The Reboot

After fifteen years apart, Maya and Arjun bumped into each other at the most unexpected place — a tech conference in Berlin.

She was presenting on AI ethics; he was demoing a blockchain-powered supply chain solution.

Their eyes met across the buzzing expo hall, and for a moment, the future paused to let the past catch up.

“Is that really you?” Arjun asked, smiling like no time had passed.

Maya laughed. “Still trying to save the world with code, huh?”

They ended up skipping the next two talks just to sit on a hallway bench, catching up over overpriced lattes.

She told him about her startup that failed gloriously and her quiet victory in academia.

He spoke of burnout, recovery, and the joy of building slow, meaningful tech.

The more they talked, the more it felt like picking up a sentence that had been paused mid-thought years ago.

That night, they walked through Berlin’s streets, the city lights reflecting off cobblestones like fragments of old memories.

They laughed over how they once fought over semicolon styles and who wrote cleaner code.

At midnight, a light rain started to fall, but neither of them made a move to go inside.

Instead, Arjun reached out, gently brushing a drop from her cheek.

“Some bugs,” he said, “are worth rediscovering.”

Maya rolled her eyes, but her smile betrayed her heart.

The next day, they skipped the conference altogether and took a train to nowhere in particular.

They talked about old dreams, new ones, and maybe starting something — this time, together.

By the end of the weekend, they had a joint GitHub repo and dinner plans for next Thursday.

It wasn’t just a spark.

It was a reboot.