Story Series: Untitled - Part 1

(Holiday season is back, and I'm coming out with another ambitious story series that will hopefully run throughout this month and the next, culminating before my third semester of college kicks off. 

I will not reveal anything about this story and let you all figure out how it'll pan out in the subsequent chapters. I want to gauge the level of anticipation and interest I can create in a story without letting the reader know the plot outline in advance. 

Since I am bad at nomenclature, I am leaving this story untitled as of now. If and when an apt title comes to me, I shall update this post for all to see.

Needless to say, any comments/suggestions/criticisms are welcome here as well as on my FB page. Read on...)

Chapter 1: Invitation to a Party

“We will be eagerly expecting your graceful presence, Ms. Parmar” the elegantly worded invitation concluded. The initials were not printed or separately inserted, at least to the naked eye, which struck her as odd for a moment.

Fuck this finery.

Another party, another socialite get-together celebrating hollow mirth and pretended fellowship. Richness and fame came with their own baggage, more so for the CEO of one of the most successful organization in the country.

Four years ago, as a disgraced engineering dropout, she couldn’t have imagined her start-up to have scaled such heights. Her patented model of software encryption had not only earned her plaudits from the academic and scientific fraternity, but also presented a huge business opportunity. She could offer instant online privacy to millions of government-wary consumers willing to shell-out a fortune for her services.

She had started at the micro-level, going door-to-door with her software installed on a writeable CD. In the pre-internet era, she had relied on word of mouth and cheap sharing among her locality friends to publicize her idea, earning a trifle for every sale.

“What the hell is she always up to, this girl!” her father would complain to her mother, who’d have little time to look into the daily engagements of her teenage daughter. “Doesn’t have a degree or anything, what the hell is she going to do when she grows up?”

“Aap bhi na, don’t worry too much. Anyway, she has to go off and get married,” she would reply hurriedly. 

Somewhere deep down, her parents had come to terms with the fact that their middle class upbringing had failed to launch her into the fiercely competitive world. Marriage appeared to them to be the last bet, but a good one at that: she wasn’t wanting in the department of looks and appearance. At 15, she had eloped with a classmate and would have succeeded in running away from home, had the plan not been foiled by her spoilsport-of-an-elder brother.

“Dad, Ira is planning to run away with that village idiot of his,” he’d blabbed.

“What?! When?”

“Tonight. I eavesdropped on her when she was on the call with him.”

That had done it for her. She had been severely punished and grounded at home for a full week. Considering this reprimand enough to suppress her ‘undue’ interest in the opposite sex, her family had not anticipated her next move.

After a day of mewling and whining, she had reserved herself to the confines of her bedroom and refused to come out despite repeated calls. Food was sneaked in through the gap in the door by her brother, who felt guilty for having told on her. When she finally did come out on the third day, it was with a homemade transistor in her blackened hands, her face shining through all the muck and her open hair messily falling on her face. She was nothing like her earlier self; all her angst had vanished. One could contend that she looked ungracefully sexy in a very schoolgirl-ish sense.

“Look what I made, Ma!” she ran to her to display her new ‘invention’.

Her parents’ anger had cooled off by now and they greeted her with surprised acceptance.

“What is it, Ira?” her brother asked, an engineer-in-the-making himself.

“A radio transistor, bhaiyya. I saw the design in one of your books, and decided to make one myself!” Her glee was palpable. As months went by and technology progressed at ever-faster rate, her gadgets changed and so did her mastery. From merely possessing a dextrous touch with mechanics, she grew to teach herself to code and write virtual languages which rarely anyone of her age even knew the name of.

It was when she topped the National Science Olympiad in the Delhi state her parents thought it best to leave her to her own devices and not interrupt her natural course of inclination. She had not looked back ever, having precociously finished school at 16 and joined Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur the next year.

A drop of estrogen in an ocean of testosterone, her natural instincts had taken over as soon as the restrictive home atmosphere gave way to the freedom of the girls’ hostel. She would juggle time between her hobbies of software coding and chess with outings with the most ‘desirable’ men on campus. Her sex-capades were known far and wide and she had promptly became to be known as the ‘slut’ of the college. She was known to consume recreational drugs and her dorm room was looked at with disgust and, to be fair, a detestation born out of envy.

This disrepute was what eventually led to her ignominious eviction from the institute the subsequent year. She would have liked to believe that she had been expelled because she refused to conform to the ancient values of an institute in decadence, but she knew it was more to do with her lapse of judgement that had led to the extremity.

The intercom line on her desk rang, shaking her off her thoughts. She cast the invitation aside with a belittling shove, letting it land in the heap of trash already too full for the waste basket, and picked up the receiver.

“Ma’am, Mr. Almeida is on hold. Want me to route him through?”

She sighed. Joseph ‘Jo’ Almeida, one of her earliest aides cum go-to lawyer was starting to get annoying with his all-too frequent calls of late.

“Go ahead.”

The line dropped momentarily and the familiar low-pitched, inconsistent voice of her lawyer greeted her.

“Hey, Ira! Wassup?”

“Nothing much, Jo. Just being barraged by some unneeded invitations and phone calls.” She hoped he would take the hint.

“Haha, we all have been there. Anyway, what are you doing this Sunday afternoon? Is there a prior engagement?” His voice gave away his anticipation to meet her.

“Um,” she thought rapidly, “I don’t know Jo…” Her eye fell on the crumpled invitation she had strode into the dustbin moments ago.

“…oh yes, I have this lunch invitation! Some fancy get-together. I’d rather call sick and--”

“Oh, no,” he cut in, “that’s what I wanted to talk about!”

She sighed.

“What about it?”

“You must attend, Ira. All the major stakeholders in our company are going to be there. I’ve heard that the Board itself has convened the whole thing.”

‘Our company’ my arse.

“What for, but?” She was genuinely curious.

“To, er…” he hesitated, “to get you to…change your mind about going open source.” His voice had grown softer and dropped down to a whisper.

Ira fumed, warm air flaring up her nostrils. She had announced to make the code of her program public in two days and known that many in the Board of Directors had not taken kindly to the proposal.

Her initial lust to gain financial riches had long since exhausted. After assuring a lifetime of comfort for herself from the money she had already made, she had had an actual change of heart and decided to give it up for free usage all over the online world. While governments were getting increasingly paranoid about private content on the internet, online rights activists had been campaigning against allegations of snooping through private mails and messages by the NSA. She had been in the eye of the storm since she was one of the very few service providers of authentic encryption software that could be updated to work its way around every governmental decrypting device and system in existence. Her allegiance had been a matter of speculations for months, until last week when she had announced to release her code into the open source in the coming few days. Not only would that deal a lethal blow to the National Security Agency and its global counterparts, but would also be a blessing for international militant outfits over the world, who could customize the code and tailor it to their specific needs.

“Listen, Jo,” she started, “how sure are you about this?”

“I’m quite positive, Ira. In my opinion, you must surely reconsider your stance.” He suddenly sounded on the edge of desperation.

“No, I am not going to do that,” she replied firmly. “I know what I’m doing with my creation and no one can arm-twist me out of my resolve.”

“But think of all the wrongdoing you are indirectly encouraging!” His protests were rising in pitch and amplitude with each syllable.

“’Indirectly’ is the important word here, Jo. I am not responsible for the actions of a criminal who avails my cutting edge technology. My job is to give to the world what I know and am capable of! What the world makes of it isn’t my purview.” She smiled inwardly, feeling happy about her eloquence.

“But try to understand, Ira…”

“No,” she snapped, “I won’t. And Jo, why the fuck are you so concerned? Do you have a stake in this decision, too?”

Don’t fuck up, Ira. Don’t let anger get the better of you.

The line was blank for 5 seconds; she couldn’t hear him breathing but knew he was around.

“Jo?” she asked, “listen…I’m sorry.” She added apologetically.

“You…just don’t get it, Ira.” She could hear his voice quivering. “I can’t make you see sense.”

His final words rang in her ears as he cut the call before she could respond. She sighed to herself and slammed the receiver down.

“Fuck you, Jo!” she shouted at the telephone and stretched further back in her recliner in frustration.

Why was he making such a big deal out of it? She had always known him to be a level-headed person who always took her side of the matter and only questioned her in an advisory manner. Was the Board involved in any way?

Why can’t shit be simpler?

The more she looked at the crumpled invitation nestled at the top of the wastepaper basket, the more reasons she found to attend the lunch.

Do I even have a choice?

She clicked her tongue and got up to prepare for the gathering.

(Read Chapter 2)