The library was completely deserted; there was word that all the antique pieces of literature dating as back as 2010 were available in it. I walked inside; most of the books were sealed inside vacuum chambers, chronologically arranged from the present year 2499 to as far back as year 2001. Times were changing; a niche market for the literature of 21st century was forming slowly expanding its frills from the dungeons of failed writers. Writers of the present day lamented persuasively of a society that no longer respected its artists. The movement began somewhere in India. My thesis on the origins of the movement took me to the place. Great Britain as they referred to, was now merely London. Ireland and Scotland fought for a share in England for over two centuries; fuelled with the pestilential forces of Americas on Ireland’s front; capricious, malevolent and bullish forces of Russia on Scotland front, the war destroyed the great island into rubble. Ashen and unresponsive, the land laid uninhabited until India in the year 2400 deployed its technologically superior machine power. It was not the sophisticated manner of Indians that the world sought for, rather it was the trust that every other power on the planet revered and bestowed their confidence in. India over the period of last four centuries had grown into something of a monument, one that was built on the most instinctual premises home to animals-trust.
I tuned my 9XPG into India’s coordinates. The car whirred, I pulled out the Xylene potassium glass coaster from the titanium coated vacuum enhanced fur pyjamas. There were no animals anymore, not in London. All the nations had convened recently in the infamous city Kurnool that was home to all the reptiles and mammals in the world. The city was constructed in the form of a 21st century coffee mug with a lid covering it. The whole city was a sanctuary, the only one left in the whole world.
Presently, I swiped my 9XPG with ‘The Vertiginous’ and stepped out of it. There were other time machines, but India’s democracy was such that the people of the nation opposed any company that their intelligence reports confirmed with the status INC60. INC60 stood for a company or individual’s poor oxygen usage record. When I landed in the timeport of ‘The Vertiginous’ that was stationed in the street between Hyderabad and Kurnool, I was feeling slightly dizzy. I looked about me, a vivacious pretty young lady walked towards me, identified herself as the member of ‘Remarkable’. Hyderabad was one of its kind. The present day’s Hyderabad was the equivalent of ancient Greece. ‘Remarkable’ was a community of time travellers. They operated from head quarters in Hyderabad. Their branches in London housed employees who were famously known as geeks. Geeks was again a word of 21st century, it had survived battering of four centuries before uncovered, dusted and put to use by ‘Remarkable’. The geeks of London tested every new innovation at headquarters thoroughly before releasing it on 9XPG.
Everyone dreamt of a night’s stay in the legendary hotel Paradise. The hotel welcomed its guests after a genetic calculation of the number of mutations on the maternal path of ancestry. The hotel’s charm was of such nature that the guests that stayed at Paradise were granted instant celebrity status in their nations. On my 9XPG, I was checking for any anomalies in my vital signs, when there was a knock on my door. It was the vivacious lady from ‘Remarkable’. After pleasant exchange of words over the royal irani chai served in china cups with music from the 20th century in the background-track from saajan, she offered me her leather shawl encased in titanium. Pointing to it, she eyed me stately, pulled me closer into her arms, lifted her chin skywards and breathed heavily. Her heaving bosom, a little pout on the lips and strangely attractive movement of the hips bemused me. She later explained to me that she was mimicking a famous star form the 20th century-Madhuri Dikshith.
I presented my interim report to ‘Remarkable’ and it turned out that they were interested and agreed to help. Before transporting me back in time, they ran several tests on me. At one point, they tapped into my memory and recovered forgotten memories. Surprisingly, my forgotten memories were persistent and they left them un-erased. I soon recovered them onto my 9XPG, mapped them against the theoretical framework of my thesis. The mapping itself was quite pleasing; it clarified some of the blind alleys of my work.
Next morning, the vivacious lady accompanied me to the portal. Time travel was going to be unpleasant. Unlike the time travel envisaged in the popular culture of the 21st century, the present day’s teleportation was quite different; this was a travel into another dimension. The sixth dimension, area in which Remarkable made progress recently, was also the first company to do so in the entire world. The first visitation was conducted by the team ‘nawab-e-qutubshahi’, the teleportation successfully yanked them away from the present dimension in time and space to the sixth dimension in America’s 22nd century. The team conducted extensive research on the cause of the demise of one of the greatest powers of the then world-the Americas. The report was published in everyone’s 9XPG couple of weeks earlier and was an instant success. Team ‘nawab-e-qutubshahi’ was felicitated by the honourable Prime minister of India.
The itinerary was plugged into my 9XPG, I was to briefly gloss over the riots in Hyderabad that took place in the year 2009. Then station my travel portal and conduct visitation of the pivotal day – January 20, 2010. The day that was to be studied endlessly for four centuries by academic and industry practitioners, the day that was to held high the power of emotions like a mat and spread it against the sky of insanely intriguing political dogma; it was said that no researcher was left unaffected by the spell of human frailty the day cast.
The fact that the pivotal day engrossed all the researchers or the fact that artists, scientists and businessmen were besotted with the day did not bother me. All the previous visitations were conducted in the fifth dimension. It was believed that the teleportation disturbed the prismatic harmony of time. But studying from the sixth dimension was different. It had none of the vicissitudes of the fifth dimension. The researcher’s 9XPG would be hooked up to the machine and brain’s activity studied by a team of expert neuro-teleporters from Remarkable. Any anomaly would be deciphered instantly and the team would alert the researcher, in the event that the researcher fails to respond appropriately after three alerts, he would be detained and the visitation shut down.
The machine was primed, whirring and I was transported. Hyderabad was quite different in the year 2009. Kurnool and Hyderabad were a good three hundred kilometres away back then. In the present day however, only the street Remarkable (named after the company) stands between the wild sanctuary and Hyderabad-the city that overwhelms with its cultural backdrop.
On the pivotal day, I was noting down observations on my 9XPG and plugging in numbers on teleporter’s dashboard. The teleporter stationed for the visitation, after confirming the status back to neuro-teleporters at Remarkable, I waited patiently for the event to unfold. Political parties rallied on the roads of Hyderabad, mobs were cruising in from both the extremes-Vanasthalipuram and BHEL. Some threatened suicide, some took law into their hands in the name of revolution. This incensed the police, they opened tear gas in some areas near chaderghat and puranapul.
At 2:24 PM, in the heart of the city, through the perplexing and vexingly chaotic environment of the day emerged a lady constable. She walked upstairs through the narrow staircase of the monument Chaminar. Once up there, she extended her arms wide open, with fists clasped tightly together over her breast, she stood there for 3 minutes. At 2:27 PM, she opened her eyes and the teleporter shook as if hot by a wave. ‘pull out’ the message from neuro-teleporters at Remarkable was flashing on my 9XPG. The teleporter jolted as if travelling on a gravel land, the rattling sound beneath was ear shattering. There were coruscating prismatic patterns that emerged on the teleporter’s dashboard as if time was sheared into dimensions incalculable by the machine and imperceptible to the human eye. Light struck my temple and blinded me, the prismatic pattern lacerated my skin with its razor sharp thickness. I was blind and the noise was growing ponderously. ‘pull out’ second message.
‘you have eagle’s eyes’ the lady constable muttered looking through me as if I was a ghostly figure with no form. She continued ‘we all do, at night. But you have them in day light’.
On my left shoulder some one tapped me three times Tap, tap, tap….and I woke up.
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