THE INVITE
Earlier that morning.....
It was a warm October morning. Joe woke up hearing the annoying sound of the alarm on his phone. He took the phone and switched off the alarm. Joe sat on the bed half asleep. His eyes were heavy with sleep. He found it hard to keep his eyes open. He looked at the phone for the time. It was 4:30 in the morning. He realized with regret that he had once again forgotten to turn off his daily alarm on a holiday. He was having a beautiful dream about someone he had not seen or heard for a long time. He fell back on the bed hoping to go back to sleep again and continue with the same dream. But he couldn't go back to sleep. He got out of his bed cursing himself. He washed his face with some cold water. That made him feel so much better.
Joe now sat on the chair in his room and wondered what he would do now. He couldn’t help thinking about the dream. It felt so real. He tried to recall the dream that he had. It was rather unusual. He could remember every little detail.
She was in front of the hospital waiting for him. She dressed herself in black like marvel's black widow. Her hair was cut from the shoulder level. Together they entered the hospital. He saw their reflection in the glass door. He wore a white shirt. They walked around in the hospital. His arm was around her all the time. She told something with her hand pointed at an old man and a child. But it was not clear to him.
He now ran alone through a dark tunnel. Cars came against him in groups. Whenever the cars came, he moved to the side of the tunnel and would go back to running in the middle of the road till the next Wave of cars came.
Another wave of cars came against him. But this time a car broke out of formation and hit the other cars creating a chain reaction which ended with an explosion. He raced backwards to protect himself from the detonation. There was a phone in his hands, which started ringing and he woke up.
It was too early for anything in his To-do list for the day. As he didn't have anything else to do., He thought maybe he would take a look at the To-do list. Joe took his phone and searched for the list. It was then he saw a notification from Gmail. He opened Gmail app on his phone. He was startled by what he saw there. It was from someone, whom he thought, he would never hear from again. He froze for a moment. The phone almost dropped from his hands. He read the name again. It was Lisa Maria John. He was completely awestruck. She was the last person that he expected to get a mail from. Days after the convocation day, she had disappeared from both Facebook and WhatsApp.
After a minute, he became normal. He opened the mail, but he was disappointed. The mail which he supposed to be a love letter turned out to be lots of random numbers save an N and an E. He felt as if someone took him to the zenith of happiness and pushed him down from there. He said to himself, 'Why would she mail me these numbers after all this time?' He figured it must have some significance. He knew that Lisa is not someone who likes to pull pranks.
Joe looked at the numbers again. But this time he saw it like a puzzle. She loved puzzles. He observed that each of numbers had even number of digits. If each set is further divided into sets of two, each set was a two digit number between 65 and 90, both inclusive.
"Holy shit, its ASCII.” Joe cried, jumping out of the chair... Like all those who have studied a computer programming language, he also knew what ASCII is. A set of numbers that represent text in computers.
He searched for a pen and paper. He started decoding the message. When he finished, there was a small paragraph on the paper in front of him which went like this.
HAI I ASSUME THAT YOU HAVE NOT FORGOTTEN ME IF I STILL OCCUPY A PLACE IN YOUR HEART I WANT YOU TO COME FIND ME AT ST THOMAS CHURCH
Joe understood that the last eight digits were not part of the code because it had an N and an E written as alphabets itself and the numbers were outside the 65-90 range.
1242N7573E
This was that last part of Lisa’s mail. It gave Joe some trouble initially, but suddenly the thought came to his mind. He typed it into Google, but the result seemed too absurd. He figured there must be something wrong in what he typed. So he searched for examples of latitude and longitude. Then he realized if there are dots after 12 and 75and also degree sign before N & E. But he couldn’t find the degree sign on the keyboard so he added the dots and Googled it. This time the result showed a map with Madikeri written on it. He searched for that in Google. It was a small hill station town, also known as Mercara, the district headquarters of Kodaguss. He now knew where to find her. He was on cloud 9.
He did not have to think much as he had already decided to go find her. He immediately wrote a reply informing Lisa that he is starting right away. He started making preparations for the long journey ahead of him. Being born into a rich family, he was not exactly used to packing all by himself. But that day it didn’t matter.