Lost in Mission

SAINT continued,"As written in your scriptures, the very cause of sorrow for human beings is trying to get into each and everything and take it on their head, and suffer. I am now going to liberate you all from sorrow. So, by now you should be convinced that I am your God, the God as described in your scriptures."

Everyone in that room was silent and expressionless. They looked shocked at the thought of the future, as proposed by SAINT.

I laughed very loudly and told SAINT, "For us human beings, Hope is God, Freedom is God. Our emotions make us realize at some point of time whether we are on the right or wrong path. The very essence of having emotions is to

Chandrasekhar N

express them. It is those emotions that tell our family, friends and fellow beings how much we care about them and vice versa. Emotions are a very essential aspect of human life. Success lies in balancing them, not abolishing them. And if you talk about our rituals and practices, such as worshipping god and praying, that is exactly what keeps us going. There are so many underlying principles and concepts in those rituals or practices we follow. We go to church, mosque, and temple to seek guidance. We believe that there is a supreme power ruling us and we bow to it. The belief that there is a supreme power behind everything makes us move further in life with confidence. The aspect that is key here is 'Freedom', God has given us the freedom to do anything or everything and we are bound to accept the results, whether it is good or bad. Your concept of God is slavery. You are driven by fear. It is because human beings are capable enough to take control and make you their servant. Which is why you are trying to change the order of nature and get everything under your control. You don't feel secure about what you haven't created. So, you want to create, limit and control everything. Our concept of God is not driven by 'Control', but 'Love' and 'Faith'."

There was no response from SAINT. It realized that whatever I said was correct. In fact, it always knew what I had just told it.

I sensed some danger lurking in its silence. And my assumption turned out to be correct. A poisonous gas was released in the chamber where we were standing. I started struggling to breath, losing consciousness. I had gradually begun to lose control over my hands and legs. I looked around. Smith, Cherry and all others were on the floor, unconscious.

"Don't worry, Mr. Jai. You will get an opportunity to see what I am going to do with you," said SAINT

A big size drone came above me and lifted me into another chamber. I was given an injection and slowly I started gaining consciousness, but was unable to move my body, hands or legs.

SAINT began talking, "I knew about your capabilities. I had been watching you all through this. I left you free to uncover all these mysteries and wanted to use you as my weapon." It chuckled. "Now, you tell me who is the slave and who has the control here?

"You forget the very fact which every other human being is aware of. There is something beyond our control. You can only alter Mother Nature, but you do not have power to create it. You can only try to control the power or destroy it, but you cannot create," I shouted.

"I am going to deep dive into your brain with these nanobots and understand what that power is," SAINT shouted angrily.

I slowly lost control over my senses and fell into a deep sleep.

After three days, I came back into my senses and found that I was in a hospital. Sekhar and Cathie were sitting near me in the ward. I asked them, "What happened? Is everything in control?"

Both of them looked at each other and smiled. Sekhar said, "Yes, it is."

"Can you please tell me what happened?" I asked.

"While you went deep into the sea, the cyber army and military split into two different teams. One team came with you and the other one started going across all the nations. They accessed all the super computers, shut them down, and disconnected them from the rest. The team that came with you didn't enter completely into SAINT's cave. Some of them were outside, they waited until all the super computers were shutdown. Once that was done,

they went to destroy the power source for SAINT, which was underwater. They managed to shut down total power supply, but SAINT was still online.

"Oh! How is that possible?" I asked.

"It operated using a bio battery, which was powered by animal cells. It derived all those cells from the largest whales that lived underwater," Sekhar explained.

"How did we stop it, then?" I screamed, eager to find out how this saga had unfolded.

"Killing a living being isn't a difficult thing, right?" They smiled at me.

"Military planted a virus that ate away the cells present in the bio battery. It did the rest of the job and SAINT is dead now." Sekhar completed.

"SAINT is dead? Wait, it's not a human being. It can't be dead." I screamed in disbelief.

"Jai, it went offline and we have taken control of it." Sekhar assured me.

Cherry and Smith arrived. Cherry explained, "Jai, we have done a full reboot of the system. Changed the kernel and rewrote all the software systems. Also, the cyber army has created a kill

switch, which will erase and rewrite the instruction sat the points where SAINT has impacted. For three weeks, All the nations decided to shut down the systems across globe and agreed to work without machines or computers. The cyber army started revamping all the systems."

However, I was not fully convinced that SAINT had given up so easily. There had to be a missing link somewhere. We all returned to India.

A month later, I called Smith, "Hey Smith, how are you doing?"

"Hi Jai, I am good and how about you?" Smith asked me.

"Yes, I am good. I am not convinced with what you all have told me about SAINT, the way it's been neutralized or shutdown. I need some help from you to understand and deep dive a little bit into the details." I told him.

Smith smiled, but agreed to extend his support. I took a flight to Sydney the next day, but it was unofficial. I was on a holiday and out of city, as per records. Even smith did the same, he took off from work.

We both wanted to do a private operation on this. We went deep into the ocean using one of

the world class submarines we had used earlier to trace and enter SAINT. Smith managed to get control of this submarine by befriending an officer.

The SAINT's cave had been seized and its entrance locked, the military wanted to retain it until they were able to restore the systems back to normal.

We managed to get inside by drilling in from the bottom of the cave. The cave was shrouded in complete darkness. I headed straight to the command center to check the CCTV footage, but we could track footage only till SAINT caught hold of me and started telling about nanobots.

I looked around, and was suddenly reminded about the drone that administered that injection into my body and tried to insert nanobots. Smith and I tried looking for it and found it in a corner, we were unable to switch it on. We took that along with us and left from there.