Tag Archives: Sera

Site Error

Posted by on May 30, 2026 No comments

It was hard that morning. It was a rather dark morning with some cloud cover. Etul had walked to work from his place. His living quarters were not very far from the office where he worked. It was a distance which was covered easily by walking. Etul reached the office building and stopped. From the place where he had stopped, the building entrance, he looked up, and above him, long distance away, was the top of his office building. The top was far away. Etul looked down. He looked at the ground, which felt dark. He then looked ahead and walked inside. Inside, it was some light. The light was not too bright, in fact, it tended towards being a little dim, mild effect of the lights inside. Etul looked at it and moved on. The office lobby was not without anybody. There were some people in the reception desk area, and, there were some people walking towards and away from the elevator. There were still some more people, waiting in the lobby. It was as usual. Etul did not want to look at anyone right then, so, he moved past all of them, towards the elevator. The elevators were some distance away, some people were already waiting there, Etul could see that. ‘Oh, no, it is going to be some waiting’. There were more people there, Etul would have to wait there, until the people who came before him would get cleared. It was going to be some time. Etul did not like it. He waited. People in front of him were mostly quiet. ‘It feels a little eerie, it always does, here, at this time, I don’t know why. May be something happened here, which nobody knows about. It could be something very sinister, like a murder. The happening of which still lingers here. I have read stories, and have imagined feelings like this’. He looked around. ‘I hope the elevator comes soon’.

The elevator arrived soon and Etul was on it. The elevator rode straight up, it did so slowly. It was as if the elevator sensed the eerieness of the place. ‘It is as if the elevator knows’. Etul thought and then kept quiet. The elevator stopped at a couple of floors and finally opened the doors for Etul on the floor number 21. The elevator panel read the number 21. Etul exited the elevator and did not look back. He walked towards his desk. But, he had to look back, he looked back, and saw the elevator doors, closing, with half a foot of gap between them, Etul could see the people remaining in there, 2 faces showed, the doors pushed closer together, it felt as if the people in there were screaming, then, the doors closed. Etul looked ahead. ‘There is nothing I can do’. He thought and walked, towards his desk, suddenly heavy. He reached the desk and put down his bag on the desk. He was in no mood to start working, he never was, usually, in the morning. He put down his bag and turned to go towards the coffee machine. The coffee machine was in the corner of the floor. He walked and reached it. There was no one there.

Etul pressed the necessary buttons on the machine and waited. The machine started and made some sounds, Etul was no stranger to those sounds. The sounds stopped and a beep could be heard. Etul reached for the coffee cup, careful not to pick it up by the middle part, the machine always gave out very hot coffee, he had learnt the hard way on the first day of his job there. He had to carry coffee on his shirt all day. Etul picked up the cup by its rim and walked back to his desk. He was careful, he was careful not to slam into anybody on his way to his desk. The coffee was very hot in the cup.

Etul successfully walked back with the coffee in his hand. He sat down. Then, he turned on his computer monitor. It came on, with the usual login screen. In a well trained fashion, Etul entered the password and went on. He clicked the email software icon twice. The software came up on the screen. He immediately saw and opened the email from his colleague. ‘No way, this is going to be a bad day. I would have to fix it today. The internal monitoring site is down. I would have to get on to it. Before, the boss notices, I would have to fix it’. Etul took a sip from the cup of coffee. ‘Thanks a lot, I’ll look into it’, he emailed back to the sender, Sera.

Space Craft

Posted by on May 27, 2026 No comments

“The space has always been a challenge, and we have always risen to it”. Mr. Taret said as he walked across the meeting room. It was a meeting full of senior engineers of SpaceDot. SpaceDot had been a leading maker of spacecrafts for 2 decades now. It manufactured spacecrafts as well as other equipment. Mr. Taret walked back and looked at the people in the meeting.

“Do we need to revisit the design for SpaceRace”? One person in the meeting, Gare, an engineer asked. Mr. Taret looked at him and said nothing, at first. He was quiet. A few people looked at each other. A moment passed by and then Mr. Taret answered, “You can do so, if you wish to”. Then, he kept quiet, and then, he moved on. The meeting was going to take some time. The people in the meeting waited. Mr. Taret walked back and forth.

“We are here to renew our vision for the next decade. The next decade is a challenge for the field of technology. And, SpaceDot must rise to it. We are not a company that lags, we are not a company that comes second. We are the leaders of the industry and I want everyone to keep that in mind and work accordingly”. Taret delivered a small speech and then waited. Then, he looked at the room, a little proud of himself, he waited, looked ahead, no one said anything. A few people wore a look of some kind of hope. A few wore a look of mild hopelessness, they were careful not to show it much. They knew this far too well. “This is yet another, one of those, I speak, you listen kind of meeting. This is going to be a pep talk, but, the difference is that, Mr. Taret is going to talk and we are going to pep him up. He is the CEO, it is the usual deal”. Those few who were with hopelessness had earlier had this conversation by the water cooler, among the two of them, the others from the group were away from them. The people were quiet in the meeting room.

Present Day

Sera and Teya were standing in front of the huge gate that belonged to the building and the warehouse of the SpaceDot corporation. The corporation was not there anymore. The gate and the building wore a deserted and dirty look. There was no one around. Sera looked around, to make sure they were alone. Teya looked at Sera. Then, Sera moved forward and put down her backpack, from the backpack, she removed a big cutter, it was big enough to cut across steel half an inch thick. The handles of the cutter were each one and a half foot long. She motioned Teya to step back, Teya did so. In a second, Sera had the cutter on the lock of the gate, and in another second, Sera brought together the handles, the lock gave in, with a loud snapping sound and fell down, on the ground. Sera looked back, at Teya, Teya looked at Sera. Sera put the cutter back in the backpack and put the backpack back on her back. With the gun in her hand, she kicked on the door, the door moved with the hinges making some sound, Teya looked around. She walked towards Sera. Sera took a look inside, she waited.

A half minute went by, “I think, we can go in”, Sera said in a low tone of voice. Teya followed Sera as Sera went in. They took another stop at the building entrance. Another half minute, “Let’s go”, Sera said, after making sure they were good to go. They both went into the building, now, a palace of dirt, dust, darkness and 40 floors. Sera stopped by a huge board to scan the floor map. The map showed various parts of the building. Sera scanned the map for what they were looking for. Teya kpet a watch. Sera took time, going through the list of floors and sections. It was a big list, SpaceDot was a huge corporation. There were a number of floors, sections, groups and parts listed there. Sera scanned the map, top to bottom, bottom to top. ‘Where the hell is it? It is supposed to be here. The equipment section should be here, as informed by Huto. This is too much information. If I don’t find the section, it’ll be a wasted effort’. Sera had thoughts. She kept scanning the section.

Finally, after about 3 miniutes of scanning the map, she found it, ‘1243’, ‘this is the section’, Sera was glad. “We go to floor number 12”, Sera informed Teya. Together, they took off. They walked towards the elevator shaft. Then, they moved towards the staircase. The staircase was open, they both took a look, up, and finding nothing there, entered and started walking, up. “Be careful now”, Sera said to Teya. Teya kept quiet. They both moved, slightly crouched, up the staircase. It was going to take time. They climbed slowly and kept a watch on their surroundings. They both had their guns ready. Sera and Teya moved up the stairs. It took some 12 minutes before they reached the 12th floor. Once, on that floor, it was easy to find where the section was. It was right in front of them. ‘1243’. A board read. “Let’s go in, get our equipment and get out”, Sera said. Teya followed her. They entered the section. It was considerably dark, with some light seeping in from broked windows across the section. They both found the part that they were looking for. They could see boxes loaded with the device they were looking for, the boxes read, ‘Raisin’.

Vertigo Why

Posted by on May 25, 2026 No comments

Sera moved quickly, she ducked and then she crouched. She was aware that she did not want to hurry. Of course, she did not want to be slow either. Speed is greed, slow is death, she reminded herself. She crouched behind a set of boxes, two of them, stacked, one on top of another. The boxes seemed heavy, they were not made of metal. Sera got jumpy, she did so also, she got up quickly and moved. It was the ground floor of High Rise. The ground floor was empty and desolate. There was no one there, there was supposed to be no one there. Sera looked behind. There was no one behind her. She moved and came into an open space. She looked up from there. It was a little breath taking, one could see the grey blue sky above, through the stack of 30 floors which rose above the ground. The High Rise gave way there, to the view of the sky. Sera looked for a second. Then, she looked ahead and moved. This was not a sight seeing visit. High Rise was no place for a rookie. It was a place for her to do her job.

She kept moving. She arrived at a staircase and looked up, there was no one there. She walked, up on the stairs. She walked up some three floors like that and then she stopped. She looked around, there was no one. She looked up. Then, she looked around. There was an elevator shaft nearby. ‘Let me take a look’, she thought and went up to that shaft. It was open, the door had collapsed. She leaned in and looked up and then down, there was nothing in there. She looked down, there was darkness below, ‘the elevator car has probably fallen there’. She looked down there, in the darkness for a few seconds and then looked up. There was light above. She stepped back. And then she removed her backpack. She zipped open the pack and removed a rope thrower. It read ‘Raisin’. It had a handle. She inspected the device for a bit. She checked the hook at the end of the coil of rope. The hook looked okay. So did the coil, the coil was housed well in the enclosing case. She put her hand around the trigger at the end and moved back to the door. She looked up and aimed her device at the edge of the shaft, the aim was very high up, the aim was the edge at the top, on the 30th floor. She took a second and then she fired, the device gave out a loud hiss, the explosive charge behind the hook fired and the hook went up, straight, it flew very fast and took the rope with it, it disappeaared from her sight and in a second, there was a light thud, it seemed to come from the 30th floor, Sera pulled the rope, it came tense, in her hands. She pulled it again. She knew she was ready. In a moment, she pressed a button on the side of the device, the big button clicked, and it started a rotor inside the housing which housed it. Sera quickly gave up the floor and held well onto the handle of the device, ‘Raisin’. It pulled her to the top. It took some few seconds. As she approached the lasr floor, she quickly gave up the grip on Raisin and grabbed the edge of the floor and then a bar on the side of the door. She pulled quickly out of the elevator shaft and on to the last floor. It was the last floor. She pressed another button on Raisin and got the rope fully wound back into the device. She looked around. It was time for business.

The business did not look good. ‘Scar’, she exclaimed lightly and shot at the head of one as it aprroached her. The scar went down, it lay on the floor motionless. The scar was a common problem now. A nasty evolution in the city. It was a creature which would eat you alive if you did not take it down, it was always covered in some kind of filth, it smelled bad, like a mix of rotten eggs and meat, topped with a week old garbage. Another one came at her and went down the same way. Sera kept moving. It was a big wave. It was non stop. Sera took down 2 more scars as she walked fast. She knew she had to keep moving. She kept moving. It was needed. The scars came at moderate speeds at her. Sera had only one response, shot of her gun. She reloaded after the fifth scar went down and kept going. It was business. She looked around, 2 scars came from behind, she shot each one of them twice. They fell on the floor and rolled and then stopped. She moved on. Now, 3 scars came up from the front, they appeared suddenly. Sera had to shoot them qucikly. She sprayed around bullets horizontally and they were on the floor. She moved, one more came up from behind wall, just inches from her face. She took it down quickly with the butt of her gun and then shot it, it rolled around and stopped. She hissed and reloaded her gun. Suddenly, a hand touched her shoulder. She froze, a bolt of fear went down her body, she could not movve or think for a second, the gun also froze, in her hand. ‘It’s me, Teya’, a voice came from behind. Sera unfroze and looked back. It was her business accomplice, Teya, she was a little pleased, then they both, each shot down 2 scars which came up towards them. It was nice after that. Sera and Teya chatted as they moved and shot down scars. “When did you get up here?”, Sera asked Teya. “Just now, how is it going?”, Teya answered and asked. “It is as usual, I got one in my face, it’s over there by the wall, it did not look good”. “Sure”. “This is not going to go away anytime soon”. “My mother says the same”. The conversation continued. The walk continued. The shooting continued. A scar came from behind, and now, Teya shot it down, without even looking back. Sera looked at her. They both appreciated each other, they did not appreciate the scars. “Let’s keep moving”, Sera said. They walked on. They took half an hour. After which, it was done. They both stopped and sighed. A quiet second went by and suddenly a scar emerged from the staircase, “Fracture”, Teya shouted. There was no way now, a Fracture could only be killed by a set of multiple grenades. They would have to bail. They both knew it. They both ran and they both jumped off the roof and then pulled the cords of the parachutes, behind them, they could hear the loud grunt of the fracture. They were both away now, and were sailing safely from the height of the building towards the ground. Teya looked at Sera, she was some 20 feet away, Sera had fainted, ‘Oh, she is going to land badly’, Teya exclaimed and looked down towards the ground which was coming up at her fast.