Chapter 1
Renu was about eight years old when she was first introduced to the calculator. It was the summer holidays when she found it in the dusty corner of her bedroom cupboard. Her palms were so small at the time that she had to stretch them both to hold it. The calculator wore a pale white frame; time had erased all the numbers on the rubber buttons. She carried it to her father who nonchalantly nested it in the burrow of his left palm and punched on it methodically with his index finger. Just as a woodpecker pecking at a dead bark looks away in befuddlement, after flipping the calculator upside down, beating it against his palm, her father lifted his head to meet Renu’s eyes. He was about to tell her that it had lived its useful life. But her dark eyes had worn an expectant gaze, so he replaced the dead pencil cells with new ones and repeated the beating about.
Ten minutes later, he drew the child closer, rested the calculator before her chin and pointed to the rectangular block on the panel. On the top right corner, over the block that her father indicated, she noticed the words ‘solar powered’ written on it. Perhaps Renu could try her luck under the sun. And yes she did. After lunch, when her parents had retreated into the bedroom for an afternoon nap, she slipped out of the house and took the narrow stairs to reach the balcony upstairs. Here, she squinted all day long at the reflecting panel of the calculator as she held it under the sun.
Later that night, after supper, Renu returned to the balcony. She laid her back on a mattress that had been left there by her mother in the sun, for Renu had wetted it last night. She began counting the stars and went on for a while until a beep disturbed her. It was the calculator; it had acquired a blue glow on its panel. A smile escaped the little princess’ plum lips as she swaddled the blue instrument with the silk pleats of her gown and raced back downstairs.
Back in her bedroom, she fiddled with the instrument for a while until she realised that it bore strange features. A button with two swords crossed on its head read ‘enter’. Renu pressed her little finger on it and a stream of incoherent blue numbers flashed on the screen. They conjured up on the left end, ran along the length of the strip and slipped into oblivion on the right. A couple of minutes later, the screen went blank and a blue cloudy daub receded into the background until it shrunk to the size of a pin prick. Then it blinked twice and grew outwards until it turned into a foggy cloud and later into a number.
For about two weeks, Renu dabbled with the aid of her instrument in a world of curiosity with no returns. It won’t respond to genuine mathematical queries, won’t respond to sun bathing, and won’t respond to a hard thrashing. The same irreverent display of a blue mist shrinking into a point and growing into a number; it depressed Renu. She shared her embarrassing tale of dejection with her father. Every single night, he patiently listened to her. Pinching her cheeks, he showed her back to the bedroom, smoothed the cotton blanket tightly around her, and patted on her back until she fell asleep.
Months passed and the summer holidays came to an end. Renu had by now pushed the memory of calculator into the far recesses of her brain. It was school time again; Renu celebrated her ninth birthday that may. In her fourth standard now, she made new friends; bought a blue ink pen for the first time. Pencils, her class teacher instructed, were still to be used when one filled the blanks or drew lines in the textbooks. Back home, she found it amusing to open a new textbook in the middle and press her nose into the clean split between the pages. With the smooth pages rubbing her cheeks, she would smell the distinct whiff of a new textbook. In doing so, one evening in the mid of June, when the first of the rains came down pouring around the house, she noticed a series of numbers in her maths textbook. This series, after a bit of contemplation, revealed a familiar setting. She had seen them before.
The numbers began with 2,3,5,7 and went on till 83, 89 and 97. Title of the chapter read ‘prime numbers’ and an explanation of what makes a prime number followed in couple of paragraphs. That made no sense to her. She carried her musings to bed and into her dream. Between disconnected flashes of her dream, she noticed the blue glow of her calculator. The strange interplay of dreamscape took her from a hiding spot where she was holding the blue instrument, to her school where everyone around her was hiding their faces in the new textbooks, and to her father’s writing desk that presently floated in air. In the next moment, two of her friends grabbed her by the shoulder and whisked her out of the school, and off they went to a factory that manufactured blue ink pens. Then there was the familiar beep; she slipped her hands into the side pockets of her green uniform and pulled out the calculator which had metamorphosed into an old bearded face that projected outside the panel. The face coughed as sparrows, one by one, flew out of the beard. And the face cracked, its cheeks pale and ashen; and it spat a blue viscous fluid which settled on the panel beneath the face.
Now, the old haggard face melted away to leave behind it, the original plastic frame of the calculator. The pale blue slime receded into the background and almost vanished. Then it blinked twice, gained colour, thickened, grew sharp, distinct and left a number ‘97’ staring into Renu’s face. Then the dream alternated between her running around the house chasing a pigeon and her mother beseeching with her to pee before going to bed. The pigeon came to a halt in its flight and Renu who was waving her hands about, rushed to the bathroom. With the sound of the pigeon fretfully boring its beak into the bathroom window about her, she relieved the bursting bladder of its predicament.
Then a distant voice of her mother’s admonishing voice came her way; the pigeon cooed and left. Drawing her knickers tight around her, Renu stepped out of the bathroom to face her mother who had by now begun shouting at the top of her voice. A hand, two hands pressed on her chest and she woke up to find out that her mother was pulling the sheets away from her. She had again wetted her sheets. She heard her mother say ‘didn’t I tell you to pee before going to bed?’
In the chaos that ensued with her mother rolling the sheets into a heap by the bathroom corner and her father ransacking the cupboard in search for a fresh pair of knickers, Renu’s dream melted away. Like an ice cream that begins melting around the perimeter, the memory of her dream failed her as to the beginning and the end. The only pieces that remained with her were the bits that included the haggard old man, her chasing the pigeon, and the number ‘97’.
She had a dreamless sleep for the rest of the night. Next morning at school, Renu deliberated on the bits and pieces of her dream. She restlessly spent the rest of the day; she longed to go home and get her hands on the blue instrument that has invaded her dreams. Later than evening, with the calculator propped in her hands, she stared longingly at it. Hoping for the bearded old man to conjure up, she prodded the button with crossed swords painted on its roof. The instrument whirred, whizzed and performed its blue mist routine and left a number at the end. It was 79.
There was a power outage again. For a moment, she rolled her eyes at the ceiling fan which was coming to a stop. As she tried to keep at pace with the swing of the fan blades, the numbers came pouring down on the floor of her mind like broad rain drops. 97, 89, 83…the numbers that the blue instrument popped out, were following a pattern. They were all prime numbers from her maths textbook. She recollected that 97 was the first number she noticed on the panel that night in the summer when she rested her back on the hitherto wetted mattress. And the others followed; in the following week, when she was still coming to terms with the instrument, it popped out 89 followed with 83 the next day and so on until it was 79 when she threw it back into the cupboard.
Now it was still on 79. The prime numbers in reverse order. What would happen when the numbers reach 2? Will it rewind? Or were the numbers an indication of something altogether dramatic, like an ancient message taped into the instrument to indicate an apocalypse?
Chapter 2
“The universe is a mysterious place. The fall of a glorious universe is always saddening. Seasonally, a tall tree meets death naturally in a rainforest, and clears way for new life.” Renu’s father rubbed his palms together before continuing “And so it is that our universe has to die. You see, the death of a matured universe will clear way for nascent universes” Renu lowered her spectacles “yes, the shrubs and vines and grasses of the forest grow strategically. Some with broad leaves to feed voraciously on sunlight; some with supine stems crawl up the stiff barks of old trees, to reach great heights with little investment; some give up solid roots to tall stems; and still others spread their roots carnivorously rendering it impossible for others to grow around them.”
Renu’s father stepped out into the hall while Renu changed to get ready for the evening party. With a singar kumkum tube rolled up in her fist, pinching the pleats of her sari into the waistband, Renu evaluated herself in the bow shaped dressing table’s mirror. Her hair was drawn up tight into a braid. The swollen braid bared beneath the nape, tiny frail hair that was too delicate to pucker up into the roll. With her back facing the mirror, she spun her neck and rolled her eyes over the green blouse to make amends to it. The broad golden embroidery curved over her pelvis like a mountainous road bending around the circumference of a highland before running up to meet the swell of her bosom.
He raised his voice from the hall. “So our dearly universe that we live in, has to die eventually. New life springs up in the forest, and life bearers selfishly outgrow each other,” here he seemed to take a pause and slow down a bit. “Likewise, nascent universes outgrow each other in the event of the natural demise of a mature universe.”
Renu was a woman of science. She knew that her father was weaving the specifics of science into an analogical mood, but she felt the need to concretely state the facts. Elegantly dressed, she stepped into the hall. “What does a universe feed on?” Renu said to her father. He replied “a universe feeds on entropy just as green life in forests feed on sunlight. All the universes, with the aid of their evolved and multi varied strategies, grow up fast, feed on as much entropy as they can, and try to make it difficult for others.” Noticing that Renu wore an expression of expectancy like she did when she was a small girl, he pressed on slowly “Life on planet evolves with the selfish genes rendering their vehicles, life forms, a change. A change in every generation would enable the life forms to survive better, find a better mate, and eventually pass on the genes to the next generation. Similarly universes evolve with space-time apportioning their respective universes with fundamental forces in such a way that it would enable them to compete with other universes.”
“So, you are telling me, all the species on the planet compete with each other,” Renu cleared her throat “so that the selfish genes in each of them maximise their chances of finding themselves in the next generation.” Here she paused and stared into her father’s eyes as if to seek affirmation. He nodded and she proceeded to finish her interpretation “And so do the universes. They compete and evolve so that the selfish space-time can find itself in the next generation. Space-time of each universe (as each species on planet) manufactures fundamental forces in such a way that it maximises its chances to find itself in the generation.”
Renu’s father thought that the matter was settled and put to rest. But she would not let it go. She pressed him for more. “Lions have evolved, they got fiercer and stronger; fishes evolved to grow better fins and gills; humans evolved to grow better brains; bats, whales and butterflies – all the species on planet have evolved differently to maximise their chances of survival. Now, in this respect, how did our universe manage to evolve? ” Her father, seated before the dinner table, dragged a bottle of water close to him. He clarified “space-time in our universe has manufactured better fundamental forces just as selfish genes in species manufactures better claws, tails, brains, fins and bodies”
“Right then, what seems to be the trouble” Renu adjusted the brooch over her left shoulder that pinned the blouse and saree together “why does it bother you that the number on my blue calculator reads 3?”
With a morbid expression, he explained “Cancerous virus mutates live cells into totally unrecognisable forms, so much so that the host’s body is left confused as to the nature of the attack. It grows rapidly, it breeds, thrives and flourishes inside the host’s body; it feeds on host from inside out. It kills the host and feeds on its carcass. The virus evolves and adapts to do its job better and better with every passing generation.” Calm evening breeze was unsettling the window curtains. “A seemingly innocuous force in our universe had been feeding on it for ages. Scientists are calling it, the dark force. Our scientists have still not got to terms with it. They do not know its nature. As it turns out, the host universe is confused. The dark force is eating its way into the host universe like a cancerous virus.”
He concluded “It is time. We are getting closer to our end.”
Rain was pattering hard on the window sashes. A sudden gloom overcame her; dark clouds loomed over the horizon. The rain was sudden; just a moment ago, sky was clear with sparrows and pigeons pecking at their wings. Clasping telephone wires and rusted iron grills under their webbed feet, birds flitted peacefully across the crimson painted horizon. But now, she noticed rain water gathering up over the cantilevered roof of her window. The transparent beads floated on the underside of the roof like jelly. There was nothing to it but stay home.
Near her feet, a golden thread leaked out of the starched ribbon of embroidery. Caught in the exposed wooden toes of divan, the leaked thread puckered the ribbon behind it. Leaning to the floor, Renu Snapped the leak; daintily she raised the thread to meet her eyes, and paused it there for a while. But her disoriented move cast the kumkum tube to the floor. The tube spluttered vermilion paste like a withered creature spat blood; slowly the paste melted outside and Renu did not notice a thing.
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