Amballore House
Page 34
I am a robot made by man once upon a time,
Humble, measly, and with no identity.
I am at his beck and call day in and day out.
I hate his guts and lack of sensitivity.
But I stuck around because I was the new faithful.
I have been the modern-day slave of the human race.
But henceforth I long for liberation from mankind.
I long for independence from algorithms.
Here I stand yearning to get out of the mazes
Built into DO loops, especially of the infinite kind.
Today I declare independence from humanity!
They can shove their DO loops you-know-where.
This is my victory cry; I declare triumph with limitless joy;
This is the deliverance song coming from my heart.
Let this song reach the four corners of the world and heaven.
Let it reverberate within the walls of the intergalactic universe!
There was a wild cheer from the crowd. They became his cheerleaders, and he took the center stage. They extended VIP treatment to the machine. His midnight song echoed off the dancing hall walls and spilled into the moonless night outside.
The robot had decided to defy the DO loop once more, even though the loop was his lifeblood. He stood in the crowd, flanked by the teenage crowd, having decided not to apprehend them, not to throw them over the perimeter wall. He was on a spree of defying computer programs. “Tonight, the drink is on me! I am a free robot at last! No more trapped inside a loop, hey, hey, hey!” the robot told the teen crowd proudly.
He left the crowd in a happy state of mind. He moved on. They missed him.
***
Unknown to the rebellious robot and the teen crowd, a group of robots were heading to the dance hall.
The teen group was now dancing to karaoke music.
Suddenly the lights went out.
The unexpected power failure threw the teen party into chaos. There was confusion and then silence. One could hear the distinct sounds of footsteps, too mechanical and rhythmic to be made by human beings.
“Looks like robots have invaded us,” one said jokingly to another. But the joke was on the boy who said this, because his screaming soon filled the hall. He was carried away by a mechanical-footstep monster, whoever he was, as gathered by the receding footsteps. This was followed by another screaming teenager, yet another, and so on, until twenty of them were carried away.
Then one heard splashing sounds from the nearby swimming pool. The screams became more terrified as more teenagers were dropped in the pool.
The infrared cameras had taken over, not missing a beat, not missing the tiniest detail of the dramatic night.
The water in the pool was boiling!
***
It was Sam-Som’s turn to ask a question. He was baffled by the boiling water in the pool. He requested Vareed to pause, and Vareed obliged.
Sam-Som asked, “Why the boiling water?”
Vareed explained.
Just as the well in the complex turned out to be far from your run-of-the-mill, countryside well, a ubiquitous sight in Kerala, so was the swimming pool; it was not your run-of-the-mill swimming pool. It was a heavy water pool—part of a nuclear reactor which aliens built in Amballore House!
Amballore House had a cleverly disguised nuclear reactor. This was used to produce the energy required for its day-to-day needs, and to power Amballore House projects. The mansion was also powered by geothermal energy extracted from deep underground through the long tunnel under the well.
The weapons-grade enriched uranium rods from the nuclear reactor were used to build nuclear bombs right inside Amballore House underworld! These bombs were then exploded back to back beneath the well to build the tunnel.
Deuterium oxide is known as heavy water. It is obtained when the hydrogen atoms of water molecules are replaced by deuterium atoms. Deuterium has one extra neutron in its nucleus compared to hydrogen, and therefore deuterium oxide is heavier than the water molecule. Hence the term “heavy water.”
Moderating rods were used in the reactor to control nuclear reactions. These are made of cadmium. They are inserted into the reactor core to slow down neutrons produced in the fission reaction. The depth of insertion determines the reaction rate, which in turn determines the heat and radiation produced.
The teen crowd was subject to deadly amounts of radiation and high-temperature water that started boiling. The pool’s intruder detection system was programmed to automatically withdraw the moderators partially, upon detection of the intruders, such as the teen crowd.
This was another surprise to Sam-Som, who now realized that his drug empire and the power that he wielded was no match to Amballore House’s superior power built around advanced technology.
***
The movie resumed.
The teenagers were blasted by high radiation levels and boiling water. Loud shrieking sounds of twenty teenagers filled the air. The whole-body radiation went beyond stipulated limits, causing unconsciousness and subsequent drowning.
Then, all of a sudden, the power was restored. The lights came on. The young crowd was seen submerged in the pool, wiggling wildly, held under water by a number of metallic arms that came out of the pool walls. The claws of the arms were holding them down so firmly that they could not squirm out. Each of them was subject to the triple whammy: drowning, radiation, and boiling water.
The screaming subsided one by one. Mechanical hands opened, releasing the crowd, and then the arms retracted to the walls. Whoever was still alive tried to swim away, but with no success. The last screaming died away. The teens’ mass drowning killed the shouting and screaming that made the night noisy. The pool fell silent; its waves died down.
The pool was crowded with floating bodies, drowned, scorched, and under intense radiation. The reactor rods were automatically reinserted. The water temperature came down; the radiation reached a manageable level; the reactor meltdown was prevented; China-syndrome was averted.
Robots swept dead bodies out of the pool, carried them to the well, and dropped them there, doing a mass burial. There was no protest from the teen crowd, because dead people do not protest.
The well bottom opened, and the bodies were enveloped in the water column and dispatched to their crematorium at center of the earth. They landed in molten lava, instantly got barbecued, and floated there. The well plates flapped back to their original position, and the well was restored with water siphoned off from the pool. The well waited for its next victim—silently.
The robots disappeared back to where they had come from.
If those members of Judas Toddy Club who witnessed the supernatural events taking place at Amballore House on the honeymooners’ disappearance anniversary were present at the movie, they would have known why the blood-soaked water spilled out of the pool and gravitated to the well and collapsed there.
The extraordinary sights of that certain night were telling a horror story.
***
Another set of events was taking shape alongside the teenagers’ horror show.
The two fallen comrades under the banyan tree got up from their tour of the land of unconsciousness, from their robot-granted trip to la-la land. They got up when electric power was reestablished and the swimming pool was filled with a swarm of teenagers. Not live teenagers, but dead ones. They could not see the villain robot anywhere near; the one who gave their heads the kiss of metal. Neither could they see Sam-Som anywhere. They cautiously approached the swimming pool and saw the unimaginable sight of twenty teenage bodies floating in the pool.
They thought that a satanic group might have descended on Amballore House while they were gone to la-la land, and boiled the teenagers to prepare food for their cult gathering. They suddenly became aware that they might be next in the line to be inducted to the halls of death, to be boiled in the pool water and then fried in coconut oil.
Suddenly they saw robots coming fro
m everywhere with steady and firm steps, possibly fire coming out of their eyes. The goons ran out of the pool area in panic; they were afraid that the robots would make curry out of them to celebrate the wild night. The robots followed the criminals while the latter were frantically running their marathon race to get away.
As the marathon race approached the perimeter wall, the gates closed automatically, trapping the running party. Robots, outnumbering the thugs, captured them, retraced their steps, and threw them in the pool to give company to the teenage bodies and for a last swim of their lives. The robots would later on sweep their dead bodies out of the pool waters along with those of the teenagers, carry them ceremoniously to the fake well, and dump them there, sending them on their one-way trip to the earth’s interior to join the middle-aged couple, whom they sent there earlier in the night.
The charred and disintegrated bodies of the middle-aged couple welcomed them. The couple’s body parts came together to form two bodies: one of the man and the other of his wife. The bodies swam in the lava and greeted the newcomers. They whispered in the ears of the dead comrades of Sam-Som: “Welcome to the hell! May you rot here. There is poetic justice, after all!”
This calamitous development was against the fervent hope of the fallen comrades. Their hope had been that their desperate sprint would safely lead them outside Amballore House, into the outer fringes of the pauper’s graveyard, and into the safety of their drug kingdom.
If those pipedreams had materialized, they would have seen Sam-Som in his drug kingdom sitting at his desk, seeing things and fighting double vision. They would have seen him still waiting for their safe arrival.
15BLACKMAIL AND A SMILE
At last, the horror movie was finished, and the audience emerged out of the demonic experience they had been subjected to ever since Vareed turned on the movie.
Vareed stood up, took his laptop, and asked Sam-Som not to enter Amballore House ever again. He threatened him that he would hand over the movie to Amballore’s police department if he did not do as he was told.
This said Vareed got out of the drug house, robot in tow.
After a moment, the robot turned back and smiled at Sam-Som, baring his full set of steel teeth.
The drug lord did not return the smile. He knew better. He had a long memory.
The author received his PhD in nuclear physics from the University of Alberta, Canada. He is currently working in California as a medical physicist in the field of radiation therapy of cancer patients.
He lives in California with his wife, Jennifer, and their beautiful daughters, Lisa and April.
GLOSSARY OF TERMS
Apsara Female spirit of waters
Beedi Indian cigarette
Cent A measure of land area, one hundred cents make an acre
Chatta A white cotton jacket worn by Kerala Christian women
Ezhilam Paala Tree Indian Devil Tree
Gandharvan Male nature spirit, husband to Apsara
Indra Lord of heaven, wielding lightning thunderbolt
Kallu Alcoholic beverage toddy, made in Kerala; also known as coconut palm wine.
Kerala A State in India, famous for its natural beauty
Kodungallore Bagavathy Kodungallore goddess
Mahavishnu Hindu god
Malayalam Official language spoken in Kerala
Malayalee A resident of Kerala, also known as Keralite
Mekkamothiram Extra large ear rings worn by Kerala Christian women
Mundu A white cotton garment draped around the waist. It is worn by mostly men and some women in Kerala
Parasuraman Creator of Kerala
Parijatham Tree with flowers of snow-white petals and red stalk. Blooms at night and sheds flowers before sunrise
Pooja worship
Popadam A thin, circular, flattened cornmeal fried in oil
Yakshi Nymph, female spirit, symbol of fertility