Amballore House (34 page)

Some of the properties ended up in the hands of property grabbers with no questions asked, because a period of anarchy followed Britain’s departure. One of the properties that the British owned but fell into wrong hands immediately after they left was Amballore House. The area around Amballore House slid toward decline, and this helped unruly characters to take over unauthorized properties. The nearby tile factory went out of business, people moved out of Amballore, the temple was abandoned, and the paddy fields became the pauper’s graveyard. Drug dealers took over the area because of the anarchy that prevailed, with none to question them for fear of losing their own lives.

The dominant drug dealer in the area, Sam-Som, took over Amballore House without having a bona fide property deed. He just entered the property, called it his own, and established ownership illegally. Investigators were aware that the mansion was left over
from the British era and that there was no bona fide owner to the property, even though they came across a fake property deed issued to Sam-Som. They, however, never came across record of a sale to Sam-Som that would unequivocally have established his authentic ownership. This meant that he was illegally occupying the property.

The formation of Kerala State and the subsequent scenario of the plausible adoption of universal property laws instilled fear in land grabbers. They foresaw the state coming up with rules to round up unoccupied properties so that these no-man’s lands could be confiscated and then sold to individuals or organizations at fair market price. It was not unlikely for the Kerala government to recoup abandoned properties by the British and provide them with bona fide status by issuing valid property or parcel numbers and deeds, with intent to sell to interested parties—so the property grabbers feared. The government needed money as always, especially in its infancy. The Kerala government had just been formed and needed funds.

Many people prepared to fight back. Sam-Som had claimed ownership to the mansion, but his feathers were ruffled upon learning of the government’s moves. He decided to sell the property to get rid of the problem once and for all and to let the buyer have the headache of handling any legal ramification. His strategy was to jumpstart the sale process prior to the government action taking hold. He employed real estate brokers to sell Amballore House.

But then he had another reason to sell, a sinister reason at that.

From the era from 5000 BC to the British-empire years, aliens did not conduct their operations from a designated headquarters in Kerala. They moved from place to place, also moving the wormhole to their new residence. However, they decided upon acquiring a permanent property to stage their operations, and this happened around the time Kerala was formed in 1956. The extraterrestrials were looking for a secluded property, and they liked what they saw in Amballore House. They were aware that the property was abandoned by the British upon their departure and decided to take over. Amballore House came under the jurisdiction of the aliens in 1956.

How the ETs and Sam-Som coexisted at the same property was enmeshed in mystery and intrigue. Different conjectures were proposed. One was that Sam-Som was leasing his property to the ETs until he found a buyer. He was on constant lookout for a buyer. The second conjecture was that the ETs were unaware of Sam-Som’s ownership of the property (albeit illegal) and therefore took over when the British left. They probably became aware of Sam-Som’s presence after they took over the property but continued to stay, defying the drug lord’s ownership. Sam-Som’s power could not easily scare away the ETs. He probably tried to evict them but with no success. Yet another conjecture stated that they became aware of each other’s presence in the mansion and decided to coexist, keeping out of each other’s way.

It puzzled them why Sam-Som was not staying at the property, unless he was leasing the property to aliens. Maybe he did not want to stay there, making himself an easy target for the law enforcement agency to capture him, since the law was on the lookout for him for various crimes, including murder. According to Amballore’s citizens, Sam-Som would not stay at the same address for more than a night or so, making himself hard to catch.

It was by sheer coincidence that the aliens and the drug dealer homed in on the same property, Amballore House, at around the same time.

Things were going smoothly for the ETs until legal issues started popping up, issues related to disappearance and murder at the property.

Speculation still remained the sole source to throw light on the mysteries at Amballore House. Sam-Som was known to be behind many crimes in Amballore, and so everyone’s eyes turned to him as the possible culprit. He was a natural suspect, having built notoriety in and around Amballore for running his illegal drug operation marked by nefarious schemes. He had orchestrated many crimes, including murder. Law officials were investigating him all the time on one case or another.

One theory put forward tried hard to appear to be clothed in reason
but was nothing but conjecture. Proponents of the theory stated that Sam-Som was behind the honeymooners’ disappearance and mass murders at the mansion, and not the aliens.

This accusation gave rise to a contradiction. How could Sam-Som, who was eager to sell his property, potentially kill the buyers, who did a favor to him by buying the property? He should be happy for them to buy his property. His headache of having to deal with the new land regulations would be gone; his problem would be the new homeowner’s problem; end of the story. There was no earthly reason for killing a buyer. He was not possibly going to gain anything out of this hard-to-swallow possibility.

On the other hand, it was the ETs who would gain by eliminating the buyers. They would have no one to share their mansion with, granting them privacy and secrecy to conduct their clandestine operations of abducting scientists, and housing them at the mansion. The presence of new buyers at the mansion was interpreted as inconvenience to aliens, and was thought to be reason enough to eliminate them.

More questions popped up. Were the ETs and Sam-Som colluding? Were they partners in crime? Were they collaborators of an artfully planned and meticulously engineered vile scheme? Were they scratching each other’s back?

4
A KAMIKAZE MISSION

The bureau came to the conclusion that the revelation of who the culprit was rested with the online recording of events at the property. It was purely a speculation that there was an ongoing round-the-clock recording of the day-to-day events at the mansion. However, it was worth a try to pursue that assumption, based upon the fact that it was a heavily guarded mansion shrouded in mysteries, and therefore there was a good possibility that such a feature existed.

If only one could access the recording, the puzzle would be solved. For this, they would have to trespass upon the facility and break into its computer system. There was no way in hell that anyone loving his life would do such a thing. However, the absence of any witnesses on the night of the Honeymoon Disappearance meant that breaking into the futuristic technology center’s computer system was the only way to uncover the foul play that took place.

The bureau mused over sending some of their smartest investigators to the property to confiscate the live records. However, they were faced with a dilemma: it was going to be a losing proposition. Here was a futuristic mansion with unheard-of technologies, housing a very smart couple, Vareed and Eli, as the ambassadors of the aliens, and probably hiding a large number of robots. The bureau was no match for Amballore House, which was an institution in itself.

The bureau hatched a plan to send a spy to Amballore House nevertheless. The plan was for the spy to enter the mansion compound surreptitiously. The bureau speculated that the Vareed-Eli team would probably be away, attending to intergalactic affairs somewhere in a remote corner of the universe.

Once inside, the spy would start looking for the entrance to the underground facility. Nobody was aware of such an entrance. They could not figure out this secret in spite of their painstaking attempts over the years. If the only means to go to the underground facility was an elevator inside the aboveground structure of the mansion, then one would have to steal himself into the main building and
access it.

Even if the spy managed to find an entrance to Amballore House underworld, he would still be haunted by additional roadblocks, such as confronting robots guarding Amballore House. These robots would not be sleeping, unlike their human counterparts, who usually fell asleep as soon as they started guarding something. One could not hope to forcefully give a sedative to an ever-alert robot. One could not spike a glass of water with a narcotic and give it to a robot, hoping to knock it unconscious. To make a long story short, the robots functioned as impenetrable security, making the intruder’s scheme virtually futile.

The heavily fortified mansion posed a challenge for anyone trying to get in. Therefore the plan for a break-in was shelved. The bureau, by stroke of genius, proposed a plan for the spy to be deliberately captured by the robots. The spy then would be able to see the whole mansion, assuming the robot would take him for interrogation to the underground facility. This should give the spy chance to find out where the online movie collection was kept. He would promptly steal the collection and report back his findings, assuming he would be released by the robot.

The success of the scheme depended upon the validation of many premises that underpinned the discovery mission. There were lots of “ifs” to be confirmed to make it a viable mission.

However, the bureau was insistent on the possibility of online recordings of the events of the crime nights, stashed away in some computer in the underground facility. It was too tantalizing a possibility to give up any plan to retrieve it, and the bureau was determined to leave no stone unturned in the pursuit of its discovery.

The bureau decided to get a spy and prepare him or her to be captured. To begin with, they had to come up with a suitable candidate willing to risk his or her life, which was what it boiled down to, if that individual dared to enter the mansion and face the consequences. The bureau posted the following ad in the Amballore
Times
:

We are looking for a daredevil person willing to undertake a kamikaze mission. He or she should be a person with death-defying mental setup, recklessly and insanely courageous, with probably no worldly attachments to make him or her think twice before self-sacrifice.

This individual is someone who wholeheartedly believes in the principle found in Philippians: “To me, to die is gain and to live is Christ”—or at least in the former part, “To me, to die is gain.”

You should be willing to die, believe it or not! You are someone blessed with a mind-set to undertake a one-way trip to a planet far away in the outer fringes of the galaxy, never wishing to return.

Mind you, this is not the task that you are getting hired for. But, if you think you are qualified for this task, you will definitely be qualified for the task we have for you.

Your reward will be your own satisfaction in executing the mission, and it cannot be measured in worldly terms. Of course, we will pay you handsomely if you survive the dangerous mission and come back to us alive.

Remember there is no life worth living if there is no mission or goal. By embracing a mission that defies death itself, you are embracing a life worth living for, a life worth dying for.

This ad attracted widespread attention, even though a good majority of readers had a hearty laugh at the agency for looking for someone willing to die. “In your dreams!” a lot of them said to the newspaper they were reading, which flapped in agreement.

After a long search, they found someone of the mental setup they were looking for. They found someone willing to go to the ends of the earth to accomplish what he was after.

Even though he had a typical Kerala name a mile long, everyone called him DD, meaning “daredevil.”

DD entered the mansion after midnight. He was able to scale the perimeter wall, crawl over it like a cat, and enter the complex.

As soon as he jumped from the wall to the complex grounds, someone was waiting for him in the darkness, not unexpectedly. It was a robot who had detected DD while he was climbing the wall. It had been the bureau’s hope that he would be greeted by a robot upon his arrival. The first phase of the plan, therefore, materialized.

The robot’s duty was to throw the intruder over the perimeter wall and secure the compound. However, this robot was a rebel and refused to stick to Amballore House policies. Instead of flinging him to the outside world, robot grabbed him, and dragged him over the ground like he was dragging a palm tree log to a trash bin. He was holding his right leg, which meant that DD’s entire body was dragging against the gravel and whatnot that lay around. The machine took its time, pulling the intruder calmly and naturally as if this was something that it did for its livelihood, as if it was something it did every day of its existence. The robot’s Frankenstein-like walk, dragging an unconscious man at night, was a far cry from the usual night scene of a small town like Amballore.

DD managed to wrestle away from the robot. He stood up, but not for long. The fierce blow from the robot knocked him out, and he continued to be dragged.

When DD opened his eyes, he was in the Midnight Express! The bus then flew up and transformed to a spacecraft while up in the air. It then shed its Midnight Express exterior, getting a new makeover with heavy duty transparent glass exterior. It then dived down, its front end first. Its front-end rockets fired, controlling the downward speed caused by gravity. It descended and entered the well in the complex!

The well had a false bottom that opened under a signal from the spacecraft, revealing a long tunnel through which Midnight Express descended slowly. It was a wide, circular tunnel. The tunnel travel in the spacecraft gave the impression of an elevator ride. The transparent walls of the spacecraft revealed that the tunnel offered periodic entrances to an underground building that surrounded the tunnel. In other words, the descending spacecraft functioned as an elevator cab, and the tunnel functioned as the elevator shaft. This elevator serviced a huge underground facility.