A Matter Of Time

Prologue

Philip couldn't sit in his seat for too long. The fight with Sophie this morning over breakfast was still haunting him. It was a simple matter of a slightly spicy breakfast which got worse with Philip telling Sophie this wasn't the first time and Sophie asking him to try making breakfast from tomorrow on. That touched a nerve, and being made for each other, the feeling of anger was mutual and simultaneous. After the war of words, both of them didn't utter a syllable throughout the trip to their respective places of work. After a few hours simple rational thinking resulted in Philip's temper becoming remorse. He had decided. He was not going to let a few milligrams of chillies get between him and Sophie. He wanted to apologize and get it over with. Most importantly, he knew what was probably the best way to get it done.

Philip & Sophie - 2007 AD

Philip picked up his mobile phone and after much thought, typed out the words "Sorry" and sent it to Sophie. He waited with bated breath for his phone to chime with the message "It's okay sweet heart". A few finger nails got ripped apart, but the phone still wore that dead pan expression. He thought for a while again and typed "I said I am really sorry, and I do mean it". Moments passed, but the phone didn't budge. Remorse became Unease.



Cursing mildly, Philip looked up his instant messenger and found Sophie online. If she wasn't going to respond to his message on the phone, she has to reply online. Thinking about it, he thought it is was probably better since it would cut the excruciating wait for messages on the phone.

"I am sorry", he typed and waited for the messenger to indicate that she was typing.
"I said I am sorry. Can we just get over it ??", he typed again. The messenger was decidedly mum.
"How many times do I have to say it ?? Can't you just say you are okay ??" was followed by "It wasn't my fault alone, okay ?? If I can apologize despite that, what is your problem ??" and later by "Thats it, if you want to be so stubborn, I can be twice as much" and thankfully concluded with a curt "Bye". Unease had decidedly morphed into Anger.

Philip picked up the land-line phone. Trembling in anger, he dialled her office number only to be responded with an engaged tone. "She did it on purpose. She unhooked the phone on purpose", he told himself. Anger, after having clouded his judgment, had promoted itself to become Rage.

And Rage does what it usually does when residing within a short-tempered young male with access to emails. Within a few minutes, Philip had spewed a few kilobytes of venom into Sophie's mail box. "That should teach her a thing or two", he proudly told himself - clearly not understanding the meaning of the word "proud".

Elsewhere, Sophie, who had forgotten to bring her mobile, was distraught that she couldn't apologize to Philip because the network infrastructure in her office had gone bonkers. In a corner of her mind, she was wondering how good it would be if Philip also felt the same way at some point of time in the day. Just as she was about to give up and leave for the day, the network came up. And so did an indication that Philip had sent her an email. She knew it, Philip had apologized profusely, the sweet heart that he was. She couldn't wait to send a message saying she was sorry too. She opened the mail and started reading.

Philip & Sophie - 2007 BC

Philip climbed on his horse and set out to meet Sophie. He met her, started apologizing, got stopped before he could complete his apology, was apologized to, hugged, told he was such a sweetie pie for having travelled so many miles on horseback through mountains, deserts, forests and other assorted landscapes for a simple apology and underwent lot of other general mushy things that would not be mentioned in this blog out of respect to Philip & Sophie. However, this blog, armed with that inside knowledge, would safely say that they lived happily ever after.

Epilogue
If you have learned the lesson about how any new scientific invention can never, ever replace human face-face communication, but unhappy that the 2007 AD version of Philip & Sophie have ruined it for themselves - read further.

Lot of things happened during the "Philip & Sophie - 2007 AD" story line which were cut for brevity. Philip's unexplained feeling in the deep end of his stomach after sending the email, him receiving a call from Sophie's best friend who wanted to convey a message to her but couldn't since she wasn't picking up her mobile phone and not responding to messages, a long thought process where he added one and one and arrived at two (in other words: realize that he had screwed up just about everything), a frantic rush to somehow get his hands on the mail that he sent, realizing computers weren't built to suit slip-ins and slip-outs, an undoubted gift from God when he remembered her Unix mail password which he used to log into her mail server and delete the message without a trace and a few less kbs in a mail which said how sorry he was about the whole thing in the morning which he sent seconds before her network came up. The mail, coupled with the few apology messages that Sophie found in her mobile at home, led to series of events later that evening which would continue to remain Philip & Sophie's little secret. To pry them would be plain uncivilized, but yes, in all certainty, they lived happily ever after too.