“You are also blessed with spiritual powers of the mind and subtle energy that you have not realized yet. You had a spontaneous surge of such subtle energy that once, you could not control it. You jumped high and fell and broke your jaw, hence the name Hanuman, the one with an unusual jaw. Does that answer all your questions?” the Muni asked.
“Yes, but it raises even more questions in my mind,” Hanuman said naively.
The Muni smiled. “Son, you have great physical powers and unshakable morality. In due course, you will acquire spiritual powers, learn all the Vedas that are compilations of knowledge, the art of warfare, and become a great warrior and spiritual master. Naturally, you have lots of questions in your mind. You will have to find the answers, and in some cases, realize the truth yourself. The Munis who live here in the ashram will help and direct you in your journey. And then you will live as long as you wish and help others in their journey for eons to come. That is our vision. That is the purpose of your life. May we all be successful in our mission.”
Hanuman had a lot to digest. He walked in silence, processing everything he had heard. He was trying to piece everything together. He had learned enormously from the Muni. They reached a stream near the hermitage. The fourth prahar of the day had begun.
“Please sit here under the tree while I bring water for your evening prayer,” Hanuman said politely to the Muni. As Hanuman was fetching water, he saw his reflection. He saw the years of work, research, and countless lives that had been spent to create his present form of a body and a mind as tough as armor. He was a combination between the best of humans and simians. He saw his simian face, his strong arms and legs, and his muscular body. Hanuman had all this power, but he was tormented. Who was he really? Just what he could see, or was there more? He developed a yearning to realize the truth. He then thought about the Muni. His body was weak, but he appeared stronger and wiser.
Clearly a weak body is not an impediment for one who is willing to seek and learn, Hanuman thought. All these thoughts were confusing to Hanuman. “Respected sir, please bless me,” Hanuman went back and fell at the Muni’s feet.
“Hanuman, you are more than your body and your thoughts. Slowly, you will realize your true identity and your goal.” The Muni effortlessly read the questions in his mind. The Muni had closed his eyes in meditation. Hanuman sat down and closed his eyes too. The sun was close to the horizon. It was a calm evening. The birds were returning to their nests.
The somber feeling that the day was coming to an end inspired a disciple in the hermitage to sing the Sri Raga. The melodious notes filled the air, enhancing the mood of the savory moment. The Muni was lost in meditation and appeared to be one with the surroundings. He had dissolved into and become one with the scenery.
On the other hand, Hanuman’s eyes were closed, but his mind was like the shallow water of the nearby spring, continuously running and jumping, flowing toward something unknown.
Chapter 4
Clarity
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Modern Day California
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Intense experiences provide clarity of goals.
What is that noise?” Krish said, sounding irritated. He had just fallen asleep after a long day at the lab when he heard a loud thud from downstairs. He was barely awake, but was sure he’d heard heavy footsteps, one after the other—quite a few of them—rapidly climbing the stairs. He also heard voices. Even before he could finish rubbing his eyes, and realize what was happening, he heard a bang as blinding light filled his room.
“Oh shit!” he was completely disoriented by the stun grenade. His ears were ringing, eyes blinded. He couldn’t understand the shouts of the voices he heard. He tried to see what was going on. He was just able to make out the letters: SWAT. Krish covered his ears to try and stop the ringing. His eyes were trying to adjust back to the dim light of the lamp on his nightstand. His mouth was dry. He could smell that some of his papers were on fire due to the grenade. The fire was put out before it escalated.
The first thing he saw, when the smoke cleared, was guns pointed at his face and laser pointers all over his upper body.
“Show me your hands! Hands in the air! No sudden moves!” somebody barked at him. He followed the orders. The men who had invaded his space were armed to the teeth—every inch of their bodies covered in protective gear. Their fingers were on the triggers of automatic weapons pointed directly at him. He could barely see their faces through the helmets and safety glasses. Black uniforms added to their anonymity. Strangely, he could feel their nervous energy permeating through the protective gear, ready to pounce on him.
He immediately realized that one wrong move would leave him dead in a matter of seconds. He instantly calmed down. He knew exactly what to do. At that moment, he realized he had nothing to fear; he hadn’t done anything wrong. But, if he acted nervously, it could appear threatening. It was in his best interest to bring the intensity of the situation down. It was necessary for his survival. He had everything to lose, and there was nothing he could do anyway.
Krish made eye contact with the person who appeared to be shouting the most. As soon as the thought of being calm flashed in his mind, his whole body relaxed. It seemed that everyone around him subconsciously read the message and their trigger fingers relaxed a bit. Krish turned around and somebody handcuffed him.
“Get out of the bed,” he was told. He obliged.
Two guys thoroughly checked the room for any explosives and weapons.
It was Krish’s turn to ask questions, “What’s going on? Why am I in handcuffs?”
Another man, wearing a blazer—and by far the least armed man in the house—walked up the stairs.
“We have credible information that you are a mule carrying drugs from across the border,” he answered.
“You can’t be serious!” Krish said. He almost felt the need to laugh. “Credible information, really?” He could barely control his contempt; staying calm was going to be harder than he thought. He was shaking at this blatant falsehood. “I am a world-renowned physicist and a doctoral candidate. I don’t have time for some government bull crap!” he shouted as he lost control of his temper.
Now that he was handcuffed, he posed no danger and the agents in the room were more relaxed. Krish could express his disgust without the danger of being shot. Adrenaline was rushing through his veins, causing his heart to pump rapidly. He had this unmistakable urge to punch somebody in the face—any one of these jokers would do.
“Sorry sir, I apologize for the inconvenience. I guess we got the wrong guy,” the officer said. He motioned as if he had just received word in his earpiece. He relayed various codes to the other agents.
“What the hell are you talking about? You almost killed me by mistake?” Krish screamed.
“I apologize, sir, DOD informed us of imminent activity from this address… it was a mistake. We’re just trying to protect our communities from the drug menace. I apologize once again,” the officer said politely.
Krish sighed. He ran his tongue over his lips. There was no point in arguing. “What can I do about this? I need to complain to your bosses,” Krish said, even as he felt his body flood with relief. “What about the door that you broke? I rent this place.” His mind could finally worry about the small things. The officer thought, only an innocent person could think of such things.
“Please contact the city per Federal Tort Claims Act, FTCA. Come on guys,” the officer said as he retreated. Krish saw the SWAT vehicles exiting his cul de sac. Some neighbors were peeking through their windows. He could only imagine what they must be whispering about.
Krish was still shaken by the whole incident when he got up the next day. He grabbed a cup of coffee on the way to work and said ‘hi’ to Olivia, the barista. He walked at a slower pace than usual to allow time for his mind to calm. He was taking in the greenery around him—the fresh air, the sunlight—to help ease the tension in his body. When he reached his office, he saw a note from Dave, his a
dvisor: ‘See me ASAP.’ This was the first time Dave had left such a note. Krish could sense the urgency. Something was not right.
Krish walked to Dave’s office not knowing what to expect. Did I miss a deadline? Did the projects not get funded? Was there a particularly bad review for my latest paper? Did Mark or Kathy complain about me hogging time on the NASA Pleiades supercomputer account? Krish was going through different plausible scenarios in his head, trying to decide what his explanation would be. He took a deep breath and knocked on Dave’s door.
“Come in,” Dave said.
When Krish entered the room, Dave was still on the phone with someone. The level of tension in the room could be cut with a knife.
“All right, I get it,” he said, hanging up the phone. Dave scratched his nose and needlessly adjusted his glasses. “Close the door,” he ordered Krish.
Krish took a deep breath as he waited for, what he was sure was, bad news.
“DARPA wants exclusive rights to your research on Quantum Communication. Otherwise, we’re looking at a lot of problems—and not all of them academic. I just got off a call with them. They’re responsible for sending that SWAT team to your home. This is how the government negotiates,” Dave said flatly.
Krish was surprised to hear that. He felt betrayed and offended by the hostile takeover of his research. It was as if someone were asking him to give up the rights to his newborn child after having gone through the painful labor.
“The possibilities of QCOM are immense. How can we just give the rights of an emerging technology to one organization? And I know what they’re really after—all the ways I screwed up before getting to the right approach—they understand the limitations of the system and use it as a red herring to misguide enemies,” Krish said, anger invading his tone. He walked out in a daze. He didn’t know what else to say.
Krish saw Mark, his lab mate. “Hey Mark, can I talk to you for a second?”
“What’s up man, did you mess with Pleiades again?” Mark joked. Mark was an experimental guy. He thought all theoretical research was just empty promises.
“No man, I have a much bigger problem. Can we go for a walk?”
“Walk… this early in the morning? I have to get my laser started,” Mark said.
“The government wants to hijack my work. They roughed me up last night,” Krish knew exactly what to say to peak Mark’s interest. Mark was a surfer dude who liked big waves, freedom, the wind in his hair, and most of all, he liked relaxing at the beach with all the ladies who were tripping over themselves to go out with him. He was a mythical and enviable creature in the graduate student community—popular and dateable, the hunk-scientist.
“I hate government bullshit,” Mark said. “Let’s go.” Krish and Mark were soon walking down the stairs.
“Where you guys headed? Don’t we have a group meeting?” asked Kathy, their third lab mate.
“Hi Kathy from MIT, also known as the Cal Tech of the east coast,” Mark couldn’t help pulling her leg. Krish thought Kathy liked Mark, and that there was a little flirting going on between the two. Kathy was proud of her looks-high cheekbones, slightly almond shaped eyes, and glowing skin from her Asian mother—as well as the superb brains and dark, brunette hair that came from her Caucasian father.
Kathy was very sharp. She was working on interdisciplinary research for applying the mathematical tools developed for astrophysics to NanoRx. Her goal was to use devices the size of nerves to heal the human body as part of the President’s Brain Initiative.
“If there’s no meeting, I’ll join you,” she said. The three of them sat on a bench near the cafeteria.
“All right, here’s the deal,” Krish began. “One of the many applications to my research is in the field of secure communication. Quantum communication cannot be hacked. A photon from an entangled photon pair is transmitted over a distance. The very act of measuring it, changes it. And since it’s part of the entangled pair, you have to know the properties of the whole system to decode the information. My research will increase the amount of information, and the distance over which it can be transmitted. The quantity and reach are important for any real-life application. My rough calculations show my constructs can transmit gigabytes of data up to 36,000 kilometers! That means they can be used for satellite communication—crucial for all military applications.” Krish looked at his mates with excitement.
“Oh good,” Kathy said, not impressed. “So, what’s the problem?”
“DOD wants me to give them exclusive rights to the work, along with all of the mathematical models that didn’t work!”
“Sons of bitches!” Kathy said.
“Oh, now she’s fired up. Has nothing to do with my research,” Krish said feigning annoyance. “Big brother has strange negotiating tactics. They almost shot me in my bed yesterday.” For a moment, Krish thought that Mark and Kathy were jealous of him—that they also wanted their work to be important enough to be almost killed over. He was amused by that thought. He wanted some feedback and support from his lab-mates.
Mark thought for a moment before speaking, “With the government on the prowl, your computer is probably already hacked. I have written code to encrypt data that’s very difficult to crack. Secure all your unpublished work through that. It will buy you some time. And stall Dave in the meantime. I don’t know what else you can do.”
“Good idea,” Krish said. He gave a firm and warm handshake to Mark and Kathy. He felt like hugging them. He was all alone in this strange situation, thousands of miles away from loved ones. They were the closest thing he had to friends. But, he ended up not initiating the hug. The trio headed back to the lab.
Krish sent an e-mail to Dave, ‘My mother is sick. I’m traveling home for a couple of weeks.’ He took pictures of all his notes and equations, and encrypted as much information as possible using Mark’s custom software, carrying it in a jump drive.
I’ll do it the old-fashioned way. I can’t trust anything on the web. No cloud storage, he thought. He destroyed all other copies. He burned the original copies in a chemistry department lab.
I need to have a proper meal at a nice restaurant to get over this shitty day, Krish thought as he walked to his house. French food sounded good at the moment. While walking home, he felt as if somebody was watching him. I’m just being paranoid after last night, he thought.
Krish picked up the pace, took the shuttle, and went home. The homeowner had called a handyman to fix the door.
“It will be ready by the evening,” the handyman told him with a forced smile.
Krish was thoroughly confused. He didn’t know who to trust. He was sure his house had been bugged. He scanned the house for anything important and took his passport out of the safe deposit box, just in case he needed it. He picked up his notebook—the one where he had scribbled a lot of formulae—and took it with him.
This is exactly why we need secure communication, or pretty soon we will be back to using paper for everything that you don’t want unauthorized access to, he thought.
Krish drove to the French restaurant. The feeling of being followed persisted. He had a crepe and some wine to calm his nerves. I still have some work to do, he thought and ordered a latte. Krish was sipping his coffee when a customer at the next table got his attention.
“How you doing, Mr. Scientist?” the customer asked.
Suddenly, Krish saw a gun with a silencer pointed at him from under the table.
“What in fuck’s name are you doing?” Krish shouted. He was about to react when he heard firecrackers inside the restaurant, near the entrance. He ducked under the table. Another guy with a gun began shooting randomly around the restaurant.
Krish had been sitting at the rear of the restaurant. The place was reasonably full, with at least twenty to thirty people. Krish saw a waiter throw an entire tray of food in the air and run in fear of his life. The terrified waiter was shot in the shoulder and collapsed to the ground in agony.
Chaos and screams filled
the restaurant as people tried to duck behind a makeshift shield or run. Food and drinks flew everywhere; the loud echo of bullets was the only sound able to overcome the wave of screams. The firecracker sounds continued—bang, bang, bang—at a steady pace. The smell of death was everywhere. The fear of meaningless, sudden death at the hands of some pathetic loser gripped the once pleasant restaurant.
Krish was frozen for a moment. He didn’t know what to do.
The waiter closest to him was probably shot from a bullet that ricocheted off the wall. He didn’t seem to be in the direct line of fire. He was young and probably only serving to put himself through school. He soon lost consciousness.
Krish tried to pull the boy’s body under the table for protection. Krish wasn’t sure if he just wasn’t registering the gunfire anymore, or if it had actually stopped. He felt his pockets in search of his phone. Then, he spotted it on the tabletop. He tried to reach for it, but the gunshots started again. The gunman was shooting aimlessly, standing on a table across the room.
“Nobody moves and nobody leaves, got it?” the shooter said casually, as if he were explaining the rules to some sort of friendly game.
Raw power to kill in the wrong hands, Krish thought. The shooter rested his long gun on his shoulder. He changed the magazine, keeping a watchful eye on everyone.
“Some of you will live, and some will…” Before he could complete his sentence, a brave police officer barged in the front door to save the lives of strangers. He risked his life for his duty. He was in the direct line of fire. Krish cringed, preparing himself for the unfortunate fate of the young officer. At the first sign of resistance, however, the shooter shot himself in the mouth and fell from the tabletop.
Krish was stunned.
“Oh, screw you, you coward!” someone shouted at the gunman.
Tenth Avatar: A quest for answers Page 4