The One Who Wrote Destiny

by Nikesh Shukla

  I don’t reply.

  Eventually, he texts, What about destiny?

  I ask if he remembers Ba.

  Not much. Like, I have a very fond memory of her. What about her? What about destiny?

  She believed in it. She really believed in it. It was her most Hindu trait. I’ve had some unexpected life news recently and I decided to set out to prove whether she’s right or not. Can you believe it? I’m trying to prove the existence of destiny.

  You weirdo. What unexpected life news?

  I hesitate, before replying, I quit my job.

  I love my brother and don’t want him to worry.

  Good, he replies. It sounded really boring.

  SATURDAY NIGHT

  GoTo: System. Reboot

  Ba phones me.

  ‘I am here,’ she tells me.

  ‘Where?’ I ask.

  ‘Where you left me,’ she replies.

  She sounds distant.

  ‘In Mombasa?’

  ‘Will you visit me soon?’ she asks. ‘I know you will. He’s here with me. He told me where you all went. He’s here.’

  ‘Ba, what are you talking about?’

  ‘Hum˙ premal˙a mitro tamara badha dusmano kanvart˙a thase.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘Jay Shree Krishna,’ she says.

  The phone clicks off.

  I’m staring at the ceiling of my bedroom. I don’t feel as though I’ve been asleep. I don’t feel like I’m awake.

  I know I’m not holding a phone.

  SUNDAY MORNING

  GoTo: Bug Fix

  The first thing that bothers me when I wake these days is the feeling that someone else is in the flat with me. I’m unsafe. I am vulnerable.

  My space has been invaded.

  I try to ensure that my monitors are all off when I go to sleep, and my laptop is shut.

  But the monitors are always on, things are happening on the screen, bits of code, bug fixes I don’t remember writing.

  I start to worry that I’m sleep-coding. I don’t even think that’s a thing but I look it up.

  Every morning, though, strings of code are appearing in the algorithm. Ones I don’t remember writing.

  When I look in mirrors, objects so familiar to me before, a poster of Spock, a cardboard cut-out of Starbuck, a bust of Darth Maul, all become confusing presences, people, physical entities, invading my space. I am no longer alone.

  No one tries to communicate with me; they just let me know that they are there. My solution is to have the curtains open and the television on while I am awake.

  I sit and drink a clear tea, looking at some of the bug fixes written overnight. Nothing looks particularly anomalous, extraordinary or dynamic. The fact that it has been written and I don’t remember doing it unnerves me.

  I want to go for a walk. The flat feels oppressive. But the tea is the right temperature and my feet need elevating. I stay put.

  I think about texting my dad. I’m weakening to the idea.

  I think about the money. Who I might leave it to.

  Maybe I’ll give it all to the donkeys.

  Apparently, it’s a British thing – the reason why a donkey charity receives £13 million every year – because what’s more humiliating to a family than a person’s fortune being given to a bunch of asses over them?

  I spill my tea. When I return from the kitchen with a cloth to wipe down my desk, there is no trace of liquid.

  I brush my teeth incessantly, but my mouth never feels minty. Instead, it feels furry and stale.

  I lose.

  I text Raks.

  I laugh. I actually feel lost. For the first time in my life, I am aimless. The project is complete, but I’m beginning to wonder about the ethics of it all. Should we know these things? Do patterns offer us comfort? Does knowledge of our destiny give us agency? Would telling my family how they are going to die help them avoid it or would it happen regardless? Is knowing the manner of your death a blessing or a curse?

  I feel haunted today. I keep seeing black spots in the corner of my eye, turning around and finding nothing there.

  I decide to check my name. Out of interest. Out of confirmation.

  I click on my name. It opens up with a photo of me from the staff page of my old job. It lists some basic facts, links to some industry awards I’ve been associated with.

  I’ve been avoiding this. Not because I was scared of what I might see, but because things are obvious – I have cancer-filled lungs. There’s only one way out for me now.

  I read through my record. It tells me things about myself I already know, functional things.

  It then tells me I am going to drown.

  I stare at it. A mistake, surely. Surely?

  Is there a bug? Is this because of bad code? I know Mum’s grandmother drowned, and so did Dad’s dad. But me? I don’t get it. This doesn’t make sense. Is it bad code or is it real? Will I decide I’m done with this world and jump off a bridge? Will I fall asleep in the bath and be too weak to pull myself out? Will I be water-boarded because of my development of the Death Predictor, which then goes worldwide?

  Drowned? It makes no sense.

  SUNDAY NIGHT

  GoTo: Someone Else’s Code

  I wake up to that song.

  The singer is so shrill and coy, it drills into my brain.

  I open my eyes. Slowly. Trying to work out if this song is in my head or somewhere in the room.

  My laptop is open, on my thighs, keeping them warm. My music player is also open and a song is on loop.

  Tere naseeb . . . mere naseeb . . . I know the lyrics off by heart now.

  I wake till my eyes focus, pick up my glasses from where they’ve fallen on to my lap and give myself a few seconds. I leave the song playing. It’s soothing. It’s comforting. It’s like the last song I will ever hear. Perhaps it is something I should ask to be played at my funeral. I can see Ba making rotlis as this song is on the radio, me watching her, a Star Trek comic book open in my lap. As if no one is watching, she shimmies a hip at the chorus.

  I smile at the partial memory.

  I don’t remember pressing play on this song, nor do I remember procuring it, legally or illegally. I certainly don’t remember looping it.

  I press stop.

  The flat suddenly feels like mine again. Everything belongs to me. I’m unnerved so I close my laptop and struggle my way to standing. I waddle over to the kitchen where I pour myself some water, sip and think, leaning on the sink for support. My clothes are baggy on me now. I have to punch a new hole in this belt. I hold my trousers up.

  Who keeps playing this song?

  I sit back down at my computer and look up the lyrics to the song. I don’t understand Hindi so I put them all into an online translator.

  Ye hum kyaa jaane, ye wahee jaane, jisane likhaa hain sab kaa naseeb.

  What do I know, only he knows, the one who has written the destiny of all.

  This is the bit that was looping. Like a stuck record, trying to tell me something. Ba communicating from wherever she is.

  She is trying to tell me something.

  What do I know? Only he knows. The one who has written the destiny of all.

  I look at the date of release of the song.

  Stray fragments from the trip to my grandmother’s keep coming back to me. Sugar rotlis, museums, learning to eat mangos the proper way, learning to swim, long bus journeys, donkeys.

  Ba, I miss you. Little Vijay, I miss you.

  Ba? Are you trying to communicate with me?

  Little Vijay? Is that you?

  MONDAY MORNING

  GoTo: Processing

  I go for a walk.

  The plan is to walk across the road to Pivo, drink a clear tea and walk back. I want a beer. I cannot sustain a beer. Not in my condition.

  My eyes sting with the natural light. It’s colder than I remember now I’m in an unregulated atmosphere. I’ve not been wearing cushioned shoes and the backs of
my feet, my heels ache when I try and press them into the pavement. I cannot do heel-toe, heel-toe. I walk like Frankenstein, one clunky whole-footed stride after another. I should have showered.

  I see a man, sitting cross-legged next to the fountains between my house and Pivo. He wears a long puffy raincoat over his jubo lengha. I stop and wait for him to look at me. He’s Indian, not uncommon for this area, but he looks elaborate. He has a white U painted on his forehead; a severe red line of powder runs down the centre of it. He has flower petals in his lap. His eyes are closed, and he is mouthing something to himself.

  Sensing my presence, he opens his eyes. He doesn’t stare at me but I can tell he knows I am there. I stop walking. He stares blankly in front of him before turning his eyes to me.

  He is young, in his early thirties, thick black moustache freckled with white, a severe face with a puckering, small mouth. He wears round glasses.

  He looks at me blankly. It’s only for a second, because then he peers at his watch. He looks at me again and closes his eyes once more.

  I walk past him as quickly as my weak legs will allow.

  MONDAY AFTERNOON

  GoTo: Pivo

  Mika tells me an interesting fact.

  ‘Pivo,’ she says, ‘is Czech for beer. And piwo is Gujarati for drink. Weird, eh?’

  I nod placidly.

  ‘Do you believe in destiny?’ I ask.

  ‘I’d need to, working in this place,’ she says. ‘It has to be my community service, before the big time. Before they find my blog and give me a TV show.’ She pauses. ‘You ask funny questions, Spectacles. Everything you say leads us down a surprising path.’

  ‘Is that your dream? To be on TV?’

  ‘Isn’t it everyone’s?’

  Mika pours a beer without me ordering anything. I accept it.

  MONDAY EVENING

  GoTo: Cheating the System

  Is that what I’ve done? I wonder. Have I tried to cheat a higher power by attempting to emulate it? Is my computer a rival for a god? Have I offended him or her? Is this what happens to atheists at the end?

  Rational thought makes way for a fear, reverence and religiosity, in the hope that, just in case there is a god and I need to keep the guy onside, just on the off-chance? I didn’t think I was that easily led.

  I am the master of my family’s destiny, and the captain of their soul. I laugh, remembering having to learn the poem I’m paraphrasing by heart at school.

  The master of our destiny. I could not control the cancer but I can now control its detection. That’s what people say about lung cancer, specifically. Early detection saves lives. I hope Raks has kids and I hope he has twins, and I hope they live a long, happy, fulfilled life.

  My father, my brother, they both need to know about their fate, about the algorithm. Its predictions. They can save themselves in ways I cannot.

  I may have cheated the system, I may have told death I can see its patterns.

  I’ve created something that can tell your destiny. A digital palm-reader?

  *

  My brother is more selfish than me.

  We’re both self-obsessed. But he is more so than I am. His career dictates that. He is on stage telling people his version of our lives, hoping for laughter, aiming for laughter. He has no sensitivity to what parts of our lives can be material for him.

  I’m tired. Tired of mining the past to try and figure all these things out.

  Weighing up our failures against each other.

  What do our respective failures tell us about who is the better twin? My failure to not escape my mother’s genes versus his inability to be noticed by our father. To be fair, our father didn’t notice me that much, either – he was always too busy obsessing about his perfect memory of our mother.

  We are our parents, sieved through.

  The glass of beer in my hand is cold, comforting. I look around the empty bar, scanning for Mika, to remind myself that I am present.

  I want to hear my ba’s voice again. That phone call, I know it wasn’t real. Just some sleep-deprived hallucination. Was it? I feel as though she is near me now. I get a pang of homesickness. Home doesn’t exist any more. My father sold it when Raks finally moved out. He lives by himself in a one-bedroom flat above his shop. We cannot be accommodated there. We do not do the joined-up family thing unless it’s at a pub, and even then, we’re hoping our phones will give us an escape route.

  I sip my pint.

  My family, they need bringing together. And I need them, I realize. It’s time to let them know what’s happening to me. Maybe they can take me back to Ba?

  I text my brother, I text my father, I ask them to meet me at the pub the following day. Raks replies quickly and asks for a change of location nearer to him – he has an Edinburgh preview later. I decline and insist it’s Pivo or nothing. I have something to tell you, I write. It’ll be easier near my house. He says he’s busy. I do not hear back from my father.

  I cannot breathe.

  I long for death. I’ve had enough now. Come on, let’s see if there’s an afterlife. If there isn’t, I won’t know any different.

  I do not drink the beer. And I leave when the room feels oppressively unlike the cocoon of my flat.

  TUESDAY MORNING

  GoTo: Setting Fire to Destiny

  If the one who wrote destiny is looking for a fight, then come for me. If the one who wrote destiny doesn’t want me to peer into its code, then come for me. If the one who wrote destiny believes in their own existence, come for me. Either way, I’m not afraid of what I don’t believe in.

  I wake up, sitting on the toilet.

  In my hand is a picture of my ba holding my mother. Dad gave it to me once, when I was asking about Ba. He said it was the only photo of her he had. This was when I was a child. I haven’t seen this picture in years, and I don’t remember looking for it but I must have done. I don’t even know where I would have found it.

  I leave the toilet, looking back to see exactly how I ended up there.

  My monitor is flashing. I stumble over to it.

  Are you sure you want to delete destiny.xml? Y/N, it asks.

  I don’t remember trying to delete the site.

  There is someone else in this flat. I feel unsafe.

  Maybe destiny has decided to come for me.

  Acceptance

  WEDNESDAY AFTERNOON

  GoTo: Paperwork

  My father’s birth date is wrong.

  He phones me up to tell me this.

  ‘Hey, kiddo,’ he says, in his jovial voice, begging to be liked.

  My father has always wanted to be popular. It’s pathetic. Who wants to be liked? It gives you an uneven personality, private and public, anxiety tearing you apart as you debate new ways to be. If people cannot accept your flaws, they cannot be your friend. I keep a tight net for this reason. I will not change myself.

  My father’s biggest failing, apart from his romantic ideal of my mum, is thinking that what you think is more important than what he thinks. It will be the thing that kills him. Or a heart attack. The prevalence of heart disease, angina, diabetes, in his family, according to my algorithm, will give him a heart attack at sixty-six years old. He is a goner in two years’ time. He will outlive me.

  Ba lasted longer than both her kids, and her husband.

  Raks, he’ll live for ever, even after he dies on stage in several decades’ time. He is content now. Immortalized in joke. And YouTube. YouTube is the cockroach of the internet. Indestructible.

  ‘I realized something last night,’ Dad says. ‘You will find this funny. You wanted to know all about our family history, and our dates. For your database. And I remembered – before I came to the UK, I had to apply for a passport. I did not have one. And they want to see your birth certificate but I do not have one of those either. I was not given one. Nor did my amee have a birth certificate.’

  ‘Right,’ I say.

  ‘But Sailesh, my old friend and I, we decided to make u
p my birthday. We didn’t know how long I had been alive. Amee could not remember. She gave me two different dates, two different years. We do not celebrate birthdays. This is a Western thing. We did not mark another three hundred and sixty-five days of living. We only mark when we are born and when we are dead. Everything else in between is gift enough. What I am trying to say to you is, when I was twenty-three, and I returned home to bring my bride to my amee and papa, we met my cousin. Who had a birth certificate. And Amee told me I was born in the same month as him. She’d remembered and had a letter to prove it. And she told me, this is the month and year you were born. So I am one year older than I thought. Can you believe it?’

  ‘Okay,’ I say.

  He continues, ‘I never changed my birthday because I don’t like hassle. And it becomes your birthday. Every year. Because English people tell you to celebrate the day. I do not like marking occasions. I think about the date I met your mother, the date I asked her to marry me. The date we went to register the wedding. The date of the civil wedding, the vidi, the sanghee, the Hindu wedding. I remember all of those dates. But not my birthday. I think I am a year older than I originally thought.

  I am sixty-six. Funny, eh?’

  ‘Father,’ I say, ‘you have ruined everything.’

  ‘Are we still meeting later?’ he asks.

  ‘You are no longer welcome,’ I tell him.

  WEDNESDAY AFTERNOON

  GoTo: Rage

  My rage is short-lived.

  I smash a wine bottle in the kitchen. The way the metal of the sink sheens through the red liquid feels comforting.

  I go to swig from another bottle but I cough at the first sip and spit the wine down the plughole. I clutch the sides and hunch over, trying to control my breathing through the coughing.

  My father ruins everything.

  My entire program is useless now. I have all the wrong data. Dad’s woolly birth date is inexact. Ba is still an anomaly. I have been working on too many wrong assumptions for my work to have any meaning. My legacy is redundant.

  Destiny and patterns cannot coexist. Not when humans are left to police them.

  THURSDAY AFTERNOON

  GoTo: Last Stand

  I cannot think in this flat. I decide to go out to Pivo. I dress in a black T-shirt and jeans, put on my tweed blazer, slick my hair down with warm water from the kitchen sink. I look lost in all my clothes, like a goth MC Hammer.