SMOKE -------------------------------------------------------------------------- by Mike Daryl Ormond
Chapter 1: The Surprise Party
It has been a terribly long week. Meetings, deadlines, last minute design & code changes. It's the week before the Christmas holiday vacation. I should have seen it coming. Everybody's getting everything done before the year ends. Well, at least, it was Friday now and its 7:25 PM. time to leave and stock up some groceries for the holidays. I was shutting down my laptop and was about to leave my desk when my cell phone rang.
"Where the hell are you!?" a very familiar voice screamed on the line. It was Andrea. Andrea is one of my friends from college who I also work with.
"I'm about to leave the office! What's going on!?" I said as loud as I could. I startled a number of people still in my office area. There seems to be a lot of noise on Andrea's end. Laughing and loud music.
"The surprise party! Everybody is looking for you!"
"Oh shit! Was it today?! I forgot! Is Duncan there already?!"
"As a matter of fact, yes! And he's half drunk already. You should have seen his face when he got in and saw what we did to his apartment. Do you plan to join us anytime soon?!"
"Yeah! I'll be there in 30 minutes!"
"Great! Don't forget the cake! And buy some beer as well. We're nearly out."
"Cake.. beer.. got it!" I got kind of worried because there was still light outside and beer was already out.
"Ok! Be quick, I'll need help to explain all this smoke to the fire department as soon as they get here! See yah!"
I did my best to pack up my laptop and as quickly as possible and headed to the parking lot without causing any more disturbances.
The surprise party. How could have I forgotten? Andrea & I have been planning this party for the last 2 weeks. I must have been very, very busy indeed. We planned this gag to fill up Duncan's apartment with smoke using a smoke machine we borrowed from a local bar. We had to talk to his cleaning lady into lending us the keys to his apartment. We had to disable a number of smoke detectors. Of course, this was not the perfect plan since we won't be able to do anything about the smoke to come out of the windows and ventilation system that would surely attract the attention. I promised Andrea that I would do the talking in any case we find ourselves in the company of displeased neighbors or, worse yet, charging firemen.
I arrived at Duncan's apartment at around 8:20 and they were still fanning out the remaining smoke out the windows.
"Finally! Guys, the cake is here!" shouted Andrea as she moved away from the bar where she was getting herself a drink. "We started passing around hard drinks half an hour ago. We thought you ran off with the beer"
"Traffic is terrible. It didn't help that we stirred up quite a crowd downstairs expecting flames to come out of the windows any second now."
Everybody in the room, mostly our friends from college greeted me as I entered the apartment. Andrea quickly relieved me of the cake and set it on the table.
"Son of a bitch! The devil himself finally to made a appearance! " I spun around hearing this and saw Duncan standing in the doorway also still in his office clothes. He was carrying his cat. The doorman downstairs agreed to look after the cat for the afternoon while apartment was full of smoke. Duncan set down his cat. He wobbled a bit obviously tipsy already. "I thought you were bringing more beer?"
"It's still in the car. I brought up your cake first. I'll go down and get it now". I got out of the hallway and started down the dimly lit stairs when I heard somebody descending the stairwell behind me.
"Hey. Wait up." Duncan said slowly as his eyes were adjusting to the low lighting.
"You should have stayed upstairs. You might hurt yourself down here. "
"I'm fine. I thought you might need help with the beer. And besides, I can use more fresh air with all the smoke I inhaled from trying to save a burning apartment earlier.
"We're really sorry about that but you will have to admit, it was quite hilarious."
"Yeah..yeah.. you had your laughs. Now you have to help me clean up later when all of this raucous is over."
I opened up the trunk when we got to my car. As we were lifting the beer cases, he saw my laptop in the trunk.
"Still working through the holidays?"
"Not really. " I said unconvincingly as we made our way back upstairs. "Just wanted to check my office email from time to time."
"I thought you were quitting that hell hole of a job of yours. I'm telling you, we still have a lot of analyst positions up for grabs. I can sure use a bit more familiar faces in our department."
"Still thinking, I guess. Don't worry. You'll be the first to know when it happens."
"Hey speaking about work, I have something would like to test out with the group we have upstairs."
"Not another one of your online surveys, I hope".
"No... " he then paused. "I thought you liked the surveys."
"One or two a week is ok. One or two a day is not ok."
"Well this is not a survey. It's more like a game."
I gave him a doubtful look.
"Our company is opening a new service, you see. " he continued. "It's like a dating tool. Let me ask you a question. How of many your friends right now are you interested in? I mean, those you might think of dating."
"I don't believe there's one" I lied. "And even if there is one, it will be suicide pursuing it."
"Unless this someone is interested in you as well."
"You found a way people's minds?"
"Close. I thought of a safe way of knowing if someone you're interested in is interested in you as well."
"And how do you plan on doing that?"
"It is quite simple actually. A person, for example me, will send out an email to group of friends. This email will contain a link where each friend could list down the names of friends in the same group they are interested in. As soon as the system finds a match where friends are interested in each other, an email will be sent to the parties involved in the match informing them of the good news."
"Sounds risky." I said as I backed up on the apartment door opening it for us.
"Risky? Sounds like fun to me."
Next...
Chapter 2: The Game
Please send your comments to: mikedarylormond@yahoo.com