Turbulence

by Samit Basu

  Sher rises to his feet with feline grace and crouches, his head moving from side to side. Green tiger eyes gaze hypnotically into Vir’s, and Vir flinches as Sher snarls, displaying his fangs. He tries to think of something clever to say but can’t. He knows it’ll come to him later.

  The tiger-man leaps on him, snarling. Vir jabs him, hard, on the nose, and follows up with a kick to the stomach that doubles Sher up. The beast flees now, heading towards the gym area.

  Vir flies after him and barrels into him from behind, sending him head-first into a weights machine stacked up with massive one-ton weights. As the punch-drunk tiger swings wildly, Vir steps up in front of him and grasps him around the waist. Face contorted with effort, he picks Sher up, flies up to the hall’s ceiling, squeezes the breath out of the tiger-man and drops him.

  Cats don’t always land on their feet, and Sher lands on his nose. The floor shatters. The tiger stays down.

  “Princess Anima! This is a test,” Jai calls.

  “Super Striker Spear!” Anima squeals, driving a glittering energy-spear into Vir’s side and sailing over him, her fairy wings buzzing.

  Vir swivels, snaps the shaft with a well-placed chop and flies away, his head spinning, the sizzling spearhead falling harmlessly to the ground. As Anima sails after him, sprouting another pair of katanas, the air around her glowing and distorting, he turns, faces her, watches the swords rake his chest, then grabs them and breaks them in half across his knee. His hands feel frozen and aflame all at once.

  The child is frightened now. Twin fountains of tears pour out of the sides of her face. He grabs her by the shoulder. One punch to the face, Vir’s instincts yell, but he can’t make himself hit this little girl.

  A decision he regrets almost instantly as Anima conjures up a huge battle-axe and tries to cut his head off with it.

  Vir spirals to the floor, his Adam’s apple a huge, throbbing lump of pain. She’s buzzing all around him now, darting humming-bird-like, pausing, hurling sparkling energy bolts, laughing.

  Vir is dizzy, fading, spent. Groaning, he takes to the air, flies around the room as fast as he can, dodging shuriken and arrows, darts and spears, watching Jai smirk beneath him, and wondering what his father would have done in his place.

  Tia opens the door to the first cell and finds an elderly woman clad in a Benarasi sari sitting demurely inside.

  “What’s your power, aunty?” she asks.

  “I can sing,” she says.

  “Sweet. Can you get out of here?” She helps the woman to her feet, and runs to the next cell.

  All along the cell block, other gun-toting Tias swing doors open, struggle with locks and usher inmates outside. A confused crowd of people from the science section mills about, though the smarter ones have already started racing towards the upper levels.

  At the end of the block, yet more Tias deliver quick instructions: Get out of here, stop for nothing, lots of women who look just like me are waiting to show you the way.

  Bursts of gunfire echo through the building as clusters of Tias take on its less friendly inhabitants. Tia doesn’t stop to count the people she’s rescuing. She knows several of them won’t make it; some will die before they leave the building, the Himalayas will account for others. Not to mention the small matter of Jai’s superpowered allies, thankfully otherwise engaged for the moment. But she’s left several copies prowling all over the base, armed to the teeth. Whatever happens, she knows she has achieved something this night.

  A siren wails. “That’s the signal! We need to leave the base!” yells a fleeing doctor.

  “Bloody genius,” a Tia growls, and runs to another cell.

  “Mega Power Destruction Crossbow!” Anima yells.

  Twinkling razor-edged bolts of power shoot towards Vir, and even as he dodges them he realises that the flying schoolgirl is slowly herding him into a corner. Vir’s second wind has almost run out, and his head is spinning too fast for him to see clearly. Pure instinct and blurry green lines are all that keep him going.

  Anima flies above him, fighting casually, not even at full stretch — she’s toying with him. Her crossbow disappears and a huge mace appears in her tiny hands. She swings it effortlessly, catches him smack in the middle of his back and he crashes down again, skidding along the floor, tasting dirt and sweat and concrete and blood. His blood. He rolls over, lies on his back, and blood bubbles up in his mouth. He coughs, spits, tries to get up and fails.

  “Well done, Princess!” Jai cries. “Finish him!”

  Anima laughs and curtsies in mid-air. The mace disappears in a cloud of green bubbles. A broadsword appears in its place.

  “Final Decapitation Combo!” she calls, twirling the sword over her head and sweeping down for the killing strike.

  At the last possible moment, Vir swings his hands up and blocks the sword. The blade cuts into his palm and sizzles as sparks of power ripple across his arms. He rips the sword from her grasp and tosses it aside as he rises into the air in front of her. She’s manga-terrified, her mouth a small pink circle, her impossibly huge eyes quivering.

  Vir grabs her wrist with one hand and, with the other, begins to tickle her. She squeals and giggles, helpless tears running out of her eyes, now horizontal slits above her rapidly rising nose. Her laughter reaches impossibly high notes, elsewhere in the hall, a light shatters.

  “I’m the hero, Princess,” Vir says, gently but firmly. “And you’re a good girl, aren’t you?”

  “Finish him!” Jai yells.

  She ignores him and nods at Vir.

  “You’re not going to fight me any more, are you?” Vir asks.

  “No,” she whispers. “I’m really sorry.”

  “Go to your room and think about what you just did.”

  Princess Anima starts to cry, and this time her tears aren’t twin fountains, but big, fat tears running down her suddenly human cheeks. Her eyes shrink, her wings vanish, and her limbs flail. Vir catches her and lowers her gently to the floor. She runs off, sobbing.

  “Smartly done,” Jai says. “You have your moments, you know.”

  Vir turns to face him, staggering slightly.

  “And now, the main event,” Jai says, stretching.

  The door to the hall opens, and Jerry and Vivek rush in.

  “Something’s gone wrong down below,” Jerry says.

  “Deal with it,” Jai snaps. He strides towards Vir.

  Vir stumbles forward, trying to raise his fists. Jai’s first punch sends him flying across the hall. He smashes into a wall and stays down.

  “Er… Jai?” Jerry says.

  Jai stops in mid-stride and snarls.

  “What is it?”

  “The prisoners got away,” Jerry says. “Tariq is dead. So are lots of people in the science wing. We don’t know what happened.”

  Jai stares at the ceiling for a while, fists clenched.

  “Pick up the tiger. Get the kid,” he says finally. “Grab anything else you need.”

  “Poison’s back,” Jerry says.

  “Tell him not to unpack. We’re leaving.”

  When the men have dragged Sher out, Jai walks up to Vir and pulls him to his feet. He slaps him a few times, until Vir opens his eyes groggily.

  “I don’t know how you pulled this off,” Jai snarls. “But I want you to know that in a few minutes some bombs are going to go off, and you’re going to be buried alive in here. We’re going to bring a mountain down on top of you. We could have ruled the world together, Vir. That was what I wanted. Now I’m going to have to do it by myself.”

  He slams Vir to the floor, kicks him savagely a few times, and starts running, his footsteps blending into a drum-roll.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  “I still can’t believe you didn’t tell me,” Aman mumbles.

  “Darling, I didn’t know I was going to turn into Rambo and storm the base,” Tia says. “I think I’ve more than compensated for anything I might have done, anyway.”

  “So this was… comp
ensation?”

  “That’s not what I meant. Really, men are so sentimental.”

  “True. But warn me before you start shooting monsters again, okay?”

  “I’ve told you, I don’t really know what my new bodies are going to do — I have a plan before I split, but I don’t always stick to it. Different choices, different paths — we’ve had this conversation. I won’t even know what it felt like until I merge with one of them.”

  “It must be amazing, never having to make a choice,” Aman says. He stretches and yawns, willing himself to get out of bed. “Hell, I’m not complaining.”

  Tia grins, sits up and reaches for her clothes.

  “Yes, you seemed quite enthusiastic about everything, as far as I remember.”

  She pulls a T-shirt over her head and Aman groans.

  “Must you do that?”

  “If you want to look at naked women, you have a free net connection, love. Besides, what would your girlfriend say if she saw us like this?”

  Aman rolls his eyes. “Stop it,” he says.

  “Are you going to tell me you don’t have the world’s most massive crush on Uzma?”

  “Sure, but that’s her power. And now, this — you and me —”

  “No, no,” Tia says hurriedly, and practically jumps out of Aman’s bed. “Aman, don’t make me regret this, all right? I don’t want you to end up getting hurt. We have enough to worry about as it is.”

  A loud knock on the door, and Aman curses and runs to his bathroom with his clothes.

  But it’s not Uzma at the door. When Tia opens it, it’s another Tia. And when Aman emerges from his room a few minutes later, he looks into Tia’s room and finds a bunch of Tias, each with headphones attached to her ears, watching different channels on the fifteen flatscreen TVs arranged on her wall. A few Tias turn and smile knowingly as he passes. He waves and walks by swiftly, and hears a chorus of giggles explode behind him.

  Aman sits in the living room, wolfing down his breakfast, hoping to be left alone. But the fates deem otherwise, the Scientist and Bob are eager to know what happened at the base. Their faces fall when Aman tells them he doesn’t really know. The Tia who’d called him after the great escape had been cut off in the middle of their conversation, something about a tiger-man. She’d not called again. As far as he knew, there were now any number of powered people on the run in Kashmir with Jai Mathur’s henchmen hunting them down. Bob is shattered to hear no news of his parents, and the sky outside grows overcast.

  A loud rumble of thunder, and a Tia enters the house, dripping wet. She drops a large package on the floor.

  “Laser robot nanotechnology thingies from Japan,” she announces. “Aman, we got trouble. Some of us — me — got followed today when we went for our pickups. One of my delivery boys told me that people have been asking questions about us and the stuff we’re getting off the ships. One of the big mafia types wants to know. Apparently some big changes are happening in the underworld, some new boss is taking over the business district. His name’s Shinde.”

  “How many of you are out there now?” Aman asks.

  “None. We met in a clothing store and merged in a changing room. People were following two of me, but I lost them.”

  “We should lie low for a while, then. Can you get by for a few days on the stuff you have, Sundar?”

  “I wish I knew,” Sundar says. “I’m sure I’ll manage. I think the armour I’m building is almost complete. I built some arm extensions for it that I suspect are cannons. I’ll know when I deduce where the ‘On’ switch is.”

  “They’re going to find us and kill us,” Bob says, and there’s a flash of lightning outside.

  Aman stands up. “That settles it, then,” he announces and strides towards the stairs.

  “What are you doing?” a Tia asks.

  “Something I should have done the day I discovered my powers,” says Aman. “I’ve wasted too much time talking.”

  Uzma enters the living room minutes after Aman’s departure, and her housemates gather around her, concerned; she’s clearly been crying. After two cups of coffee and three silent bursts of tears, she reveals what is wrong. She’s been rudely awakened from her Bollywood dream. Her three biggest movie hopes have all been shattered. In each case, the director told her that he loved her audition, but didn’t think she was quite ready for the role. That she had failed her screen tests, she just didn’t cut it on camera. The directors all thought she was special, though, and wanted to get to know her better over dinner.

  “They liked you because of your powers, but you didn’t come across well on enough video,” Sundar explains.

  “Not now,” Tia warns.

  “In other words, I have no talent. I should never have come here,” Uzma says.

  “You should consider a career in front of a live audience that will be fooled by your powers. Theatre is the solution,” Sundar concludes with an air of triumph.

  “Sundar, shut up. What’s wrong with you?” Tia snaps.

  “But a film career is not out of the question either. After all, plenty of popular actresses have no real acting ability,” Sundar says with an encouraging smile.

  When Uzma runs from the room, howling, and Tia runs after her shooting dagger-like looks at him, Sundar turns to Bob with a puzzled air.

  “I don’t understand women,” he says.

  “You don’t understand humans,” Bob says.

  Aman sits in his room, staring at the computers on his desk. There are three custom-made monitors in front of him, each screen reloading rapidly as his thoughts hyperlink. No mouse or keyboard sits in front of the screens, he stopped needing them after his first week. He doesn’t really need the screens either.

  His hands tremble. To calm his nerves, he looks at holiday pictures of strangers on Facebook. He reads JK Rowling’s online backup files and writes three alternative final chapters to the Harry Potter series. He watches clips from Japanese TV shows on YouTube. He looks at the time and curses. Hours have passed.

  Tia enters his room.

  “You all right?” she asks.

  “No,” he says, not looking at her, his left foot tapping on the floor of its own accord. “I’ve been talking about this endlessly, about using our powers the way they should be used, not behaving like super-idiots. But I need to show you exactly what I mean and instead I’m wasting time. How am I going to use the internet to save the world if I keep getting distracted by the internet?”

  “Can I help?”

  “I don’t think so. I’m just completely… I think I’m just terrified of doing anything that will actually make a difference. I’ve made plans, but now, now that I’m here, now that it’s time, I’m just — stuck.”

  “So you see now why Uzma doesn’t want to be a superhero.”

  “Superhero,” Aman laughs. “Hell, I wish I could be one. Or any other kind of hero. I wish someone could just appear and tell me what to do — some Gandalf-type with a white beard and a white nightgown who would tell me to go and find, I don’t know, a magic remote control that I could use to save the world from the growing forces of evil. I need an instruction manual, Tia. I have too many options. I’ll go crazy.”

  “I don’t know what you’re trying to do,” Tia says, “but I can tell you’re just going to keep on not doing it as long as I’m here, so…”

  She leaves.

  Aman grins and turns off his screens. He closes his eyes and reconnects.

  The internet appears in his mind’s eye as a swirling pool of liquids, billions of coloured strands coalescing, blending, bubbling. He feels that curious lightening in the back of his head. His hair stands on end as his awareness explodes, as networks expand and intersect through satellites, under-sea cables, phones, and it feels as if he’s sinking into the pool, drowning in an ocean of information as the pool swells around him, filling his senses, melting and reshaping him into a tiny piece of plankton drifting in the cyber-ocean. He watches the datastream flow around him, the rush of b
illions of phone conversations blending to a dull hum between his ears.

  The world is inside his head; Aman is everywhere.

  He focuses his attention. A single cell in the pool expands, extends digital pseudopodia, forms shapes. Aman checks his email. His mind shoots forward, text and image and sound coalescing into shape in millions of gelatinous bubbles and then dissolving back in an instant. Aman is in digital nirvana, swimming through the stream, instinct and intuition driving him towards his quarry.

  Aman is online.

  He starts small. He finds out the names of Colombia’s richest drug-lords, finds their Swiss bank accounts, and gives away all their money in their names to relief agencies in Somalia, making sure to send polite emails asking the recipients to withdraw the money from their accounts as quickly as they possibly can. He repeats the process with Middle Eastern gangsters, American gun companies, Italian fashion brands that use Bangladeshi sweat-shops and members of the Indian parliament. Then he changes the names of the countries and continents involved and does it again.

  He gets bored.

  He realises that superheroes wear strange costumes and do irrational things, like using their cosmic powers to stop neighbourhood muggers, because changing the world is tedious, and actually physically accomplishing something, no matter how trivial, is far more satisfying than throwing money at problems and hoping they will go away.

  Undeterred, Aman takes his online Robin Hood act a step further: he creates his merry men. A stream of bubbles appears in front of him and speeds into the datastream, each one containing his brainwave patterns; each one assigned a specific task. Aman feels warm and fuzzy now. In a way, he realises, he has just impregnated the internet. He watches his thought-bots swim into the horizon, slipping and sliding through the currents of global finance, and idly plays a game of Tetris as he waits for results.

  Over the next few hours, Aman goes deep into the heart of the military-industrial complex and dances the lambada with its finances. He takes billions of dollars from companies and individuals all around the world, redistributing property on a scale that would have made Karl Marx rise from the grave and die again from sheer happiness. He hands out money to conservationists, environmentalists, peace activists. In several cases, they win lotteries and break online casinos. A lot of the world’s richest people make huge charitable donations through public announcements on the web, pledging their support to campaigns against everything from AIDS to human trafficking.