Demons of Time

by Varun Sayal

  “The thought of visiting you crossed my mind a few times, Gurudev, but how could I? That night, that jungle. For me, they symbolized the torture me and mother had to endure for years. As a kid that day, I saw the talons of death so close, yet I felt so helpless. If you had not arrived at that moment, we would not have been alive. Even today, I shudder to think of our impending fate.

  “I can’t go near that forest, ever. I hate that part of my life and wish to forget it completely. Unfortunately, I can’t. To this day, I get frequent nightmares, in which I live through that night again and again. I see myself and my mother being chased and threatened. Those demons—their faces are so clear. I wish they were in front of me. I would have crushed their skulls with my bare hands, and would have thrown away their flesh and bones for wild animals to devour.” Tej’s face went red with anger. His eyes were bloodshot, and his body trembled with rage.

  Rigu looked at Tej and took a deep breath. “Those are not mere nightmares, Tej. Every time you think you are seeing those specters from past, you are actually going back in time and visiting that particular night.”

  Tej couldn’t understand what Rigu meant.

  Rigu continued. “Owing to the trauma you experienced, your consciousness is anchored to that night. It keeps time-traveling to that moment, especially when you are between your weak sleep and deep sleep stages. That is when your body’s hold on your consciousness is the weakest. Whenever you do go back, you can’t enter any of the human bodies, but I believe your consciousness is entering other small organisms, insects, frogs. I am not sure which ones.”

  “What are you saying, Gurudev? I am traveling in time? How can I do that? Some of these dreams do feel vivid and intense. But dreams usually appear real when we are in them. That happens with most people, right?”

  “I know it’s a lot to take, Tej. But you have the same ability those demons had. Your consciousness can crawl through time and enter other humans or living organisms. You, Tej … are a time-demon.”

  Tej was stunned.

  “But Gurudev, how can I be a time-demon? How can I have these powers? I have been studying ancient texts since I was a child. Lore says that the time-demons obtained these powers as boons only after they engaged in years of worship in the name of Goddess Trikaaldevi. How could I have the power of time travel without doing any of that holy penance?”

  “All those are just scriptures, Tej, stories for gullible minds. Time-travel was actually a crucial step in human evolution. There were many times in the past when the human species were completely wiped out from the face of the earth. The only humans that survived these apocalypses were the time-travelers. They moved their consciousnesses out of human bodies before the cataclysms hit the planet. Hence they survived the doomsday, every time.”

  “And where did they go?”

  “They moved to future times when humanoid civilizations again prospered on earth. Without them, the post-apocalyptic people would have started from scratch. But previous knowledge accumulated by these time travelers helped mankind make giant strides at a fast pace. Messiahs, saviors, many of the ancient leaders were actually time-travelers. They ‘reincarnated’ themselves again and again over the ages, and led humanity on the righteous path.”

  “That sounds like a good deed, Gurudev. I never knew this. But if they were the righteous leaders, why are they called time-demons?”

  “While some of these time travelers worked for the welfare of humanity, many of them started abusing these powers. Driven by their animalistic needs, they traveled back and forth in time. With each journey, they possessed human beings with power, wealth, and the means to rule over others. This act of forceful possession of other bodies earned them the name ‘time-demons.’”

  “But you said I’m a time-demon, too? How is that possible? I have never traveled through time. How am I a part of this evolution?” This was too far-fetched for Tej to believe.

  Rigu went silent. He closed his eyes as if doing a careful evaluation of what to say next. What he was about to tell Tej was a damning life-altering fact. He opened his eyes after a few moments and asked, “Are you sure you are ready for the truth, Tej? Truth is like that bitter drink which looks appealing when in the glass, but when ingested, only brings pain and sorrow.”

  “What truth? Tell me, Gurudev.”

  “You have obtained these powers via your genes. You have these powers because you are Kumbh’s son.”

  5.

  Neurotoxin in Thy Bloodstream

  Tej gulped the bile of anger down his throat. For the past twenty years of his life, he had been thinking of a thousand different ways for how he would kill Kumbh and Vetri one day, and exact his sweet revenge. But today, he’d learned that one devil was, in fact, his father. He was not sure what to feel anymore.

  He spoke through a clogged throat. “Mother never told me that. She usually avoided talking about my father. She said Kumbh and Vetri killed him when I was a toddler.”

  “She had her reasons, Tej.”

  “Tell me more, Gurudev.” Tej lowered his head and closed his eyes, feeling cheated.

  “Time-demons such as Kumbh and Vetri maintain huge harems full of humans. They kept men and women as sex slaves. Your mother ran from one such harem that night. Since the time-demons sexually exploited the women in the harem, they also had to devise ways to avoid progeny so that their seed didn’t take root within a slave. Kumbh and Vetri, being the ruthless savages they were, had equally cruel methods to prevent pregnancy among their slaves.”

  “I have vivid memories of that place, that harem, Gurudev. Those remembrances haunt my dreams to this today. But I don’t remember their particular ways.”

  “Your brain did the right thing by repressing most of those negative memories. Their acts were indeed reprehensible. Their harem-keeper servants administered snake-poison to the women on a periodic basis. Quantities were small enough to keep the women alive but large enough to keep their bodies frail and prevent any life from germinating in them. The miracle is that despite the regular intake of that toxin, your mother not only got impregnated with you but also gave birth successfully.”

  “Why did they not kill me while I was in her womb, or at birth?”

  “Your mother was a courageous lady who fought not only for herself but for other slaves, too. Kumbh and Vetri could have killed you right when they knew she was carrying you. But she begged for your life and agreed to comply with their demands without protesting, which she always did otherwise. They figured they would keep you alive as leverage against her, and kill you any day when they felt it appropriate. But fate was weaving a different tale. Your mother escaped with you and came to Dandak Forest that night. Unassisted, Kumbh and Vetri came running after her, and I could capture those demons.”

  A thousand feelings went through Tej’s mind like waves in a turbulent ocean. He felt as if his whole life has been a lie. He had a faint memory of Kumbh’s harem and his private bacchanalian ceremonies. Only now could he understand how difficult those days must have been for his mother. She’d sacrificed her dignity, her persona, her whole life, to keep him alive.

  He felt rage building within him. All the animosities he had been nurturing against the time-demons had been re-invigorated. He noticed Rigu looking at him as if reading his deliberations.

  “Gurudev, if I’m a time-demon too, then please tell me—how can I use this power? I want to go back in time to a moment before you captured those demons so that I can have my revenge.”

  “Revenge?” Rigu raised one of his eyebrows a little.

  “Yes, Gurudev. I have been training for my whole life. Archery, swordsmanship—I can fight two swordsmen at once. I can shoot a running target from several hundred feet away. These proficiencies were not useful for me as a farmer. But even so, I mastered them. I have been waiting for the moment when I will seek my vengeance. Please help me take my consciousness into
the body of an able warrior in the past. I will confront those bastards and teach them a lesson that other evil savages will remember for ages.”

  “The universe has granted your wish, Tej. Soon, you will have a chance to exact your revenge—though not in the way you are thinking. The reason I am here is that Kumbh has escaped the time-prison where I captured him twenty years ago. We need to put him back where he belongs once again.

  “Uncountable innocent lives are in danger because of what he is planning to do in the future. I need all the help I can get to stop him. In fact, while I was traveling from my ashram to your village, I was thinking about this meeting with you, deliberating on how I’d have to motivate you to help me re-capture Kumbh. But after talking to you, I am sure you are ready to commit yourself for this battle already.”

  “I am at your service, Gurudev.” Tej folded his hands in respect. “But Vetri? Where is he? I want to cut those hands of his, which touched my mother.”

  “That’s the primary reason I came to you, Tej. Vetri could not travel through time after that night. When you bit his wrist that night, you released a powerful neurotoxin in his bloodstream. It’s strange that the toxin did no harm to his host body. But it changed the fundamental constituent structure of the host brain. After that night, his consciousness remained trapped within that host. He tried to escape, but couldn’t.”

  “I released some kind of venom his bloodstream?”

  “Yes, you did. When you and your mother stayed at my ashram, I drew several blood samples from yourself and your mother. It was your blood that showed the presence of this neurotoxin.”

  Tej slapped himself three or four times as if struggling to wake up from a dream, and Rigu chuckled. “No, Tej, this is not a dream.”

  “It feels like one, Gurudev. First, you’ve visited me after so many years. You tell me I am a time-demon. Besides that, you also say that Kumbh is my father. And I also had a toxin in my blood which somehow entrapped Vetri in his body after I bit him?”

  “I must apologize, Tej. I wanted to tell you these facts at the right time and at a much slower pace. But Kumbh’s escape has pushed my timeline.”

  “Please don’t apologize, Gurudev. I have a lot of faith in your decisions. You know the best. Tell me more about this toxin in my body.”

  “This is not a normal toxin, Tej. Any toxin which acts on consciousness has to first reach the brain. For that, it has to cross the endothelial cells—that is, the blood-brain barrier, which only allows specific materials to pass through, and is almost impenetrable. Your toxin could cheat this impenetrable barrier, too, which is unheard of in this time-slice. Only scientists of the future would be able to build medicines bio-engineered to permeate this membrane. Despite my extensive research on time-demons, I cannot explain this phenomenon. But I have kept Vetri’s body in my ashram, under a dose of heavy anesthetics. He stays entrapped in there forever.”

  “This is hard to stomach, Gurudev. How can I release a neurotoxin through my teeth? How did I get this poison in my body in the first place?”

  “You are forgetting that you not only germinated within your mother but thrived as a fetus, despite the fact that those beasts were giving small doses of snake poison to her periodically. Your anatomy was not only resistant to that snake-poison but also blossomed within its lethal environment. You were born with traces of that poison within your body. And since your antibodies formed later, they did not treat those poisonous substances as foreign objects. During eight years of your upbringing, that simple snake-poison underwent biological magnification. It turned into a potent neurotoxin. That’s the venom which you injected into him that day. An eight-year-old child, you brought down mighty Vetri with a venom-bite. Now that you are twenty-eight, I am curious how pernicious that venom would be today.”

  Tej felt a bit awkward. Was he some kind of a snake-man? He had heard parables of men and women who were called snake-people. Their bites had the same murderous potency as of a poisonous snake.

  “I haven’t ever felt I am a toxic person—though a venomous snake bit me when I was fifteen years old, and nothing happened to me. I have seen people dying within a few moments after those snake-bites, yet I was unharmed. I believed that something was wrong with me. Otherwise, why was I not affected by that lethal sting? Hence, I kept the incident to myself. I suppose the virulent poison which flows in my veins protected me.”

  “Yes, it did. And I don’t believe your toxin is poisonous to humans. But it has a definite entrapping impact on other time-demons.”

  Rigu realized a lot of time had passed since they began talking. He stood up and looked outside the window, at the sunlight, gauging the time of the day.

  “We will discuss more later, Tej. For now, we need to chart out a strategy to capture Kumbh as soon as possible. Time is of the essence because we have less than seven days. But before we do anything, I want to get you ready for this battle. Once we capture Kumbh’s consciousness in his old body, we will administer your poison to him. As a result, he will be imprisoned inside that vessel forever. That’s the best punishment for him.”

  Tej looked at Rigu. He was still trying to make sense of what the Guru had said. The sage coming to him one fine day, after twenty years’ absence, and loading him with the phantasmal memories from the past, was too much for him to take in.

  Rigu, who could somehow decipher Tej’s dissonant thoughts, smiled.

  “I know you have many questions, Tej. Myself coming here one day and dragging you into a strange conflict is overwhelming for you. But I wouldn’t have come to you if it was not of the utmost urgency. I assure you that in due course, you will have your answers.”

  “There’s one more thing I wanted to tell you, Gurudev.” Tej could not find the right words to convey what he wanted to say. Mentioning something like this to a respected sage and his guardian angel was difficult for him. He was drowning in his own guilt. Words started in his throat but skipped his tongue.

  “Gurudev, actually, I have…” Tej stammered.

  “You have feelings of affection towards Manu Kumar. Isn’t it true, Tej?” Rigu looked into Tej’s eyes as if navigating through his soul.

  “Yes, that is true. I know I am not supposed to like another man. It’s unnatural. That, too, when I already have a devoted wife and a lovely daughter. But I am attracted to him. In fact, I usually liked the boys around me, more than I liked the girls. I didn’t want to get married. But when my foster parents found Damayanti for me, I could not say no to them.”

  Tej weighed his words and spoke again. “Manu Kumar came to our village only a few months ago. But ever since he came, I want to spend more and more time only with him. Why do I have these unnatural feelings? These abnormal desires make me feel that I have sinned. How could a reprobate such as me fight by your side in this holy battle?”

  Tej felt a ton of weight lifted off his shoulders as he spoke those words. Given the societal pressure, he had never confessed his sexual inclination to anyone until today—not even his mother, to whom he was very close. But today in front of Rigu, he somehow could not contain this secret anymore.

  “Tej, for my whole life, I have been reading time. I have seen the past, the present, and the future. I have realized that there is only one sin in this whole world—that is to hurt another living being, who means you no harm, through your direct or indirect intentional actions. So your feelings are not sinful.

  “There were times in the past, and there will be times in future when men liking men, and women liking women, will be an acceptable social practice. But unfortunately for you, today in this age and in this realm, it’s not. So let go of your guilt. You have committed no sin. I am sure that you will keep fulfilling your duties as a sincere husband and as a loving father. Discard these doubts. I want your head completely in the game. This is the most crucial battle we will ever fight for humanity. So get ready, and say your goodbyes. We need to travel
to my ashram right away.”

  There was some kind of magic in Rigu’s reassuring words, and they rejuvenated Tej. He felt his guilt and gloominess slipping away. The fire of vengeance was burning inside of him, unabated. “I am ready for this battle, Gurudev. Please, tell me—when do I get to go to the past and fight with Kumbh?”

  “Not to the past, Tej. The future. Kumbh is in the future.”

  6.

  Virtual Exoskeleton, Virtexo 2.0

  A few minutes later, Tej had a heated argument with his wife Damayanti. Tej assured her he would be back in a few days, but he did not reveal the details of his discussion with Rigu.

  She could not understand the reason behind his sudden plans to travel. She fought, she cried, but then made her peace. She knew Tej. She knew once he decided to do something, he rarely rested before hitting his mark. He was stubborn that way. She packed a bag of clothes for his journey.

  Tej said his goodbyes to his foster parents, to his friends, and to Manu Kumar. He told them that he was visiting Guru Rigu’s ashram for a few days of meditation and relaxation.

  As he was about to leave, Kaalpriya came running to him.

  “When will you come back, Baba?”

  “Very soon, kiddo.”

  “Why can’t I come with you?”

  “I explained that to you a few minutes back. Right? If you come with me, then how will you play near the river? There is no river where I am going.”

  “Okay. But if you come back and I am grown up, how will you recognize me?” The child had tears in her eyes. Her face had turned pink.

  “I will be back soon. Don’t you cry now. Otherwise, how will I leave? You’re my strong kiddo. Right?”

  Kaalpriya removed a small red glass bangle from her wrist and gave it to Tej. “Take my bangle with you. Ma says my face is round like this bangle is. If you look at this every day, you will remember my face.”