Aban's Accension

Chapter 10: The Woman Who Rested

Chapter 10: THE WOMAN WHO RESTED

by Shireen Jeejeebhoy

“Aban.” El’s suddenly firm voice arrests her as she reaches the doorway. He asks, “Whom do you seek?”

She keeps her back to him.

“Aban, what do you want to ask?”

Aban turns around and sees him unfolding himself, standing up, looking at her. She cannot read his expression, but then she can’t read people anyway.

“Aban, what do you want to ask?”

“Nothing.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah. I know what I’m supposed to be doing. I don’t know why I came here. Life with Mom and Dad was fine, you know. I was doing stuff,” she says, putting the emphasis on “doing.”

“Yet you came.”

“I had to.”

“Why did you have to?”

“I don’t know,” she whines. “What are you, a cop or something, asking all these questions. Who made you judge? I don’t have to tell you nothing, you know. I didn’t even tell Mom everything.”

He awaits her in silence as she frowns at the floor, rubbing the old wood with the toe of her right sneaker. She asks sideways, “So what do you do around here? They used to brag there was more to do in the big city than in the country, but so far all it got me is a fancy wedding and hot air. And useless university magazines.”

El sits down and gestures with an open palm for her to join him. He waits until she can no longer resist the pull. She doesn’t want to sit. She doesn’t want to stay. She wants to go...to go...well, she doesn’t know where. Not here. Not home. She perches at the very edge of the chair, hands between her knees, staring at the floor.

“There was a CEO in charge of a large software company,” El begins, leaning toward her, his eyes upon her bent head. “He had many employees in his care, and his company produced software that most of the world had grown to depend on. He was successful. But he had a rival. His rival owned a small software company. It had few employees, and it sold its software only in Canada. The CEO looked upon his rival with contempt. She was small. She didn’t threaten his large company. Yet he felt uneasy. He would work harder he decided.

“So one day, he told his managers, ‘I want you to produce the best, most radical software the world has ever seen, one that will run on PCs, Macs, iPads, and Blackberries. Even on Linux computers. I will invest every penny in it. And I want it done in time for the Christmas sales.’” His managers looked at each other and said, ‘But sir. That has never been done before in so short a time.’ He got angry at them. ‘Do you not work for me? I hired you to be better than everyone else. Are you not the best, the brightest of all software designers?’ They answered him, ‘Yes.’ ‘Then do it,’ he told them.

“He went away and funnelled all the company’s funds toward developing their design. He came back in three months and asked them if they were done. The managers looked afraid. They said they had a radical idea but they needed more time, for current hardware would not run their new software. The CEO again got angry. ‘Why are you creating problems,’ he asked them. ‘I told you what I wanted, now do it. If you work night and day, if you stopped wasting time sleeping so much, you’d have your time.’ The managers scurried away and finished writing the software. When Christmas sales time came upon them, the CEO was pleased to see he had beaten his rival to the punch and put on a flashy presentation streamed to the whole world, and people flocked to all the stores to buy the best, most radical software ever made as gifts for themselves and their families. But within hours, they became angry. The software didn’t work. It crashed constantly. On the best computers, the iPad, or Blackberries, it crashed. The people demanded refunds, and the company demanded the CEO’s resignation. He never worked again.

“Meanwhile, a year earlier, his rival had asked her chief designer what he was working on. Her chief designer said he had been thinking about a new idea for the last couple of years and had run into the problem that no hardware out there would run his software. The rival asked her designer, ‘What do you need?’ The designer told her. She went away and set the problem aside for a month. The designer continued to refine his software idea. When the CEO’s rival came back to her designer, she asked him again, ‘What do you need?’ He told her. She went away to take courses on hardware design, for up till now she knew software but not the details of hardware design. Then she passed on some ideas to her designer and left him to work it out. A month later, she went back to her designer and asked him what he needed. He shook his head; it was not going well. She went away for another month to think. When she came back, she said she had an idea. She spoke to a company that specialized in hardware. They worked together and designed the hardware that her designer needed. When Christmas sales time came upon them, together the CEO’s rival and the hardware company put out a few ads and put up a website to tell out the news about their new device with its radical software. No one paid much attention to it, and the big company scoffed before putting on their flashy presentation.

“But slowly people found out about it. As the big company’s software crashed, the rival's rose into public view. People tweeted about it, facebooked one another, and talked about it on their blogs. Soon newspaper reporters heard and wrote articles, and magazines featured it in their what-to-buy-now stories. People outside of Canada wanted this new device too. As the CEO’s company plunged into the red, the rival’s grew into the blackest of black.”

Aban stares at him. What is he yammering on about now? Worse, he’d used words she’d never heard before. She feels stupid. Unfamiliar anger makes her splutter, “Seriously, what’re you talking about?”

El shakes his head, “It’s a simple story Aban. Let it sink in; savour it; don’t be afraid of the words.”

“I’m not afraid,” she retorts. Who is he to say that? She barks at him, “Like Mom says, the world needs doers not slackers.”

“Yet you picked up the University course catalogue.”

“So? It was sitting there.”

“Many other magazines were sitting there too.”

El gazes empathetically upon her face; she stares woodenly at him.

“What is your name?” he asks.

She walks out.