It was almost 8 AM. The sun was very bright that day, as if screaming, “Damn it, earthlings, wake up!” But even the strongest beams of light from the giant fireball couldn’t penetrate the thick dark grey shades in Vicky’s room.
It was a small dorm room, with space for just one person to sleep in. There was a tiny study table in one corner with a hard metal chair that was definitely not made to go along with the table. On top of the table was a gaming laptop with its power cord plugged into the mains. The table was so small that there was hardly space to keep a mouse bedside the laptop. To the left of the table was the bed on which Vicky’s sleepy body lay, half covered in a blanket, with his left arm hanging from one side, the middle finger barely touching the floor. Beside the bed, lay a pair of socks, an ID card, and one shoe. To the right of the study table was the entry door in front of which lay another shoe.
“Vicky! Vicky!!”, Came a loud call from outside followed by three bangs on the door.
“Hmmm”, said Vicky in a barely audible and very low pitch.
“Vicky, wake up dude”, another three bangs followed.
“Waaa haaan”, said Vicky. He meant to say, ‘What happened?’
“I have something interesting. I bet you’ll love this”
“Le me sleeep”
“Exclamation, hash, bracket, hash, bracket, dollar, percent, bracket, percent, percent. Can you solve this?”, The voice from outside screamed.
“Whaaa?”, Vicky was still half asleep.
“It’s an encrypted message, Vicky. Someone left it for you”
Vicky’s eyes instantly opened wide.
There were another two bangs on the door, but before the third bang, the door opened.
Vicky stood there, in his tank top and shorts, rubbing his left eye. Even though the person in front of him was much taller, Vicky wasn’t conscious enough to raise his head.
“Dude, you got to see this!”
“What is it, Sunil?”, Vicky finally spoke clearly.
Sunil walked into Vicky’s room, while Vicky still stood by the door, yawning.
“What the hell man, it’s so dark in here”, Sunil said while simultaneously opening the shades. Sunlight instantly came in shooting like thousands of white lasers and the room was lit up. Vicky raised his hand to cast a shadow over his eyes.
Sunil sat on the bed and opened an email on his phone.
“Yesterday you gave me your email address and password to order food online. I forgot to log out, I saw this email in your inbox today, you got to see this dude!”, Sunil almost screamed.
Vicky didn’t reply, he still stood by the door, as if he didn’t even have enough energy to sit down or produce any other motion.
Sunil stretched his hand and turned the phone to show the email to Vicky. Vickey’s eyes still didn’t adjust to the furious white beams of sunlight. After a few blinks, he was able to read the message.
The email had no subject. The body had only one string of characters:
!#>#)$%(%%<&&>)(%(*^#
“Who is the sender?”, Vicky asked.
“vikram@zxvk.com”
“What?”
“Yup. It has your name”
Vicky took the phone from Sunil’s hand and checked if what he said was true.
“What if it’s a mistake? Those characters might be random junk”, Vicky said.
“I don’t think so. The email address has your name. Someone might be wanting you to have a look at it”, Sunil’s reply came swiftly.
“I don’t think my help is needed. Cody can solve it in a flash”, Vicky replied in a low tone.
Cody was the name of an AI bot that could answer almost any question anyone ever had. There were multiple such AI bots on the internet, some free to use and others required a subscription. They could even develop and debug codes, build software and applications for smartphones and PCs, design structures and even create other AI models. A lot of engineers lost their jobs and research was the field they tried to shift to. AI could solve any problem that it could from the dataset it was trained on, but couldn’t imagine or come up with new things. That’s the reason research work required human workers while the development was done by AI. Vicky was a computer engineering student but hated the fact that AI could do anything. He was extremely intelligent but lost motivation to do something new because there was always an AI that could do it instead.
“Cody couldn’t solve it.”, Sunil said swiftly.
“Then it’s probably garbage mail”, Vicky replied.
“Or maybe it’s beyond what Cody can do. Maybe it was encrypted in such a way only an intelligent human can solve it”, Sunil said optimistically.
“Well, I’m sure some other AI can solve it”
“Why don’t you give it a try?”
“I don’t care. Why put the effort when nobody will recognize it?”
“Look, Vicky, I am sure you can solve it. Artificial intelligence can be smart but your Real Intelligence is smarter. Now whether you do it or not is your choice.”, Sunil said and walked away to his room.
Vicky stood there, looking at the door through which Sunil walked. Then he looked at his phone on the bed, then at the laptop on the desk.
Two bangs were heard on Sunil’s door. Sunil instantly opened the door. Vick stood outside, showing his phone’s screen to Sunil.
There was a series of numbers on the screen:
13.3045955,77.0959863
“What is this?”, Sunil asked.
“Decrypted message”, Vicky replied.
“Holy shit! You did it so soon? How did you…”
“It was easy. Each character is the special character printed on the number row of a QWERTY keyboard”
Sunil ran back inside, opened the email on his phone, and looked at the keyboard of his laptop.
“Damn!”, He screamed.
“What’s the use? It’s not a phone number. The email address doesn’t accept replies either. What was the point in doing this?”, Vicky said. Then he continued, “I’m sure some or the other AI could have solved this. It was too easy”
Then Sunil started speaking with excitement, “But what an AI can’t do is physically go to a location on Earth.”
He then turned his laptop to show the screen to Vicky. There was a map with an indicator pointing to a location.
Sunil continued, “Those numbers are coordinates to this place. It’s an empty patch of land near Maralur Lake. What do you say?”
“You Sure we are not wasting our time?”, Vicky seemed to be interested.
Sunil didn’t reply, but his answer was clearly visible in his smile.
When they arrived at the location, they couldn’t see anyone waiting for them. There were no people there and it was an empty patch of ground beside a small body of water. It was almost noon and the sun became hotter as if someone poured a bucket of petrol on the already hot fireball. They walked back to the road where they parked their scooter and sat beside it, drinking the cold drinks they bought earlier. A postman passing by them on his bike dropped an envelope near them. Sunil ran and picked up the envelope screaming, “Hello! Uncle! You dropped this!!” But the postman disappeared by then. He looked at the envelope and remained stunned. He ran back to Vicky and handed it to him. On the envelope, it was written, ‘vikram@zxvk.com’.
Vicky quickly opened the envelope and found a letter with nothing except another string of characters:
!)!<)!)<))<)))< ))))< !) <)! <!!)< ))< )!)< ))< )!)) <)! <!)! <)
Continued in part 2…
Tiny Tales 
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