Immortals (19 page)

Professor Ananthakrishnan was shocked to hear this, but had to agree with Professor Nair on further scrutiny of the data pouring out on the screen in front of him.

‘Could it be distribution of an out-bound signal? Something that was beamed out from Earth and is being beamed back to Jai’s head?’

Professor Nair was dumbstruck. He whispered back in a conspiratorial tone:

‘You are thinking mind-control and stuff, aren’t you?’

‘Kind of. I do not know how else to explain it. Rays converging on to someone’s brain and conferring on him extraordinary abilities; abilities that are unheard of, wilder than even the most bizarre in the paranormal circles. I still can’t explain the rest of what is happening to him. How that is making him cheat death or to reset time itself, is beyond me at present. We need to analyse these signals and see what we come up with. Do you think these signals have been sent out from Earth? Some classified or fringe experiment of some kind maybe? A lot of governments have dabbled in it at some point or other. The US and the USSR had rival armies of psychics doing thought experiments during the height of the Cold War.’

‘I doubt that. As far as I can tell, this signal is unique because it lacks the reverberating quality of other signals that are sent and bounced back by the GPS satellites. It does not seem to be stemming from an upload,’ Professor Nair replied, as his mind furiously considered the various possibilities.

‘So, what is the locus that is feeding the signals to the GPS satellites?’ Professor Ananthakrishnan asked Nair, just framing the unknown rather than really expecting an answer.

‘Well, that is the proverbial million dollar question, isn’t it?’ Professor Nair replied perfunctorily, still busy looking at the data being collected by the computer.

They kept dissecting the raw data and improvising algorithms to analyse the data that kept streaming on their screen. It was another hour before another brainwave hit Professor Nair

‘Is this signal unique?’

‘Hmm?’ Professor Ananthakrishnan mumbled, not understanding Nair’s question.

‘I meant, is this signal being uniquely sent to Jai, or are there other locations where it is being sent to?’

‘You mean are there other people who are receiving the broadcast of this signal? How can we find that? You mean Jai may not be the only immortal on Earth. There may be others here, with similar capabilities. I am already getting goose-bumps thinking about all of this.’

Nair pondered the question for a moment.

‘Well, the signal is uniquely situated on the electromagnetic spectrum, isn’t it? We can make use of its unique signature to see if other such signals are leaving the GPS satellites.’

‘Wow! You are a nocturnal creature, Nair. The night brings out the best in you. Do you have that kind of access to the GPS sat system?’

‘I have a limited academic access and I think that would help us locate the broad region, rather than pin-pointing any other deviant individuals like Jai.’

‘Let’s do that. Let us first know if there is anywhere else this signal is going to. We may have a legion or an army of these immortals. We may be dealing with something much bigger than just Jai and his accidental immortality.’

Professor Nair retrieved his access codes for the GPS system and fed in the data, looking for any broadcast on a frequency similar to Jai’s. The results were instantaneous and startling.

That is the problem with computers – they do not pause for effect. They heed to the commands given and spit out the results as soon as they have them.

There were only two results on the computer. One was Byalalu, Bangalore, India, and the other read Noyabrsk, Russia.

Both the professors looked at each other, perplexed.

Prof. Nair clicked the lower button and a map of northern Russia appeared on the screen with a tag saying
‘Noyabrsk’
.

‘Northern Russia! Now, what could we be having there?’

Professor Nair shrugged. He punched in a few strokes and got the Wikipedia page on Noyabrsk. It was a bustling oil and mining business centre in northern Russia. There was a recent burst of news about Noyabrsk, and it was all about a Sonya Ludvigsdottir, heiress to the international Hantel Corporation, who had apparently been kidnapped from Noyabrsk a few days ago.

On Professor Nair’s computer, the GPS localised images were displayed on the Google Earth software. Professor Nair zoomed in on the Google Earth image and the signal further localised to an urban landscape. On further zooming, they could isolate the signal to a posh business centre in Noyabrsk, with wide four-lane roads and a number of high-rises. Scaling up the zoom factor once more gave them one of the many high-rises. Nair flipped up the zoom further and the signal went off the map. It was not possible to get any further with the signal.

‘Get the address of that building,’ Professor Ananthakrishnan directed Nair, by now mesmerised by their progress on the screen.

Nair switched over to the map from the satellite version and clicked on the address.

Hotel Park

It was the address of a posh five-star hotel in Noyabrsk.

It was almost five in the morning. They needed to get Jai away from there and back into the guest house before daybreak. They could not afford to get caught with a fugitive from the law within the premises of IDSN, once the regular hustle bustle of the centre started. The official timing was from nine, but people came in much earlier, some as early as seven to set up the work they had to do for the day.

They backed up all the data that was gathered, and erased their footprint from the lab’s computer. Jai was unhooked from the wires and was led away to the guest house.

‘We’ve come up with lots of different leads. You need to get some rest while we work on the data that we have gathered. In fact, I think I’ll take a short nap, too, while Nair works on it. We may have some answers for you tonight.’

Henna smiled when she heard this. She held on to Jai’s arm and gave it a light squeeze. Jai looked back at Henna and smiled too.

‘It’s about time I had some answers. Thanks, Professor. I shall always be thankful to you,’ Jai said to the professor.

‘Hey, kid,’ the professor ruffled Jai’s hair playfully, ‘you saved my life. This is the least I could do. And don’t think that I have not gained anything from doing all of this. You are perhaps the most exciting science that I have done in my entire life.’

Jai and Henna were puzzled and excited to hear this but the Professor declined to give them any further details before analysing the data further. They went back to their room, and tired after a wakeful night, they slept almost as soon as their heads touched their pillows.

***

The professor had been working almost non-stop for thirty-six hours, including the overnight drive from Chennai to Bangalore the previous night. His ‘short nap’ stretched to about six hours.

He was awakened by a sharp knock on his door at around one in the afternoon. He woke up groggily and opened the door to find a visibly excited Nair at the door.

‘Hey, what are you doing here? Aren’t you supposed to be at work now?’

‘Lunch break. Anyways, I was too excited to wait until evening. I had to tell you now.’ Nair was literally shaking, agog with excitement.

‘What happened?’ asked the professor while letting Nair into the room, where he paced up and down, too keyed up to sit in the chair indicated by Professor Ananthakrishnan. He was clutching a piece of typed paper, crushing it in his grip.

‘What’s in your hand?’ Professor Ananthakrishnan asked Nair.

‘Yeah… I’ll tell you about this,’ Nair waved the paper in the professor’s face and continued, ‘but let me start from the beginning.’

The professor nodded and sat on his bed.

Nair went on:

‘I was too excited to go to my routine work. I kept at the data that we had generated in the night. When I did not make any headway there, I thought I should take a look at the Noyabrsk angle. I followed news items on Noyabrsk in the recent past and that woman Sonya Ludvigsdottir’s kidnapping is all over the regional news there.’

‘Who’s that?’

‘We saw her name today morning when we pulled up the Wiki page on Noyabrsk, remember?’ Nair reminded Professor Ananthakrishnan.

‘Anyway, it seems that Sonya was apparently kidnapped about ten days ago from the same Park Hotel, to which our signal is homing down. That meant that the signal is being broadcast to someone in that hotel. We know that it could not be Sonya. So, I turned my attention to who is in that hotel at this time. I put that and the fantastical story of Jai, which you had told me earlier, together. I made a fair assumption that someone with the gift of immortality will have as fantastical a life as your Jai had been leading. The inescapable conclusion that I have reached is that besides Jai, the only other immortal person to which the signals are being sent, must be Ludvig Hanssen, the owner and CEO of the Hantel Corporation and father of Sonya Ludvigsdottir.’

‘What? Why Ludvig Hanssen? Is he in Noyabrsk?’

‘Yes. In Noyabrsk and camped in the Hotel Park for the past ten days.’

‘It could be anyone else in the hotel, a concierge or a bellboy of the hotel too. Why Ludvig?’

‘It is because the stuff of Ludvig’s life is beyond us mortals.’ Nair’s pitch was measured, almost theatrical. He continued in his dramatic tone:

‘Ludvig started from scratch to now owning the largest telecommunications empire in the world. He has an adventurous streak, to put it mildly, and is the only person to have been to both the poles, solo; to both have conquered Mount Everest and visited the Mariana Trench; to have flown solo round the world in a twin-seater and to have circumnavigated the globe in a sailboat. His company has survived three takeovers and seven major corporate scandals. It has survived more than six hundred and fifty serious litigations in courts all over the world and most remarkably, he has fought most of his battles after the age of fifty. Now, you tell me – is there a better candidate to be harbouring the fantastic immortality trait than Ludvig Hanssen? A man who has literally cheated death scores of times and has harnessed his gift of immortality and foreknowledge to amass an enormous business empire. You have to weigh in the benefits of this gift. You could be king on this Earth if you had the power that Jai has. And Ludvig is a king in his own right.’

Nair ended his little speech with a grand flourish and he stopped just short of a modest bow in front of his imagined audience.

‘But that doesn’t give us enough credence to go to Ludvig with this incredible story.’

‘No, that does not. But this does.’ Nair said as he waved the paper in his hand at Professor Ananthakrishnan.

‘What’s that?’ Professor Ananthakrishnan reached for the piece of paper, which Nair handed to him.

‘I found a short string of data that was out of sync with all the other data. A short string of data that could be decoded by a simple numerical substitution. It held a message, in good old bloody English!’

Professor Ananthakrishnan was too busy reading the paper to acknowledge Nair’s words.

His face was almost ashen white when he looked up from the paper.

Nair just stood there looking at him, nodding his head vigorously.

***

They knocked at the door of Jai’s room together. Jai was still sleeping. He awoke, stumbled to the door, and opened it a crack. Jai saw both the men of science standing outside his door, literally shaking in their boots.

He opened the door and both the men rushed inside.

Jai took another look at their faces and asked:

‘What happened? Why are you guys so agitated? Is everything alright?’

‘Everything’s alright. In fact I think we have most of your answers,’ Nair replied, barely containing his excitement.

Jai looked mutely at Professor Ananthakrishnan, who made Jai sit down on a chair. Henna had woken up by then and was sitting up in bed, listening to the men.

Nair continued his excited recounting:

‘The signals coming into your head are extra-terrestrial. The signals are alien, probably from an alien in some other world. You do not belong here and you have to go back there urgently. You are the leader and they need you.’

Jai did not understand a single word that was just said.

‘What? What am I? Where am I from? I did not understand anything.’ Jai was scared; of what, he did not yet understand.

Professor Ananthakrishnan tapped Nair’s shoulder and motioned him to keep quiet.

‘Jai, let me.’ Jai looked up to him.

‘There are signals coming into your head; these signals are coming from somewhere out there.’ Professor Ananthakrishnan pointed his finger up and Jai looked at the ceiling.

‘From where?’

‘From somewhere out there. We had no idea where “there” is, but I think we know now. These signals are probably responsible for resetting your life each time you die, sending you back in time so that you can live through your life a bit differently, thus avoiding your death next time round.’