Day and Night
I’ve always loved this view of Kepla. I can come to the balcony and stare all day long. It reminds me of my mother.
“Hey Jacob, come here,” she used to say.
“I’m coming mom,” I must have been maybe around sixteen years old back then.
“You must understand that running the company will be stressful when the time comes.”
“Yes mom, you’ve told me about it. I’ve seen you get stressed out, I know what I’m getting into.”
It’s been a few months since she left. Surprisingly, what I said was never a lie. I was always prepared for what was expected of me. It was my turn to run Ubiquitin. It wasn’t until my freshman year in college that I understood what the Ubiquitin protein did, it served as a tag that helped cells dispose of proteins it didn’t need. In essence, that was what my company did. We tagged problems, and then we set plans in motion to remove those problems.
The view in front of me is one of the best views of Kepla. Of Upper Kepla, in particular. Sunlight shining and reflecting in the skyscrapers walls, somehow making all of the flying advertisements look better. It does bore one’s eyes a bit to always see the sparkly white lobby floors, with the occasional black columns in every building, with a lot of green from plants and trees sprinkled in between. White, black, and green, the signature colors of minimalism. Of solar minimalism if you will.
As soon as I finished the work I had, I take the train to lower Kepla to meet up with some of my best friends. You couldn’t really see that part of the city from upper Kepla. It wasn’t even that far away, only a half an hour ride in the high speed underground, but no one really took the line for pleasure.
“The work was tough this week,” I overhear some of the construction workers on the train.
“Yeah, these machines they keep adding. It’s impossible to keep up,” the other one replies.
“I know right? I heard the company’s trying to replace all of us with living machines.”
“You really think they might?”
“Oh for sure. If the money’s there, they won’t even give us a second thought.”
I take a note in my notebook. I need to rethink when and how to implement living matter technology. I’m not this evil monster I know they’re talking about. I’m standing right next to them, just as human as they are.
Finally, the train arrives. As is always the case, I’m shocked at the view. It’s a perfect contrast to Day. It doesn’t have any of the white, black and green that removes the individuality out of everything as in Day. Here in Night, every building has a unique style. Unfinished second and third floors, irregular shapes, hints of neon blues and pinks all over the place. The colors are uneven, they’re not “pretty.” This is what lower Kepla is all about, it’s about the contrast, about the difference. It’s about the individual.
I walk a few blocks until I get to the garage. I open the door and find Kevin fighting over the phone.
“There’s no way you can code a better bot than I can,” he says. A few seconds pass. He looks frantically through the Poker leaderboards. “What? When? I fucking hate you, now I’m not going to sleep all night.” Kevin notices I’m here, “yo, I need to go, I’ll give you a call when my bot beats your bot. Love ya.” He hangs up.
“Andrea, I’m assuming.”
“Yup. Apparently she decided she was going to compete in Pokerbots. You know, that’s my thing, it’s insane. This is just like the time with the microchips. I complain about my system, she has an interest out of the blue and comes up with a better one. I get a decent poker bot, she decides she’s gotta beat me.”
“Then break up with her.”
“Now you’re just saying nonsense. She’s the hottest girl I’ve ever been with, why would I ever break up with her?”
“Then don’t complain about her?”
“You really are a good friend, aren’t you?” I decided to ignore that comment. Being diplomatic is a task for Day, I needed to relax during Night.
“Anyway, I’m going out to get some work done. I need a change of pace.”
“Sure, have fun with Kas,” Kevin replied in what felt almost like a sarcastic tone, but not quite.
“Huh?”
“Aren’t you going with her?”
“Well, not particularly, I could ask her what she’s up to.”
“Aha—” Kevin paused for a second. “Sure, you go ahead and ask her.”
I leave the garage and walk towards my favorite cafe. Back in Day, everyone ordered rides everywhere. After a night out, we can spend almost three hundred dollars on rides. Walking in Night however is such a wonderful experience. There is a light rain falling down, and seeing the drops in the windows and the wet neon signs while occasionally hearing the robotic “Welcome to McDonald’s, would you like to order?” is a refreshing change of pace. Upper Kepla banned this type of soliciting more than a decade ago, following massive pressure from its citizens. Lower Kepla didn’t mind— or at least everyone had their own problems to worry about, and they did not include caring about robotic voices trying to lure you into restaurants.
I hear the robotic voice welcoming me to Elixir Cafe. As I come in and order my coffee, I notice that Kas isn’t here. She usually sits near the back, her laptop open and coding; she’s always coding, it’s inspiring. But today, she isn’t here. I sit at our usual table, and wait to see if she gets there. I scroll through my phone for a while, waiting to see if she messages me something. I briefly think whether I should ask her where she is. But then I remember that we didn’t really have plans to meet for tonight, and she’s probably busy doing something. Yes, why should she always be here?
A few minutes later however, I see her coming through the door, and my heart skips a beat. She’s wearing a black leather jacket with tight dark jeans, a t-shirt with her favorite band’s magnum opus, and black sneakers. I smile. She orders her coffee and starts walking towards me.
“Hey,” she says, with a small smile.
“Hi!” I reply back. “What a coincidence to find you here.”
“I know right? It’s almost as if we’ve seen each other at this very table every Saturday night,” she says in the most sarcastic tone I’ve ever heard someone ever use. I simply grin at her as she takes the seat right beside me. This is Kas. She’d scare the shit out of you and would come off as the most unpleasant person if you didn’t know her. She liked that.
I first met Kas at the club a few months back. I had gone there with some of my friends from Day, but they had ‘hated the vibe’ and left. I would’ve gone with them, had I not seen Kas dancing as I’d never seen anyone dance. She flowed with the music and was unafraid in a way that I couldn’t understand. I could usually read people from first glance, it was one of the most important skills I had gotten from managing the company. But I simply couldn’t decipher Kas, which intrigued me even more. I decided to go up and talk to her, and we bonded over inviting our friends to the club and them abandoning us.
“If your friends didn’t like it here and you did, why do you even go out together?”
“Straight for the kill, wow.”
“Yeah yeah, cut through the bullshit Ken.”
“Ken?”
“I mean, you’re tall, blonde and I don’t really understand the size of your arm. But empty. I’m everything. You’re just Ken.”
I pretended I didn’t understand that she just called herself Barbie, but I started to feel where it was going, “well, my friends are usually pretty chill anywhere, they just didn’t want this vibe.”
“This is literally the best club in the whole area, what do you mean they didn’t want this vibe?”
Now, that wasn’t entirely true. I do agree with my friends that in Upper Kepla, the clubs were better. The music was more fun, the bottles felt smoother, and the floor felt swifter.
“Oh I agree with you. I think they went to Upper Kepla.” Kas choked on her drink as I said that.
“What, they think they’re going to spend a thousand dollars on a night out?” she said with her characteristic sarcasm. She was quite wrong, a night out was more on the order of seven or eight thousand dollars for my friends and I figured she didn’t run a multi billion dollar company. But then, Kas looked at me suspiciously, “are you from Upper Kepla?”
“Obviously not. Why’d you think I stayed here? They’re in a delirious state where they think they’re gonna get past the door.” I don’t exactly know why I lied. I really wanted her to like me, and it was clear she had something against Upper Kepla.
After a couple hours drinking and talking, she suggested we go to her place, and so I followed her. It was quite a night. I was so stressed out about having to deal with Ubiquitin and everything else in Day, but being with Kas made it all so much better, it made it all fade away. She was confident, she knew what she wanted, and she understood me in a way no one ever had.
After catching up a little bit in the café, I asked her if she could take a look at some code I had been writing for a new feature in Ubiquitin. Of course, I just told her it was for a small project I was working on.
“You’re an idiot! Oh, Gosh, I hadn’t seen such stupid code in ages, who taught you how to do this?” Kas’s facial expressions were lovely. She looked good even as she insulted my code. I knew she didn’t mean it though. The fact that she kept reading it gave it away.
“Oh shut up, you’re just jealous you didn’t write it yourself. It’s so good that you can’t even figure out what’s wrong with it.”
“Aha, aha. If that’s what lets you sleep at night after writing this, then sure, keep thinking that.”
“Oh I sleep pretty well, thank you very much. Here, I’ll show you,” I take my computer out of her hands, and for a very brief moment we touch each other’s hand. It’s slightly awkward, we just became friends after that night and neither of us has mentioned it or made a move ever since. But the tension is there. “Look, this was where I fucked up last time, this is what I had before, and this is the change I made,” I say while pointing to the different versions.
“Oh I see,” Kas continued to analyze. “Wait, I see what you’re doing. Uh huh, you’re parallelizing the computation, but this part right here… no way… does this actually work?”
“In theory it does.” I grab a stack of good old fashioned paper out of my backpack.
“You’re fucking kidding me. Gawsh, I don’t understand how you come up with these ideas using paper.”
“What? I’m old fashioned, okay. There’s nothing like good old pen and paper when it comes to inventing new maths.” I’m careful not to bring out my Montblanc, surely Kas would think I stole it, if she even noticed that it was an expensive pen, but just to be safe I simply kept it in my bag.
As she reads, I guide her to the important pages of the stack she’s holding, our hands touch once more, and she looks up at me for a split second. “It should be faster than any current method to my knowledge, and around 18% faster than regular transformer architecture.”
She continues looking through the pages and through the code. I silently sit there for a couple of minutes, looking at her while she looks at my code. There is something about her dark, long hair and the way it looks against her deep blue eyes that makes it impossible to look away. I don’t want to look away. “Wait, I think I found something. You see, here” she says while pointing at part of the code, “rookie mistake software people always make, you see, when accessing physical memory at these speeds, it is almost certain that there will be electron misses. That’s why the error doesn’t pop up in simulations, but will continue to happen in the real world.”
“Oh, I see what you’re saying.” I silently stare at the code. And I can see in the corner of my eye that she’s also thinking. “Can you help me fix it?” I break the silence.
“What, software guy can’t do it by himself?”
“I don’t think I can, as a matter of fact.”
“Well, I guess I can help you fix it. But for a price, of course.”
“What do you want now?” I said using her usual sarcasm.
“Take me out to dinner.” My heart skipped two beats this time.
“What?”
“We can’t ignore whatever this is that is between us. And you simply won’t do anything, so I’m taking the lead. I want you to take me out to dinner.”
I am genuinely surprised at the proposition. But Kas is right, and so I play on. “And where do you want to go?”
“Oh no, I asked you out. Now it’s your turn to do the rest.”
“Fair. Does Friday at eight work for you?”
“Aw, you look so cute asking me out like that.”
I blush a bit. “I’ll pick you up Friday at eight then,” I say while I grab my stack of papers off the table and return them to my backpack.
As I did that, Kas grabs my computer and begins adding herself to my code repo.
“Ubiquitin? Why do you use some capitalist trash’s software to host your code? They’ll steal it from you if they detect something cool. It’s in their terms and conditions.”
“I’m pretty sure you should read those again, that’s definitely not in there. I think their software works pretty well. Worst case, if they do see something they like, maybe they’ll recruit me” I reply.
“Why would you ever want to work for them?” Kas says, genuinely annoyed.
“Also, is that a yes?” I ask.
“Yes. But only because your code is so bad that you really need me to say yes,” her usual sarcasm back.
I head back to Day. Usually, I would have simply spent the night at the garage working, but tonight I have a lot of stuff to think about. Plus I have to wake up in four hours’ time to get to the shuttle station to get to a meeting with a client. In any other situation I wouldn’t have slept at all. But just for tonight, I want to dream.
I wake up, having gotten only around two hours of sleep in between the trip back and fantasizing about my date with Kas. I get to the shuttle station, and prepare the launch for the Berlin system. My team and I arrive, and we immediately start preparing for the meeting. We work all day, meeting with executives from the company we’re about to sign with, Live-Alive. They specialize in using living matter for data storage. Having a compatible system with our software was the next step in the game. No one had dared to try it before, but with the code I was working on with Kas, it should be the first step in prototyping. I felt bad that Kas hated Upper Kepla so much. So much lost potential in hatred.
After the night is finished, we party. And we party hard. Today, we decide to keep it simple, partying in the club in the penthouse of our hotel. We invite Melissa, the heir of Live-Alive, out for a couple drinks.
I stand on a small terrace outside, to get some fresh air from Berlin, and admire the view. I see Melissa approaching from the corner of my eye.
“Hey,” Melissa begins flirting with me. I, of course, play along.
“The weather’s so amazing here. I’m simply in a suit and I’m not freezing to death.” She looks at me with a weird look on her face. I’m used to it. As if no one she had flirted with before had opened with ‘weather’s nice today.’
“And it allows me to admire you in that gorgeous dress you’re wearing. You’d probably freeze if you went out like that back in Kepla.”
“Thank you,” she giggles. “You don’t look too bad yourself.”
I continue with this back and forth for a few minutes, and then leave. Of course I’m not going to sleep with our future business partner, it simply complicates things way too much in the long run.
The rest of the night went as smoothly as always, paying a bill for seventy six hundred dollars, sleeping at nearly four in the morning, only to begin working the next day at eight in the morning sharp.
The next morning, we focus on the logistics of the deal. We have to give Live-Alive as little information as possible to keep our technologies a secret. My friends would probably kill me on the spot if they knew that Kas had access to some of the most closely guarded secrets in the industry via my code. But it was my code, which, may I add, no one within the company could even come close to understanding. The construction workers from the train would probably fume at the fact that I ‘inherited’ the company, saying that I lucked out. But it’s obvious that no one else could come close to managing the stress of the day to day life, and be able to come up with novel directions to the traditional. I bet they couldn’t do it.
After a long day, we settle on plans to prototype tests over the next couple of days. Then, we go out to party all night long. Tonight we settle on a famous club in the city center of Berlin. Suddenly I realized what was missing from the club the night I met Kas. A night in that club was a complete waste of time and money. The nights at our usual clubs led to the contracts that could fund a whole year of going out.
Friday afternoon finally came. We came back from Berlin yesterday. Today was all work, and I was stressed out. I leave Ubiquitin early to prepare for my date with Kas. At this point, I also begin to prepare myself mentally in case she didn’t show up. The thought hurt.
After the small flirts with future business partners in Berlin, I realized that I actually wanted to come clean with Kas and to tell her about my life in upper Kepla. It was a risky move, but I was going to have to tell her anyway eventually, so why not do it now. I’m always stressed out in Day after having to deal with everything. I go to Night— I see Kas, and my problems go away. Kas in Day, now that was going to be real fun.
I had decided I’d take her out to Yamato’s. It was my favorite sushi restaurant in all of upper Kepla, on the seventieth floor of the Bringham Tower. The view was insane, you could see all upper Kapla. It was amazing. While I would usually wear a fancy suit pared with a fancy watch, I decide to wear the simple clothes I always wore to our nights in the café. The BMW I’m going to pick her up in is already going to be enough of a statement, keeping everything else normal is the correct move. As the clock hits seven, I leave for lower Kepla.
“What the fuck?” Kas reacts to my car.
“You like it?”
“I didn’t know you had the guts to steal this beauty,” Kas looked amazed at the BMW. She loved supercars. She looks as stunning as she always does. Black leggings underneath a super flashy neon pink skirt, a shirt about a band that I had never seen before, and a slight hint of makeup (because while she doesn’t believe in the beauty industry, she looks like a badass whenever she does use it).
“Oh, this is actually mine.” I began to talk a lot more like I would in Day, to smoothen the transition when I finally revealed everything. “Get in, I’m going to take you somewhere amazing. Best view you’ve ever seen.”
“What do you know about the views I’ve seen?” she replied with her usual sarcasm as she got into the car.
“Okay, so I know I trash talked your code the other night, but oh my God you’re a genius.” Compliments were uncharacteristic from Kas. My heart skips three beats after hearing her say that about my code. I’m even more convinced, that what I’m about to do is the correct choice.“You have foreseen everything that can go wrong. Once I understood the theory, it all worked. Well, except for the part I fixed, it now all works.”
“I can’t thank you enough. I’ll make it up to you when the project becomes a big thing.”
“Oh don’t worry, I’ve made my arrangements to present this code to Big Tech so they’ll hire me,” I’m confused at this, is she for real? is she kidding? will she go to Ubiquitin?
“Wouldn’t that be lovely, I only developed the theoretical basis behind everything, and code that worked exceptionally well for all but one situation, which was impossible to anticipate. Yeah it wasn’t that much.”
“I’m kidddiinngg my God, why’d you get so pressed.” She was kidding, but my heart is still racing trying to recover from that. “How was your week anyway? I didn’t see you in the café at all.”
“Oh I was just working on some stuff. Well, actually—” I pause for a few seconds. Not yet. “I’ll tell you the full story when we get there.”
“Where are we going anyway, it’s been almost an hour? I get you have this fancy car, but if a camera notices the stolen plate we’re toast.”
“You’ll see. We’re almost here.” We had entered downtown Upper Kepla.
“Upper Kepla? Only snobs dine here.”
“Then I guess we’ll be snobs tonight.”
“You’re kidding right?” she twitches slightly as she says this, looking mildly uncomfortable after realizing I was talking seriously.
“Relax, it’s on me.” She throws a look of disgust at me after that comment. “You’ve done plenty with the code already.”
We finally arrive, and as I give my key to a valet, another one opens the door for her. Kas looks tense. She’s usually quite vocal whenever anyone opens the door for her, giving one of her lovely ‘thanks, I didn’t realize I didn’t have hands’ comments that make people uncomfortable. But this time, she’s dead quiet, and silently nods at the valet as she gets out of the car. She looks around, seeing all of the tall skyscrapers and the people in fancy suits and dresses. She glances at the clothes she’s wearing, and humps slightly. I take her arm, and we enter the building making our way to the fourth elevator, the one with floors 61 through 80. She quickly glances at me with a look on her face I can’t decipher. Everyone inside briefly stares at us, but quickly look away, as if trying to pay as little attention to us. I hit floor 71 for Yamato’s.
We exited the elevator and made our way for the restaurant. As we step inside, the people sitting at nearby tables give us the same quick stare we had already received from the elevator, as does the waiter.
“Sir, madam. I’m afraid we have a very strict dress code we must enforce, and you unfortunately are breaking it. As such, I am not able to let you in,” the waiter condescendingly said, as if he were proud to be able to say such a thing.
“Let me speak with Grey,” I reply back. “I’m sure he’ll let you know that as of a couple of minutes ago, the dress code need not be enforced,” I use the same tone as the waiter. He’s clearly mad at this.
“Sir, I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask the lady and you to leave this establishment immediately.”
There was some back and forth between the two of us, and the scene had become quite a bit louder than I was anticipating. And Kas was quiet through all of this. The Kas I knew would have tackled the waiter to the ground by this point, and would continue to fight until she was forcibly removed from the man’s face. But she was quiet, simply observing, probably thinking the same things I thought about her. ‘Who is this person? They’re not the one I know’
After a minute or so, once the costumers inside actually started giving us annoyed looks, Grey comes by to verify what is happening.
“Ah, Grey! How have you been,” the waiter is shocked that I actually talk to Grey, and realizes he might have fucked up.
“Ah, my friend! Please do tell me, what is this exotic fashion that you and your friend are wearing?”
“Apparently something that goes against the dress code.”
“What dress code?” Grey looks at the waiter. “Oh come on Bernie, don’t you know we’re talking about my friend from university here! None other than Ubiquitin’s CEO himself!” Fuck. This was earlier than what I was expecting. I quickly glance at Kas, but she seems to be looking out to the distance. Maybe she didn’t hear.
“Sir, I’m so sorry I caused any trouble. Please, follow me,” the waiter’s tone was a lot friendlier, but I smiled at him. I won.
“Thank you Grey, don’t forget we’ve got our meeting in a couple of weeks.”
“It’s been marked on my calendar since the day we scheduled it! Of course I won’t forget.”
“See you then!”
I grab Kas’s arm but she shakes it off. We follow the waiter to our table. We sit down and order our food, but Kas continues to be quiet. Eventually, I break the silence.
“Hey, you haven’t talked in a while. All you alright? Did the waiter make you uncomfortable”
“Why?” Kas says after a few seconds. “Why did you go to the cafe?” There’s a devastating look on her face.
“Sorry? What do you mean, why?” I see Kas sobbing a little. She had heard Grey earlier. “Because I wanted some coffee? What are you talking about.”
“You clearly can go anywhere you want. You can go to the fancy places here, or probably leave to another planet to taste their signature apple juice or whatever. We could have been a one night thing and moved on with our lives. Why would you go to my café?”
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to—”
“Oh, you didn’t mean to,” she sounded very angry now. A couple of people began looking in our direction. “Ubiquitin’s CEO— of course you are. I thought you were like me. But you aren’t. You lied about everything.” She thinks for a few seconds. “And the code you showed me is probably for your company, isn’t it? Do you even care about me? About Kevin? I talk about the piece of shit dickheads that run this place, and it turns out you’re one of them?” I see a few tears leaving her face, her voice cracks from her crying opaqued by her anger. “Ah, how could I be so stupid,” she shakes her head.
“I’m sorry Kas, I can explain,” I try to think of a good answer. “I don’t understand why you’re so upset, I just—”
“And to think that I was actually starting to fall in love,” Kas interrupts me.
There is a deep silence that lasts for a few seconds. I try to think of a good answer, still trying to process what had happened. If only Grey wouldn’t have showed up, would it all be different?
“I guess I have my answer. I’m out of here.”
“No wait, I can—” I try to say something, but Kas storms out of the restaurant. I physically cannot move. I don’t know what just happened.
After a few minutes, I receive a text message. I immediately look at my phone, hoping to see Kas’s profile picture. It isn’t. It’s a message from one of my colleagues at Ubiquitin, something wrong with the Berlin project. I decide that I need to clear my mind from what just happened, and so I go back to the office to work.
Epilogue
I never saw Kas ever again. I went back to the cafe almost every day. Eventually, I realized it was futile, and so I stopped going. The coffee was terrible, the only reason I went there was to meet with Kas.
I still went to the garage occasionally, where I spoke with Kevin. I always heard him complaining about Andrea. At least he had someone to spend his time with, however strange their relationship was.
I kept working in Ubiquitin, although history will likely remember me as the downfall of the company. After our deal with Live-Alive, I never really had a good idea. Getting everything to work together as it was got extremely stressful. Before, I could go to Kas whenever I was feeling stressed out, and I’d feel better. But she wasn’t there anymore. The view from the office, the memory of my mother explaining the company to me— it just wasn’t the same anymore.
Eventually, Ubiquitin fell out of the loop. We pioneered living mater data storage, and an ultra-fast access method. I bet Kas wasn’t happy when she realized the code she had worked on had pioneered a new era of research. I don’t get why. The amount of potential, how could someone simply look at it and say “no, this is not for me, Ubiquitin is evil.” We couldn’t keep up with the speed of innovation. I was in charge of it. I couldn’t handle it, not like my mother could. I left the company shortly after. I woke up every day, and instead of looking forward to the work I’d be doing, to the parties that would happen, to going to lower Kepla and simply walking and admiring the individuality, I simply dreaded everything that I had to do. The pressure was too much. And Kas wasn’t there to help me.
I eventually realized I had loved her. And I had only loved her. No matter what I tried to do, no matter how hard I tried to focus. She was the only person I truly cared about. And she wasn’t here for me. That love eventually turned into hate. Why had she left that night. I never really understood.