“Two hours, huh?” Lyra murmured calmly as she straightened her jacket sleeve. “That means we don’t have time to panic. So, are you going along with my crazy plan, or do you want to watch your project go up in smoke?”
Ales stared at Lyra without blinking, his throat suddenly dry. “What do you mean, crazy plan, Ra? My main laptop shorted out! Those CAD and SketchUp files are insanely huge. There’s no way a phone can handle opening them!”
“Who said anything about opening them on a phone?” Lyra shot back, exasperated. She strode quickly across the living room toward the dining table. Ales’s open-concept house had no dividing walls, so the dining area and TV lounge flowed right into each other. On the dining table, Ales’s dead laptop lay in defeat, wrapped in a napkin.
Ales’s eyes widened. “You mean... take out the SSD?”
“Yep, genius!” Lyra reached into the crossbody bag slung over her shoulder and pulled out a small transparent plastic case containing a precision screwdriver set, along with a black rectangular object made of aluminum.
Ales frowned at the object. “How do you even have an SSD enclosure, Ra?”
“Did you forget I’m an IT girl?” Lyra said casually. “Sure, my GPA was mediocre in college and I only understood the basics, but I’ve experienced a dead laptop in the middle of working on my thesis. That’s why I always keep an SSD enclosure in my bag, just in case.”
Ales stared at the aluminum piece in Lyra’s hand. As an architect, he understood its function, of course: an external device that could turn a laptop’s internal SSD into a giant, high-speed flash drive.
“I brought my work laptop in my bag,” Lyra continued quickly as she rummaged through it. “The specs are nothing special—it’s a regular laptop, not a heavy-duty design laptop like yours. But if all I need to do is open the 2D CAD drawing, pull up your latest backup, and convert it to a PDF... my laptop can handle that!”
Ales’s heart pounded. His mind, which had been completely blank, suddenly started working again. It was a reckless decision—the still-damp dead laptop could suffer further damage when opened, and revising the design on an ordinary laptop with mediocre specs would mean suffering through endless lag. But at this moment, they had no other option.
“You... really sure about this, Ra?” Ales asked doubtfully, his voice trembling slightly.
Lyra turned around, folded her arms across her chest, and fixed Ales with the sharpest look she had in her arsenal today.
“It’s already past five twenty, Ales. Do you want to stand there thinking about the risks, or do you want to start dissecting your laptop right now?”
Lyra’s statement hit Ales like a slap in the face. Without wasting another second, Ales snatched the precision screwdriver case from her hand. He pulled out a dining chair, positioned his dead laptop in the brightest spot, and began turning the tiny screws on its underside with trembling fingers.
One screw came loose... then two... then three...
“Careful. Go slowly. Don’t let the screwdriver slip and stab the battery,” Lyra whispered from beside him, holding up her phone’s flashlight to illuminate Ales’s work area.
CLICK.
The laptop’s bottom casing finally came off. The savory aroma of baby porridge broth wafted faintly from the components. Luckily, the porridge had only pooled around the cooling fan and the edge of the keyboard, while Ales’s M.2 SSD, positioned in the upper corner, still appeared relatively dry.
Carefully, Ales removed the SSD’s securing screw, pulled out the tiny memory card, and wiped its edges with a dry tissue.
“Put it in here,” Lyra ordered, holding out her aluminum enclosure.
Ales inserted the SSD into the enclosure, secured it tightly, then connected its cable to Lyra’s laptop, which was already powered on atop the table.
The breath-stealing seconds began. A circular loading icon appeared on Lyra’s laptop screen. Ales squeezed his eyes shut and prayed that his SSD hadn’t also burned out from the short circuit earlier that afternoon.
DING!
A new storage window suddenly opened on Lyra’s laptop screen: Drive (D:) - ALES_ARCH.
“IT WORKED!” Lyra cried, barely holding back a shout as she smacked Ales hard on the shoulder.
Ales opened his eyes, and immense relief flooded his chest when he saw all his project folders lined up intact on the screen. But his joy lasted only five seconds before his eyes flicked toward the clock in the lower-right corner: 5:35 p.m. WIB.
They had only eighty-five minutes left.
“Okay, don’t celebrate yet,” Ales cut in quickly, pulling himself together. He immediately took over Lyra’s keyboard. “I have to find the latest automatic backup in the drawing folder. Open Mr. Handoko’s draft revision notes in the email app on my phone and read the points to me one by one!”
“Got it!” Lyra replied promptly, snatching up Ales’s phone.
The gloomy dining area instantly transformed into an emergency command center. Sporadic keyboard clatter, Ales’s rapid-fire instructions, and Lyra’s reading of the revision points echoed back and forth, shattering the late-afternoon silence.
“Point one: move the first-floor bathroom door!” Lyra called quickly from the phone screen.
“Okay, I’ve drawn a new axis line!” Ales called back, dragging the cursor, which was stuttering because Lyra’s laptop was beginning to roar with heat under the strain of running the design software.
“Point two: add a structural column to the backyard terrace!”
In the middle of their tense, minute-by-minute race, the bedroom door suddenly opened slowly. Ion rubbed his bleary eyes and stumbled out of the room, hugging his stuffed toy.
“Papa...” the boy called softly, his voice hoarse in the unmistakable way little kids sounded after waking up.
Ales froze, his eyes still glued to the laptop screen as it loaded, his head feeling more ready to split by the second. But before Ales could panic about dividing his attention, Lyra had already dropped to her knees on the floor and greeted Ion with a warm smile.
“Hey, our little hero is awake!” Lyra whispered gently, kneeling with her arms open.
Ion’s eyes suddenly went wide. His sleepiness vanished the moment he realized his favorite person was standing there. Without wasting any time, his little feet raced toward Lyra, his face bright with joy.
“Auntie Yaya! Ion missed you!” the boy squealed happily, crashing into her and wrapping his arms tightly around her neck.
Lyra laughed brightly and returned Ion’s warm hug while rubbing his head. “You missed Auntie that much? Same here—I missed you a whole lot too!”
As soon as the hug ended, Ion’s eyes locked onto the bright-blue wooden bird whistle on the table. His face grew even more excited, and he stared at the toy without blinking.
“Wow! Boo bird!” Ion cried, his enthusiasm shooting through the roof. His little hand immediately snatched up the toy. “Does it make a sound, Auntie? It’s so cute!”
“It does! But let’s blow it gently on the sofa, okay?” Lyra whispered. “Go play with the blue bird on the sofa for a little while, okay? Papa’s being a superhero and racing against time. It’d be a shame to distract him.”
Ion looked at the wooden bird in his hand, then glanced at his papa, who was watching from the dining table with a touched smile. The joy of holding a new toy and having his favorite auntie there made the boy nod enthusiastically.
“Okay! Ion wants to fly the boo bird on the sofa!” Ion shouted excitedly before toddling toward the living-room sofa. Since there were no dividing walls, Ales could keep an eye on his son while holding the laptop.
Seeing how adorable and happy Ion was, Ales glanced over from the dining table and felt as if he had just received a fresh supply of breath and energy. The weight in his head felt a little lighter.
Ales watched Lyra’s back as she made sure Ion was sitting comfortably on the sofa with his toy, then returned to drop into the seat beside Ales and smack the table hard.
“Focus, Ales! We’ve only got forty minutes left!” Lyra scolded firmly.
Ales smiled faintly, let out a long breath, and turned back to the screen with complete focus. Tonight, surrounded by a frantic deadline and an overheating laptop, Ales realized he wasn’t fighting this battle alone.
6:57 p.m. WIB.
“Ales... we’ve seriously only got three minutes left!” Lyra cried in a low hysterical voice, her eyes fixed on the clock in the corner of the laptop. “Did you hit Send yet?!”
“Wait! The PDF attachment is still uploading. The signal keeps cutting in and out!” Ales shouted back, cold sweat beading at his temples. His index finger pressed the Enter key with the force of someone experiencing an emotional crisis.
Lyra’s laptop screen spun for a moment... and then:
DING! [Message Sent - 6:58 p.m. WIB]
To: Mr. Handoko Subject: Final Revision of Draft Floor Plan & Structural Design - Ales
Silence suddenly flooded the room. Ales immediately collapsed against the back of the dining chair, gasping for breath as if he had just finished a twenty-six-mile marathon. Beside him, Lyra let her head fall onto the table and released an incredibly long sigh of relief.
“I... survived...” Ales murmured faintly, staring at the ceiling.
“I’m the one who saved you, genius,” Lyra rasped, turning her face lazily toward Ales without lifting it from the table. “You’d better treat me to ten servings of martabak telur if this project commission doesn’t come through.”
“Forget ten servings. I’ll buy you the whole cart later,” Ales replied with a weak chuckle.
BRRRT! BRRRT!
A loud sound resembling a badly played trumpet suddenly came from the living-room sofa. Ales and Lyra turned around in unison.
On the sofa, Ion sat cross-legged with his cheeks puffing in and out, blowing into the tail of the blue wooden bird with total concentration. The boy’s face was smeared with traces of martabak telur that had somehow been opened on the coffee table at some point.
“Ion...” Ales said, stunned. “Was that the martabak telur Papa ordered earlier this afternoon?”
Ion stopped blowing and looked at his papa and auntie with wide, innocent eyes. “Yeah! The delivery guy knocked on the door, so Ion got the egg and ate it. It was yummy! Auntie Yaya want some?”
Without a care in the world, Ion held out a piece of the slightly flattened, cold martabak telur with his bare, greasy hand.
Lyra burst out laughing so hard she had to clutch her stomach. “Oh my gosh, you little munchkin! No wonder you’ve been so quiet. You’ve been snacking on martabak by yourself on the sofa!”
Ales could only smack his own forehead, unsure whether to laugh or cry. He stood up, walked over to the sofa, and lifted Ion into his lap.
“Papa’s smart boy, you can shop all by yourself now. But look at those messy hands—oh, man...”
“Here, let Auntie clean you up,” Lyra said, shifting to sit on the carpet beneath the sofa and grabbing a wet wipe from the table. Patiently, she wiped Ion’s mouth and tiny fingers.
Ticklish, Ion deliberately pressed his still-greasy cheek against Lyra’s. “Auntie Yaya smells good, unlike Papa. Papa smells like sweat!”
“HEY!” Ales protested, offended, making Lyra laugh even harder until her eyes narrowed.
“See? You heard him yourself! Even your kid knows enough to admit you stink,” Lyra teased, sticking her tongue out at Ales.
Ales snorted, his eyes narrowing mischievously. “Oh, so we’re ganging up on me now?”
Without warning, Ales leaned forward, wrapping one arm around Ion’s neck and pulling Lyra’s shoulder in with his other long arm. Mercilessly, he squeezed both their heads against his chest, which was genuinely soaked with cold sweat after the deadline chase.
“Get over here, you two! Smell the sweat of a superhero!” Ales crowed triumphantly, deliberately mussing Lyra and Ion’s hair at the same time.
“AAAAH! YOU’RE THE WORST, ALES! FOR GOD’S SAKE, LET GO!” Lyra shrieked hysterically through her laughter, struggling to break free, but Ales’s hold was too tight. Her face twisted in disgust as her nose was pushed closer and closer to Ales’s sweat-soaked shirt.
“PAPA STINKS! AUNTIE YAYA, HELP ION!” Ion screamed gleefully, his little hand still clutching the wooden bird as he smacked Ales’s arm and laughed until his eyes watered.
“No helping each other! This is punishment for anyone who dares insult Papa!” Ales hugged them even tighter, forgetting about the fingers that had cramped during his marathon typing session.
The living room, which had been as tense as a battlefield, suddenly erupted in the uproarious laughter and excited screams of the three of them. After several seconds of pushing and laughing freely, Ales finally released them, panting heavily.
Lyra immediately fixed her hair, which looked like a bird’s nest, and laughed at Ales while breathing hard. Her face was slightly flushed, but she quickly hid her embarrassment by throwing a sofa cushion straight at Ales’s face.
“You’re seriously the worst, Ales!” Lyra grumbled, pretending to be angry even though she couldn’t stop smiling.
Ales caught the cushion easily, wiped his face, then looked back and forth between Lyra and Ion. In the warm living room, amid the scent of cold martabak telur and the lingering echoes of laughter, his overwhelming exhaustion from the day’s disasters suddenly vanished.
NOTE! *CAD & SketchUp: Applications used to draw draft floor plans and building designs. *M.2 SSD & Enclosure: Devices used to turn the memory from a dead laptop into an emergency flash drive.