Demons of Time

by Varun Sayal

  Rigu signaled Bhavi-pati to begin. He asked one of the time-readers, Kuntala, to step onto the stage. Kuntala was a twenty-two-year-old girl with a dark complexion and sharp facial features. She wore the usual ashram uniform: a red, white and orange saree, draped around her scrawny body.

  Rigu introduced her with a warm tone. “Please welcome Kuntala. She is one among you, a sincere, hardworking disciple of this ashram. I am told she can read most comprehensive visions of the distant future. Her eyes have seen the happenings of the impending catastrophe with remarkable exactitude. Although there were a few missing pieces in her visions, other time-readers from the Bhavi group could fill them in. While she is the one speaking, she does so on the behalf of the collective effort of the whole Bhavi group. Kuntala, the stage is yours.”

  Rigu gave way for Kuntala to take the center-stage and sat on a chair nearby. He knew that Kuntala was going to give a detailed account of a sophisticated future. Much of the terminology she was going to use would have been incomprehensible to a common man of that age, but most in the audience were time-readers. They knew the future and had made their peace with the complexity of it.

  Kuntala was sweating and her hands were shaky as she walked to the center of the rostrum. She carried a few pieces of paper in her hands. She gulped and started to read from the first page.

  “Five thousand years into the future, on January 1st, 2069…”

  “Speak louder, my child” Rigu interrupted her. “I am sure your friends at the end cannot hear a word.”

  Kuntala cleared her throat and started again.

  “Five thousand years into the future, on January 1st, 2069, Vedvance Technologies Inc., United States, will make a path-breaking announcement. They will present a technology which promises to change the course of human history forever.

  “The executives from Vedvance Inc. will produce a much-anticipated press-release suggesting that after several years of biotech research, a singularity between human consciousness and artificial intelligence has finally been achieved. They will announce the retail availability of “Concordia VX.” This device can be injected at the back of the neck with a simple injection. The device would then give the human brain complete access to a machine level intelligence. This singularity between man and machine will be an unparalleled feat of technology. This device will allow a human to enhance his or her intelligence, decision-making power, and reactionary instincts twenty times over those of a normal human being.

  “They will also announce that their engineering team will send several regular updates and bug fixes over following few months. These remote updates will make Concordia VX even better, smarter and more integrated into the human brain.”

  So far, so good, Rigu thought. The vision was the same as the one presented to him a few weeks ago. Having listened to visions of the future multiple times, he had made it a mental habit to put mental markers on where exactly a vision changes.

  “One week later, on January 8th, 2069, Vedvance Inc. will conduct a mega media-event in downtown Manhattan. In this gala-event, they will activate Concordia VX remotely for three million customers. These customers would be the early bird buyers who pre-ordered the device and injected themselves with it in the previous few months. This event and further such events in the following years would be a huge success throughout the globe. This technology will go viral among the masses within no time. Within the next three to four years, this number of three million customers will rise to a massive 8.7 billion. Roughly 85% of the world population will have injected themselves with Concordia VX.”

  “When will Kumbh and Vetri enter this time-slice?” Rigu couldn’t hold back any longer. “Has the date changed? Or the host bodies—is there a change there?”

  “The date has not altered, but there is another major change, Gurudev. Earlier we could see both Kumbh and Vetri entering the year 2072, but now it’s only Kumbh.”

  “Okay, that’s good. Change is good—our efforts are making dents in the timeline. But when does Kumbh enter this timeline. Is there a change in the date?”

  “No. Kumbh is first seen in this time-slice on November 19th, 2072, as was the case earlier.”

  “Ok. Please continue Kuntala.” Rigu hid the look of disappointment on his face with a wry smile, which looked more like a frown. Kuntala continued.

  “On November 19th, 2072, Kumbh will acquire a vessel by the name of Karlesha Breathnach, a child prodigy. This detail also matches our previous visions. Karlesha is a super-intellectual computer scientist and ethical hacker of German-Irish descent. She works as a post-graduate researcher with Fern-Maroll University’s Center of Artificial Neural Networks. She is one of the lead algorithm designers and network programmers for the Concordia VX project. She stays in a city-area called North-West NYC. On this date, she will be exactly nineteen years, six months, and twenty-three days old.”

  “Same girl? Same Karlesha Breathnach? The same city?” Rigu murmured to himself in disbelief. “Are you sure, Kuntala? These details are exactly the same as your previous vision?”

  “Yes, all these details are exactly the same as my earlier visions. I mean, our earlier visions.”

  “Go on. Describe the rest of the vision.”

  This was not looking good. They were so close to putting Kumbh and Vetri in the time-prison. Yet the future visions were not reflecting the changes Rigu was expecting.

  Kuntala turned over the page. “Within a few minutes of possession, Kumbh will take over Karlesha’s body completely. He will suppress her consciousness as time-demons do. She will slowly drop her regular schedule, shun her friends, her usual habits, and her work. She will lock herself in a small apartment complex at a desolate location. Through the intellectual skills of this vessel, Kumbh will soon set up himself on the dark-net cyberspace as a notorious hacker, Trisillex Agneta. He will then start hacking more than two million government and private websites within a span of one month. This mass cyber upheaval will send most of the global cyber-security authorities on wild-goose chases around the world.”

  Kuntala paused to look at the faces in the crowd. They were gazing at her in awe. She wiped the sweat on her forehead and continued.

  “Trisillex will leave breadcrumbs and false identities throughout the cyber-space. This will create a muddle of electronic footprints and red herrings. Because of these, global police organizations will perceive it as a massive hacking conspiracy by a major group of hackers. On December 20th, 2072, as per Trisillex’s well-laid setup, a joint team of Interpol and CIA, will arrest seventeen members of a group called “Paint Me Bleak Red,’ a.k.a. PAMBLER. Trisillex would have meticulously framed PAMBLER for these cyber violations. In the spirit of swift justice, the captured members of PAMBLER will be sentenced to two thousand years in maximum-security prison by an NYC court. PAMBLER’s head Vijuheet Baal, a.k.a. the Red Snake will be thrown in two years of solitary confinement before he begins his actual sentence. These arrests will bring the past few days of the manhunt and media questioning to rest.

  “Security organizations will see this as a massive victory. Several officers will be commended and promoted. Medals of honor will be given out to numerous police personnel in elaborate ceremonies. Worldwide, the gatekeepers of cyber-crime will go into celebratory mode—completely unaware that a dark entity lurks in the virtual mesh.”

  Rigu was getting more restless, and the look of disappointment on his face was deepening. The dominant future had not changed at all, which was concerning.

  “On the next day, December 21st, 2072, Trisillex will start hacking into the Vedvance’s systems. Over the next few hours, he will gain access to critical security protocols and acquire admin account privileges. As the next step, he will disable all alarms and failsafe mechanisms within their systems, one by one. To stay under the radar, he will only spend time taking control, and not use that control at all. He will wait in stealth mode until he is completely read
y for his final blow.

  “At exactly 8:42 PM Eastern Time, December 22nd, 2072, Trisillex will finish acquiring complete control of Concordance VX servers. At 08:43 PM, he will quietly send system updates to the devices of all the 8.7 billion customers plugged into Concordance VX’s Cloud. This Trojan horse update will be shown to users as a routine, automatic bug-fixing patch. Users will be cautioned that without this critical update, Concordia VX will slow down.

  “But at the back-end, this code-patch will do a critical alteration in Concordia’s core system. This update will secretly reverse the ‘Human Over AI’ HOA protocol. As per the original protocol design of Concordance VX devices, the human consciousness would have been able to supersede any of the Concordance A.I.’s commands. But this reversal will make sure that Concordance A.I.s can, in fact, override any of the human consciousness’s commands—a protocol called the ‘A.I. over Human’ AOH protocol. And then, at 7:33 AM December 23rd, 2072, is when…I can’t read any further.” Kuntala’s eyes were wet, her throat heavy with the sea of emotions scalding inside of her. She shuddered every time she re-imagined her horrific visions of the future.

  “Kid, please? We need to hear it. We’re working together to avert this future. So please go on.” Rigu scowled.

  Kuntala pressed her lips together and nodded. She was trying hard not to burst into tears. She hated revisiting it. But she had her orders.

  “At 7:33 AM, on December 23rd, 2072, Kumbh a.k.a Trisillex will send a message to each of the 8.7 billion Concordance devices. This message will instruct the A.I. to immediately suspend every possible physiological function of its host body. The message would otherwise have been ignored by the HOA protocol. Each of the devices will send strong electric waves to the host brain. These electric charges will fry large parts of the cerebrum, thalamus, and brain stem from within for each host.

  “Billions of souls will drop dead to the ground within a matter of few seconds. Parents, children, policemen, leaders, caregivers—all annihilated within a few moments. Numerous vehicles, trains, and planes being manned by human pilots and drivers will crash into each other or into surrounding buildings. This will cause fires, pillage, and even more devastation. A major part of human life on Earth will be wiped out from a single stroke of Kumbh’s evil plan. Our planet will experience a large-scale near-extinction event—without a single drop of blood being shed.” Tears rolled down Kuntala’s cheeks, and she sobbed.

  A feeling of gloom spread on the crowd. Several of them had tears in their eyes. Many of them sat on their knees, feeling weak down to their guts. They were men and women who had seen a lot of vehement bloodied wars and conquests through their time visions. But such a gigantic loss of life in a fraction of seconds was difficult to comprehend.

  Rigu stood up and gently placed her hand on Kuntala’s head. He signaled for her to return to her place and then addressed the crowd.

  “This is the ghastly future we have been fighting to avoid, my children. Hopefully, after we throw Kumbh and Vetri into the time-prison today, the future will change. If that happens, billions of lives will not be lost. Hope is all we have, and our best efforts are what we can do.”

  Day 1 of 7

  4.

  Kumbh’s Estranged Son

  The year was 3057 BC. Twenty years had gone by since that fateful night when Rigu saved the lives of the mother-son duo. Tej was now a full-grown man with the sturdy frame of a farmer, and the instincts of a trained athlete. After the incident in the Dandak forest, Tej and his mother had stayed in Rigu’s ashram for a few days. Rigu had sent them to a village called Sarp-nagar. A village couple gave them a place to stay, and they had been living there since.

  Five years ago, Tej was also united in wedlock to a girl, Damayanti, and had a sweet four-year-old daughter, Kaalpriya. Three years ago, his mother had died a peaceful death in her sleep. When that happened, he felt as if his whole world was destroyed—as if a part of him was lost forever. He stopped eating and cried for days. No one was able to console him. But the sun still rose every-day and brightened the sky. The raindrops still fell, and the crops still bore grain. The world moved on, and he did, too.

  One afternoon, Tej was sitting in his circular bamboo hut, whittling a small wooden log with a sharp knife. This was his cozy workshop, where he worked for hours on end. He spent time fixing his farming equipment and building and sharpening new bows and arrows for his crop-protection duties.

  This hut was around ten feet tall, and the bamboo sticks composing the walls were painted dark brown with a special dense dye made from a wild-fruit. A few knives of various sizes hung on the wall facing him. Two equipment-sharpening limestones were kept at one side. Although there was some clutter in the room, the whole place had an austere ambiance.

  Next to Tej sat his new friend, Manu Kumar, another farmer’s son. Tej was teaching Manu how to build a bow and an arrow from scratch. His efforts were in vain, as Manu had rarely used weapons.

  “When you are tying a string to a bow, dear Manu, you must not let go of the other end of the bow. Otherwise, you cannot tie a string to the bow. You are my age; you should have been a trained archer and swordsman by now. But you are not even a novice,” Tej taunted.

  “So what? With you as my guru, I will learn within a few months.” Manu smiled.

  “A few months? No, no, you have to learn in a few days. Your family is new to the village, and your parents don’t know the rules here. All able-bodied villagers have to engage in specific harvest-related activities. The first few weeks were fine—your family was new, and was given time to learn our ways. But soon, the members of your family, including you, will have community duties ascribed to you.”

  “Community duties?” Manu’s eyes stretched wide with bewilderment. Anything related to a duty or hard work was akin to punishment to him.

  “Yes. The village headman will assign the next round of farm protection duty in a few days. If your name comes up for volunteering, how will you protect our cattle and our crops from wild animals? With a wooden stick? No. You will have to scare the wild animals off with sharp arrows, wound them, or even kill them if required. But the first step to being an archer is to learn to tie a string to a bow. That’s a basic,” Tej explained to Manu as if teaching a small child.

  As Tej took the untied bow from Manu’s hands, their hands touched for a moment, and they both felt a bit awkward.

  “I didn’t mean to touch you. I’m sorry,” Tej said. He gulped with guilt.

  “It’s all right, brother, no problem.” Manu wanted this odd moment to be over.

  “Don’t call me brother. I’ve told you many times,” Tej responded with slight anger in his tone.

  “I am sorry, Tej. So you were going to tell me to tie the bow. Teach me, please. I heard you have killed many panthers that once haunted these woods.” Manu changed the topic.

  Seeing Manu smile, Tej quelled himself and looked at him with an affectionate gaze. “Yeah, I did slay a panther once and hurt another. But don’t worry. I will definitely teach you. In fact, I won’t rest until you are the best archer in the whole kingdom. Even if we have to spend countless hours here or in the field, practicing.”

  There was a knock on the door. Tej’s daughter Kaalpriya came in and hugged him from the side. She wore a flower-patterned pink dress and a little metal necklace. Two small anklets of matching designs decorated her tiny feet. Her well-oiled and plaited hair was neatly tied at the back. When she smiled, the spaces between her teeth were visible. Tej smiled and kissed her forehead.

  “Baba, an old man is here. He is looking for you,” she whispered in Tej’s ear, but spoke the last word loudly, and tittered.

  “Old man? Where is he?”

  “He is also coming here. I challenged him to race with me and see if I came first.”

  And then Guru Rigu entered the workshop. Tej felt serendipitous. It had been twenty years since he�
�d met the guru.

  Rigu looked as if he hadn’t aged a bit. If he had, it was too difficult for Tej to determine. Both Tej and Manu Kumar paused for a moment. They then jumped to their feet and placed their foreheads at the sage’s feet with respect. Rigu smiled and blessed them.

  Manu Kumar quipped, “I’ll come later, Tej,” and ran out of the hut. Tej gestured for Kaalpriya to also go outside, but she refused to do so. Tej gave her a look of feigned anger, and she ran outside, jumping and chirping. Tej cleaned a small bamboo chair in haste and offered the sage to take a seat.

  “It’s been a long time, Tej. How have you been? Do you even remember me?” Rigu sat on the chair, and Tej sat near the guru’s feet.

  “How could I forget you, Gurudev? You were the savior who not only extricated us from the clutches of death but also sent us to this beautiful village. This calm, peaceful abode has nurtured us ever since. My foster parents have been such kind souls, who helped my mother take care of me. In this sanctuary, she was able to raise me the way she wanted to—away from the shadow of evil.”

  “So I see. You are grown up and well taken care of. She raised you right.”

  “I am what I am because of her. Even though those years of torment devastated her, she showered so much love on me that I could get past those days of terror.”

  Tej wiped a tear from his eye. His mother’s death had created a void in his otherwise contented life, which he felt he could never fill. “Mother spoke of you with high regard, Gurudev. If she were alive today, she would have been elated to see you. But she left us three years ago. Did you hear that news? You would have—I forgot you are a time-reader. You know many things.” Tej blurted out those words in one go as if he had been practicing them forever.

  “You say you have heard so much about me from your mother, yet you never paid a visit to me in my ashram?” Rigu lovingly taunted Tej.