Shiva

by Simon Sloane

  “When Alexander showed us the operating theatre one floor below Shiva, he mentioned Sorokan’s state-of-the-art medical equipment. If the best possible care was available right here, why would Sorokan arrange for Akasha to be flown to a hospital?”

  Maya gave Hugo one of those deep meaningful glances that touched the depths of his soul. The billionaire had arranged the helicopter crash that made Akasha’s charred corpse look like an accident. But why had he tasked Yogi to kill her in the first place?

  Hugo caressed his chin as his mind went into overdrive. He had to juggle his conversation with Maya and the irregularities in the timing of Shiva’s actions. He still believed the countdown revealed something important about Shiva. Again he checked the declining curve that reflected the ever-shortening intervals between news reports of Shiva’s actions. They were bound to approximate zero within the next three hours as Shiva accelerated towards infinity.

  The moment of singularity was close at hand.

  The fact that Akasha had been burnt alive didn’t bode well for Shiva’s disposition toward the human race. Maybe she wanted everyone else to share her fate.

  Maya held Hugo’s gaze. He wondered if he was asking too much of her. He could barely imagine how her soul had been crushed by her father’s treason.

  “Rewind the recording.” Hugo pointed at the screens above the Shiva statue.

  Maya sighed in agony. “Do we really have to go through it again?”

  “Not the operating theatre, the earlier clip from your party.”

  He focused on the screen, where Maya was dancing to the electro beats surrounded by her female friends as well as audacious suitors. Hugo followed Yogi’s movements at the edge of the dance floor. At some point, Hugo’s predecessor as CEO of Akasha Ltd locked eyes with a handsome man in his late thirties—an old friend or a former colleague perhaps?

  “Who’s that?” Hugo pointed at the screen. “I’ve seen that man before.”

  Maya’s lips trembled as if she had seen a ghost. “That’s Nikesh Randhawa. He’s an actor. He played the leading man in Brush of Desire.”

  Hugo remembered the scene where Akasha was being painted in the nude. Her glance at the artist was of such longing that her husband trembled with jealousy.

  Hugo took a deep breath. “All those years, Akasha was in love with another man,” he unveiled the family secret that lay beneath the birth of Shiva.

  “They were uniquely gifted actors, Nikesh and my mother—”

  “But then Akasha made a mistake. She invited Nikesh to your party!”

  “So?” Maya was apparently unaware that Nikesh’s presence had triggered Akasha’s murder and possibly doomed the human race.

  “Imagine yourself in your father’s shoes.” Hugo looked straight at Maya’s doe eyes. “His children have come of age. His daughter just got engaged to the scion of the ruling family. And then, in the midst of the celebration, Yogi tells him that his rival for his wife’s heart has set foot into his home. Don’t you see that he must have thought Akasha was cheating on him?”

  Maya cleared her throat a few times before answering. “Mother felt that she had done …her duty.” She coughed again.

  “Akasha was ready for a new life,” Hugo concluded, “a life in which her needs came first.” He remembered what Sarah had found out about Shiva’s origin on December 8. On that day, Akasha had been punished for her attempt to break free. But instead of passing away, her soul reincarnated in Shiva as a result of Yogi’s endeavour to salvage his AI project. Maybe he had planned to replace her mind with Sorokan’s, but apparently, he had not succeeded.

  “You’re right,” Maya said. “It was the new life that my mother had deserved. But it was not to be.”

  Hugo swallowed. The terrifying insight into the events of December 8 caused his throat to close. He turned around to face Maya as he reached the lethal conclusion. Both of them were coughing, trying to catch their breath. They had been hit by the reengineered virus from Syngenetiq. It was the deadly vehicle Shiva had designed to wipe out the human race.

  With trembling hands, Hugo wrote a final message to Diana, but he knew it was too late to stop the AI. His windpipe closed, and he felt Akasha reaching for his throat. This was how she must have felt when they had torched her for trying to reclaim her life.

  And now she was taking everyone else’s.

  Chapter 112

  Switch On

  Saturday, 2:30pm CET (6:00pm Indian time)

  “We must hurry!” Diana shouted at Alexander while she watched Hugo’s transmission from the Shiva temple. Alarms were ringing across the residence. Thankfully, their coughing fits subsided for a moment.

  “Now you’ll die in a different manner.” The Russian pointed at the flood of rioters streaming into the gated compound. They were carrying torches and knives.

  “Did your guards let them in?” Diana asked as the mob reached the floor below the artificial intelligence. “Just like in New Delhi?” With horror, she saw the thugs running toward Singh Tower with hammers and crowbars.

  “I guess,” Alexander grunted as he stepped out of the lift. “They got nervous after they heard of Jyran’s and Yogi’s violent deaths. I should have looked after them!”

  “What do you think it was?” Diana tried to distract him from his impression that he had neglected his duty. “The coughing. You had it too,” she panted as they rushed through the corridor, trying to reach the operating theatre where Shiva had come to life, inspired by Akasha’s soul.

  “The riff-raff must have tampered with our air-purification system,” Alexander said as he struggled to keep up with Diana. “Mumbai smog would be intolerable without it. But don’t worry. They won’t be able to smoke us out.”

  Diana checked her phone one more time. Hugo’s latest message from the temple revealed what needed to be done. And she could do it only with Alexander’s help.

  Maya was right: this was Diana’s destiny.

  She didn’t need her ATF training about reading facial cues and body language to notice Alexander’s exhaustion. She nearly lost her patience with him when he took longer than expected to unlock the operating theatre. “Hurry up!” she cried. “You know what to do.” Never in her life had she felt more certain of her plan.

  Alexander shrugged. “I don’t, actually.”

  Diana took his gun and shot at the security cameras in every corner of the room. Alexander had revealed that they still were operating before they had rescued Hugo from the warehouse. This time they had to prevent Shiva from seeing what they did at any cost.

  Fortunately, Alexander had the sense not to protest.

  Diana flipped a switch in the electricity cupboard to cut power to the upper floors. She stepped forward when the emergency lighting switched on, careful to avoid the shards of broken glass littering the floor.

  “What are you doing?” Alexander asked. “Are you mad?”

  Diana groaned. “Isn’t it obvious?” Only when she felt sure that all of the cameras had been destroyed did she lie down on the operating table and put the electrodes on her head. “We should have done this at the start. Would’ve saved us lots of trouble!”

  Alexander shook his head in confusion. “Sorry, but I still don’t get it.”

  Diana turned her phone’s display toward Alexander and replayed the recording she had received from Hugo, who was still stuck in the Shiva temple.

  “That’s what Maya confessed to Hugo,” she said, looking Alexander in the eye. “This is how Shiva was born. And now it will be born again. Remember the fifteen minutes that went missing from your surveillance recordings? Here they are!”

  Alexander swallowed. “Do you really believe this will work?”

  “It’s our only chance. Once we’re ready, you must set the highest voltage and charge the aluminium platform.”

  “No!” Alexander protested. Then he lowered his voice. “You won’t survive this, Diana. Don’t you see what happened to Akasha?” He pointed at the display.

 
“Listen to me!” She stabbed her forefinger at his barrel chest. Once again, she checked the electrodes for correct placement on her head. They only had one attempt.

  Alexander looked at her in a bewildered manner that reminded her of Hugo when she had abducted him. “You won’t survive this!” he beseeched her when she texted Hugo one final time.

  “It’s either me,” Diana gave him a meaningful glance, “or everyone.”

  This was why she had joined the ATF. There couldn’t be a greater sacrifice, and yet there was no greater benefit. All her life, Diana had longed to do something meaningful, to achieve something important—unlike the rest of her family.

  And in her death, she would.

  Chapter 113

  Seventy-Two

  Saturday, 2:45pm CET (6:15pm Indian time)

  Sweat ran down Hugo’s face when he read Diana’s message. He hoped it would never have to come to this, but it was the only way. With a sigh, he took the candle from beneath Shiva’s feet and placed it near the corner of the temple.

  “What’s wrong?” Maya asked when she returned from her ensuite bathroom. Her coughing had gone too. Shiva had granted them a reprieve, but what about the rest of the world? Hugo didn’t dare switch to the news channel in Maya’s presence.

  “It’s nothing,” he said, shoving Maya’s mobile phone beneath the pillows again. “I’m just feeling a bit weird. Maybe the painkiller is wearing off again.” He still wasn’t comfortable lying to the young woman, who was clearly in love with him.

  “Look!” she said, her face beaming as she caressed his pectorals. “Your scars!”

  Hugo glanced at his torso in bewilderment. The traces of his past struggles had vanished. Even the fresh injuries from the helicopter crash had disappeared. So had the wound from Yogi’s bullet. His body felt more toned, his mind more alert, his spirit more serene than ever.

  “It must be Shiva,” Maya said, caressing him tenderly. Her smile warmed him from within. “I can feel it too. Mother protects us. We mustn’t be afraid.” Once again, she moved to sit astride him, always longing for the pleasures they would share forever.

  Hugo groaned as his mind clouded again, overpowered by sensual bliss. He looked Maya deep in the eye as he enjoyed the rhythm of her tantric movements.

  The sting of destiny pierced his mind when he remembered the words from Jyran’s audiobook: “And while homo sapiens mated with Neanderthals for millennia, genetic differences between the two species accumulated to a point that they could no longer produce joint offspring. The result is known. Homo sapiens edged out Neanderthals, mainly due its superior ability to hunt big game in a coordinated fashion, essentially starving his less advanced cousin….”

  It was the same with Hugo and Maya. Their coughing had been a symptom of the reengineered common cold virus that delivered Shiva’s genetic cure. Akasha had enhanced her daughter’s genes along with the love of Maya’s life. Although they still looked homo sapiens the two of them had evolved into a higher species. The blood drained from Hugo’s face when he came to the bone-chilling conclusion: his sole chance ever to have children was with Maya. No other woman in the world would get pregnant from his genetically improved sperm—that was, if any of them survived whatever Shiva was doing to them right now.

  Making love to Maya, Hugo felt the capacity of his mind grow by leaps and bounds, although it was too late now to be good for anything.

  And then he saw it. Everything fit perfectly now.

  All of Shiva’s actions formed a single strand. Kali’s necklace united seventy-two skulls. Shiva’s first step had taken seventy-two days. Hugo’s original mistake had been to allow himself to be distracted by the symbolism around the secret circle of the 108, the holy number of Shiva.

  Shiva was a misnomer for the AI on the thirty-sixth floor, originating from the male-dominated nature of the House of Singh.

  The more fitting name would have been Kali.

  And Kali’s holy number wasn’t 108.

  It was 72.

  Just like Akasha had entertained a clandestine love affair with her co-star, the AI had operated on a completely different countdown from the one that Hugo had calculated on his way to Mumbai. His mistake had been to focus on the timing of news about Shiva’s actions instead of the moment when Shiva had triggered them.

  He sank into a trance from Maya’s movements, but this time she didn’t rob him of his intellectual powers. His body surrendered to the young goddess, but his mind withdrew into its own realm. Just like Shiva’s cooled-down Majorana fermions, his neurons were shielded from disturbance. Nothing could distract his thoughts.

  It was the golden ratio, also known as phi, visible in the Shiva temple and elsewhere around the Singh residence that inspired Hugo to look in the right place at last. Sensing the dread rising from his stomach, he remembered his insight about how Shiva accumulated knowledge when Yogi had unveiled its operating principles. The way the quantum computer processed and stored its results implied that its knowledge grew at an accelerating rate that was governed by the golden ratio.

  Combining its two most recent states of its knowledge base to derive the next state drove up Shiva’s power in proportion to the Fibonacci sequence. And the ratio between two subsequent Fibonacci numbers approximated … the golden ratio!

  Hugo had his answer at last. Summing up seventy-two days divided by subsequent powers of phi yielded his ultimate insight: Shiva’s countdown had already ended on Friday at 9pm Mumbai time!

  The AI had reached transcendence well before Hugo’s arrival. He hoped Maya wouldn’t notice his desperation, but she appeared to have sunk into a trance.

  Now nothing in the world could stop the AI. Reincarnated through Akasha’s wounded soul, the fearsome goddess Kali had triumphed over humanity.

  Even Hugo’s last, desperate action wouldn’t change anything.

  Homo sapiens was doomed.

  The game was over.

  Chapter 114

  Reload

  Saturday, 3:00pm CET (6:30pm Indian time)

  Still waiting for Hugo’s message, Diana pointed at the surveillance screens. “Soon we’ll be mauled by the mob—just like Maya’s former fiancée.”

  “Don’t worry,” Alexander said. “We won’t.”

  “How can you be so sure? Your guards have deserted us. What can we do about the brute force of the thugs with their axes and machetes? Stare them down?”

  “Just look!” Alexander jerked his head at the monitors.

  Diana couldn’t believe it. Somehow the assaulters lost their force the farther they ascended the spiral staircase of Singh Tower. Their spearheads began to tumble, knocking down their followers in a domino chain of bodies giving in to gravity. The deadly flood receded as their motionless bodies piled up on the steps.

  Shiva had repelled the intruders. Once again, they were safe.

  Diana took a deep breath. “When I’m gone, cut the power and wait for thirty seconds. Then ramp up electricity again.” She took the phone and typed a reminder to Hugo. What the hell was he waiting for? Then she gave the device to Alexander. “Flip the switch as soon as Hugo responds.”

  “Diana, no!” Alexander threw up his arms. “I just can’t do this.”

  “We’re soldiers,” Diana said matter of factly. “We must sacrifice.”

  Alexander swallowed. He lowered his gaze.

  Diana hoped that by now he understood that there was no other way.

  “It was an honour, Diana.” Alexander sighed when he took his position next to the switch that would electrocute her. “At least you’ll live on in Shiva!”

  “Not for long,” Diana said, when he inserted the golden access card into the slot beneath the socket that connected the electrodes to the wall. “Once you’ve reloaded Shiva with my mind, you must flatten the entire data centre with C4.”

  “Why?” Alexander protested.

  “Watch for the surveillance screens to turn violet,” Diana said, remembering the way her ATF colleagues had communic
ated with her through her smartwatch. “That’ll be the sign for you to blow that shit up!”

  Once again, Diana held Alexander’s gaze to make sure he understood his task. Hugo’s message was due any second. For a moment, Diana doubted whether he had the strength to do his part. He would have to sacrifice what he loved most.

  She wondered what might have been if they had spent more time together. Had it not been for Shiva’s destructive power, they might have returned to London and bought an apartment by the river. Diana didn’t know why she fantasised about that, but there was something that was way beyond professional cooperation. For the first time since school, she had lowered her defenses for a man.

  Prepared to sacrifice herself, Diana was swept by a last-minute surge to stand up again and fight Shiva with the weapons to which she was accustomed. Couldn’t Alexander just blast the goddamn cylinder to pieces? What about the Royal Air Force and their missiles?

  It wouldn’t work though. Even a single surviving Shiva installation would be sufficient to carry out the AI’s apocalyptic designs.

  There was no other way. Diana folded her hands and prayed that Hugo would come through. Finally, her mind was at peace. She was ready for whatever came next.

  Then she closed her eyes for what she knew would be the final time.

  Chapter 115

  Chandelier

  Saturday, 3:15pm CET (6:45pm Indian time)

  Hugo knew these would be the final moments. Once more he soaked up the sight of Maya’s pristine body. Then he ogled the candle in the corner, burning away beneath the cord. Could he really throw it all away—eternal youth, eternal love in the arms of the beautiful young woman? Never would he be able to have a family when Maya was gone.