces for a while, and after a while when they got used to it, they were able to peer down.
"Well so what do you think? How is it to live your dream?"
"Well I never thought I would be able to do this ever, thanks for forcing me to do this!"
"That's what friends are for. To make you do things that you are scared to do "
"Well still I am glad you are here with me today"
"Me too"
Tara rested her head on Manny's shoulder as they sat on a thhin grill like platform on the top.
Suddenly the sky went ablaze with the meteor's fire.
"Here it comes", exclaimed Manny putting his hands around Tara looking into her eyes with a smile on his face.
“Go away!! I am sleeping”
“But its the most beautiful day ever, why on earth would you want to spend today sleeping?”
I always wanted to die in sleep, but Manny was different. He was one of the people who would go screaming and dancing towards death if it stood in front of him.
Well now there is no point in sleeping anyways, I can always come back and swallow a few sleeping pills and go back to sleep in time.
I woke up and let Manny in. He came in beaming as if he just won a million dollars in a lottery.
“Whats going on Manny?”
“Well you tell me. This might be the last chance we get to hangout together, so let’s go outside and have some fun!!”
“Well i just want to stay inside!!”
"Alright!! I will come out for an hour and then come back to my place to end it in sleep!!"
"Fair enough!"
"Let me get ready."
"What for? If you want to roam out in your lingerie, and not be ashamed of it, today is the day"
"Well I want to dress properly even on the day I die"
"Ok, hurry up"
After about 10 mins Tara came out in a long red gown, as if they were going for a fancy restaurant date.
"Looking good madame", exclaimed Manny, taking her hand in his and giving it a peck.
They then set out to explore what was the last day on earth.
Tara always expected people to scream and create a ruckus, destroy things and so on on if they knew the world was going to end, but everyone was surprisingly calm. Even enemies hugged it out and forgave past differences.
Most shops kept a sign outside the door reading "Come in and Take whatever you want, no need to pay".
Some restaurants who were good at what they did, created a huge table of food and laid it out on the street on big tables for people to eat.
You can never find a dearth of good food in New York. Manny lifted a croissant from outside a French restuarant and started eating it.
Tara picked up an apple from the same table.
"So how fast do you think it is going to happen?",asked Tara.
"What?"
"The end, what else?"
"I don't know, but hopefully very fast"
"What if we don't die and just lose a leg or become incapacitated?"
"Well you live at least"
"I don't want to live like that!"
"Well then let's have backups, let's go to the chemist and get some cyanide or something just in case we want to die if we don't"
They stopped by the chemist and surprisingly they ran out of cyanide. Apparently it was the most preferred method of dying for most people who did not want to live it out till the last moment.
"I have some rat poison if you want", said the chemist.
"Nah that thing does not kill instantly, I don't want to die howling in pain for an hour"
They continued on to the riverside and sat on a pier.
"So how well have you lived your life then ?Would you call it a success ?",asked Manny
“How do you measure if it was a successful life? Well let’s see I broke up a week ago, lost my job right after that, and pretty much spent the last one week on my couch eating ice cream, hot pockets and dozing away most of the time. And three days ago just like that out of no where a meteor decided to crash the planet I am living on. So yeah what do you make of it?”
“Let’s see, does not matter now, does not matter now, awesome wish I could have done that too and not in your hands. You see you are looking at all of these events the wrong way!! How many people you know have to got to spend the last one week of their life, not having to worry about others, or their jobs and instead eating ice cream and hot pockets? See it’s not so bad now is it?”
“You always look at a glass half full don’t you?”
“Well I don’t care about the glass at all, because I probably am never going to drink from it anyways. Now here we are at the end of the world as we know it!! Do you think there will be a new species of living beings on earth like us after the dinosaurs? We totally are the new dinosaurs aren’t we?”
“Maybe”
“So what should we do now?”
“Can we go back home?”
“Tara, be a pal, help a lonely man feel not lonely in his last moments”
“Eww that sounds cheesy”
“Haha, come on now, you gotta have one wish that you haven’t gotten to fulfill et that you wanted to do in NY city”
“Well yeah, I always wanted to stand on the other side of the railing on the empire state building and look down, not like a prisoner through the bars, but like a free willed person from the other side”
“Well, there you go, we have our next mission then”
“It’s silly, and the empire state building is probably crowded as hell right now”
“We cannot give up even without trying, come on now, let’s see. It’s just a few blocks down here, and I will get to fulfill my wish too”
“What’s that?”
“Break the glass of a car and steal it!!”
They found a bugatti veyron parked a block away from them. manny ran up to it, and took off his shirt, then he wound it around his hand like a boxing glove and hit hard on the glass. His hand recoiled back and he howled in pain.
“Here take it”
He turned around and saw the owner of the car come out of the building nearby.
“It brought me to my destination, maybe it will take you to yours”, he said and tossed Manny the keys.
“Thanks boss!!”, shouted back Manny and got into the car.
“Hell yeah!! I am gonna drive a Bugatti Veyron in the New York streets. Here comes the Knight Rider!!”
“Easy there boy, we are only driving a few blocks remember?”
"Well then let's make the most of it!!"
Manny revved up the engine and blasted through the road. He was having fun driving it around and Tara felt it was unfair for the person who was trying to fulfill her wish to be living his wish so short.
"Well you can drive around the block to reach there, have some more fun with your car"
"That's all I had to hear!"
Manny raced back to the riverside and went at 100 mph on a New York road. Mainly because there was no one there on the streets any more. Every one wanted to spend their last day with their loved ones. Except these two stupid souls who were having fun on the streets, like many others like them.
ON their way they saw a small incline on the road, and Manny's eyes sparkled. He stopped a few hundred yards from it and began revving up.
When Tara saw the incline, she knew what was on Manny's mind.
"Manny no!! We might turn over and ..."
"And what? Die? Isn't that gonna happen anyways, and trust me, we will be fine"
"Ahhh, I feel I am gonna repent this decision. Fine! Go ahead and kill us before we die!!"
Manny pushed on the gas and zoomed towards the incline. And as soon as the car went onto the incline it flew into the air.
Tara and Manny felt weightless for a moment as the car was preparing for a loud landing. Both of them had held their breaths out of fear. The car landed with a huge thud and the air bags burst open onto their faces. But htey were both safe. They started laughing loudly.
Soon they pushed down the air bags and drove to the Empire State Center building.
As they had expected it was crowded with a huge line trying to get to the top. Manny and Tara got out and stared at the crowd.
"Now what?", asked Tara in disbelief that she came all the way for this.
"Well now, we go up"
"There isn't enough time for that. Don't you see the line?"
"Well all of to go to the top and see from the inside, but our goal is to see from the outside, so let's find a way to that place then"
They went around the building and at one corner, they found a platform tied to a harness going all the way to the spire on top of the building. It was the type of platform used for cleaning the windows on the building.
"Well ain't this our lucky day!!",exclaimed Manny.
They got onto the platform and started heaving themselves up. There were ropes on both sides which they had to pull in tandem in order to go evenly on both sides.
For some distance they went fine, once they reached the 60th floor, Tara glanced down for a second and seeing the height they were at, she forgot to pull on her end of the rope for a second and suddenly the platform tilted to her side, she got jolted out of her seat and hung onto the roper harness.
"Tara, hold on, I will pull you back up"
"Hurry up, I am afraid of heights!!"
"What, you are afraid of heights and your last wish was to see from atop the empire state building?"
"Well is this the time to lawyer me?"
"Ohh yeah sorry, here grab my hand, I will pull you back"
Tara grabbed onto Manny's extended arm, and he heaved her back onto the platform, and she pulled onto the rope to even out the platform again.
They finally reached the top level of the building, and from there Manny led Tara onto a small ladder in the interior of the top spire. They finally reached the top most point of the Empire State Building. They were both short on oxygen, and it was pretty cold up there, with a cold wind blowing onto their faces.
They immediately shielded their faces for a while, and after a while when they got used to it, they were able to peer down.
"Well so what do you think? How is it to live your dream?"
"Well I never thought I would be able to do this ever, thanks for forcing me to do this!"
"That's what friends are for. To make you do things that you are scared to do "
"Well still I am glad you are here with me today"
"Me too"
Tara rested her head on Manny's shoulder as they sat on a thhin grill like platform on the top.
Suddenly the sky went ablaze with the meteor's fire.
"Here it comes", exclaimed Manny putting his hands around Tara looking into her eyes with a smile on his face.
Thursday, August 28, 2014
Vipe
“Quick hand me the lasso”
“The train is too fast, you will not be able to hold on to it!!”
“We still need it don’t we? Otherwise we die anyway so now give me the rope!!”
“Aye aye captain”
Marty pushed on the gas and brought the van parallel to the train. The rear mirrors that the train used were trained to look at threats coming from far away so were always at an angle, so the trick to slip by it undetected was to start from the tail end and run dangerously close to it and parallel to it so as to avoid being in the line of vision of the mirrors.
If the drivers noticed any threat in the engine they pulled on a rope which sounded a bell in the wagon with the guards in it who then became alert and acted upon the threat with extreme prejudice.
Dan looked for something to hook the lasso to. He found a metal rod welded to the tank in front of him to which he can hang on to. He signaled Marty to go a little to the front so that he can hook the lasso to it. Marty pressed on the gas again and pushed the van to its limit and they reached the tank. Dan took an aim and threw the rope onto the protruding rod. It quickly latched on to it and Dan got pulled in with it. The van still ran parallel to the tank. Dan’s legs started hitting the ground under him, the rod was too low and the rope was longer than he estimated. He lugged on the rope with force and pulled himself up. The air hitting his face was brutal. It felt like a thousand needles piercing on the face.
He pulled himself to the rod and finally felt the ledge of the tank under his feet. Randy pulls the pipe from the back of the van and slides open the door and screws one end to one of the containers in the back of the van and throws the other end to Dan.
Dan slowly climbs up the smooth surface of the tank with the rod as his support under his feet. He barely reaches the cap closing the tank. He pushes hard on the cap and opens it. Before he can secure it to replace it later, it flies off.
It was the year 2076. Unlike many had predicted, the apocalypse did not come in the form of an Ice Age, but instead it went the other way round. The drought started in 2057 with more than 80% of the countries in the world not receiving any rains. With that came shortage of food, which led to widespread famine. more than 60% of the species of the animal kingdom went extinct. All political structure fell into a disarray and people formed groups to survive now. Only a few reservoirs of water were now left throughout the world. There were no more trees, no more crops and humanity was on the brink of extinction. It is on times like this that people hungry for power seize the opportunity.
Vesil started controlling a small neighborhood in Manhattan and expanded from there to now control the entire of North America within a span of 19 years. There were many wars and a lot of good people died trying to protect the democracy of the nation, but failed. Dan was a part of that war as well. One of the few to escape after being imprisoned and tortured by Vesil’s troops.
In the engine room the drivers were eating their sandwich of beets and onions, when one of them suddenly sees a glint of the cap that flung off shining in the angled mirror. He gets up and looks backward and sees the van running right beside the train and Dan on the train trying to siphon off water into a container on the van. He leaped for the rope tied to the bell and started pulling on it violently.
“Uh Oh Dan, looks like we are gonna have company!!”
“Alright we need to get atleast two containers to have enough water until the next train arrives. Time me I will hold them off as long as I can.”
“Alright Marty boy, calculate time left for Dan”, shouted Randy.
“Already did he has about 10 mins left before the soldiers reach the tank and the containers will fill in about 12 mins!!”
“You have about 2 mins of fight off time in about 10 mins Dan”, conveyed Randy back to Dan.
“Alright, 2 mins ain’t so bad!”
About 15 soldiers started running towards the tank section as soon as they heard the bell ring. They bore Commander Vesil’s mark on their uniforms. They were led by Captain Shaw. Shaw was a cunning man. He was a petty thief before the Vape began, who would even kill someone for a few dollars. His notoriety grew once the Vape started and he soon became one of the biggest mass murderers in North America. One day he went to loot in a department store in Vesil’s area. He held the counter boy at gun point and that was the exact moment when Vesil entered the store too.
“Do you know whose store you are robbing?”, asked Vesil.
“Does it matter as long as its a store and has food in it?”, replied Shaw without even turning his head.
Vesil was impressed and made Shaw his right hand man. Shaw grew in his duties and was now entrusted the most important duty of them all - transport of water to the capital.
Shaw ordered the troops to hurry up.
“If even one of those assholes escape, I will flay the skin out of your backs!!”, he roared.
Randy shifted the tube to the second container now.
Two soldiers climbed onto the platform on which the tank rested. They started towards Dan.
Dan started counting.
“Five Four Three Two One”.
He pulled a thin wire he had installed before they came and they tripped and fell off the tank and the wire snapped with their weight. Three more came on to Dan charging with batons in their hands. Dan grabbed onto the oncoming baton and pulled the soldier with it and pushed him off the tank. He used the baton in his hand now to throw the next soldier off the tank as well.
The third soldier was trying to take the tube from the mouth of the tank, before he could get hold of the tube, Dan threw the baton in his hand onto him, throwing him off the tank.
Shaw came onto the tank now.
When Dan saw him he recognised him immediately. They had a history, back in the prison. Shaw was one of the prison guards who tortured him. His mind raced through images of Shaw flaying him, knocking him around, threatening him.
For Shaw Dan was the man who escaped from his prison. He had hurt his pride.
This trip just got personal for both of them.
“Second container is done, I am pulling back the tube, Dan come on in, time to go!!”, shouted Randy.
But he saw Dan lunge forward knocking two other guards in his way towards Shaw. They started dealing punches to each other. Randy picked up his catapult in the back of the van. He started aiming at the soldiers trying to help Shaw and knock Dan out.
One of the soldiers was able to knock Dan on his back, and Dan almost lost his footing but grabbed on to a handle on his left and pulled himself back up. Shaw seized the opportunity and hit his face with the baton.
“I want this man captured and alive!Do not knock him over”, shouted Shaw
“And I want this man dead so better not come in my way”, shouted back a glaring Dan
Randy saw that Dan was outnumbered. He saw a patch of soft sand coming up in front of the van. He aimed at Dan’s foot and fired his catapult. Dan stumbled and fell off the train onto the sand patch.
He got up and started running back towards the train to get back on it, but the train was too fast. He and Shaw looked at each other like enemies who were sure that their paths would meet again.
The van pulled out and came by Dan.
“It was my call!!”, shouted Dan holding Randy’s collar
“Live today, fight tomorrow brother!! now let’s go, we have some thirsty mouths waiting for us.
The van pulled into one of the towns abandoned after the Vipe. There was no sign of any life whatsoever to be found anywhere.
Marty honked thrice, and about 100 people appeared from the houses which just minutes ago looked like empty shells.
They were all wearing clothes that were dusty and patched. One person from each household came forward with a small vessel to get their quota of water. Small children looked at them with smiles.
They did not play much anymore since playing meant drinking more water. Life had all come down to making smart water choices.
Half a container of the water was given to Pastor Givens for the vegetable farm.
Dan went afar from the group, his chest heaving of anger.
The sun was setting far in the west and the golden rays from it highlighted the Capital. the place that Dan knew that someday he would have to go back to, to take his revenge and to free the nation of its tyranny.
For now his people had water to drink and he had plans to make.
“The train is too fast, you will not be able to hold on to it!!”
“We still need it don’t we? Otherwise we die anyway so now give me the rope!!”
“Aye aye captain”
Marty pushed on the gas and brought the van parallel to the train. The rear mirrors that the train used were trained to look at threats coming from far away so were always at an angle, so the trick to slip by it undetected was to start from the tail end and run dangerously close to it and parallel to it so as to avoid being in the line of vision of the mirrors.
If the drivers noticed any threat in the engine they pulled on a rope which sounded a bell in the wagon with the guards in it who then became alert and acted upon the threat with extreme prejudice.
Dan looked for something to hook the lasso to. He found a metal rod welded to the tank in front of him to which he can hang on to. He signaled Marty to go a little to the front so that he can hook the lasso to it. Marty pressed on the gas again and pushed the van to its limit and they reached the tank. Dan took an aim and threw the rope onto the protruding rod. It quickly latched on to it and Dan got pulled in with it. The van still ran parallel to the tank. Dan’s legs started hitting the ground under him, the rod was too low and the rope was longer than he estimated. He lugged on the rope with force and pulled himself up. The air hitting his face was brutal. It felt like a thousand needles piercing on the face.
He pulled himself to the rod and finally felt the ledge of the tank under his feet. Randy pulls the pipe from the back of the van and slides open the door and screws one end to one of the containers in the back of the van and throws the other end to Dan.
Dan slowly climbs up the smooth surface of the tank with the rod as his support under his feet. He barely reaches the cap closing the tank. He pushes hard on the cap and opens it. Before he can secure it to replace it later, it flies off.
It was the year 2076. Unlike many had predicted, the apocalypse did not come in the form of an Ice Age, but instead it went the other way round. The drought started in 2057 with more than 80% of the countries in the world not receiving any rains. With that came shortage of food, which led to widespread famine. more than 60% of the species of the animal kingdom went extinct. All political structure fell into a disarray and people formed groups to survive now. Only a few reservoirs of water were now left throughout the world. There were no more trees, no more crops and humanity was on the brink of extinction. It is on times like this that people hungry for power seize the opportunity.
Vesil started controlling a small neighborhood in Manhattan and expanded from there to now control the entire of North America within a span of 19 years. There were many wars and a lot of good people died trying to protect the democracy of the nation, but failed. Dan was a part of that war as well. One of the few to escape after being imprisoned and tortured by Vesil’s troops.
In the engine room the drivers were eating their sandwich of beets and onions, when one of them suddenly sees a glint of the cap that flung off shining in the angled mirror. He gets up and looks backward and sees the van running right beside the train and Dan on the train trying to siphon off water into a container on the van. He leaped for the rope tied to the bell and started pulling on it violently.
“Uh Oh Dan, looks like we are gonna have company!!”
“Alright we need to get atleast two containers to have enough water until the next train arrives. Time me I will hold them off as long as I can.”
“Alright Marty boy, calculate time left for Dan”, shouted Randy.
“Already did he has about 10 mins left before the soldiers reach the tank and the containers will fill in about 12 mins!!”
“You have about 2 mins of fight off time in about 10 mins Dan”, conveyed Randy back to Dan.
“Alright, 2 mins ain’t so bad!”
About 15 soldiers started running towards the tank section as soon as they heard the bell ring. They bore Commander Vesil’s mark on their uniforms. They were led by Captain Shaw. Shaw was a cunning man. He was a petty thief before the Vape began, who would even kill someone for a few dollars. His notoriety grew once the Vape started and he soon became one of the biggest mass murderers in North America. One day he went to loot in a department store in Vesil’s area. He held the counter boy at gun point and that was the exact moment when Vesil entered the store too.
“Do you know whose store you are robbing?”, asked Vesil.
“Does it matter as long as its a store and has food in it?”, replied Shaw without even turning his head.
Vesil was impressed and made Shaw his right hand man. Shaw grew in his duties and was now entrusted the most important duty of them all - transport of water to the capital.
Shaw ordered the troops to hurry up.
“If even one of those assholes escape, I will flay the skin out of your backs!!”, he roared.
Randy shifted the tube to the second container now.
Two soldiers climbed onto the platform on which the tank rested. They started towards Dan.
Dan started counting.
“Five Four Three Two One”.
He pulled a thin wire he had installed before they came and they tripped and fell off the tank and the wire snapped with their weight. Three more came on to Dan charging with batons in their hands. Dan grabbed onto the oncoming baton and pulled the soldier with it and pushed him off the tank. He used the baton in his hand now to throw the next soldier off the tank as well.
The third soldier was trying to take the tube from the mouth of the tank, before he could get hold of the tube, Dan threw the baton in his hand onto him, throwing him off the tank.
Shaw came onto the tank now.
When Dan saw him he recognised him immediately. They had a history, back in the prison. Shaw was one of the prison guards who tortured him. His mind raced through images of Shaw flaying him, knocking him around, threatening him.
For Shaw Dan was the man who escaped from his prison. He had hurt his pride.
This trip just got personal for both of them.
“Second container is done, I am pulling back the tube, Dan come on in, time to go!!”, shouted Randy.
But he saw Dan lunge forward knocking two other guards in his way towards Shaw. They started dealing punches to each other. Randy picked up his catapult in the back of the van. He started aiming at the soldiers trying to help Shaw and knock Dan out.
One of the soldiers was able to knock Dan on his back, and Dan almost lost his footing but grabbed on to a handle on his left and pulled himself back up. Shaw seized the opportunity and hit his face with the baton.
“I want this man captured and alive!Do not knock him over”, shouted Shaw
“And I want this man dead so better not come in my way”, shouted back a glaring Dan
Randy saw that Dan was outnumbered. He saw a patch of soft sand coming up in front of the van. He aimed at Dan’s foot and fired his catapult. Dan stumbled and fell off the train onto the sand patch.
He got up and started running back towards the train to get back on it, but the train was too fast. He and Shaw looked at each other like enemies who were sure that their paths would meet again.
The van pulled out and came by Dan.
“It was my call!!”, shouted Dan holding Randy’s collar
“Live today, fight tomorrow brother!! now let’s go, we have some thirsty mouths waiting for us.
The van pulled into one of the towns abandoned after the Vipe. There was no sign of any life whatsoever to be found anywhere.
Marty honked thrice, and about 100 people appeared from the houses which just minutes ago looked like empty shells.
They were all wearing clothes that were dusty and patched. One person from each household came forward with a small vessel to get their quota of water. Small children looked at them with smiles.
They did not play much anymore since playing meant drinking more water. Life had all come down to making smart water choices.
Half a container of the water was given to Pastor Givens for the vegetable farm.
Dan went afar from the group, his chest heaving of anger.
The sun was setting far in the west and the golden rays from it highlighted the Capital. the place that Dan knew that someday he would have to go back to, to take his revenge and to free the nation of its tyranny.
For now his people had water to drink and he had plans to make.
Sunday, August 24, 2014
Home
"Well with the downsizing going on in the company. What do you think our chances are?”, asked Rahul.
“I don’t know bud, let’s take it as it comes”, replied Adarsh.
Rahul went to his cubicle and tapped on the “Ctrl+Alt+Del” button to log in to the system. There was an email from his manager - a meeting request to meet him in his office at 4pm. He hated 4pm meetings. There was always work to be done which meant he had to stay back until 8-9pm to finish it off. He now did this almost 3 times a week. He has been working at InfinitySo in Los Angeles for five years now.
He remembered times when he used to be a different person from what he is now. He used to believe in a god. Believed in his religion. Loved his parents. He could do anything for his friends. He remembered how they would drink half a beer bottle each in the night and drive around town at midnight feeling the cold night air hit his face in Hyderabad. He used to go home everyday looking forward to what his grandmother cooked that night. He loved reading books. Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, Sidney Sheldon's books. He used to get lost in the world they created seeing the characters take a life of their own in front of his eyes. Then came the final year of his Bachelor's. He did not have a job yet because of the recession era, so he decided to study further and gave the GRE thinking that going to the USA will be his shortcut to make more money. Due to the recession his college did not really have any jobs or assistantships to offer so he ended up borrowing most of his fee in loans and then he got into InfoSo and slowly paid off his loans in five years. There was little he saved in this time.
Even though that burden got lifted off his shoulders, he was a different person now. He did not speak much to anyone anymore. Hated almost everyone. Did not read much and drank almost every day to go to sleep. He was not really in touch with any of his friends from college. They sometimes called him to hangout but he preferred staying back home with a glass of scotch and some TV. He was just a skeleton of the person he once used to be.
The calendar app on his monitor suddenly filled the screen notifying him that it was 4 pm and time for him to go meet his manager. Sam was his manager for the last three years. He really liked the previous manager, who gave him only work enough to fill his week and let him go off back home by 6 pm at least. Since Sam stepped in afterwards, life hasn't really been that smooth.
He knocked on Sam's office door.
"Come on in Rahul"
"Hi Sam"
"Sit down Rahul"
Rahul pulled the chair back and sat on its edge hoping to take his assigned work and get started on it as soon as possible so that he could go back home and get his drink in his hands.
"So what did you want me to work on Sam?"
"Ohh well you are doing fine on your current task Rahul, I did not really have any new work to assign to you today. I called you in for something else today."
Sam was a social person, but he never called people to talk about something other than work. Rahul wondered what his discussion would be about.
"As you know with the new acquisition we are forced to cut down our personnel"
"But Sam I have worked for the past five years at this company and worked really hard"
"And i am not refuting that Rahul, you must understand that it has been a really tough call for us but we have decided to let you go. But don't worry we have a really good severance package lined up for you."
"I don't believe this. What am i supposed to do now?"
"You are an intelligent person, you will figure out something Rahul. Think of this as an opportunity to do something new now. We are really sorry about this but my hands are tied. You have to understand"
"Until when do i have?"
"Actually this is kind of urgent to streamline our company in a focused direction so we need you to vacate your cubicle by the end of this week"
"End of this week! I do not even have another job in hand yet and my visa will lose status if i do not have another job within the next one week!!"
"We are really sorry about this Rahul but you gotta understand my point of view"
The least thing Rahul was interested in right now was to understand his point of view. The company decided to streamline? Without him? His mind raced thinking about what he was gonna do and how he was gonna cope with this? He really needed a drink right now.
"Can i leave now? I gotta get back home"
"Sure Rahul, i will definitely recommend you in your next job, feel free to give my reference. Have a good rest of the day now", said Sam smiling.
He went to his desk dazed and unable to believe what had just happened. His entire life turned upside down in the last ten minutes. Adarsh peered over his cubicle wall and asked
"What did you get? I got the new acquisition merge design project !! Wanna get dinner since we are gonna be here late anyways ?"
"I actually did not get a project because because..", he choked and took his keys and stormed away.
He got into his car and sped away to his apartment.
There was no more scotch left. He had finished the last peg last night. He took his wallet and walked to the bar which was about a mile away from his house.
He ordered a pitcher of fat stout ale and finished it in about 15 min and then he drank another and then yet another. He was trying to shut the fear of having no job by drinking it out.
Then Adarsh stepped into the pub and saw him and came and slid into the seat opposite to him.
"I was worried about you man! I am sorry about your job but you will be alright dude, it's not the end of the world"
"Well its easy for you to say, you are not the one without a job!"
"Look i am not trying to console you or anything, what happened to you was horrible and i am gonna miss having you around. But i am here as a friend now."
"Sorry man, i am not myself and this beer has really fucked me up, can you drop me at my house?"
"I came on my motorcycle. Will you be able to sit on the back seat?"
"Haha it was what we always used to do back home!! Let's do this!!"
They went out to the parking lot and rahul hopped behind Adarsh on his bike. Adarsh tried going slowly at 25 mph to make sure Rahul did not fall down.
"Hey Rahul I just remembered that I left the door to the office open when I opened it in the evening to let some air in. Do you mind if we stop by there first?"
"Alright!"
Once they reached there Rahul wanted to take a leak so he said he would come in too. Suddenly something struck Adarsh.
"Hey do you wanna thank Sam for the kind offer he made you today ?"
"What do you mean ?"
"Follow me ! Trust me you are going to enjoy this "
Adarsh went behind the office building. He looked around and found an empty trash can lying there he brought it by the wall and laid it down to make a step out of it. He got onto it and pulled himself to the window he had left open. And then turned back to help the very drunk Rahul up.
"Why are we going this way dude?"
"You'll soon know dude."
After helping Rahul up he led him to Sam's office and went over to his desk opened his top drawer.
"Your toilet bowl awaits you sir !!"
"Dude I can't do this !! I will be fir ...."
It suddenly struck him. He unzipped his pants and did what he had to do while Adarsh stood guard outside and after he was done they ran out the way they came, this time closing the window behind them.
"I feel good.. No in fact I feel great dude!!"
Adarsh revved up the speed and soon they reached a bridge and the cool breeze hit Rahul's face reminding him of the night strolls he used to take back home.
"So do you have something saved up to last while you are off the job?"
"Yeah I have enough to last some time .. "
He got up on his feet behind holding Adarsh for support to feel the full force of the cool air as he remembered how they did it back home.
"And are you planning to end your lease as well?"
"Its gonna end this month anyways. I don't think I will renew it."
"What then where are you gonna go ?"
Rahul closed his eyes and tilted his head back and all the faces of his friends and family came streaming in front of him. Every small event of his life played in front of him on a screen with thousand different parts all playing at once.
"I am going home."
“I don’t know bud, let’s take it as it comes”, replied Adarsh.
Rahul went to his cubicle and tapped on the “Ctrl+Alt+Del” button to log in to the system. There was an email from his manager - a meeting request to meet him in his office at 4pm. He hated 4pm meetings. There was always work to be done which meant he had to stay back until 8-9pm to finish it off. He now did this almost 3 times a week. He has been working at InfinitySo in Los Angeles for five years now.
He remembered times when he used to be a different person from what he is now. He used to believe in a god. Believed in his religion. Loved his parents. He could do anything for his friends. He remembered how they would drink half a beer bottle each in the night and drive around town at midnight feeling the cold night air hit his face in Hyderabad. He used to go home everyday looking forward to what his grandmother cooked that night. He loved reading books. Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, Sidney Sheldon's books. He used to get lost in the world they created seeing the characters take a life of their own in front of his eyes. Then came the final year of his Bachelor's. He did not have a job yet because of the recession era, so he decided to study further and gave the GRE thinking that going to the USA will be his shortcut to make more money. Due to the recession his college did not really have any jobs or assistantships to offer so he ended up borrowing most of his fee in loans and then he got into InfoSo and slowly paid off his loans in five years. There was little he saved in this time.
Even though that burden got lifted off his shoulders, he was a different person now. He did not speak much to anyone anymore. Hated almost everyone. Did not read much and drank almost every day to go to sleep. He was not really in touch with any of his friends from college. They sometimes called him to hangout but he preferred staying back home with a glass of scotch and some TV. He was just a skeleton of the person he once used to be.
The calendar app on his monitor suddenly filled the screen notifying him that it was 4 pm and time for him to go meet his manager. Sam was his manager for the last three years. He really liked the previous manager, who gave him only work enough to fill his week and let him go off back home by 6 pm at least. Since Sam stepped in afterwards, life hasn't really been that smooth.
He knocked on Sam's office door.
"Come on in Rahul"
"Hi Sam"
"Sit down Rahul"
Rahul pulled the chair back and sat on its edge hoping to take his assigned work and get started on it as soon as possible so that he could go back home and get his drink in his hands.
"So what did you want me to work on Sam?"
"Ohh well you are doing fine on your current task Rahul, I did not really have any new work to assign to you today. I called you in for something else today."
Sam was a social person, but he never called people to talk about something other than work. Rahul wondered what his discussion would be about.
"As you know with the new acquisition we are forced to cut down our personnel"
"But Sam I have worked for the past five years at this company and worked really hard"
"And i am not refuting that Rahul, you must understand that it has been a really tough call for us but we have decided to let you go. But don't worry we have a really good severance package lined up for you."
"I don't believe this. What am i supposed to do now?"
"You are an intelligent person, you will figure out something Rahul. Think of this as an opportunity to do something new now. We are really sorry about this but my hands are tied. You have to understand"
"Until when do i have?"
"Actually this is kind of urgent to streamline our company in a focused direction so we need you to vacate your cubicle by the end of this week"
"End of this week! I do not even have another job in hand yet and my visa will lose status if i do not have another job within the next one week!!"
"We are really sorry about this Rahul but you gotta understand my point of view"
The least thing Rahul was interested in right now was to understand his point of view. The company decided to streamline? Without him? His mind raced thinking about what he was gonna do and how he was gonna cope with this? He really needed a drink right now.
"Can i leave now? I gotta get back home"
"Sure Rahul, i will definitely recommend you in your next job, feel free to give my reference. Have a good rest of the day now", said Sam smiling.
He went to his desk dazed and unable to believe what had just happened. His entire life turned upside down in the last ten minutes. Adarsh peered over his cubicle wall and asked
"What did you get? I got the new acquisition merge design project !! Wanna get dinner since we are gonna be here late anyways ?"
"I actually did not get a project because because..", he choked and took his keys and stormed away.
He got into his car and sped away to his apartment.
There was no more scotch left. He had finished the last peg last night. He took his wallet and walked to the bar which was about a mile away from his house.
He ordered a pitcher of fat stout ale and finished it in about 15 min and then he drank another and then yet another. He was trying to shut the fear of having no job by drinking it out.
Then Adarsh stepped into the pub and saw him and came and slid into the seat opposite to him.
"I was worried about you man! I am sorry about your job but you will be alright dude, it's not the end of the world"
"Well its easy for you to say, you are not the one without a job!"
"Look i am not trying to console you or anything, what happened to you was horrible and i am gonna miss having you around. But i am here as a friend now."
"Sorry man, i am not myself and this beer has really fucked me up, can you drop me at my house?"
"I came on my motorcycle. Will you be able to sit on the back seat?"
"Haha it was what we always used to do back home!! Let's do this!!"
They went out to the parking lot and rahul hopped behind Adarsh on his bike. Adarsh tried going slowly at 25 mph to make sure Rahul did not fall down.
"Hey Rahul I just remembered that I left the door to the office open when I opened it in the evening to let some air in. Do you mind if we stop by there first?"
"Alright!"
Once they reached there Rahul wanted to take a leak so he said he would come in too. Suddenly something struck Adarsh.
"Hey do you wanna thank Sam for the kind offer he made you today ?"
"What do you mean ?"
"Follow me ! Trust me you are going to enjoy this "
Adarsh went behind the office building. He looked around and found an empty trash can lying there he brought it by the wall and laid it down to make a step out of it. He got onto it and pulled himself to the window he had left open. And then turned back to help the very drunk Rahul up.
"Why are we going this way dude?"
"You'll soon know dude."
After helping Rahul up he led him to Sam's office and went over to his desk opened his top drawer.
"Your toilet bowl awaits you sir !!"
"Dude I can't do this !! I will be fir ...."
It suddenly struck him. He unzipped his pants and did what he had to do while Adarsh stood guard outside and after he was done they ran out the way they came, this time closing the window behind them.
"I feel good.. No in fact I feel great dude!!"
Adarsh revved up the speed and soon they reached a bridge and the cool breeze hit Rahul's face reminding him of the night strolls he used to take back home.
"So do you have something saved up to last while you are off the job?"
"Yeah I have enough to last some time .. "
He got up on his feet behind holding Adarsh for support to feel the full force of the cool air as he remembered how they did it back home.
"And are you planning to end your lease as well?"
"Its gonna end this month anyways. I don't think I will renew it."
"What then where are you gonna go ?"
Rahul closed his eyes and tilted his head back and all the faces of his friends and family came streaming in front of him. Every small event of his life played in front of him on a screen with thousand different parts all playing at once.
"I am going home."
Tuesday, August 19, 2014
John and Robbie visit the Great Wall of China
John and Robbie stood facing the wall. It was the tallest wall they had ever seen in their lives.
“Dude is this the Great Wall of China?”, asked Robbie.
“Hmm looks like it.”, said John
“Do you think this is where we will find the gem?”
“But why would the gem be in China?”
“The old man did point us this way though”
“Maybe the old man did not see which way he went”
“It’s worth looking anyways now that we are here”
‘Yeah man!! I always wanted to peer down from the great Wall of China. Did you know that it is the only man-made object visible from the moon?”
“Hmm I didn’t know that. That’s pretty cool, but it also kinda makes sense. You know how, if you can look at a person in a mirror, the person can also look at you in the same mirror? This must work the same way!!”
“You are an idiot Robbie!! come now, we do not have time to waste!!”
They started towards a door they could see a few feet away. When they reached it, John signaled Robbie to have his hex ready. Both of them took a little of the golden hex dust from their pouches in their hands.
With the hand with the hex dust on his back John knocked on the huge wooden door. A chinese guard slid open a panel in the door and peering through the slot, he looked at Robbie and John.
“What do you want? Why are you here at this time of the night? The wall opens for tourists at 6 am in the morning tomorrow.”
“We are not tourists. We are here to get an important item stolen from us”, said John.
“What item? Go to the cops if you have been robbed. There is no one on the wall now.”
“No, you don’t understand, we cannot go to the cops for this, and some very reliable sources have informed us that it is here that we will find what we seek!!”
“Like I already said, come back at 6am!!”, shouted the guard and shut the panel.
“I did not know you knew mandarin!!”, said Robbie
“I don’t”
“You were conversing with the guard in Mandarin!!”
“Really? Hmm these powers we got work in weird ways! I guess we can understand any language we want and converse in it too!!”
“That’s so cool bro!! We should totally go to Mexico the next time!!”
“That sounds like a good idea!! Now for the task at hand! Stand back !”
John lifted the hand in which he was holding the hex dust and uttered a hex and threw the hex dust at the wooden door. The door swung open with a bang.
Inside the old guard lay on the ground surprised, unable to comprehend what happened.
Before he could react to them entering, Robbie used his hex dust to knock him out.
“That will keep him sleeping for the next two hours!!”
“Good, now let’s go find the gem!!”
They found a set of stairs nearby and climbed it to reach the top of the wall. The wall stretched for miles on either side.
“Whoa dude!! Come look at this!!”, shouted Robbing peeking from the edge of the wall.
“That looks so cool. Wish I had my phone to snap a selfie now, but I think I left it back at the inn!!”
“Wait I have mine”, said Robbie, and dished out his phone. he opened the camera app on it and turned it the otherway around so that the back camera was facing them both. They arched back, put on a shocked face and took a selfie.
“I will have to wait till we get back to post this!! I have no bars here!!”
“yeah i guess it can wait, just make sure you don’t lose your phone!!”
Suddenly a glint of red caught their eye from the far end of the wall, but not really on the wall. it was like a firefly floating in the air just beside the wall.
They started running towards it hoping to find what they were looking for. After all the old man did say that a light will show them the way. They kept running for a few miles, but the light never seemed like it got any nearer. After about an hour, they sat down to rest.
“I don’t think we are heading in the right direction”
“Look, the light is going down!!”
“They started running towards the light with double speed now and soon reached a place, where the light just sat now at the base of the wall.
“What should we do now? Jump over?”
“I don’t know!! I did not put up that light!!”
“Well maybe we should mark this spot, and go back down the stairs we came up from and walk back in this direction!!”
“That will be too late, we only have about ten minutes now before we will be pulled back, we gotta get to the gem before that!”
“Damn” shouted Robbie and kicked a stone in the wall, and shouted with pain.
“Robbie look!!” said John, pointing towards a staircase which appeared at the base of the stone that Robbie kicked. It was going down into the staircase.
They both descended down the stairs. It was damp and dark. Both of them took some more of the hex dust in their hands and looked around trying to find some light.
Robbie found a torch hooked to one of the walls. he used his hex to light it and led the way deeper into the hollow in the wall.
After some time, they came to reached a huge room. Suddenly a snake slithered past their feet. Robbie shrieked out of surprise. John asked him to stay quiet. In a distance a small stone suddenly shone in the light from the torch.
“There it is, on that raised platform up front!!”, he shouted.
“Good! Now let’s fetch it and get the hell outta here”
Robbie started running towards the stone before John could stop him, and no sooner had he tried to lay his hands on the stone, he was flung to the far end to a wall in the room. he landed with a thud.
The sorcerer stood right by the stone now.
John immediately tried casting a spell but before he could do it, the sorcerer vanished into thin air.
Suddenly he felt a hand grab his shoulders and pull him back. He was then flung to a corner, but it was not the same room he was in before anymore. This room was brightly lit and had only one door shaped opening through which he could see Robie getting up dazed in the other room. he tried running back in through the opening but just crashed into it, like there was some invisible wall there. He tried to put a breaking hex on it, but the hex dust just hit the wall and fell down as if it was just sand.
he shouted out to Robbie to try and get him out of here.
“Robbie!! Can you hear me?”
“Hey John, where are you dude?”
“I am in a room sealed by some invisible wall. can you follow my voice and try to free me?”
Before Robbie could do anything, the sorcerer appeared again and uttered a spell pointing his index finger at Robbie. he slowly lifted his finger and suddenly as if grasped by invisible hands, Robbie was being lifted in the air.
“Did you think it was that easy to steal my gem?”
“Your gem!! You stole it from us!!”
“Fool!! it had always belonged to me. Only I can harness it’s true power to reign over this world!!”
“Well hard luck dude because john and Robbie are here now to stop you!!”
“Haha .. Let’s see what you can do.”
the sorcerer pointed his finger towards the wall from which John was looking and it suddenly turned like a rippling wall of liquid.
John tried and he could now step through it.
Next the magician flicked his other wrist and dropped Robbie to the floor.
Both of them took some of the hex dust in their wrists and started putting hexes on the sorcerer.
But none of them reached the sorcerer, simply disappearing in mid air.
Now Robbie picked up the torch that fell down nearby and lunged towards the sorcerer.
While they were grappling with each other John quickly jumped on the gem and grabbed it. On his signal both he and Robbie got off the sorcerer.
“You better give me the gem!!” bellowed the sorcerer in anger!!
Joh briefly glanced at his wristwatch and raised his hands in the air and started counting:
“Five Four Three Two One! Adios Amigos!!”
They were encircled in green gas cloud and before the sorcerer could reach them or do something, they vanished into thin air!!
And suddenly they landed with a thud on something hard.
They opened their eyes and found that they were lying in the grass somewhere off the highway. Their pal hovered over them trying to shake them to consciousness.
“Hey man!! Where is the sorcerer? did we lose him? Is the gem safe”, asked Robbie.
“You idiots! what are you blabbering about? Do you’ll remember nothing about what happened last night?”
“We were fighting a sorcerer to retrieve the gem man!!”
“No you idiots!! You got stoned from the weed and started asking the bartender which way the sorcerer went. he thought you wanted to go to the restroom and pointed you’ll towards it. But instead you’ll got out and ran all the way to Chinatown. Here you got into an alley and started kicking at a wall talking to some guy on the other side something which made no sense. Then you climbed the wall and jumped over to the other side, threw some sand at the guy and ran shouting and laughing towards the sidewalk. You took a photo there, and kicked open a manhole and jumped into it. The ran about 5 miles in it. grabbed a stone lying around, jumped and kicked about and got out from there and jumped into a truck which did not know you’ll where in it. When the truck driver stopped by this highway to take a leak, he noticed a stench coming from the truck, he found your phone gave me a call that he was gonna dump you’ll here and drove away!! I just reached here.”
“Wait a minute if you just reached here, how do you know all this?”
“It’s because instead of taking a photo you left the camera in video mode and even though there was no video to see, your voices were heard pretty clearly. I had stopped following you and went to ask the cops to retrieve ya'll after you jumped into the manhole!! I just informed them that I found you’ll as well”
“Damn dude, it all seemed so real!!”, said Robbie scratching his head.
“Yeah man, weed does really take you places”, said John getting to his feet
“Yeah but I must say, this really felt like a damn good adventure, we should do it again sometime” smiled Robbie and they got into Timmy’s car and drove back to New York.
“Dude is this the Great Wall of China?”, asked Robbie.
“Hmm looks like it.”, said John
“Do you think this is where we will find the gem?”
“But why would the gem be in China?”
“The old man did point us this way though”
“Maybe the old man did not see which way he went”
“It’s worth looking anyways now that we are here”
‘Yeah man!! I always wanted to peer down from the great Wall of China. Did you know that it is the only man-made object visible from the moon?”
“Hmm I didn’t know that. That’s pretty cool, but it also kinda makes sense. You know how, if you can look at a person in a mirror, the person can also look at you in the same mirror? This must work the same way!!”
“You are an idiot Robbie!! come now, we do not have time to waste!!”
They started towards a door they could see a few feet away. When they reached it, John signaled Robbie to have his hex ready. Both of them took a little of the golden hex dust from their pouches in their hands.
With the hand with the hex dust on his back John knocked on the huge wooden door. A chinese guard slid open a panel in the door and peering through the slot, he looked at Robbie and John.
“What do you want? Why are you here at this time of the night? The wall opens for tourists at 6 am in the morning tomorrow.”
“We are not tourists. We are here to get an important item stolen from us”, said John.
“What item? Go to the cops if you have been robbed. There is no one on the wall now.”
“No, you don’t understand, we cannot go to the cops for this, and some very reliable sources have informed us that it is here that we will find what we seek!!”
“Like I already said, come back at 6am!!”, shouted the guard and shut the panel.
“I did not know you knew mandarin!!”, said Robbie
“I don’t”
“You were conversing with the guard in Mandarin!!”
“Really? Hmm these powers we got work in weird ways! I guess we can understand any language we want and converse in it too!!”
“That’s so cool bro!! We should totally go to Mexico the next time!!”
“That sounds like a good idea!! Now for the task at hand! Stand back !”
John lifted the hand in which he was holding the hex dust and uttered a hex and threw the hex dust at the wooden door. The door swung open with a bang.
Inside the old guard lay on the ground surprised, unable to comprehend what happened.
Before he could react to them entering, Robbie used his hex dust to knock him out.
“That will keep him sleeping for the next two hours!!”
“Good, now let’s go find the gem!!”
They found a set of stairs nearby and climbed it to reach the top of the wall. The wall stretched for miles on either side.
“Whoa dude!! Come look at this!!”, shouted Robbing peeking from the edge of the wall.
“That looks so cool. Wish I had my phone to snap a selfie now, but I think I left it back at the inn!!”
“Wait I have mine”, said Robbie, and dished out his phone. he opened the camera app on it and turned it the otherway around so that the back camera was facing them both. They arched back, put on a shocked face and took a selfie.
“I will have to wait till we get back to post this!! I have no bars here!!”
“yeah i guess it can wait, just make sure you don’t lose your phone!!”
Suddenly a glint of red caught their eye from the far end of the wall, but not really on the wall. it was like a firefly floating in the air just beside the wall.
They started running towards it hoping to find what they were looking for. After all the old man did say that a light will show them the way. They kept running for a few miles, but the light never seemed like it got any nearer. After about an hour, they sat down to rest.
“I don’t think we are heading in the right direction”
“Look, the light is going down!!”
“They started running towards the light with double speed now and soon reached a place, where the light just sat now at the base of the wall.
“What should we do now? Jump over?”
“I don’t know!! I did not put up that light!!”
“Well maybe we should mark this spot, and go back down the stairs we came up from and walk back in this direction!!”
“That will be too late, we only have about ten minutes now before we will be pulled back, we gotta get to the gem before that!”
“Damn” shouted Robbie and kicked a stone in the wall, and shouted with pain.
“Robbie look!!” said John, pointing towards a staircase which appeared at the base of the stone that Robbie kicked. It was going down into the staircase.
They both descended down the stairs. It was damp and dark. Both of them took some more of the hex dust in their hands and looked around trying to find some light.
Robbie found a torch hooked to one of the walls. he used his hex to light it and led the way deeper into the hollow in the wall.
After some time, they came to reached a huge room. Suddenly a snake slithered past their feet. Robbie shrieked out of surprise. John asked him to stay quiet. In a distance a small stone suddenly shone in the light from the torch.
“There it is, on that raised platform up front!!”, he shouted.
“Good! Now let’s fetch it and get the hell outta here”
Robbie started running towards the stone before John could stop him, and no sooner had he tried to lay his hands on the stone, he was flung to the far end to a wall in the room. he landed with a thud.
The sorcerer stood right by the stone now.
John immediately tried casting a spell but before he could do it, the sorcerer vanished into thin air.
Suddenly he felt a hand grab his shoulders and pull him back. He was then flung to a corner, but it was not the same room he was in before anymore. This room was brightly lit and had only one door shaped opening through which he could see Robie getting up dazed in the other room. he tried running back in through the opening but just crashed into it, like there was some invisible wall there. He tried to put a breaking hex on it, but the hex dust just hit the wall and fell down as if it was just sand.
he shouted out to Robbie to try and get him out of here.
“Robbie!! Can you hear me?”
“Hey John, where are you dude?”
“I am in a room sealed by some invisible wall. can you follow my voice and try to free me?”
Before Robbie could do anything, the sorcerer appeared again and uttered a spell pointing his index finger at Robbie. he slowly lifted his finger and suddenly as if grasped by invisible hands, Robbie was being lifted in the air.
“Did you think it was that easy to steal my gem?”
“Your gem!! You stole it from us!!”
“Fool!! it had always belonged to me. Only I can harness it’s true power to reign over this world!!”
“Well hard luck dude because john and Robbie are here now to stop you!!”
“Haha .. Let’s see what you can do.”
the sorcerer pointed his finger towards the wall from which John was looking and it suddenly turned like a rippling wall of liquid.
John tried and he could now step through it.
Next the magician flicked his other wrist and dropped Robbie to the floor.
Both of them took some of the hex dust in their wrists and started putting hexes on the sorcerer.
But none of them reached the sorcerer, simply disappearing in mid air.
Now Robbie picked up the torch that fell down nearby and lunged towards the sorcerer.
While they were grappling with each other John quickly jumped on the gem and grabbed it. On his signal both he and Robbie got off the sorcerer.
“You better give me the gem!!” bellowed the sorcerer in anger!!
Joh briefly glanced at his wristwatch and raised his hands in the air and started counting:
“Five Four Three Two One! Adios Amigos!!”
They were encircled in green gas cloud and before the sorcerer could reach them or do something, they vanished into thin air!!
And suddenly they landed with a thud on something hard.
They opened their eyes and found that they were lying in the grass somewhere off the highway. Their pal hovered over them trying to shake them to consciousness.
“Hey man!! Where is the sorcerer? did we lose him? Is the gem safe”, asked Robbie.
“You idiots! what are you blabbering about? Do you’ll remember nothing about what happened last night?”
“We were fighting a sorcerer to retrieve the gem man!!”
“No you idiots!! You got stoned from the weed and started asking the bartender which way the sorcerer went. he thought you wanted to go to the restroom and pointed you’ll towards it. But instead you’ll got out and ran all the way to Chinatown. Here you got into an alley and started kicking at a wall talking to some guy on the other side something which made no sense. Then you climbed the wall and jumped over to the other side, threw some sand at the guy and ran shouting and laughing towards the sidewalk. You took a photo there, and kicked open a manhole and jumped into it. The ran about 5 miles in it. grabbed a stone lying around, jumped and kicked about and got out from there and jumped into a truck which did not know you’ll where in it. When the truck driver stopped by this highway to take a leak, he noticed a stench coming from the truck, he found your phone gave me a call that he was gonna dump you’ll here and drove away!! I just reached here.”
“Wait a minute if you just reached here, how do you know all this?”
“It’s because instead of taking a photo you left the camera in video mode and even though there was no video to see, your voices were heard pretty clearly. I had stopped following you and went to ask the cops to retrieve ya'll after you jumped into the manhole!! I just informed them that I found you’ll as well”
“Damn dude, it all seemed so real!!”, said Robbie scratching his head.
“Yeah man, weed does really take you places”, said John getting to his feet
“Yeah but I must say, this really felt like a damn good adventure, we should do it again sometime” smiled Robbie and they got into Timmy’s car and drove back to New York.
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