The Chronicles of a Developer

Trust Codes and Linear Algebra Lessons

It was the dawn of the twenty-sixth, an unseasonably crisp July day, a solid 9:17 a.m. His eyeballs were still clotted with sleep, his brain just clocking into the realm of the conscious, but duty called. On the agenda: a visit to the patriarchal barbershop - perhaps to trim his wild mane, perhaps to gather familial anecdotes. Then, onto the promised land of Aupark, a pilgrimage to the global caffeine mecca - Starbucks - and the quest for the elusive bomber jacket, a pursuit of fabric that promised to morph him into the fashion-forward being he aspired to be.

Before venturing into the day, however, a flicker of a memory danced in his mind - a recollection of a conversation with Saška that had been left out of previous logs. A silent testament to their mutual trust: he knew her phone code. A small detail, an insignificant little string of numbers to most, but for him, it was a badge of honor, a token of intimacy. But that was a matter for another time - the day beckoned.

In the grand pursuit of self-education, our hero finally threw himself into the open arms of linear algebra, signing up on Brilliant and Khan Academy. His empty pockets echoed their disdain for the preposterous prices slapped onto textbooks, as he roared, "About fucking time!" in the echoey expanses of his brain.

Yet, like a persistent itch, thoughts of Saška kept scratching at the corners of his mind. Her silence hung in the air like a fog, both of them trapped in their own little busy worlds. A sigh of relief escaped his lips when he successfully acquired the bomber jacket, a stylish piece of cloth that seemed to silently scream his personality.

Her silent treatment persisted. Messages left on read, the blue ticks on WhatsApp feeling more like a knife twist rather than a communication tool. The phantom pain of her silence was only intensified by the knowledge of her being online. He imagined her, perhaps exhausted, weighed down by her hospital internship. Empathy won over annoyance - he wouldn't push. He'd let her come to him, the words of GPT-4 echoing in his mind like a mantra.

Yet, by the time the evening shadows stretched long and thin, his resilience crumbled under emotional duress. His fingers flew across the screen, a message dispatched inquiring about her wellbeing. He received a weary voice message in return, the sound of her voice punctuated by the hum of a car engine in the background, hinting at the presence of someone else. The date of his departure for Denmark loomed, a specter on the horizon. Her admission that they probably wouldn't meet was a harsh blow, a pungent blend of sadness and anxiety frothing in the pit of his stomach.

He remained steadfast, attempting to navigate through the murky emotional waters, searching for a solution that seemed to be just a hair's breadth away, yet elusively out of reach. To be continued, in the chronicles of a man's life, layered with bomber jackets, math equations, and coded trust tokens.