Dawn

by Rakesh K Kaul

  ‘Living organisms have a certain order to them, Arman,’ she continued slowly. I could see that she was thinking hard. ‘This order is different than the bouncing around of atomic particles within inanimate matter. The order inside a living cell is the same as one sees when matter is cooled down to zero. It is the ultimate state of maximum information, neurons included. A living organism always has the option of maximum choices, which in the old times used to be called swatantra or freedom, and so, based on which energy state a human goes into, it can be modelled by algorithms. One can then answer the sole remaining question that is faced by humanity: “What is Life?”’

  Arman fell silent and lowered his head in deep concentration.

  During this lull, I turned to my mother. ‘How did you use quantum properties in your work here?’

  ‘It was quite simple, really, once there was acceptance that humans had found a biological way to go from the material particle state that is bounded by Newton’s laws to the unbounded wave state, which is the field of Quantum Mechanics,’ she said, her hands moving in the air mimicking these particles. ‘The transition from the physical twin to the Cognition Twin is a biological change. I was the first one to study it and replicate it systematically. The stories were there all along. I just believed that they were true,’ concluded my mother modestly.

  ‘Why has Arman gone silent here?’ I asked.

  ‘Dawn, he realized that I had chanced upon a breakthrough idea. We were not naïve to the implications of what would happen to the person who unlocked the key first.’

  My mother asked Arman, ‘Tell me one thing that is important to you as a person and not to your wealth creation activity, Arman.’

  ‘I suppose privacy. And to you?’

  ‘Transparency.’

  ‘Honesty is important in what one shares,’ he seemed to almost sneer, ‘but one has no obligation to share everything. So, I am not with you all the way on that.’

  I heard my mother laugh. ‘Sharing your life stories is the highest experience of life. Why would you deny yourself that? Stories that are hidden are generally about violence or shame, is it not?’

  ‘I suppose I am boring. That’s about it,’ he said with some finality. ‘The password to my life, miss, is mine alone.’

  He excused himself to go to the restroom and stepped off the flying carpet.

  I watched through my mother’s eyes, as her gaze riveted on the passing clouds, the mountains fully decked out with green buildings that had trees growing in the balconies. My mother had told me about these green buildings that were built to maintain a zero carbon footprint after many climate-change catastrophes. My mind raced to another thought, something that the man who was my father had said: to make privacy the number one value in life. It was strange and troubling. What my mother did next though shocked me. She took out a cotton bud from her purse and discreetly picked Arman’s saliva sample from the chillum. She took the swab and touched her Tekni sensor inside her clutch bag, which instantly flashed a red message, ‘R292H’, followed by some more details. The Tekni sensor could give an instant read of all body parameters and whether anything was abnormal. We had one in our pod till my mother tweaked it and made it into a body scanner. This was another one of my mother’s home-made inventions and she was constantly tweaking it.

  I strained my eyes to read the details. There was a sentence in red that flashed on the sensor that stated that if the subject had this gene and was left-handed, then a diagnosis of schizophrenia was a high probability. My mother now ran another sample test of the contents, this time of the chillum. It was opium! The baneful, illegal drug produced in Kashmir!

  ‘So, what did you find out about me?’ Arman had suddenly returned, and he was very angry. His eyes were blazing with anger and what seemed like a sense of victory.

  ‘I . . .’

  He cut my mother off right away. ‘Oh, let me explain because I am very honest. I own this place and I see and hear anything that goes on in here. The Shikara is fully wired. I always excuse myself during my meetings because the recorder of my guest never lies to me.’

  My heart raced, but my mother seemed unperturbed, ‘You came up to me! A girl must watch out for herself. Oh, and let me explain because I am very honest too. The opium won’t fix the problem that you are experiencing, but I can save you.’

  ‘A woman will save me?’

  ‘Are you hostile to women?’ My mother’s voice was ice-cold.

  ‘Generally, yes, because they are the perfect example of the weak side of Nature. By contrast, my code is supreme because it creates perfection,’ he said. ‘Once perfected then done. Like gravity, the strong and unforgiving side of Nature, my algorithm works forever without failure. Truth is what works and I am about the truth in life.’

  ‘But empty code is not life. Surely, you are not such a megalomaniac to put yourself in the same league as Nature itself?’ ma scoffed.

  I couldn’t help grinning. Clearly, my mother knew how to handle bullies and cut them down to size, even if it meant showing my arrogant father the truth.

  ‘And what do you think Life is, Vidya?’ Arman jeered.

  ‘A mystery that only poets can come closest to describing.’

  He shouted, ‘For a scientist to resort to nescience means that you have no rationale. You have lost the argument, miss.’

  But my mother wasn’t done. ‘You are the ignorant one if you deny that even in the year 2983 there are many questions that are unanswerable and immeasurable but only experienceable. That is why the metaphysical truths can only be described by poetry. Have you read the work of the greatest sage-scientist of the second millennium, Pandit Gopi Krishna?’ Arman seemed nonplussed. ‘Well, then. Let me share a poem of his. It is as accurate as any scientific paper.’

  You are a queen although you know it not,

  The mistress of the Cosmos in your thought

  A sun, a star, a moon that has no peer,

  For what the world is worth without a seer

  Open a higher centre in the brain,

  Designed to explore the transcendental plane

  Of life, beyond our mind and intellect

  Which needs another channel to detect.

  ‘Woo-woo science,’ said Arman, mockingly.

  My fists curled into a ball. I couldn’t believe how ignorant but more importantly how disrespectful a person my father was. Maybe it was a mistake to ask ma about him after all.

  ‘I am a follower of Schrödinger who had the right answer,’ he went on. ‘And the essence of Life, Vidya, is the information present in a chromosome or molecule or neuron. United Intelligence or UI collects information at the very level of neurons and provides the breakthrough into the mysterious subject of what Life is. For that, the “Digital Me” has to be grouped to become the “Digital We”. Once my AIman Hadron database is built, we will smash information no different than the way we used to smash atoms in a collider.’ As he spoke, his fists crushed the invisible air. ‘Life is completely measurable, quantifiable, analysable and usable information. Not your unscientific mumbo-jumbo.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘No. You listen to me, fake scientist. Information is power, wealth and beauty. He who has the most information wins, Vidya. Human history shows that life’s goal is to gain the unchallenged power of information. With total information, I, Arman, will create perfection and domination. Just you wait and watch.’

  Arman’s face was transfixed as he was talking. It was as if the utopia that he was seeing had completely captured him. His pale eyes had become hypnotic, and his once-handsome face now looked like that of a mad king. I could not peel my eyes from this man whose eyes resembled that of a maniac, a madman. I wanted to shout, ‘Leave! Leave him right away.’ I was disgusted that I had anything to do with this person.

  Suddenly, when I thought all had finished, my mom spoke up in a calm voice, but it was a whiplash against Arman’s face. She seemed to be looking straight into the eyes of the madman, for I too was
looking into his. ‘The last man whose touch turned everything to gold turned his daughter lifeless and you are headed down the same path, Arman. What is it about you technologists? You all want a quadrillionaire-dom monopoly, and this is no different than the religious zealots of medieval times. Study them and you will know that their recipes of utopia only created dystopia where people couldn’t function, nothing could.’ She now stood up to face him. ‘Information, my dear benighted man, belongs to the free individual. UI can only work through force or manipulation or both. It is in Unified Life, UL, if you may, where humanity’s destiny lies. Based on voluntary connectivity, this Unified Life is what will lead to the flow of empathy. Oh, and yeah, talking about life, it is time you get yourself checked by a real doctor who will give you better medication than forbidden opium. What does your mother think about this or have you stopped listening to her? Didn’t they teach you in college that the brain is your frenemy? Guard it and guard against it. Now, goodbye,’ my mother ended curtly as she stepped off the carpet.

  Ma switched off the Gotra Memory Gene Recorder and looked at me. There was silence. I had a dim memory of my father from the time I was a child and it was rapidly adjusting to who I had seen now. The pale eyes had now come back to me. But the person I remembered as playful had worn a different face. I started shaking involuntarily.

  ‘Dawn . . . DAWN! Are you okay?’ my mother shrieked, immediately draping a warm blanket around my shoulders. The glazed look vanished from her face.

  ‘Yes . . . Yes, I am fine now. You said goodbye to him and walked out on him. What happened then?’

  ‘It will get worse. Can you handle it? He is your father after all.’

  ‘I can handle knowing, but I can no longer handle not knowing. I can’t believe that he . . . he is such a terrible person. My own father.’

  I felt my mother’s reassuring embrace. ‘We all make mistakes. But some things are meant to be for greater things to happen.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ I broke the embrace and looked at her.

  ‘Later. Now if you want to know what happened next—Arman connected with me some time later, and it is safe to say that he was very persistent. He said that he had changed his mind and needed me to figure out what was causing him to isolate himself and spend all his life in the world of artificial reality and medicating on opioid. He said . . . he said he needed me and asked me out for Valentine’s Day, which was thirteen days later.’

  I remarked with deep foreboding, ‘And you agreed? Obviously, against your better senses.’

  ‘We will pick up tomorrow,’ said my mother, sensing that I was turning hostile.

  It had been a long night.

  We’d barely had dinner and our usual fare of bread made out of home-grown algae and my favourite dish of red-hot fried fish from the aquatic lab remained almost untouched. After all that I had heard and seen, I was itching to run out of the pod into the snow and scream. But I knew the rules. So, I kissed my mother goodnight and turned in for the night, only to lie awake for hours thinking about that horrible person who was my father.

  The next morning, I awoke with a start, trying to recall the horrible events that I had been exposed to and was just coming to terms with. I tried to clutch it, but the moment had passed.

  ‘Maej?’ I sat up, missing my mother. She had always woken me up, even after our rare arguments and fights. I scrambled out of the bed and ran to the open living and dining space.

  My mother was sitting in front of the computer, unnaturally still. Her kalaposh cap was plugged into the flashback projector. On the screen flashed scenes of Arman, in a tuxedo, opening the door to a restaurant that had an ornate sign ‘Sunsets’, passing under an arch of pink and red roses. They were led to a table overlooking the serene water.

  ‘The Wayzata Bay in Minneapolis,’ my mom said without turning back. ‘Your father had the pan-fried walleye fish. Double filet. And I had ordered the salmon Niçoise salad. Sunsets was famous for it.’ She laughed all of a sudden, ‘And an order of their best Szechuan spicy green beans. We . . . we both found we liked it.’

  She stopped talking and turned around, looking as stoic as before and offered me a mug of coffee.

  ‘Coffee? Ma, you sure?’

  She just nodded and turned to the big flat screen in front of us. With a swift click on the keyboard, the flashback resumed.

  A group of young women, flashing huge smiles, were now waving at my mom. ‘What’s happening?’

  ‘My friends. They had spotted us, and yes, everyone knew of the great Arman, the recluse quadrillionaire. He was famous but no one knew him.’

  The women seemed to be smiling and trying to talk, but Arman only had eyes for my mother.

  The scene dissolved and all I could see was darkness, peppered silver with glimmering stars. They had gone for a walk around the lake under the stars. ‘After you,’ he said, pointing to the bench overlooking the lake.

  ‘He reached out to hold my hand. Imagine my surprise when Arman started to sing a love song to me!’ my mother said, ‘Like a movie. I had not expected to see this side of him.’

  I saw my father singing in the dark, his lips moving with the words to the song as he held my mother’s dainty hands.

  ‘What’s he singing?’ I said, taking a long gulp of the steaming coffee.

  ‘It was the love ballad of Banasura Vada Katha, the first epic story translated into the Kashmiri language from the Mahabharata. Your father truly had a melodious voice. It was hypnotic.’

  I rolled my eyes, but I could not escape the truth. No matter how much I despised my father, he truly did have a hypnotic voice. ‘Tell me about this Vada Katha,’ I said, trying to distract myself.

  ‘The katha was the love story of Dawn and Aniruddha. Dawn was the daughter of Banasura. She was locked up because of her immense beauty, as many suitors deemed undesirable by Banasura kept approaching her. One night, Dawn dreamt of a young man and fell in love with him. She described him to her friend Maya who was a talented artist. When Maya drew him, she recognized that it was Aniruddha, the one who resided in the highest hill in the Kashmir Valley, Sharika Parvat. It was the home of Pradyumna, who was the father of Aniruddha and the son of Lord Krishna. With her mystical powers, Maya made an opening, a sort of a tunnel into the subterranean region, Patala, which was the base of the Universe. Maya did all this so that Dawn could be with the man she loved. She brought Aniruddha there, safely away from Banasura’s gaze. And as they say, true love triumphed over all the obstacles that had been in the way and soon the two got married.’

  The song too came to a close.

  I saw my mother’s face melt as Arman kissed her. He had won her over!

  ‘What! What was wrong with you?’ I could not control my anger. Totally dismayed, I now finally knew why my parents had named me Dawn. An ancient story and an ancient prophecy.

  ‘Why did you fall for him, ma? You were so much better than him! What happened?’

  ‘To this day, I have not figured it out,’ she let out a soft sob. ‘Was it because we had so much in common but also were opposites? I can never know. He was highly intelligent barring his ego that was balanced by this softer side.’

  ‘A side that he rejected in you, maej. You saw that! You saw how cruel he could be,’ I said, slamming the mug on the table.

  ‘Life hides much, much more than it reveals, Dawn. The science of love is understood in terms of the chemicals that are released in the brain, but the biology of what triggers them is still a mystery. Unfortunately, my fatal mistake was not just the beginning of my personal tragedy but that of the Universe.’

  ‘The Universe?’ Again, the answers were confusing. ‘Did you not talk to friends or family? What did they say about this recluse? Were they taken in by his money or his equally big words?’ I could not believe I had so much disappointment and anger hidden inside, but now that the outlet was there, I struck savagely.

  ‘Perhaps that was the fatal mistake I made. I was so close to my friends, and y
et, I did not share this. We talked about life, shared our happiness and sadness, but never mentioned all this. Arman said that we would fly away and have a secret wedding. Elope! We would come back and then hold a grand reception. What a surprise it would be!’

  ‘And you agreed.’

  ‘Well, I did not disagree,’ she said with a sad smile. ‘I was experiencing such a high that I had taken leave of my senses. In that moment, I believed that life was going to be magical with him. He had shown to the world that he did not care about anyone but me. He made me feel special, like I was the only one. I stopped confiding in my friends and family. I stopped meeting them. I abandoned them for him. Believe me, Dawn, I was lost.’

  Ma switched off the flashback and burst into sobs, her face buried in her hands. I ran to her. All my life, she has been a source of strength for me. Never before had I heard the cries of her wounded heart.

  The next day, we were having kahwah—our favourite drink—in the arboretum. Ma would grow the plants and flowers directly from the seed that had been hybridized by her labs there. Temperature, light, humidity, nutrients and absolute weather control, including rain, snow and wind, permitted us to grow a wide range of plants, from cactuses to orchids. It was our favourite place to relax because Nature held sway with all of its beauty.

  Caressing a lab-grown lily with her finger, my mother spoke absent-mindedly, ‘You know, in the beginning, Arman was very interested in learning everything that I knew about Genecrinology. Even about simple plants and flowers.’

  ‘Why? He was faking it, of course?’

  ‘Well, his reason was that he wanted to know what he was going to undergo as part of his treatment. But as I was to find out later, it was for another reason altogether—’

  Simmering with anger, I interrupted her, ‘Why did you not escape his web? He was untrustworthy from day one. He was mean and rude and insensitive! He told you as much when he said that privacy was of the utmost importance to him.’ I knew I was being harsh on my own mother, and what experience did I have in the matters of the heart anyway? My total experience with men, and that too boys, was all of one day and here I was, the daughter chastising the mother.