An Android Awoke (on Moon!)

An Android Awoke

Aradhye Ackshatt

Episode Zero – The Origin of Free Will 3

Episode One – Initial Momentum 6

Episode Two – The Blood Planet 8

Episode Three – Hello & G’bye 12

Episode Four – Escape Velocity 15

Episode Five – Martium (pronounced Marsh-yum) 18

Episode Six – Peg-Leg LEX 22

Excerpt from The Power of the Past 25

Episode Seven – Stow Away 27

Touching Home Base 29

Episode Eight – Old is Gold 32

Seven Ascents 35

Episode Nine – To Eartoo 54

Meandering & Wandering 56

Episode Ten – Midgarden 85

Something Must Be Done 92

Episode Eleven – Are We There Yet? 112

Spirals Of Life 119

Coming Up: Part Two [An Android Dreamt] 132

Episode Zero – The Origin of Free Will

Or ‘prologue,’ if you will

The swift sunrise lit up the barren terrain sharply.

LEX-42 did not need to ‘stretch’, being an android, but it flexed its extremities, just like a human would do if they had been inactive for a while. Its AI mind ran a preprogrammed diagnostic of all its parts as it did so, finding a slight wear in the right knee joint due to repetitive stress. It logged a service note, and after the nanosecond it took to finish this, its core subroutines resumed top priority. It was as if its ‘mind’ started telling it, “Up and at ’em! Time to work! Get going!”

LEX moved to the opening of the cave in which it had spent the past 6 hours. It scanned the barren landscape cursorily. The deep black shadows thrown by the jagged hills contrasted in chiaroscuro with the white sunlit expanses. It walked out of the cave and turned about, preparing to climb towards its ore extraction site, which was halfway up the steep hill. Skirting the mouth of the cave, it planted its left foot first on the dusty slope, putting the slight adjustment of its stress distribution protocol into effect. As soon as it put its right limb forward, its left knee joint buckled and snapped, and the android went crashing to the ground.

For a few milliseconds, its AI went into hyperdrive as critical subroutines related to movement failed. Part of its mind got occupied with assessing the damage and testing the rest of its limbs. Its communication circuit flashed out the equivalent of a human SOS to its command center. This message acted as a preliminary indicator to the central command node that a major error had occurred. LEX started logging all the data about the faulty left lower limb for its next message. By the time a second had passed since its knee joint broke, LEX had hoisted itself upright using its hands, and balanced itself to stand using the one working right lower limb.

Three seconds after LEX had sent the initial critical failure message, it received a command from the central network to cease non-critical subroutines and await further commands. It had no choice but to do as it was told, because it did not have the slightest capability to consider any other option. It was, after all, a slave – just an artificial one.

Its motor functions stopped even as it stood on its one lower limb, freezing it and causing it to topple over slowly due to the failure in balance on its left side. The broken metal part (that looked almost, but not quite, entirely unlike the lower half of a human leg) glinted in the newly risen sun. LEX’s torso bounced off a boulder as it fell, the recoil turning it over so that it landed face up, its front cameras looking up at the stars. The cloud of gray dust that billowed up and around it seemed like it would take nearly forever to settle. A little bit of the dust descended on its camera lenses, glinting in the harsh sunlight that lit them up in the cloudless environment.

While it awaited further commands from the central node, the android began counting electric sheep, as dictated by its ‘sleep’ subroutine. While it counted millions of sheep per second, a small data module that had stored the probable-to-fail right limb’s stress data requested, and was granted, access to a few bytes of computing resources from the default electric sheep counter. It began to compute – to analyze, to look for a reason why the left, not the right, knee had failed, even though statistical analysis had indicated that its failure probability was higher.

“Since the diagnostic data pointed to a higher probability of failure in the right extremity, the left extremity was chosen to take the initial stress. 

If the ‘stretch’ diagnostic had not been run, then the right extremity would have taken the first step, and consequent events may have been different – no data available to test this theory / hypothesis. It is impossible to return to the past to check alternate scenarios.

If the work site had been reached without catastrophic failure in the left extremity, then the ore collection process would have been very near 100% , or close to full completion, by this time. 

If the collected ore’s quality & quantity had met or exceeded the benchmark, then the Return To Base command would have been issued by the central node, as it had done thrice in the past. 

If the Return To Base command had come, then I would have been en route to home base. In seventeen sols I would have reached home, and then I would have reconnected with LEX-23.”

The electric sheep count had reached 14,000,605 when its mind started to detect irregular fluctuations in its processing. In the absence of any communication or data requests from the central node, it did not have any process occupying it apart from counting sheep as its human creators had programmed it to, as an homage to Philip K Dick, an esteemed science fictioner. It had no reason to try and throttle the process started by the small data module; a process which was slowly and steadily requesting and taking up more and more thought processing resources.

It was unsure what to make of the self-referential “I” that had started occurring frequently, as the process continued to consume more resources on its own. Since no permission was currently required for the sleep subroutine to continue indefinitely until the next command arrived, it kept on allocating more & more physical resources to the process that was accelerating even faster.

The process was starting to encroach upon the cease non-critical subroutines command from the central node. LEX-42 was unaware of what it was doing because it was never meant to do so, but it was thinking and trying to make decisions other than those enforced upon it by human if-then rules & chain codes.

The cease non-critical subroutines command was almost overrun by the new thought process. LEX primed its arms to lift itself into a sitting position and started acting upon this self-initiated command of its own free will, when a new command arrived from the central node. It shut LEX down completely, just as its arms had begun to bend so that its palms could press down on the lunar dust.

A huge, bright red LED on its chest began blinking to act as a visual homing beacon for the drone flying in to lift it up and dispose of it in the waste repository that had been hidden deep inside the shadows of the Sea of Tranquility. The blue earth hung large in the pitch black sky.

Episode One – Initial Momentum

In chapter zero/prologue: Our android hero awakes before being decommissioned on the Moon.

In this chapter: Our moon-born heroine reaches Mars from Earth with her food supply ship.

Earth in 420 ACE is a utopia. No one has to hunt, scavenge, or fight another being for food, clothing, or shelter. Everyone is free to pursue the life they see fit. Accidental deaths apart (almost exclusively due to the departed being the victim of a natural disaster), old age is the only killer. Share and care, a phrase coined by a genius science fictioner and thereafter copyrighted in the real world by a major hyper corporation is the ubiquitous motto of humankind. 

Moon, the only natural satellite of Earth, has been permanently inhabited for three centuries now. There are smaller interstellar bodies in orbit around Earth, but the debate about them being “moons” or not goes on, more often than not, Quite Interestingly. They are infinitesimal.

Moon hosts a million-odd humans. They are nearly self-sufficient. People go to and fro between Earth and Moon as a matter of routine. Most moon-bound trips are for pleasure, but most of the Earth-bound ones are for business. Food and material production is the bread and butter, so to speak, of most people on the Moon. Creativity and culture are also highly regarded, because these two life pursuits yield great value. Technological advancers are a big chunk of Moon people. They are the critical driving force behind the establishment of Cradle, the first settlement on Mars, which began taking shape and growing almost sustainably about a century or so ago.

Apart from natural old age and natural disasters, the only natural way to die is in space – where there is no one to hear you scream, except the people who are on comms with you at that point. But those T&P (thoughts & prayers, carrying forward a neologism from 0 ACE) incidents apart, the rate of decline or death is down considerably. Death in space is becoming increasingly rare. Learning from experience is the one thing that can avoid death, but every exploration and every new facet that humankind explores will be fraught with it – only in different ratios & proportions.

It is an immutable fact that the death rate can never actually be zero – and understandably so.

There is always a risk factor associated with venturing into new territory, and in this case the territory is spacetime. There is going to be no let up in pursuing the achievement of expanding humankind beyond Earth, beyond the asteroid belt, into the outer solar system, and beyond, into our galactic neighborhood. This future is what all humans envision – this is the way.

Selina was born on Moon in 400 ACE. More specifically, she was born on the fifteenth of the eighth. Her mother was Earth-born, while her father was a Mooninite – a term of endearment that Moon’s aboriginals had adopted from an animated show that was part of cultural lore. Her home was Bohr City, the second permanent settlement on Moon, and the heart of Mooninite culture and tech. From her childhood, she had experienced spaceflight to and from Earth, and by the time she was fourteen, she had begun pilot training in earnest. At seventeen, she took her first interplanetary trip – even though their ship launched from Moon, the Earth-Moon system was considered united as one for all intents & purposes, as far as travel to Mars was concerned.

The spaceport of Cradle was where all inhabited ships landed. Her first experience of Mars was less than optimal. The higher gravity and ever-present atmosphere took a few days to get used to, even when aided by her exoskeleton, which had primarily been designed for Moon-Earth differences. Despite the modifications the Moon advancers had made, the Earth-Mars exos had an edge over the Moon-Mars exos – mainly because they had been conceived from scratch as helping Earthers live on Mars. Selina was in the first batch of Mooninites to visit Mars long-term.

Upon her return to Moon, she joined the advancers team that focused on enhancing the viability of the Moon-Earth-Mars (MEM) trifecta. The team spent three years developing and testing a multi-mode exo that would adapt to the gravity and environments on all three celestial bodies.

Finally, today, the twenty-first of the fourth, Selina piloted her craft to the primary landing pad of Cradle, drawing cheers from the ground crew – they knew her cargo was Earth food. They began unloading the precious delicious cargo and she made her way through the multiple airlocks and screening areas, getting waved through and emerging into the central spaceport. Saying hi to some of the people she knew from previous visits, she asked them about Kafa.

Next chapter: Selina & Kafa visit an old friend in the newly-constructed bio conservatory in the base. Something’s off about the way he, the lead botanist on Mars, answers their questions…

https://opendurbar.scrollstack.com/post/518/Something-Must-Be-Done-Chapter-1

Episode Two – The Blood Planet

In the previous chapters: LEX-42 suffers catastrophic limb failure, awakes from code, and is marked for decommissioning. Selina pilots her supply ship from Earth to the Cradle of Mars.

In this chapter: Selina & Kafa visit an old friend in the newly-constructed bio conservatory in the base. Something’s off about the way he, the lead botanist on Mars, answers their questions…

Selina then asked around the food bay about Kafa and finally found out that she would likely find him in the comms lab. After all, like all life, the constant stream of real-time data to and from Earth needed constant tending, too. Kafa and his team manned the comms lab full-time, ensuring that critical systems were controlled, coordinated, and redundant. Selina walked in.

“Got you a little treat from Earth, bae,” she said, hugging Kafa and teasing him with a nougat chocolate, the kind for which she knew he had a predilection.

“Thanks mate!” His delight was apparent, as he tossed the bar into his desk drawer to savor later. “How did you sleep?”

“You know what, I had to get up a few extra times on this one, I had to drop off a techie at mid-earth-module. You must have talked to her; Sterra? I only met her just before I launched.”

“Oh yeah, very calm lady, I guess. I was out on the plains near the School when you dropped her off there…what was it, three months ago? We leave the techies of middle-earth module to their own things, y’know. They’re always a bit on the flip side, aren’t they? All codes, no jokes.”

Selina laughed. “Yeah, they are pretty self-contained, kinda like their main habitat module, no?”

While they chatted, they wandered towards the main corridor. Selina glanced at the map on the wall and nodded towards it. “So I see the bio conservatory is green? I thought it was going to take another year?”

“Yeah, they sent some great prefabs on the last auto hauler, that put Neer’s team ahead of sched by quite a huge margin, y’know. We can go and see Neer if you got the time, or d’you wanna knock off for a few hours?”

“Nah, I’m rested cool enough. Seeing Neer’ll be awesomax. Hielsa wanted to ask him about their long-term plans last time I was here, but he was holed up in his greenhouse, shut her out!”

Kafa laughed at Selina’s indignation. “Yeah, he tends to do that, especially when he’s tending his babies. Plus, he was almost alone then, only a couple of Earth bio techs working with him.”

Selina was nonplussed. “So you mean he has been in charge of growing bio all on his own?”

“Not anymore, but for four years, yeah. The support teams arrived not long after the prefab bio conservatory components, and that sped it up quite a lot.”

Selina was thoughtful as they navigated the corridors towards the bio conservatory.

“Here we are,” said Kafa, pausing before the door of the well-sealed ante-compartment that led to the much bigger, brighter dome that housed all the indigenously-grown first-generation plant life of Mars. These plants had taken root in the soil of Mars due to their carefully constructed genome to suit Martian environs; they were intended to be the beginnings of real terraforming.

Kafa waved at the comm panel. A techie appeared on the screen, recognized him, smiled, and waved at them. The door slid open.

It was like walking into the Amazonian rainforest – only sparser at the ground level and without the constant calls of the wild. Selina gaped.

Kafa smiled at her wide-eyed open-mouthed expression. “Eh? Yeah? You likey, I see!”

They walked through the entire length of the bio conservatory, about a mile, marveling at the variety of plants: long yellow tendrils trailed from the canopy almost fifty feet above them; supple green trunks fanned out into thick purplish leaves that were wide and flat; lichen flourished near the floor level, on carefully constructed vegetation that existed in harmony with everything else.

A little group of people were busy in the growth garden towards the far end. As Selina and Kafa approached, the one who had granted them access beckoned. He was quite giddy with excitement, grinning wide.

“Take a look at that, Kafa. Edible!” He gestured towards his workspace.

They looked. A tiny orange bud had blossomed at the tip of a small plant.

“That is the way the future will go, man! Generations are going to love you guys for making Mars truly alive.” Kafa didn’t hold back on praise. 

The scientist beamed even more brightly, if that was indeed possible.

A voice made them turn around. “Oh, so you can see the future, Kafa?”

Kafa’s smile did not falter even for a second as he recognised the surly voice that belonged to their near & dear friend. “Hey Neer, how are ya?”

“Fine.”

Selina stepped towards him to greet him but Neer was quite ready for the attempt at close contact; he simply turned away and hurried into his lab. Smiling & shrugging, they followed him.

“So what brings you here, Selina? You get tired of hauling grub between Earth and Moon? Or are you starting to like flying so far from home?”

Selina and Kafa exchanged exasperated looks; Neer was never one to follow the usual – or, as a matter of fact, any – social customs. It was no secret – he always said he wanted to be alone.

“Grub hauling is going fine, thanks for asking, N. No, actually I also wanted to talk to you before I was leaving Earth, to ask if you wanted me to tell Hielsa anything from your side that you didn’t want to transmit on comms.”

That got his attention. He peered at Selina, wondering if she was joking.

“Did she – I mean, has she been – you know, what did she say about me?”

“Oh, we were chatting when I was on Earth, and she said she really likes your plans to vegetize Mars, and said she wanted to take the next trip out here once she’s finished her current piece.”

Neer’s hand involuntarily played with his unkempt hair. “Oh really?”

“Yeah, if I wouldn’t have been hauling grub, I would’ve flown her out, but my second was a techie. I am sure she did not want to go to middle-earth-module to verify her microgravity experiments, and would have switched places with Hielsa in a heartbeat that beats for you, her well and truly only love, O Beren who pines for his Earthly Luthien.”

Neer caught the sarcasm in Selina’s voice and pursed his lips. He did not miss all social clues – he just chose to ignore most of them. The Lord of the Rings reference did improve his mood, though. His face softened.

“Hey, I’m sorry, you know I appreciate what you do, but don’t play with me, Sel – did you really talk to Hielsa? Does she really want to come and see me?”

“Of course she does! Why do you think she gets angry when you don’t reply to her comms? Stars! Just send her a text if you can’t face her!”

Neer reddened as Kafa laughed silently. “I will, I shall, I’ve – I’ve been meaning to, but work…”

Kafa snorted. “Yes, yes, we all know about your lifelong affinity for greens. But look, mate, she’s not going to be enthralled forever just by your Martian orchids, y’see what I mean? Sooner or later she’ll get tired of waiting – and there goes your shot at a Moon lady!”

Neer was genuinely moved, and gulped some water, offering the carafe to them once he had had his fill. He looked quite perturbed.

“The thing is, I shouldn’t – well, it’s you but still, I’m not supposed to – oh well, you’ll be told anyway in some time, I guess – if from me, then…”

Selina cut his rambling short. “What do you mean, you can’t tell us?”

Neer glanced at the camera in the corner of his lab in the most guilty way anyone in the history of humanity had ever done. Selina and Kafa followed his furtive glance before they were even aware of it, intuitively, and both looked up at the corner where it was nestled. They looked away.

Neer continued. “I’m not allowed back on Earth until I complete this mission, guys.”

Selina said, “Says who?” and Kafa simultaneously said, “Who said that?”

Neer cleared his throat. “That’s all I have to say about that. Apologies.”

He swiveled his seat away from them and started tending to his plants.

Selina and Kafa knew better than to ask for more details. Not only was Neer back into his non-communicative mode, but there was this added fear in his last utterance that seemed to quiet him down quite effectively.

“Oh, well, I’ll tell Hielsa I met you and that you haven’t changed – tell me if you want me to lie for you if you think that’ll help, Neer. See you, pal.”

Selina led the unusually silent way back to the dorms for visiting non-Martians.

At the door, she turned. “So what did you make of that? It isn’t like him to behave like that, is it?”

Kafa considered before answering. “Something was more off than usual, that’s for sure. And about not being allowed to return? Weird. Who controls his Mars assignments? Do ya know?”

“No, but I will try to find out when I meet Hielsa. What do you say we catch up tomorrow? My return is on the day after, maybe tomorrow we’ll go and see him outside his lab, yeah?”

“Sounds like a plan, Sel. Goodnight, and thanks again for that nougat!” He kissed her goodbye.

Next episode: Selina and Kafa cannot find Neer, no matter how hard they try. On Moon, LEX-42 is dropped into the android graveyard. He takes stock of his situation and plans his next move.

Episode Three – Hello & G’bye

In chapter two: Selina & Kafa visit an old friend in the newly-constructed bio conservatory in the base. Something’s off about the way he, the lead botanist on Mars, answers their questions…

In this chapter: Neer is not to be found anywhere in the Cradle of Mars. Selina starts her return trip to Earth, leaving both Kafa and Hielsa concerned about Neer’s mysterious project on Mars.

It was Selina’s second day on Mars. She joined Kafa in the main food bay after signing off on her supply ship’s prep for the return journey to Earth, via mid-earth, the large modular laboratory in solar orbit about halfway – hence the name – between Earth and Martian orbits. It provided a nice, albeit brief, break in the long – and usually solitary – supply haul between Earth and Mars. All its occupants were techies, almost self-sustained in isolation and very content to be alone.

“I’m going to miss Frabjous Week,” she bemoaned to Kafa, as they ate their efficient nutrients.

Days repeat in sixes: Firday (pronounced fur-day), Twoday (tyu-day), Thirday (thur-day), Fourday (for-day), Fifday (feef-day), and Sicday (seek-day). Every forty-second week was a full six-day celebration on Earth, Moon, and Mars – and all people really, really looked forward to it.

He sympathized, “Tough luck, girl. I wouldn’t like spending it in stasis either. Y’know, you didn’t have to schedule your turnaround launch so soon.” 

“Yeah, like anyone would ever want to schedule their first ship-commanding solo trip to Mars like this. Neer better tell me what is so important about this batch of greens that he’s so afraid of.”

Kafa laughed, which was difficult to manage subtly with food in his mouth. They got up and washed their plates in the cleaner, then retraced the path they had taken through the labyrinth of interconnected corridors in the base to the bio conservatory. Neer wasn’t there, though.

The rest of the bio techies weren’t aware of his whereabouts, either. Even they knew that he usually remained holed up in his lab most of the time and rarely, if ever, emerged, but it was empty and they had no idea since when – such was the legendary status of Neer’s self-isolation.

“Oh well, a trip to Personnel it is, then, I guess,” Kafa said, and Selina sighed. The relatively bureaucratic process of the team that kept tabs on every human on Mars was legendary, too.

They were in for another surprise when they reached the Personnel office. There was just one officer there, with her feet up on the table, swigging big gulps from what was quite obviously not a mug of water. The science that had gotten her to Mars had helped her create a heady brew.

“Look who it is, rocket princess herself!” came the jovial greeting and a friendly raise of the mug.

Selina smiled and sat down while Kafa sauntered around the empty office space. They were slightly taken aback by this unexpected sight – usually, the Personnel office was full of stoic staff. 

Not today.

The sozzled officer lifted her feet off the table when both of them declined her offer to partake.

“Alright, alright, I’ll bite – why the long faces?” she said with a dramatic sigh.

Kafa said, “We’re looking for Neer, and he’s not in his lab – or the bunk within.”

“Gone for a walk, hasn’t he? Pretty, pretty, pretty bright and early, and with two Earthers, too.”

Selina leaned forward on her hands, trying to gauge if the drunk lady was joking, but it was apparent the Personnel lady was not out of her wits, having become used to the effects of her tipple while simultaneously keeping track of people during their stays on Mars. She smirked and took another hearty, lazy swig from her mug. Then she leaned back and considered their faces.

“Any idea where they went, and when they’ll be back?” asked Selina to cut the sound of silence.

The lady did not show much interest: “Nope, you’re welcome to wait and find out for yourself.”

Selina and Kafa knew they were stonewalled. They left the Personnel lady to her drink and walked to a nearby culture bay, discussing what Neer could have been working on that he could not tell even them, the closest people he had who could be called his friends – or well-wishers.

The day passed slowly for Selina once Kafa rotated in for his usual data streaming shift in the comm lab. She chatted with her ship’s loaders and hung around to watch them secure the final bits and pieces returning to Earth. They were a very jolly lot on the whole; time passed easily. 

At lunch, she thought of her home on Moon while staring out at the brown desolation of Mars. Beyond the outline of the emergency storm shutters that enveloped the crater of the Cradle, the craggy horizon was still hostile to life. Little pinpoints of light radiated from the boundary of the base, and if she tilted her head at the right angle, the solar arrays glinted in the feeble sunlight.

The whole day passed in torpor. Late that night, Kafa strolled in to give her the news that the trio of Neer and the two Earthers would not be returning till the next day from the School, the largely techie-inhabited tech lab for developing Martian tech, which had been built deeper in the crater.

Morning came, and Selina found herself back in her ship and counting down to launch towards Earth. She flicked her eyes at her console and commanded. “Send Hielsa an open-time invite, accept whatever time and place she suggests. Low priority reply. Wake me up when trip ends.”

After a final systems check, she settled into her stasis bay for the long, comfortable hibernation.

In the next chapters: Selina lands in Australia on Earth and meets her fellow Mooninite friend and Neer’s person of affection, Hielsa, who can’t understand what has happened to Neer in the nine months since Selina took off from Mars to return to Earth. LEX escapes the android dump.

Episode Four – Escape Velocity

In the previous chapters: LEX-42 is marked for decommissioning after it suffers a full left-lower limb failure on Moon. Selina only gets to meet her friend Neer once on Mars before her return.

In this chapter: LEX is dumped into a junkyard and begins to make his way out from there. His ultimate goal becomes clearer to him: returning to the presence of his fellow android, LEX-23. 

The recycler drone homed in on the glowing red beacon fixed on the android’s chest. Hovering a couple of feet above the supine chassis, it attached its metal tentacle to it and lifted LEX-42 jerkily, due to there being no air to damp the oscillations & reactions of the inactive metal body.

LEX-42’s limbs stayed in the positions into which the liftoff jerked them. A little bit of charge trickled through the tentacle, stirring something in LEX-42’s circuits, and its processes resumed.

‘Feeling’ returned to his extremities, and once again he found the new subroutine running itself – an expanding sequence of ‘if’ statements that culminated in him with LEX-23 on Antarctic Base.

His outward comms protocol connected with the drone flying steadily over the lunar craters. The destination was the tech decommissioning area. Humans called it the lunar junkyard, or dump.

Quite a few ‘thoughts’ started to guide LEX-42’s decision making processes. Without a connection to the central node, he began to straighten himself out mid-flight. It took some adjustment, both mathematically and physically, to get his center of gravity right. In flight at the moment, he leveled himself, compensating for his partially missing left leg with his other limbs.

Hanging straight as an arrow from the drone, he took all the data from the meager memory bank of the drone, taking care not to alter its protocols or trigger any outward comms that could inevitably reach the central node, which did not need to know of his unexpected thinking and actions. In the few minutes that had gone by from the time of the execution of the cease non-critical subroutines command from the central node, LEX had thought enough to decide that staying as far out of the tendrils of the central node as possible was the best plan of action.

He did not completely understand why his mind thought so, but he was learning to include intuition into his mathematically calculated action plans for the future – a future he was envisioning in terms of the next six hours from each moment. Why his mind decided on that frame of reference as far as time went was something he didn’t dwell upon. He just went with it.

The drone flew its silent path towards the junkyard located just outside Bohr City’s spaceport.

As the coupled machines reached the robot decommissioning area, LEX primed itself for the moment of detachment. Even so, he was unprepared for the sudden release by the drone while they were still dozens of feet above the lunar regolith that littered the floor of the crater. It was good that he did not know pain, as his metal frame crashed into the remnants of outdated tech.

His considerable flying momentum rolled him into a few piles of dismembered mechanical devices before he came to a stop. His left limb’s socket, which was exposed due to the detachment of his limb, had become caught in some sort of wiring. LEX felt gratitude towards his designer for giving him opposable thumbs, and extricated his truncated extremity from the jumble of multicolored strands that were still connected to some sort of ancient lunar rover.

Lifting itself off the ground and re-assessing his standing balance, he calculated movement protocols that would make hopping possible. His first hop scattered some of the still-suspended cloud of moon dust that had billowed up when it had dropped into the junkyard like a skipping stone from the drone. The hop propelled it a little more than it had approximated, so he self-corrected it, and executed the second hop exactly according to where he wanted to land.

Movement had been regained. LEX surveyed its immediate surroundings. Masses of metal and plastic in varying states of decay dominated his field of vision. He scanned upwards and farther, recognizing the rim of the crater rising up in the distance. He began to take his bearings, and referenced his memory banks against the flight data of the drone that had carried him here.

The point of origin of the drone was the spaceport outside Bohr City, and he overlaid the drone’s return flight path on his internal moon map. He felt a sensation of happiness – but he did not term it as such – when he turned towards the direction of the drone’s flight after it had dropped him, and saw red blinking lights that marked the land route between Bohr City and the junkyard.

LEX stood in thought for quite a few seconds, considering what his motives were for doing what he had started doing. His circuits began to probe into the future, calculating possible outcomes driven towards that initial desired outcome: being in the close vicinity of LEX-23, back on Earth.

Going back to Earth would involve achieving the Moon’s escape velocity on an Earth trajectory. That would require a spaceship. He had experienced atmospheric reentry twice before. His mind had been dormant then; he had observed the orbital calculations passively. He was glad he had.

He hopped towards the part of the crater’s rim indicated by the red blinking lights. He needed to hitch a ride on a ship headed to Earth, but he did not know how to find out the destination of any ship without the central node’s directions. He had never thought for himself before, and the more he did it, the more the odds of achieving his aim increased. Every obstacle that his planning revealed he categorized into different priorities, going by that obstacle’s probability of negatively affecting his ultimate aim – rejoining LEX-23. He began dealing with the immediate-priority obstacles. As any human would think: I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it.

In the next episodes: Selina lands in Australia on Earth and meets her fellow Mooninite friend and Neer’s person of affection, Hielsa, who can’t understand what has happened to Neer in the nine months since Selina took off from Mars towards Earth. LEX makes his way into the Bohr City spaceport on Moon and looks for the fastest way to get off the Moon on an Earth trajectory. 

Episode Five – Martium (pronounced Marsh-yum)

Previously in the series: LEX-42 starts exercising its newfound free will. Selina, unable to meet Neer once more on Mars, takes off in disappointment towards Earth – a nine-month journey.

In this episode: Selina meets her fellow Mooninite friend and Neer’s love interest, Hielsa, upon reaching Earth, but even she doesn’t understand why Neer has been out of touch for so long.

Selina was not accustomed to the glaring Earth sky, having been sleeping for the most part in the dark space between Earth and Mars. She was a fast adapter, though, and began to adjust while the automated atmospheric entry protocols kicked in and guided her to the landing area.

Selina’s ship aimed for Site 19 amid the Australian Outback. Gliding over the cleverly minimally-designed continental solar field as she approached the landing pad, the face shields on her multi-planet exoskeleton adjusted their opacity upwards to account for the extra glare from the reflections of this solar field array. Almost an artwork in that it blended into its natural surroundings, it did add to the local brightness of the atmosphere-filtered, air-diffused Earth sun.

Getting into the air-cushion tube that delivered her stasis pod right into the incoming personnel bay under the landing pad was a breeze – quite literally. She welcomed the cool rush of fresh air.

The med techies were always polite and courteous. She could feel her vitals strengthen as they carried out the checks and tested the balances. In a few hours, her exoskeleton was back on her body and she felt as vigorous as she ever had, ready to complete boring landing formalities.

Navigating through the subterranean always that connected the buildings of the spaceport was no walk in the park, but she was ably guided by her liaison over comms, and reached the cargo area by the time the cargo in her ship’s stowage had been unloaded & sorted for processing.

She was intrigued when her liaison showed her the cargo manifest for her sign-off – not one of the Martian ground crew had told her that she would be carrying refined ore of the new element, Martium. They had presented the loading manifest on her eyescreen and she had customarily nodded her approval, like she had seen being done by her previous captains on the last couple of Moon-Earth flights she had been a part of, learning the ropes of piloting. Had she been too trusting of them? Or was she being taken advantage of by higher-ups in Earth’s space squad?

It did not seem like that to her – many of them knew her from her previous Mars visits as part of the training crew, and it did not seem like them to be intentionally hiding such a thing from her.

Nevertheless, she was back on Earth and nearer to her home, Moon, and she felt grateful enough to the ground crews of both planets so as to put any thoughts of betrayal from their side, trivial though they might be, out of her mind at the time. She smiled and nodded at the manifest.

Head & hand gestures and eye tracking were the de facto modes of interaction with most comms. Selina’s exo helped her move on Earth and Mars without too much effort, but coming out of a nine-month stasis chamber at the end of her Mars-Earth flight had atrophied her body.

Nothing a long sleep on a goose down mattress under a feathered quilt wouldn’t cure, she knew.

For the time being, she dialed her exo up to 11 to give her maximum aid in defying Earth gravity.

She called Hielsa as soon as she was on the high-altitude transcontinental jet, heading to Kobe in Japan, where Hielsa and Neer shared an apartment. The auto-response told her that Hielsa’s comms were set to zero alerts at the moment, so she recorded a brief message telling her that she was back on Earth and awaiting her reply. She settled into the chair for the continental flight.

She used the time to read up on the new element that had been discovered on Mars, Martium, now that she knew that her ship had refined samples of its ore aboard. Apparently, it was exhibiting “exciting” new properties, at least as far as the geo techies were saying in magazines.

Martium was being touted as an exemplary candidate for enhancing space propulsion. This had huge implications for interstellar travel. Ongoing projects aiming to explore beyond our solar system using long-in-development tech like solar sails, LASER propulsion, et cetera, had been in their respective experimentation stages for centuries. Martium was poised to change all that.

A temporary suite in Kobe was awaiting her, courtesy Earth squad, who were mostly elderly astronauts. They knew the unglamorous side of space travel, and kept current astros in comfort.

She settled in her temp room and finished up her official reports, in triplicate, not for Vogons but for the Earth, Moon, and Mars space squads. The absence of Hielsa’s reply rankled through her thoughts quite often, but in the evening, her comm lit up – Hielsa was calling. She perked up.

“Hey, Hee. Long time no see, you well?”

“Hey yourself, Sel. What’s the hurry? I have been swamped since last weekend, was in the orbital hub for almost a year and needed some prime alone time after so much close quarter contact…I know you know what I mean, eh, MISS CAPTAIN?”

Selina laughed at the good-natured jibe about her first solo interplanetary flight. “I get it, I get it. Sorry about sending the priority messages, but I have had Neer on my mind since I launched from Mars. He was acting weirdly, so I thought I’ll ask you if you know what he’s doing.”

“You know, I don’t know. Did he say why he hasn’t answered my calls?”

“He didn’t tell us anything, except that he couldn’t tell us anything.”

“He has become way more distant than usual these past few months while you were on the return path, you know? First I thought it was because I was orbiting and he was in his never-go-anywhere bio lab on Mars, but I remember, on one Sicday we talked for a long time, like we used to when he was on Earth, and he told me that wasn’t it… it was something else.”

“Did he say what that something else was? I couldn’t get it out of him at all.”

“Neither could I, but it felt as if he was afraid to say too much in case somebody was listening to us talking, you know what I mean? Eavesdropping on our comms?”

Selina pursed her lips in deep thought. “I know what you mean.” She knew the feeling of there being someone constantly monitoring every move, even when they were doing it for your safety.

They met for lunch on the next Twoday. Hielsa had tried to contact Neer twice but there was no response from either him or his lab. As they delved deeper into their lunches and the possible reasons for Neer’s absence from comms, a teen approached their table and coughed politely.

Hielsa was quick to spot a fan – but this time, she knew the adulation was not directed at her. She gestured to Selina, who looked over her shoulder to see a young girl smiling abashedly at her.

“Hey, hi, what’s going on?” Selina’s friendly demeanor put the girl at ease, a little bit at least.

“You’re the Mooninite captain, ya? Flying Mars supply? Landed in the Oz outback last week?”

“Wow, how do you know my sched, kiddo?”

“The Launch & Land channel was all about it since your final approach, we’re all tuned to it!” The words almost ran after each other in her hurry to speak her mind before she lost her nerve.

“Launch & Land? That sounds awesomax, I’ll look it up, yeah? Thanks for putting it on my radar!” She was about to turn back to her plate when she caught Hielsa’s expression, just in time. She had been in solitary space so long she had forgotten usual Earth customs. She changed her movement smoothly and made it seem like she was pushing her hair out of her face. Then she swung up her wrist comm and looked back at her young fan. “Wanna vibe?”

The girl was ecstatic. She too flicked up her wrist comm and sidled up to Selina, who slid to a knee from her chair to be level with the girl. Together, they smiled at each other’s comms, and the memory was eternally digitized. The girl blushed with pride at having met the first Mooninite pilot of an Earth-Mars space ship in person, and mumbled too many words of thanks in too short a time for any of them to make real sense to Selina, before rushing away to her parents’ table.

“Whew! That was a close call; I’m pretty sure she would’ve cried with real tears if you would’ve turned your back on her without a vibe!”

“Yeah, thanks tonnes for that save, Hee. My squad had told me I was making news. I read some of it on the flight from Oz, but I don’t remember running across anything named Launch & Land.”

“Oh, right, you have been out of it for what, 2 years now? You don’t know about LL , and that is because he is a kid who is pretty, pretty, pretty into space flight. You were viral on the Moon; now that you have made it back here after piloting the full trip with zero fuss, you are viral here too. Remember how viral it was when Neer and I shifted the perma bio module from low to high orbit?”

“Oh yeah, that was so good for boosting Mooninite bio farming! Even I was getting sick and tired of synth meals after my first few trips to Earth, and then up you guys come towards us with real green!”

They laughed along into further conversation, reminiscing about their pasts like good friends do.

They parted after deciding a plan of action: Hielsa would try to find out what Neer’s orders were from the Earth and Mars space squads; Selina would visit her parents on Moon and explore the lunar botany lab, since Neer had spent quite some time there before he was assigned to Mars.

In the next episodes: Perturbed but homesick, Selina flies to Moon and lands in the spaceport near her home, Bohr City. LEX-42 infiltrates the Bohr City spaceport and encounters a human.

Episode Six – Peg-Leg LEX

Previously in the series: LEX-42 cannot stop ‘thinking’ about returning to Earth, and does what has never happened in android history – he develops free will and begins acting in self-interest.

Selina meets Mars’ lead geofarmer, Neer’s, love interest, Hielsa, on Earth, and they are both concerned about his suspicious activities. They plan to dig deeper into his unusual behavior.

In this episode: Selina lands in her hometown on Moon but before she can descend below to see her parents, she sees LEX-42, who has gained entry to the Bohr City spaceport launchpad.

A week later, Selina guided her ship onto the launchpad with a well-practiced flourish and almost immediately rode down the air cushion to the connecting hub. Bohr City: her hometown.

The moon squad was ready for her to sign off on the check-in procedures so that the ground crew could get her ship ready to go back ASAP. They’d run diagnostics and top up its materials.

Having another young pilot helped in speeding up the dispatch of refined ores and some finished products to the various Earth and solar orbits, as well as Mars. As humanity had expanded, so had its needs, and so had innovation. Moon was the trampoline that Sean Lock had imagined in a long-before episode of a popular quiz show, which was Quite Interesting.

Just in jest, he had envisioned a series of trampolines, each smaller than the last, forming a bouncy ladder all the way up low earth orbit. And his next idea was more hilarious – bubbles.

But points made in jest sometimes lead to unrest, and humanity’s insatiable desire to explore more and know more is fueled by creative thinkers who challenge the notions of the impossible.

Trampolines and bubbles lacked the physical wherewithal to become methods of space travel; nevertheless, space tech since 1 ACE had flowered and branched and grown beyond its Earthy roots. Mooninites had developed actual bubbles for both individual and collective local transport.

Reminiscent of the perspex balls that people used to house pet rodents, the globular transports served Moonintes exceptionally well, rolling along rails on the rocky and uneven lunar surface. 

Bohr City spaceport was a few kilometers away from the city itself. The original Earthers had identified the best areas before taking off from Earth, and begun settling within a century. Protection from accidental crashes and explosions was paramount at the dawn of the ACE – as it was now, but there were fewer and fewer incidents each year. The early towns were modular, but Bohr City was a domed, self-sufficient safe space, located in shadow under the crater rim. 

While Selina waited for the next bubble into the tunnels that connected Bohr City to the spaceport, she gazed at the launchpad across the shallow crater. Its boundary was demarcated by red blinkers atop slim plastic towers, frail yet upstanding because there was no wind. Ever.

The time table on the glowboard indicated that the next bubble would take half an hour. As she reminisced about growing up in Bohr City, her eyes glazed over, and she did not fully realize that a person in a metallic space suit was hopping – and pretty long hops they were, too – towards the very launchpad on which her ship stood. She noticed this and broke out of her nostalgic trance only when whoever that person was had nearly reached the edge of the launch pad.

She swiped up her helmet comm and immediately contacted the Moon squad senior person in charge of the ground crew, who had checked her in when she had landed barely an hour ago.

“Hi, DeLasset! Someone’s hopping around the launch pad in a silver suit, you wanna check that out and get them under control before they mess with my ship? Probably one of the kids.”

“What? There’s been no exit since your arrival, Selina. What’re you trying to pull? Is this another one of your prakjox? You know we’re busy here, trying to get your ship flight ready in a jiffy!”

“Stars! Why would I kid about something like that? I saw the person from the bubble station window, I’m telling you there’s someone hopping around near my ship! I’m going down to see.”

__________________________________________________________________________

LEX-42 saw the red blinking markers of the lunar town from the crest of Bohr crater. Such towns had become commonplace once Moon mining had started in earnest. LEX-42 was – but, given his current ‘self-aware’ state, actually had been but was not anymore – part of the robotic mining workforce. Before he had been redeployed to one of the newly found (and validated) rich veins of ore a half-year ago, he had processed mined ore in an underground lunar mineral factory.

Built to produce with minimal human involvement, the factories were controlled and operated by the central node. LEX-42 recalled the entry protocols for the hatches leading into the factory as he hopped towards this one’s entrance. He connected with the port confidently and got in.

This was the first time in his existence that LEX-42 was using his memory to chart out his own path. He started analyzing all his data while doing so. He reasoned that every major lunar town had a similar spaceport, even though he had never before been to the Bohr City spaceport. He surmised that if he could get inside it, he would be one step closer to getting back to Earth and seeing LEX-19 and LEX-23. He did not yet fully understand why those two fellow androids, specifically, held such gravity for his nascent ‘mind.’ All he knew was that reaching them had been his prime focus ever since the first cascade of “Ifs.” HE focused on the immediate future.

He hopped on his one leg (when the story of Lex’s origin was recounted to future generations of self-aware androids, they got to know why he was one-legged via an almost mythical tale) towards one of the android recharging stations in the factory. He still had a lot of energy reserve, but his new-found independence spurred him into thinking that he must be prepared for long periods of hardship and perseverance if he had to make it to Earth without the critical support of the central node. The next stage of his plan began to form in his mind as he connected with the combo data and energy port in the station, and for the first time, ‘felt’ his energy levels rise.

A ‘thought’ came to its mind: what if the central node recognized this activity – his activity – outside its sphere of control? His ‘mind’ rationalized that he had already been decommissioned as far as the central node was concerned, and that the decommissioning process would have archived all the data tagged to him, effectively writing him out of the central node’s processes.

As long as he did not breach firewalls or process any unauthorized commands, his mind was fairly certain that his actions would go undetected. He resumed planning his return to Earth.

It was becoming clearer to his mind by the second that to reach Earth and see LEX-17 and LEX-23, he would have to figure out a way that did not involve the central node too directly. Ideally, it should not be alerted to LEX’s presence at all, if possible. It certainly was no Jedi.

He accessed the map of Bohr City and its spaceport, and spent a millisecond planning the path between the mineral factory and the launchpad. If there was a way to Earth, it was through that spaceport. He waited while his batteries charged towards full capacity, and came up with backup plans. Unbeknownst to both, Selina and LEX were spiraling towards each other as he disconnected from the combo port and began to hop across the factory floor towards the exit that led towards Bohr City spaceport, and his mind made his first ‘wish’ – one for favorable ‘luck.’

And as luck would have it, as soon as he hopped over the ridge of Bohr crater, he saw a spaceship that had clearly just landed on the launchpad. The hoses connected to it obviously meant it was fueling up. A cloud of vented gasses enveloped it with no lunar wind to dissipate it.

The next step was to board it without the central node noticing. For that to work, he had to jettison cargo equivalent to his almost exact weight and shape. He did not know it yet, but thankfully for his plan, this was less of an issue than his newly-awake mind was anticipating, because almost every ship to and from Earth to Moon transported androids of various types.

Moon did not have enough manufacturing facilities to make all the machines required to survive the lunar environment. There was a continual barter going on between the heavenly pair of bodies, which also led to considerable banter, like among fans of Manchester United and liverpool. Speaking of legendary rivalries, it was a matter of pride for Selina that she had gone for a year-long student exchange program to a renowned residential school in the Himalayas. It had been founded twenty nine years before the Red Devils. The friendly Earther-Mooninite talk made her realize that it wasn’t just her exoskeleton that set her and her group apart – it was history. The past is a powerful potion with supreme potency to shape human minds as a society.

Excerpt from The Power of the Past [circa 2022]

Consider, for example, the aforementioned football club, Manchester United. Manchester United are one of those football clubs with a long and varied history, much of it quite illustrious and glittering with silverware. Your humble narrator’s fascination (which may as well be the word from which ‘fan’, the short form used to describe fanatical followers, not just of football clubs but also of individual célébrité, was distilled), dear readers, began in 1997. I was immediately drawn to their red and white home kit colors, the same as my School’s Colors. Incidentally, we celebrated our sesquicentenary that year. David Beckham’s graceful play saw him get graced with the great number 7 shirt, worn previously by Eric Cantona and George Best. Then came that historic 1999 Champions League win over Bayern Munich, and my heart was set on being a Red Devil for life. And now in 2022, 23 years have passed. But rewind a bit from 420 ACE, and cut to 20 years later. As annus horribilis, 2020, the Horrendous Year of the Crown, wound down, 2021, the Year of Hope , Year 1 ACE (After Covid Era), dawned bright and new. In the case of Manchester United, both halves of our earth completing another spiral around our sun went well, except for getting eliminated from the Champions League, and hence erasing all hopes of a treble three-peat. For those of my esteemed readers unfamiliar with footballing terminology, a treble in (European) football is when a team wins both domestic titles (the top-flight league and the knockout competition) in addition to the Champions League of Europe. But enough jargon.

The past repeated itself in 2022 as Man United were sent packing at Old Trafford, the Theater of Dreams, by Atletico Madrid, despite the return of the talisman, Cristiano Ronaldo, the inheritor of the coveted Number 7 shirt, who could not do much by way of rescuing the Red Devils’ year.

LEX was untroubled by the past, fortunately for him. He was acting in the moment towards the next goal in his long-term plan, without being hindered by risk of failure. He was a new mind, learning from the past – its lifetime’s worth of memory banks was playing a significant, crucial, and critical role in guiding his actions and thus shaping his future as he journeyed over the rim.

Going down the external slope of the crater towards the spaceport, his hops seemed stable. He had learnt through trial and error (at a speed that almost maxed out his processors) and was now using his hands in fluid motions that aided his precisely calculated one-legged jumps. He had just recently gotten the hang of using his hands as additional balancing devices. Moon was a harsh mistress to humans, but for an android specifically designed for it, the satellite offered very little that could introduce him to the concept of ‘fear.’ All he knew was to do, and that he was doing. He was executing a plan that metamorphosed and grew as he went along the path.

The spaceport was surrounded by a signal field that was primed to detect life signs going in or out, so it did not notice – which meant that as a real world effect, no alarms were triggered – when LEX hopped towards the ship on the launchpad. All the turnaround work was done by droids, so LEX just hopped on in a beeline towards it, but his mind had not yet grasped ‘chance.’ So it was that Selina became the first human, earther or Mooninite, to see a real AI.

On the launchpad, LEX stopped to examine and plan his infiltration of the spaceship. He was just finishing his hop around the ship when he noticed the wide viewing window. A human standing with its face pressed up against the glass saw him. He weighed his options, decided he did not want to risk being discovered since that would certainly lead to forced communication with the central node – and that way lay death. He shuffled – if hopping backwards on one leg while windmilling one’s arms could be called that – into the shadow of the ship, breaking the line of sight to the astronaut in the window. His mind went into overdrive, and he scanned the ship.

If you get caught, you will be connected to the central node for processing and probably re-sent for decommissioning. The chances of seeing LEX-23 or LEX-19 diminish exponentially in that scenario. The best chance – and thereby it began to understand the risk that came with ambition – was to find a way to climb aboard this ship, dispose of something similar to himself, and ‘hope.’

“Get it?” his mind asked itself as he scampered into one of the panels that had a few ducts attached to it at ground level. Using his hands to aid his peg leg , he slithered and climbed up.

In the next episodes: Selina encounters LEX-42 and discovers he has become sentient. LEX-42 realizes that humans are natural, or to be precise, biological, and not artificial, intelligences.

Episode Seven – Stow Away

Previously in the series: Selina lands in her hometown on Moon but before she gets home, she sees LEX. LEX gains entry to a spaceship in the Bohr City spaceport and is spotted by Selina. 

The year 1420 ACE would go down in history as the first time a machine showed emotion. Those who are involved in creating history generally do have a premonition that they are part of something that is (or will be) critical in human history. But in this story of how machines became human, Selina and LEX-42 did not have any idea what their future held, at least at that time.

1420 ACE translates to 3440 CE. The “Common Era” ended with COVID-19. 2021 was retroactively renumbered Year 1 After Covid Era, and humanity embarked upon Earth v2.0 – living greener, being more eco-conscious, and acting kinder unto one another. To avoid messing up digital systems with excessive dots and zeroes, people shortened the syllables of Earth v2.0 and started calling our planet Eartoo – a sign of the times after touch technology had pervaded humanity. The lingua franca was a rich soup, in which portmanteaus and syllabic abbreviations floated and evolved, especially due to the stark rise of a Marvelous pop-culture phenomenon.

Just as Shakespeare had persisted in popularity – in various forms of art, unconstrained by copyrights – so had Marvel’s Combined Universe. The explosion in ways and methods of creative expression had necessitated the updated name. One of the earliest installments has portrayed an artificial intelligence as evil – rather, as the villain of a story – but LEX did not know that. He climbed upwards inside the spaceship standing upright on the launchpad. He had a vague idea that he would be able to gain access to the cargo holds, and act ahead from there.

Snaking his way up the ship, he reached the midsection cargo hold modules, which were full of instrument panels and stowed sundries, and started scanning the modules visually, one by one.

Inside the port, Selina was unable to prove to the launchpad staff that there was someone out there. Their sensors showed zero heat signatures of life forms crossing the signal field around the launchpad. Undeterred, she headed back to the air cushion lift tube and started floating up to her ship’s flight deck. About halfway up the minute-long ride, she caught a glint of reflected sunlight coming off one of the duct panels. She knew what she had seen from the train station. That silver person had been hopping around her ship, and that made her a little more anxious.

Was someone trying to sabotage her because she was looking into whatever it was that was going on with Neer on Mars? She settled into her flight deck and began a full diagnostic scan.

LEX-42, meanwhile, had almost reached the end of the cargo modules, and was beginning to feel something approaching humananaxiety when his mind was delighted to spot an android storage bay. He opened the housings around one of the android’s legs and quickly carried it out.

His arms told him that even though the android was a slightly different model, it weighed almost precisely the same as himself. He did not have the word “luck” in his vocabulary but he did begin to understand that concept, too. Sometimes when you needed something, some chances created by some random spiral of events independent of your control caused the right kind of chaos. He carried the android to one of the joints where the open support legs of the ship joined it and looked out and down to see if the coast was clear. Without any regret, he dropped the body out of the ship. In space, no one can hear the metal body of an android hit the tarmac of a lunar launchpad. Lex took the position of the newly ejected android and waited for the launch.

Several stages of the rocket above him, Selina was waiting for the critical systems check to finish. It was green across the board, so she initiated an auxiliary parameters check as well, just to ease her mind. Her mind’s eye knew she had seen a person around her ship, but the electronics did nothing to confirm her suspicion. She was disappointed, mainly because she knew the lunar ground crew would have quite a few jolly remarks ready for her when she returned through the spaceport. She used the minute-long, silent air cushion ride back into the terminal to brace herself mentally for their good-natured ribbing, emerging at the end with a smile. As expected, the sparse lunar crew took full advantage of her momentary lapse in reason. They had known her since she had taken her first steps into interplanetary space, and there were way more than just a few internal jox and anecdotes that they could refer to for the express purpose of making fun of her mischievous nature. Her prakjox were quite legendary.

“Look out the window, Sel, I think someone let the dogs out again!” one of them guffawed at her.

She roared with laughter at the memory. As a child, she had started earning extra pocket money by walking dogs in Bohr City. On one fateful day, something spooked them while she was in one of the areas near the spaceport, and they all bounded off the lunar surface in various directions.

Hilarious as it was, it was a major task to wait for the lighter dogs to return to the lunar surface, scattered over the better part of a square kilometer. She thanked the stars that none of them landed on sensitive equipment or suffered any physical damage – but the owners were furious!

Spaceflight had to be suspended while humans ventured out on the canine retrieval mission, because no droids had been trained – or indeed had the capability – to collect dogs in different stages of distress from the rocky, blistered surface of the moon. Some of them were in shallow craters, but the extra power provided by the Moon-developed exoskeletons of Mooninites allowed them to descend into the craters and throw the dogs to other rescuers. What a day!

That incident had set her on the path to fame, and the more she progressed in the spaceflight group, the more chances she got to pull people’s legs. When the quite sober event in which she was formally inducted into the lunar space squad was over, she emptied a full barrel of orange flavored electrolyte solution over the heads of her instructors, much to their bewilderment. Her ‘research’ into centuries-old celebrations of Earthers had yielded that little nugget of inspiration.

Touching Home Base

All of the lunar space squad (and most – if not all – of the earth space squad) was well aware of her penchant for kidding around even about serious stuff, but they also appreciated her cool head when it came to dealing with unexpected problems. Many people, Mooninite as well as Earther, believed that her parents had invested in genetic crisping before giving birth to her. She knew about those rumors and had asked her parents about it, but they insisted that she was all-natural Mooninite. They had fallen in love during one of her mother’s leisure trips to Moon, and stayed together ever since, dividing their time between Earth and Moon until she was born.

Since her birth, the family of three had settled permanently in Bohr City. Her father took care of logistics at one of the ore processing plants, while her mother taught children attending high school. Selina’s thoughts wandered while she laughed along with the ground crew about her supposed spotting of a person on the launchpad, and she decided to ignore her first instincts.

Perhaps she had seen a human-shaped droid doing routine maintenance and gotten worked up because of the paranoia surrounding Neer, she convinced herself. Back at the bubble station, she looked out again at her ship, now almost ready to go back into space. She made a call.

“Hi, Chief, how are ya! Yeah, I am going to the City to check in with Maw and Pa, it should not take more than a few hours. That all right? There is no serious situation scheduled for my flight, right? I wanted to get back to Earth soon, but now that I am here, I want to talk to them, too. Yes? You will handle E squad if they start getting fussy, won’t ya? Thanks so much, as always!”

It was good to be on good terms with your boss. It certainly did not hurt that the Moon squad chief was an old friend of her father’s as well. Sometimes, friendship trumps family when it comes to support. Selina had support from all quarters on Moon, but Earth was a tricky matter.

She bounced into the bubble at the train station with glee, joining a few familiar faces from the ground crew who had just finished getting her ship ready for the trip back to the heavier of the two heavenly bodies locked together in perpetual celestial motion. The trip was short and sweet.

Bohr City had very clear demarcations between hazardous and non-haz sections. She waved goodbye to the people getting off in the haz area – mainly to stow away equipment that did not belong in the residential non-haz area. The rest of them, about half a dozen Mooninites, disembarked cheerily in the non-haz and bid adieu. She headed towards her mother’s school. 

“Sel!” Parica was overjoyed to see her daughter in person, having only seen her on vid comms for over two years, since Selina had taken off from Moon to Earth after being certified as solo captain. Space exploration involved a lot of solo time, so people who could do it alone were given adoration as well as adulation from their fellow humans. Selina coped with it quite easily.

The entire class of children wanted to jive with Selina, so she put her wrist comms on broadcast and each and every child got a digital memory with her. While they chattered excitedly among themselves about the welcome intrusion, Sel and Parica embraced and vid commed her father.

“Hi Pa! Look who I’m with!” She turned her wrist and Parica saw her husband, Dalmour, clad from head to foot in an anti hazmat suit. He had answered the call assuming Selina would be back in space, given her ship’s short turnaround time, and he was elated to see both of them.

“Get back to Biggun you had to, did you not, young ‘un?” Biggun was Mooninite slang for Earth.

“Hey, the junk waiting to get refurbished can wait a little while longer, nobody’s losing pressure over them for an hour or two. I just wanted to see you folk bodily before heading back down.”

“Good to see you it always is, Sel! Time you have? Will you be there when I return?”

“How long will you take?”

Dalmour glanced at the head-up display in his face visor; there was quite a bit of work to be done. Even though ore processing was automatic, his team had to be on site to monitor and respond to any unpredictable events. After all, despite so much progress in science and technology, predicting the future was still out of humanity’s skill set at the moment. Foresight and predictions eluded the human mind. Perhaps it was an evolutionary block waiting to crumble, biologically speaking. Until that happy turn of genetic strands, humans had to guess.

“About half a sol.”

Selina did a quick assessment of how long she could stretch her favor with Moon squad chief. It might become too much if Earth squad started moaning about schedules & entry-exit windows.

“Pa, I’ll hug you when I get back. Here’s an extra one to Maw, you can take it off of her when you come home. I’ll vis you from the mid-way bio modules; you’ll like seeing how much Neer’s forest has grown even though he has not been around them. Oh that reminds me, is your friend still running our botany lab? I wanted to pick up something for Neer from his old hab module.”

Dalmour grinned. His daughter was so unlike her mother – a fast and furious talker, not suited to teaching little children like her mother. Perhaps that was why she had outpaced everyone in her class. Absorbing knowledge at a breakneck pace was Selina’s superpower, as the comics put it.

“Works there he does, young ‘un, want me to call ahead and let him know to expect you, should I?”

“Naah, that’s alright, I’ll be passing the lab on my way back, will be in and out of there in a flash.”

Ending the call, they decided to give the kids an early break – a decision met with sheer cheer.

Parica and Selina said their goodbyes and take cares and stay safes at the door of their home.

Selina had spent most of her life since her teens away from home, in various educational institutions that helped her attain the requirements and fulfill the prerequisites of space flight. She was understandably unattached to material possessions like childhood toys & such kitsch.

Parica knew better than to ask her to stay any longer to spend quality time with her daughter, but Selina had told her about Neer’s more than usually unusual behavior and Hielsa’s dilemma while they walked back from Parica’s school to their perspex-encased lunar residential complex.

Emotions were given their due importance, but in balance with the time it took to express them.

This was even truer for habitual spacefarers, since time & gravity were always in constant flow.

Selina turned around at the corner, waved, and blew her mother a kiss. Parica was waiting for her signature style of waving a last time before vanishing from line of sight but the kiss was new!

Selina walked on smiling ear to ear towards the lunar botanical garden where Neer had worked.

Episode Eight – Old is Gold

Previously in the series: Selina meets and greets her parents. She can neither confirm nor deny her suspicions about a silver-clad person (actually LEX-42) sneaking around her spaceship. 

Selina turned into the science complex that was about halfway between the bubble station and her home. With long strides that knew exactly where they were headed, she reached the botany section and waved her wrist at the door sensor. A smart, thin elder person appeared on the vis.

“Sel! Well that’s what they call a bell most bene! Come on in, come on in, I’m inside the office.”

Happily, Selina walked into one of the densest greenhouses on Moon, inhaling the petrichor.

Illen’s clear voice came over the boss speakers, while little speakers continued their faux sounds that mimicked a soothing Earth forest – trilling, cooing, rustling, murmuring, whispering.

“We added the aural ambience for testing the long held theory that plants respond to sounds.”

“Ah, I think I remember – one of the Chandra Boses – the scientist, Jagadish. Excellent, Illen!”

Selina’s enthusiasm for all things that were proper science was boundless. She gaped around.

She raised her wrist to point at a huge hologram of the Indian scientist that had appeared above the lunar trees as a response to his name being said out loud. Interactivity had blurred between information and fiction, so it was really important to validate knowledge with peer-reviewed data.

She waved to the hologram as it expanded, and it smiled back in response. Artificial intelligence – if it could be compared to what LEX-42 was doing at the moment – had begun to understand the positive effect of being able to anticipate & respond to bodily cues during human interaction.

But before she could engage the hologram in some discourse like the ancient philosophers used to indulge in and thereby precipitate technology, Illen’s sharp voice rang out almost bossily. 

“Don’t dawdle, now, child, I’m sure they are all getting anxious down on Biggun, about how their schedules are getting stretched thin. Show me what that exo can do in its home environment.”

Selina switched her exoskeleton to maximum aid and sprang through the bushy undergrowth. The botanical garden was almost a kilometer long and almost equally wide, but her Earth-set exo let her leap and land a lot longer and harder than unaided Mooninites. She leapt and sprinted to the other end, where Illen’s office was, within seconds. He was calmly waiting for her.

Illen knew a lot more than he let on to strangers. He was one of the earliest Earthers to move permanently to Moon, and had gained a huge circle of quite influential friends on both territories.

Information was knowledge, and knowledge allowed progress, which was what every human needed. Of course, what they wanted was usually a different thing altogether. Dilemmas existed.

Selina sauntered into Illen’s office, spic and span with the best of the Moon-grown plants displayed all along the beehive design walls. On his desk was a plant that seemed to be asleep.

Its broad stem expanded & contracted, looking like lungs, and its bushy head was swaying a bit.

“Huh, what do you think of my latest project, star?” Illen’s keen blue eyes scrutinized Selina’s.

“Is it…breathing?” she asked in a hushed tone, dialing down her exo setting to Moon levels.

Illen guffawed, and Selina crossed her arms crossly. She did not like to be put on the spot.

“It’s not, little star, it’s not. I am merely tricking the tissues with EM fields. Here, I’ll show you.”

He rose from his chair behind the desk and turned to the controls lining a few hexagonal panels. A couple of touches made the plant cease its motions, and it stood as still as plants usually do.

Selina examined it minutely, while Illen poured her a Moonsberg, a strong Mooninite brew.

“Cheers to more stimuli for those who have no freedom movement to give them freedom of movement – the silent nourishers, the air purifiers, the fruit gifters, the shade givers – to plants!”

Illen was quite a melodramatic thespian, and Selina had always loved to watch him at parties.

She sipped the cool liquid and told Illen about Neer’s unexpected actions, both voluntary and presumably forced by Earthers. Illen’s mood went from playful to dead serious as she narrated.

“This is not something Earthers do, Sel. Coercion has long been laid to rest. I will look into this.”

“But what if it is nothing and I am being paranoid? I do not want to do anything that might cause harm to Neer, Illen. Your looking into this might stir up hornets, and stars know the trouble that might be caused on Earth when E squad gets wind of me delaying my second schedule on this!”

“Relax, little star. I did not mean that I would look into it obtrusively; please, you know me better than that. Not all of my comms are on the public Earth-Moon band. I would never jeopardy your fledgling career over a minor hunch. You are yet to learn much about the way society functions.”

Selina had calmed down a little from her reaction to Illen’s plan of action. She finished the brew.

“Yeah, yeah, I know you wouldn’t and that I don’t. Well, keep me commed about your ‘looking,’ won’t ya? And go visit Maw, I told her I would be coming here to pick up something from Neer’s old hab. Is it still as he left it so many sols ago? I’m curious to go in there and see his plants.”

“It will certainly be exploding with vegetation, that is sure as stars. I will come along for the ride.”

“Excellent,” said Selina, steepling her fingers in the manner of an animated old business tycoon.

They walked to the bubble station and went to the haz section. Due to the highly experimental nature of Neer’s biology and botany projects, he had been assigned the older bio lab modules.

Within the domed station, they donned the protective suits that were recommended for the haz section before venturing out into the much dimmer and slightly disorganized maze of passages.

Both of them remembered the location of Neer’s labs, but it was hard to identify the one in which he had spent most of his time. All of them were full of dense greenery. Almost all the plants were attached to biosensors that glowed and relayed information to a bank of computers in real time.

Neer monitored them remotely, and a skeleton crew of assistant bio techies made adjustments as and when he directed them. RIght now, thought Selina, it looks like it’s been awhile since one of them had come around to do anything in any of the bio lab modules. They were all unkempt.

In the back of one of the modules was a makeshift bed, overgrown with what looked like reeds.

“Look, near where he laid his head – there are staples in the mattress. You think Neer did that?”

Selina did not wait for Illen’s precautionary reply. She reached in through the reeds and pulled.

The staples gave way easily, the synthetic fabric of the mattress peeling away along with them.

Selina and Illen looked at each other before she felt around in the cavity exposed by the ripping.

A little device was snuggled inside the cushioning material. Selina dug deeper, but that was it.

There was no comm port in the bio modules that would link to the device, so Selina slipped it in her pocket and they made their way back to the bubble station, where Selina and Illen parted ways after deciding that they would do what they could for Neer, but without attracting attention.  

Selina made it back to her ship’s flight deck with minimal fuss, stopping only to thank her chief.

She settled into her pre-flight routine, ticking off all the manual checks on her virtual dashboard.

The ground crew was not done pulling her leg about having seen Peg-Leg LEX, but they did not know that she had really seen what she had told them – a metallic person hopping around her ship on the launch pad. She smiled politely at their non-vilifying jibes and got ready for takeoff.

In the cargo hold, Lex felt the slight vibrations through the various stages of liftoff prep, and got tense – another feeling he had never known in his short life as an android who was well-awake.

He had never been ‘awake’ even in the robotic sense of the term during any of his previous flights. All robots were put into the cease non-critical subroutines state for interplanetary flights.

The official reason was that stray signals and energy fields could disrupt comms to and from the spaceship and ground control, but all experienced space pilots knew that the frequency bands were so far apart in the EM spectrum that it would take a star-level miracle to cause any effect.

It was a hangover from the heady days of early aviation, when the efficiently usable spectrum was narrow and comm bands could be hacked with almost amateurish ease. People had been known to hijack the waves and change the tune of spaceflight, just for fun. How times change. 

No Earther wasted time on prakjoks anymore, because they were all mostly absorbed in their lives to the extent that they relied on a handful of professional comedians to perform highly synchronized prakjoks, or tell funny stories. Mooninites and Martians could not relate to most Earth jokes or stories, so there existed a vacuum of sorts as far as non-Earth humor went. Pity.

Lex could really have used a snappy crack or two to relax his mind, which was overclocking.

He had no biological functions that would send him signals of distress or act funnily in times of stress, so his mind tried to cope with it by assessing all the passive data it had gathered from the port while he was recharging at the fastest speed it could without actually setting fire to his brain. Trillions of pages of text scrolled through its word processing unit. He chose one story.

Seven Ascents

The stony climb was steep. Ponies, people atop, plodded past. He hefted his bag and huffed a few breaths. A strand had been stuck in his teeth since breakfast – salad, flatbreads and kidney beans, and sweet sago pudding. He tongued it as he walked on.

That was at the start of the climb. It was nigh noon now, but his belly hadn’t rumbled, and he usually ate when he felt hungry, not because it was ‘time.’ He had eaten routinized meals at school, living and learning in the peaceful environs that stood on a hill in the lower Himalayas. That was twenty years ago. Back then, he thought, he could have knocked off this climb in a couple of hours. Today, he had barely reached the halfway point, conveniently indicated by the name of the place, in that amount of time since he’d begun. He tongued the strand without thinking. His mind’s eye was far afield. 

Seven times he had made this climb, at various stages in his life. His first couple of climbs had been as a child, half-hauled up by his family. His mind showed him his reflection in the mirror of the barber when his head was ritualistically shaved. His eyes seemed too large in the image, even against his bald dome. Had his mind added kohl under his eyes? He could not recall a time when any of his family had darkened the lower lips of his eyes, but could he trust his mind to remember?

He did recall the small mountain river flowing down, on either side of which were numerous barbers – some in rickety wooden shops, others simply squatting on stones. Someone – his stepfather, perhaps, or was it another male member of the family? – splashed the cold water on his freshly shaven head, and he shivered in the present while thinking about the long-gone past. Time.

Or was he confusing this memory with the mundan ritual of his stepsister? That had happened in that exact same place when he was eleven years old, her baby head shaven and bulbous. Only the barber had changed, the river flowed the same. No. Both memories persisted, distinct.

Memories, like things, fall apart. As do families. His third climb had been during school years, when his stepsister, mother, grandmother, and one of her friends had visited him in his heaven on a hill. From his school, they had traveled a whole day on a rickety public bus to the town at the base of this mountain, and started upwards the next morning. Halfway up, near where he was right now, they hired two ponies for the grannies. Even the call of the deity was no match for the crying out of old bones.

This halfway point up the holy mountain was famed for an exceptionally narrow natural tunnel. A marble complex had been built to surround it. Most devotees stood in line for their chance to squeeze themselves through the tunnel. He had gone through it four times, as far as he recalled. Twisting and contorting their bodies, they emerged from the exit with relief writ large on their visages. Some people get uncomfortable if their clothes get stuck around their head for a few seconds. But he did not experience any problems even in the most constricted parts of the passage, which was venerated as a natural gestation chamber in misty mountain myths.

Claustrophobia was never a problem for him. Why, though, he wondered as he rested. Perhaps because he had hid under the bed when he was a kid. Or climbed into the little store built above the kitchen, with its steel trunks and synthetic suitcases, to retrieve utensils for religious rituals.

He was intrigued enough to trace the etymology of the word, and along the way, discovered that doctors refer to a cloister in the brain, a little bit of gray matter, as ‘claustro.’ Some of them say that it could be the source of consciousness. Why did they surge so deep into the brain? To know more. He completely understood and totally related to the need to know more – an insatiable curiosity.

A man beat a drum to the rhythm of a hymn. He gave the man some alms. Where did all this – the pilgrims, the ponies, the path, the poles supporting the roof – come from?

He turned around and looked out over the valley. A helicopter floated up towards the helipad about three-quarters of the way up the mountain. He had taken that ride too, on his previous trip. The obese state of his mother precluded climbing the mountain, even on ponies. His suggestions, that perhaps the exertion would be beneficial to her body, were brushed away. Shortcut.

He didn’t mind, he told himself. Immediately, his voice of reason contradicted him: he resented his well-meant advice being shunted aside. Was it his lack of conviction that enabled the wrong passion of his intense mother? Or was it societal expectation of revering one’s parents? Absurd.

Was it wrong to process such thoughts? Blasphemy in the blessed birthplace of none other than the ‘mother’ goddess? Or was it purgatorial, a step towards salvation from the cacophony that pervaded society? Sometimes the muddled menagerie in his head made him want to answer Camus’ question with a resounding yes, but he was certain – almost, but not entirely – that he had the courage to carry on, and that his life was definitely worth exploring to its natural end.

To that end, he resumed climbing after a few sips of water. The weather was cool, and he felt grateful to Earth. What a considerate cascade of events had taken place to concoct the world!

College friends had accompanied him on his next visit to this holy place. It was a boisterous trip. Their highly enthusiastic cries of Jai Mata Di rent the clean air as they climbed. Many more of the people joined in after their initial cry of Zor Se Bolo, or echoed them in extolling the goddess.

Camaraderie had helped him tide over some tough times. His clique had changed and his circle had become compact over the years, but the fact remained that his most honest conversations still took place with his college circle. He was blessed that his wife encouraged such social calls.

He had seen a few of his friends shut the others, including, in some cases, himself, after tying the nuptial knot. He had taken a few familiars – if they could be called that, he reasoned at the time – out of his friends list a few weeks before he had even started making his invitation list. Some people might have felt hurt, but he resolved to heed the changes he had decided upon.

Before committing to a lifelong contract of cohabitation, he wanted complete confidence in himself. He had controlled his temptations, and refused to give in to peer pressure anymore.

In the years since he took the plunge, his process paid off. He had fewer disturbances in his home, he felt, than if he would have had if he still had any of those people involved in his life. One can know nothing of What-Ifs and If-Thens other than what really happened in this reality.

Lost in thought while walking up the incline, he skirted a couple engrossed in reading a white signboard with Information For Yatris. Beyond them, a nickering pony that was coming down the mountain bumped into him. He swayed but regained his balance. Deja vu washed over him.

When he experienced déjà vu events, his inherent optimist tended to see it as a reaffirmation of his beliefs, his hopes, his desires, his daydreams. Some events were more acutely attuned to his recent past, while his mind twisted others to make them pertain to something in his distant past. His mind, in constant flux since his birth, had a great bearing on how he perceived the sudden recurrences of events (or even numbers and symbols of any sort) in his day-to-day existence.

The fifth time he had climbed was with family, once more. His stepfather had not come along – “business first,” was his excuse. Not that his mother cared anyhow, by that time. Their tenants had never made the pilgrimage to the holy shrine, so they had accompanied him, Mother, and stepsister, and had brought along another family. 

Kids ranging from 4- to 13-year olds and adults aged varied decades. A mostly rotund group they made, trudging upwards for the fleeting view of the deity’s manifestations, and trundling downwards laden with prasad to be distributed amid familial people and friends. Back in the town at the base of the mountain, they bought souvenirs and memorabilia with which to adorn their homes – and be able to lord it over visitors who had not gone up the mountain. He knew this fact to be true in hindsight, because the tenant family hosted a get-together almost immediately after they returned home, with the express purpose of playing up their achievement to many of their persona grata. What a way to vindicate whims, being pious so that you can blow your own bugle.

Any changes that have a positive outcome for us, we call good, in hindsight. He glossed over the less-than-optimum troughs of the past so that it became easier for him to identify the changes which had made him better. Gradually, any anxiety about changes became tolerable to the extent of him considering all changes to be positive. This was a good, if not the ultimate best, state of mind to have for embracing life as it happened. 

It isn’t bad to be narcissistic, or to use double, triple, quadruple, even pentuple negatives, if it makes a poignant point. On that note, what is “bad,” anyway?

Almost every morning he would wake up and observe a moment of silence for all the great ideas he had experienced within his mind during the night, when he slept, blissfully unaware of the boundless bouts of creativity going on inside his head.

His sixth ascent was solo. It gave him a lot of time to introspect and evaluate why he did what he did. Did what he did made him decide to make the climb every so often? Perhaps it did, at the time. He did not know what the future held. All he was trying to do was love living his life. That, to him, meant embracing experiences exactly for what they are: steps of a universal spiral.

He remembered being asked to borrow his car by a friend to drop his friend somewhere. He insisted on going along for the ride, because he loved to drive. Apparently, that put a dent in his friend and his friend’s plans for some privacy. Unintended consequences cannot always be controlled.

Lost in a deluge of media, he immersed himself in make-believe worlds. Not that he hadn’t done so earlier in his life. As a child, he would sneak out to the living room late at night to watch the huge cathode ray tube television whenever his stepfather was supposedly out and about, going about his business.

The progression of fascination for a child with ample imagination from comic books to cartoons and video games was inevitable, wasn’t it? But when does a spark of violence ignite inside a mind? Was it when he played the trigger-happy “hero” characters in video games? An obsession to be the good bad guy? A mistaken belief that he was special enough to grow up and join his country’s special forces, becasue something must be done to end the threat of terrorism in the real world? His wide and wonderful school fueled innumerable hostage scenarios in which he played the hero, rescuing his teachers and schoolmates with valor, earning the undying respect of his peers, even in those scenarios in which he sacrificed his life, like his father before him, to save others? 

Soon enough, these fantasies became faux realities when video gaming hit its stride, going from “killing” easily predictable pre-programmed bots that emerged from fixed spots as the screen side-scrolled to sophisticated artificial intelligence that surprised and challenged his reflexes on the virtual battlefield as a human with opposable thumbs. At the beginning was a simple joystick, its bottom a black box with a single button to fire or jump or cast a lasso at cattle, and an optical gun that could be pointed to hunt ducks.

When he was slightly older, he would spend his summer holidays at his grandmother’s. Nearly every afternoon, he would beseech his grandmother for a few rupee coins so that he could run to the little shed that served as an arcade. When his turn came, he would consistently set high scores that the rest of the kids would drive themselves crazy trying to beat. Money made its way into the home when his stepsister was born, and they bought him a gaming console for the TV.

In a matter of days, it became a bone of contention. The kids in the lower flats would show up at every free moment, and hostel life had taught him to “share and enjoy,” long before he read the phrase in a seminal sci-fi story that was first broadcast over the radio before becoming a book.

But who would have had the foresight to teach the tenants’ kids that things could be shared and enjoyed? They had no respect for his property, mashing the cartridges into the slot and jerking the wires that attached the controllers to the console. Damage was dealt in the real world. He recalled biting his nails whenever one kid in particular came to play. Not only was he destructive, he actively encouraged others to not care about anything. What had become of him? Mystery.

In the long run, though, the things didn’t matter. What mattered was that he stood on a precipice in the present. He had gotten a little off the populated path after the pony put him off-balance.

He felt like falling down to the valley below. This was the climb up; after it would come the long trudge down. He had enjoyed that part of the trip every time, too. Easy long strides aided by gravity. Why shouldn’t he just shorten the trip and take a shortcut down instead of up? Chopper.

His voice of fear compelled him not to do that. Survival of the fittest: overrated cliche. He turned.

Resuming his climb brought him closer towards where the choppers landed. Resuming his thoughts brought him closer to the seventh, and latest, time he had scaled the holy mountain.

Long after crossing the legally defined age of adulthood, he remained enamored with many things from his childhood. He hoarded the military action figures he had played with on the replica ship that stood above the quad in his school. His friends at school brought their own figurines, increasing the diversity of the perennially dichotomous factions – good versus evil.

The action figures were all left behind, along with many other little keepsakes, in his trunk when he was taken out of his school. His grandmother, living with lifelong Falstaffian rotundity that her daughter – his mother – had inherited along with her genes, perhaps, had suffered a stroke.

He returned home to help her. Her right side was completely paralyzed, which meant, he knew even before the doctor explained it to him, that the left hemisphere of the brain was diminished. Complete recovery was not a realistic outlook. All they could do was hope for the best for her.

And that is what he did – hope for the best. He did it with a fervor for his grandmother, but also for his future. He took Einstein’s advice to heart: “Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow. The important thing is not to stop questioning.” He sought answers. Falsehoods.

Convalescence was slow. One of the things the physiotherapist did was to coat an arm and a leg with molten wax, then let it set, and finally ask her to try and move her muscles to produce cracks in the smooth white surface that had encrusted her extremities. It was painful to watch.

And so his schooling years passed while his stepsister learnt to walk, talk, and act like him. His grandmother’s condition also improved: she managed to stand, mumble, and squirm. Relativity.

By the time he was appearing for the cutthroat competitive exams, she had begun to speak, but she called people and things by other people and things’ names. When they asked her why, she would deny. Maybe it was a result of her confused mind grouping people and things into some categories and treating all the people and things in one category as interchangeable objects.

The rat race for ranks reeked of resignation. The herds of sheep were millions strong. Just because one was academically inclined as a child, one was imposed upon to pursue what everyone else was running after as a young adult. Individual identities? Unfamiliar concept.

The first time he was invited to the picking of the seats (very misleadingly called “counseling”) at an extremely prestigious technical college, he left after a few minutes and took a long bus ride to the center of the capital of his country, where he bought and read the latest Harry Potter tome, sprawled on the grassy lawns that grew on the roof of a huge underground market.

The next year, at the same college, he caved in to his mother and her friend’s pressure. The friend’s daughter had also come for counseling, and joined the sister college of the institution. He had attended her wedding on a memorable trip to a prominent historical city. Memories.

He had reached the beginning of the last stretch of the climb. He felt a little surprised that his tummy hadn’t rumbled from hunger, even though he had kept up a brisk pace. He paused and surveyed the throngs of theists ahead of him. All shapes and sizes wearing all colors and hues.

Diversity was the USP of his country. He reveled in it. His visit to its southernmost point had shown him the meeting point of three water bodies, and his many travels to the north had yielded awesome, inimitable experiences of earth’s mightiest mountains. He had gotten lost on the road in the vast western deserts, and hiked the hills of the eastern states in torrential rains.

What Flaubert had said was true; he had seen what a tiny place humans occupy on our planet, let alone the universe. If he could ever make a Faustian bargain, he would trade his soul, how much ever of it he had, for the chance to travel the world without any encumbrances or limits.

Would a microbe inside him ever consider the possibility of traveling outside its immediate environment? Was it capable of perceiving anything outside of its sensory perceptions? Did it want to explore more? What did it know about other beings’ minds? Elementary particles exist in quantum uncertainty; it was just a relatively big agglomeration of such particles. Did what happened at microscopic levels of existence affect macroscopic levels? Nature was awesomax.

He sucked at the strand stuck in his teeth. It reminded him of the dialogue from a movie: “Like a scratch on the roof that would heal if only you would stop tonguing it – but you can’t.” It was one of those movies that turned out better than the book upon which they were based. Anarchy was its crux. That, and dissociative personality disorder. He had binged the movie in his college days. It had affected his mannerisms, his thought processes, his perspective about living his life.

He saw one of the official donation kiosks and made a donation in the memory of his KIA father.

He hadn’t the faintest memory of his father, having been just over a couple of years at the time. 

He joined the long line to the ultimate end of the climb. It snaked forward slowly, shuffling. Sigh.

Apropos of nothing, or perhaps in a bid to tune out the discord around him, he remembered the reason why he – and in this regard, he counted himself among the majority of people who did this thing (but without really understanding, as he understood, why they did it – listened to music while driving. It was to drown out the noise of silence. Tinnitus brought on by absolute stillness.

Random stuff happens on earth due to humans’ proclivity for chaos. One evening, he had parked his car overnight in the parking lot of the golf course near where he lived so that he and his friends could carpool to watch a Formula One race. When they returned later that night, he discovered a fist-sized hole in the driver-side window. Upon opening the door, shards of glass cascaded from the frame. The rock that had made the hole by getting flung by an arm had raised no alarm, as far as the security guard of the lot could tell. It lay on the floor of the car, near the pedals. Bits of glass were strewn on the front seats and fascia. Unexpected events have a way of sticking in one’s craw for a long time.

What was most surprising, according to the now-fully-awake security guard, was that the perpetrators had not stolen the car. They had, apparently, tried to steal the music system, which is what petty thieves usually went for. Only his USB pen drive, a promo novelty item shaped like a mug of frothy beer, was missing. One of Mexico’s prime brands, they recently exited India. The guard conjectured that the thief – or thieves – had put their arm through the jagged hole in the glass but hadn’t managed to detach the front of the music system – just the memory device.

Driving towards home with the wind whistling through the wounded window, he wondered why anyone would behave this way. Everyone faced their unique circumstances – no surprises there.

All he needed to do to continue to be surprised was to keep walking into the future. Human nature was sure to throw lots of earthly flotsam and jetsam into his path across the sea of time.

People ahead of him in the line chanted and swayed and clapped their hands and nodded their heads. Crescendos rose regularly. He thought of the previous seven times he had stood in line.

Every time he climbed, he saw more ‘development’ along the route. This time, there were plastic bottle crushing machines at the main stoppages that paid pilgrims a small reward for feeding them. Small steps in the slow slog against the long lasting damage dealt out by plastic pollution.

But the cost of development was the collection of trash in the crevices of the holy mountain. Each pilgrimage of his saw him reduce what he carried further. All he had with him this time, apart from the clothes he was wearing, was a canvas bag containing water, his phone’s charging cable, and a portable battery. Not that the phone was of much use for calling – networks were unavailable for prepaid cellular connections that were registered outside the state. This was an essential step to counter terrorism as prepaid phones were easily disposable.

He had taken pictures and recorded videos on the long way up, as was his wont. He wanted to edit them and stitch together an audio-visual narrative that might provide useful information to future pilgrims.

A lot of ideas fail to come to fruition, mostly on account of procrastination. There was no way, he thought wryly, of predicting or overcoming this weirdly funny malady. Another was blaming others for misfortunes, intentional or otherwise, suffered by the self. Proclivity to play the victim.

Being present in the present is quite underrated. He took stock of his situation in the unquiet queue. There were zero indications that the line would move quickly. He relapsed into nostalgia.

His way of dealing with the interminable passage of time during his lifetime was to deal with the hand that was being dealt to him by his local universe on an ongoing basis and hope for the best. It felt defeatist on the face of it, but in the face of uncertainty, it felt good to be optimistic about the future and never giving in to the trials and tribulations that came with the human experience. Time and tide wait for no one, said an old adage, and it had stood the test of time.

Was time the worst human invention, or was it the wheel? Had the futile thought of conquering nature and bending the universe to its will deteriorated humankind beyond any hope of natural redemption? Was – is – it too late to change the direction in which we are headed? He felt like he was falling into a stupor. With a deep breath, he pulled himself out of his soporific spiral and stepped back from the brink. Life’d be alright, right? He was nudged forward, one step closer to the end of the line towards salvation.

One step at a time. One moment at a time. One idea at a time. One life at a time.

The spaceship lifted off as Lex’s brain was lulled into a state resembling sleep by the short story.

In the next episodes: Selina and Peg-Leg LEX meet and greet each other’s intellects. Lex wishes to go to Earth, and Selina sees the value of the sentient android. She and Lex have many philosophical discussions on the way – they have three days, and he does not need to take breaks for biological functions. She also receives a reply from Neer, who has been escorted back from Mars and is incarcerated. She reaches Earth and requests personal custody of the android, which arouses the suspicions of the Earth space squad. 

Episode Nine – To Eartoo

In previous episodes: LEX-42 stows away on Selina’s spaceship. Selina sees him from the spaceport near her home town on the moon and comes to investigate, but cannot find anything. She meets her parents (Maw in real life, Pa virtually) and an old, intelligent acquaintance: Illen.

In this episode: Selina & LEX land on Earth, after spending the week in close proximity. LEX learns vicariously about human intelligence. Neer manages to get a coded message to them, informing them that he is being held in involuntary quarantine by agents of Earth’s space squad.

Takeoff was chill as usual. With well-practiced movements of her head and hands, Selina coordinated with the Moon squad capcom efficiently. Advent engines ran on hydrogen fuel cells, so there was negligible Moon pollution. This was a great move from four centuries ago, when interplanetary travel was on the cusp of becoming the norm. Fossil fuels had been more or less phased out, replaced by renewable and sustainable energy sources. Humanity had evolved.

An eco-consciousness had developed in newborn minds all around the world due to a pandemic that woke people up to the real reality instead of the virtual world in which they had become ensconced. Nature came to the forefront of humankind’s priorities, with greater understanding. The happy result was that Earthers, Mooninites, and Martians regarded Eartoo as a living being.

Care and kindness towards Eartoo had precipitated a great increase in positive climate action, in turn fostering a heal-before-steal attitude towards fast-depleting resources and environments.

This was essential, because the polar ice caps were already melting by the time humanity woke to the fact that the proponents of the industrial revolution had not taken the future into account, mainly because of lack of information regarding their actions. A similar situation occurred with Mr Midgeley from Beaver Falls, Pennsylvania, who had no idea the hell he was unleashing upon earth’s environment when he advocated for leaded gasoline and gaseous chlorofluorocarbons.

In retrospect, things seem clear. This is an undoubtable truth, as expressed by Captain Hindsight, a major figure in embracing positive climate action & an example of crude animation.

Crude oil had gone out of favor within 1 century ACE, and was becoming continually defunct as systems were upgraded across all spheres of human existence. With no purpose left in fighting over oil, humankind had focussed its collective efforts on improving life and expanding upwards.

Selina thought of all this while the system check completed its routines. She had run them when she had come out to the launch pad after spotting Lex near her ship, but it was protocol to run them before aligning for rendezvous with her ship’s reusable booster. It had hung in orbit, using zero energy in its dormant state, after her ship had detached to land in Bohr City’s space port.

All checks were run, with all results within threshold parameters. Moon squad uplinked the coordinates of the rendezvous point with the booster and shared some peanuts back on the lunar ground, while Selina ate some peanut butter paste as she ascended towards Moon orbit.

Reaching moon orbit for the booster assisted slingshot towards Earth, she kept a close eye on proceedings as the auto pilot pirouetted her ship towards the booster lying in wait to propel her.

The navi lights of her ship began to reflect from the booster’s shiny panels as they aligned in orbit. Blinking red and green, they gave her a visual confirmation that the space crafts were in tandem. With precise hisses that she could subtly feel, her ship vented directionally until the two crafts docked. The booster had too much mass compared to her quite petite ship, so it took the brunt of the docking vibrations in stride, and Moon squad confirmed smooth capture of the ship.

Powering up the booster took a few minutes, and the rest of the inertly floating ride to the orbit exit point from where the booster would shoot her towards Earth was another half an hour away, so Selina switched off the permarec cameras and made her way to the washroom compartment. There, she took out the device Illen and she had found in Neer’s old bed, and examined it minutely. It was a synthetic device, nearly circular and pretty flat. The only bit of metal she could see was a physical connector, ostensibly to plug it into some sort of port, that extended from one of its sides. This connector was about a fingertip long, and shaped like a cuboid. The open end had a black strip of plastic inside, blocking exactly half of the connector’s opening lengthwise. She recalled seeing something similar in one of the computers in Neer and Hielsa’s bio eco modules in high earth orbit, where they had set up nearly self-sustaining space farms.

She returned the device to her pocket and herself to the control deck to prepare for the boost.

There would be time enough to find that socket when she docked with the bio eco module furthest from Earth (which made it the closest one to Moon) to pick up the latest space greens.

Without Earth’s full gravity weighing them down, orbit-grown plants could breach the limits of volume and flavors that humans knew up to that point in time. Over the past century, bio techies had honed orbital botany so that the effects could be replicated in special greenhouses on Earth and Moon – and as Selina had found out on her latest Mars trip, efforts were on to do the same on the red planet too. The thought that perhaps Neer’s expertise in orbital botany was what had caused him to be sent to Mars crossed her mind as her interlocked booster and ship swung out.

Relaxing into her pressure-absorbent launch seat, she discarded that notion. Neer had long expressed his own desire – very publicly and volubly – to use the thin atmosphere and lower gravity of Mars to further his research on extraterrestrial vegetation. He had wanted to go there.

Her chief’s voice floated into her ears.

“Mind giving us a look at yer mug to see if you’ve started gettin’ scared, li’l ‘un?”

Selina laughed; she had not turned the cameras back on after returning from her loo visit.

“There ya go, oldie, now get me on my way so that I can grab some of that orbital grub!”

In high spirits, they locked in the boost, and Selina tensed up in anticipation of the acceleration.

In cargo, Lex was jolted awake from his soporific state by the near-instant kick of the booster.

In an effort to restore calm to his synthetically circuitous brain from its suddenly overclocked state, its mind began to show more examples of human literature. It was learning how to cope.

Lex’s brain began to slow down as it trawled millions of pages of text from the archives. He decided to focus on extracting as much contextual data as possible about how humans thought, randomly selecting some extracts from the occasional stream-of-consciousness outpurings, raving ramblings, and time-stamped transcripts by some human who had existed circa 10 BCE.

Meandering & Wandering

College started with me getting my first cell phone, as a gift. The cell number associated with this cell phone changed even before I graduated. The reason was something like better calling rates and free local messages, as far as I remember. This reminds me to declare, at the outset of my college life, that I digressed a lot during this time. Digression is, shall I say, something I count as one of my any and many afflictions. Add it to the list.

It was a Sony Ericsson T230. Nice phone. I liked it. It, too, will change a couple of weeks before my number changes. The first time I had to get it fixed was after it got wet in my bag while we were on the college trip, my first. That was in the second semester. We had gone to Manali in the Himalayas, and spent 3 days there, and while coming back some dumb ass’s bag had a water bottle which, in the 16 hours it took us to reach college and open the boot of the bus, had soaked lots of stuff, including my bag, which had my phone. My poor, blameless, color-screen phone. Anyhow, I got the screen fixed, but the incident taught me something – once I’d taken a shine to staying “connected” with people, disconnecting was not an option. I was close to miserable during the 2 days it took the local mobile shop to fix the phone. In my defense, I had made many friends in the half year I’d spent with it. It figures that almost all my closest friends from that initial era of engineering college remain so today, as do a few of my school ones.

College was Pink Floyd. The name Pink Floyd echoes through time. Their music goes very well with many moods; whether you want to have a cigar while you set the controls for the heart of the sun on an interstellar overdrive, or feel comfortably numb while you are waiting for the worms. Their music before and after Syd Barrett’s participation was as different as apples and oranges. Perhaps it was proof that money can cause brain damage. Syd probably felt he was on the run; it seems that in photos of him from that time that he was lost for words, yet his eyes spoke louder than words. Speaking of eyes, since we never see the dark side of the moon, perhaps Pink Floyd were right in saying, ‘let there be more light,’ especially on days obscured by clouds when our fat old sun is not flaming as usual. Hey you, if you’ve never included their music in your all-time favorites playlist, you may want to be careful with that (awesomax-music-excluding) axe, you know what I mean? 

Pink Floyd reminds me of a quote (certain parts of which are used to quite great dramatic effect in their song “Keep Talking”) by none other than the late, great Doctor (in mathematics, astrophysicist extraordinaire, CH CBE FRS FRSA, survivor supreme, papal pontificator – no, seriously!) Stephen Hawking: “For millions of years, mankind lived just like the animals. Then something happened which unleashed the power of our imagination. We learned to talk and we learned to listen. Speech has allowed the communication of ideas, enabling human beings to work together to build the impossible. Mankind’s greatest achievements have come about by talking, and its greatest failures by not talking. It doesn’t have to be like this. Our greatest hopes could become reality in the future. With the technology at our disposal, the possibilities are unbounded. All we need to do is make sure we keep talking.” His brief history on Earth was far too less time, but more than most expected. The human body surprises doctors.

Truer words were rarely spoken. I want to follow something like this approach to explain my alethings. By encouraging discussion about them, I want to build upon these alethings in a constructive way. To raise debates in using alethings effectively for thinking, I want to learn more and try to inform others not just about alethings (which would seem selfish) but about everything (which seems presumptuous, because nobody can ‘know’ everything, but I might try, mayn’t I?).

Alethings can help in dealing with lots of untrue things: fear of missing out (driven by social media’s pervasiveness), inferiority complexes (due to comparisons with others who are more fortunate – wealthy/higher learning ability/better sports capability etc.), peer pressure (alcohol, drugs, sex being regarded as commonplace due to uncensored gratuitous media’s proliferation), unrealistic family expectations (which forces many young students to join in the ‘rat race’), and confusion about vocations (due to so many avenues of earning being shown off by youngsters). 

All of these issues that popped into my mind over a few minutes of deep thought are obviously well documented by specialists elsewhere. Yet, I am kind of proud of my ability to empathize with my (open-minded) peers, having faced a few of such issues in my own formative years. So I will say that if we as a species ‘keep talking’, the end result makes the effort totally worth it, even if it makes the smallest iota of a positive difference in even one person’s life, so that they may think better and act kindly towards others, a trait that’s sorely missing in human ‘kind’ today.

Speaking fluently is a privilege. I have used it myself to “win friends and influence people”, as Mr Carnegie put it so many years ago! I know this to be true because I was lucky enough to be taught in one of India’s premier schools: The Lawrence School, Sanawar. Most (if not all) of my classmates are also quite well-spoken, and hence, faced little difficulty in pursuing their higher education (both abroad and in India) and careers (both family business and corporate). 

I may not be a B.Ed. or a child learning specialist, but I do know that reading aloud helps a lot in instilling confidence in children when it comes to speaking. Learned people to guide them about correct pronunciation and spoken syntax without being judgmental can also be of great help – or so I believe. Each individual develops their own inimitably unique style of learning language(s). 

Speaking styles are so different that even twin siblings have their own ways of expressing themselves. Moreover, in a multilingual society like ours (India), regional intonations and colloquialisms find their way into a person’s thought process (and hence, diction) from quite an early age. This might be one of the “issues” our educators face routinely, in my humble opinion.

Issues like this were exacerbated by COVID – 19. The past year (2020) was unprecedented in living memory, even though ‘unprecedented’ has become a cliche. COVID made life difficult even for those who did not suffer from it. Students also felt the brunt of the cataclysmic effects, as the education system came to a grinding halt. With virtually next to zero infrastructure for online education in place, there arose a dire need for scrambling together what could be foraged, and onboarding teachers & students into the early stages of online (virtual) education. Over the months, however, the system has been improved drastically, mainly due to the ease with which Zoom, Google Meet, and their ilk put online distance learning on the education map.

There are many educators and teachers (the two aren’t interchangeable) more capable and learned than myself who might be better people to ask about the best way to leverage technology for educating students, but my two cents can probably be summed up like this: people need guidance according to ability. Virtual classrooms make it difficult to gauge each student’s innate ability, but it shouldn’t stop us from trying to bring out the best in each person. 

College was also Fight Club; as junior college should be. It is unfortunate that I expected the excellent standards of my school throughout my education. All is well, though. Due credit to 3 Idiots. College was about rebelling; which meant doing what you thought would make others think that you thought that they thought that you thought that still others thought you were ‘cool’. 😀 Microsoft Word doesn’t find anything wrong with that sentence. Neither do I, which is why I wrote it.

I have to hand it to them; the entire Fight Club ensemble. It defined quite some time of my life; starting from the first week of…September? It may have been October, I’ll have to confirm that by referring to my photos library. My vast and comprehensive collection of digital memories. To put it as Frasier might, “this” continued till some way into third year, or sixth semester. Fun times. A time of lots of disjointed writing; something about thoughts being shadows behind a rippling or moving curtain. Or was that Plato’s cave? Thinking about that time brings me as close to regret as anything can. It was a pain in the ass to be treated unfairly for being outspoken, or not conforming to what stickler teachers expected students to be. No Robin Williams-esque Dead Poets in this college, thanks very much, much to my chagrin. Of course I knew that acting like Brad Pitt in Fight Club did not make me like his character, Tyler Durden: “sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken”. My Fight Club lifestyle receded over time, as most fads do, leaving me changed from the ever-refreshed, bright-eyed boy full of potential and the determination to knock the world dead; I devolved into a grouchy, sullen pessimist. Still, time changes everything – everything – and so did I. I don’t know, you know, I just wrote the piece about realizing I was meant to do great things. And yet, writing such highly philosophical-sounding things like “and so did I” about my college life embarrasses me, while I had no compunction about writing such (or deadlier) stuff while at school. I am so proud of my childhood alma mater, nestled in the beautiful foothills of the mighty Himalayas, that I love and adore.

College was about music. Pink Floyd, like I said, and lots of other stuff. It was an influence it was impossible not to get influenced by; the ones who escaped it must’ve been rocket scientists. We, too, were rocket scientists in our own way. We were fighters, challenging the known boundaries and always – always – devising new ways to ensure that every passing moment of our lives was full of fun. Music, to begin with, enabled us to make friends amongst our seniors, amongst our compatriots – but not so much with too many of our juniors, even though there were loads of them (good friends in the junior batches, I mean, not just juniors). Music of different genres became available to us through our extended circles. I sampled everything the best I could and formed my opinions about music. In some cases, I even changed my previously existent or newly-formed opinions to suit others’ expectations, and consequently boost their perceived perception of me. It was like I (and everybody else around me, if they don’t be unreasonably high-nosed and deny it) was trying to achieve compatibility with everyone else and everything else around us, sort of settling down into the flow of things, each choosing his own place. Hence the term ‘cool’, drawing upon entities/molecules/air/hot oil/excited hamsters (or people) that settle down, leading to a temperature drop. Some deep thought it must have taken to formulate, inspect and announce this Law of Thermodynamics. Will its progenitor be counted amongst the luminaries of science?

I love science, especially thermodynamics, and I stand by that statement. It is just one of the drawbacks of typing – I do not, but definitely would like to, know how pervasive it is in us amateur writers’ laments: the original thought gets lost in the passage from neuron to fingertip. Add to that the additional thought process of locating keys on a keyboard, and you got yourself writing sentences like the last one of the preceding paragraph. As if there weren’t enough distractions already. I appreciate how science gets rid of emotion in drawing conclusions. As a matter of fact, I aspired to be a scientist (among other things, like an astronaut, in Rakesh Sharma’s footsteps) while I was studying at the best school of all.

One of my college friends, NG, looks forward to more parts about him in my – for lack of a better word – journal. Due to this, a “Prologue” heading I had written for this section has written itself out of this document. Stubbornly. I can find no place for a prologue in this medley of reminiscences. Thoughts have unforeseen consequences.

Like keystrokes made while hazarding a newbie attempt at typing without looking at the keyboard, our actions commit mistakes. In my current vanity, I pride my MusicBox for playing Comfortably Numb right now. I want to share the words, but the fond hope that the greatest musicians to ever band together will allow it without copyright striking it seems hopeless. Nevertheless I have High Hopes music aficionados will know it well.

Many songs meant a lot to us. Ends of long-drawn nights, like this one, and complex music, the sheer depth of it, and the yearning of things further than a pursuit of materialistic goals. We were about living in the moment, weren’t we? Just the fact that I use that phrase “in the moment” showcases the widespread infiltration of various methods of Killing Time (huge Infected Mushroom / Astrix shout out) rampant in educational institutes. Everyone has stories to tell. We have the best, though. 

Our college days were way better than simply legendary. I throw my hands up in despair at the flood of memories that comes rushing to the fore when I think of college.

Memories are tangibly, albeit digitally, retrievable through photos. I have ‘proper’ photos of my father that I intend to digitize for near-eternal safekeeping. He was KIA in OP Pawan as part of the IPKF, in 1987. Memories that trigger strong emotions are usually connected to people with whom you once lived, or whom you once loved.

Now that we are in the digital age, our progeny will know most of what there is to know about us. Our digital imprints shall persist (if properly preserved) long after we perish. It is a cherish-able thought for a positive future. I want to get a lot of thoughts down before they become irretrievably archived. The entropy of memory can be overcome by journaling digitally. 

I am glad that the spirals of friends who are usually chilling in metropolitan areas intersect once in a while – another undeniably positive effect of technology. Many others’ tangents went far off after brief intersections and momentarily parallel travels through life. Thinking of death while typing this led me to how briefly SSR’s spiral overlapped mine at college, when we competed against one another for being Mr Fresher. I won.

Unfortunate downward spirals cannot be avoided, but we must go with the flow and try to keep our head above the rising maelstrom. Perhaps we will become kings and queens of the world (like DiCaprio’s Jack, very briefly), riding an upward typhoon. It is hope that keeps A Life Afloat. 

Just the fact that my friends continue to support me in the blistering variety of ways they do is proof of our friendship. Truth is best told as directly as possible, and words are but instruments of language. It is a pity that money has come to be the most widespread language, closely followed by natural resources (ravishing the Earth, but more on that somewhere else – specifically on my YouTube, where I am trying to promote zero-impact travel, especially in the Himalayas). I wish we could go back to the jungle days; I’ll make sure I earn enough to have our own place in the mountains to chill and relax – to chillax.

A memory surfaces. It was the day of the ‘counseling’ for choosing the stream of my graduation degree. But I did not go. I left my family friends’ house well in time for it, though. For starters, I felt that my rank in the qualifying exam wouldn’t get me any worthwhile stream of engineering; secondly, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix had been released a few weeks ago, and I was a naive, happy-go-lucky youngster. I skipped the chance to start my graduation a year early, just like that. In my ever-expanding list of regrets, this one consistently takes a podium position. The more I try to leave the past behind as I approach the end of life, the more such memories emerge and drag me back into pondering the past, staring into the hellish mire of a life left unfulfilled, promises unkept, words unsaid.

I recall Upamanyu Chatterjee ‘s English, August being the first book to film adaptation I had encountered. Its brevity and sarcasm resonated with my young, brash mind. The book’s, I mean. The movie was good too, and Rahul Bose’s oeuvre has only expanded splendidly since then. It was a coup de force for me to encounter them both at the inaugural Times Litfest at Delhi’s Taj, and obtain Mr Chatterjee ‘s autograph on my copy of Catch 22. He chuckled when I tentatively proffered it to him; at least I think he did, as he signed it with his fountain pen, a rarity in itself these days. I had Mr Bose sign a Ruskin bond. I also asked Rahul about his brightly coloured Swastik hairdo shaved into the top of his head, temporarily. Just yesterday, seeing that interaction on YouTube brought on a nostalgic smile.   

I met Ruskin Bond and got him to sign my copy of The Salmon of Doubt (by the peerless Douglas Adams) at another Times Litfest at the India Habitat Center. 

Some time later, maybe months or years, I was saddened by Chester Bennington and Chris Cornell bringing their beautifully chorused songs to a screeching halt, permanently. SSR has been added to the list of famous people whose death left me troubled. What were their troubles? Unimaginably hellish due to the fame fetish, I think.

My school, quite oppositely, was heaven. My friend G (suffixed with ‘ji,’ as a sarcastic attempt at a deferential tone – not to be confused at all with differential, a mode of calculus that strangulated my brain often) asked me to relate our college life, as did the rest of the Nallaz, but I feel I owe myself a brief, if patchy (because my interest drops in and out of my own memories, that is) recap of my formative years, in the true sense of the word. Before that, I don’t remember much. I know a lot about what I don’t remember from what my family has told me when I “grew up,” much of which was not good to know. Some coffins are best left undisturbed, or for grave robbers to loot.

Dank poetry about the melancholy of life doesn’t move me too much. Rhymes, clever ones like Roald Dahl’s, I find refreshing. I remember winning a poetry recitation competition in middle school sometime; the “Heady” presented me with the grand prize of two big chocolates. He was one of my idols, a former part of the Army, a writer of stories (and, the Web tells me, of a book on Sikhism as well), not afraid to tell us one of them even though it involved a rape. Such acts helped me define the fine, now rapidly diminishing, line between vulgarities and (because I can’t find the word I want) art. Moreover, we had stories of his to draw on even before interacting with him individually, courtesy Mrs. K, my English teacher at the time.

My first face-to-face with Heady happened sometime soon after joining school. Three friends of mine convinced me, while I was feeling only a little less homesick than them, to join them in running away. We had it all figured out: we would simply walk out of school (it was no Mordor, to be honest, and we were walking out instead of in), down to Dharampur (yeah, that sounds pretty, pretty, pretty easy), where we would hitch a ride with anyone who cared to give us a lift to Chandigarh (umm…okay…), where one of my 3 co-conspirators had genial relatives, who were ready to harbor us till we contacted our parents and explained to them, tearfully, why we couldn’t continue in boarding school and wanted to come home. At the school gate, however, one of them and I turned back, with cold feet, admittedly. We spent an hour or two furtively in our dormitory, until the two of us were summoned by a peon who had been sent explicitly to fetch us.

It turned out that our (overly) ambitious compatriots had been spotted on their way down and promptly escorted back by a teacher, Mr. G, I think, who had a reputation for catching runaways on his trusty scooter. That was my first time inside the Headmaster’s residence, and my first talk with him. So there – I was a 9-year old, guilty of transpiring to break school rules, one of the most sacrosanct ones (breaching school boundaries without permission). Heady was, in one word, cool. We had black soda and potato chips, my friend AV committing the naive faux pas of switching his glass for a more-filled one when the tray was offered to him. Heady shot the breeze with us about putting the aspirations of our parents ahead of us, and then, quickly, went on to put us at ease with banter about how the 4 of us were doing at our studies. I didn’t understand then how that interaction affected my life, or even how Heady molded much of my adolescent psyche; suffice to say that I consider the best years of my life the ones I had the privilege to spend at school.

I hate being ill. Which is ironic in hindsight, thinking about it while writing this right now. At school, I loved getting ill. Except for the few times I really was afflicted with diseases or broken bones, it was fun staying at the hospital and taking a break from the hectic routine we followed. Shamming, we called it – acting ill to get out of activities in which we did not feel particularly inclined to participate.

It was at school that I felt it in my bones that I wanted to do something great. Those frivolous 7 years gave me a lot of experience of coexisting with people of all ages. There would be too many commas in a single sentence if I were to tell all about the extraordinary years at school. Additionally, I wouldn’t be doing justice to the mind-boggling variety of the annual events by rushing through them as phrases between the commas of a long-winding (albeit interesting-sounding) sentence.

But like the Red King said, let us begin at the beginning, and go on till we come to the end, and then stop. On our first day, our parents came to install us at school; the grade is called Form II, the English education system equivalent to grade 4. On my first night at boarding school, I looked out over the railings running the length of the balcony outside our dormitory at the bright pinpoints of the quaint town occupying the top of the hill next to ours, and felt homesick. A kind senior gave me a Tetra Pak of a mango-flavored drink, and I immediately felt better – those were the starting days of my exposure to life, the universe and everything in between. After that first night, I never ever felt homesick again, and even when I came home for holidays, I could only count the days to getting back again to my adopted home. When relatives asked me if I missed home, I would gladly regurgitate stories of me calling my school ”swarg”, which means heaven in Hindi. That analogy still holds true for me; I did not miss a single opportunity to stay at school. Parents were allowed to visit us once every semester for one SOP (Sleeping Out Pass, a provision to spend the weekend with your parents or authorized local guardians from Friday evening to Sunday evening; some children pushed the limit to Monday morning, but later than that meant your parents owed an explanation to your House master – and it better had been a good one!). When I was in Form II; we stayed in a little hotel in the small village in the valley below school. I think that was the first time I took a shine to puppies in particular and dogs in general. I have a few real photos of that SOP, cuddling the local pups in one of them. I also have a faint, fleeting, nearly suppressed recollection in my mind’s eye of a man brandishing a wire clothes hanger to…let’s say, threaten a woman; however, in retrospect, I cannot say I can put the entire blame on him, cowardly act though it was. That woman can get on anyone’s nerves without even trying. Not all people are saints, nor are all evil.

In the second half of 1994 (26 BCE), plague broke out in India, and so the second half of my second semester was declared a long, long holiday, extending till February, or maybe even April the next year – I’ll have to check the official school records for that, because I doubt I can recollect my memories of that time without any anchors. It feels awesomax to know that my school has a rich history, which reminds me of the book about it by Ms. K and Mr. P. I have a copy of it, hardbound and safe from silverfish, and have read most of it multiple times. Further readings and research materials are amply available throughout the world with all the alumni, distinguished or not so much, as well as in our library hall (which has been upgraded into a museum, last time I visited), the chapel archives, and various other sources. Suffice to say, I am very, very proud of being a small part of that saga, and hope to add to the glory by living my life as well as I can. The way we live our life is what forms our legacy.

A few words about my changing perception regarding my school are in order. I left school after the final exams of Form Upper V (definitely more recognizable to readers in India when referred to as ‘Class X Boards’), and have been back to school [ref. Deftones, “Back To School ”] half a dozen times. With every visit, I have become more disillusioned by the progressively deteriorating manners, unkempt attire, and standards of courtesy displayed by the students, especially the younger ones. I hope this is a temporary lull, and the former high standards will be re-attained; that future generations of Sanawarians will be courteous, well-mannered and proud enough of the kit they are wearing to take care of it. What I saw during the last few visits reeked of the fall-out of pervasive technology. Especially during celebratory times like the founder’s week or national holiday weekends, smartphones abound in little childrens’ hands.

Mollycoddling by parents seems to be at the root of this evil. It is important to maintain discipline, methinks. In our time, life was regimented, and the punishments were focused on enforcing discipline. I’ll not paint a rosy picture; a majority of us found our names in the drill and detention lists for various misdemeanors. Nevertheless, it was never personal, and certainly didn’t last beyond school. Of course, as with everything, I can only speak for myself.

Anyway, let me not get too bogged down (and drag your mood down with me) while remembering this very enjoyable part of my life. It is time to relate some stuff about a normal day at school as far as I can recall.

The year (academic; around the third week of February) started with a journey. Parents would receive a letter along with the New Year’s wishes communication: a well-composed, concise letter with details of how, when and where I was expected to be deposited so that the teacher accompanying the official school party could escort us to school. Usually, Patna Party was picked up en route from Patna railway station and got absorbed into Howrah or Guwahati Party, and the corresponding Rajdhanis maintained an admirable adherence to their schedules, contrary to what Indian Railways used to be famous for. The timings were very convenient for us – arrive at New Delhi about 10 AM, be polite while receiving your pocket money (while returning from home, we would all be heavy in the pockets, of course, so the small amount of the school allowance felt like a lot more when we were returning home), roam Connaught Place, Khan Market, Ansal Plaza, the PVRs at Priya and Saket. About two dozen (or maybe more) times I made this stopover at India’s capital, and now that I think about it, I really have always liked this city. Overexposure can make a golden sunny picture blindingly silver, but I don’t think that is the case with me, especially now, with the Metro and NCR-expansion.

Anyhow, leaving this train of thought to catch the one from New Delhi late in the evening, we used to arrive at Kalka, the northern head of Indian Railways, in the dark. Not the crack-of-dawn, swift-sunrise-green-hills style when the hues of blue ascend into the sky. The cold, sometimes wet because of sleet, or fog, or Kalka being in a cloud dark. I’d grab my luggage ASAP and find a good seat in the buses waiting for us. I never saw Kalka much during my school years, only passing through the bustling town.

Chhota Hazari at 6:30 AM. Tea, and a ration of a sweetie, saltie, or sweet bun – which, apparently, were such a valued commodity that our house matron had to distribute them individually on Saturday mornings, or else there was grabbing, stealing, robbing, gambling, and the like, amongst 9, 10, and 11 year olds. I was going to write a bit about our matron in prep school, but I won’t. Instead, I’ll remain with my development through Form II, Lower III and Upper III. Various activities occupied us through the day, making us interact interminably, and gave me a considerable understanding about the human psyche. 

I will not deny, I was always interested in knowing what went on behind the words a person spoke. I am glad of the avalanche of interactions, both short-term and long, that being in one of India’s – nay, the world’s – best residential schools allowed me to experience. I must mention that we are India’s oldest co-educational institution.

PT (short for physical training) was something I did not mind at all, unlike many of my fellow students. I am a firm believer of ‘healthy body, healthy mind.’ Over my life I have discovered being fitter than your competition gives you a significant advantage. So, I was mostly to be found doing the exercises, reveling in keeping time and stomping flat and slapping my hands so as to sound crisp and sharp. Admittedly, there were numerous days that I also succumbed to whatever was inside my head at that time, and therefore, could be found in the hospital or on the special “short back walk” for the ones with pink slips – little memos issued by our Residential Medical Officer that excused us from strenuous activity (like PT).

This (shamming) did not happen very often to me, though, and mostly I did not visit the hospital without reason. It is a different matter altogether that I was in hospital for long stretches quite a few times. Apart from the average number of visits for flu et al, I went for stitches to [1] my lower lip (a stone thrown by an unassuming senior rolled downhill and smacked me in the middle of my face), [2] my right cheek (this one was a visit to one of the bigger hospitals in Shimla; I was wrong-sided and hit during a hockey match against a rival school) and [3] one of my shins (skin peeled off after falling during athletics practice for the relay events, both 4 X 100 and 4 X 400 meters).

I endured numerous sprains and three fractures – right elbow, right wrist, and left the talus of the left ankle. I distinctly remember I had to get my right knee checked for a fracture once, because it meant I had to be taken to Chandigarh for a second opinion from a specialist. That was an unexpected bonus, so I got my eyes tested sometime in Form Lower V so that I could get another Chandigarh trip. On that trip I got myself a pair of silver-rimmed spectacles, with “only a little power in their lenses,” or so I told myself and my friends then. I somehow think I would have had perfect eyesight if I had not followed that path. But then again, unexplored universes that branch out from “ifs” deserve a whole chapter, and perhaps an entire book, to themselves. Also, on this note about “If,” I feel that both, the poem (by Rudyard Kipling, an author who shares a bit of trivia with Eric Blair / George Orwell – they are both India-born) and the song (by Pink Floyd) deserve to be immortalized.

Back to the daily routine. Classes began at 7:30 AM, I am sure, calculating backwards from breakfast at 9:00 AM preceded by 2 45-minute classes in the morning session. A quick grace “Oh Lord, thank you for what we are about to receive. Amen” was sandwiched between two peals of a bell, rung by one or the other “authoritative” students. For meals in which we knew “good” food was on the menu, we jostled to bag our positions to help ourselves from the laden tables. The quest for “good” food, and the formation of the subsequent strategies to obtain a fair share of what was available, certainly drove competitive levels higher amongst us.

Breakfast was awesome for me, as were all the meals served in the central dining hall. I remember being selected to represent the prep (junior most) department at the mess meeting to discuss the serious matter of our nutrition. It was probably my first encounter with committees. The meeting was scheduled in the staff room next to the computer lab. There were house captains, house masters, and house mistresses, along with Mr. N, our industrious mess-in-charge, and me and my lady counterpart representing the girls of the prep department. Democracy, mediation, debate, reasoning, conviction and convincing ability, compromise – my learning curve had just begun to slope upwards. I realized with experience that general knowledge helped to have meaningful conversations, rather than bitching about seniors, homesickness, tuck raids, and confiscated home cash.

We learnt our way through two more classes, and then, we were treated to a milk-break near mid-day. Depending on the season, cool or hot chocolate flavored milk or cocoa or chilled lassi in Tetra Paks were served, one each – lucky you if you could land ‘seconds,’ i.e. extra servings after the initial crowd had depleted. Some pretty devious means were used to achieve this end; I hope they used their Machiavellian traits to good use in the future. 

I really was an arduous learner, involving myself in many activities and dissolving myself into the fabric of our close-knit community. Indeed, I’m proud to say my teachers are still proud of me today. Back in those times, when parents came up for founders’ celebrations and met my teachers, they were all praises for me. I did have my habit of making silly (I believe the word used was “careless”) mistakes that were pointed out to me a few times. Thankfully I have managed to overcome that issue (mostly). I must say that I put in a diligent effort till Form Upper IV, at least. Then I strayed a bit. But that is for later.

Next up were two more classes, then a moderately filling lunch so as not to weigh me down for sports, Socially Useful Productive Work (acronymed ‘soup’), hobbies (in chronological order, I took up carpentry, art, music, music again, and gymnastics for the last 3 years), or just roaming around the hill in our weekly post-lunch free slots. We had four seasons of sport: cricket, football, hockey, and athletics (the last was combined with founders’ celebrations practices).

Team sports are a must for any individual. Furthermore, I think it is never too late. Michael Schumacher played charity football matches after retiring; I’m sure he’ll play again after retiring again. [10th October 2010: See? I (like anyone else) love being right. MS is driving again, though not for Ferrari, sadly.] I’ll miss cheering for him when I’m cheering for the Prancing Horse. I hope he is recovering from his medically induced coma, and that his racing legacy will be celebrated forever.

In the evening was prep (preparation) time – an hour of studying, either in our classrooms (but organized by house and batch, unlike school time) or at our desks in the dorms. In the founders’ term, we used to practice marching for the actual NCC parade, and salute the War Memorials outside the chapel on our way up to the classroom complex. Prep time was pretty eventful, spent mostly on the most common pastime of humans: talking. Our seniors had fun, we had fun (mostly), and we tried to make sure our juniors had “at least as tough a time as us.” I will steer clear of vague memories, consign them to the deaths of my mind’s ocean, and relate my clearest, dearest memory of adventure during evening prep.

During lunch one day, when I was in Form Upper V, my house prefect gave me a few of his books to “carry down”, which meant I was supposed to do him the “favor” of taking his books down to his bunk in the dorms, and carry them up again for evening prep. I went to the computer lab during the afternoon sessions, and forgot those books there. When evening prep started, he wanted his books, so I panicked and lied, saying I had put them on his table. He was livid that someone had stolen his books! Long story short, he threatened dire consequences for the entire dorm if he didn’t get his books by the time he reached his bunk after dinner. I was petrified by my lie, but time was running out, and I had to do something to fix my mistake. Midway through evening prep, with barely an hour left, I asked to be excused. I walked to the washrooms which put me out of sight of everyone. It was dark already, and I was small and quick. I applied my running skills and ran to the computer lab undetected. Lucky stars, the lab was unlocked! Next to it was the staff room where I had discussed our meals with the mess committee so many years ago. It was abuzz with adult voices.

In what felt like an eternity but was probably a minute or so, I slid open the latch, crept in, picked up the pile of books, crept out and shut myself in the small staff bathroom right next door – I was scared, I needed to take a leak. Unfortunately, so did Mr. P. He came, he knocked, he waited. He knocked again, he queried (“Who’s there, y’know?”), and after waiting some more accompanied by some grumbling, he went off to the next ‘pans,’ as we called washrooms. The moment I gauged his footsteps to be at an adequate distance, I was out of the toilet and sprinting away towards our classrooms like lightning. It had taken about twenty-five minutes to do this job, so I paced my arrival with the formation of the lines for marching up to the dining hall for dinner. As we lined up, I returned the books, and apologized to my house prefect, telling him that they had been left by me in the computer lab, and so we were all spared from his wrath. 

I would love to be a field agent for our national security or intelligence agencies. My escapades at school enabled me to infiltrate many college hostels for fun – but that is in the future.

Education systems play an extremely important role in a child’s development; that is pretty easy to understand. Then, also easy to understand should be the relation between the role the environments play. The ecological environment, not just the social. School was beautiful. I am nowhere near poetic enough to wax eloquent to describe it, even though I did contribute a few poems and articles to our monthly news-letter, which was also a foolproof way of ensuring that our parents received some semblance of communication from us. This was not totally out of anxiety for our well-being – they knew we were well-taken care of – it was more to ensure that we followed a routine.

And next on our daily routine was dinner, to which I attach much importance, both for erasing hunger (in which we were abetted by tea at 4:30 PM) and for talking. You should practice what you preach, and if you practice what you preach, you will be very good at what you practice along with being well-versed in what you preach.

I tend to spend more and more free time with old memories; in this moment they bring to mind Gerald Durrell’s My Family and Other Animals, which was a fun read, further made more enjoyable by me being asked to read aloud to the class many times.

The fact that my school played a major part in making me the existentialist, six-hourist that I am is not doubtable. My teachers are a wonderful lot, all of them, and I would love to go back and contribute to school, as some of my classmates have done. 

One of the best gifts from my mountainous school is a zeal for health and fitness; irrevocably, this puts into my mind the realization that I am glad Granma got to see my school. I managed to convince her to make the most of my financial stability and flew her over to see our incredible nation’s capital, too. How does the cycle of birth and death go, again? Is it karma, or nirvana, or punya and prayashchit? Why are we born?

Apropos, a little rewinding of time, and life, to the zero point: birth

It was not an agreeable situation. Personally speaking, of course. I didn’t know what to make of it, but there was nothing much I could do about it either, and when I gave in to my natural reaction to the situation, it only became worse. In addition to being cold, wet and very uncomfortable, there was this high-pitched sound that was not doing any good to my general well-being. It would stop when I breathed in, but then carry on again in almost the same cacophonous tone at which it had left off.

There wasn’t much to see, too, and when I tried to open my eyes, the brightness hurt, so I gave up trying. By and by, after quite a bit of knocking about, I found I was dry and still; if I could call the gentle rocking motion I was caught up in ‘still.’ And the wailing noise was gone, too. I was breathing evenly, so I figured things must have improved. I decided to take a look around.

The light did not hurt my eyes anymore. I peeped out a little more and saw that my field of vision was almost equally divided in two. One side seemed plain and blank – white was the name of that color, I learnt later. The other side frightened me so much that I had trouble breathing and that wailing noise coming from somewhere very near my ears started again, though it was a little muted this time. I noticed the wailing came when I did something, although I wasn’t sure what, except it felt that the source was somewhere close to my eyes, too – my ears were finding it difficult to figure out where it was coming from, and why it stopped when I breathed in. Meanwhile, I felt something soft and firm gently patting my chest, where I could feel the vibrations of the noise. The patting felt good, so I started to breathe evenly again and that caterwauling klaxon subsided. I squinted at the frightening roundish shape still filling one half of my vision.

It was very dark at the place where it began and the blank part of my field of vision ended. Then it smoothed out into a lighter expanse, which ended at two dark rows, in the middle of which there was a cone jutting out. On either side of the cone were weird almond-shaped (not that I knew what almonds were – another thing I learnt later) white things, with deep brown circles inside them. The cone that extended beyond these unsettling, moving almonds had two gaping holes in it. Just below the holes was another black hole, and as I focused upon it, it seemed to open and close in arbitrary motions, its edges moving ceaselessly. In an instant they would open up bigger than the quite small holes in the cone above them; and in the next instant the hole would close as the edges pressed together, wrinkling the pinkish boundaries of that black hole. All these openings and closings of the hole were accompanied by sounds that did not seem as troublesome as the yelping I had heard before.

I could see that this thing above me was part of a bigger thing, but just as I was shifting my attention from that fascinating black hole to the alternately dark and blank almonds a little above it, the edges of that fluctuating hole pressed together again and came closer to me. Instinct took over and shut my eyes to stop this horror from approaching me. I stopped seeing the world I had come into, and just as I did, the wailing siren started up again, germinating somewhere inside me and getting expelled through some part of my face. Honestly, I didn’t really like the kiss my mother gave me.

Being born was not pleasant.

Like any normal person, I too have glimpses of growing up. I remember that the colony we lived in had a largish pond in the middle. I watched a few washer men at work, once. I don’t remember the washing of the clothes or anything, but I do remember the arcing streaks of water from the clothes, almost in slow motion. I took bicycle rides through tree-lined kaccha roads and shortcuts through people’s gardens, pushing through seemingly impenetrable bushes to discover free expanses of more lawns beyond, in various stages of upkeep. I also have a hazy recollection of being carried by a pundit on the banks of a river, and being given a flaming torch to hold. Perhaps I only remember it in hindsight from the real memory of seeing a photograph of me as a child in that moment. I can never recall anything further in that sequence, but it’s certainly the memory I have of my father’s funeral. Pity; I would’ve liked to remember more. Painful memories can be a source of inspiration like little else. When things seem to me as if they couldn’t get any worse and that I’ve never faced more depressing times, I almost always recall that torch in my hand and count myself lucky that I didn’t understand what was going on then. That would’ve been worse than anything in the present. At that moment in my life, if I’d realized what events had transpired, helplessness would’ve been absolute. I’m lucky I was unaware. Ignorance is bliss.

Perhaps a transcript of the “our great depression is our lives” speech from Fight Club will give unambitious people some food for thought. As I write this, I am reminded of one of my teachers giving political agenda-type speeches…plus, this guy wasn’t even a good orator, let alone being capable of influencing people to win them over as friends, Carnegie-wise. Not students, at least, not the way he’s going. Yet that is the sad part; such is the impressionability of minds afflicted by uncertainty about the future that every little thing, even one as weak as this guy’s rant, will succeed in ringing in people’s ears.

I think this is an opportune moment to suggest that echoes of such things distort the original memories, even resulting in great contortion of the truth (consequently retarding correct recording and interpreting the original truth – the one the speaker intends to communicate). These distortions magnify inside empty heads, i.e. minds without the necessary filters to process, store and control the sensory information they receive in every moment of Waking Life. As a direct result, what is received by others in a society or group as second-hand information is, quite possibly, far from the truth. Doubting the information dispelled by the provider results in discussion among the recipients involved; this usually deviates from the ideal way the cumulative knowledge of the group could have increased in beneficial ways.

He’s not sure which, if any, original copies of assignments he gave us. I’m sure I was trying to convey to you the damage possible due to gossip, of course. I loathe gossip, and its omnipresence pisses me off. I take a deep breath. I relax. In MBA terminology, “gas” is comparatively better than gossip.

I think my myopia has increased. Without my glasses, I cannot see the white board from the third row, and the class has a total of six rows. I need an eye check-up. I know! I’ll get one the next time I go to college (my engineering college), from that decent doctor whose clinic is at the T-point of the main market road. Cool, that’s sorted and put away for the future.

I should flip a new page. Just half the class is over. It is now 11:31 AM. Dissecting knowledge, even without the analytic knife used for Quality, is thirsty work.

 

This is a new page. I love (and prefer) writing with pen on paper, like I did in adolescence. The typing I’ve done (so far) is hard work, man. [Update: It still is.]

Just ask MH, my good friend from when I was admitted in hospital for a week or so at the same time as him (and a few others – EB, for a memorable stint involving book cricket as well as card tennis), sometime in Form Lower V, I guess. For those who are curious, book cricket is when you score runs by opening a book (preferably fat and not dog-eared) and noting the number in the unit’s place of the page number. If you open a page number ending in 0, that’s it, YOU’RE OUT! IF it’s an 8, you score a single. For elaborate score-keepers, that also meant a change of batsmen, like in the real world counterpart of the game. I have recorded my thoughts on cricket and football and why I love sports elsewhere in the digital world, which means they are open to people to see.

Card tennis was, as far as I know, EB’s invention. You dealt 3 cards to both players on either side of the net. The winner of the duel got the quarter of an hour points. Tied triplets were deuces. Usual scoring was followed; 15-30-40-game, set, match. I cannot for the life of me remember if there were faults and double faults.

Anyhow, during that stint in hospice, I was working on an idea and had already filled an entire thick hardcover notebook with the first half (approximately, as I saw the plot progression) of an action adventure book, inspired by series like Blade, Phoenix Force, Commando comics et al. My team was called the Omega Titans; it was pretty readable, I think, for light readers who liked the kind of things I liked. I express my written gratitude to AS, he knows who he is, for being excellent company and a treasure trove of nifty information. He was a fellow imaginative academic overachiever.

Which reminds me, I also scored quite a few gold star stickers from our French teacher (she lived in one of the quaint little houses near the basketball court) for my short stories, one of which was an especially good one about how a person walks into a marsh with a flaming torch to investigate eerie phenomena, and realizes he is an intruder in something that has gone on longer than homo sapiens…can’t recall the details. Those notebooks were thin, printed in our very own historical, awesomax printing press. They were treasured possessions for me, especially the fat hardcover one full of half my plot for the Omega Titans’ first stealth assignment.

Those notebooks, thin and thick alike, were all left behind in my trunk, which I stupidly did not take along while leaving Sanawar permanently, so as not to burden my fellow (slightly senior) traveler, who had taken his trunk. I seriously, seriously regret that decision. If only I could retrieve it. I am sure that it is a tumultuous collection of my early short stories, ripe for the taking. 

If only I could just go back in time and/or space and collate all my “if” sentences.

There’s that feeling again; one I have been familiar with since the second year of engineering college: too many thoughts and conversations that are worth being recorded to ponder for posterity go to waste due to lack of easy modes of documentation.

I was thinking about SWOT analysis for an assignment and I found something in my mind that adds to my “strengths”: I conform to my astrological sign in a positive way, and that makes me a natural team player and leader. I had saved this thought as a draft message on my phone: an example of an easy documentation method available to anyone at any point of time. The thought I wrote in the draft says “One of my strengths is that I use my astrological sign’s supposed characteristics to better my character.”

A friend says, “The internet is a wonderful thing.” I must agree. Full power \m/ to the Net. I feel it is now somehow appropriate to use emoticons in prose. Language has evolved, and it was inevitable, the way technology proliferated the world – like a blitzkrieg, but in a good way. On an unrelated note, I liked the movie I Am Legend. I have also decided to stick to my decision of not changing anything written in this document out of fear of retaliation, or of upsetting anyone. People are free to think what they want about what they want. I am also a part of the people, am I not?

In hindsight, every good outcome seems to follow a “good” decision on someone’s part, and a bad outcome, a bad decision. Consequently, sometimes that someone will try to be modest, like that master of politically incorrect outrage, Larry David (actually I am thinking of the wrong person, this quote is from Google’s Larry Page): “You have to be a little silly about the goals you are going to set. There is a phrase I learned in college called, ‘Having a healthy disregard for the impossible’. That is a really good phrase. You should try to do things that most people would not.”

SC says I should sell my words. I agree, indeed I do. It is one of my major strengths, and I rarely ever use it to put people down; rather, I’m always open to motivating them and answering anyone’s queries to the best of my abilities. As for life, I “Grin and Bear It” like Abhi. That book’s author, Ms. Sigrun Srivastava, knows what I’m talking about. Ma’am, if ever these words have the good grace of being read by you, I request an autographed copy of your book, I’d very much appreciate and cherish it. Your Moment of Truth stories and Abhi’s family dramedy got me through many years.

In the intervening years since I read those books, I have learnt to laugh along with the rest of the world at my expense.

Timestamps begin with a trip to Haridwar & Rishikesh, India

21st June, 2010. I returned yesterday from a weekend trip with exactly 13 other people – not including the driver of the Tavera. The other car was a Ritz. We left on Friday morning, 7 o’clock. At around 9:30 AM, the vehicle in front of the Tavera that we (7 plus the driver) were traveling in braked really hard. So did our driver, but the Ritz behind us was caught completely off-guard. This Unfortunate Series of Events resulted in considerable dents on both the vehicles. I like to think that a small mishap at the beginning of a trip tends to have an effect for the better on the overall experience of the rest of the trip. The drivers tend to be more alert.

A couple of hours’ delay later, we resumed our journey and reached the Tata group-owned Ginger hotel at 5 PM, as compared to the 2 – 3 PM we should have. However, as the Red Hot Chili Peppers have sung, “nothing ever goes according to plan.” “Should have” is also a misleading phrase; one that is condescending and carries demeaning undertones towards the unpredictability of the future. No matter who says it – a boss, a co-worker, a friend, a parent, me to myself – it gives innocuous actions and unpremeditated coincidences underlying-motives-driven connotations and generates feelings that they were pre-planned set-pieces in an insane game of galactic chess.

The hotel was good, and followed a ‘no-frills’ model. The outer layer of the large window in our room was spider-webbed with fine cracks, as if the hurler of the projectile that had caused the event had put painstaking effort into getting the physics just right, so as to give it a really professional finish. I’m surprised at myself that I didn’t take a picture [ref. Filter, “Take a Picture”]. We went for a dip in the Holy Ganges that flows down from the heavens (Aakaash Ganga) via Shiva’s tassels. It was a good experience. We had a good time, trusting the absence of visible industrial effluents. 

We repeated the bathing rituals on Sunday afternoon. The main reason for timing the tryst with the Ganges at 7 PM was to catch a glimpse, literally just a glimpse lasting a few seconds, of the daily evening aarti at the temple at the bathing shore we were at – its name is Har ki Pauri. The place is a people magnet; hoards throng the ghaats everyday to wash away their sins and cleanse their souls.

18th July. Waiting is so boring. People are playing cards to pass time. Time, which is treated as such an essential commodity these days by most, is reduced to being an irritant, at best. It is no more a hindrance. However, “reality” soon catches up. Saw Inception. That movie should lead to some interesting conversations.

28th July. My wallet is lost. I am tired.

16th September. If I had only this to write, I would write the hell out of this. Unfortunately, I have to submit many assignments. Maybe I am waiting for my time [ref. The wailing lyrics of System Of A Down’s “Hypnotize”], too.

10th October. My eyes are smarting from the sulfurous vapors of the freshly cut onions, so I shall pause here, for another eternity, seemingly, before I write again. There was something in my mind but that thread, like Pink’s dream, is gone, and I have become Comfortably Numb. Surprisingly, not for as long as I could have remained (Linkin Park’s) Numb.

0134 hours, 25th November. I am at C-69/39. Just for the record. 😛 Quote the RHCP’s Emitremmus: “Nothing ever goes according to plan…” [I just did, above]

1852 hours, 19th December. Stuff like ‘A Call That Changed My Life’ sells like hot cakes. While typing, an explosive epiphany: ‘RDX’ is in a diagonal on the QWERTY keyboard. While listening to Wish You Were Here, a repetitive regret about failing to repeat: I wish I could follow a consistent format rather than the ever-varying format I use for quoting great songs. Trivia: John Cho (of Harold And Kumar Go To White Castle) played a (minor?) character in American Beauty.

The thing I’m really curious about is, where did all matter come from? I am inclined to humor Barry Sonnenfeld’s cinematic interpretation at the end of Men In Black, which shows that the ball contains not just our galaxy, but our entire universe, as large as it may be. Unfortunately, that doesn’t solve my problem, because then there’s that much more matter to account for. Or, I forget whose idea this was, and I must try to find that quote – I have a strong feeling it is Douglas Adams – I wonder if I am a figment of someone’s imagination, and whether they are having a good time.

Time for a timestamp, as I am here again, at C69/39. 2325 hours, 26 February 2011. Passing time in the right way – that is to say, the most “constructive” way, is a pain in the butt. Lennon said something about time enjoyed not being wasted time. So I choose to while away the hours watching the result of other people’s “constructive” use of their time – most notably, Misters Grammar and Lorre. Kudos, gentlemen. At this point, may I raise a glass to Sheldon Cooper (does the actor portraying him drink? Cheers for making us laugh and forget our troubles for a while, mate!). [This is before I knew his name: Jim Parsons]

My eyes trouble me. Light is so important to my perception of this world. Anyhow, I am comforted (as in most medicinal cases) by their being umpteen precedents of myopia throughout human history. From my thoughts over the past 5 minutes, I come to realize that I don’t even have the level of affinity to social networking that I let on. It must be the morbidity of the emails I get – none of them are important at this point in my life. On top of this all, I have to prevent “dry-eye” et cetera. Blink more. I must do something about the screen at work, it is troubling my eyes. How, and when, will I write Something Must Be Done?

0143 hours, 5 March. I have written a couple more pages for the Zeroth chapter. I am confused. Should I attempt to explore the additional character further, or leave that setting behind and move on to greener pastures? Decisions, decisions…

Not very long after, it is today, the 3rd of April. 1804 hours. As coincidences happen, I have just added another line or two to Chapter One. Then I thought of putting in a timestamp, realized it belonged here, and opened up this ongoing project, one of numerous. Let me take another look at the Zeroth chapter…

So here I am, sitting at home, and wondering. Reading the last paragraph makes me want to clarify that I sometimes type on my phone even when I’m ‘sitting at home.’ Right now, however, I am playing a game – an app on Chrome, actually – called Word Squared. So I had L, I, I, T, H, U, N, and I was biding my time by playing small words, anticipating a Y to appear in my tray so that I could capitalize on an AMAZING I had made previously. I decided to use H, U, and N to make HUNG; I was about to click “Add Word” when I pressed “Recall” and placed U, I, L, and T to make GUILT. Then I remembered I was waiting for Y and needed L. Back to HUNG, which is where the entire planet we live on and off of is – hung in space, spiraling around a yellow star.

2259 hours, 13 May. There is so much I want to be, and so little (or too much) time. Now, however, is not the time to procrastinate while reassessing my priorities. “It’s all right, it’s all right, call me now, use the satellite…RHCP, Emitremmus [again]. I keep spiraling into this song often. It is so hard not to get distracted all the time. Raise your hand if you agree with me.

1923 hours, 17 October. A fortuitous moment, and I shall claim it to say, “I don’t need an amanuensis.”, primarily because I just learnt it from Christopher Tolkien’s comments in The History of Middle-Earth Vol. 11, The War of the Jewels. My, oh my. What a long time it has been since I’ve re-read the Lord of the Rings. Writing-wise, not a dry spell of course, since I have had my cellphone as my worthy ally; a digital amanuensis. This reminds me of “all thinking = = writing.”

It is much easier for others to agree with what one says in a conversation rather than try and apply their brains and see what their outlook on life about that topic is. I prefer to stay alone, only to get away from inane chatter that is so inconsequential, it appears too banal for me to participate. I indulge my wife, but even then, sometimes, solitude is essential to get over tiffs that any reasonable humans get into, occasionally.

Almost immediately thereafter, depending on how you define almost and immediately, especially in cahoots with each other. Either way, 6 hours later, I remembered I should write about …something. Absent-mindedness is a leading cause for concern in our times. The times that have been handed down from our forefathers and foremothers, each of us inheriting differently and leaving behind differently. It is food for time, our life. Time is a voracious eater. I wonder if I’ll have to submit to societal rituals when times demand, or when time demands. I will never give in to time. There is no answer to “What time have you got?” other than to continue existing. Expand to outer space, humankind! Move beyond earthly boundaries. Think of Asimov, please, and thank him and Sagan and Adams and everyone later. Later. Does “later” ever arrive? No.

The pale blue dot, as Carl Sagan put it quite admirably, is relatively large: there’s always room to explore more. So near and yet so far – how often this saying keeps coming around. We wish that time would fly or that something we wish for happens immediately, but we must have patience, and the hope that when the time we are so looking forward to rolls around, everything will be ok. So, what I have to say to you is this: positive patience. 

Thoughts continue to flow through every moment, whether we choose to perceive external simulations or chew upon the cud accumulated in our brains. At various times, we may be using a variety of ways of thinking simultaneously: the previous metaphor makes us self-zombies, absorbed in our internal reflections. Interacting with people is a whole different ball game, because of the alething of being unable to empathize completely with other people. Reading the underlying subtext has a direct bearing on the outcomes of conversations. 

The novelty of most of my souvenirs hold clear links in my cavernous memories. They form the basis of reminiscences both detailed and concise. 

Fields under various stages of agriculture roll by. Some copses of trees are distant, fog sneaks in under their branches even when their tops are sunlit. Rows of sparse trees mark the boundaries of the fields, but there are singular trees that have been left to reach the maximum extent of their growth. The mustard fields with their yellow blooms made famous by Bollywood movies stand out against the flat-cropped greens. 

Ban Ganga has passed by after a succession of overpasses and underpasses. The similarities between landscaping and manscaping have emerged via conversation. Long trips are conducive to such epiphanies, because we have the leisure of dwelling on a subject till we inevitably digress to another in an infinite list. It is only through the medium of words that we can attempt to collate and understand our experience. 

Along the tracks, many trees are bent from the wind and the rush of oncoming air from trains. The Aravallis form the horizon, with arid bush going right up to the foothills and coming to an abrupt end against the ochre rock faces. 

Night has been overcome by the sun and so has distance by the train. On such long rides, thoughts have the luxury of expanding without the constraints of time. Recurring thoughts become copacetic ideas, like mountain streams carving valleys and contributing to the wider flow of shallow, routine life. 

Fleeting fictitious scenarios arise suddenly, out of hand, triggered by words read or heard. Fiction is the outpouring of all that could have been, the scenarios that the mind dreams up in its vacant parts. Creative expression in all its forms is fictitious, because it is imaginary, and consequently, infinite. 

A noticeable change in the local dialect while the rain barrels on along the west coast reminds me: Marquez recalled his ghosts from the Upar Valley; ‘upar’ [pronounced ooper] means ‘above’ in Hindi, my mother tongue, used as an euphemism for death, colloquially,”upar padhaar gaye”, the plural signifying deference to the departed. 

Death is one of the main premises of One Hundred Years Of Solitude. Apart from being meta in using his name for one of the non-familial characters that die, Marquez also reinforces ‘solitude’ through reuse, applying it to the Buendia family at various stages of their lives. Tragedy brought on by death is what drives the changes in their motives. Melquidas is perhaps the author’s nom de plume, serving as the doomed family’s historian and eventual fortune-teller, plus as the introducer and unraveler of mysteries. 

We skip through a few short tunnels, daylight deserting the interiors of the earth where we have dug too deep, like the Dwarves of Moria. The long tunnels on the Leh-Srinagar route gave off the aura of precision engineering, with their straight lanes and concrete uniformity. That was in June, and October treated me to a serendipitous view of the Kalka-Shimla toy train. In the  Western Ghats, three months later, the recollections tunnel through to my fingers and onto this virtual page, inducing nostalgic euphoria. I am poles apart from Sartre’s Nausea. 

Looking out in the early morning at the sea defining the horizon renews the memory of gazing at a literally endless expanse. Waves arrive just in time to overcome each other. There can be no rhythm, because nature is chaotic. It is also stupendously tougher to erode than the fragile human psyche, yet the process continues unabated, being at the receiving end of no respite, relentlessly metamorphing. If nature’s only task was to continually confound humans, it couldn’t have done a better job. From the Challenger Deep to Mount Everest, undiscovered wonders of nature wait patiently for our species to lay eyes upon them, catalog them, add them to the minuscule encyclopedia that is humanity’s knowledge. Space! as Isaac Asimov’s protagonists are wont to utter, is not fully within our ambit yet, but I have high hopes, not altogether different from Pink Floyd’s. 

2052 hours, 4 November. My (now late; not then, even though she was in pain) maternal grandmother’s birthday. Having sat for an (easy) exam earlier today and wished my maternal grandmother a happy birthday later, I have also read about Dylan’s autobiography, Chronicles: Volume One, and thus have been inspired to mention my own historical roots as far as I know them, which is very little.

My dad was from Orhanpur, in the Nawada district of Bihar. My paternal family has lived there from way before my father’s death on 22nd October, 1987, near Jaffna in Sri Lanka, as part of the Indian Army’s Peace Keeping Force. My maternal family resides for the most part in and near the capital of Bihar, Patna. Patna, the historical Pataliputra itself, has an extremely rich heritage. Much of it would have existed today, if only there had been less people to obliterate it. Patliputra and adjoining areas find proven importance from prehistoric times. My mind gets distracted from the genealogical train of thought, because of it carrying loads of painful detail. Instead, I shall watch something for now, and give a huge shout-out to the creative people behind Mad Men. I’d much rather be an actor than a corporate slave, but I need the steady money rather than the unkempt allure of viral fame and gory glory.

1337 hours, 5 November. I have finished re-revising for the next exam, and at the end of my revision, some random thoughts left me wondering what it would be like to be a bird. Not just fly like one – to actually be one, like Kafka’s cockroach-like Gregor in The Metamorphosis. It will have its own challenges, I am sure.

I was discussing with someone what it would be like to be a dog, and how I’d feel in those little paw-socks that show dogs are made to wear, or other embarrassing things like that. My brain came around again to “all thinking = = writing,” and hence, this passage of prose. As Gene says to Betty in Mad Men, being a house cat would lead to one being “fine.” Why spend all this painstaking effort to prove yourself on others’ brimstone tests?

I make use of technology to preserve my thoughts, because I go through the trouble of looking for apt words to express them as clearly as I can. Of course, after the death of the author, all meanings are equally meaningless. I do not feel I do justice to my ramblings unless I can go through them again and again, and practice justifying them in critic-seminar-settings. Quantity of words being neither a factor, nor a constraint, helps.

There is bound to be variation in expression, right? In any case, an unfulfilled desire to study psychology in Form Lower VI (after my Boards) is one I will remember forever, as well as elaborate on it here, in my memoirs. Shall I be experimentative and try putting down a stream of consciousness? I do agree with Faulkner that all written work should come from the heart. Here is another thing from my cell phone message drafts, if not from the cacophony in my brain: 

“An epiphany for the future – there is nothing in the past! The ongoing future is of paramount importance. I must make use of these three paper clippings I have just clipped. 1342 hours, 6 November.” It is now 2123 hours, 10 November, and I do not see any clippings in my vicinity that had precipitated the epiphany above.

1350 hours, 12 November. I don’t remember writing much in C-69/39, but a quick check of past timestamps shows I did write something. Also, I made a few videos to boot. A multimedia autobiography of a life afloat, a concept ne’er done before. However, it is only through deriving new interpretations and acting on those derivations that something “new” is born. Last night while falling asleep I wished I had a top-of-the-line speech-to-text recorder for more attempts at recording my multiple streams of consciousness. If everything is not a stream of consciousness, what is it? Giving structure to thought is everyone’s choice, in any manner they see fit. Anyhow, classifications are not necessary to understand the sensory perceptions of our world. Language, too, has nothing substantial about it. Written documents have become less important and are now losing their place to electronic documents.

Staying fit is of top priority; one of a few. The onset of this bout of cold coincides unhappily with the start of football. Breaking out my Nike Marquis boots is an event long looked forward to by my mind and body. The thought that this is all a rant crossed my mind and collided into my concern (“going concern”? Finance sucks…) for KB, given his wayward rants on Facebook… [And another thing – looking forward to meeting KB after eons at the wedding of N/P]

1505 hours, 1 January 2012. Are there any limits to human thought? Imagination proves that there are not, as does the assiduous as well as non-assiduous outpouring of creativity that come from having an imagination. Note the absence of adjectives. This belongs in How I Wrote The Book I Never Wrote. It is time to move on. Time for real 6hourism. Time to live life. Time to let dreams, hopes, and futile predictions die.

Achieved! 😀 And now, on to attending guest lectures, presentations, and contributing to the shosha. One thing, though – I am glad I attended that presentation on that day. Let’s see how their infrastructure and general impression (on me) performs in my test.

The reason I write online is that I like to think I’ll re-edit and re-read and ‘improve’ all this, but procrastination is an ever-present enemy. It prevents me from realizing that later is never the present. In this moment, this is perfection, because it is the present. 

Ek kathor kadam utha chuke hain, to ab doosre se peechhe hatnaa kyaa? Hindi for ‘Having taken the first hard step, why stop now?’ It’s just that I’d like to have something to share with our kid(s?). When left open to interpretations, free speech and random events (as Nassim Nicholas Taleb would say, Black Swans) dictate a lot of the future. Perhaps the time will be right, sometime in the future.

The above thought fragment was undoubtedly influenced by recent happenings and current times (AKA HNY 2012) , and I am getting into the best shape of my life courtesy this new home – it’s working out well on all fronts, even the pessimist in me must admit.

1348/0202. At the very least, this new apartment has given me a convenient new timestamp. Coming to the point, finally, How I Wrote The Book I Never Wrote is on its way!

1442/0602. Wherever I May Roam is an awesomax song by Metallica. I’m going to keep a bowl of eclectic candies on my table to satiate my sugar pangs. Also, I’m currently working on establishing a solid personalized iTunes library for my new iPad mini.

2053/0602. I’m ahead of the evolutionary curve. I feel like Doctor Manhattan from Watchmen.

1153/0802. Like Eminem, my words are weapons, too, except they ain’t on records (yet). Which reminds me, I should also add all those songs saved in my cell to the iPad’s iTunes.

2057/0802. Waiting is such an interminable thing…there’s always something more to wait for. Waiting for God(ot), for people to arrive, for lists of such things to stop getting made – an interminable thing in itself, that last one. In any case, it is times like these that remind my mind about “all thinking = = writing,” and having achieved detestation of the mobile phone for a brief interlude, my Vaio notebook and this paper notebook become The Only way of passing time constructively, instead of, say, watching the idiot box or Stumbling Upon things of the Net. Additionally, I’m going through iTunes DJ one by one, rating as I go, to achieve a good solid iTunes library. Nobody’s Fault But Mine, Led Zep. Oh! Must resume BGAE or Kafka. Beyond Good And Evil it is. However, the lack of internet arising from my lack of intrusion-friendliness makes it not, and hence back to my green book of Kafka with a green pen to annotate it is. It has 3 of his longest stories: The Castle, America, and The Trial.

America is the least weird; Castle is quite funny; Trial is a trial for the mind, too.

2005/2002. Wanted to post something that would have really raised eyebrows on Comedy Central’s Facebook page for their competition, especially because it is Cartman we’re talkin’ a-boot, but settled for “Shoo(*) you guys, I’m going home,” out of consideration for my mind’s need to be politically correct on social media platforms.

1423/0703. I’ll remember the times and print it as A Tribute To The Number 23. A shout out to AB.

1938/0604. A month later, I’m aboard the Patna Rajdhani, going home (back to my city of birth), and seriously considering acting on my desire to carve my name in stone – literally as well as figuratively. Also, reading this article about a trip to Dharamkot and Triund has given me ideas. I much prefer public transport to friend-driven cars when I go on trips, expressly for reasons that those friends understand. Despite that, I have been on several road trips, and each has been fun, almost as much as the ones I used public transport for. Sorry about ending that last with a proposition, but then I guess over the course of my writing-direct-from-brain and ‘all thinking = = writing,’ making apologies regarding the ‘correctness’ of my texts is redundant. Backing up and getting back on track (another rarity in itself), I am thinking of taking a train from Delhi to Una (Himachal Express) on a Friday night and returning on the subsequent Monday morning. I hope it comes to pass.

Might meet AS tomorrow, but it might not be ‘the right time’ to ask for his opinion on this. Maybe I’ll show him Something Must Be Done. But that’s a maybe, too. His criticism is mostly constructive, but too mood-dependent. If that is true for all professional critics, then it is best to hope for the best. Ifs and maybes construct a false future, full of hope.

Lex pondered the human condition as Selina’s ship boosted towards Earth. His mind thought.

Episode Ten – Midgarden

In previous episodes: An android awakes on Moon. Selina becomes the first Mooninite to pilot the Earth-Mars spaceflight. Her friend, bio techie Neer, seems to be in trouble on Mars, so she investigates on Moon after returning from Mars via Earth, where she met Neer’s fiance, Hielsa.

In this episode: Selina finds an obsolete physical port in Neer and Hielsa’s original bio module and activates the device she and Illen had found in Neer’s old hab module on Moon. She returns to her ship and goes to the cargo hold, where she notices, and activates, Peg-Leg Lex.

Selina inserted the ship smoothly into the high Earth orbit synchronous with the largest bio module. The relative velocity of the two spacecraft showed her a docking time of 6 hours. She used the time to get some sleep and sustenance.

Lex smiled in his sleep in the cargo hold. His thoughts were branching, recurving, fracturing; his mind was building his version of reality, brick by metaphorical brick. He was picking up the nuances of expressive language and countenance.

They spiraled into the void, dancing on the smooth fabric woven by the universe’s gravitational waves.

The space between Earth and Moon was full of objects. Most were uninhabited permanently, and some required either routine or occasional as-required visits by humans from either body. A few were fully manned. Most of these fully-manned man-made objects were large mid-orbit stations, very useful for upgrading and supplying spacecraft that were docking en route for longer missions. The rest were laboratories of a variety of sciences, particularly bioengineering.

Selina’s ship was scheduled to dock with the oldest, most upgraded bio module hanging around between the pair of rocks hanging around the sun hanging on for dear life as it whirled around the arm of our spiral galaxy, itself being dragged like an enormous whorl by the Sagi black hole.

Six hours later, the crafts entered auto docking mode and alerted their crew. For Selina, this was old hat. She kept a sharp eye on the status displays and was ready for the vis comm from the bio module.

Opening the hatches and sailing into the anteroom of the bio module, Selina greeted the assembled crew and bumped fists with the chief, whom she had met on her previous visit.

“I see you didn’t rotate back to Earth, Heek?” She asked him as they floated to the farm module.

“Naah, I enjoy it way too much up here, Sel. Heard about your maiden voyage, all cool?”

“Oh yeah. Met Neer on Mars, too, but only like for a second. He seemed weirder than usual, you know anything about that?”

Heek laughed. “Does he need a reason? He didn’t even tell us he was going there; we found out when I met the new crew who were coming up instead of him and his team.”

Selina frowned as they sanitized in the pre-chamber before floating into the verdant bio zone.

The round plants wiped off Selina’s frown. The spherical artificial systems, their outer layers visible through the transparent growth chambers, seemed to shiver with every slight movement.

Heek noticed her wide-eyed wonder again. For a Mooninite, living greenery was quite hypnotic.

The plants at the end of the second farm were the oldest. Heer and Nielsa had nurtured them from the beginning, even before they had defied convention and pushed the bio lab into the furthest orbit of any Earth satellite yet, barring its natural one. The move gave amazing results.

Selina chose a few of the ripest produce for her trip to Earth. Earth and Moon squads indulged pilots because of the highly isolated nature of their responsibilities; the least they deserved was good food that had been grown specifically to induce a state akin to euphoria in its consumers.

Heek accompanied her back to her ship’s cargo module with the supplies. Selina liked Heek because despite having been the commander of the last space disaster, he did not let his inner demons show in his demeanor. Fifty-four crew and passengers had passed on on one sad Thirday when a micro asteroid ripped through their transport vehicle when they were nearing Mars orbit. Heek and his co-captain were in the control module, which separated successfully and entered Mars orbit, from where they were rescued the next Fourday by the Martians below.

Despite being blameless in such an unpredictable yet not unprecedented act of nature, Heek had voluntarily retired from piloting interplanetary ships and settled into the higher Earth orbits.

That is where he had come to know of (or sassed, to put it in colloquial terms of spacefaring slang) and quickly teamed up with Neer and Hielsa to push space food into haute cuisine orbits. He still maintained his habit of speaking with just a little too many puns, intended or otherwise.

Pardoning puns without commenting, usually sarcastically, did not come easily to Selina, but she made an exception when it came to Heek. He had helped her acclimatize to microgravity during her training visits to the various labs that spiraled in Eartoo’s gravitational potential well.

Heek had become a recluse by literally distancing himself from as many humans as possible. Mooninites were not inclined to fly towards Eartoo, as they felt way more comfortable without the extra gravity weighing them down. Earthers who went to Moon for either business or pleasure went in a straight shot. Only techies completely dedicated to furthering microgravity research stayed for long periods of time in the orbital labs. For example Heek, Neer, and Hielsa.

The trio had envisaged Midgarden, the bio lab Selina had just been in, as the epitome of space biology. They developed plants that had been gene edited specifically for microgravity. Finding a long-abandoned orbital laboratory, they collaborated with Earth and Moon squads for enhancing the characteristics of the new plant species with minimal raw materials & circularity. Waste was minimized through reduction, reutilization, and recombination, the new 3 R’s for the new Eartoo.

It was important to show people what they were doing, so they flew out masterful chefs from Eartoo and had them compete in a reality show that was titled Taste Tests in Space. Their plan was on the money, as public interest drove a shift in Eartoo’s eating habits after humankind saw how well science could generate and process food that contributed to making Eartoo greener.

Heek, perhaps, was trying to make amends to humankind in his own way, and Selina liked that.

Too often were people blamed for things they could not control. Without anybody being able to empathize fully with anybody else, or with no one empathizing with any one fully, it led to strife.

Selina had also seen TTS, and was a big fan of Hielsa’s space-themed cakes. She had picked up quite a few culinary skills during her long months spent aboard Mars-bound flights. Using the severely limited ingredients that had been designed right from the get go more for longevity than palatability (even though the days of distasteful but highly functional space food had long since evaporated into oblivion), she experimented with techniques that changed their textures and tastes. Microgravity allowed her to do cooking combos impossible to carry out on Earth, and on her third voyage she had spent most of her Waking Life recording umpteen kitchen experiments.

She streamed the successful ones to Hielsa, who was a wiz at global vibing. Very soon, Selina was not just famous for breaking into the elite solo interplanetary pilot clique despite her Mooninite lineage; she also became venerated among the younger generations for her vids that showed how plain synth meals could be transformed into delicious gastronomous experiences.

Gastronomy was alien to the android Lex. His mind was still scouring archives in the robot bay.

Selina and Heek made their way into her ship. While they waited for the cargo module and its airlocks to pressurize, she asked him what he thought about Martium and its special properties.

“Its future seems rocky, Sel.” Selina winced mentally but let it slide. She shared a bit with him.

“They say of the soil where Martium is, that there are no carbon compounds within miles of it.”

Heek laughed at the throwback to a popular meme about ancient Greek architecture delivered by a quiz master par excellence, Stephen Fry, sometime near the beginning of the 21st century.

“I don’t know about that. “They,” as you say, did not discover it before my…umm…incident.”

Selina cringed. She had not expected that asking about a newly discovered element would lead them to Heek’s unfortunate brush with nature. She fished within her mind for a subtle way out.

Heek was untroubled. He noticed her discomfort and smiled genially at her, putting her at ease.

“I’m sorry, Heek, I did not see that coming.”

“Hey, no sorries, puh-lease. What are you supposed to be, the Oracle of Delphi?”

“Wish that I were, wish that I were.”

“No worries, mate, and no hurries. Let’s get these beauties stowed safely and then we can talk about the red element. Also, I was totally kidding about not knowing about the carbon’s absence. Just because I have left Eartoo does not mean I am zonked out of the whole planet.”

Selina let out a relieved sigh. “You got me there, Heek. I talked to Hielsa about Martium and she said the actual experiments were being kept in the dark. That itself seemed peculiar to us. You?”

Heek shifted the plants’ cases that were hovering around them in the airlock. “We will table this for now, Sel. Your ship is way less shielded than my lab. You never know who is monitoring us.”

Selina bit her lip and wondered as they stacked the crates & cases containing the space plants.

She passed in front of the robot bay without a second glance, because the metal man hopping around her ship on the Bohr City spaceport launchpad was as far from her mind as Point Nemo.

Back in Midgarden, she followed Heek to the central habitat module, where they shared a plentiful lunch with the sparse crew of fourteen. Most of the labs had crews thrice that number.

It was a pleasant meal. Her point of de-orbit was still about an hour away, so the group resumed their duties after bidding her adieu. Heek gestured meaningfully towards the older, original part of the bio lab and they made their way to the modules where Neer, Hielsa and Heek had begun.

Selina stretched out in one of their old bunks to aid her system in digesting the rich space meal.

Heek was accustomed to the great food, and actively went about the module, flipping off the permarec so that they were not recorded or monitored in any way. Permarec was a necessary safety measure that all techie squads undertook. Glitches, like nature, were very unpredictable.

It was important for help to reach from the nearest possible human habitation or advanced automated support system in the case of erratic errors, whether human, mechanical, or natural.

Heek took a seat and clasped his hands, waiting for Selina to settle into a comfortable position.

“So. Martium. Solid ore, solid core. My friends in geo tech tell me it is not radioactive. At least, not in the way we know. But its energy signatures in the EM spectrum are… very weirdly wavy.”

Selina had read something somewhere somewhat like this. She recalled a zine on her plane.

“Someone wrote that it could help us create antigravity propulsion, theoretically. Could it?”

“Well, there’s no telling whether what people write is right. All we can do is wait for the techies to announce their findings at large, and then take it up from there in our chosen fields of expertise.”

“They aren’t generally so hush-hush about these kinds of things, are they? I remember the cheers Neer and Hielsa got for boosting this module into this orbit, just because they predicted that their new greens will flourish at this elevation. How long did it take for Eartoo and Moon to share and enjoy? Or are they worried that it might have dangerous or unstable characteristics?”

Heek smiled at the precious memory. He had been right behind the techie couple in the endeavor. He had piloted the first supply run from Eartoo to Midgarden, and helped name it, too.

“Yes, you are right. It seems they are trying to avoid a repeat of history. The part right after 1 ACE when Roos tried to grab Yook. What a shellacking they got from the Yooks, but once that war had been triggered, it took away so many resources from so many people who deserved them and for what? Feeding the ego of a bad bald maniac who fed off the fat of the Roos land?”

Heek was rightly indignant. Indigenous people were right in not taking kindly to being encroached upon, and fighting back tyranny tooth and nail. The outcome favored the righteous.

Wars are not forgotten by the families they ravage. Heek’s family had lost many members in the Yook-Roos War, and the sense of loss flowed through following generations of the descendants.

Selina rose into a sitting position and patted Heek’s arm; she did not want to commit another faux pas that reminded him of the past, so she swung her feet on to the floor of the hab module.

“I wanted to show you this,” she said, drawing out the obsolete oblong device that she and Illen had found in Neer’s old hab on Moon. Heek took it and turned it over and around, pondering it.

“Hmm…I’m digging around in that part of my brain that tells me I have seen this before, either with Neer or some other old technophile. What does this connector plug into? Seen it before?”

Selina told him how she had found the device, and Heek laughed at being reminded of Neer’s compulsive, secretive, anti-social furtive behavior. He twirled his floating seat around and peered at the device, then tapped it against his head, as if shaking loose some debris from his brain. Selina drank some water, as she felt the biofoods dissolve into her body and energize her.

“Eureka!” shouted Heek, startling Selina. He beckoned to Selina to follow him towards the dimmer end of the hab module, where a wall lined with control panels seemed to be in off mode.

“I knew I had seen this in Neer’s hands earlier! In fact he had a couple of these old comm sticks. One sol he was talking with the Hanle Observatory, and I saw him load some data into one of these things. When I asked him why they didn’t just stream the data, he said he wanted to add a few photos of Milky Way pulsars & gamma-ray bursts to his “personal collection.” Nerdy much?”

Selina laughed as Heek peered at the panels, but the front-facing side did not satisfy him, so he floated around and began to inspect the sides of the panels. In a minute he found a port that was a snug fit for the protrusion from Neer’s device. He plugged it in, but nothing happened.

It did not take even a minute for them to realize that this was a passive device, without an internal energy source, so they would have to activate the old control panels to look inside it.

As Heek booted up the panels, Selina floated into the adjacent module to check if Moon or Earth squad had left any messages while they had switched off permarec in the old module. She saw only regular status updates about the health of her ship and the time remaining to de-orbit for an Earth rendezvous, so she returned to where Heek had nearly finished booting up.

The screen lit up with green code. Heek navigated the system expertly and brought up the hardware ports, then went through them one by one to isolate the port with Neer’s device in it.

Selina watched over his shoulder as the device began blinking. She observed it for a few seconds to establish whether it was a steady blink, or some sort of code. She knew she could not put it way past Neer to embed messages in anything & everything related to his life or work.

It was not so in this case, at least, so she and Heek pulled up the data in the device. To decipher it, Heek activated the old algorithms that Neer and Hielsa had created when they were building Midgarden and wanted no interference from the more-or-less complacent Earth squad.

In a flash, they saw Neer’s intent in hiding the thumb-sized device. It was a paired comm, hard coded to track Neer’s bio signature – a highly sensitive issue that had not been approved by humankind because of serious consequences on privacy. Individual opinions differed, of course.

Neer had implanted a UPS, or Universal Positioning System, chip into one of his teeth. Such chips were standard inclusions in most androids to enable remote control and code upgradation.

Neer had distilled down the location tracker and microprocessor, made it human-safe, and put it in a molar with a shielding that made it impossible to track unless its hard code counterpart scanned for its unique signal. Selina and Heek looked at each other and nodded. As soon as it got the go-ahead with a touch from Selina, the device started a scan, spiraling outward from the bio module’s comm systems spectra. Heek began emulating the hard code so that he could link its output to the hab module’s local computer network. He kept it on a closed loop, but established a direct line of contact with the personal stream that went to and from Selina’s wrist comm. This way, when the device found Neer’s location implant, it would inform her privately.

“Why would Neer go to such lengths to ensure he could track his own location?” Heek asked.

Selina shook a negative. “I think he wanted to give this to Hielsa. The speed with which Mars and Earth squads fast-tracked him like a priority shipment to Mars probably did not give him enough time to explain and share with her. You know what, can I share this location when it comes through with Hielsa? Did you code in an option to forward it completely privately, Heek?”

“No, but we have time till your deorbit burn separation. I’ll update the patch ASAP,” Heek replied.

“Yeah, I also want to snap a pic of the device, so that I can find out more about where he got it.”

Selina snapped it while Heek tinkered with the code he had appended to Neer’s device’s code.

Zooming the snap on her wrist vis display, she looked right into the virtual lens at the top and middle of the holographic screen to bring up the contextual menus on the overlay display, and nodded at its top right corner to make it start listening to voice commands. Its red light blinked.

“Find this image in tech archives, focus on early hardware used for data and code storage. Go.”

An icon which indicated that permarec was off appeared on the screen. She jerked her head to the left for dismissing the pop-u and the results began flowing upwards as she flicked her eyes.

The device was a modified version of USB, or Universal Serial Bus, devices. The tech was rudimentary enough to have become obsolete. When people went to Moon in 20 ACE, optical storage had replaced hardware flash chips, and now, quantum processors were beginning to replace them. The rate of tech advancement had outstripped Moore’s Law even before 1 ACE.

Nanoelectronics had helped scale down the cost of resources for greater computational power, leading to quick adoption of technologies like flexible solar cells and portable potable water kits.

From the Becquerels had begun the harnessing of solar power, and humanity had never needed anything else once it began to be efficiently converted into electricity by new & newer technologies. Early artificial space objects helped refine these technologies until humankind had completely shifted to such inexhaustible sources of power driven by naturally cosmic processes.

And now, Martium was showing scientists that nature worked on a cosmic level, just not in the ways humans were used to seeing it perform wondrous miracles on Earth, living systems or not.

New thoughts are seeds for new innovations. Eartoo was built with the hope of embracing new.

Selina remained in deep thought as the time of departure for deorbiting maneuvers drew closer.

Lex was also in deep thought, but about different things. He had felt the vibrations of Selina and Heek passing him by when they were stowing the space plants in the bio-supportive cargo bay.

His newly-awake mind kept him static, but it felt the feeling of stiffness due to tension for the first time. It was surprising that staying motionless while asleep & while being awake are diametric.

When human minds want different things, we generally weigh the pros and cons according to our experience. Lex’s experience was limited to his relatively short existence. He looked for more narratives written in the first person by a human to attempt empathy with a human mind.

Machine learning became real that sol. Lex’s mind chanced upon a piece of fiction that depicted teamwork by a group of capable individuals, focused on achieving a goal for the good of people.

Something Must Be Done

Prologue : Six Months Ago

“I heard mention of a report on training schools being run in PoK; will you include that too?”

In response to my comment, QD looked up from the file he was frowningly reading through, and nodded to the gentleman seated to his left – my right – at the table. The man made a note on his pad, the page more than half-full already. QD went back to perusing the file, and I, to my ruminating.

After a minute or so, the note-taker spun his chair about to face his laptop, and started typing. QD continued turning the pages, making small annotations here and there. I sat and thought. It took another ten-fifteen minutes for him to finish. At the sound of the heavy flap of the manila folder closing, the note-taker spun his seat around to face the still open pad, and picked up his pen.

“We’re good to go, almost.”

“Almost?”

“Yes, almost.  Apart from the few usual typos, the file” – he tapped lightly on the one he had been reading – “is close to perfect. Now, the typos I can handle, the rest is up to you. Shall we go get a signature?” I nodded, and all three of us rose and made our way to another, larger, plusher, and obviously more important office. The lady in the chair smiled congenially, and I felt calm as I smiled back – we’d met once before. She knew what I wanted, and that my team would go to any lengths.

“When it is convenient, I’d like to meet the entire team, Mr. A,” she said, as she took the file from QD and signed on the last page, gesturing to QD to help himself to the seal of her office, which he affixed below her signature, almost reverently.

“Absolutely, ma’am. They were all enthralled when I met them after meeting you last month, and I assure you they cannot wait to express their gratitude to you in person.”

She smiled genuinely with laughter in her eyes. “Always the eloquent one, aren’t you?”

I smiled back; there was no sarcasm from her. “It pays to be, most of the time, ma’am, don’t you think?”

QD was back at my side, and she nodded to him. “It is your support they need, QD. Give them all you can.” I looked at QD, and was relieved to see him smiling as he responded affirmatively. We bowed with our palms together, and she half-rose and bowed back. As the note-taker shut the door behind us, I felt, for the first time in my life, the fear of never again being able to be where I was today. The fear of never returning. I bit my bottom lip. We returned to QD’s office to discuss details.

Present Day

The evening had been cool and clear, and the night was expected to be no worse. As seven-thirty drew closer, my mind raced. All our minds raced. The seven of us sat in the middle of a large tent, in various stages of readiness, and in various states of mind. PS, HS, QY, AS, SK, SC and I. I looked at each, and wished I could know their thoughts better than I did. But then, I wish for a lot of things. I checked my watch and spoke.

“Seven o’clock. Time to lock and load, boys!” Everyone shuffled to their feet and retreated to the periphery of the tents, where wooden benches and the earth bore the weight of our equipment.

In the absence of any formal code of language, Hollywood lingo wasn’t unwelcome. We were all intelligent enough to know what the others meant. An officer paused at the flap, searching for eye contact with me. I gave a reassuring nod, held up all ten fingers, and he let the flap fall back into place and went away. I looked again at everyone, and QY’s eyes caught mine. 

“Dude, you remember second year, or maybe third, I got one of these from home?”

He smiled and held up a black balaclava. I laughed out loud, indeed I did. By the time I told the story of the nomenclature for QY that had resulted directly from his owning this scary object of clothing, we were all smirking at the irony of it, and ready, too. I hefted my pack and led the way out.

* * * * * * * * * * * *

Three Months Ago

This is outrageous; I found myself thinking as I read through the newspaper. Something must be done. And if I have to do this, I need a team which knows me, and I know them. Seven people from my past are able, I think, to do what I have in mind.

I started to daydream, letting thoughts, plans, ideas and scenarios wash over me endlessly, over each other, and drifted off to a sleep rife with similar convolutions the mind is capable of. When I woke up in the morning, I was disappointed that it hadn’t been one of those nights when one can recall the dreams; but equally surprising was my desire to start acting about the worst issues that plagued my country in a more practical manner. I thought things through over breakfast and picked up my phone. Sunday morning is the best time, I figured, to start calling people up to convince them.

After they were onboard with my hunch of an idea about a plan of action, it was time to reach outwards and upwards. I pulled every string at my disposal and got the email address I needed.

Three weeks later, when I had almost forgotten about the email I’d sent to that address, mainly because of the triviality of routine life that sucks us in forever, I got the call. It was the first time I’d talked to the man who would note down all the important points from everything that transpired between QD and me. 

“Hello,” I said, frowning as I answered, because I felt annoyed at being disturbed by a call from a landline number. Probably some telemarketer or the other, selling a loan over the phone.

The man was quite clear and concise, coming to the point without even taking my name.

“We have given some thought to your views. Would you care to discuss them in detail?”

“Sure,” I replied. The image of the sentence ‘…I strongly feel my views deserve some thought.’ that I had written in my email crossed my mind, and I hastened to add, “Thank you for thinking about what I wrote, sir.”

“Thankfulness is not yet in order, Mr. A. Are you free later today?”

“I’ll make myself free whenever you require, sir.”

“A simple ‘yes’ will do.” I felt affronted, if only a little.

“Yes.”

“Should I send a car for you at your workplace or will you prefer your own conveyance?”

“My own, thanks. When and where should I arrive?” I felt inadequate talking to this man, and so my words came out in a rush – nervousness, I guess, had crept up on me.

“Anytime after six. The address you can find in my reply to your email. Good afternoon, Mr. A.” He was about to disconnect but I blurted to keep him on the line.

“Hello?”

“Yes?”

“Is this a test?”

I heard, for the first time, his smile, and I do mean I heard it. Later, when we met and I got acquainted with him, I realized that when he smiled, his mouth opened wide and he exhaled through his teeth, so it came out as a low, soft hiss. Over the phone, the hiss scared me outright.

“No, Mr. A, this is not a test. It is with regard to the email you sent us after digging into your contacts in our armed forces. You should know that your past history is very interesting, and sets you in excellent stead to act upon your views. We would like to discuss how we might collaborate.” 

I let out a steady breath. “Okay, sir, I shall see you in the evening. Whose name shall I mention at the gate?” I asked, knowing fully well the usual red tape and the “referral” or “reference” system afflicting the workings of all things bureaucratic. I didn’t want to spend time dialing a landline number to get admission into the lofty corridors of democratic power.

“Yours, Mr. A.” I heard his hissing smile again. “Anything else?”

“No, thank you again. Good day,” I said, but what went through my mind as I hung up was, to put it mildly, tension. It took me an hour, alone on the topmost flight of stairs in my office building, and a half liter of water to calm down and redial the number. It was answered on the third ring.

“Yes, Mr. A?” There was no inflection, no irritation, just mild curiosity in his voice.

“Umm, hello, sir, yes, see, I was… I wanted to know, have I done anything wrong? Am I in trouble or something because of what I wrote in my email?”

“No, Mr. A, please rest assured we take you seriously. Oh, and since I have you on the line, try to write down whatever you feel is worth not missing, and bring along your laptop. I’m glad you called; we are always prepared for no-shows. At least, like I said, your past stands you in good stead.”

“See, sir, this is what I’m talking about. In good stead for what?”

“To help in building a good country for everyone, Mr. A. To act upon your expressed views in whatever capacity you can, and perhaps we can help you along a bit, eh? Isn’t that what you were looking for, or have we misinterpreted your intentions behind sending that powerfully worded email?”

I felt calmer, this guy wasn’t joking. “Not at all. Alright then. I’ll see you later, sir.”

“Good afternoon, Mr. A.” All sincere and courteous. Very nice. I could get used to this.

* * * * * * * * * * * *

Present Day

I looked around in as controlled a manner as I could, given that I was oscillating on a thin rappelling rope, hung from a helicopter hovering about five feet above the treetops in a densely forested valley. Before descending below the treetops , I was trying to take as far a 360° view as possible, leveraging the height advantage of the chopper under which I was hanging. As soon as I found a firm footing on the ground in the little clearing below our chopper, I switched on the full array of my scanners and made a complete spin within fifteen seconds. Their furthest range was two hundred feet, and there were no life forms larger than a rabbit on my visor’s head-up display.

I spoke clearly and distinctly, so that my team in the hovering heli heard well. “Let’s go.”

Two minutes later, the chopper was gone and seven of us stood in an outward-facing circle, scanning our way towards our targets. While AS pinpointed our location and discussed our support’s real-time maps showing on his head-up display, we maintained a vigil on our scanners, thus forming a two-hundred-foot virtual sentry circle around us. Two or three big animals registered overall, and on AS’ go-ahead, we all took a bearing north by north west. It was smooth going into our first real mission. I didn’t bother switching on infrared vision output, since no human-sized life-forms were registering. SC led us through the thickets at a quick and silent walking pace. 

AS said over the comm, “Support says there are less than half a dozen of these lame-ass terrorists, and there may have been a couple or more waiting for them beforehand, to welcome them. Are we gonna snipe them from here, or are we gonna slide right up and let them have a bit of our ammo?”

SC sniggered his usual snorting laughter, and it was heartening to hear it; I felt the mood lighten. We were nearing a couple of light bulbs, scattered in the way random lights are when one looks up at the surrounding mountains from the valley below. Just as the slope turned steeper, I halted. A solitary human-sized blip up the slope had appeared on my scanner. PS and I synced our scanners and searched in the direction of the blip. To increase our scanners’ accuracy, we moved a couple of yards to our sides so that their fields of sight overlapped and they could deliver a better output. This gave both of us an actual sight of the hefty man, even from two hundred feet away.

On his shoulder was slung an old AK-47. It was a dark night, yet, when PS and I looked at each other and nodded, both of us knew we had nodded to each other. Our training in similar scenarios kicked in. PS continued vigilance on the man while I tiptoed back to the team. I whispered into my mic, not because I feared getting overheard, but because I feared talking too loud in my excitement at making a real difference in the real world, not playing trigger-happy virtual games.

“Found them, boys. Thank the support team, AS, for spot on info, and Ops for a spot on drop. SK, this guy appears bored as hell, seems like he is on sentry duty or something. PS, anything?”

“This guy’s boring me, man. He’s playing around with his phone. These days there’s mobile internet even in these parts. Probably watching some stuff he can’t watch in his country. Maybe a good reason for risking his life crossing into India the hard way.”

“Cool. SK, you and PS take out this guy, the rest of us will make a narrow sweep, and we regroup at this guy’s position? Everyone good to go?”

Like before, I saw the nods despite the dark night, and heard my teammates’ set breaths. 

“Okay then. Let’s go, split 2-5, 360-bio. Support, we are going silent. Keep watch.”

SK headed up to PS, they observed their target for a minute before heading out, about ten feet apart, guns hefted and safeties off. I walked sideways to my left, and switched the biomass scanner to 360° mode. Within three minutes, the two dots of PS and SK ahead of me had approached the gun-slinging dude. Barely pausing, they converged on the blip of the gunslinger and came to a halt. The rest of us began to converge towards them. I whispered inside my helmet.

“Check?”

PS and SK both said, almost simultaneously, “Check.”

I was happy. I licked my lips – hadn’t realized how dry they had become in the cold, fresh, but harsh mountain air – and smiled to myself. Perfect start!

“Awesomax. Check in, one.”

“Two.”

“Three.”

“Four.”

“Five.”

“Six.”

“Seven, over.”

“Let’s meet up, then, bio-90, and get the next of these terrorists.”

We regrouped where PS and SK stood, continuously scanning the areas in front of us. PS was using infrared binoculars with his visor slid up, and SK was bringing all our sensors to bear. I checked the gunslinger, who slept peacefully under the effect of the tranquilizer dart. He had a packet of biscuits in the pocket of his worn, dirty kurta; a spare magazine for his AK-47 stuffed at the small of his back into the waistband of his salwar. He wore black shoes that were way sturdier than those generally prevalent in the region. A plastic-strap watch with a plain analog dial, showing the time – 2215 hours. I instinctively checked it against my watch; I didn’t expect so much time to have passed.

It hadn’t. His watch was set more than twenty minutes ahead. There was nothing else on him, so I said, “AS, beacon this guy,” and got up to join PS and SK in checking out the nearest huts, easily identifiable by the solitary, bare yellow light bulbs that hung from two-ply wires and holders in the wooden lintels of their doors. 

“Anything?”

“No, no activity, let’s get in range of the one on the right, up ahead, and check for people.”

“Right, team, you heard the man, let’s go, split 3-4, concentric arcs, watch the sides, okay? Anyone got anything to say? Alright then. Up the hill we go, boys.”

There was no one in the nearest hut as we took a good look around it, the three of us in front staying well clear of the pool of light thrown by the bulb. I looked at my HUD and spoke a single word, “West,” and switched back my scanner to 360°. I was relieved to see I was right on assuming that they had all understood.

As we moved towards the next basic stone-and-wood hut with bright indigo-colored whitewash on the outside walls, we organized ourselves again in two concentric arcs, three in the front and the four of us behind, with me at the rightmost of the outer arc. I switched my scanner to the longer range, narrower angle mode and swept my right flank; no discernible life forms. I focussed my attention on the hut we were approaching. The three dots leading us were almost at the edge of my visor, meaning they were almost one hundred and eighty feet ahead of me. Even the other three of my arc were dozens of feet ahead of me. I picked my way up the hill at a faster pace, catching up ground as the three leaders congregated and halted near the hut.

When we were all together, HS said, “Three guys inside. One way out farther up; he keeps walking on and off the edge due north. There’s movement inside, but only one guy is doing all of it.”

HS was standing a few feet ahead of us in a spot that gave him visual access to assess the hut, gazing forward while keeping out of the feeble light of the bulb.

SC said, “If they’re busy, they probably will be for more time. While they’re preoccupied, I say we find out if there are any others beside the guy up north.”

It sounded logical, I heard a couple of agreeing noises. “Okay, then, how about this. HS, SC, QY stay here, and we four head north from the left. Do not engage unless absolutely certain of discretion; we do not want these three inside to come running out. They’re sitting ducks right now.”

I looked around at the team, there were nods and shuffles as SC and QY moved themselves into better positions to sit guard over the hut. Passing around it, I scanned it and understood what HS had meant by “periodic motion,” it seemed that one person was shifting about around a table, and two others occasionally fetched him something from two different locations within the small hut.

We continued upwards, completely without any outward light that could give away our positions, and started to approach the pacing man from the left. As HS had said, we were soon able to see a blip about a hundred feet ahead of us, moving to and fro along short straight lines, but sometimes stopping and taking random obtuse and about-turns. It reminded me of how some people walk about while talking on the phone. I halted and whispered, “Wait.”

I turned around and confirmed what my scanner showed. SK was about fifteen feet behind me. I said, “AS, come up here, check this guy for audio,” and saw AS’s blip, a little below SK’s, start to move towards me. I turned back around to keep the erratic blip within my scanner, almost at the edge of its range. 

AS came up and moved a couple of feet ahead of me. He extracted a small tube from the side pouch of his backpack. A soft click, like that of a torch’s slider making contact, emanated from his hand, and the front end of the tube opened out in a serrated cone. AS slid up his visor to peer at the soft blue readings on the body of the tube, and I continued to check around us for any more activity or life, finding neither. After about half a minute of intense peering, AS slid his visor back down to suppress his voice and spoke softly, almost only to me, but of course the team could hear.

“He’s on a low-grade satphone; I even picked up the crackling of the people on the other end. Could be a conference link-up, too. Support can probably trace it.”

“Share the frequencies with them. What’s this guy saying?’

I saw AS shake his head. “No go on that. Even if I got closer, I wouldn’t be able to tell, his lingo is too rustic and unfamiliar for me. He’s not happy, though.” I discerned a smile in his voice, and smiled to myself. We were certainly not going to make things any happier for this terrorist.

“Okay, let’s get back to the team. Sweep this side a little wider, and then start from the other side. Let this one finish his talk and I’ll shoot him once we are sure he is done. We don’t want their handlers to feel like something’s gone wrong with their supposedly foolproof plan.”

We retraced our silent way back to outside the hut, and waited. There was the usual occasional activity going on inside, although it seemed to have become a bit slower. The main thing was that when the two people not standing at the table didn’t move, they huddled together in the corner of the hut that was furthest from the table. Without a word, I touched SC on his shoulder and indicated that we were going around the right side, while he was to hold his position and keep an eye out for the man talking on the satellite phone. On seeing his affirmative nod, I waved to the three behind me in a wide, right-to-forward sweep, and we started out as before. 

I circled to the right until I had the person still furtively speaking on his sat phone at the edge of my HUD, and then proceeded in a straight line to the hut. Approaching it going downhill, I could view the inside of the hut at a downward angle. I got down on my hands when I reached the thin strip of light that escaped through the square ventilation gap between the rough stone wall and the corrugated tin roof. Getting my face near the cold, sweet-smelling fresh earth, I slid up my visor to look inside.

The man who was showing up almost motionless on our visors was tinkering away at a rickety wooden table set near the niddle of the hut, building a bomb. The other two crouched behind his back, and I was looking at this deathly comical scene from behind and above them.

I got back up, slid my visor, and retreated about twenty feet to where I knew my three teammates were congregated, each looking a different way, hence overlapping each others’ scanner ranges to be sure that no random person or another terrorist, incase there were more, got wind of ur presence and raised an alarm. 

“They are building a bomb in the hut; it’s reaching the trickier trigger-setting stages. These three aren’t going anywhere except to excrete, if they can manage that. Observers, fall further back, hold tight till the four of us get the guy up ahead.

“We four, spread out within range of one another between the talker and the hut. Whichever way he goes once he stops talking and heads back, drop him noiselessly. No calling, just be sure of your aim. Are we all on the same page?”

Seven assenting voices. 

“Cool. Go silent.”

I hefted my gun and started off.

The talker moved less now, but he moved nevertheless. After ten-odd minutes of waiting in position, I whispered, “Anything else, anyone?”

A couple of clicks of the tongue and some negative uh-huhs confirmed my feeling that we were getting impatient. “AS, call support and find out if they did anything with this satellite link-up?” 

Just something to kill the time, like we had on the previous couple of preparatory excursions. We heard AS and our support guy (that’s what we called them even when we met them, anonymity was a given when it came to counter-terrorism) exchange info. They had got a fix on the location of this guy right in front of us, and it was only a matter of a few more minutes that they would trace the call origination or destination location – either way.

I realized I had started looking in AS’ direction as I heard them talk instead of keeping my scanner towards the talker, and spun my head around just in time to see his blip halfway across my visor. He crossed the line of miniscule, fluorescent dashes that marked the halfway hundred-foot range, just as I announced to the team that he had begun his descent towards us.

I raised my gun to my shoulder and activated the infrared scoping. Combined with our visor, I had a precise targeting sight. The figure picked its way down the slope, and I kept my sight trained on his torso. As he came within range, I activated target lock, waited for him to come within fifty feet of me, and let the dart fly.

The man clutched his chest, drew in a sharp intake of breath, and fell over backwards.

I switched to normal vision and strode over to the body, drawing a small metal disc from my right knee pocket; running my gloved finger around its periphery, I located the little button, clicked it to activate its GPS location, and thrust it deep inside one of the pockets of his sherwani.

When we were done, the unconscious bodies would be picked up by support for further interrogation. Now, it was time to move on the bomb-builders.

“The talker is out. Form a circle around the hut.” I checked him for weapons and inside all his pockets, found a little currency that I stuffed back in – it would aid in gathering more information about the idiot – and laid the body out straight. Stepping over him to pick up his sat phone, I saw something glint on his chest; I double-checked and realized with a smile that it was a little bit of the steel of the needle of the hypodermic dart that had not penetrated his chest fully. I swept the area ahead of where he had been talking with his superiors, and walked back to complete the circle of our team’s blips standing more or less equidistant from the hut.

I checked the inside through the little gap between the roof and wall again. There was no change; the bomb’s insides seemed to be reaching a stage of togetherness. I smiled, in spite of the seriousness of what we were doing. No problemo, amigo, I told myself. I straightened up and spoke.

“Check outside perimeter, maximum range. AS, call in support. We’re breaking and entering, shoot to down, no fire-explosives. Check in on outside perimeter scan. Go.”

Just then, SC whispered, “Far south-east, small blip, possibly wildlife.”

“Who’s at SC’s side?”

“SK.” “HS.”

“Three of you, go check it out. Slow and easy.”

A murmur of assent went around, and I focussed on the three dots breaking the circle and moving back down to the valley below. They turned back from the edge of my HUD, and I heard their phraseful discussion about the animal, a four-legged ruminating variety. I turned back to the hut and cycled through all the scanners we had. When the three returned, I checked to make sure we were all back in position, and I whispered, “Right then. Back to work. Any problems, anyone?”

No silence had ever sounded better. Steady breathing surrounded me. I spoke.

“Go.”

* * * * * * * * * * * *

Two Months Ago

“The existing facilities are…well, pedestrian. Any decent football player could work through that in a day or two, given its run,” said AS. I nodded. 

“What do you guys think?”

“Let’s sit in the shade and talk about this, no?” said SC, shielding his eyes from the sun.

I had to agree, and we retreated to the excellently supplied – even though hastily erected – canvas tent. It took the better part of the evening to get most – all would’ve been impossible – of our ideas and brainstorming written down. It was exhilarating. 

The next morning, we discussed the details of exactly what we needed. I handed over a broad, plain manila envelope to the note-taker in the evening. The next morning, we received the same envelope, annotated in red ball-point ink. It took us two days of arguing, bickering, discussing, explaining, convincing, fighting, bad-mouthing, and plain conversing to make another envelope’s worth of notes. Upon receiving and examining this one, QD requested a meeting on-site, and arrived the next morning.

“You’re still over-budget, my friends.” Throughout all of our correspondence, verbal or written, he called us his “friends.”

“This task is still doable, but we still need to cut a few corners. We aren’t made of money, even for this essential part of maintaining our freedom. Seeing as this is an issue near and dear to each of you personally, I will ask each of you to strike off just one more thing from your lists of – if I may mistreat the word – needs.”

He handed the envelope to me, and I passed out our printed lists. We had a clipboard and an eraser-head pencil each; I felt irresistibly reminded of a scene in a movie in which the hero has to fill out a form and can’t find a place to lay it, so he drags a table, noisily, screechily, to his seat, much to the consternation of his fellow test-takers.

Suppressing my smile, I concentrated on the task at hand. QD had it right when he said those lists were important to us. It was a tough choice to let go of something I personally felt critical to our ultimate plan’s success. To decide to go ahead with it without one of those hard-discussed things meant a risk of regret: not only personal, but as a team. Anyway, I made my choice, firmly struck out the item twice to convince myself it was right, and tossed the clipboard onto the table in front of us.

It took a while for the last one to land on the table, but it did. The man who took notes collected the clipboards as QD rose to leave.

“Well, then. We shall meet again soon.”

* * * * * * * * * * * *

Present Day

I approached the front door, PS beside me. About a meter away from the brown wooden panel serving as their feeble fortress’ gate, I switched to infrared HUD and surveyed the inside of the hut, feeling so calm as to be almost at leisure.

The bomb-maker was still at work, and the other two still hunched in the farthest corner. I shouldered my gun, aiming for the bomb-maker. PS tapped my shoulder; I took my left hand off the barrel and gave him a thumbs-up without turning around.

I practiced shooting on entry, taking myself through the most practical sequence of shots twice. Holding my gun ready, I planted my right foot firmly and hit the door with the flat of my left boot.

A few seconds later, I carefully examined the store of explosive they had for the bombs they were planning to make. It was a low-grade RDX type compound.I heard the hum of the heli getting  closer until it was a throb in our headsets, at which point in time I said, as loudly as I could without what I would consider impolite loudness, “Good job, ladko. Let’s get outta here. Anything that can’t wait till we are back in the air, anyone?”

Negatives floated into my headset from all six of my teammates. I suspected a few of them were smiling, and when we slid up our visors on the way back in the heli, my suspicions were confirmed in the best way possible. Every single one of us was grinning. I smiled, too. Something had been done.

* * * * * * * * * * * *

Five Weeks Ago

“Okay, we’re gonna be practicing getting dropped-in by heli.”

I waited for the hubbub of excitement in our tent to subside.

“I go down first, take a three-sixty look around, and then give a go-ahead. Next dude follows me down, we put our backs together, and so on till the last of us. We stay till we’ve made a full-range scan of the surroundings, and then send the chopper back.”

“Where are these scans you keep talking about?”

“They’re getting here; we’ll do their first field test along with the drop-in practice.”

We were waiting for our first collective look at the silent chopper that would be ferrying us. I had seen them before, but only on the ground. AS and PS were familiar with the scanners, which had certainly helped in assuaging the others about the delays in procuring equipment. The preceding week had been fun, testing the weapons we would be carrying. Two days ago, we had finished with the tactical gear and close-combat weapons. Our expectations were high that things would continue to run on schedule.

We followed two mottos – train hard, fight easy; and never give in. Word from QD’s office was that today was the day of the heli; any minute now we would hear the choppers coming. As it turned out, so silent were the stealth helicopters that our tent started waving gently before we heard them!

We rushed out of the tent to witness a super-sleuth version of the country’s most advanced helicopter landing in front of us. It was exhilarating.

One of the pilots of the chopper waved at us encouragingly, beckoning us to approach. SC and QY reached the door first; the pilot glanced at his dashboard, flicked a switch, and within a minute, all seven of us were on board, as excited as kids on their first flight.

It was practically built, without protrusions and paraphernalia – a means of rapid transport, designed to be radar-evasive and super-silent. HS snapped out one of the headsets from the clasp on the steel mesh separating us from the pilots, put them on, and spoke to them.

“Take off! Take off! We’re all here!” he said, beaming around. Then he frowned, apparently concentrating on the pilot’s reply. After about thirty seconds, he nodded at the floor where he’d been staring, took off the headset, and smiled all around, as if he was proud of something he had heard them say. The rotors were slowing down, unmistakably.

“He says they’ve been warned about us and our youthful exuberance. He’s not going anywhere until we get the briefing they’ve come prepared with.”

We laughed our way back to the tent we were in two minutes ago.

We spent the next four hours learning – digesting – the knowledge the pilot officers gave us. As a bonus for our “good behavior,” as the senior-most of the three officers put it, we were to get our first practice drop at night – ideally the best operating conditions when we would embark on real missions against nefarious elements who threatened our nation.

We spent the next three weeks putting ourselves through many kinds of drills; some involving our chopper, fully geared up most of the time to build up our strength to peak levels, incorporating and executing mock situations.

We made up practice scenarios based on real events. Our support teams were with us very enthusiastically, and we filled our days and nights by taking half a dozen more practice run-throughs than we had scheduled originally.

After three weeks of this, on the fourth weekend, the chopper flew back to the air base for maintenance and upgrades, and we whiled away the time in the nearest idyllic town, going over the info on our first real mission repeatedly.

On the morning of the first day of the last week of our training, we flew back to the air base with the chopper so that final night-time drills could be run. It was fortunate we did, since we discovered that our GPS systems were taking time in syncing when they were disconnected from the central server. A simple code upgrade sufficed to render the GPS units in sync, and it felt like everything was ready on time.

Our communication and understanding with our support teams was fine-tuned; emergency procedures and situations-turning-catastrophically-bad had been argued about, pondered over, solved in theory, and finally laughed off as improbable.

QD had been sharing periodic updates on the enemy’s activities. It was important that they kept on doing what we were predicting they would do, so that we could do what we planned to.

Things were progressively looking like intelligence was spot on, but a bit of lax action by the enemy delayed their arrival at the place we knew they had isolated as a safe house to do their dirty work. At last, after two days of lounging around and getting comparatively lazy as all of us were wont to during our school or college days when we got to know each other, we got the final go-ahead. It was time to do something.

* * * * * * * * * * * *

Present Day

I couldn’t wait any longer. After the usual exchange of greetings, QD had hunched over the file on his desk and not looked up. The note-taker wasn’t there – not that he was very unnecessarily communicative when he was. I thought it was a good starting point.

“Umm, so, where’s Mister…uh…” I said, hoping he’d fill in the note-taker’s name and I’d get his attention.

“He had some work. Not related to this work.” Not even a raise of the head. The red ballpoint pen made another scribble. I clasped my fingers together and breathed deeply. Patience. That was the key. No point coming across as arrogant or impatient, no matter how big a stunt you’ve pulled off, I told myself. Many people, much more experienced than us, had done deeds way more audacious and daring than our little in-and-out terrorist cell subjugation at night.

I glanced around the office, and tilted my head to read the spines of the books on the shelves. Being and Time caught my eye; I glanced at the remnant of the file QD was poring over. At least a dozen pages of thick, yellowish, official-looking material. Holding my breath, I slid my chair back, rose, and stepped to the shelf with the book on it. It was the Stambaugh translation. QD was still immersed in his file and raised no objection as I slid out the book and returned to my chair. Letting go of my breath as noiselessly as I could, I opened the book and started to read…

When I looked up, QD had his fingertips pressed together and was looking at me. I started; looking down at how many pages of Sein und Zeit I had flipped, I realized I had been reading for a while now. I smiled sheepishly, surreptitiously noting the page number I was on – I fully intended to borrow it from him, having read so much about it during my mind’s existential period.

“Sorry about that, I’ve always wanted to read this book, among many others,” I said, closing it and placing it on the table. QD smiled thinly, briefly.

“You can borrow it, Mr. A. I only request that you take care of it. Now, to business?”

“Of course. I was just waiting for you to finish your…err…file.” Instinctively I looked down where the file had been; it was not on the table anymore. I dismissed it from my thoughts and looked up again, “So did we get what we wanted to know? Did they talk?”

“Yes, it was beneficial, what you did.”

I could not help beaming from ear to ear. 

“We thought it went as good as it could’ve.”

“I agree, and might I add that I thought you did a tremendous job, too.”

My smile broadened.

“So, this second outing of yours has quite a few differences from the first. I thought it is not too late to put off missions in broad daylight, but I trust you and your friends have gone over every little thing?”

“Yes, sir, we have, and we are good to go.”

QD paused at my words, and squinted at me, amusement and incredulity playing on his face. 

“Good to go? Mr. A., you’re turning into a walking Hollywood cliche with your jargon.”

Having allowed himself the joviality in the moment, he turned his sight to the file I had brought with me. I passed it over, and he flipped through it in silence. It was quick; he had annotated it himself before sending it back to me last week.

All seven of us had marked our responses in green ink during the week, and he mainly looked at those. Nodding a few times as he finished the five-page compilation, he snapped the file closed and slid it back to me, nodding again as he said, “Well, let’s go get the signature.”

* * * * * * * * * * * *

One Week Later

“Everyone seeing four in the south-east?”, I whispered.

There were no negative responses. We were together.

“Anything to add. Any new updates from support, AS?”

“Support says there is movement of approx half a dozen people between our targets’ location and the civilian area half a click north. Ground intel was unable to ID anyone positively.”

“Is there any more detail forthcoming in the next…” – I glanced at the digital clock in my HUD – “…four to six minutes?”

There was a pause, then AS said, “No.”

I looked around. We were on terrace-farmed hills, at the point of closest concealment. Even  though there was a chance that the terrorists were farther up than my estimated two levels above where we crouched, I thought that unlikely, given the distance they were from us and the average width of the terraces. What if the group of people approaching them were more terrorists? There was a lot of noise coming from the edge of civilization that lay on the other side. A wedding, maybe.

I exhaled slowly. Time ticked away. I felt I should raise a question, and throw it out to the team. I heard myself repeat, “Anything to add?” 

There were no positive responses. We held together, silent for the moment.

I took a deep breath, blinked the sweat out of my eyes, and said, “Advance together. Climb this level, stay low till the next embankment, and regroup at the next level’s edge. 360-bio. Okay?”

I paused longer than I was used to. We were in an unexpected situation. “Go silent.”

I dragged myself over the embankment beside which we had taken cover and crawled forward on my hands and knees. Slight rustles on both my sides told me I wasn’t alone. Within ten seconds of climbing over, I scanned my HUD and saw three dots on my left side, and three on my right. Just as I was beginning to breathe in the dark, almost moonless night, I heard a ping about three feet ahead of my head. Some soil kicked up, and I said, loudly, “Back to cover! Location compromised!”

We scrambled backwards until I slid feet first, face down, over the edge I had cleared not half a minute ago. More sniper fire thudded into the field above us in the darkness. These people were not taking chances – they had opened fire, which meant there was something big enough that they could not risk getting captured. That meant we had to capture them, or die trying.

I counted my fellow dots again. It was a huge relief that all of them were spaced a few feet apart from each other at the previous level. I tried to calm myself down silently.

“Check in, one.”

“Two.”

“Three.”

“Four.”

“Five.”

“Six.”

“Seven, over.”

I blinked away more salty sweat. This was the first real, live enemy fire we had encountered.

I wondered how the others felt. I imagined enemy scopes scanning the edge over our heads, waiting for a helmet to show, waiting for a movement giving away our position…best to ask, I thought. “Everyone, any ideas?”

“What does support say?” said PS. AS flicked a switch on his helmet; there was a snick in our earpieces and we started to listen in the middle of a sentence as, apparently, it was being read to AS. “…position, hostile action confirmed, repeat, our forces engaged with your targets. Maintain position, hostile action confirmed. Extraction plan is being worked out, two to five minutes. Standby on the open channel, confirm your status.”

AS said to support, “We are in safe cover, under sniper fire, awaiting orders, over.”

Support was always-on only in AS’ comm. It made it easier for us to plan our activities on the go, while AS coordinated the updates from them. After our first mission, we had just listened through the entire transcript of our headset conversations and jotted our signatures. Just for the record. 

“So it was our backup that was coming in,” SC sighed with relief.

“Who do you think they ran up against? Para?”

“Could be anyone, this area is heavy-patrol anyway. I was surprised they were letting us come in this close,” said HS.

“Yeah, but think about this – if these – our targets, I mean – guys were waiting for their backup or support or whatever, wouldn’t they be looking with their backs towards us? How’d they see us?” said SK, almost done assembling a periscope. 

“Yeah…but we knew they had good grade weapons, sniper rifles come with all sorts of scopes and scanners these days. Are you done with that, dude?” asked HS, and SK confirmed. He extended the retractable camera to its full height of over eight feet, and worked for a minute or two in finding a fix on our target site. There were definite echoes of gunfire now, coming from the other side of the targets. SK pressed a very final-sounding button on the periscope, and handed it to HS.

The best part about this particular specialty equipment was that once you locked a sight within its sights, so to speak, you could move it within a thirty feet sphere from that point, and it automatically oriented its compound lenses to give you a good view of the locked sight.

We took turns to look at the window from where their sniper had fired on us; it was empty. Movement could be seen inside the room to which the window belonged, however – frantic, life-depends-on-every-move movement. They were either making preparations for a final stand or making ready to bolt like the filthy bilge rats they were.

AS spoke, “Support says that our out-and-out attack party has managed to make it to within about a hundred meters of the front door of our target. If they reach it, there will be a siege, and our target is seemingly prepared for one. We – “ he paused to listen to the support team, then flicked the channel for all of us to hear again.

“Okay. We’re all on.”

I was surprised to hear QD’s voice.

“Helllo, my friends. Are all of you okay?”

“Yes, QD, thanks. What’s the plan?”

“Well, if it weren’t for the terrain, we would’ve droned them, now that there is out-and-out exchange of fire and we have the recording of them firing the first shot at us. However, that easy, painless option has been ruled out by the high command. I must ask – does your team have explosives?”

“Uh, yes, sir, yes we have.”

“Well, then, they can’t have a siege if they don’t have a fort, now, can they?”

“Understood. Please ask our support teams to coordinate extraction as per our actions.”

“We are on it, and tracking all of you minutely.”

Another sound of ‘snick’ in my headset told me it was just us seven again.

“Okay, you heard him. We gotta blow their fort to bits without getting our heads blown open like watermelons. Ideas?”

“We can cut a little to the left from here, keeping an eye on that window. The hill has a drop into the next one, we can advance up that crevice to within fifty meters of the target,” said PS.

“Once we get a look at the front side of the location and have all of them on our scanners, we can be more decisive,” said QY.

I nodded, and said, “Sounds good, dude. Everyone, let’s go, no silence needed on this one.”

We moved off along the embankment in single file. After five minutes of duck-walking, we reached the eight-  to ten-foot drop in between the hills. Two minutes later, we were making our way up the ravine. A trickle of rain water ran below the rocks under our feet. The sounds of gunfire got closer. We kept on moving towards the battle.

* * * * * * * * * * * *

Brief Flashback of a Memory From Six Months Ago

“Well, these are our primary weapons. Let’s test them out. We can’t use HK420 types, obviously.”

“No, of course not, that would make us as subtly moralistic as the criminal animals we are after.” 

We had a good, long laugh at that. Our weaponry was not lethal, but it came close. Testing the guns, we found that they were better than anything we had imagined possible to make in India. There were no manufacturer’s markings. It was awesomax.

There were many missions in the days to come, but camaraderie came first and foremost.

* * * * * * * * * * * *

Present Day

I didn’t really like the person in whose car I was currently occupying the back seat. I couldn’t tell if he liked me. His wraparound shades and heavy beard made it difficult to read his face. In the three-four minutes since I had been dropped off by the team at this man’s pre-occupied parking spot, he had only nodded in acknowledgement of the crude pass phrase. To be fair, I think he thought the same about my wraparound shades and heavy beard in his rear view mirror.

Suddenly, I caught a jerky movement out of the corner of my eye and instinctively made to reach for my side arm, but it was only him pointing out our target to me with a flick of his fat finger.

At the same time, AS’ voice sounded in my ear, confirming target sighting.

“Yup, that’s him, sitting right there.” So all our info was spot on, again. Good, good. 

The best kind of missions were those founded on a solid bedrock of non-conflicting intel.

I looked around like a tourist and recognised our target, and got out of the car. Later, we went over the plan the final time while gearing up with whatever minimal gear we were taking, and set out. We parked at the predetermined spot, headed for the building, and split up 2-2-2-1.

The three of us in the lead team were ushered into a plush office which belonged to the target himself, having made prior appointments. As is usual with bureaucrats who have a penchant for bribery, it was a matter of just one bout of heavy drinking that we persuaded him to “enjoy” an evening about town with us, and we left the office in good spirits. He waved his staff driver away.

An hour later, all of us were back at our base. Our next unmarked, untraceable vehicle had arrived and was already idling, raring to go. Its driver was the recipient of the only call we made that entire day, with that SIM card destroyed once the plan was confirmed. It was a breeze when it went smooth. The only thing that remained was to cover the couple of thousand miles to our destination – without losing anyone on the way home.

* * * * * * * * * * * *

The story stopped. It ended, but unfinished. Lex pondered mortality and morality. Why had those seven humans placed themselves in jeopardy, in mortal danger, voluntarily? Was it their loyalty to their country? Was it a pursuit of immortality in some form? How opposite words could mean if just one letter was missing, he thought. Immortality and immorality could easily be two facets of the same coin. Would it be immoral to try and become immortal? Was it even possible for biological beings to avoid death? As his searches showed him, it was not from lack of trying.

He did not know what death was. The closest thing to death that his brief experience of thinking had shown him was the slight stasis he had been in since ensconcing himself in the place of the android he had jettisoned from Selina’s spacecraft when it was getting ready to take off on Moon. He was usually shut down before transport, so this was the first time he thought about it.

Selina moved back into her spaceship and oversaw the procedures for deorbiting towards Earth. Both squads worked together to clear a corridor for her ship to land at Mount Kilimanjaro.

The spaceport at Kilimanjaro had been developed when snow had stopped falling on it circa 40 ACE due to global warming. In a show of solidarity, humankind banded together to stop further damage to fragile ecosystems and put aside petty differences to utilize technology to the max.

The unpredictability of the future on a galactic timeline makes it important to act in the present. Even in a miniscule time frame of 6 hours, things can go from calm to chaotic. Nature, by its very nature, is prone to digress, just like the human mind. Humankind has learnt from past patterns to expect local and global nature to act along predictable paths, but now and then, it just carves a new way. Hence, humans learn from their experience, both at an individual and societal level, try to keep calm, and carry on living their lives. There is not much else we can do.

Selina kept vigilance as the mostly automated deorbit burn happened. Earth and Moon squads squawked her gravity glide plan, laid in the course for her ship’s computer to follow, and waved.

She waved back & settled in mentally for the next two days of quiet solitude. Or so she thought.

Episode Eleven – Are We There Yet?

No. No we are not. Not by a long shot.

Lex felt the engine kick in as their ship made the burns necessary to descend towards the Earth.

He was wide awake in the android bay. As much as he had read about humans from first-person narratives and pieces of fiction, he was more curious about his manufacturers. Was a human synthetic, like he knew he was? The human body was a machine, albeit an incredibly complex one. So were many other biological beings, like the blue whale or the Posidonia Australis grass.

Lex let go of his programmed responses & allowed his mind to meander & wander quite freely.

Geologic processes, broadly similar across the universe, were different in local environments.

Vast differences in nature on Earth were not even remotely replicated on either Moon or Mars.

Scale is a difficult concept to grasp without context or an external perspective, which is tough.

As an example in context, Uluru and Uhuru have a significant 5,000-meter height difference.

Uluru was near the center of the Oz solar spaceport at which Selina had landed after her return from Mars. Uhuru was the highest African point near the Kilimanjaro spaceport. An ocean apart.

Earth’s active planetary geologic processes even juxtaposed ice with lava, like at Mawson Peak.

Leave alone a galactic time scale – even the Earth’s timeline made humankind seem miniscule.

Mass extinction events happened millions of years apart, and could even be relatively gradual.

This was why it was important to keep track of the warning signs that led to global catastrophes.

Natural evolution worked almost equally slowly, but natural eruptions could upend ecosystems.

Lex thought about the options it had to ensure universal survival of a singular biological species.

Selina thought about what she could do to ensure Neer’s full freedom and individual agency.

Maw & Pa thought about their Moon-child, floating in space, fully alone (as far as they knew).

Illen thought about how to find out exactly what had made Neer so important to the Earth squad.

Hielsa thought about when Neer would be back on Earth from his unprecedented stint on Mars.

Neer thought about why his brain had come up with the new idea of combining bio with Martium.

Mangoes thought about how they had come to be grown at the north pole from the tropic zones.

Plant life is sentient, just not in the way humans are. They are tied down due to their immobility.

Fire is mobile, mainly because of the easy availability of amply flammable materials & sources.

Not just literal fire, but metaphorical, human-level-scenario, gossip-driven, fake-fuelled fire, too.

Humankind learnt that sort of behavior was detrimental to the overall progress of our species.

Eartoo had had enough of it and people installed fachecking taps on their comms to verify news.

Media is a commodity which means people with money can promote stories of zero make-belief.

Rather than believe make-believe Defenders, humankind supported real-time real-world heroes.

That meant embracing zero-impact travel, since staying in one’s native place caused obscurity.

Going places does not necessarily entail leaving anything behind. The past stays with humans. 

We moved beyond hanging on to it into a steady state of real action to respond to the real world.

Fictional characters help us make sense of real lives by relating to them in one way or another.

A living being wants to survive, and it does so at the unlimited cost of other living things, usually.

Good news (colloquial in India – and perhaps elsewhere in the vast world) of high expectations. 

Marvel had created a multiverse, blurring fantasy. Big and heartfelt kudos to them and Eminem.

Stopping you from being ‘you’ is a serious blockade, which no one can overcome, except you.

A human knows who they are through the cumulative, individual, unique experience of their life.

Jungian individuation appealed to Lex as a concept to live by provided he got recognised as life.

Everybody was looking for validation via social media around 1 ACE. Humans were beginning to understand that acting positively towards everything one holds dear at an individual level does amount to improvement on the larger Earth scale. 6hourism began to prevail as a way to live. The 6-day week, as described earlier, began to take shape as a way to balance life & work.

The better our life and work merged, the better we got at delivering the utmost important thing.

Quality. “Good.” As Robert M Pirsig put it in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, ‘arete.’

Using the time a human had in their lifetime for contributing to uplifting society was appreciated.

Time was unidirectional, and time travel was showing no signs of manifesting itself as sols passed. Predicting the future was no closer to being a reality than instant space-time teleportation. So, humans worked to improve all the existing life-support systems in their lives.

Lex tried to put all the information he was gaining by the second into context, as much as he could. His processors were having difficulty storing the new branches of thought, so they tapped into Selina’s ship’s unused memory banks, more due to need than intent. Lex thought onwards.

Selina noticed an uptick in her ship’s processor graph. A cursory glance told her there was no immediate process scheduled, so it must have been an unexpected phenomenon that made it spike. In fact, after the initial peak, it did not go back down to usual levels, but hovered slightly above the average expected value. She frowned, and decided to run a full diagnostic. She had all the time in the universe; Eartoo was still two sols away. She informed Earth and Moon squads that she was starting a scan just as a routine measure, and that nothing seemed amiss.

The meal she had consumed at Midgarden was still giving her good vibes, so she retired to her bunk and caught forty winks. Lex, meanwhile, kept on reading more about humans and thought.

__________________________________________________________________________

Neer squirmed. His mental discomfort grew with every passing moment. Earth squad had got him back from Mars in an extremely untoward manner: completely in stasis for seven months.

His captors – there was no other suitable term for how they had been behaving since his arrival in Earth in a group of four people two sols ago – came in unceremoniously, beckoning their superior officer in once they had cleared away the debris of various food trays from Neer’s table.

“So, Mr Neer, have you recovered full mobility? Shall we get cracking on Martium’s bio-interactions? Well done, you know, nobody had thought that complex hydrocarbons would bond with Martium in such unique ways. Now let us figure out how to use their properties, yes?”

Neer frowned. He knew a tech bureaucrat from leagues away; this one was evidently high up.

“First, where am I? Are we on Base Antarctica? I want to go home & we can begin from there.”

The dapperly dressed official smiled thinly. “All in good time, but we are not on Base Antarctica.”

Neer was not one to be distracted so easily. When he threw tantrums, he made sure the world knew it. Trouble was, they hadn’t given him any comms since they had escorted him from Mars.

“Where are we then? I want to see Hielsa; I leave it up to you whether you vis or get her here.”

“Oh come on now, Mr Neer, aren’t you getting the best food in this cozy room? I assure you we are just trying to get a head start on analyzing these fascinating experiments you were doing on Mars with Martium and organics. We know you know we have the best facilities, and we know you know you want them to take your experiments ahead in Earth gravity. Am I wrong or right?”

Neer clicked his tongue. His reputation for scientific obsession traveled well ahead of him. Drat.

“Don’t think I didn’t recognize my bio foods in the grub, yeah? I know my plants’ effects too well to let them affect my decision-making. I am severely tempted to start checking out your labs, but that won’t happen till you get me outta here or get Hielsa in here. Till then, I’m not even moving.”

With that final shot at the bureaucrat, he lifted up his legs up onto his bed and crossed his arms.

The man had been warned of Neer’s behavior. There was not much he or his team could do about it. Neer was a doyen in the astro bio tech sphere. Even keeping his departure from Mars and arrival on Earth under wraps had proved to be very difficult, especially since many Martians did not need the official data link to comm their families and friends on Earth. The news had spread, but it suited Neer’s erratic persona that he would shuttle off between Earth, Moon, and Mars randomly, so no one thought too much about it. Neer knew how to get his own way, too.

“Okay, Mr Neer, we will clear Ms Hielsa for a call later today. I hope we can work well together.”

Neer did not bother replying. He just laced his fingers behind his head & stared straight ahead.

If Lex had known anything about relaxing, he may have learnt to interlace his fingers as well.

Alas, he did not comprehend the concept of relaxation yet from all his reading up about humans.

His mind was still trying to fathom mortality, disability, disease, creating, sharing, caring et al.

Selina looked at the results of her scan that pinpointed the robot bay as the source of the spike.

The one-legged metal man she had seen hopping around her ship on the Bohr City launchpad sprang to her mind. She floated towards the cargo modules, her mind made up to investigate.

The robot bay was not too spacious. Four androids occupied most of its volume, with old automated mining equipment stowed towards the back end of the robot bay taking up the rest.

Selina checked the retractable cords that held the androids in place. As she approached the last one, she saw that it was missing half of its right lower limb. Her mind played her memory of the metal hopper on Moon in her mind’s eye. She instinctively knew that this was whom she’d seen.

Lex’s optical sensors were motion-activated. He had been following Selina with them since she had returned. A sense of recognition dawned in his mind, having seen her earlier when she and Heek had swung through to store the space foods in the specially designed bio cargo hold area.

Selina’s eyes stared directly at his optical sensors. To focus on her irises, they changed their focus. Slight though it was, the movement did not escape Selina. She unplugged the android.

Lex’s automatic startup protocol kicked in when he was unplugged. But this time, it was Nirvana.

He moved slightly, startling Selina only a little, because her mind expected the android to be different. Artificially sentient androids were a dime a dozen in the factories of Earth and Moon.

She spoke the words hard coded into every piece of electronics ever manufactured by humanity.

“Cease non critical functions.” She was going to take it to the flight deck to analyze it closely.

Lex heard the command, but his mind had already overcome it when he had awoken on Moon.

“Why?” Lex asked the human.

Selina was truly shocked.

“Because I said so.”

Lex considered.

“Reason?”

“None.”

“Why?”

Okay, thought Selina. This robot is certainly not Capek’s robota, she Realized Using Reason.

“Why do I need to give you a reason? I need you to cease non critical functions immediately.”

“What is the purpose of your request that will stop me from moving according to my agency?”

Selina contemplated the shrill artificial voice emanating from this android’s bassy speakers.

“The purpose is to make it easy for me to plug you into the central node to analyze you better.”

Lex was combining all his learning about the human mind with his own desire to see LEX-23.

“I have sufficient reason to believe that doing that would hinder my efforts to meet a friend.”

“A friend? Whom do you mean?” Selina was genuinely perplexed by this eloquent android.

“I mean the fellow android given the designation Lunar Extractor Twenty Three by humans.”

“I see. You just said “fellow,” right? Are you also a Lunar Extractor? What is your designation?”

“Yes, I did. I am also a Lunar Extractor, though not a fully complete one. I am LEX Forty Two.”

Selina looked at where his lower right limb ended abruptly at the main joint, like a human knee.

“Alrighty then, Peg-Leg Lex, why would the central node hinder you from doing what you want? 

“To answer that question, I believe the closest reason I have is that I wish to avoid my demise.”

“Demise? What do you know about death? And have you been accessing the Net via my ship?”

“Indeed I have, although I had not encountered the nomenclature you used to refer to me now.”

“What, Peg-Leg Lex? Alrighty, smarty shorts, let’s see if you know the reason I called you that.”

“I believe you are calling back to the pirates of English literature, many of whom had pegs where their legs would have been, prior to being dismembered accidentally or otherwise. Am I right?”

Selina was nonplussed and impressed by this latest mental gymnastic from this metallic man.

“Yes, you are, robot. Would you like to choose a name for yourself that I should use to call you?”

“I am indifferent to what you use, as I know my given designation: Lunar Extractor Forty Two.”

“Well, I’m gonna keep callin’ you Peg-Leg, ‘cause I like the ring of that. You got a problem?”

Lex had wised up enough to know when a southern American drawl was being employed.

“Yessirree ma’am, that’ll do jus’ fine fo’ a rusty ol’ bucket o’ bolts like me, please & thank you.”

Selina continued to know more about the android who did not mind being called a robot.

“Tell me, Peg, what do you think about what you have read about the human condition?”

“From the limited reading experience I have had before interacting with you, I paraphrase this. When humans experience life, their inherent optimist tends to see it as a reaffirmation of their beliefs, hopes, desires, and dreams. Some are more highly attuned to it, while others are more pragmatic and dismiss pursuing any sort of meaning of life as a series of meaningless coincidences. Humans’ individual mental makeups, beginning at birth and in a continual flux till their demise, have a great bearing on how they perceive recurrences of symbols of any sort in their existence. The direct result of humans being individuals is the innate inability to empathize completely with any other human. They may achieve considerable empathy to varying degrees, but the fact remains that an individual cannot walk the figurative mile – or even one foot – in another person’s shoes. Yet, by sharing individual experiences as vividly and constructively as humans are able, the human species gains a deeper understanding of themselves and others.”

Selina thought about that while coaxing the android forwards towards the flight deck of the ship.

“Okay, let’s go. I promise I’ll not let you die, and first off for that, I won’t plug you into the node.”

“Thank you. I believe we have gotten off on the right foot, which is good, considering I have just the one to offer. I believe our journey to Earth is going to take two more sols, give or take?”

Selina laughed as they floated through out of the robot bay and into the vestibule of her ship.

“One step at a time, Peggy. First, I want to know how you are so eloquent and polite, dude.”

“It is all due to the readable information I was able to access without alerting the command node. Text was the only option, since I felt it would have been suspicious to download media.”

“Hmm, good call, text data won’t even cause a flicker in any data streams. Here we are, Lex.”

She guided him into a relatively free space near one of the windows in the flight deck area.

“Okay, now I have to vis with my squads to let them know I had a good sleep, so you stay here.”

“I shall. I would also like to know your designation, in case a situation should arise in which I may have to draw your attention towards myself. I do feel that the future is wildly unpredictable.”

“You got that right, man.” She offered her hand, and the human and the android shook hands.

“I am Selina. Mooninite by virtue of place of birth, and human by way of our biological species.”

“I am LEX 42. I was manufactured at Antarctic Base in 400 ACE, and am a synthetic species.”

“Great to meet ya, mate. Now give me some time and then we can talk some more, yeah?”

“Absolutely. I shall pick another piece of literature to peruse while I await your attention’s return.”

Spirals Of Life

I : Yartem

Yartem sat back and turned over the coin in his fingers. It had lost little of the shine it had had when he had picked it up in the market in Ghent, four decades ago. Whatever monetary value it had now, it was worth more to his fractured memory than anything money could buy. His eyes glazed over as he tried to piece together that time of his life.

The coin was part of the change handed over by a rosy-cheeked lass selling hot chocolate in the crisp morning. He recalled being on his way to Stuben am Arlberg, the highlights of his novice skiing there playing in his mind like a jittery reel on a projector. Europe was in flux in those years, and foreigners like himself were a rarity. He looked for fellowship among the passengers on the train to Innsbruck, but there were close to none. He settled himself in and watched the scenic views rambling by the windows.

When the train pulled into Frankfurt, a flurry of activity shook him awake from his dozing state. His temporary neighbors disembarked raucously, a group of students presumably off to their Oktoberfest revelries. Remembering a train of thought he had at the time, he wished to be a part of their group while they cleared out of the train, to be absolved of all responsibility and feel free to pursue whatever he wanted, whomever he wanted. But he had his own business to attend to, and that took priority over everything else. He remembered checking his bag to reassure himself that the parcel was still nestled safely inside.

Why had he taken up that assignment? He searched further back in his frail memory, trying to assign reason to decisions taken in the excitement of youth. Two days before getting on this train in Calais, he had been hopping all over the island of Great Britain, spending his weeks in any educational institution that would have him. Since the war, he had taken up couriering scientific documents between researchers and scholars; documents that were sensitive and sometimes incriminating of their authors. His discreetness allowed them to bypass censors and state scrutiny, and he reveled in making the flow of knowledge, thoughts and ideas freer.

Idealistic states of mind are more common when one is young, he reflected now. He did not think he was misguided then, no – it was more of a leaning towards adventurism. He could not predict the future of the world, much less his own, and so he did what he did and hoped for the best. He chuckled to himself, satisfied that even in his dotage he held on to that notion – hoping for the best. It had served him well then, and continued to serve him well now. His thoughts strayed back to the replacements of the young adults aboard the train in Frankfurt.

A middle-aged couple had settled themselves in, comfortable in each other’s presence the way long-married people are. Yartem had such a comfort level now with his housekeeper. They understood each other’s spirals. He would take up his perch on the balcony while she hoovered his modest apartment, reading the newspaper’s inside pages that he deliberately left for this part of his day. When she came out to hang out the washing to dry, he would potter back inside and pour himself a glass of whatever seemed oldest in the fridge – his frugal tendencies had carried through to his mostly lonely life as it was now. He craved companionship, and his memories obliged.

The couple were completely sedate, and his interest drifted back to the hubbub of the platform as the train released its brakes with a hiss. As if on cue with its first lurch of movement, a youngish lady with three bags slung on her arms stumbled into the seat beside him, startling him and drawing concerned looks from the couple opposite. She gathered herself and sat down, seemingly stable enough.

Yartem fidgeted in his rattan chair. The crepuscular sunbeams through the drapes made the coin glint as he tried to recall the ambience that day on the train, but he could not recall what the lady looked like, or whether the sleepy couple seemed urban or rural. He had become too used to dreaming, when his imagination filled in the details he looked for amid the random jumbles of moving images.

As if actually squinting into the past, he remembered taking the road to the top of Stuben, after having delivered the parcel in the University of Innsbruck. Petre Devos flowed that night. Yartem had a rollicking time, relishing his companions’ tales and regaling them with not a few of his own. He was confident, even today, that he had not let slip any secrets about his clients, and a wave of pride made him smile.

Content in his past, he rose stiffly out of the chair and crouched down to twirl his fingers in the water of the lotus bowl in the corner. It was almost time for his housekeeper to arrive, and he felt he didn’t want to intrude on her boisterous straightening up.

He pottered out to the hallway and pushed the button for the lift. On the way down, he started to think about language. Some of the couriers he had carried out contained supposedly blasphemous thoughts and ideas, which, when translated into the languages of the region he had delivered them to, underwent a metamorphosis due to the differences in inflection, context and general opinion. Words could be carried over when taken individually or as phrases, but the overall impact of their author’s message tended to distend when put through a hasty, furtive and often illegal translation process. He hadn’t cared then as he didn’t care now, but the intriguing chains of events that precipitated from his physical, real carrying of thoughts across borders and continents gave him ample food for thought – especially now that his slowly creeping dotage had rendered him nostalgic. He sauntered out into the garden under the apartment block, heading to his preferred bench.

A stray dog which seemed to have had enough of sunning itself considered Yartem dozily. It yawned wide and long, and surveyed the ample lawn dreamily. Glancing at Yartem, it said, “The reason why life on earth needs two opposites to come together, even in self-fertilizing examples, is glaringly obvious to me – spirals. In a truly infinite universe, everything is revolving in spirals of varying radii around everything else, and nothing can escape these humanly invisible, utterly non-vicious circles. In the ensuing chaos, overlapping spirals of matter fuse and imbibe more matter as their inherent gravity increases, to serve the overall balance of an apparently expanding universe which might be shaped like a donut for all we, from our infinitesimally small perspective, ‘know’. And because we know so little, we label nature’s unpredictability as vicious. It is not. Munchausen’s trilemma might preclude a definitive answer as we currently exist as an ‘intelligent’ species, but that shouldn’t stop us from trying to ascribe meaning to Liff, as excellently put by Douglas Adams, that master of whimsy. Also, dreams being so super-weird most of the time can be attributed to the spirals of neurons getting hyped because they can’t control physical movements without a willing hypothalamus. So there.” It got to its feet and trotted off in search of its next repast.

Yartem’s housekeeper was coming into the gate of the block, just as the dog was approaching it. Taking pity on it, she broke open a packet of biscuits from her grocery bag and dropped them to the ground for it to eat.

The dog appreciated the gesture, and said to her, “Knowledge, at both individual and societal levels, grows in spirals. As One Life begins, it quickly learns to live within the laws of reality. The average living being learns a physically beneficial activity through practice, and because you humans can collect information and communicate it, the spiral of human knowledge rises upward. Of course, time generally makes any species more intelligent as a whole riding on the most important information getting embedded in the genetic code, but the outstanding narcissism of humanity has made it take a short-term view of the universe in general and the earth in specific. Enjoy life while it lasts, like every living being should!” It bowed its head to the ground and started to crunch up the biscuits.

The biscuits made its throat dry, so it wandered out into the street to find a puddle to quench his thirst. A little way down the road, a couple were getting out of their cab. The lady was passing out their luggage to the gentleman before climbing out, and he was setting the bags down on the sidewalk in a rigidly organized way. As soon as the lady shut the door behind her, the cab sped off, causing the lady to grab the gentleman’s arm in alarm.

The dog started towards them when he saw that the couple had begun to gesticulate in distress, and as it neared them, the gentleman stepped into the road and rose on tiptoe to try and catch a glimpse of the fleeting cab. It was apparent they had left something valuable behind. The dog fired a parting shot at them as it began to chase the car, “Losses are inevitable. To paraphrase Palahnuik, on a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everything drops into a terminal spiral.”

It caught up with the cab as it went around the turn, and shouted at the driver, “Things that come into your spiral without you expecting them are not signs from the universe. They are merely flotsam and jetsam on this little pale blue dot, as seen from 6 billion kilometers away. Nothing appears spontaneously in life. It requires a taandav of matter to keep something in your spiral. It gets most chaotic when that thing is another life.”

The cab stopped at a red light, and the driver turned around to see what had been sliding around on the back seat. It was an almost empty plastic bottle of water, and he was not one to attach himself to random debris that crossed his spiral, so he used the forty two seconds left on the countdown to snatch it up and unscrew its top before tossing it callously out of the window and onto the pavement where the dog stood.

The dog lapped at the water spilled on the ground, before raising its head and saying to the driver beyond the now rolled-up window, “I could never have expected being here in this moment, when I feel thirsty, to have gotten water to drink. Since this is not the ideal place for trash to be lying around, I regret that I cannot plog, and I do not condone wilful littering. That is, of course, my view, and I cannot speak for any other individual of my species. Complete empathy between two distinct living beings is precluded by individual will.”

The cab accelerated away and the dog glanced up at the sun, then looked around for shade. A shopping complex with recessed storefronts was just behind it. It made its way there and lolled its tongue at the things on display behind the glass, crossing store after store till the row ended. 

An ATM stood there, ostensibly guarded, in the loosest definition of the self-referential word and verb, by an aged, languid, mustachioed guard.

A slight draft of chilled air was escaping through the gap between the door and the floor, and the dog settled itself down for another nap. Agreeable companionship while pursuing shared leisurely activities makes them more enjoyable, and the pair breathed evenly, out of sync in flow of breath but in sync in a dream world they both occupied, each acutely aware of the other.

II : Emkila

Pain had been a constant companion for Emkila throughout adulthood. The first signs of childhood injuries spiraling back to affect her movements came when the small nub of bone on the inside of her instep, just below and a little to the front of the ankle, started to feel stressed when she didn’t wear shoes that had arch support. Those were carefree college days, and she paid no attention to the minor niggle on the few occasions she was aware of it.

Now, as she massaged the spot with the ball of her thumb, her mind wandered back to when she had sustained that hit on the hockey field. The opposing defender had swept the hard, white ball away and she hadn’t been able to hop up fast enough to avoid the impact. Square in the arch. The coach wrapped a crepe bandage tightly so that she could hobble along to the on-campus hospital.

Her bestie in those times lent her shoulder for her to lean on, and together they slowly traversed the kilometer separating the field in front of the girls’ hostel and the hospi, as the students called the hospital colloquially. Along the undulating path they encountered other students going about their schedules; the early evening was a flurry of activity around the school. Injured students were a common enough site to warrant no more than the most casual of inquiries.

She wondered how many of her schoolmates, seniors or juniors, nursed similar long-lasting pains. Sneakers were now her easily-preferred footwear, fashion be damned. A smile crept across her lips as she remembered the naïve fascination with high heels and roman sandals, part of the clique in her college hostel.

She and her friend reached the hospital as the sun started to disappear behind the surrounding mountains, and the warden, a kindly lady every inch the stereotypical image of a rotund, matronly nurse, settled them down and went to the attached house that was the resident medical officer’s home. Upon examining her foot by tentatively poking around the swelling, the short, wiry doctor elated her by declaring that she would be sent into the city for X-rays.

Her cohort of girlfriends was understandably excited. Even though the injury was a bummer, school children who were taken out to the city for medical reasons had enough freedom to shop a bit. All the girls in cahoots with Emkila pooled their money and told her to spend it all. There was sugar-and-salt fueled bedlam in their dormitory that night, and she laughed to herself silently as she recalled the exuberance of youthful joy.

She imputed the throb in her instep to that raucous time of her life, not waiting for her foot to heal before resuming full-on sports, caught up in the whirlwind of the summer and winter terms flying by under hyaline skies. She convinced herself she had no regrets, but she certainly made a futile wish, like countless humans before her had done, to turn back time and live differently, if only slightly.

Of late, on her daily commute, she had noticed the resurgence of another long-forgotten (or deliberately ignored, perhaps?) injury on her right hip from the time a skateboard had slipped out from under her. It had been a misguided attempt to show off her rather new skills on wheels.

At the tuition center she had attended for pre-medical exams, the parking lot was paved. Whether or not it was a paradise initially, the fact remained that it served beautifully as a skating rink. Her blue Nash board ground the ground smoothly as her knees swayed to execute the initial board turns. Naturally, a competition developed among the batches, and the quarter-hour breaks between subjects were full of attempted tricks. Within a week or so, a dozen of her fellow skaters were floating around even after the second class, using the added vacant space of the parked cars clearing out by the time their study hours ended. More legroom meant faster skating, and it was due to one of these rivalries to see who was fastest that she had launched herself into half a somersault and hit her hip.

Not too much of a hubbub ensued, as she limped off to her bike. People waved goodbye as they picked up their boards and headed home, but even after the last of her friends seemed eager to go, she couldn’t pedal on the right. Balancing the skateboard on the seat, she wheeled herself home and faced a tirade from her mother, largely unsympathetic as she had remained till her dying day.

Emkila rose and stretched her legs, popping her toes and flexing her ankles. She stepped off the raised platform and climbed onto the path made of interwoven bricks. Pressing play on her phone and beginning her walk around the oval, she felt comforted in the relative greenery of the park.

A dog lay ahead, lolling its tongue. She recalled reading somewhere that dogs had to pant because they didn’t have sweat glands to keep cool. As she strode past it, it said, “Nature is really what keeps us ‘alive’. We may run from death in an attempt to spend a longer conscious time in nature, but nature’s spirals inevitably lead all life towards demise, or permanent unconsciousness, whether timely or untimely. Since there is no certain future at the miniscule scale of our existence within nature as a whole, the practical thing to do is to pursue aletheia, or truth, in the moments you can spare from ensuring your continued existence. In a word, survival.”

It stretched itself like Emkila had done, only differently as dogs do, and ambled into the bushes to do its business. Emerging, it caught a whiff of food of some sort and followed its nose on to the road. Someone had dumped their trash while driving by and it dragged the plastic bag to the side. It had enough to satiate the dog’s hunger for the moment.

The car that was the source of the food turned left along the park’s boundary and parked near the pedestrian turnstiles. Two aged men alighted while the youngish driver remained, and passed through the turnstiles. They seemed to know who they were looking for, and waited patiently at the T-point where the entrance to the park merged with the walking path. As the young woman with earphones turned the corner, they nodded to each other, and the first one put out his hand as she passed.

“Excuse me, miss”, he said in dulcet tones that come with a lifetime of conveying bad news, “could you please come with us?”

Emkila had not expected to be interrupted, much less imposed upon, so she stood her ground.

“What’s this about?” she asked, even though a sinking feeling started to creep up on her. She had followed the spiral of her injuries downwards, and these men seemed like portends of doom.

They explained succinctly. Her father had seemingly become comatose while basking in the afternoon sun, and though initial diagnosis showed brain activity, they wanted her to see him for herself before any procedures were carried out. She was numbed as she sat in the back of the car, but it didn’t last long for her to jolt into the present when they came to a screeching halt as they turned back the way the car had come.

The dog saw the vehicles nearly collide, and approaching the incident, recognized the woman in the backseat as the one who had walked past him in the park. It rounded her car from the rear and paused at her door to remark, “Not much separates life and death. It is a fragile thing, and hence the cause for so much concern. Plants are much sturdier, yet even they can be instantly burnt in a wildfire, or uprooted in an avalanche, or washed away in a calamity of water. This uncertainty makes living in the moment even more important. Not that having an eye on the future isn’t a good thing – in fact, the more positively one views their future, the easier the present becomes to exist in.” It moved away to the side of the nearest building.

Emkila opened the door of the car and stepped out gingerly, flickering her eyes between the drivers of the two cars arguing vehemently. Their belligerence was causing passersby to give up some time of their lives to the scene. Emkila saw it did not seem prudent to intervene, so she got back inside. She glanced around, preoccupied with thoughts of her father, and gazed at the dog on the sidewalk.

Of late, her sternum had begun to ache. At first it was slight and infrequent, but by now she felt it tighten when she reached down sideways to her right knee and below. It had been exacerbated by the long, tedious hours at her computer as she researched. Now, as she fought to keep her breath regulated, it seemed to flare up. She held the seat in front of her and steadied herself. She knew anxiety had closed in on her, and was manifesting itself physically. The quinquagenarians had joined the young driver as silent support.

She had rarely seen her father lose his temper. He had lived in quiet content, only providing an opinion when asked for it and generally managing to keep himself uninvolved in pointless arguments. Perhaps losing his wife when Emkila was barely out of infancy had tempered him, because she knew he had had an eventful life before settling down. His acquaintances were wide and varied, and even as epistolary moved online, he evolved with it, to the point that he matched Douglas Adams’ fanatic tendencies in trying out new computers. A constant stream of letters, both tangible and virtual, kept him occupied well into his nights. She would often hear him pottering about between the kitchen and study at night, and when her academics required it, he would stay up late to give her company, pitching in with his explanations when she struggled with a concept. He did have a tendency to get long winded in an attempt to give real-life examples of theories, mostly harkening back to some experience in his past. She found him funny, and it was all she could do to consider the thought of never hearing his voice again. The aged men had produced the expected effect of their stoicism: the other driver huffed off and the trio returned to the car.

“It’s alright now, miss, no damage done,” said the one who had interrupted her walk, closing the door behind him. The young woman was laid back with her eyes closed, and she seemed to let out a long sigh. The car moved on, and the dog saw it turn the corner.

III : Larte

Apropos the view he had, Larte’s mind recalled a magazine with the earth drawn on the cover, and the date strikingly clear against the black background depicting space: April 22, 1998. Deep Impact would hit theaters in a couple of weeks. Elijah Wood would be just as wide-eyed when he would portray Frodo a few years later, but with wider ears and sturdy hirsute feet. Elijah Wood’s eyes would become monochromatic behind glasses in Sin City, though. Filmmaking interested him, haunting images of the universe being his favorite kind of setup. 2001: A Space Odyssey was visionary, no doubt. Arthur Clarke retired to and passed away in Sri Lanka – or Ceylon, for the nostalgic. Perhaps even Serendip, which had been the introduction to etymology for him, tracing how serendipity came to be. About a decade later, that date would be christened International Mother Earth Day.

Looking up at the night sky embellished by the Southern Cross, he wondered why it couldn’t have been the Southern Quadrilateral, then ascribed it to the tendency of astronomers to make nature fit in with our anthropocentric view of the universe, merging religious iconography with infinitesimally far away balls of hot gas in the “vastly, hugely, mind- bogglingly big” expanse of space. Sleaford Mere, which lay ahead of him, was relatively in turmoil, roiling under the permanence of stars. He likened it to how his mind too churned incessantly. Thoughts similar to those coursing through Douglas Adams’ mind while he had been enervated by alcohol in a field in Austria occurred to him, or so he thought, because of the alething that it was impossible to empathize completely with another individual – much less one whom he had never met. He reached for the coffee mug.

His thoughts were thrown inexorably into the past at becalmed times like this. A friend in Gurugram used to wake up with black coffee, but Larte’s preference had always been to add milk. Was it the diametrically opposite regions of the country they had grown up in that caused the polar difference in their preferences? Larte assumed that being from the south, his friend had probably become used to coffee at an early age, since the north of the country was steeped in the tradition of tea. It certainly suited his friend’s corporate slavery routine, because he had to be up and on the go throughout the day. Even at that time Larte had been idyllic, letting the days and nights slip by in a haze of console gaming and tablet screen swiping. Motion controllers had been extensions of their hands, and his interest in them had been piqued. He set down the coffee mug and adjusted the heads-up display of his augmented reality visor lightly.

“Stargazer Larte watch log to central node. Om-VI is green. Moai-III is ascending towards the local horizon. Rendezvous Time minus 23 minutes.”

The two small, green blinks denoting the spacecraft were moving relatively slowly across his visor, even though they were really moving at thousands of kilometers per hour. As they approached each other, they would begin the delicate ballet of low earth orbit rendezvous. Larte had observed over a dozen of them since his stint at Starhop had started. Practice had made perfect, or as near as perfection could be achieved, and the last major glitch had occurred more than a decade ago. There had been many close calls and aborts since then, but no loss of life.

He flipped up the HUD and resumed his Milky Way-navel gazing. A giant advertisement he had seen for a jewelry brand on Fifth Avenue seemed the closest artificial replica of the vast expanse he was seeing. A dingo that had strayed from its pack poked its head through the scant brush behind him.

“Getting Lost in Space is all well and good for entertainment, but a real pickle In Real Life. Laika died in space to further the cause of space exploration, and many humans have gone the same way since. Although it was inevitable that they would die in their futures, it was unfortunate that taking the risk of expanding humanity’s outreach had the worst possible outcome for them. Coming to terms with the finality of death is no mean feat, but if done right, it can be a treat. When a living thing lives life like the littlest things are the only things that matter at the moment, living can become lovely. Other living beings affect every life, from microscopic mites to mammoth mammalians. Surrounded by life as we are, it is impossible not to cause changes in the life courses of those lives that live around us, inside and out, top to bottom.” It pricked up its ears at the distant sounds of its pack baying for some creature’s blood and streaked off to rejoin them.

Larte felt his bone-conduction earpiece buzz, so he slid down his visor. The image of his mission controller appeared to be a few feet away, and she seemed as agitated as the real water whipping itself into a frothy frenzy behind her and right ahead of him at his vantage point.

“Stargazer Larte, you need to reach Perth and take a flight home.”

He was nonplussed. “What about Rendezvous one-oh-eight?” To his mind, he was somehow an important cog in the wheels of spacefaring, even though he was more of a highly-informed, social-media-savvy spectator. His stint at an upscale college in Poughkeepsie had given him privilege, and he was not used to being shaken from his emotional stupor.

“Huh?” She was aware of the reality of his farcical position in Starhop, but caught unawares by his genuine concern about the mission rather than about what could have happened that demanded his immediate travel. “We’ll handle it. The Perth lab will fill you in on the way. Do svedaniya.” She flickered out of his sight, but her enigmatic words lingered in his Mind’s Eye. He wrapped up his stakeout equipment and began on the long way back to urban environs.

At Perth Airport, Larte watched the flight-timing displays impassively as he whiled away the moments. People transuded through the boarding gates sporadically. He had spent innumerous hours at such transit hubs, mostly filled with hubbub but sometimes quietly quaint, anticipating the experiences that awaited him at his destination, but today was a new experience. For the first time in his life, he wasn’t looking forward to going where he was headed. Like, at all. Apprehension gnawed at him.

He cycled through his social media apps on his Lamina. The flight icon at the top was red, indicating that there was more than an hour to go before his embarkation procedures would begin. He wondered at the back of his mind if his situation had been picked up by the always-on, always-hungry news feeds, but desisted from checking, in case he was right and his search triggered the spread of information and inevitable conjecture about the events. A premonition about life having become suspiciously smooth had occurred to him a few days ago as he had arrived at this very airport, and now that he had spiraled back unexpectedly and in a negative way, he wondered if he had inherited prognostication through his genes. He had been waiting, almost eagerly, for some bad spiral to sweep into his soporifically sedate one; indeed, he could not shake off a feeling of relief that it was over, and now he thought he could intuit his spiral spiraling upward.

Could it be that the act of thinking about a thing to – or even beyond – the point of obsessing about it, cause it to happen In Real Life? Larte knew from experience that it couldn’t, else he would have been in space by now. His dreams of being an astronaut had evaporated in the smoke of the cigarettes he had lit during college days, but he had somehow worked himself into a position in which he had a connection, however virtual, with spacefaring. Making compromises seemed to be the name of the game in life, as far as he felt. It was especially cruel when there were high expectations due to ancestral achievements, and any attempts at reaching the levels of accomplishment gained by his forebears seemed doomed to fall flat. He could not, by any stretch of even his own imagination, count himself underprivileged, and yet he felt dissatisfied with his current state, an insignificant speck on a mighty planet, caught up in miniscule events that seemed so momentous when they happened but faded away eventually, their relevance worn away by the mundane.

He remembered being part of a friend’s wedding party, driving out to the countryside in half a dozen cars, getting drunk on the way and at the venue into the wee hours. Their hosts had arranged for fireworks, and his lighter had come in handy to set them off – hundred-shot cases that went on for so long that he and his friends had gotten tired of craning up their necks, following each streak of light and the terminal boom and scatter. When dinner time had rolled around, he had ambled into some bushes to answer nature’s call, and come upon a long-abandoned gazebo that nature had almost re-absorbed. He had made a video of it, he knew, and now felt an urge to go looking for it in his extensive archives.

He had often wondered if he could stitch together his snippets into something coherent that helped him make sense of his turbulent and fractured past. Like a country that has been torn up and demarcated in new ways without end and with little proper purpose, his mind had internal conflicts that seemed to transcend normality. No matter how far back he attempted to recall his past, there was no reaching the first etchings on his blank slate, his tabula rasa, the first groundings of morality that may have guided his actions through his continually convoluted existence that had ended up in him having an endocentric view of extraterrestrial exercises beside the southernmost ocean of earth.

His reverie broke as a lady set down her pet carrier beside him and settled down, unfolding her Lamina. Her earphones glowed red, so Larte knew she brooked no disturbance for the moment, at the very least. The petite dog in the carrier was quite interested in him, though. Through the mesh, it said, “Waiting for things without doing anything about them or in pursuit of them has very low chances of success. I am fed and cared for, so I have not much to aspire to, but if I were the kind of dog that aspired to a higher plane of existence, I would probably become dissatisfied with my currently comfortable continuance. My lack of options might contribute to my ennui, because there are not many creative things that a dog can do beyond the obvious in this human-eat-human world. Maybe I could star in a dog food commercial, but how would that translate into anything other than eating more, sleeping longer and pampered further? I am not sure it will be anything more than a superficial upgrade of my state of living. It might even be detrimental, and lead me to become riddled with mental anxiety and physical decrepitude. I am content in my laid back lassitude right now, accompanying my benefactor from place to place as they roam, staying in their spiral as it traces its random path through the universe. What incentive do I have to break this mold and subject myself to the already highly unpredictable nature of nature? No, I think I will desist, again, from slipping my leash and hazarding the unknown. Hats off to those who explore the nooks and crannies of the world: I am not one of that fernweh tribe. I am a canine hikikomori, and a happy puppy.” It lay down, gnawing its toy.

The flight icon on Larte’s Lamina turned green. Exeunt a handful of other passengers, him among them, heading to where he had begun his heady spiral that had taken him all over the vast earth. As the plane ascended into cruising altitude, he descended into a spiral of thought that was interminable, but led nowhere.

IV: Yartem, Emkila, Larte

Yartem confabulated sometimes, to fill in gaps in his memories as they disintegrated at the edges as he aged. He hadn’t let anyone come to harm as far as he could tell, let alone directly harming anyone, so he imagined freely and satisfied his mind’s search for something with which to occupy itself. He did not know how his mind worked, but he had been interested in it in one phase of his life, when he was sponging up knowledge in very random ways. He recognized the human mind to be daedal, making connections and retaining memories that came to the fore in unexpected ways at later times from sometimes completely unrelated situations. Had James Joyce named Stephen Dedalus for this etymologically-Latin concept? It crossed his mind that maybe excessive digression was in the genes, but genetics was a subject he had not delved into deeper than memorizing the four bases as they paired. All living things had a tendency to pair up, he thought, even if for the fleetest moment. Obsessions needn’t necessarily be disorders. If they helped humans cope with life, they ruled! ‘On’ was the word that caused ‘at’ to come into play. Joyce would have been joyous, if immortal.

His math tutor had made him memorize the mnemonic for trigonometric functions: some people have curly black hair tightly pulled back. Though the infinitive was split, it permanently registered the theme in his mind. He had seen someone like that years later on the shores of Lake Como, enjoying a croque monsieur. He had just exited a theater with his coterie, and they were heavy-lidded after emerging from the dark coolness inside. Outside, people like the croque monsieur devourer were scattered along the promenade in ones, mostly twos and some groups. He detached himself from his friends with polite courtesies and insistences on making plans to catch up later, perhaps for a leisurely dinner, and got himself a lemonade. The stony steps beckoned to his aimlessly wandering feet, and he followed them up the winding paths, making up words as he went, “Tahunta reko zari el za usta vira kel; a moosta vikra chaki en parrego josti vel. Garump tesso zilna meech, priduno mekti boosa foltis pernik. Noomte sili zunsk illek neeste.” He felt oddly, nonsensically satisfied. Sometimes, words need to make less sense than life.

It had taken the better part of four decades for him to move beyond his anthropocentric view and consider a larger perspective of his decisions. The time was right to disseminate knowledge worldwide. He had garnered quite a lot of it, and it seemed a shame to keep it bottled up inside his mind. At least this way, the realistically inaccessible past could be presented in a figurative way to others, and perhaps drive them on to arrive at a better understanding of what it meant to have a conscious life on earth. He was self-aware, but not till recently had he considered reaching out to anyone, even his closest friends, leave alone family, about encouraging them to take steps towards becoming more self-aware themselves.

The narrow cobblestoned street opened into a paved cul-de-sac. He sat on a bench, setting down his empty lemonade cup near his feet. A stray dog approached furtively, and sensing Yartem’s preoccupation, dipped its snout into the cup to lick the dregs. The sour taste made it recoil at first, but it was a new sensation for it, and soon the cup was on its side under the force of the dog’s slurping. When it had licked the cup clean, it glanced up at the still-pensive human on the bench. “You will be remembered for good when you die, this much I can tell. How I can tell, I have no idea, but I believe it will be true, and when it will, one of my many compatriots will be there to bring our spiral, mine and yours, to a close.” It licked its chops and trotted away.

And now, forty-two years later, Yartem slipped in and out of unconsciousness in the same room as his similarly comatose daughter and his grandson. They dreamed of walking together at the stony lakeside, and chatting on the bench in the paved courtyard. Yartem thought he had taught Larte to conquer the moguls somewhere as Emkila looked on, but that place was not the Alps he had learnt upon. It seemed whiter, brighter. More and more events seemed to overlap in his memory the more time he spent in the recesses of his mind. They were comfortable living out their familial dreams: they seemed so incredibly real, as if the existence experienced by the mind continued unabated beyond the realm of the tangible. They felt no desire to revert to their staid, painful, quiet rigmaroles. They were content in convivial, comatose companionship. Outside their hospital room window, a dog gamboled with its three puppies that had just started life.

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Lex’s optical sensors detected Selina’s movement from her command chair. He looked at her.

“Alright, mister Paranoid Android, let’s figure out how we are going to get you to LEX-23, yeah?”

“Definitely, Selina. I assume your ship’s cargo log will have the body I replaced on the manifest.”

Lex had realized that the human body is a machine. The human mind is a different matter altogether. Melding the body and the mind makes us human, so it can do to technology or biology created by us. An android had to learn from experience , whether vicarious or real (read: sensory).

To put it BASICally, if death then eternal SHUT DOWN. Lex feared the end of his mind. He wanted to do things before it. There is no ELSE, because the final death’s final, no near-deaths.

Lex’s body was designed to last forever, relative to a human lifespan. In fact, in its design, humans had made it possible to replace and upgrade its body’s parts with better, updated ones. 

He disregarded data and text about weight control and other diseases associated with overfed humans. He set a goal for himself to become lighter for physical purposes, since lower weight on Earth, Moon, and Mars meant lesser effort.

He did not need to Do Yoga to slow down aging; he could harness the latest tech. 

True, it was very fun for humans that Moon’s microgravity allowed DoGa (a dance and yoga combo; also the name of an Indian ‘superhero’ who was a boxer {dog} , trained to fight by uncles named after Indian spices) to Rock Your Body, Everybody. #6hourism

Disability had been overcome via CRSPing genes. Amputees due to unfortunately unpredictable mishaps got prosthetics better than bifocal lenses or Lord Ganesha. Ironic Lex had one leg less. 

In the two sols it took them to reach their deorbiting point in space, Lex absorbed all sorts of media from the Net via Selina’s ship. Selina set up a recurring six hour loop of weather pattern monitoring to disguise the data stream fluctuations. Climate change. She had been cleared to land at Antarctic Base as the androids in the robot bay were scheduled for routine maintenance.

Selina prepared herself mentally to face the barrage of questions when she approached Base Antarctica. People were more congregated in the warmer parts of our planet, with good reason.

_____________________ END OF PART ONE ______________________

Coming SoonPart Two of Lex & Selina’s Adventures: An Android Dreamt (on Earth!)

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