Tales for Forever

The developer walked hurriedly towards the conference room, his coffee hand outstretched half way away from his nicely ironed shirt and blue patterned tie, held down by his ID card hanging on his neck. He was late for the morning daily scrum meeting, he thought again as he approached the conference room. He opened the door ever so quietly, stepping into the navy blue square patterned carpet of the conference room. Still twenty or so eyes at the back of the room turned towards him. They seemed to be waiting for a distraction to show up. In front of the crowd of twenty odd people in the room, a person's face projected on the wall spoke in a monotonous voice. He read out the modules' names and their daily status on the work remaining.  Behind him were a bunch of impatient faces, impatient to leave for the day. They constantly shook their heads, as their team lead gave commitments on their behalf on meeting the deadline for code freeze the coming Friday, stealing looks at their...

The old man struggled to connect the camera on top of the laptop. His shaking hands did not help either. Like him, his laptop was old, and pre dated the time when cameras started coming inbuilt into the Bezel of the laptop screen. He clicked on the video icon on the application that had been on on his laptop since past thirty minutes, keeping another eye cautiously on the webcam that precariously hung at the top of the laptop. He watched anxiously as the Skype call rang for a few minutes. Finally, he could see his grand son smile sheepishly from the other end. Smiling, the young boy said "Morning grandpa, what time is it for you there? ". Grandpa smiled back. The past half hour had been worth it. He could face another day of life.