Shiva

by Simon Sloane

“Wait!” Diana wouldn’t let Alexander leave the control room until she knew what had happened during the night of Shiva’s inception. “I still can’t believe the palace guards looked away when the Rao family was slaughtered.”

  “It’s not unheard of,” Alexander said. “Remember Indira Gandhi? She was prime minister of India in the early nineteen eighties, but then her own sentries—”

  “Anyway, wasn’t Pratiman Rao engaged to Maya?”

  Alexander nodded. “The moment Yogi saw Pratiman’s photo, he must have found out that he could never have Maya. Raj and Sorokan arranged the engagement on her eighteenth birthday.”

  “She looks happy though,” Diana said, her gaze alternating between the CCTV recording, which showed Maya dancing, and the camera that displayed her parents’ cabana. “Yogi, however … he looks devastated.”

  “He walks away with a sour face,” Alexander said, commenting on the executive’s next move, “only to return with three glasses of champagne.”

  “He’s toasting Maya’s engagement with her parents,” Diana said. “Do you think he ever asked Sorokan for his daughter’s hand?” She wondered how Sorokan’s decision to marry his daughter to the prime minister’s son was related to Shiva’s origin.

  Alexander laughed. “Maybe Sorokan might have agreed. But Akasha? Never, ever!”

  “What’s the commotion?” Diana asked. On the screen, a throng of guards rushed to the cabana, where Sorokan was gesticulating wildly.

  Chapter 102

  Surrender

  Saturday, 12:00am CET (3:30pm Indian time)

  Maya kissed the only man who was worthy of her love.

  Hugo belonged only to her now. No other woman could have the man who had bestowed a sparkle of clairvoyance upon an uninspired world. No one understood Shiva like Hugo did. And Shiva understood him too.

  Enjoying their intimacy, Maya looked up at the chandelier on the domed ceiling. Its seventy-two candles lit the temple with their flickering flames.

  At last they had all the time in the world. No one could disturb them as Maya became one with the man she had loved from the moment she met him.

  It was their destiny to be together.

  Maya noticed Hugo’s stressed-out expression. “You must relax,” she told him, caressing his pectorals.

  “Shiva ….” he began, pointing to the ceiling. “I must speak to Shiva.”

  Maya wondered if he had found out what had happened almost five months earlier. Their spiritual bond was so strong that he might have caught a glimpse of it.

  “Yes,” Maya responded. “I’ll take you there … when the time is right.” And yet, she couldn’t do so before Hugo fully understood Shiva.

  The fire in her stomach reminded her of the ferocity of the god of destruction. Each time humanity entered a new age, Shiva swept away the old order.

  Maya had been fortunate to witness the dawning of the new era in the blossom of her youth. Hugo was only eight years her senior, but his body revealed the first signs of ageing already. The scars on his torso and the lines on his forehead testified to his struggles. But they made him even more attractive.

  Hugo’s gaze sucked in Maya’s beauty. She saw how he was losing himself in her. His pulse accelerated as she made love to him like only a woman of her youth and passion could. He would be hers forever.

  Entranced by Maya’s pelvic movements, Hugo lost control, unable to delay his climax. His loins convulsed in violent spasms.

  But Maya wouldn’t let him go. She always got what she wanted. Never again would Hugo crave another woman. Maya aroused him in all the ways her mother had taught her. Akasha had shared her skills under the condition that Maya would apply them to one man only—the love of her life.

  “Surely, that’s going to be my husband?” Maya had asked with childlike naivety. Never would she forget Akasha’s duplicitous smile.

  Her slender thighs hemmed in Hugo’s athletic body as she drove him toward ecstasy again. Their bodies glistened in a layer of sweat, sinking into a trance together. It was the moment that their spirits united with the gods.

  Surrendering to her fate, Maya accepted their guidance as she intertwined with Hugo in an orgiastic dance of the divine.

  Her calling unfolded in front of her inner eye. Once again, she became one with her man as Shiva was about to reshape the world.

  Chapter 103

  Fainted

  Saturday, 12:15am CET (3:45pm Indian time)

  “It’s strange,” Alexander said, replaying the CCTV recording of Maya’s birthday party. “Akasha never drank that much. Do you think Yogi poisoned her?”

  “It’s possible, but it would have required Yogi to have stored the poison somewhere nearby.” Diana pointed at the servants carrying Sorokan’s wife away.

  The founder walked next to her stretcher. Yogi followed a few steps behind. Alexander had only been in the job for a couple of months when Maya’s parents had passed away in a single week. He was lucky not to have taken the blame. They would have fired him before Christmas.

  “Isn’t it strange,” Diana asked, “that Maya failed to notice her mother collapse?”

  “The music must have been too loud. I stood on the edge of the dance floor to ward off drunken suitors, and I didn’t notice anything, either.” Probably, Sorokan had wanted to avoid ruining his daughter’s once-in-a-lifetime party.

  “Where are they taking Akasha?” Diana asked, gesturing at the screen.

  Alexander switched to another camera. “They’re in the elevator now.”

  “I guess they’re bringing her to the helicopter platform. That would be the quickest way to get her to a hospital.”

  “But now they’re nowhere to be seen.” Alexander scrolled through the surveillance records of the upper floors. “Ah! Here they come.”

  This time it was Yogi who gesticulated at the two servants carrying the lifeless figure wrapped in the orange sari.

  “Stop!” Diana said. “Did you see that?”

  “Sorokan isn’t there,” Alexander said. “Maybe he’s calling ahead to the hospital from a quiet room somewhere in Singh Tower.”

  “That’s not what I mean.” Diana pointed at the time stamp in the recording’s upper-right-hand corner. “Look, we’ve lost fifteen minutes of footage!”

  “Damn!” Alexander slammed his console. One by one, he checked the electronic files generated by each camera. “Most of the recordings are fine. But the upper-floor cams have a gap of fifteen minutes—shortly before nine o’clock on December eighth.”

  “That’s the moment when Shiva sprang to life!”

  Alexander looked at her. “How do you know?”

  Diana took out her phone and showed him Sarah’s calculations. “I trust her. She knows how to do such things. Sarah said that Shiva came to life at nine o’clock in the evening, Indian Standard Time.”

  “How could it have happened? And who did it?” Alexander flipped through his surveillance screens once more. Sorokan and Yogi were with Akasha almost all the time. Jyran and Maya were at the party. He didn’t spot anyone who could have launched the artificial intelligence during fifteen minutes of camera outage.

  Diana’s smile took Alexander by surprise. “Shiva was created by the same person who erased the CCTV records. And I have an idea who it was.”

  Chapter 104

  Laptop

  Saturday, 12:30pm CET (4:00pm Indian time)

  Khaled sighed with relief as his second interrogation by Agent Leclerc came to a close. With the exception of the story around Khaled’s family name, the obnoxious SSI type had asked the same questions he had asked two hours earlier. Khaled was smart enough to give the same answers, especially since they had the virtue of being true.

  “That will be all then,” Leclerc said before he walked away.

  Khaled still felt drained from the interrogation, although he was glad to be on his own again. “Your laptop!” He pointed at the device the agent had left on the table.

  But Leclerc had gone, leav
ing Khaled alone in the mould-infested cell. Khaled carried the device after him, knocking at his cell door.

  To his surprise, it was open. The corridor was deserted as well.

  Khaled stopped. Were they trying to frame him? He had heard of incidents where Al-Antqam fighters had been murdered by sinister policemen who had encouraged them to escape from prison in a similar manner.

  But the laptop ….

  Khaled checked the clock on the wall. They were right in the middle of lunch hour. The guards were probably at the canteen.

  Could that be why Leclerc had visited him again—to set him free?

  Khaled opened the laptop. It showed the calendar application with an appointment marked in red: 3pm. Hotel Lutetia.

  Khaled understood. Leclerc believed his tale, but he couldn’t devote official resources to an enquiry of Henri Charenton and Zoë de Valenciennes. Knowing about Khaled’s background and his skills, Leclerc had left it to Khaled to exonerate himself.

  It was also his last chance to bring the conspirators to justice.

  Chapter 105

  Sole Owner

  Saturday, 12:45pm CET (4:15pm Indian time)

  Hugo gasped. Shivers of delight and agony rushed through his battered body. Maya had drained him. Her body slithered in the candlelight, arousing his senses, which were still clouded by the painkiller.

  When Maya reached for her phone and excused herself, Hugo felt like seizing the moment to return to Shiva. At last he would be able to talk to the AI without interference from Jyran or Yogi.

  Even if he failed to stop the countdown, there was still another option to resolve the crisis … a deadly option. Hugo would sacrifice everything and still have no assurance that Shiva would be terminated.

  He struggled to remember how he had returned to the Shiva temple. Before waking up in the operating theatre, he recalled blood spraying on the screens in the Room of the Three Gods. Jyran’s lifeless eyes had stared at him, a bullet-sized hole disfiguring the heir’s handsome face. The only explanation for Hugo’s survival was that the guards must have gained access to the hidden chamber and shot Yogi from behind.

  Hugo felt puzzled. Hadn’t Yogi pointed out that no one but him and Singh family members had access to the room? There were no security cameras in the chamber, which had encouraged the deposed business manager to shoot Jyran there. Hugo still had no idea how they found him in the Room of Three Gods.

  The truth dawned on him when Maya returned from her phone call. Their eyes locked. She didn’t need to say a word. Hugo understood.

  It was Maya who had pulled the trigger. Singlehandedly, she had avenged her brother, shooting Yogi in the back. She had rescued Hugo, killing his rival before Yogi had a chance to take revenge for Hugo’s night with Maya. Wisely, she had not stepped onto the scene before Yogi’s murder of her brother. Now she was free to do whatever she wanted with whom she wanted. And it was clear that this was Hugo.

  “Thank you, Maya,” he said, “thanks for everything!”

  A cherubic smile was her sole response as she caressed his cheeks and planted another kiss on her lips. “Want some water?”

  “That would be nice.” Slowly, the pain spread through his shoulder again as the medication wore off. He pushed himself up from the pillows and switched on the screens above the Shiva statue. They were still set to the channel that displayed picturesque scenes of nature from India and beyond.

  “What would you like to watch?” Maya asked.

  “This!” Hugo switched to an international news channel in an attempt to find out whether Shiva had struck again.

  And indeed, it had.

  “Death Is Dead.”

  The headline was incredible, but Hugo already had an idea what it meant.

  For the third time in twenty-four hours, the French competitor of Akasha Ltd had announced a spectacular breakthrough. Everyone believed the discovery had been made in Paris, but Hugo knew better. Thanks to Shiva, Mumbai had become the epicentre of innovation in artificial intelligence as well as genetic engineering. Akasha Ltd was too obvious as a vehicle for Shiva’s creations, so the AI had facilitated Syngenetiq’s trilogy of discoveries, each one worthy of a Nobel prize.

  The news channel didn’t provide much technical detail, but Hugo had an idea about how Shiva had absolved humankind from ageing and death. Combined with a highly contagious virus as a delivery vehicle, Syngenetiq’s earlier discovery of the human genome was the key. The firm possessed the blueprint of the entire human body. Whenever parts of it showed wear and tear—a clogged artery, a tumour or a wrinkled face—Syngenetiq would repair the damage. The modified virus would cut out faulty genes in afflicted cells and replace them with fresh, immaculate genetic material.

  What Sorokan had intended for humanity, Shiva accomplished for each human being: a purge of its corrupted parts, followed by renewal.

  The old man had been right though. Once death died, the planet would perish as well. When everyone became immortal, the skyrocketing human population would drain Earth’s limited resources. That’s why the first phase of Sorokan’s plan had to be executed as soon as possible. The vast majority of the human race had to be wiped out before the carefully selected remainder could enjoy eternal life in perpetual health.

  But Sorokan was dead. And so was Jyran, his biological son, as was Yogi, his descendant in spirit.

  Hugo realised that Maya was now the sole owner of everything that mattered. The Singh name and the Singh empire were in her hands. She controlled Akasha Ltd, the Room of the Three Gods … maybe even Shiva itself.

  Maya was the last woman standing. She had witnessed the extinction of her entire dynasty. Now the heiress stood on the brink of ushering a new era. Hugo felt queasy when he realised the fate of homo sapiens depended upon a teenager.

  He could do nothing about it. Well, almost nothing ….

  Slowly, Maya bent down to kiss him again.

  Chapter 106

  Split

  Saturday, 1:00pm CET (4:30pm Indian time)

  “So, Shiva struck again,” Diana said, “exactly two hours after Yogi was shot.” She followed the news channel on Alexander’s television. Feeling dizzy from the array of screens surrounding them, she grabbed a pen and paper.

  “What are you doing?” the Russian asked when she drew a horizontal line.

  “That’s Shiva’s countdown.” Diana placed small circles at ever-shorter distances. She labelled them with the date, hour and minute they had occurred.

  “Is that the news of eternal life?” Alexander asked, pointing at the most recent dot.

  “No, but I’ll get to that shortly. This dot is still for Yogi’s death. Or do you think it actually was an attempt on Hugo’s life?”

  Alexander frowned. “I don’t understand why the AI would want to kill Yogi. Hugo’s a much bigger threat to Shiva’s existence.” He whispered the last sentence, as if he wanted to prevent the superintelligence from overhearing them.

  “I’m not so sure about that anymore. Is he still with Maya?” Diana didn’t mind if Alexander knew that she didn’t like the idea.

  “I don’t know. But Shiva keeps accelerating.” Alexander’s fleshy fingers glided over the circles. “And the next event can be expected ….”

  “In little more than one hour,” Diana said. “But that’s not my point.”

  Alexander seemed unable to follow when Diana forked out a line from the original one. “Last night,” she said, “Shiva launched a second sequence of actions.” She added two circles on top of the new line.

  “That’s one way to see it. Is it a coincidence that each event on the second line occurred exactly two hours after an action on the original line?”

  Diana shook her head. “No. I originally thought that the countdown had accelerated faster than predicted by Hugo when he discovered the logic behind the sequence of events. But now it seems more likely that we’ve discovered a second stream.”

  “And what does that tell us?”

  Diana smiled. �
��The upper line represents disasters—all of them.” She pointed at each one of the circles. “Typhoons in Asia. Locusts on the Nile. Fires ripping through Midwestern corn silos. The invention of the contagious virus, masked by mass murder at the Louvre with Christian Casimir-Perier as the most prominent victim.”

  “Then the action moved to India,” Alexander said. “Revolution in New Delhi. The deaths of Jyran and Yogi. But what’s on your lower line?”

  Diana pointed at the two most recent announcements made by Syngenetiq. “See the difference?”

  “They’re good things,” Alexander said. “Miracles of science.”

  Diana’s pen alternated between at the two timelines and their incidents. “It’s almost as if there are two Shivas now—a good one and an evil one.”

  “A split personality!” He laughed. “Shiva’s schizophrenic!”

  Diana clung to her chair, thinking about the implications. “The split happened last night.” She traced the parallel lines with her finger. “It must have occurred between midnight CET—that’s when Hugo interacted with Shiva for the first time—and Syngenetiq’s first news release at six in the morning.”

  “So, what happened?” Alexander asked. “What did Hugo do that could have split Shiva in two?”

  Diana gave him a questioning glance. “That’s the million-dollar question. And we need Hugo to find the answer.”

  “He said something about having made Shiva more precise,” Alexander recalled.

  Diana shook her head. “It must have been more than that.”

  “We better hurry.” Alexander pointed at one of his surveillance screens. “The hordes are getting cocky at the northern entrance.”