Genesis

by Tej Pratap Singh

  “I have come from far away,” replied KC, “…and I have to do something very important, but I don’t know how to or whether I’ll be able to do it !” replied KC not knowing why he was telling this to a complete stranger, but he felt the drive to.

  “Don’t worry,” replied the gentleman smiling. “I will help you to the ‘langar’ (community kitchen). You can have a sumptuous meal there and revive yourself. Then you can tell me what’s bothering you. I am one of the ‘Babaji’ (priest) here. Maybe I can help you. It indeed looks like you have made it very far...” said the Babaji keeping his hand on KC’s shoulder as he showed him the way to the langar. “Son, the ‘outcome’ of your journey is not decided by the length you have already traveled or the length you seek to travel further, it is decided by the amount of spirit left in the person undertaking it and how much can he learn every moment while he travels for when one journey ends, the other starts, so why bother! There is no reason why you can’t make it further…”

  * * *

  “What happened next?” asked Kamal as he jotted down something in his notebook.

  “Well, I came to meet you, and I stopped KC from giving the information to you,” replied KC.

  “You mean - you will stop KC from giving any information to me. Right?” inquired Kamal.

  “No,” said KC reluctantly, “I already did.”

  “When?” said Kamal puzzled. “I don’t remember meeting you before.”

  “Of course you don’t,” replied KC. “I stopped you in a different space… I mean in a different time.”

  “Oh!” said Kamal with a pause rubbing his forehead. “So, you’re not coming back from the alternate 30th century, you just told me about?”

  “No, I am not,” replied KC sounding exhausted. “I location-jumped from my Class-C destroyer to Earth. I met you before KC could and ensured that I destroy the time com before you get any information off it. Then I location-jumped back to my time,” explained KC.

  “And here you are back! In front of me… again!” interrupted Kamal. “I guess all didn’t go well, when you reached back.”

  “It didn’t,” said KC. “I reached back to 2956, to find that my absence had weakened the AMU. We commanded not even a single sector of the universe. In fact, we were at loggerheads with the International Federation (IF) on Earth itself. Fighting for world domination. The maximum reach we had was a colony on the moon.”

  “Wait a minute!” exclaimed Kamal. “This is the exact time and type of era the first KC told me he was from. This was supposed to be the beginning! The exact time KC is trying to get back to, to find Jenny, to find controlled peace. The perfect time and space where you left – Your Time! For God’s sake.”

  “No, that’s what he (KC) thinks. That’s not our real Time,” said KC firmly.

  “Then what is the reality? Where are you from originally?” asked Kamal even more confused.

  “After I returned to 2956, on stopping the time-com from reaching you, we had some massive battles with the IF on Earth. We were heading towards victory, when I got captured by the IF,” explained KC. “And was sent back in time to…”

  “…Deliver information to their IF forefathers - MEGATECH,” continued Kamal.

  “Yes that’s right,” said KC. “And that is the KC you met, he thinks all this to be his real time. But this is not. Right now he (KC) only wants to get back to the era of AMU and IF on Earth. But I have to stop him. Going back is just an endless loop of complication. The past, present and the future is only getting more and more distorted every time we time-jump.”

  “Then what is the true Time. Where are you from?” questioned Kamal again.

  “I am from a time when the AMU ruled unopposed over 3 sectors of the known universe. There was no IF in existence. Our only enemy was a race called the Garmaniens led by their leader Garmin,” explained KC raising his wall partially, which Kamal watched with astonishment. “In one of the battles, my love Jenny got injured. Such was her injury that she couldn’t have recovered even with our advanced technology. I took an oath to save Jenny and destroy Garmin once and for all. I took care of Garmin rightfully. However, I was too late to save Jenny,” explained KC “…I decided to do the unthinkable – travel back in time, to a stable contact point - the year 2017 and give the information to you, our founding father. I did as per plan and delivered the information to you. But as I told you, when I got back, I realized the AMU had grown strong out of proportion, I now commanded 14 instead of just 3 sectors. I had everything I ever wanted. But my empire was without a soul. That I tried to restore. Only to lose Jenny again during a battle with Garmin… I failed her again.”

  “My God,” said Kamal looking at his notebook. “This is huge, no matter what you do. Whether you give the information to me or not, even if you leave everything as it is, you are not able to get back to your time. You lose Jenny no matter what you do! You have time-jumped four times to this time, and the other KC has time-jumped for the third time.”

  “Every problem has a solution, just like an equation does. We sometimes are just missing the right constants, just got to figure that out,” continued Kamal looking at his notes.

  “What if we are trying to work it all wrong?” said KC with conviction.

  “What do you mean by that?” questioned Kamal.

  “Every time I tried to make a change; something went wrong. And I came back to correct it! That explains me giving KC the one dollar note to ensure he didn’t falter by giving the time com to MegaTech. Then ensuring that Jasmine doesn’t get hurt and so on… everything is explained. So…does this mean that this time when I go back, I don’t come back again?” said KC.

  “This can only mean two things, either you go back to your real time, when you time-jump this time, or wherever you go… you die there, because we have not seen an older you, yet.”

  “Exactly,” said KC, “the only problem is that…The contact time has just one day left, after that there is no stable contact time for next three centuries. If I don’t time-jump by tomorrow, I am stuck here forever. And I can’t figure out where to go or even how to get to my time! Tomorrow the future collapses. Everything that you or I know will change forever. There will be no future, as we know it. I will be wiped out of existence and so will your memory of me.”

  “We do have 24 hours,” said Kamal as he started his car. “Let’s just go back to my place, have some decent coffee and think it over. There’s got to be a way out… There has to be a way.”

  KC didn’t say a thing. He was stuck in time! And now he had too little of it left. “I have hit a rock bottom Kamal,” declared KC. “There is just one way to go to from here… and that is up!”

  “Now that’s the KC I know,” added Kamal elated.

  * * *

  One hour later and two mugs of coffee down, KC and Kamal stared at each other. “Nope…still not getting it. How will I come out of it?” said KC sinking his head between his hands. “I need to somehow undo everything that I have done so far - save Jenny, ensure that I don’t give you the time com. But I have already done that. How can I undo it?”

  “What if, theoretically, you could for the last time travel back in time and stop yourself from shooting Jenny and giving me the information? That would solve all the anomalies that have occurred and then you could return back to your time ‘with Jenny’. Theoretically, you should be right back where you started originally - commanding three sectors of the universe with Jenny by your side.”

  “Yeah, but how do I time-jump. I got no technology to do that now?” said KC.

  “Yes, that’s true, we don’t have the technology to do a time-jump. We neither have the time to set up a lab to explore the option nor the space,” added Kamal.

  “That’s it! jumped KC as his eyes beamed. “We don’t have to - Time travel.”

  “We don’t…?” asked a confused Kamal.

 
“It’s not about - Time traveling. It’s actually about space/location jumping,” explained KC. “Imagine Kamal…in the year 1945, planet Earth was at a particular location in the universe. As we know, all heavenly bodies are moving, therefore since 1945 the Earth has traveled forward in space and today in 2018 it is at a particular location in space, which is different from its location in 1945. In fact, Earth has even traveled since yesterday and moved forward through the vast expanse of space. The Milky Way, our galaxy is traveling at a speed of two million km per hour. So, if you multiply this with 24 hours, we have traveled – 48 million kms since yesterday. Now imagine how much we have traveled since 1945! Kamal, it’s all about Location Jumping. I need to get to that location in space where Earth was when I shot Jenny.”

  “Wow…! I never thought of it this way,” said Kamal. “But how do we location jump?”

  “First, we need to find that location in space. The exact coordinates. Then we need to actually jump to that location. Crona!” said KC as he raised his wall. “Find out the location of Earth in 2017 contact point when I had shot Jenny.”

  “Directive commander,” replied Crona promptly and then replied after a pause - “23.34xt 34.56.990.”

  Kamal saw the whole thing dumbfounded. His mouth half-opened.

  “No Kamal,” said KC smiling as he looked at a dumbstruck Kamal. “You can’t have it. Earth is not ready for Crona yet.”

  “Yeah yeah, of course,” said Kamal in the same breath.

  “Well, we have the coordinates now, how do we get there?” questioned KC looking at Kamal.

  “That point is very far away,” said Kamal drawing in on a board as he jumped on his sofa to grab a marker and a board and hung it on the wall in front. “If our galaxy is moving at the speed of two million kms/hour then in one day it would travel 48 million kms and in one year it would have traveled - 17 billion kms. So, this is where you want to go, these many kms back to find that location and Crona has given the exact coordinates of where you were when you shot Jenny.”

  “OK then, let’s see the amount of time we’ll take to get there. The speed of light is one billion kms/h,” said KC. “Time = Distance/Speed, therefore it would take me 17 hours.”

  “Well, that’s not much…17 hours,” said Kamal. “Only problem is that the ‘17-hour figure’ holds good if you are moving with the speed of light, which is not possible yet. With our current technology, you will take millions of years to get there!”

  “We need to move at the speed of light. I have only 24 hours left in the contact time, got to make the most of it,” interrupted KC.

  “But it’s not possible,” reiterated Kamal as he folded a newspaper and threw it on a side. KC looked at the newspaper, it had a picture of the particle accelerator lab, the LIGO.

  “Isn’t The LIGO used for detecting magnetic waves originating in the universe by accelerating particles at the speed of light?” asked KC as smile came on his face.

  “Come on KC, that is for particles, not for humans. You can’t…use that to get to the speed of light,” said Kamal raising his hands in protest.

  “Crona, is it possible?” asked KC raising his wall. “Yes Cdr, it is possible,” replied Crona.

  “How on Earth is that possible?” questioned Kamal not believing what he had just heard.

  “Theoretically, if the human body could be disintegrated into sub-atomic particles and accelerated through the Particle Accelerator in the given direction to the coordinates - 23.34xt 34.56.990, the sub-atomic particles could travel nearly at the speed of light to that location in space,” informed Crona.

  “This is the most absurd thing I have ever heard,” interrupted Kamal raising his hand again. “First, how on Earth are we going to disintegrate ourselves into sub-atomic particles and secondly, even if we do, how are we going to rearrange ourselves back into human form? Come on KC, this is absurd. Not possible,” ascertained Kamal.

  “Essentially, such a transformation is only possible where the same system is present at the source and at the receiving end,” added Crona. “Since we are planning to location jump to only one year back, this will be possible, as the particle accelerator was present in 2017 and is present today as well in 2018.”

  “Oh! So, you are planning to send the particles (us) from this space in 2018 via a particle accelerator to 2017 where it will be received by the particle accelerator in 2017 itself?” asked Kamal finally trying to make sense of it.

  “That is precisely what I am saying,” replied Crona.

  “OK, but that still leaves us with a tricky problem!” said Kamal. “How do we disintegrate ourselves now and reintegrate in 2017?”

  “I will hack into the world’s fastest super computer built yet. It’s an IBM-built super computer rated at 200 PetaFLOPS. That is to say – byte-kilobyte-megabyte-gigabyte-terabyte-petabyte-exabyte-zettabyte and finally 1 petaflop. This super computer is 200 PetaFLOPS.”

  “And in English! What does that mean?” said Kamal sarcastically.

  “She basically means the computer is unimaginably fast for the standard of this time,” replied KC.

  “I will hack into the particle accelerator and ensure that the particle disintegration will be controlled and directional. 01 December is the day we need to do it, that is tomorrow, as the Earth/particle accelerator will point in the exact direction of the coordinates we want to send you to,” added Crona.

  “I don’t believe this is possible,” said Kamal. “This is…unconceivable.”

  “It can be done,” replied Crona. “I have just run virtual scenarios one million times to check, it works every time. I can disintegrate the Cdr even now and reintegrate him in no time within this space, but I can’t do it to jump space one year apart. We have 22 hours to get to the Particle Accelerator in the US.”

  “We are doing this,” declared KC.

  “Come on!” added Kamal. “This is a whole different level of craziness.”

  “Gentlemen stay close,” announced CRONA. “You are going to location jump in 3...2...1…”

  There was a loud thumping noise and an uncomfortable stretch. Kamal closed his eyes. The brightness was unequalled by anything he had ever witnessed before and then there was absolute silence. Peace and quiet followed by a final stretch and a power-packed slam on the floor. Kamal opened his eyes, he was alive, and he could feel his heart pounding recklessly, but couldn’t move a muscle. He turned his eyes around and then his neck, he could see KC standing next to him. Kamal coughed and tried to roll over to get up but couldn’t. It was hard. He was exhausted as if he had run a 90 km marathon.

  “What the hell just happened?” murmured Kamal.

  “Welcome to my world,” replied KC.

  “What am I doing on my floor?” questioned Kamal. “How did I faint?”

  “You are not on your floor, Kamal. We just location-jumped to the US,” replied KC.

  Kamal looked around the room still lying on his back, unable to get up, “Damn, this isn’t my house!” he admitted.

  KC looked around the house, it looked familiar undoubtedly. It seemed as if KC had come back after centuries! The woodwork was exquisite and the ivory-carved pistol on the showcase looked elegant and classy as ever. It was Mike’s house.

  “Thanks, Crona,” said KC softly as he touched the wall, which still had a photo of Mike and KC.

  “I can read your mind Cdr,” replied Crona.

  “Who is it?” came a fumbling voice. It was Mike. Mike was a broken man since KC had vanished without a trace.

  Stumbling his way around the room he finally reached the light switch and switched it on. He could see a distinct outline but without his glasses and being two bottles down he couldn’t make out who it was. “Don’t you ring door bells anymore! How did you get in here?” added Mike angrily as he moved ahead lurching and reached for KC’s arm.

  Mike skipped a heartbeat on
ce he reached close enough to sense that it was infact KC. Mike was taken aback. He was speechless, he took a few steps back until he hit the wall.

  “Jo…you came back!”

  “Yes, Mike,” replied KC as he got on to his knees and held Mike’s shivering hand. “I am back, and I found out who I actually am… My real name is - KC…”

  “It’s been years!” said Mike almost in tears. “I lost my son…and I thought I have lost you too…but you came back. This is the happiest day of my life,” added Mike smiling. “But, where had you gone?” questioned Mike. “I knew one thing… A dear boy like you could never hurt Jenny.”

  “Mike… Mike…” said KC trying to gain Mike’s attention. “Its a long… long story, I cant even begin to explain, but right now, we need your help!”

  “Who is - ‘We’? It’s just you here,” observed Mike. KC looked around searching for Kamal.

  Kamal raised his hand, “I am still down here, I can hear, but I still can’t move!”

  KC quickly grabbed Kamal’s hand and pulled him on to the sofa. “Kamal, this is Mike. Mike, this is Kamal,” said KC quickly. “Only thing that is important right now is that we, Kamal and I need to get into the LIGO - particle accelerator. Mike, your company runs the security there. I need your help to get us in,” explained KC bluntly.

  “Jo, you just came back… and why on Earth you want to go into the LIGO facility?” asked Mike.

  “If I don’t get us in there by tomorrow, I am going to die, and this time for real,” explained KC.

  Mike knew that look. “I don’t know why but I believe you and I am going to help you,” replied Mike. Mike went into his room and came out after a minute. He had a rolled-up paper sheet in his hand. He walked up to the dining table and quickly swiped his arm over the table, removing all that was on the table and opened the sheet of paper on it.

  “Wow, these are the security plans for the particle accelerator, aren’t they?” asked Kamal. “I know a security plan when I see one.”

  “I am the head of security there. LIGO is my baby, I am showing you this plan, but no one should come to know about this … And, no one should get hurt or come to know that you have intruded. My reputation is at stake,” stated Mike.