Chapter 1
Lost in a
dream
A dream,
Far better than
the wretched reality...
Passionate and subtle,
for it was woven delicately,
Yet it is just a
dream, for it can never become the real...
"We have a problem!" Chris yelled through the glass
doors, desperately hoping that someone would come and solve it for him.
"What's wrong?"
Linda came into the cubicle with a concerned look on her face which
wasn't shock but a mild irritation that showed this problem was encountered
very often.
"I dunno!" Chris lifted up his lands in frustration "This
WDOD is acting really weird!"
Linda was really
annoyed when she heard WDOD was the problem. The Water Density Operational
Device was like a right hand to these oceanographers and if that failed all
their research would go for a toss. "Fix it!" she ordered authoritatively.
"Smart, Linda!"
Chris roared back "if I knew then why the hell would I call for help!"
"What are we gonna do then!" Linda was waving her arms
like a metronome, completely gone bonkers over the fact that she was proving to
be utterly helpless.
"Call our girl!" Chris saw it as the only hope. Any
problem, she would know how it fix it, his bestie and the second in command
"Linda, I said go!"
"Okay, okay!" she
hissed back "Keep your head on!" and off she went, in search of the mechanic
cum genius. If anybody had a solution, it was her.
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Albeit serenity was something you could never hope for in
the gush of the waters of the Pacific, Serene
was bobbing up and down as the waves crashed on to its shiny surface. The
Pacific, known for its rage, had been oceanographers' delight for decades now.
It was tremendously difficult to work in these waters, risky to a point of
stupidity and idiocy yet, this natural beauty had more secrets to offer than
any part of the world. How the Amazon was for the wildlife discoverers, Pacific
was the same to the ocean people.
She stood there, on the deck of her strong vessel, which
looked more like a massive aircraft carrier rather than a research ship,
staring at the infinite blues that met her eyes. It had no visible boundaries.
It was just like a huge blanket of blue waters, bordered with white. The roar
the waves made was more like melody to her, as she sunk into it, completely
losing herself in the wonder. The saltiness the air was covered with no longer
bothered her to sickness. Instead it had become a negligent factor compared to
the astounding environment she was awarded with.
"Khu-Shi!" and she turned back when someone yelled her
name with a typical American accent and she found herself responding to an
annoyed and irritated looking Linda. She giggled "what's wrong, Lin? Did
McKinley empty your Budweiser's again?"
"Oh, shut up!" she hissed back causing Khushi to throw
her head back and laugh "we have a problem" and Khushi's head snapped back at
her, concerned at what might have happened this time to make Linda annoyed.
She threw a questioning glare to which Linda responded
"the WDOD has gone all crazy! It would be better if you have a look at it."
"The WDOD?" Khushi was surprised. That device was
something that could not go wrong anytime soon, "what happened?? Did you guys
run a run time scan?"
"I don't know what happened?" Linda muttered "McKinley
isn't letting me anywhere near it. He wants you to take a look at it first
before I do something." Linda had this cold war sort of a thing going on with
McKinley. Both were on the rocks for a quite a long time because, apparently
Chris wasn't interested in dating Linda and this made Linda furious.
Khushi smiled at her hair brained friend and motioned her
to follow, as she got down the deck, perked up and went to the lab to see what
the matter was. Linda staggered behind her, not in a mood to go to the same
room which held McKinley in.
"Heyya, Mc!" she shouted as she came into the cubicle
"Sup buddy?"
"Ah, thank goodness you came" McKinley breathed a sigh of
relief before he gave her a one armed hug "I was going crazy. This thing just
doesn't listen to me."
"Ah, Chris!" she
exclaimed "nothing is too much for my big guy!"
"Shut up, Mrs.
What-do-u-call-that-bloody-thing you have every day!"
"Oye, don't you dare insult my jalebis!" she roared in
mock anger.
"Hell yeah! Like I
would" Chris grinned at his friend "Mrs. Jalebi, mind having a look at it?"
"Mrs. Jalebis?" she scowled "how mean is that?"
"Like I said earlier, it looks like you have married that
sweet!" Chris chuckled "I have never seen you away from it at all!"
"I love it! You gotta problem with that?"
"Nope, but I just wonder how the hell would those sweets
stay fresh here?" Chris was curious. For Khushi, the day she didn't have
jalebis was a doomsday and Chris had no damn clue as to how those materials
would stay fresh in this salt filled weather.
"Just as how you good for nothing desserts stay fresh!"
Khushi countered back "I make them fresh so there is no point in it getting
stale."
"Yeah, whatever, you and your jalebis!" Chris just
couldn't argue with Khushi on jalebis. Every time, she would very smartly turn
the argument on him and he had no idea how to back him-self after that. So he
had learnt that resigning in this case was the best option long back "could we
just look into what is the matter with this?"
Khushi was snapped back from the delicious world of her
jalebis and she thought furiously, jerking all the instruments and monitors,
hoping to find some loose connection that might be the reason for all this mess
"give me five" she said and settled on to find a solution.
Chris watched on, sipping on the soda he had. He knew it
would be moments before Khushi would come up with the solution. She was an ace
in all these. Explained why she was the second in command to Rodriquez.
Rodriquez and Khushi, though were the two most powerful people on the Serene and had the same style of
working, greatly differed in their personalities. Khushi was lean, thin and
beautiful while Rodriquez was large, beefy and not anything remotely termed as
beautiful. But she had a heart of gold and that was valued by Khushi, who
considered Amanda Rodriquez nothing less than her never existed mother. But
both of the women were never defeated geniuses in the field of oceanography.
"The programming crashed. That's it!" Khushi sighed
"nothing major. Can be fixed in minutes."
"Well, I knew you
would!" Chris adored Khushi for her abilities.
"Well, then now
the problem has been solved, you owe me a treat" she grinned mischievously at
her friend.
"For what joy?" he countered back "I wasn't the one who
spoilt it!"
"Yet, you are the one who works most on that!" her eyes
were glinting with naughtiness "if I wouldn't have fixed it for you then you
might have broke your head. So technically speaking, I saved your machine and
your head, so this calls for a treat and that too, a double one!"
"You know how to get stuff from me" Chris replied in mock
annoyance "if it goes on then one fine day I might go bankrupt!"
"Don't worry, I won't let that happen" she exclaimed "if
you run out of money then there will be no one to buy me some yummy burgers and
pizzas!"
"You are one naughty b****, aren't you??" Chris shook his
head in amusement.
"Much more than just a naughty b****" she winked and they
both shared a hearty laugh, as they went to the programmer's desk to notify him
about the WDOD.
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A sense of emptiness engulfed her as soon as she retired
to bed, exhausted from the day's work on the ship. She was bone tired but she
could get a wink of sleep. An unknown yearning, magnetic, had made her heart
flutter every day, every minute. There was a huge void in her soul which was no
longer going to be filled as something had snapped and torn away from her,
causing her to lose a part of herself in the battle she was forced to fight in.
Never before this longing she felt was so powerful but it
had no power to bring back the lost treasure to her. It was deep, intense and
almost as forcible as a black hole yet it could only attract her to it but not
embrace her in a sense of belonging. It was just a magnet who lost its power
when the attraction ceased.
Khushi sighed before she hugged the comforter and dozed
off into a warm, welcoming sleep, something that she was rarely awarded with.
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Those little, delicate fingers were just minutely apart,
waiting to be grasped by the others, which evoked a powerful emotion of that meant to be...but the wind was so strong
that it knocked down the two miles away from each other as it blew between
them, shredding the hopes of being together into pieces, considering it as
unworthy as it could possibly be...
Khushi woke up with a start, her face all sweaty and
clammy, as how it always had been from that fateful day. She had been chosen to
choose something between some things she could never make a choice.
Khushi was no longer what she used to be...
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Precap:
A problem in
AR. What measures will Arnav take?
A/N: So how was it? How did u like my Khushi? Ny the way, let me tell you, Serene is the name of the ship or rather a research vessel and Khushi is one of the team members, who are on board Serene for their research work on the Pacific Ocean :D
