"Guys! Stop it!" Akash, founding member and CEO of "Safe Tech Corp" yelled as his two technical architects went for each others throat. Arnav and Khushi were two of his top employees and brilliant engineers with contrasting ideologies but both for some godforsaken reason had ended up in his company. With those two around he was reduced to a kindergarten teacher trying to break fight between two four year old kids. He wanted to take a cane and beat the two of them till they bruised. He was generally a pitiful soft soul but these two brought out the never before existed violent side in him.
"Arnav, Khushi is just saying that…" He started but religiously cut off by the said man.
"Oh please. She wants to install security system that a chimpanzee with an access to a Commodore64 can break in twenty seconds," Arnav said harshly. Khushi, his peer and a colleague and an on-off friend rolled her eyes.
"Bullshit. You know that any COTS (Commercial Off-The Shelf) product would rip us off badly so instead we should build our own security frame work and sell it along with our other prime products," Khushi argued.
"Right. The customers would want a system which would probably make a fifteen year old cell phone look smart," Arnav smirked at his own statement. Akash knew that another fight would break out if he didn't intervene.
"Alright. Stop, both of you. You are senior employees in this organization and you are behaving like immature brats. Shame on you," he said with as much venom he could muster.
"Akash, if you want to be a jerk, then learn it from the master here," Khushi said pointing at Arnav.
"And you are a royal bitch, not a Mary Sue," Arnav snarled right back.
"Okay that's it you two. You two may be my friends but here, in this office, I outrank you both. How about this? I will review both your proposals and ask our sales team to perform a survey with our clients and based on client satisfaction with the proposal, I will choose one. What do you think?" Akash asked look at the two of them who were standing at the opposite side of the conference table.
"Okay," Khushi conceded first.
"Fine," Arnav said immediately.
"It's already eight. Why don't you guys go home and think about your behavior?" Akash said plaintively.
Khushi looked at him as if he had lost all his marbles and Arnav looked at him sympathetically. 'Are you seriously saying that?' His look seemed to question him. Akash collapsed on his chair.
"Here you go sir," his secretary, Payal, walked in and handed him a bottle of lemonade. His face broke into a smile and smiled at her goofily. She chuckled, blushed and walked out of office in less than two minutes.
"Pathetic," Khushi noted as Payal went back to her desk.
"More like disgusting." Arnav added. "Akash may be handsome and successful but when it comes to women he is the most pathetic creature around," he said unnecessarily.
"I think that's much cuter than your overtly Casanova attitude," she said cheerfully. He bared his teeth in a fake smile. She rolled her eyes and walked towards her cubicle as did he.
****
He liked it. The output of one hour of writing wasn't probably literature prize worthy but it was his baby. It was his first baby. Thus on a mundane Thursday evening after a huge row with his colleague, "Freeloop" was born and posted on a popular Indian website under the pseudonym "CynicalNoob". He was a cynic and he was technically a noob when it came to writing and stuff like that.
He was blown away by the insanity of it all. The idea had crept on him, probably when he was arguing with Khushi about yet another very lame thing, and had invaded his mind as some sort of virus. He had tried very hard to shake it out of his system but it had finally consumed him. He watched the damn show with his sister who watched it with great awe and poured all of her concentration, attention and affection on two leads whenever they were on the screen.
He seriously hated himself to be drawn to watch the show even after berating it for an entire day. So he had finally given into sheer pressure of the idea in his mind and started to pen down a story. He had of course abandoned the canonical part of the characterization and had gone ahead with his own. He had seen loads of writers doing the same so he didn't feel too much out of it. He basked in the glory of his first story and refreshed "My Posts" ten times a minute to see how his story was faring.
"What are you up to?" Khushi asked him peeping into his cubicle. "Am going for a coffee run, want some?" She asked holding out her coffee mug.
"I am good," he said not looking up from his laptop. She shrugged and walked towards pantry thumbing through her phone.
"Oh, that's an interesting username," she muttered when her eyes fell on the name 'CynicalNoob'.
Khushi, was a hardcore fan of the show but had never let that out in open. She called it her 'guilty pleasure' as she watched romance of the two leads over and over again on Youtube.
"What kind of characterization is that?" She frowned. "Let's put this ass in his or her place," she muttered to herself and walked back to her desk with filled coffee cup.
"Can you two please leave?" Akash said looking at the two of them buried in their work. Or at least they seemed to be.
"Five minutes Akash," Arnav said. He had already received four comments but the fifth comment from a person named "QuiteThoughtful" blew him away.
It managed to enrage him in a matter of one point six seconds. He was going to respond and give that person a piece of his mind.
To be continued.
Edited by -Sookie- - 13 years ago
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