🌌 A Night By My Self

Written in 2004, re-written with Copilot

I. The Night Before

It was dark and lazy. The air was cold, and the wind sang a melody to those sound asleep. Whether they heard it, I’d never know—for the bed felt like a better invitation. Yet I stood, fighting all odds, my bed looking more loyal than ever.

Don’t mistake me for a half-crazy man sharing his night with the wind and the chilly aura. I was a man cornered by conniving higher echelons—doomed to spend the night at my desk. My destiny: to scan pages of small printed alphabets, which at that hour seemed to vanish.

To be clear, I had to finish dozens of pages on Distributed Computing—a subject whose very thought disturbs me to this day.

II. The Solitary Struggle

What made it strange was knowing I was the lone soul trying to comprehend it all. My friends had surrendered to sleep—some by knowledge, some by age-old tricks. There were the “know-it-alls” who slept early, the “bad guys” who abandoned the race, and the “poor guys” who never started. I was a loner—with a dearer bed and a dreaded book.

III. The Escape

Then, miraculously, a thought darted in: “Why don’t you go out and take a break?”

I stepped outside. A new dimension struck me. I had been trying to decode Latin and Greek from some madman’s mind, and now I stood beneath stars—glowing, comforting, timeless.

What if there were aliens? How large were the stars? Didn’t they deserve more attention?

I was struck by the enormity of the contrast—between black letters on paper and the vast, ancient cosmos. Why was I stuck believing those pages were all that mattered for tomorrow?

Weren’t there galaxies to ponder, stars with stories to tell? How many unnoticed eyes had fallen on me?

IV. The Return

But reality called me back. The brute fact: an exam loomed, and I was one of the least equipped.

I walked back to my room, catching all I could from the speaking stars and the milky sky. I believed there would be another day—when I’d sit and gaze, wonder at nature, learn from it, and simply be with it.

But will there be such a day? The cosy bed is a cunning servant.

Footnote: I wrote this at 3 AM before my Distributed Computing semester exam in college. I hadn’t studied a thing and had pages of photostat to cover. But luckily, I passed—by writing my own version of answers (stories) 🙂