Broken Code

Part 19

We agreed to meet at a café on Torstrasse, a place with two exits. It was a cheap dive with dreadful coffee, plastic tables, and tin ashtrays. In the evenings, it was usually filled with a motley crew of local punks, but at this hour, it was deserted. Perhaps it wasn't the most romantic spot in all of Mitte, but it was far enough from both the office and our residential areas. The café had a passageway leading to the street across, and Simon explained his choice by saying that, in case I decided to change my mind after seeing him, I would have the option to leave through the other door. He understood that I needed an escape route, even at the very last moment. I could feel the excitement rising within me, though I wasn't sure what—or rather, who—was waiting.

All these preparations and concerns felt overly elaborate, almost like something from a spy movie. Who would take notice of two colleagues planning a casual Saturday morning tour of former East Berlin?

When the day of the meeting arrived, I felt a flutter of nerves. At the last minute, I almost considered cancelling.

I entered the café, and my heart skipped a beat. There he was, sitting at a window table, facing the entrance. He wore a tracksuit and nervously twisted a cigarette between his fingers. And that face—it was familiar. I had crossed paths with him several times during the week, mostly when he spoke with my boss, Alex.

But he wasn't just a friendly colleague from the office—he was Viktor Simon Lanz, the owner of our company! How could I have been so foolish!

I walked past his portrait in the office every day, and now, here he was, sitting in front of me, looking more nervous than I felt. His face showed confusion, and his eyes were searching for mine. At that moment, I realised this was no ordinary meeting between two colleagues. This was something much more.

"Hello, Stef," he said, his voice warm but with a hint of nervousness. I noticed his hand trembled slightly as he lifted his cup of coffee.

I smiled, trying to ease the tension that had settled between us. Confusion and fear was hanging in the air, but I had no intention of backing down. Despite my bewilderment, I was ready to talk.

"Herr Lanz, I don't even know where to begin. I suppose you should fire me for my sheer lack of attention." I admitted, lowering my gaze to the table. Simon smiled.

"Well, at least now you know what I've been risking," he said, his voice sincere. "I didn't want you to know who I was, because I feared it might affect our relationship. But now that we're here, I hope we can speak openly."

"It's hard to believe you're the same Simon I've been thinking about all these weeks," I said, looking up at him. "I never would have made the connection between one of the developers and the portrait on the corporate wall. They seem like two completely different people."

Simon sighed, his face relaxing a little, though the tension still lingered.

"Let's go back to the old way of speaking—let's use 'you'."

I liked his voice, his mannerisms. And his hair colour. It could be called red, though it wasn't exactly. Really, he was like a sunflower—just without the glasses! His face had a certain pliability, a quality that made it easy to read his inner state. It was fascinating to watch his expressions.

"You really are very inattentive. If you'd ever looked away from your computer and looked up, you'd have seen my office windows about five or seven metres away, on the right side."

Indeed, life often gives us tasks for which no one has yet written a working code. We're all developers here—without much experience.

I took a deep breath and felt my fear andtension begin to dissolve. I had taken a step into the unknown, and perhapsthis was the moment when my life could change forever.