He'sStory - Episode 2

All of a sudden Shereen was feeling dehydrated when she reached her workstation. She just tossed the bouquet of roses on top of the floor's pigeon holes and headed straight to the pantry. Raymond, her boss was at the photocopy machine, and noticed her.

'You look worried, are you okay Shereen?' he asked, a little concerned. Shereen almost jumped to his voice.

'Oh, nothing. I'm okay. I'm fine. Don't worry about me,' she answered, although unsure with her own words. She had to admit, she was feeling a little scared then. There were missing pieces of the unsolved puzzle and they must be scattered somewhere. If only she could think of the best place to start searching for them.

'Did I own a diary or journal Raymond? I mean, before the accident?' that question suddenly came and she thought perhaps Raymond would be the best person to know of most of her tasks and activities, if not her social life before this.

'No, I don't recall seeing you carry any,' Raymond rubbed his cleanly shaven chin.

'An organizer or at least a little black note book?' Shereen was still hoping she kept one of those. At least she would get some answers, although she couldn't figure out just yet what were the things she wanted to know.

'No, you had that faithful Blackberry of yours and I remembered you said that it was your ultimate companion at work,' Raymond smiled, finding his own statement funny.

'Oh yeah! Now I remember. That Blackberry... Oh no... My sister told me that it was smashed and beyond repair. It went under the car wheels and once it sped off, my Blackberry was history,' Shereen leaned on the pantry door, as waves of frustrations swept through her tired mind.

'Don't worry, you can raise a purchase request and I'll approve it. You need that toy for your daily tasks. I'm sure we still have budget for that. You can see the IT department guys if you need to restore any of your light databases,' Raymond suggested. Shereen looked at him and thought she should act right away, she must retrieve those information. But, what specific information she's looking for, she was not sure.

'So, is that temporary PC okay with you?' Raymond asked, regarding the PC she was currently using.'I hope the smaller RAM is not affecting your day-to-day works,' he added.

'This thing is temporary? What have I been using before this?' suddenly Shereen understood why the PC was so 'clean' and 'blank'. She could only use if for corporate portal, email and calendering. She also found it funny opening an almost empty mailbox when she reported back to work. The only explanation to that was she was such an organized executive, that performed mail housekeeping until the utilization meter said 1% usage. However, that just didn't feel right. When she searched for her mail archive from the server, there wasn't any. What kind of executive was I? She kept on questioning herself.

'I think you've forgotten about your laptop. The motherboard crashed a few days before you had that accident, we've sent it to IT department for repair. Perhaps you can check with them whether they managed to get the parts. If it's ready you can always use it back,' Raymond explained.

In almost an instant Shereen found herself almost running towards the lift.

'Thank you Raymond. You just reminded me a lot of things!' she shouted while pushing the lift button. She was going up 2 floors, going straight to the IT department service centre and she was going to get her laptop back - together with some missing pieces of her history. What could they be? She was almost too afraid to continue thinking about it. Now, her mind was focused on her laptop while she silently prayed, 'Please... let the archived mails still in there.'

She knocked softly on the service center room's glass door. A bespectacled man with crew cut hair appeared from behind a stack of computer monitor boxes.

'How may I help you Shereen?' she noticed the courteousness which was almost non-existance a few months ago. The guy must be new, she thought.

'I was wondering whether my laptop is ready, you know.... the one which motherboard crashed not too long ago,' she knew she sounded desperate but the IT guy just smiled and noded.

'Were you using an HP or SONY?' he asked while stepping on a small stool to reach for his log book that was placed on the top shelf. It should have been recorded in the system but somehow service center guys always found their manual log book handy, all of the time.

'It's a SONY. Don't ask me the model because I don't remember it. By right there is a sticker bearing my corporate ID and the laptop serial number on it,' Shereen explained. The IT guy noded again while checking the entries in the log book.

'Hmmmm... you've sent it months ago. Let me check first,' he flipped the pages while whistling some unknown tunes to Shereen's ears. Then he finally said, 'Yeah, you're in luck Shereen. The part arrived two weeks ago. We've installed and tested it. It's ready for collection and I tell you it's now as good as new,' he closed the log book, a proud expression on his face.

'Erm... I don't want it to be like new. I want it as it was. The old stuffs should be there. They're all there, aren't they?' she had to fight the urge to tug on the IT guy's white shirt. The guy had no idea how important the old stuffs were to her.

'Don't worry Shereen, your data has been preserved. We only replaced the motherboard and reinstalled the O.S. Your old data is still in the backup drive,' again, the IT guy was feeling proud to deliver the great relieving news to Shereen.

'Oh, thank you, thank you, thank you....,' perhaps that was the happiest moment of the day. 'May I have the laptop now?' she just had to have it right there and then. The IT guy, courteous as before drew a laptop case from one of the opened cabinets.

'Here you go Shereen. Sign this form and you can start using this baby again right away,' he handed her the service completion form. She grabbed it and hastily signed at the bottom before reaching for her laptop case.



If the laptop booting up process took 2 minutes, then 2 minutes seemed like a life time for Shereen. Thank god, the password has been reset to none. She straight away browsed for the one and only folder she had been having in mind ever since 20 minutes ago - Mail-Archive-2006.

She held her breath as her eyes scanned through the subfolders:

January06-week1-4
February06-week1-4
March06-week1-4
April06-week1-4
May06-week1-4
July06-week1

She looked again, harder this time and then she gave a silent cry, 'Where is the mail archive for June 2006?' She leaned backwards, lifted both arms to cover her face giving an act like a boy who just found his long lost robot toy, but with the head missing. Just as she thought she'd find some lead to what had been happening to her before the accident, just a few weeks before July, and relate that to the roses she had been receiving from a mysterious sender, the proofs just vanished into thin air. And again, she found herself buried deeper in the complexity of her own confusion.

---- To be continued ----