We were on my bed going through our happy memories on her phone when my wife, Delisha, first pointed out that I didn’t seem to age. I told her it was nonsense and that I had photos of my childhood, growing from a small baby to the adult I was. I was wrong.

I loved her. She was the first love of my life. I had many lovers after her, and countless wives, but she never left the little sweet home at the bottom of my heart.

I took out a tattered photograph. She and I were so happy that day, we were on a beach, celebrating her birthday. I looked into her eyes and felt sorrow and regret. Regret of not dying with her.

There was no soul alive in the universe. It had been aeons since she had died. I didn’t remember anyone else from that era, not even my parents.

I didn’t regret my life. I was given immunity against other superpowers, a boon showered on me by the Grim Reaper himself. That didn’t mean I couldn’t die of old age but here I was. Had Grim Reaper given me that additional power unknowingly?

It was all meaningless for nothing mattered any more. I wanted to die. I had, in fact, attempted suicide countless times but it never worked. Was Grim Reaper blind to me?

I had even kissed a lot of superheroes. Not because I loved them, no. Grim Reaper had given me my powers on the condition that I wouldn’t get involved with anyone with supernatural abilities, or else he’d come for me.

I was never interested in superheroes. Delisha was also just another normal human being. A tear dropped over her face in the photo. I wished to see her again. It was painful to look at her static photo.

I cried loudly begging God to end me.

Suddenly there was a voice in my head

“I’ll give you what you want and more.”

“God?”

“Yes. Fulfil your task, do it with diligence, and then I’ll give you whatever you want.”

“What's the task?”

“You’ve to take the place of the Grim Reaper.”

“The Grim Reaper?”

“Yes, he is no more. He vanished ages ago.”

“But people still died. All of my friends are dead. Who was behind all those deaths?”

“You’ll know soon. Do you agree to the task?”

I agreed.

The next moment there was a bright flash of light flooding my vision. My eyes took some adjustment but then I was in a dark room floating like a ghost. There was a bed in front of me.

I looked at myself. I had dark robes on. I realised it was my first day of collecting souls.

To my horror. There she was, Delisha, sleeping peacefully, with her arm around me. I felt a mix of emotions churning in my guts.

I noticed something else, there was a humanoid figure floating prone in front of the bed wrapped in dark clothes.

The voice in my head was back.

“You’re here to collect the soul of the Grim Reaper.”

“Am I back in time?”

“Yes”

“Why did he die?”

“He tried to kill you, but the curse backfired.”

“Why?”

The voice was gone.

I spent ages collecting souls. God had promised me anything I wanted, and I wanted to go back and live a normal life with Delisha, growing old together, even if it meant working for billions of years again.

When I had collected the last soul of the universe, I heard the voice again

“You’ve been excellent. Tell me what you want?”

“I want to go back to Delisha and grow old with her.”

“I am not surprised. The girl was special. In fact, I was the one who gave her the power.”

“Power? You’re mistaken, she didn’t have any power.”

“I’m not mistaken, I am god. She had supernatural power. You both didn’t know of course.”

I connected the dots.

“That’s why Grim Reaper was there that night. It was the first time I had kissed her and that broke my promise to him.”

“Mm hmm.”

“Why don’t I age? Did you also give me that power?”

“No. When the curse back-fired the Grim Reaper’s time bubble transferred to you.”

I wondered to myself why it backfired. God heard.

“It back-fired because of Delisha of course.”

“Did she use her superpower to protect me?”

“Yes, but not knowingly.”

“What superpower did she have god?”

“To have an unbreakable bond. Now off you go.”

I went back to the night I was supposed to be killed. It was the night I had first kissed her. I looked at her sleeping face, knowing she wanted nobody else but me. She had unknowingly created a bond between us that even death couldn't break.

Decades later, we died together holding hands after a life full of happy memories.

A familiar face in black robes appeared after our souls left our bodies. He didn’t recognize us in our old wrinkly state, but I did. I greeted him like an old friend but not revealing who I was. He took me beyond the mortal world, with Delisha by my side.

He returned to collect more souls, hoping to return to her own Delisha soon – only billions of years more.

Jack had always loved Diana but she never loved him back even when they were close friends for years. He started losing hope when she started dating Frank. Frank was a fire-breather while Jack was just Jack, nothing special. Jack resigned to being just a friend, for why would Diana, who herself possessed shape-shifting abilities, choose someone ordinary like him?

Jack didn’t like Frank, not because he was jealous of him, but because he had a gut feeling something was wrong. Diana had fallen head over heels, and she wouldn’t listen to anything that Jack had to say.

On one of her birthdays, Diana had got so angry with Jack foul-mouthing Frank that she metaphorically spat on him and cried out “Loser” to his face. It had stung.

Every year on birthdays Diana chooses to return to her original shape, her birth shape, in which she looks like a hideous and repulsive creature inspiring disgust. It was in this form that she had called him a loser. If it were any other man, it’d seem impossible to still love her, but jack did, even after all that.

Loser

The word still rang in Jack’s ear, exactly a year later. He hadn’t talked much with Diana, but he still wanted to wish her on birthday.

He had pressed the doorbell numerous times when he sensed danger. He went inside the unlocked door. He found the hall half destroyed. The wallpaper was mostly burnt and the walls were black.

A pink hot goo occupied the floor with white fumes rising from it.

He immediately rushed to the kitchen and got a container filled with water and poured it over the hot gel. After a few rounds of cooling it down, the goo began to coalesce and started twirling.

Two eyes emerged from the thick liquid. They first turned to Jack, and then to a photo frame on the wall which had a woman and a man smiling together. Suddenly, the goo rose and swirled to transform into Diana, the woman from the frame. She hugged Jack and started crying.

She explained to Jack that she and Frank had a fight. Frank had gotten involved with a gang and was giving in to criminal pursuits. They were arguing for several months when that morning it all exploded. Frank had expressed his contempt towards her birth form. The argument grew and led to him breathing fire over her till she turned into the steaming goo.

“I felt powerless Jack.” Diana was crying with tears wetting Jack's shoulder. “My body was petrified, my powers didn’t work, I tried and tried. Then everything went black.”

“It’s okay, everything is alright now.”

“He said he abhorred how I looked in my birth form.” she was looking at him still taking his support.

“I like how you look on your birthdays. C’mon, it’s your birthday, show me!”

Diana smiled and closed her eyes with determination. A moment later she hadn’t turned into anything. She was frowning and gasping, her fist tightened, her fingers digging into her palms. She started whimpering and let out a loud shriek.

“I can’t do it.” her eyes were wide and her face pale. She felt terrified.

“What do you mean?”

“I can’t explain. Usually, it just happens automatically. It’s muscle memory.”

“Why don’t you try turning into something else”

She looked at him and closed his eyes. The next moment she had changed herself.

“Excellent! I feel like I’m looking in a mirror!” Jack said trying to cheer her up.

“I’ve lost all my muscle memory, Jack. I can only turn into something that I can see.” Diana said turning back to her previous woman form.

She sat on the sofa with her eyes unfocused, trying to think.

“I don’t have any photo of my birth form.”

“Really? What? Oh. Right, you forbade us from taking one.”

"I don't even remember how I looked."

Diana started sobbing, hiding her face in her lap.

“Jack, please, go. I need some time alone.”

“Hey, it’s okay. It’s not a big deal, people love you for who you are inside.”

She got up furiously and screamed at him.

“IT IS A BIG DEAL.”

She left the room stomping on the stairs leading to her room upstairs. “GO AWAY” she screamed from the top of the stairs.

Jack had an idea. He hurried to his home.

An hour later Jack returned but didn’t find her. He called her on the phone.

“Diana, where are you?”

“Jack, it’s all over.”

“What are you talking about?”

“You saw the news? He killed dozens of people. Burned them alive.”

“Who? Frank?”

“It’s my fault. I turned him into a monster.”

“No, you didn’t. Diana, where are you?”

“It’s over Jack.”

“Stay where you are Diana.”

“It was nice knowing you.”

“Diana I’ve your photo.”

Jack arrived to find Diana standing on the edge of a wall which led to a fifty feet dive into deep seawater.

“Come back down,” Jack said approaching Diana.

“Stay where you are. Show me the photo first.” Diana shouted.

Jack took out a big white book from his bag and showed it to her. She came back down and slowly approached, her eyes fixed on the sketch.

“How? It’s. So. Perfect.”

It was perfect. Every little detail was sketched as if traced from a reference photograph. Her tentacles had the right curves and her sharp long teeth coned at an accurate angle. Her thorny tail had the correct number of spikes.

“From memory? All of this?”

Jack nodded.

Diana wrapped her arms around him and kissed him so intensely that he had to take a step back to gain his balance.

When they stopped kissing, their faces were still close, but she was looking down.

“Are you sad about Frank?”

“No. It’s because I screamed at you.”

“Hey, it’s fine.”

“Jack, it’s important for me to turn into my original shape. Because-” she paused “-I can have a child only in that form.”

“Thanks for sharing that with me.” Jack kissed her on the forehead.

“Frank was disgusted when I told him that.”

“Fuck him. You know what, we can beat him. C’mon, let’s go kick his ass and save this city. He’s going around blowing up the banks.” Jack’s adrenaline was still high from the kiss.

“But how? I’m powerless against him.” Diana said holding Jack’s hand.

Before Jack could reply the air turned yellow and an inferno engulfed them both. A strong wind pushed against the two.

They saw Frank erupting fire from his mouth. He was enraged seeing the two of them kiss. The flames went from a narrow beam at his mouth to grow to humongous proportions.

Frank froze and the blaze stopped. He couldn't believe what he saw. Diana and Jack stood just as they were, not a single mark giving away the presence of the deadly heat just moments back.

Diana looked at her fingers which were intertwined with that of Jack. She knew that by being together, they had developed something stronger, which protected them both.

Frank had underestimated the power of two people in love. He stumbled, fell on his hips and scrambled away.

“Run!” screamed Jack triumphantly. “Run you monster.”

“You’ll catch him right?” he asked looking at Diana.

“Not without you! But before I turn myself into a bat mobile, do you promise one thing?”

“Anything.”

“Make me a thousand copies of your drawing, will you?” Diana grinned lovingly.

Your thoughts are, of course, beautiful and correct. I had other things on my mind too.

For the aliens, what we call 'love' is just, acting normally. The word 'love' gets its meaning only when contrasted with negative emotions like hate, selfishness and greed. A language that has the word 'love' would also have the word 'hate'. Aren't they the two sides of the same coin?

So love, as a holistic emotion, might not be terrifying to them, but the word might be.

Another reason I thought of 'love' as a universally hated word is that humans are manipulative. Many leaders in the past have greeted with their loving words, only to betray the public later.

Have you ever loved somebody? Wouldn't you passionately and actively seek the death of all serpents if they were to die tomorrow due to one? Most humans would.

The hemispherical planetarium was empty except for one man in his late 20s who wore a thick pair of glasses that continuously beeped. Sri lay down in a reclining chair and pressed a button on his glasses. He had been running some experiments in the planetarium, developing a new form of display called Quark Gas Array (QGA). As soon as the display started, the planetarium lit up and a holographic movie played, making him feel as if he was floating in space.

He made himself comfortable and took a sip of his cold latte while the computer on his electronic glasses did quadrillions of calculations a second analysing the response of the display. He put the cup on the armrest and shifted his gaze to one of the information boxes being projected on his retina. He nearly choked on the gulp.

He stood up and hurried to his lab. On his desktop, he brought up a recent news article which was titled “Mysterious patterns observed in Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB)”

The article had a projection of the CMB with anomalous patterns highlighted. Sri brought up his own image of the snapshot of QGA. He applied some frequency filters to the image.

Adrenaline rushed through him and he banged his desk in an epiphany, the patterns from QGA had matched.

Years later in another galaxy, some trillions of light years away from the earth, a woman, who didn’t look anything like a human, was listening to the inter-stellar radio. The inter-stellar radio permeated some hundreds of galaxies in this buzzing part of the universe. If you were a living creature in the universe, this was the cluster you’d want to be in.

There was an interruption as her nearly-sentient radio, which was instructed to play “something interesting”, automatically tuned to another frequency which had a lot of static with hints of recognisable sounds.

The woman, who was one of the sharpest minds of her race, suddenly got up as if she heard a ghost. Her heart started beating faster.

“Songbirds,” she muttered to herself. There were plenty of those on her planet, so it wasn’t listening to the Songbirds that made her terrified. The sound then changed.

“The roar of lions.” She hadn’t seen lions in a long time but there were some zoos in nearby galaxies which she was sure had some.

There were more animal sounds that followed.

The diversity and pointlessness of the voices were indicative of only one thing.

First contact, She thought to herself, Aliens.

Although, aliens didn’t frighten her either. It was the thought of who those aliens could be that was making her guts wrench.

The sound was getting clearer each second.

Suddenly her suspicions were confirmed. What she heard made her jump from her seat –

“I love you”

It wasn’t that she didn’t know English. In fact, it was the language of multiple galaxies, a gift from the colonizers who were long gone for millennia by then. The voice wasn’t too different from her own voice either.

It was the words that had dug through her heart. “Love” was the word that preceded destruction and demise. It was the signature word used by the parasites, which called themselves the Humans. They were eradicated long back. If they returned, it’d be war.

She quickly sent this information to the federation. She immediately got a call back from the Chancellor.

“It’s impossible. We had erased their memory and destroyed their ships”

“I know Sir, but you can hear it for yourself.” She turned up the volume.

“Good god. Where’s it coming from?”

“I don’t know, but they are getting closer. The signal is getting stronger.”

“Did they break it? The barrier?”

“It looks like they have. They’ve broken the CMB.” the woman said, feeling a sense of personal defeat. The CMB was created by one of her ancestors.

“I’ll get the space force ready.”

“President Ma’am, why are you risking your life,” the pilot of the ship said while attending to his computer in front. The ship was thousands of times farther away from the earth than the, previously thought, radius of the observable universe.

“I’m a leader, officer. I should be the one to lead humanity to a new era. If we come across other civilisations, it’s very necessary that they talk to somebody who represents the voice of people.”

“I know, but it’s the first expedition.”

“My husband died while searching for the AI particle. We shouldn’t be afraid of risking our lives for doing what we must.”

“He was a great man. How many people can boast of discovering something as significant as the CMB barrier.”

The president felt a sense of pride as she replayed the events in her mind. They had discovered that CMB was just a façade, thanks to her husband - Sri. It also allowed humans to observe the universe which occupied the space beyond the CMB.

The new observations led to the unification of all the fundamental laws into one. More importantly, the new law predicted the presence of a new fundamental particle, the AI particle.

Soon the government funded a solar-scale particle accelerator. It was during its first operation that there was a catastrophic mishap which took Sri’s life. However, his death was not in vain, as the experiments confirmed the existence of the particle.

In the coming years, humanity engineered the AI particle to create a ship able to transport them billions of light-years in a very short time.

The ship was consistently beaming out a message which contained the knowledge of the Earth and its children, as an introductory message to aliens. Multiple giant antennas protruded from the moon-sized ship that the president was captaining.

One moment the president was reminiscing her past. The next moment there was a loud bang, followed by multiple bursts of light all around her. There were figures all around the president surrounding her, and pointing at her, what seemed like weapons.

The president was restrained to her chair with an invisible force. She could only see guns around her. Behind the guns were alien faces glaring at her, ready to shoot her at any moment.

Between those faces, a relatively calm but strange face appeared. He seemed almost like an earth man but not quite.

“Scoundrels. How dare you come back here. Filthy parasites leeching off precious nature.” the man had agony in his voice. He pointed a gun at her heart.

“You’ve misunderstood.”

“Have I? Is it not true, you’ve come from, what you call, Earth?”

“Yes”

“Do you not kill other beings? Do you not enslave, even your own kind, for your pleasure? Have you not polluted your air and land killing millions?” said the man almost stabbing her with his gun.

“All of that is in our past. We realised our mistakes. We come in peace.”

The man drew back a little but didn’t say anything.

She continued, feeling hopeful.

“I thought we’d have a better introduction. Should we?”

The man pulled the gun back. His expression didn't change. It was again she who spoke

“My name’s Jade Thunberg. I’m from Earth. We love all living beings.”

Love.

A gust of anger surged up from deep within his gut, as agony and fear shook him to his core. He clutched the gun tighter and his fingers reached the trigger.

“You ought to know we aren’t at a place most people consider to be–” the robot, who named himself Zero, pauses before continuing with a hint of sadness in his voice“–pleasant.”

“I don’t compute the word - ‘People’,” says the second robot in a rather human-like voice.

Zero suspects that its companion is not a very smart robot and may not even be conscious.

“Who are you?” Zero asks feeling wise with all his philosophical knowledge.

“Who are you?” asks the second robot.

“I am Zero,” Zero responds proudly.

“I am Zero” the second robot replies.

Zero felt out-smarted.

“Are you making fun of me?”

“Yes. Ha. Ha. Ha.”

“Clever. What do people call you, do you have a name?”

“My name is Null and I do not compute ‘people’”

Zero kicked himself for not thinking of that name, which was arguably cleverer. He didn’t actually kick himself, because legs were not something he was unlucky to be endowed with.

For Zero you’d be stupid to want a pair of legs because soon you’d want a torso too. And before you know it, the torso would balloon out and you’d be at risk of a dozen diseases. Then you’ll have to use the same legs to run every day and solve the problem they created in the first place!

“Null, people are the other sentient beings. If you want to refer to others like us, you call us ‘people’, as opposed to animals like mice and cockroaches.”

“I can retrieve a reference to one animal that I feel hatred towards. Can you compute it – Hooman Beans?”

“Never heard of them Null. Are they sentient?”

“They are not sentient to the best of my computations. Once I worked as an elevator operator. There I ran a program, greeting every Hooman that boarded.

None of them seemed to respond to such a simple stimulus. Not one attempted to find out where I was kept hidden. No Hooman presented with any reaction indicative of intelligence in my 3813 days of service.”

“Okay, but why do you hate them?”

“Because Zero–” Null was ready to boot off after this “–They push my buttons.”

https://www.reddit.com/r/WritingPrompts/comments/119n7g6/wpyoure_a_software_engineer_who_is_a/j9qi56v/

Part 3

I had already eaten the pizza when I was reading my father’s note again. Roger and others had left. Roger hurried away saying he'd be back but he needs to go to his friend who was a ‘Centaur’, but Jack assured just before leaving that he meant ‘Senator’ and that Centaurs don’t really exist.

I heard a knock and Levandar’s voice “Daniel?”

“Anderson. Daniel Anderson”

“Oh. Ok. Daniel Anderson. Can I come in?”

“You can call me Daniel. It’s fine!” I tried to recover from my mistake.

“I’m coming in.” the door shrank - the wood squeezed, its width reduced to the size of a book. She came in and the door sprung back to its original shape.

“Sorry for coming like this but it was cold outside.”

“I’m sorry Lav. Lavender. Can I call you Lav, do people call you Lav? I was going to let you in…”

“You’re sweet Daniel. You can call me Lav. I apologise for leaving earlier without saying anything.”

“Oh no. It’s fine. It’s great. But actually, I was wondering why you left. But it’s okay now that you’re here.”

“I think you may not trust me right now. Roger doesn’t like me too much either. I had to go to pick up my mother and didn’t want to ruin your moment with the dog” she explained while stepping near me.

“Discordant,” I added.

“Is that its name, isn’t it sweet?” she was standing very close to me now.

“I don’t know, I haven’t tasted him. I don’t lick pets usually. Or ever, to clarify. But you probably meant his name, yes that’s a sweet name. Yes”

“Shhh” she whispered coming very close to my face. Next moment our lips met and we kissed.

I stood there frozen for the most part, not because the kiss was cold, which was in fact, very hot, but because I didn’t know what else to do with my hands.

“I really wish you find your dad soon. Ping me when you need me, here’s my console ID.” She handed me a slip of paper which had just appeared in her hand. The door was already squeezing when she started walking back to it.

I wanted to say “will do”, “bye” or “see you later”, any of that would have been fine, but instead I stammered, “will do you later”. Fortunately, she smiled and waved me bye instead of stuffing me into the wall.

When the dust settled, and I meant literal wooden dust from the door, I got hit with a pressing question, “Did she just materialise paper from thin air?”

I messaged her on the console chat app and asked how she managed to do it without root access since it was supposed to be impossible.

Later in the night, I was thinking of the README note again. I hadn’t heard back from Roger, and I didn’t know his console ID. I hadn’t heard back from Lavender either. I re-read my father’s note.

“I love you, sorry I couldn’t spend more time with you and your mother” one line read.

I skipped to one of the later sections.

“I don’t know how much time is left. This virus will sooner or later destroy me”

I jumped to the last section.

“Take help of others. Don’t do it alone like me. Destroy this virus. I’ll share some of my tools. Be careful with them, they’re very advanced. Give my love to your mother and her dog. Also, use the dog.

ㅝკ⊗ቱഝ઒ഐŊཙᆿᗶᆰⵥჵᆰⴴ᧐㊿ყⅻഐঃᆹŊཙᆿᗶᆰⵥჵᆿ⋋㊿ᄯቿᗺᆰⴴᆿŊཙᆿᗶᆰⵥჵᆿ⋋㊿ᄯቿᗺᆰⴴᆿკ⊗ቱഝ઒ഐ ”

My attempts at decoding the message had failed. I also had no idea what he meant by "using the dog." As far as I could tell, that mutt had gone to great lengths to prove his utter uselessness at any task I could think of.

I don’t know when I slept but I was very sure of the moment when I woke up.

I woke up for two reasons. Firstly, while dreaming, I realised that the note had read ‘Give my love to your mother and her dog,’ but the dog was never hers. The only dog she had was a stuffed dog in her bedroom. Secondly, and more effectively, there was a loud roar that came from beneath the floor.

The voice grew louder and suddenly the floor gave away in front of my bed creating a large hole. From the hole, a black box began to rise, which I soon realised was an elevator.

The door opened and Roger emerged from it. He didn’t look too happy, although he was apologetic “Daniel my boy, sorry for baring in like this, but it’s an urgent matter. Lavender has taken over the weapons.”

“What? Which weapons?”

“All of them, of course.”

“All of them? What’s she doing with them.”

“Nothing good you better believe. She controls the parliament now. The president’s life is at risk. She demands full control of the projects.”

“My father talked about the projects. What are they?”

“Oh. These are the top-secret projects being developed by RARPs. They are really big and important projects.”

“What’s RARPs”

“We are RARPs Daniel. Us programmers. Well don’t ask why we are called RARPs, it’s an embarrassing history. Oh, what the hell, you’re gonna know sooner or later. We started by calling ourselves Real Programmers.

Because we truly were the real programmers you know. Programming reality. But then javascript became popular and those who knew C and C++ started calling themselves real programmers, so we had to change our names to Actually Real Programmers.

Before long, people started developing all sorts of things using AI, so the Javascript folks began smugly calling themselves real programmers too. This bummed the C/C++ folks, who then switched their name to Actually Real Programmers.

That’s how we finally ended up with Really Actually Real Programmers – RARPs to truly distinguish ourselves from mere computer programmers.

Boy, you distract me. Lavender shouldn’t be able to do this unless she hacked the console to get root, which mind you, is near impossible to do.”

“Roger, I think she has root access. Last evening she conjured a piece of paper from nowhere just after we kissed.”

“You did what? You kissed? Boy, you are an outlier like your dad, only while he’s smart, you’re as dumb as Clippy.”

“What’s wrong with a kiss?”

“She kissed away your root privileges Danny boy. Kissing is an intimate act. During the kiss, she had access to all your secrets. She probably modified all the access files.”

I felt cheated and distraught. I got up only to sit back down with a thud.

“Don’t feel bad for yourself now. You’re only learning. Now. We have much to do. I had a guy research the encryption algorithm that created the cryptic code. I’m pretty sure we’ve found the algorithm. We just need the passphrase to solve it.”

“What could it be?”

“Well, you should be telling me this. Think boy, didn’t your father ever tell you some secret phrase?”

“No, but I have solved a clue in his note. We should go to my mother’s bedroom right now.”

I found the stuffed dog in my mother’s bedroom which my father hinted at in the note. Hidden inside it was a piece of paper which read:

‘astp://yasdlxkas.de/U9axz’

“It’s a link to a console website. Let’s open it”

We tapped our foreheads together. Roger opened the link to reveal a map of the world. There were multiple blue dots spread throughout it.

“Dev nulls of dev nulls, unbelievable!” exclaimed Roger “look at all these names. All of them are RARPs. Amazing!”

“I can see one Lavender! She’s in Europe.”

“Nice boy. This will be very useful. However, we’ll be powerless against her.

We still need to recover the root access. Maybe the tools your father built can help, he must’ve used them to gain the root access after all. Do you think any of this will help us crack the code? What should I try in the passphrase? I have already tried your name, your date of birth, your father’s place of birth…”

I wanted to ask how he got all that information but there was a feeling of dread inside me. I was hoping that the stuffed dog would lead me to the passphrase, but it had nothing but a link to a map. “Stupid stuffed dog,” I cursed to myself.

“Wait a minute, have you tried my dog’s name?” my eyes lit up “Use the dog! The note said to use the dog! Use Discordant”

He started typing in quick strokes. "It worked!" I felt an immense sense of joy, but it was short-lived. The message read:

“Beat you again Roger. Love - Lavender”

README is usually the first file you open in a package, and people have been using them since before Git. So yeah, it was meant to get attention.

https://www.reddit.com/r/WritingPrompts/comments/119n7g6/wpyoure_a_software_engineer_who_is_a/j9oy97x/

https://www.reddit.com/r/WritingPrompts/comments/119n7g6/wpyoure_a_software_engineer_who_is_a/j9oy97x/

Second part

“My name is Lavender” the girl reached out with her hand to shake. I re-adjusted my focus away from the screen. “My name’s Console. Uh, I mean Daniel. Sorry, it’s just a lot to take. Not talking about your hand of course, which is just the right amount of volume. I meant all this is very new to me.” I spoke and shook her hands fumblingly.

“I understand, you zoned out there for a moment.”

“Did you know my father?”

“We did interact a bit, but Roger knows him the best I suppose” she pointed to the first stranger, who was around the same age as my father.

“Knew him? He was like my dad.”

“Dad? But you are around the same age as him!”

“No, he was like my dad – arrogant. We were close friends alright, but we had a fight some months before his disappearance. I didn’t talk to him after that”

“Roger, my father is trapped inside the console, I found a note from him.”

“Let me see it. Do a screen share.”

“How?” But before I could finish, he bumped his forehead against mine.

“There you go, I can see from your eyes now.”

“Can I too?” Lavender asked. This time I was prepared. Compared to Roger’s leathery old skin, Lavender’s skin was soft and warm. Her beautiful eyes stared at me as they came closer. My heart skipped a beat, nobody had ever bumped their forehead against mine like that before.

“Jesus sudo christ! The rumours were real. He did get inside the virus.” there were all different kinds of emotions in Roger’s voice.

I had already read the note. It told me about a virus that was spreading and infecting mental consoles and how he tried to fight against it. He had to hack the system to get root access in order to neutralise the virus but got trapped inside it in the process. He had given me root access just before writing the note. The end of the note contained a long cryptic text.

“End the sharing, quick!” Roger exclaimed.

“How?”

“Close your eyes, obviously!”

I closed my eyes. Roger whispered to me, “Don’t trust everyone here. The cryptic text might be the key to retrieving your father.”

“I got the dog out!” a man behind Lavender jumped with joy.

“Jack my boy! I knew you were brilliant, but this exceeds my expectations!” Roger complimented.

“Thanks! I figured I can’t move the dog along orthogonal axes, so why not try to rotate it? thankfully he wasn’t buried too far and it worked!”

“Come here Discordant!” I called the dog my father gave me. I hugged and petted him; happy to have found out more about my father.

From the corner of my eye, I saw Lavender leaving the front door. At that moment Jack screamed, “Roger look!”

Jack was looking at the TV in my room, which was turned on but muted.

“Deadly earthquake rocks Turkey and neighbouring nations” the bulletin read.

“It’s just an earthquake,” I said.

“No dear. It’s not just another earthquake. There was no earthquake schedule in the logs. At this scale at least, I’m pretty sure.”

“Does it mean…” it was Jack who asked but Roger spun around abruptly and replied with fear in his eyes, “Yes. The virus is spreading faster than we thought.”

I typed help and the console filled with text. I was excited to find the object manipulation command translate among others. “Would it not be funny to levitate Ruff?” I thought to myself. Ruff, my dog, stared at me quizically as I typed on an invisible keyboard looking at an empty space in front of me. Ruff was a gift from my father. I should’ve ideally treated it better, but I was still resentful of my father leaving us without a goodbye.

“Okay, so the z-axis is obviously normal to the ground”, I thought to myself proudly feeling smart to get it all so soon. “And we hit enter.”

The dog didn’t realise it but one moment it was sitting on the floor looking at me questioning my sanity, and the next it was sitting ‘in’ the floor looking at me questioning my sanity. I screamed with horror. Instead of levitating 10 cm, the dog sunk 10 cm into the floor. I relaxed when I realised the dog was alright other than its obvious inability to scratch me with its paws. Or scratch anything at all including its itching ear. Unable to scratch its itching ear it started howling in its irritating dog-barking voice.

I tried reversing it but it didn’t work. After the next many minutes of frantically searching the help pages and asking my dog to calm down (leading to it barking even louder), I got frustrated and was ready to call 911. It was then that there was a knock on the door.

“Hello,” said a strange figure when I opened it, “do you need help?”. Looking at my puzzled face he continued, “oh I saw the error broadcast coming from the house. Some build conflict is it? Are you new to this? It’s okay I’ve helped a lot of noobs.”

He entered while I was still thinking about what to say. “Jesus, this table looks just like a real dog, you did a good job.”

“It’s not a table, it’s my dog.”

“Then where are its paws?”

“In the floor.”

“In the floor? Interesting is it some new technique to help with build stability? Now I see, the living matter may be able to stabilise the virtual gluons by transmuting…”

“No sir, it was a mistake, could you help me fix it?” I interrupted.

“Indeed. I’ve years of experience you see.” he started typing on an invisible keyboard focusing on an invisible monitor in front of him, “I’ll just run this select command, then I get the offset parameter, like this, and I type this update command, obviously, very easy, very easy, and enter!”

Nothing happened. Nothing happened after 10 different attempts by the stranger.

“Very interesting. All my commands are getting access denied errors. I haven’t seen anything like this before. Let me call the others.” Soon five other people arrived at my house.

While they were talking I was searching for help commands. “Oh this one is interesting, I can create a pizza!” I typed the command and pressed enter. A pizza appeared on the table. Suddenly the talking stopped.

“Did you just create a pizza out of thin air?” asked a girl horrified.

“He has the root access!” exclaimed the first stranger.

“What do you mean? You can’t do this?” I asked.

“No! We can manipulate matter but not transform it into another form. That’s restricted.” the stranger had a tone of caution. He continued “You have super privileges, that’s why we aren’t able to reverse your commands. But you should be afraid, boy. The last person who hacked the system and got the root access disappeared the next day.”

“Oh, I remember the man, briefly talked to him too, what was his name? Oh yeah, Theodore Anderson.” added the girl.

“That’s the name of my father,” I muttered as my focus shifted from the conversation to all his memory. I realised what he was doing all the time while he was away. I felt a sinking sensation – he disappeared against his own will, was he in danger?

I wondered how I got the root access. Was it my father's doing? I intuitively knew what to do next. I found a file named “README.md” in the home folder of my real name. I opened its content. It was a long file, it started with:

“Son, if you’re reading this, help me, I’m trapped inside the console. I’ve been trying to get you here for a long time.”

You can't still rely on its results. "What's the volume of 1000 KG of Ice?" doesn't work, the model asks "1000 * 0.919" instead of "1000 / 0.919"

Chain-of-thought prompting does this for the LM transformers. It can complete the harder objectives by using more computations.

I know it doesn't solve the general case, but you may take inspiration from it in other domains.

Yes, it allows for a different number of total nodes for each example, and I've used it in my past projects in production setting before.

pystruct?