Digital God

by Nikhilkumar Singh

‘Hmm, I must get those black shades of mine. Where did I lose them?’ Kanu searched his pockets.

  ‘Don’t! Here, this is my card.’ She slid her business card with the title of copy-editor under her name. ‘And you can call me on this number.’

  Kanu studied her name carefully. ‘I never told you this before. My house in Secunderabad was just a hundred metres away from your office. I often saw you and thought, “Who is this girl?” Then you showed up at our shop.’

  Darshu shook her head, trying not to smile. ‘Some memories.’ She looked around the restaurant. ‘Do you come here often?’ she asked. ‘I noticed you called our waiter by name.’

  ‘You know, we have business meetings here sometimes.’ He looked at her. ‘Speaking of business, did I tell you that in the stock market crash yesterday, I made close to twenty lakhs in a day’s trade?’

  ‘Twenty lakh rupees, you mean?’

  ‘Yeah, twenty lakh rupees.’

  ‘Are you trying to impress me or what?’

  ‘Honest. I’m not making this up. Twenty lakhs – that’s just my share.’

  ‘I don’t believe it!’

  ‘I swear. I can show you my account.’

  ‘No, you don’t have to!’ she said, shaking her head in disbelief. ‘What kind of business are you in?’ She was quick with her next question. ‘Can I get a job there?’

  ‘I can recommend your name!’

  ‘Please do that. I shouldn’t be saying this, but in print, the salaries are so low, it’s not fun any more. Tell me, what’s the name of the firm you work for?’

  ‘BizzareBazzar.com. But that’s just the advisory website. I handle the portfolios for different hedge funds.’

  ‘Come again?’

  ‘Never mind. You probably won’t understand.’

  ‘No, seriously, I want to know. Where’s this office? Bizarre, what did you say?’

  ‘BizzareBazzar.com. It’s in Vile Parle.’

  ‘You’re still doing hacking work, aren’t you?’

  ‘Practically, no. I am an analyst. So, getting information beforehand can be helpful. But no, I don’t hack!’

  ‘You “get” information, but you don’t hack?’

  ‘I snoop around – that’s not hacking.’ He looked around and leaned in again. ‘That’s one level down. But don’t tell this to anyone.’

  ‘Don’t tell me, you go after information to manipulate the markets.’

  ‘You’re bang on, detective!’

  ‘That’s not funny,’ she said.

  ‘Ma’am, that’s the way it is the world over. There’s a price to every piece of information.’ Kanu spoke slowly, deliberately. ‘If you must know, information is being monetized by corporations. They cheat innocent investors. What do I do? I bring out the information – hidden information – much before the promoters would –’

  ‘You mean you get insider information and trade it. Is that what you do?’

  ‘No. I monetize information. Let’s say, some mysterious promoter of some listed company is having a secretive deal about his business. That’s not cool. It’s not his money he’s playing around with.’

  ‘So you go after information.’

  ‘Don’t say it so loudly out here. As I said, there’s a price to every piece of information.’

  ‘Gosh! This is unbelievable.’

  Kanu leaned back in his chair with a glass of water in one hand, his gaze steady on Darshu as the waiter cleared the table and left.

  ‘You’re not judging me? Are you?’ he asked.

  ‘No, I mean, it’s bizarre. And your firm’s name is BizzareBazzar,’ she said uncertainly, ‘so that justifies it!’ She tried to force a smile.

  ‘I shouldn’t have told you. But basically what I do is trade information. Legal information.’

  ‘No, that’s perfectly okay.’ She looked at him intently. ‘And where do you stay? Oops, sorry! You didn’t want to share.’

  ‘These days I am in Santa Cruz West. Been there for almost three months now. But I don’t stay in one place for very long.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Okay, okay, I confess – I stay in a hotel.’

  ‘Really? Isn’t that expensive?’

  ‘No, actually, it’s cheaper. And convenient. I am single, so one room is enough. The two-bedroom flats here are no bigger than a lavatory. I mean, if you compare it to Secunderabad. And the rent is 35k. Then there’s maintenance, electricity, maid – so many additional expenses. At the hotel, you give them an upfront payment for a month and the room charges come down by fifty per cent. No electricity. No maintenance.’

  ‘Amazing! Somebody should do a profile of you!’

  ‘You tried once!’ he smiled.

  FOURTEEN

  6–31 December 2007

  A chopper hovered before landing on the rooftop of Sathyamev headquarters in Madhapur at 11 p.m. Rana Rajput stepped out of it on to the grey concrete. He wore a black suit and dark glasses, despite the odd hour of his visit.

  Rana strode to the control room on the nineteenth floor where Pankaj stood staring at the images on a giant screen in front of him. He turned back to greet his boss as he heard the sound of the door opening.

  ‘Pankaj, what’s the latest? Get me every detail,’ Rana barked. ‘Only bullet points.’

  ‘We’ve found him,’ Pankaj said. ‘He’s in Mumbai.’

  ‘Good, good! Show me, what have we got?’ His lips curled into an evil smile.

  Pankaj leaned forward to observe the image on the laptop. The giant screen above replicated the same image – green, spectral-shaped signals in a waveform. It started oscillating and the speakers in the background accurately reproduced the amplified sound: Kanu …

  ‘That’s the voice of a lady.’ Pankaj looked at Rana and then back again at the small monitor below the larger screen. ‘And that’s a positive match. We will play it again, this time a little longer version.’

  I met Kanu yesterday … I don’t believe …

  Pankaj clicked the pause icon as the recorded female voice overlapped with the second female voice. Rana turned his attention to the giant screen, moving in a little closer.

  ‘And who are these girls?’ Rana asked.

  ‘The first one is the reporter girl. Remember, the girl who broke the hacking story?’

  Rana nodded. ‘Who is the other girl?’

  ‘Some girl, Ritika. Not important. Let’s hear it again.’ Pankaj leaned forward again to play the recorded voice: Kanu …

  He picked up a mobile device from the desk below. ‘My programme can intercept conversations in real-time, twenty-four seven. I always knew he would contact this reporter girl sooner or later, and I knew she was in Mumbai. Her phone number was on my intercept list. The programme intercepted the voice-match and the alert showed up –’

  ‘When was that?’

  ‘It’s been about ten days,’ replied Pankaj. ‘Don’t worry, I’ve set our men to dig out his details carefully. The result may surprise you.’

  ‘In a good way? In a bad way?’

  ‘In a bad way, I think. He started a website – BizzareBazzar – that publishes investment tips. Not a groundbreaking idea, you might think, but there’s a catch.’ Pankaj’s voice was slow, steady. ‘He has programmed an algorithm to trick the market into believing that his offer is the best. As the market keeps moving to his best offer, the algorithm keeps changing the best offer price. Probably he wouldn’t buy any stocks, since he wasn’t offering the best price; he’s only spoofing. His big offer is just an illusion. More like dangling a carrot in front of a donkey, only that the carrot here is a 3D image. The donkey, mind you, is real.’

  ‘Stock market traders?’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘He’s coiled himself around your business as well, squeezing it ever so slightly.’ Pankaj looked at Rana to assess his reaction. There was none.

  ‘Go on, I am listening,’ Rana said.

  ‘Don’t worry, Sathyamev’s online security is impenetra
ble.’

  ‘Yes, you’ve done a good job. So what’s the plan? You didn’t call me just to break this bad news?’

  ‘We’ve installed CCTVs everywhere. Nobody knows when these cameras were installed or why. There are thousands of cameras that the government hasn’t installed, so we took the initiative on their behalf. Here, this is what we have captured so far.’

  Pankaj opened up a dialogue box and soon one image after another filled up the giant screen. The photos showed Darshu and Kanu in a coffee shop, outside her office, outside her home and strolling in a busy street. One photo in particular showed them under the shade of a giant tree, sipping fresh coconut water. The time stamp at the bottom of screen read: 7.35 a.m.

  ‘Looks like he’s steady with this girl these days,’ Rana said.

  ‘It took me eight days to piece it together. Things are normal, as you can see. We’ll take it slow, then swoop in with all our force. We’ll take him out before anyone can notice.’

  ‘Remember, no matter what you do, there should be no trace-back.’

  ‘It would all be automated.’

  ‘I always knew we invested wisely in you. Good work, Pankaj. Give me updates after you have cleared up the mess.’

  ‘Right-o!’

  FIFTEEN

  6–31 December 2007

  A

  t 7.15 a.m. on 24 December, Darshu and Kanu walked side by side through Joggers’ Park in the direction of the 120-foot-wide, tree-lined road that connected Gokul Towers Road with the Western Express Highway in Kandivali. Soon they reached a pushcart vendor, who had stacked coconuts by the pavement against the walls of the park.

  The vendor was a short, gentle-faced man and appeared to be in his mid-fifties. After slicing off the top of a fresh coconut with a large knife, the man punctured the fruit and offered it to Darshu, along with a straw. He offered the second one to Kanu.

  ‘I won’t need a straw,’ said Kanu to the man. ‘Thank you.’

  Darshu shook her head, looking at Kanu.

  Kanu smiled. ‘What?’

  ‘Nothing,’ she said.

  ‘Why are you looking at me like that?’

  ‘Why do you always want to be different?’

  ‘Now, what is it this time?’

  ‘I’ll never understand why you prefer to drink coconut water straight, without a straw. It looks so silly.’

  ‘Did I ever ask you why you sip it through a straw?’

  ‘You better not!’ she said, sipping her coconut water and eyeing him mischievously.

  ‘Let me tell you, with a straw you bypass your taste buds. If you don’t want to believe me, that’s fine. But if you start following my style, you’ll never go back to sipping through a straw, ever!’

  ‘Okay, challenge accepted. But don’t laugh if I spill.’

  Darshu gripped the fruit with both hands and gulped a mouthful, her face to the sky.

  ‘Did you feel anything?’ he asked.

  She lowered the fruit. ‘I can’t breathe,’ she gasped.

  ‘You don’t have to finish it in one go. Should I get you a glass or something? Even a glass is a better option than a straw.’

  ‘No, that’s okay.’ She began chugging the fresh coconut water again. ‘Wholesome …’ she breathed.

  ‘Slow down, champ!’ he said.

  ‘Hey, what’s that?’ she said, pausing mid-sip. ‘That flying thing?’

  Kanu followed her gaze. About 150 metres above them he saw a hexacopter with a moving camera-like device mounted on its belly. The mechanical bird hovered over them for a brief moment and then glided away, disappearing from sight. Kanu’s voice was shaky as he pretended not to have seen the flying object.

  ‘Don’t look up. Something’s wrong,’ Kanu said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Someone’s shadowing us. Let’s move. Now –’

  But before Kanu could finish, he saw an ambulance speeding towards them from Gokul Towers Road.

  The vehicle had no driver.

  ‘Run!’ he yelled over the screech of tires and the roar of the engine.

  The vehicle smashed through the vendor’s cart into the concrete wall, a few feet away from them. Kanu looked back to see the cart vendor pinned against the wall, his arms splayed out in front of the vehicle.

  ‘Don’t look back. Keep going,’ Kanu said, holding Darshu’s hand as they fled.

  ‘No!’ Pankaj screamed as he sat back and ran his hands through his hair.

  In a tiny control room in Sathyamev’s Guest House in Malad East, not far away from the Joggers’ Park, Pankaj sat in front of three monitors displaying different views from the crash site. None of them made for happy viewing. The first camera feed from the CCTV mounted outside Joggers’ Park showed Darshu and Kanu disappearing from the frame. The second camera feed, a view from inside the ambulance, was jammed up, showing only a black surface. The third view displayed random aerial images.

  He had planned it all in such detail. But now a terrible feeling of dread overwhelmed him as he hunched over, looking down at the controls of his console. He then tried to manoeuvre the long-view camera from outside the park in an attempt to follow the fleeing couple.

  ‘Do we have a backup here?’ asked Pankaj, turning to Kapu, his assistant. Kapu stared into a blank-looking computer screen, his hands busy with the keyboard and the remote that was laid on the desk.

  Kapu was an old accomplice of Pankaj’s who operated from Mumbai. He was on the wanted list issued by Interpol in connection with an online Canadian bank fraud and had teamed up with Pankaj as a programmer on various other projects.

  ‘Why is this camera blank?’ asked Kapu, instead of replying.

  But Pankaj was not listening. ‘Where’s the drone eye?’

  ‘The drone’s circling. There’s no problem with that. The bloody van is stuck. It’s not even moving in reverse,’ shouted Kapu.

  ‘You idiot, use your brain,’ yelled Pankaj.

  For nearly two years, Pankaj had worked on the radio-controlled unmanned aerial vehicle design to complete the prototype he had retrieved from Kanu’s computer. Pankaj’s new programme for the prototype was designed to sync the hexacopter’s movement with the self-driving vehicle. The remote application was able to do just about everything – from changing direction to avoiding obstacles to returning to the launch centre after each mission – without any human intervention. Now, Pankaj could see his own failure magnified on the screen – a blank camera feed that showed nothing.

  Next to him, Kapu struggled with the radio controller. ‘I can’t move it,’ Kapu shouted again.

  ‘Race it forward and then try reversing it. It’s stuck somewhere.’

  After a brief moment, Kapu was able to manoeuvre the vehicle again. ‘Yeah, it’s moving now.’

  ‘Quick, the crowd’s getting anxious,’ Pankaj said, looking at the screen. ‘We need to dump the vehicle immediately.’

  Back at Joggers’ Park, people had gathered around the crashed ambulance. On finding no driver in the vehicle, a man shouted: ‘It’s a terrorist attack. Run, there’s a bomb in it! Run!’

  At 3.30 that afternoon, Darshu and Kanu were in the elevator of Regency Airport Hotel along with a young attendant in a white jacket carrying a small suitcase. The hotel was one of the busy stopovers in Vile Parle East that catered to travellers needing a place to rest in between flights.

  Kanu had booked a double-bedroom suite on the fourth floor under the name of Paarthsarthi and had identified himself using a driving licence registered in Maharashtra.

  On reaching the room, the attendant unlocked the door using the digital key card.

  ‘Sir, hope you’ll like it here,’ he smiled.

  ‘I’m sure,’ said Kanu. ‘Do you have an Internet connection in here?’

  ‘Yes, sir. You can call at the reception to get the password,’ the man said as he switched on the lights and the air-conditioner.

  Kanu poked his head into the bathroom and briefly inspected the room. Satisfied, he cam
e back and gave a generous tip to the young man.

  ‘Thank you, sir!’ the attendant said, smiling broadly. ‘You can call me whenever you want. I can get you anything, anything you may want.’

  ‘Thank you,’ replied Kanu. ‘I’ll let you know.’

  Kanu waited to hear the steps of the man walking away before bolting the door. Then he paced back to where Darshu stood. He had seen her standing helplessly at the hotel reception, trying to get a grip over herself. Maybe she was stunned beyond words.

  He reached for her, enveloping her in his arms.

  ‘You okay?’ he asked.

  ‘Yeah,’ she said, her voice muffled against his shirt.

  ‘I should have told you this before,’ he said, moving back a little to see her better. ‘All this while, I’ve been trying to run down Sathyamev. Something must have given them the idea –’

  ‘Who were they?’ she asked, looking into his eyes as he let go of her.

  ‘I don’t know.’

  She searched his eyes. ‘Did that man die? That man in the park?’

  ‘I don’t know. He was injured –’

  Kanu moved towards the television screen mounted on the wall. He picked up the remote from the tray and turned on the set.

  ‘Are they coming after you?’ she asked.

  Kanu did not reply as he flipped through the news channels. The ticker that ran across the bottom of the screen screamed the breaking news: One person left dead and two injured by an unknown ambulance in Kandivali. He flipped over to another news channel reporting live from the site.

  A female reporter appeared on the screen and started speaking: ‘A coconut vendor was killed and two others were injured when an out-of-control ambulance crashed into a pedestrian lane in Kandivali early this morning. The rampaging ambulance crashed into the vendor’s cart, right here, where I am standing. This place is near Gokul Towers complex. But mysteriously, no one saw the driver of the ambulance. We spoke to an eyewitness who said the vehicle was without any driver.

  ‘We will run a clip of that interview shortly but I will read out what he said. He said that when he reached the site, moments after the crash, he saw no driver in the vehicle. But another eyewitness said the driver was popping his head up now and then to see the road. Perhaps the killer driver wanted to hide his identity. We also spoke to a police officer who said they are conducting an enquiry about the vehicle.’