“Avoid placing your hand across through the grill” a soft mellowed female voice poured out of the speakers inside the elevator. With a typical grin, Kranthi remarked “what would happen if…” Shravani, a woman in her early twenties, was as pragmatic as she was sincere to the institute’s ambitions. Slightly dazed though she was with the day’s work, let out a half restrained smile. Pushing the maroon coloured holographic button, Shravani let the glow of neon torch on her helmet find Kranthi under its scanner. “Your reaching out with your hand, across through the grill, will dilate time. Work is under way, and the research team would be disconcerted”. Kranthi noticed Shravani’s long drawn pointed fingers with neatly manicured fingers. Like the erect stalk that rose up amidst the plump petaled floral envelope of a budding rose, her head sprouted out of the double padded space suit she had put on. She had a pretty face; short forehead, long lips, and lush cheeks. Through the brown irises, her gaze fell upon Kranthi, she had calm and placid eyes. Presently, her long wavy hair (Kranthi noticed in the picture on the ID tag up her breast) was braided tightly above her nape. Kranthi wondered if Shravani’s countenance, that of discernment and contentment, were drawn from her mother’s.
Universe Cherry was now celebrating it’s 25th anniversary, silver jubilee, and Kranthi was the only guest, brought out of hibernation, for the occasion. The crew of three scientists aboard the mission RCU 6.2 welcomed the gentleman who was eyeing everything around him with a child like curiosity. Inside the control room, Janaki, the ship’s co-pilot briefed Kranthi on the progress “we had a rickety ride in the first couple of years, research was put on hold as we had to deal with microscopic time dilated bubbles” pushing her golden rimmed glasses over the bridge of her short nose, she continued “some of them inflated to gobble up as much as a tea cup”. Shravani who sat ensconced up on a grand old chair that was made of wood, seemed rather disinterested, but hid her emotions under the veil of professional courtesy. “Although the pilot, Ramanna, had all the bubbles treated with, I saved one in the lab”. Janaki ripped open a sheet covering the drawing board at one end of the room, then slowly slid her fingers under it and pulled a velvet purse. She emptied the contents on the drawing board- a hair pin; a wedding photo of hers’ and Ramanna, the pilot, it was taken when they were in the original universe; a ten rupee note; an inland letter; and a pair of keys.
“Mom, Iam going upstairs to check up on the arrangements” closing the door gently behind her, Shravani left them both mother and son together in the room. “The keys open a cupboard in the basement” pointing to the controls on the dashboard, Janaki , lowered her coffee mug on the table and stately, sat herself on the chocolate brown sofa. “Shravani was born on the third year of your hibernation. She grew up here, on the ship. Her world is as large as the confines of this ship”. Kranthi, who was presently feeling the enamel coat on the glass surface of the tea stand, fixed his gaze on the flower vase. Firmly, he devoured the details of reality as it confounded him. He was about eight years old when his parents won the grant for RCU. At this point of his recollection, as if a sponge lightens up after one squeezes it dry and releases, Kranthi stood in firm obeisance to his mother and addressed her “Mother. What is the progress on RCU 6.2? What happened to the crew of RCU 6.1?” Janaki rose up from her chair, “you must rest for a while. It is the standard protocol. The mission requires you to be free of emotions. I won’t be bothering you with further details now. Do rest son.”
Chapter 2
“Here. Mother asked me to drop these with you” shravani had put on thin framed glasses now. Embossed in crimson gold were letters that read - Recreating Controlled Universe, RCU, sixth edition and version 1 - the purple coloured leather case on the book was a grand make with borders sealed with Hyderabad Nizams’ signature style embroidery. Resting the giant book on mahogany table, kranthi flipped it around; the backside had gargoyles carved as if on wood on either side with Charminar’s towers ascending from the flames. Kranthi recollected the image. During his childhood, back in the real universe, it was the year 2442 A.D and Hyderabad was under the influence of charismatic aroma of Nizams again. The symbol meant resurrection of Hyderabad. On the first page were words “RCU 6.1 made way to street wide protests and agitations. The crew aboard RCU 6.1 has absconded. It is now for you, the chosen crew of RCU 6.2, to recreate a universe for humanity. Hyderabad is the only promise of hope the present universe has.”
The rest of the book was about how it all began; the quest for a new universe, one that is bearable, predictable and contingent upon human beings. RCU 1 began with a crew of 9 professional scientists. The mission was very promising, evidence for fostering space and time together as underpinnings of a new universe was found. But as a general rule, the scientists had to flip back into the present universe. This necessitated flow of knowledge, information transfer, to the present universe. But on the second arrival, in 2256 A.D, in the observatory atop the Golconda fort, cracks in the sink of gravity pool were observed. It was through this sink, with the aid of six mammoth gravitrons that the journey of RCU was made possible. On the 1st of June 2257, sharp ricocheting of the walls of observatory was followed with the towering collapse of the gravity sink. The RCU 1 was only successful till the first visitation.
The whole world mourned in silence. There were asteroid mishaps in Germany. The Americas were under threatening debris of a mysterious giant asteroid that circled earth instead of dropping flat out. Solar storms engulfed planet for about a decade. Technological advances were sporadic, frequent and noncommittal. The government collapsed everywhere; people were dying of sun burns and choking themselves of metallic dust. It was at this point in time that a rare atavistic recurrence of spikes in never seen solidarity was exhibited by a lonesome city, Hyderabad in India, a country that no one bothered to know about until then. These people called themselves Hyderabadis, couple of MBA grads, couple of research inclined scientists and seven software engineers were part of the program initially. While the rest of the world regressed and collapsed under the threat of unpredictable universe, Hyderabad rose to its crowning grandeur of the past. The MBA grads pooled in amassing brand for their program called ‘Nizam resurrection’. But soon in about ten years time, with seven million supporters, the program was renamed “RCU”. It was still dubious, nobody, save the original members, seriously believed in a miraculous escapade into a new universe.
Yes, this universe was shrinking rapidly, and yes, entropy increased. But what was the solution? It was in the year 2187 that it happened. There was a meteor strike that engulfed Charminar in flames. It was a serious blow to the morale of the RCU. But in the debris, under the charminar was found a treasure full of diamonds and rubies. This incident led the then government, Indian Congress, to establish the most technologically advanced project the planet has ever seen, and costliest of all, scientific or otherwise, in Hyderbad.
The outcome was very promising until RCU1’s imminent collapse and the ashen gravity sink at Golconda. But Hyderabad pulled itself together, soon work began on reconstruction and within fifteen years, the observatory was rebuilt. This time, it was fostered with advances in technology. But RCU2, 3 and 4 failed one after another, all due to costly human errors. The crew aboard the last 3 attempts exhibited signs of distress and anxiety which led to rapturous jubilation at times and melancholic fervour at other times. Human emotions were blamed for the last three attempts. So the crew aboard RCU 5 was hibernated from the beginning. Only under great need would a member be resuscitated. It was a crew of 3 members. They were the only successful RCU since the first attempt in 2250. They had successfully created a tiny universe with 1 planet the size of Venus. It lasted for as long as the crew did in the mission, and collapsed as soon as the crew flipped back into the present universe after 3 years of the mission underway. ‘Learnings’ from RCU 5 were implemented in RCU 6.1. The idea was to let the crew have enough time on their hands. So the gravity sink was maintained interminably. But the crew RCU 6.1 never returned. So the crew RCU 6.2 was sent on a parallel mission. Crew aboard 6.2 was a family chosen from Hyderabad. A young married couple, in their early twenties were sought out, applications poured in and a family was chosen and trained before the commencing of the mission.
Their son Kranthi, who was about eight years old at the time, was hibernated. Parents were instructed to resuscitate him only when it was time. the idea behind sending a family was, to eschew emotional breakdown of the crew, which was primarily responsible for failures in last 3 attempts before RCU 5.
Chapter 3
“Son, we have been able to annihilate about 90% of the entropy packets in ‘Universe Cherry’” Ramanna, adjusting a scarlet coloured round knob on the dashboard, rested his gaze on Kranthi. The walls of control room were slant and the roof ‘V’ shaped. “What model of universe are we attaining?” after a moment’s pause, added “Dad” in a tone of inquiry.
“Universe Cherry is a finite one son. I thought you knew as much. Entropy packets are dealt with only if it’s a finite universe, for disorder increases with time in a finite universe” flipping the pages of the RCU 6.1 manual, Ramanna addressed his son without lifting his gaze. “Mom tells me you had to wrestle for a while fixing the space time fabric” kranthi exchanged a glance with his mother as if to seek approval and continued “in the first couple of years”.
“Yes. A newly introduced system is jittery initially, and has to be stabilised with injection of right quantities of temperature and pressure. It’s nothing unusual” shravani replied. It was as if she sensed a tone of accusation and felt an urgent need to defend her father. “Yes son. Your sister was not born yet. When we introduced space and time into the gravity pool, there were a multitude of entropy bubbles. We chose the smallest one, for we believed it would be wise to deal with the smaller one. Only later we realised, the smaller ones are the most stressful ones”.
“Dad. Let me ask you this. Why not take the largest of the packets” kranthi opined “less stressful packets…”
Smile broke from Ramanna’s lips as he corrected his son “the larger ones would have reconciled with pressure and temperature and so, a universe built on it would be harder to customise to our needs” clearing his throat, he proceeded to explain “we catch hold of the nascent packets, and impregnate it with our unique customization needs”
Janaki who was merely watching the father and son conversing as if they were strangers, interrupted to explain “kranthi, to restore stability in Universe Cherry, we had to fix the ruptures that tore away the space time fabric. Knitting was done with gravity coils where we could.”
“when I was growing up, father was tirelessly fixing the entropy packets” shravani noted “time dilation is a tricky area. Mother and I have been trying to work around the traditional method of fixing this” in an interrogating tone that resonated with restlessness, she added “Dad. What is brother going to work on?”
Ramanna rose up from his chair, with a military gait, approached Kranthi “Son, you will begin work on RCU 6.2.1”
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