Rosalind roamed through her memories - now featuring 100% more Jasper! - as vignettes of her shared moments with Aziz flashed through her imagination.
Holding hands in the company kitchen, as Aziz prepared tea while Rosalind concocted the strongest coffee known to man. Aziz sleeping on one side of the bed while Rosalind, sitting upright against the bedpost, typed away at the tiny laptop perched on her thighs. A quick, chaotic round of foosball made ever more colorful by the fact that neither of them had any idea what they were doing. Aziz stopping by the office late at night to drop takeout shawarma off at her desk during the final legs of a project sprint she was leading.
"I know how the old expression goes - don't shit where you eat. But somehow, we were able to make it work."
Eating lunch together on a bench at the park. Cute post-it notes on each other's desks (I really like you) amidst a sea of stickies detailing action items, reminders, and feedback. Being each other's excuses to stand in the corner of the room during company events.
The sea of flashbacks solidified into a final singular moment. On a break from their desks, Rosalind and Aziz sat shoulder to shoulder on the couch in the shoddy-looking company lounge area, laptops in laps, heads resting against each other as they worked.
"Things were quaint. Cozy. Consistent. Just the way you'd want good things to stay. But then, the company started becoming, well, the company."
A dozen or so meters from the couch stood Martin, frozen in place, mouth agape, transfixed by something on his phone. Employees noticed his shocked expression and shouted across the floor, asking if something in the codebase had broken. No response.
Slowly, they rose from their desks to approach him near the whiteboard. The growing commotion eventually reached Rosalind and Aziz at the couch, who stood up to see what was going on.
The gathered crowd, containing at least a few people who were growing tempted to grab Martin's phone for a quick peek, were put at ease as he squeaked out a few words to pierce the tension.
"Article in QuantTech Review... about us... glowingly positive."
Like the moment after a corkscrew pops the top of a champagne bottle, Rosalind, from her vantage point, felt the two seconds of vacuum before the celebration filled the room. Before everything changed.
Amidst the cheers and fist-pumping as everyone got up from their desks, the sound of Martin shouting "They love us!" echoed in Rosalind's mind as the vision shifted yet again, morphing and twisting, until she reached a familiar sight.
She was back to the pair of tables pushed together at XPeriential, her and Aziz again sitting across from each other. This time, both were plugged in, blank expressions on their faces. Not a chance of a stolen glance between these two.
Jasper, once again intruding into the mind palace, held onto a rope hanging from the ceiling in the room, chiming, "I suppose we're having a little trouble in paradise?"
"It's not that straightforward," Rosalind said, assuming herself in her own flashback, getting up from the desk, cutting Jasper's rope with a large butcher knife materializing out of thin air, causing him to topple to the floor. "We liked each other. But we were in love with the work."
The duo watched as the room morphed in a fast-forward time lapse, old machines being replaced with new models, tarnished furniture disappearing to make way for fancy installations, the staff headcount growing alongside the increasing amenities. A floor that became more and more suffocating as the amount of traffic in it increased.
And through it all, Aziz was glued to his monitor.
"Yeah. I think I remember," Rosalind narrated.
This time, she couldn't sit in the memories. She could only watch them from a distance. Like an old projector playing against an already busy wall in the company building, she squinted to watch the milestones and events that were a busy blur to her: Aziz and Rosalind sitting upright on opposite sides of the bed with headphones in and fingers typing away, Rosalind placing another post-it to Aziz's desk about an unoptimized piece of code, no hand-holding with drink prep in the kitchen this time, just both of them doing calculations in their head. The kettle clicked - the water was boiled.
YOU ARE READING
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AdventureWelcome to the future, where the line between reality and gaming has blurred. In this brave new world, Rosalind Grey is the queen of code, the architect of XP: Experiential Points, the first video game to take place in reality. But as launch day app...
