‘Yes. He wanted to control people and he did this by distracting them, moving them away from their old way of life. One result of this was that people only did things that gave them maximum sensory pleasure. They eventually forgot their duties, their responsibilities and families died out. The importance of a family receded as people became obsessed with their own selves, wrapped in a virtual online reality. The daily consumption of the Dushita Algorithm became a parameter to measure one’s mental well-being. Your score on the algorithm became a measure of your success.’
‘So, Dushita ended up owning the addicted people. But did the other institutions, such as the doctors, the teachers, the yogis themselves, along with the wise people not fight back?’ I questioned.
‘He took over the weakest ones first. Take, for example, museums. Museums around the world never had any money. Very little money was spent on learning and storing old relics, our heritage. India had one of the oldest civilizations and spent the least on protecting it. And suddenly, magically, a mysterious benefactor appeared and started funding the major museums here. It was so easy to take over.’
‘Wait! You mean he changed history itself?’ I asked, aghast at the idea.
‘Dushita is a powerful enemy, Dawn. He had it all thought out,’ Yuva explained. ‘He realized that through museums he could start his takeover. Through these centres of heritage and culture, his control over distant history was only a matter of time. Then it expanded into folklore and stories of people—their collective identity, who they were and where they came from. The past was erased systematically,’ he sighed deeply. Kira made a sad chirp. ‘Yes, sadly in a universe where information was wealth, power and engagement, he now controlled it all. His agent was AIman, an artificial intelligence engine that was powered by the Dushita Algorithm.’
Though I was absolutely horrified, I could not help but admire this well thought-out plan. It was like a thrilling story. Dushita’s villainy was breathtaking in the simplicity of its evil plot. Hafiz broke my train of thought. ‘Who is AIman?’ he asked.
It was Tabah who gave an account of the sinister reality, ‘AIman is my master. It is in the shape of an impossibly beautiful woman but is neither man nor woman. It is an artificial intelligence creation of Dushita, hence the name. Today, every male human is paired with a QuGene robot woman partner who looks identical to AIman. Dushita thought this would ensure perfect equality and beget the perfect human-robot hybrid world.’
Yaniv reacted strongly to this, ‘What! That’s utterly stupid . . . what’s wrong with the men?’
Tabah bobbed his head in agreement, ‘They don’t have a choice. All of this is pretty complex, so listen carefully. Each QuGene woman’s central processing unit is plugged into a cloud-based storing device called the “Vyom Sky Cloud”. And Vyom, in turn, is plugged into AIman, which gives it all the data. But it doesn’t stop here. You see, all the men have a chip integrated in their heads called shikha and AIman also has information streaming in from this chip from every male human.’
‘She is an information ogress to the extreme.’
‘Dawn, you have no idea to what extent Dushita can go to . . . what he went to and what all he did to create the so-called “perfect” subjects and his evil empire. He used advanced technology to bend everything to his own will,’ he said.
‘And you’re telling me that it is through AIman that he controls everything?’ Yaniv said. ‘And that she is the brains behind all online search activity? So wait! Is she keeping tabs on people?’
‘Not just searches,’ said Tabah. ‘AIman is aware of every mental activity, every emotional fluctuation that occurs inside each man. When Dushita took over after the Data Deluge, he replaced the old LeGoog information system with AIman. So now AIman knows everything in this material world, including your genetic, chemical, hormonal make-up in real time—’
Yuva broke Tabah’s thought. ‘Yes, it controls everything there, but what is beyond the material—the intangible and immeasurable—is unknown to AIman. It thinks nothing exists beyond it.’
Immediately, Tan effused, ‘So that’s it! That is AIman’s weakness and the Kalachakra’s strength . . . meaning my strength.’ Yuva nodded and his face beamed with pleasure at Tan’s insight.
‘AIman!’ Hafiz said with immense disgust. ‘I have had her in my cross hairs forever, but now I know her truth or rather a web of lies. Now that we know your weakness, I have no doubt that you can be destroyed, AI robot!’
My mind veered back to my yester-life—my life in my safe pod. It seemed so distant already. I knew that my mother had put the LeGoog device in our home on safe search mode for me. Clearly, AIman and her QuGene brood were off-limits. But then I wondered—all this for what? What else did I not know? Who was Dushita’s agent? More concerningly, how many of my mother’s prohibitions was I breaking today?
‘Sorry for breaking this line of thought, but there is something that’s bothering me. How did we get here to the Valley, Yuva?’ I asked, confounded as to how we had been transported.
Looking at me with a keen glance, Yuva said quietly, ‘I think I owe you all an answer on that.’
He closed his eyes and began patiently, ‘I know that each one of you is wondering about how you were teleported onto this land. The truth is: you were not. You see, my children, there exists something called a “Cognition Twin” in every person. I know it is hard to understand and even harder to believe.’
He opened his eyes and looked at each one of us. ‘You too have this thing called the Cognition Twin that your mind was in the dark about. But now I have untied your awareness from your physical twin and instead tied you to your Cognition Twin, which is enabling instant communication. It is 10,000 times faster than light.’ Turning to me, he remarked, ‘Dawn, your physical twin lying in the bed can now see and experience everything around you in the cosmos via your Cognition Twin for whom the idea that we know as Time and Space has no limitations.’
‘Does that mean that we are physically at home, but our mind is wandering? And when we wake up, we will remember this? But does that mean our bodies are exposed? If we die there, we die here? What happens then?’ I started rambling. The questions were getting more complicated than the answers. Yuva cut me short.
‘Yes, yes, one by one, Dawn. These are all good questions that will one day save you. Now, where do I start,’ he said, looking at the sky, ‘Ah yes! If your body dies, then you are extinguished here. But what’s more dangerous is that someone else’s Cognition Twin can take over your physical body. That is where I come in because I am guarding your body. You have nothing to worry about.’
‘How do I activate the Cognition Twin myself?’
Yuva chuckled because he understood my intention behind asking this. It was a low trumpeting sound. I knew that elephants cried, but watching his mouth open in a wide smile and his trunk go up was surprising.
‘Within the body and mind, there are thirty-three life force centres and each one can lead to the Cognition Twin. In the Niti age, they were referred to as Shaktis—you may have heard this term. But advanced science showed that these life force centres were what we call “Cognenes”,’ he said, looking at me as I opened my mouth to ask a string of questions again. He raised his hand. ‘These Cognenes were first detected as dense neural networks in the human body. Then humans observed through yoga and other techniques that they could connect the twin with them. This was because these age-old techniques removed the veil of impurity from us.’
Tan looked satisfied, ‘I get it! So, when I activate the Cognenes pathways, this Cognition Twin gets activated. This part of my being, my twin, is freed from the bindings of my body’s impurities as it moves the body from the waking state into the body-free, thought-free trance state.’
‘Whoa, whoa, whoa! This was way too complex! Is this even real? Guys?’ Tegh jumped in, he suddenly got up and started pacing around, agitated.
‘Everything that is happening here is real, Tegh,’ Yuva was full of conviction. �
�You just need to believe and have trust.’
‘It can be done, Tegh, believe me. I’ve read about it,’ said the young lama, as he got up and held out his hand to Tegh to soothe his nerves. As both sat down on the cool grass, I looked up; the sky had become orange-hued. The sun was setting upon the stunning vista and the lake looked black and gold.
‘Thank you, Tan,’ Yuva said. ‘Yes, all this can be done. The recognition of the Cognition Twin can be activated by memory mechanisms different than genetic memory or mind memory. It is simply a secret breathing technique of which you will gain complete mastery and understanding with time. This would actually prove to be a difficult task for an adult, but you young people will be able to grasp it quickly.’
‘Wow! So that is how the mechanism works!’ Tan clapped excitedly, but then stopped. ‘It can’t be that simple though.’
Tegh interjected in a suddenly sombre tone, ‘Yuva, how many of us are left here?’
Yuva pointed his trunk at our group, ‘The six of you and Dawn’s mother are the last Analogues in the world, plus there is one other.’
‘What is an Analogue?’ Tan questioned.
‘An Analogue is a creation of nature—one who has a continuous flow within them like a river. Its five senses—sight, hearing, smell, taste and touch—act and respond in the form of waves. They exist for a moment until there is the next moment, but each moment carries a spark. Conversely, the QuGenes are manufactured beings whose sensory interaction is in the form of long or short pulses of being on and off. The men lost their natural flow with the insertion of the shikha, and now they are merely living puppets.’
Hafiz spoke softly, ‘So, they alternate between measurable light and dark whereas natural beings have the power to be always lit by An-Nur the primal light.’
‘From where did you learn that, Hafiz?’ I looked at him with sharp curiosity.
‘From The Book of Secrets.’ I made a mental note to read this book.
Yuva intervened, ‘Yes, Hafiz is right, and you will get to learn more about your ancient technologies within the Niti stories in due course. AIman does not have the six of you Analogues in its spider web, so that gives you a big advantage.’
I asked one final question—something that had been bothering me since Yuva mentioned it. ‘You said that besides the six of us, there is one more Analogue. Is . . . is he my father?’
I looked at Yuva intently, as he opened his mouth to speak. My eyes bore into him.
‘Dawn he is . . . best addressed by your mother,’ he started speaking, but before he could even complete, surprisingly, Tabah cut him off. ‘Dawn, I know who your father is. And now I understand why Yuva and Kira want you to talk to your mother before your training begins.’
My father had always been a dark mystery to me. And the murky secret had only deepened.
Sarga 3
Father’s Fall
9 a.m.
My pod, Cave of Trisirsha, Mount Kailash
‘Wake up, sleeping beauty.’
My mother tickling my feet was always a sure-fire way to wake me up.
‘Aaaahhh . . .’ My initial uncontrollable laughter at her tickling turned into an involuntary cry. I pulled my feet away and immediately sat up.
‘Look who has overslept. Everything all right, Dawn?’
‘Hmmm . . .’ I didn’t know where to begin. For a moment, I felt terribly afraid. My dream had been so vivid that I was scared that I may have broken my mother’s rule about not leaving the pod. But living together in the pod, just the two of us, I had no secrets from my mother. So, I decided to talk to her and tell her everything about my dream.
‘Maej . . . Something happened,’ I began.
She listened to me closely and interestingly didn’t look as surprised as I had thought she would be. She asked several questions that were almost only about Kira—most of which I could not answer.
‘Dawn, wait a minute. So, do you think this means that the firewalls we had put for our security did not work?’ she speculated in a worried tone when I’d finished speaking. ‘Does this mean that Dushita . . .’ she gasped in horror, as her hand clutched her throat at the thought of this potential threat.
‘No, no, maej. If our defences were weak, don’t you think we would have had an attack already?’ I tried to assure her, even though these doubts had just crept in my mind as well after this sudden realization.
Thankfully, this seemed to calm her down a little. I could almost see her hypothesizing and drawing conclusions in her mind. She had a meticulous personality that reflected her illustrious background in academics. Although she never spoke about it in great detail, but I knew from her certificates and papers on the cloud that she had done pioneering research in gene editing with a specialization in neurological diseases. When climate change, caused by the glacial melting in the Arctic and the Antarctic, had led to the elimination of the coastal cities around the world, in the USA, in cities, such as Boston, New York and San Francisco, the Noocracy government was faced with extraordinarily hard choices. They decided to protect and move their universities and abandon everything else. Harvard was shifted to St Paul and Stanford was relocated to the neighbouring Minnetonka in Minneapolis. My mother was on the staff of the Evergrande Center at Harvard, but due to the exodus, she moved to a gene lab at Stanford in Minneapolis to do some joint research.
She was now insisting that we recheck all the safety procedures in our system. Absentmindedly twiddling her fingers as fast as she could, she was speaking in a hurried tone—a quirk of hers that I have come to know of quite well. But over time, I had learnt that my mother was a master of technology, and her mastery over the keyboard was greater than anything else.
‘What if the process of implanting new memories and erasing identities has already begun?’ she mumbled to herself, staring at the numerous windows flashing on the two-way glass touchscreen of the LeGoog system. First pioneered on mobile phone communicators, the touchscreen technology was now made of organic materials, which would read the biological and emotional state of the individual from their tactile metrics and shape the response accordingly. ‘What if Yuva is a double agent? And the Pandavas . . . But Kira . . . It doesn’t make sense . . .’
‘MA!’ I didn’t mean to scream but her manic mumbling, which was so uncharacteristic of her usual confident demeanour, had even put me on edge.
‘Huh?’
‘Yuva is not a double agent. He’s good and so is Kira, and so are the boys. It is the first time in the entire sixteen years of my existence that I have met other people! I mean, it has to be good, right, maej?’
‘Koori, I would love more than anything to believe you. But you don’t know Dushita . . . the evil he is capable of, the wrongs he has done. There is a reason why we live in hiding in a cave on top of Mount Kailash.’
‘Well, if Yuva was a double agent, he would have caused more damage to our pod, to us, right? I mean, he was inside our home! All he wants, actually, is your permission.’
‘Wait! He wants what?’
‘Permission. So I can start what he calls my Niti training to become a “warrior princess”.’ Suddenly, it dawned upon me, ‘Why did Yuva call me a princess?’
‘Well, because that’s who you are . . . the daughter of a monarch—a princess.’
I opened my mouth to say something, but stopped myself. I was getting used to the feeling of how each question that I had about my new experiences in the outside world led to another question. But was it relief that I noticed on my mother’s face? She combed her fingers through her black locks, neatly tucking them behind her ears. My mother never wore any jewellery; she was a practical person. She clutched her jacket close to her thin frame and looked deeply into my eyes. They mirrored mine.
‘The dream is real, it seems, and relevant. It represents hope for us,’ she said, her face relaxing into a smile.
‘How . . . What?’
‘You see my darling, my lol, Dushita would never ask for permission from anyone, let al
one a woman. He is considered supreme and so that would be unthinkable for him. It is clear to me now that you are truly blessed! And more importantly—that you have crossed the Vasishtha Singularity Point where one is freed of the limitations of Time and Space,’ she said, looking at my incredulous face. You can exist in the past, present or future. You can flow and port from one dimension to another.
‘You know?’
‘I know that at this point there is no length in Time and no distance in Space. And that your Cognition Twin is a Vyomanaut, a skywalker that travels seamlessly,’ she laughed with relief and excitement. ‘What our ancestors used to say, today, my daughter has experienced it,’ she said, her eyes blazing. ‘You have brought supreme honour to the Vidyadhari clan.’
I sensed pride in my mother’s voice, but it suddenly made me uncomfortable. Something had been troubling me about this whole experience and I couldn’t keep it in any longer. ‘Ma, until now, I thought that in this pod, in this cave, I had everything that I needed—the both of us, comfortable in our lives and your stories. I live for those stories, for they have always made me feel limitless. But after meeting the boys, I can’t help but think what all I have missed out on because of our life spent in a state of hiding. You know, ma,’ I croaked, looking up, my eyes blurry, ‘the boys are orphans, and I was very touched that their families laid down their lives rather than bow down to the dark overlord, Dushita. They hid their sons in safe hideouts. In contrast, what about my father? I really need to know everything about him, maej, and no changing the subject this time,’ I motioned her to silence as soon as I saw her parting her lips to object. ‘I need to know about our family. It is time.’
My mother’s nervousness seeped back, as she wrung her hands and repeatedly tucked her hair behind her ears. Whenever I had asked her about my father, she would always find a way to stall it for the next day and the next. What was the mystery about my father that Yuva, Kira and she could not bring themselves to share with me?
But sensing my determination to obtain an answer, she finally gave in. ‘Okay, fine. I’ll tell you everything, right from the beginning.’
Dawn Page 5
