Elena: You’re nowhere to be found. Neither at the university nor online. I looked at our game today and your tasks. I see that your interface changes are all done and even working well, and I checked the code too. I just don’t understand how it works, and I bet you don’t even know what you wrote there.
David: Yeah, everything works perfectly, thanks for noticing. 🙂
Elena: If we were working on something more complicated, you’d have to write much more seriously. You know how the world would function if you programmed it? Balloons would be transported inflated, along with cacti, in the same wagon, and that cargo train would stop at every station to pick up passengers. Boilers would be completely left out as a class, and people would heat water in a pot placed on a heater. Firefighters would go on collective annual leave. Software companies would have an industrial railway track, coffee would be served on a plate. Well, yes, that’s how you serve it… we would wallow in a deadlock holiday…
David: It would be a wonderfully colorful program. 🙂
Elena: Again, it’s good that you’re working so much and that you’ve made progress. These last parts look better because you’ve gotten serious because of the girl. You’re getting married. You have to think about your career.
David: I already told you I started working when my dad asked me, “Will money come out of the computer?”
Elena: The man is an excellent motivator. You know Yanko’s theory that everyone has a moment in life that determines their future. Your moment was when your dad asked if money would come out of the computer.
David: Hmm… it might be, but he didn’t do it on purpose. Good things often happen by mistake.
Elena: The reversed Durkheim paradox. Everything with you is upside down, even that paradox. Maybe it wasn’t by mistake. You see, even his second child is progressing. The man knows his stuff. You two will be Super David Bros, like in the game.
David: Super David Bros, based on the last name?
Elena: No. Luigi and Mario are Mario bros. Not based on the last name.
David: Maybe their last name is Mario. Mario Mario and Luigi Mario.
Elena: I wouldn’t say so. That’s just your attempt to be right, but okay. You didn’t tell me where you are and how to find you? I have a hardware problem and need someone good with a screwdriver. I’m writing to you from an old laptop.
David: I’m at a military exercise. I can’t come.
Elena: Are you avoiding fixing my computer? If you don’t come right now, your appendix will hurt when surgeon Mandić is on duty.
David: All right, I’ll come right away. Just need to ask the sergeant. Are the doughnuts cooling down?
Elena: Come on… there are no doughnuts. Can you ever do something without a treat?
David: I’ll try now.
I arrived at Elena’s half an hour later.
“There really are no doughnuts, nothing smells. I thought you were joking.”
“There aren’t any.”
“Do you have any nice juice?”
“No. Coffee? Don’t you carry an energy drink or a thermos bottle with you?”
“Not today.”
“Well, I have Mastica1. Can we have that?”
“Sure, it’s past noon.”
Elena always programmed better, and I was better at dismantling and fixing computers. This computer was hard to open. I think they deliberately designed a mechanism so users couldn’t open the case themselves. I muttered some bad words as I opened the computer. I didn’t notice that Elena had come back into the room.
“Does it bother you when I talk like this?“
“I like when people talk to me like that, when they tell me things.”
“Nice things.”
“Not nice, a little rude things, you know…”
“Like you’re a bad girl.”
“A bit worse than that.”
“Like you’re really bad.”
“To a certain extent, yes…”
“Would I know that?”
“Maybe. I think you’re good at that.”
“Would it work if I told you your CSS is inline, that you don’t use exceptions when reading from the database, mixing snake case and camel case?”
“No. That’s not how it works.”
Elena laughed, but her face changed a bit. It seemed like she was thinking about whether she had been too open.
“Does the coffee smell?”
“Maybe a little.”
“I won’t use that against you. It’s interesting to know.”
“I’ll pour us some more of this Mastica. It makes us who we need to be.”
Mastica and a fixed computer improved our mood. I explained that I was at the dorm for an informational interview this morning. I painted my apartment over the weekend and slept in the dorm until the paint fumes cleared, since Ivan had already gone home. After the walk, Boyana came over and stayed the whole night, even though guests are allowed until midnight. The dorm manager warned me that I could announce a guest, and very politely said that this shouldn’t happen again.
I sat and listened without being able to regret even the slightest bit. All I cared about was that we spent so much time together. I told him it wouldn’t happen again.
“Is she sleeping at your place?”
“This was the first time, and she happened to sleep over.”
“How does someone accidentally sleep over?”
“It was late, and she fell asleep.”
“Something doesn’t add up.”
From the beginning, Elena thought Boyana was calculating and currently figuring out who’s more promising between me and her boyfriend.
“And why does her heart race almost all the time?”
“From fear. She’s afraid her boyfriend will hear she’s hanging out with you or she has arrhythmia.”
“Elena, either I’m naive, gullible, seeing something beautiful in people that isn’t there, or you see people through a lens where they never look good and have bad qualities.”
“Exactly. Because one of those two is true.”
“You were honest today, so I was too, but I shouldn’t have been.”
“I shouldn’t have either.“
We poured more mastic and purposely changed the subject. When I was leaving, Elena returned to my topic. She half-whispered as I went down the hallway.
“Wait, can you still hear me?”
“I can hear you.“
“When your time with Boyana falls apart, the archives of Dorm B will be the only place where you’ll be listed together, as a couple.”
The “livestock” quietly climbed up the stairs. At the exit, I pressed the intercom for thirty seconds.
1Brandy from North Macedonia.
