Story in progress.

This is a story I’m writing while riding the train to and from work. If you have something to say please do. If you think it sucks please tell me why. Thank you!

It is cold outside. He felt it when he looked out from the window and saw the white blanket of snow covering the sidewalk in front of his building. The feeling started to move down into his body, serving as a reminiscent of all the times that he was out in the cold.

“I don’t want to get out of the house. I don’t want to go to work” a voice started to speak into his own head, giving birth to the thought of not wanting to leave the warm and cozy house. “After all, I can work remotely. It’s 2029". The screen of an older generation of super smartphone turned on at the sound of his voice — ”Eve, notify the headquarters that I’m not coming in today. I’ll work from the home studio” — followed by a warm but digital voice in reply — ”Ok. But remember you are supposed to meet with the client today”, after which it dimmed back off.

He turned away from the window, and minutes later he was sitting at his desk, not wearing anything but shorts and a TShirt. The desk, a modified version of the popular among the older generation of programmers, HUMBLE 32X, that allows you to lean its surface as you move up or down in your chair, in order to maintain a good viewing angle over the set of 4 monitors, started to adjust its position according to Vasioka’s position in the chair.

As soon as he sat down, the screens also lit on, and an overexposed picture of a white landscape could be seen on all 4 of them. He placed his hand over the finger pad to be scanned and spoke loudly, as to an older person — ”Vasioka Galavat. Security Code 273 837". The same digital but rusty voice replied “Welcome Vasioka” your connection is being initiated, and before the voice finished the sentence, thousands of bits of 1024 RSA2 encrypted data got sent to the 10.10.a23.a73.b27.273 IPv6 that belonged to the Headquarters. 30 nano seconds later he was in, and ready to rock.

With the headphones covering his ears, and an old playlist setting up the mood, he was ready to get in the zone. He started to program. The screen in the middle right was showing a Monokai themed program that resembled an IDE of the older days while the one on the left contained nothing but a black page towards which Vasioka intermittently shouted coded like words — ”c d dot dot. M k dir. L s dash l”

With each new stream of words shout, the screen was making a subtle sound, followed by more words coming out on the screen. Sometimes just one line, sometimes multiple lines, sometimes a continuous stream of lines always scrolling up the screen, but always in the same pale white color. To an outsider this looked incredible and useless in the same time, but for an experienced machine guy, as Vasioka, this was pure joy. He turned his head slightly to his right and started to speak again, but with a slightly different tone, saying “Lara, take care of those new parameters passed to the Parser function and please refactor it after. Also, make sure it’s cyclomatic complexity is less than 6 — this one needs to be understood by the client as well.” He continued like this for the next few hours, intermittently focusing his attention on the slight left or on the slight right monitors but never on the ones at the far ends. In fact those remained off for the entire session.

When the super smart phone rang the 3rd time he finally realized it and picked it up. A loud voice at the other end spoke rapidly “Hi John. This is Martin, calling you about the new version release. Did you find time to test it out? What do you think about the new security module?” He didn’t get to answer save for an interrupted mumbling before the voice continued “It’s able to detect a person’s identity by intercepting her hand’s movement when she picks the device up, among other factors. What do you think, isn’t that tidy?”. A second and a half passed in silence before Vasioka tried to speak again — ”Hey listen, Martin, first of all these used to be all amazing back in 2018, but now it’s just basics. What are you?! A student in the first cycle…or just one of the others?” Hesitating in the last words. “And secondly I don’t know who you actually are and what are you talking about. Where do you have my phone hash from? I’m going to hang up now. Good luck!”.

He thought of it for a short while after he hanged up, but before any thought could actually harvest in his head he abandoned it and continued with his work. More coded letters and words were shouted towards the screen. At about 2:30 in the afternoon he stood up and hurried to the washing room, leaving his work station turned on. He took a shower, brushed his teeth, put some clothes on and rushed through the door. He told Eve to start the car and by the time he got out of the building, the car was already waiting for him in front. The Tesla model Y turbocharged, was a good acquisition and in his mind still a worthy one, even though nobody really rides them anymore.

He opened his board terminal machine and started to shout the same commands as previously into the now much smaller screen attached to the car, while he was being taken to the place where the meeting with The Client was held.

He was anxious and quite a bit stressed at the thought of the upcoming event, so much as he already forgot about the cold outside and the recent feelings towards the idea of being out. The project was not yet coming to an end as soon as he firstly predicted and he knew that The Client will not appreciate that.

The car took a last turn before it stopped in front of a tall building with grey walls and huge window panels at the entrance. What to Vasioka seemed like only a few minutes in reality were more than 35, and the time now was 3:20 in the afternoon. He jumped out of the car and rushed to the lobby. The place was empty; no movement could be seen, save for the doors which just opened in front of him. Apparently there was no need for identification, and he could just pass through, into the main area. He didn’t bother to think about the question that challenged his mind and simply proceeded further through the opened doors — finding himself in the middle of a big white and empty room after just a dozen steps. He remained there, in silence, going through the conversation he was about to have, in his mind.

The anxiety increased with the thoughts rushing through his head. He never met The Client before nor was he accustomed to any sort of personal relationships anymore. Since 2021 he had literally no human relationship nor did he try to have any after what happened. He started to move slowly into the room, walking in a small circle around the virtual center while trying to tame his thoughts. The trick was always to solve Machine problems in his head. He was good at it, and it is that one thing that gives him just the bit of confidence he lacks in situation like the one presented.

The circle in the center of the room suddenly rotate, just an inch or two, impossible to be caught by the inattentive eye, but when the floor started to move upwards, Vasioka became rapidly aware. The 5 feet wide cylinder was slowly taking shape into the white room, releasing air from its crevasses with a soft whistle. When the trick was finished, a door opened and a tall and white man came out of it extending his arm in a welcoming manner. Vasioka took one step forward but stopped and attempted to regain his control over his senses again. “Here we go” he told himself and then proceeded by allowing his hand to meet the other’s in a proper handshake. “Welcome, welcome Vasioka! I recon you are not used to having contact with other people, is that right?”. Vasioka mumbled an “Aham” and soon regretted it. “Aham?!” replied The Client. “Pardon my manners — I’m from the old days. Back then we used to do all sorts of things with other people. We didn’t have any machines back then, and the only joy we had was to meet others and do something, anything together. Things are different now of course. People don’t talk with one another anymore, and if they do is only through the Proxies. The only “real” type of conversation that still resembles the old days is through those super smart phones, but I could never get used to one of those. I mean how awful is to always having to speak up and loud into it. You want to call your mother, you say ‘Angie, call my mother!’, you want to start your car you go ‘Angie, start my car. I’m ready to leave’ or ‘Angie, cancel all my meetings for today, I’m not feeling well’. Its just such a pain. I’m all for the old tapping buttons on a screen”. They both stepped inside the cylinder and the door closed with a smooth sound, before starting to descend from the white room.

The elevator ride was short, but enough for Vasioka to observe that The Client was older than he imagined, yet still able to maintain the allure of a strong young person, with his shoulders pointing in complete opposite directions, and a posture that betrayed the lack of having to seat on a chair all day long. His way of talking, and the way his hands were moving resembled an old roman Orator while in the position of persuading the crowds with only his body language. He never saw somebody doing that, or at least he couldn’t remember it.

The same soft sound was made when the door opened again, at the other end of the ride. The Client stepped out first, shortly followed by Vasioka. The room they entered was in fact a long hallway with doors facing one another from each side, separated by not more than 15 steps from their adjacent neighbor door. 45 steps further, The Client stopped and knocked on a door on the right side. A voice yelled — ”Coming…. In 2 seconds”. Vasioka couldn’t ban himself from noticing that the voice was of a woman, and it completely lacked that harsh tone that he was so accustomed to in these days. He couldn’t stop but think — ”Is she a real woman?”, and his calmness could be seen escaping his body like one’s soul would at the moment of death, and being replaced with an unease and unsettling state that took control over his mind and was now alerting every cell in its way down to his toes, and messing up with his blood level, making him blush and fidget at the same time. When the door opened after what it seemed an eternity, Vasioka was obviously troubled. His body was now resembling a snail shrinking back into his “house”, eyes searching for patterns in the matte floor with rapid movements, and a beating heart that if one touched it, she could hear the sounds of an African tribe in the middle of their summer fest ritual.

A gaze. That’s all it took for him to fall in love with her — eternally.

…