11 Hours

by Daniel Paul Singh

  The professor now brought a small device and scanned all over me. I felt like going through a ‘security clearance’. When he took the device near my pocket where I had my phone, we heard a beep sound. I handed over the phone to the professor. “Aaah the beep tone, there is something in your phone.” he told me.

  ‘Tell me something that I didn’t know’ I thought to myself and looked at Prabhu questioningly. “Is he the right guy? Does he even know what he is doing? Why are we here in the first place?” I so badly wanted to ask Prabhu why the professor talked in rhymes. It was irritating every time he took some time to utter his sentences so that they rhyme, even though he knew pretty well that I was in a dire situation and running against time. And to add to it, the rhyming wasn’t perfect either. I was annoyed.

  Prabhu gave a reassuring look and signaled me to trust him and the professor. I had lost trust on everyone by then. The professor had dismantled my phone and was still researching on it as my thoughts wandered hopelessly with a myriad of doubts. He then kept the phone aside and again scanned my entire body with the device. We didn’t seemingly hear any beep sound.

  After thinking for a few minutes, he ran the device near the back of my head, and we started to hear faint beep sounds. All of us were confused.

  The professor asked me to put the SIM card back into my phone. I followed his orders. The moment I switched on the phone, I saw a lot of WhatsApp messages from the LOSER.

  “Where are you now?”

  “What’s with regeneration?”

  “Do not remove the bug.”

  “I hate the rhyming sentences” I couldn’t help but chuckle reading it. Me and the Loser had at least something in common.

  I showed all the messages to Prabhu and the professor.

  The professor then asked me to lie down on a table and pressed a button. The table lifted itself up and my head was sent through a device. It looked like a CRT scanning machine. The professor observed the readings of the scan in his system and I was trying to remain calm. Prabhu was standing next to the professor noting down his observations. The professor first looked astonished, and then, his expression changed into a shock. I didn’t know why he looked terrified. He then took Prabhu to another room. I was still lying down on the table and waiting for them like a lost kitten.

  After 10 minutes, Prabhu came out with a look of disbelief. He shook his head in distrust and asked me to get up from the table. I got up swiftly and tried to look at the monitor that had given them the shock. It was all waves and lines which I couldn’t comprehend.

  “Is it something serious Prabhu? Am I suffering from brain tumor?” I asked him.

  “Chuck it Rob. What did you tell, was her native?”

  “Chennai.” I responded.

  “But, you told she is from Trichy, sometime back?”

  “Who are you talking about… Brindha or Diana?”

  “Brindha, I asked about Brindha.”

  “Oh her, well her native is Trichy. Yes, why asking now?”

  “I think we should go there. How long is it from here?”

  “Takes about 3 hours by car, I guess. We discussed this already, don’t you remember?”

  “Alright. We have to go there.” Prabhu said in a hurried tone.

  “But, why?”

  “Because I have a strong instinct that we will find some clue there.” He guessed. I could decipher from his worried face that we were upto something much viler than what we had imagined.

  “We can’t risk six hours based on your gut feeling. It’s already 2.10 AM now. We hardly have 9 hours to find Brindha. I hope you are not kidding me!” I was thoroughly exasperated and tired.

  “Rob, Brindha is not in Australia. Even the LOSER has told you that. So, she could either be in Bangalore or Trichy. You don’t know anyone who could help you in Bangalore. You practically can’t contact the HR or her office at this odd hour and even the ones you contacted didn’t respond properly. Since Trichy is her native, we can at least seek the help of her parents. We will definitely get a lead. Do you remember where she stays?” Prabhu was trying hard to convince me and it made some sense.

  “The last I remember; in Trichy she was staying at Thillai Nagar.”

  “You know her house?”

  “I faintly remember, but for all you know, her residence could have changed now.”

  “Faint remembrance is better than no idea, alright? We need to go to Trichy to get a lead.”

  “What if she is in Chennai?” I asked.

  “We can be back by 8 AM, and you will have 3 hours then to find her. Let us now head to Trichy.”

  “What about Diana then? Where is the time to find her?”

  “We will find Diana, Rob, trust me. We will definitely find her” Prabhu promised.

  He then asked me to follow him to the car. The professor was still looking anxiously at me, and I had no idea why. I was at least getting away from his rhyming torture for some time.

  It was 2.15 AM. The earliest we could reach Trichy was by 5.15 AM. Will I remember her house? Will her parents still be staying in the same place? Will they remember me? Will it be still painted Orange? A million thoughts ran through my mind. I looked at my mobile, and there was no further message or call from the LOSER.

  We would have driven for an hour and reached Chengalpattu when Prabhu gave a sigh of relief and relaxed. I was still wondering how I was going to identify her house when he interrupted my thoughts with his heavy gasp.

  “Why this sudden respite?” I asked him.

  “Answer me. Who is more important? Brindha or Diana?” he asked.

  “Is that even a question? Of course, it is Diana.” I replied.

  He looked at my phone and continued in a calm tone.

  “What will you do if you find the guy who kidnapped your wife?”

  “I will kill him!” I replied with vengeance written all over my face.

  “Check your phone now and see if you have got any message from the LOSER.”

  I checked. There was none. Prabhu then insisted that I send the LOSER a Whatsapp message saying that we were heading to Trichy to find Brindha. I did so.

  “I know, all the best.” came the reply from him.

  “Good. We are now in the safe zone.” he sighed relieved.

  “I am sorry? Care to explain? What zone? How?” I asked bewildered.

  “Rob, did I tell you how I got a stroke? We were trying an experiment, a scientific breakthrough, which involved transmitting commands through brain pulses.”

  “Errr... What?”

  “It’s an electromagnetic wave pulse being generated from brain impulse that would transfer the wave of thoughts into a predictable graph, helping in realizing what thought has transpired in one’s mind” he said in a single breath.

  I didn’t understand a word of what he said.

  “Can we talk English?”

  “Listen Rob, its simple. We want to see if we could make electronic devices work just with our brain pulse. Like, you enter a room, you think that the light should be switched on, and it does. You look back at the door, you want it to be closed and it does. Getting it?”

  “Is that even humanly possible? This mind control thing?”

  “It is not mind control. It’s just thought pulses. It’s a signal, an electromagnetic wave, an impulse, that’s all. You control your electronic devices with your thoughts, as simple as that. You could close your house door sitting at your office, switch off your gas cylinder from a faraway shop. You could do anything like that if this system is successfully implemented. A lot of experiment is happening in this field currently”

  “Though it sounds interesting, it scares the shit out of me. It seems like a scene from a Sci-Fi movie! What if someone sits in some corner and thinks I should die and my watch obeys his impulse and strangles my hand and kills me”

  “You and your imaginations, Rob! Listen, what you see as Sci-Fi fantasy today could be our future for all you know. Our professor wanted to take this idea to
the next level. He wanted to see if human thoughts could be interpreted.”

  “Like dream interpretation?”

  “No. Like, think of your wife, how much you love her, what all you would do to get her back, to what extent will you go to save her and whatever you think will be recorded as impulses, which would then be used to decode your thoughts and draw a graph of your mind in a system. Similar to an EEG graph...And at the end we will know what exactly you are thinking.”

  “Is that even possible?”

  “We were giving it a try, I volunteered for the experiment, and it went wrong. I suffered a stroke and was admitted to the hospital for 90 days. The professor decided to stop the trial forever after that.” Prabhu said.

  “Holy shit! You never told me this. Have you recovered fully? Didn’t you file a case against the professor?”

  “I volunteered for it, Rob. Come on!”

  “Experimenting on humans is banned, Prabhu. How could you even volunteer for this?” I was furious.

  “Rob, I am aware of all that. Besides, we don’t explicitly publish any of these findings. We only discuss them in secret conferences. I told you now because you are my brother and I trust you. Not even my dad knows this.” He looked straight into my eyes as he said, hoping I will keep it as a secret all my life.

  “Damn, Man. So, why are we even discussing this now? What is the whole point? Why are you telling all this to me now?” I was confused.

  “Because you have one such thought detector placed near your brain now. The kidnapper of your wife knows everything you think. Knows every next move of yours, knows what you are exactly up to, and there is a live impulse feed happening from your brain to his system.” he finished and waited for me to react.

  It struck me the hard way that I was facing someone more conniving and dangerous than I could have ever imagined, and worst of all, I didn’t have the freedom even to THINK!

  ₪ ₪ ₪

  Chapter 14

  The Secret Crush The thought of Brindha filled my mind as she took leave of me. Her care filled eyes promised life eternal. If only she had been a Christian or I had been a Hindu. Brindha left for Bangalore that night and I left for Chennai and as always we texted throughout our journey. I wasn’t particularly sure when I dozed off.

  The next day as I reached Chennai, I texted her and got ready to go to office. However, I didn’t get a text from her. She hadn’t messaged on reaching Bangalore nor had she sent a ‘Good Morning’ text. I called her, she didn’t pick. I was worried at first and with every passing moment an inexplicable discomfort engulfed me. Is she alright? Did the bus take her there safely? My mind was asking several unpleasant questions. I even tuned into the TV to see if there were any accidents in the Trichy – Bangalore Highway.

  I couldn’t have my breakfast properly - the pongal I was having, found its way with much difficulty into my belly. I prayed that nothing wrong should have happened to her. As I chewed the last bolus, I got a text from her.

  “Hey sorry da, Chumms, that’s why! I reached Bangalore safely and dozed off immediately. All well, just woke up. Good morning dear.”

  I was relieved. I cursed my mind for always thinking the adverse. But wait what did she have?

  “What, what is that?”

  “Whats what?”

  “I mean. Whats Chumms?” I doubted.

  “You don’t know? Seriously?”

  “No, why? Hearing it for the first time. Whats that?”

  I was a single male child. Sex was a taboo at home. I had no clue about the technical terms that the female world used. It was my first encounter with the term.

  “Okay, leave it. I am going to get ready now”

  “No tell me bru. I want to know”

  “Oh come on. How in the world could I tell you? I can’t and I won’t” came her furious reply.

  “You just said you have chumms. Is it like mumps? Is it contagious, are you alright?” I did say that.

  “Grrrr. God! Save me from him. Dude, Leave it. Don’t talk about it. Bye” she wanted to run away.

  “Come on Bru, tell me.”

  “If you want to know go ask your mom” she said and put an angry smiley.

  I didn’t understand why she was distressed and wondered what made her behave that way. I got really pissed off when she told me to ask my mom.

  “Why should I check with my mom? Do you think only you know this term and that I don’t have other friends? I will ask my other lady friends” I texted back.

  “For duck’s sake, don’t do it, wait, I will call you. I need to pee urgently. Will go to the loo, come back and then call you.” she texted.

  But before she could call, out of curiosity, I texted and asked a couple of my lady friends for its meaning. One ignored my text and the other called up immediately to know why I had asked it. I gave her the context and then she laughed off and explained that it’s the colloquial term for menstrual period.

  “Oh, periods!!” I felt stupid.

  “Yes dumbo” she said.

  “Thank you soooo much” I said and cut the call. Meanwhile there were 3 missed calls already from Brindha. I called her back immediately.

  “I told you not to check with anyone” was the first thing she said.

  Jesus Christ!! how did she find? Was she having a spy around? “I wasn’t checking with anyone, I got a call. It was my mom dear” I lied blatantly.

  “Oh really? You asked this to your mom?”

  “No, I didn’t ask anything. Why would I? I was talking to her

  casually”

  “Don’t lie. I know that your mom calls you only at night. So, did

  that girlfriend of yours tell you?” she fumed.

  “She didn’t, she refused to”

  “So, she is your girlfriend?” she cornered me with her question. “Yikes. She is a friend who is female. This English is a dangerously

  funny language.” I tried to squeak out a laugh.

  “Did she tell you or not?” she was focused.

  “She didn’t.” I continued with my lies.

  “So you asked her its meaning, in spite of me telling you not to?”

  I was bowled again. The kind of questions she asked, I wished she

  was in the CBI department.

  “Ahem… I … I … not intentionally”

  “This looks 200 % intentional. Listen Rob, any more when you

  have such doubts ask only me and not to anyone else, okay? Got it?

  Clear? Just me!! “

  “Okay madam. So what is it?” I asked.

  “I won’t tell you” she retorted.

  “Come on!”

  “Okay, don’t plead … its menstrual cycle… “

  “That’s all is it? You were creating a ruckus for this? Duh. It’s a

  common thing right, why so much fuss about it. You could have told

  me straight”

  “Hmmm. I could have. But I didn’t want to. So, you started to

  office?” she said teasingly.

  “Yes, on the way. We will catch up over mail”, saying I pressed

  “End” button in my phone. I came to know of two things: the

  colloquial name of periods and that she was too possessive on me, which was the most important thing. I felt good about it. It felt different and I wanted to express it to her, but not through the usual

  text messages. I decided to do something unique and different. I reached my office and sat down to write a poem for her, my first

  poem. I was no poet, nor a writer back then, but I guess its love that

  brings out the poet in most of us. I scribbled some random verse

  ending with rhyming words and called it a poem. I don’t exactly

  remember what I wrote (even if remember, I wouldn’t share it in this blog, as

  I am pretty sure you all will laugh at it). It took me around 4 hours to write

  that 8-verse poem and I mailed it to her after I was satisfied (okay, I

  wasn�
�t, but my brain froze and I couldn’t think any further) with it. I had

  praised her and expressed (in words that I normally don’t use and had to

  look up in thesaurus) on how much she meant to me and how sorry I

  felt for my earlier behavior.

  Exactly after six minutes, I received a mail in my inbox. “Rob, that’s a sweet poem, did you write it? And for me?” read

  her mail.

  “Really? You liked it? Yes, of course, I wrote it just for you” “I like your intent. And I love the poem, it rhymes good. From

  when did sir become a poet?” she mailed.

  Right after seeing you, I wanted to reply, but said.

  “Nothing so, just felt like expressing myself, differently.” “I don’t like poems Rob” she sent a follow up mail.

  “Oh my, I didn’t know that, sorry.” I was disappointed with that

  mail.

  “But I liked yours” she sent that in the second mail.

  “Why did you give me that heart attack with the first mail? You

  should have said both in the same mail” I responded.

  “Why should I? And I think you did well for a first attempt. May

  be some day you might become a great poet”

  “LOL. Nice joke” I replied and kept laughing about it. As much as I wrote my first poem for Brindha, I wrote my first

  story as well for her, on her request (or was it a demand). It was a ghost

  story, ironically Or was it symbolic?

  Brindha preferred to read stories as against poems and from then

  on I started to scribble something at will every day and claimed it as

  a story and forced her at gun point to read it. She obliged (had to). She

  became my only reader, critique and fan. I was however too shy to

  share it with anyone else, including my parents.

  “You know, the best love story is yet to be written” she said one

  day.

  “Yes, and it will be ours” I wanted to reply, but instead sent a

  smiley.

  As I was embarking on my newly acquired hobby, she seemed to

  have amassed a new concern of her own - weight gain.

  She constantly kept pestering me on suggesting ways to reduce