THE HUNT FOR THE ALGOS…

Episode 2:” The sailors play a dreadful game…”

Here starts the journey of their lives…All programmers on board, bid tearful goodbyes to their loved ones, as the Kalsoft ship draws away from land. Each and everyone keeps looking till the last possible moment of visibility and then, the eyes lose track of the land and its dwellers…Its just water now, 360 degree, from all angles of the eye view…

Everyone is given a walky talky to communicate with others. The first use of the talky is marked by calling all the “programmer-cum-sailors” for the first lunch of the expedition. Saira, Arifa and Beena do a good job by preparing a healthful and flavorsome meal. The two leading-men slashDOT and Fari, and the man on rudder, Oun, review the sea route, maps, the navigators, RADARs and the special detectors…

Then comes the first night of the expedition…All the voyagers gather at the deck of the ship for a camp fire…Basit destroys their hearts out with his uproarious jokes and a brilliant dance performance by Oun, Hassan, Danyal and Tabish, adds to the bliss…Now the girls ask for the “Truth or Dare” game. Tasmiyah asks for the Truth option to be disabled as people might escape themselves out by telling lies…So it’s just “DARE” now…The bottle revolves and stops in front of Saira and she is asked to sing a song in a male voice, flat…She says no…After being forced to do so, she finally sings one! Just when the song ends, Arifa shouts, “This is boring guys, make it more interesting. Ask people for thrill, for adventure, for quest…!” Everyone thinks so and the bottle now halts at Ali Iftekhar…Hamza assigns him the daring task, the task to climb the boundary wall of the ship and stand at the edge on one foot for 15 seconds…Everyone shouts in favor of this task but Fari, with all his wisdom, says no and calls it extremely dangerous and slashDOT backs him…Propelled by the force of so many people who urge him to let Ali Iftekhar dare for the task, slashDOT finally allows this dare to be done…But this time around, Ali Iftekhar starts to feel the fear and denies…At this, Tasmiyah shouts, “Aren’t you a man? What stops you from going? Is it the lack of adrenaline?”…Everybody is dead silent as Ali Iftekhar starts to walk towards the boundary wall…With shivering hands and shaking legs, he manages to climb the wall…Everyone is watching the lad, with hands covering their mouth…Out of the two shaking legs, as soon as he raises one into the air, he at first stumbles and then tumbles into the sea in a flash…Everyone screams wild in chorus…”Damn! Oun, go save him at once”, is the cry from the captain. Oun speedily descends down from the stairs, to the surface of the sea, with Irtaza putting the spot light on the surface of the sea…Oun and the rest of the fellows look for hours, but there are no signs of Ali…”He’s drowned…”, says Oun in a plain dejected voice…Many people start to sob, while others try to calm them down. No one can believe that one of their friends has been lost…No one speaks and the whole ship is lost in grief, sighs and the silence of the sea…

[Continued in Episode 3: "The ships come nose to nose..."...Coming soon]