First post!!

Here comes my first post on this blogsite. Here goes..

The Encounter
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It was a dark rainy night.. (er.. I know all stupid stories start like this.. I didn't say this is not stupid.. won't interrupt again.. shhhhhhhhh.........)

She was stepping out of her office building at the unearthly hour when she saw him. Shocked she stopped in her tracks. He was sitting cross-legged, peering into a laptop just outside the building doors. "This job keeps getting weirder and weirder", her brain screamed. She stepped out of the building and went around to get a look at the guy. "Hmm.. not bad", she thought looking at the boyish face. Feeling her eyes on him, he half turned to look at her. "Oh hello", he said with the faintest surprise in his voice, "shouldn't you be home already?". "I could ask you the same question", she said in her head, "er.. I had to finish something". "Don't we all", he dimpled mysteriously and went back to typing on the laptop. "Er.. it's pouring tonight", she said, trying to start a polite conversation. "So I see", he mumbled without taking his eyes off the monitor. "You know the last cabs leave at 12:00.. it's 11:45 already.. we really need to rush to catch 'em.. Maybe that building has an umbrella", she said pointing to the closest building. He dimpled again, "I intend to stay the night, but you go on". "This is no place for a girl at this hour of the night", he added gravely. That was when she noticed a strange apparatus connected to his laptop. It looked like a mini satellite tv dish and was moving erratically. She gave it one long look before saying, "right, well, suit yourself. Nice meeting you", and hopped away to the building hoping to find an umbrella.

Sure enough she found a broken-but-will-suffice-for-now-kind of an umbrella. She opened the crooked umbrella with some difficulty and started walking the long winding road leading to the trans portal. As she walked she thought of the strange five minutes of conversation that she had with a stranger stranger. For some reason he reminded her of her friend's warning "don't believe people with dimples. They are supremely fickle and always spell trouble". The word trouble was ringing in her ears over and over again. Just as she was taking a turn, she saw a girl rushing out of a building. She was saying something but it wasn't audible over the heavy pitapat of rain. "I can't hear you", she said. The girl just walked on apparently talking to herself. "Oh God! This has to be the freakiest day in my boring-to-death corporate life!". She walked on waiting for another oddity to occur. It was already 11:50. If she missed the last cab she would be stuck here for the night. It wouldn't be the first time that she would be staying at office but somehow she felt today was different. Resolving to reach the cab in time, she quickened her pace. Just a few more minutes and she would be out.

"Hey, wait up!", the dimpled guy was trying to catch up with her. She slowed down. "Weren't you staying 'in' tonight?", she asked him. "Yeah.. well.. changed my mind". "They are supremely fickle and always spell trouble" came rushing back to her. They started walking silently. She had pretty much given up trying to start a conversation with him. He obviously thinks he's some kinda great... "So what project are you into?", well, his voice wasn't that bad when he wasn't trying to be sarcastic. "I'm into cosmofirst. It's a development project", the words came mechanically. This was the first question that techies asked each other, wasn't it? The natural question in the sequence came out of her lips "So, which project are you into?". Before he could answer, a guy came running towards them. Like the girl she had seen earlier, he was grumbling something inaudible too. As he went past, she noticed he had a contraption in his hand. "What on earth is going on today", she said almost to herself. "What? You look like you saw a ghost", replied the guy almost to himself. "Well this was the second time in the span of two minutes that two people have walked past me talking to themselves. I mean is this job really driving people to madness?". He looked at her as though looking at a two year old who has landed in a discotheque. "You are kidding right? I would've thought..", he stopped midway staring at something past her. "What? What is it?", and she turned to look in the direction in which he was staring. She could see nothing but darkness. "What? You freaked me out!", almost disappointed at not finding anything worth a stunned look and a conversation cut short. "Nothing, let's just get out of here okay", he was breathing hard, as though waiting for something to come out of the darkness. She gave an uncertain look to the sinister looking stretch of road behind her, where the two wannabe soliloquists had vanished and said "Yeah. Let's get out of here", and with that she gripped her umbrella a little tighter and started walking as fast as the stilettos would allow her. "What a day to wear your best footwear to office", she cursed silently and tried to keep up with the guy who didn't seem to mind the rain so much.

They arrived at the trans portal "just two seconds late" in the words of the raincoat clad guard. With the last cab gone, despair and anguish seized her. Though she didn't know why. The huge dormatorium was close by and it meant soft beds, softer pillows, warm blankets and hot water. "Well, looks like we are stuck here for the night", the guy didn't seem happy either. "We might as well go the dormatorium", she suggested. "The dormatorium?", he asked as though he disliked the idea from the bottom of his heart. "Yeah. You got any bright ideas?", she hoped she sounded sarcastic enough. "No, it's just that..", and he broke off. She rolled her eyes, "You've gotta stop cutting yourself off!", and started trudging towards the dormatorium. When she didn't find him coming along, she rolled her eyes again and said "Welllll?", in a are-you-coming-or-not kinda way. He rolled his eyes as a response in a if-you-have-a-death-wish-be-my-guest kinda way and joined her troubled pace.

They walked in silence for some distance, him contemplative, she confused. The dormatorium was thirty minutes away and they couldn't stay silent forever, so thought the guy and it occurred to him that the only identification he knew about his companion was that she worked here in a project ridiculously named cosmofirst. "What's your name?", he asked. And she thought it a bit rude, wasn't he supposed to introduce himself first? "I'm Faye. What's your name?", she said, as politely as she could. "Oh! I thought such names were abolished", and he laughed as though it was a universally understood joke. "Huh?" was all she could manage. "Oh nothing. It's LLED-1525", he replied to her confusion. "What is?", she asked, more confused than ever. "My name - LLED-1525", he replied matching his confusion with hers. "You are joking right?", she sputtered. "Er.. no.. I thought you were when you said your name was Faye". In that moment, their worlds swirled around them and crashed together.

They stared at each other for what seemed like an eternity to both of them. She was the first one to get out of the daze. "I knew something was amiss the first time I saw you sitting outside with a laptop.. I mean aren't you too young to have an office laptop.. Only PMs have them and you obviously aren't one and then those two yackety-yakking strangers and then the cabs leaving earlier than usual.. What's going on here?", she gibbered. "Hey! Slow down! I'm as confused as you are. First you call the conveyors 'cabs', a term that hasn't been used in like a hundred years. Then you act freaked out seeing the two messengers and say that they are mad because they are talking to themselves. Then you ask me to go to the ramshackle dormatorium and as an icing on the cake tell me that your name is 'Faye'. Such names were put out of existance owing to the aequalis code introduced some fifty odd years ago. I was playing along thinking that it was some kinda antique humor of yours. But now you sound as though you belong to a different world", he stared at her for a full minute before continuing, "Look obviously someone left a chrono portal open and you must've drifted through somehow. What we need to do now is to find another chrono portal and send you back in time, I'm guessing it's back and not forward. Come on let's get going", and he was already ahead of her, both in terms of human distance and human comprehension. "Whoa! Hold on. So you are saying I time-travelled?! What is this? Some sci-fi movie set?", she was finally catching on. "Good to see you read junk fiction because in a few years, from your time, all that's gonna be junk reality. Now let's move before someone finds you and jails you", he was still way ahead of her. "Er.. jail me? For having walked through a portal that some moron left open. Excuse me but I..", he interrupted her before she could finish, "And stop using the m-word, you could be jailed faster than you could pronounce that word". "What moron is a taboo now?", she half laughed at that.
"Yes, some dictator named Mulberry Bush or something banned it since a lot of commoners were employing that word to describe him. He must be from your era, you ought to know better".
"You don't mean G. Bush do you? And you've got your history all wrong. He wasn't a dictator, he was the President and I don't recall or believe a ban on that word. It's idiocy".
"Er.. do you mind not using the i-word either?".
This was the n-th time that she had rolled her eyes that day. "Who banned that word now? Politicians from our country?".
"No actually a dictator - or if you insist on calling him 'the President' - of a neighboring country".
After another eye-roll, she had almost caught up with him, covering the human distance but still lacking in comprehension. The rain was forgotten in the silent chaos going on in her mind. It came back with alarming clarity after a thud-bump-fall caused by her best footwear. "Those by the way look ridiculous", and he pointed to her heels. "Yeah well, I'll remind myself to throw them out the moment I get back. Mind helping me up out here?!". "Where do we go now?", she asked trying to dust herself off. "To the dormatorium. And we better hurry".

Now they had almost reached the dormatorium and the sight appalled her. It was half destroyed and looked pretty much like the Colosseum. "What happened here?", she was gaping at the gaping hole in the wall in front of her. "Nuclear testing. It still goes on at odd hours without warning. This was the reason that I was so surprised that you would have wanted to come here of all the places", he replied getting in through the hole and helping her in.
"Since when did a software company start conducting nuclear tests?".
"What software company? This entire place is government owned. All the companies that existed fifty years ago were conflated and the government owns everything now. Well, that was the only sensible thing to do after the law to abolish all paid labour was passed. The companies could not hire workers. All the employees became free-lancers and started to take their revenge by hiking their asking rates through the roof. The companies/factories/banks every conceivable enterprise had to either shut down or sell. So they chose the lesser of the two evils and sold".
"Mhmm.. Well at least all the jobs are secure now. And as much as I would love to sit and chit-chat about what's gonna happen ages after I'm cozily blanketed in my grave, could we please move on to wherever we were headed? And why are we here if there's nuclear testing going on here? To get blown to smithereens?".
"No my dear sarcastic stone-ager, the dormatorium is nuclear and there is the highest possibility of finding open chrono portals here".
Somewhat reassured she calmed down, "OK. So, just out of curiosity, what year is this?".
"It's 2113. What year did you walk out of the portal?"
"2008.. A hundred and five?! What a year to choose to go back into"
"Why, what's up with that?", he asked as he pulled out the mini dish from his bag and began pointing it along all the directions.
"Oh come on. Don't tell me you didn't notice."
"Notice what?"
"Er.. Come to think of it, it might just be a stupid co-incidence but, the numbers one zero five add up to six - the Devil's number and the year is thirteen, you know unlucky number."
"Wow! You are a bigger nut than I thought. I didn't know people were super-superstitious hundred years ago."
Before she could reply to what her brain indicated as an insult, they had reached a place of "intense nuclear activity" as indicated by the neon light flashing garishly ahead of them. "Well, this is it, walk through", he said. "Walk through what? There's nothing here", she said staring at the big empty half destroyed reception area of the dormatorium. "Yes, there is. See this antenna here? It's supposed to pick up signals emitted by portals", he explained. "OK, well if that's the case, you would have known when I walked out of the portal into your time, wouldn't you?", she asked with a hint of suspicion. "Yes, logically I should have", he said his eyebrows furrowing together, "maybe the frequency of the portal which you walked out of wasn't high enough or was encrypted. Anyways, this is no time to brainstorm about it. The portal is closing, you'll have to hurry. I'll adjust the chronosphere to point to 2008, go on".
"But, but.."
"What?"
"I don't see anything."
"You can't.. Just walk straight. The portal is at a distance of around three meters from here", he was sitting cross-legged again and typing feverishly on his laptop. When he didn't find her moving ahead he said "Look, you have to leave now. The portal is closing. You'll be stuck here till we find another one and I'm not sure we'll be this lucky any time soon. Besides being in this place at this hour is risky business. You'll have to trust me on this one. Can you do that?", he asked as though asking a child to give up its candy bar. She nodded a yes mutely and started walking ahead. When she had almost reached the portal, she turned around and looked at him. "Hey!", she said as loudly as she could to make him look up from his laptop. "Thanks for everything. I'll remember you. Maybe you'll come to haunt me in my dreams", and she gave a half smile which he couldn't see from that distance and started walking again. He wanted to tell her that she wouldn't remember him or this encounter when she got back because at that time she would never even have met him. He wanted to tell her that dreams were only manifestations of what had already occurred and she could never dream about whom she had never met. He wanted to tell her that he would never forget. He wanted to tell her...

It was a dark rainy night. She was stepping out of her office building at the unearthly hour. "It's pouring tonight", she thought, "The last cabs leave at 12:00.. it's 11:45 already.. I'll really need to rush to catch 'em.. Maybe that building has an umbrella", and she hopped away to the building hoping to find an umbrella.