Chapter 3 ( Part 6 )

To all, except timekeepers that is. He knows what he altered. Or King Adharma as One knows what was altered. And those alterations had been made through his coded directives that survived for centuries. Knowing the truth of the past in the form of code, timekeepers predict future much better than anyone else.

Simply put, One writes a message in the stars that Zero decodes it every minute and every second of the day. The string 'Aniket' that Aniket thought to be a decoding string turned out to be an encoding string and history was changed once again.

Based on this change, Zero will send suitable instructions and missions to timekeepers. Over time, the mystery will deepen because of their actions. But they themselves will not be affected by it. Not by knowing the truth, but by submitting to Zero's instructions.

A seed of mystery by the name Aniket was planted by Aniket himself. His intention was to know the truth, but King Adharma's intention was to create a web of lies.

This is the meaning of a timekeeper. A keeper of lies.

There was only one thing to know. Why 'Aniket'.

It maybe just a name, but it is a fairly unusual name. Aniket searched in the direction of King Adharma's name being Aniket. There are absolutely no records of this person in the world, but he is the founder of timekeepers. He must exist somewhere.

Just as a search string from his XO changed the world's history, Aniket's search for Adharma also appeared to change reality.

But it was not just a text in the server that got changed. It was his own body.

Nathaniel woke up to his wife's tears on his chest. He realised it was an hour before dawn. It was his habit to push Aniket to train at this hour. So he hugged his wife and looked at the other bed. There was no one in it.

Presumably, he had already gone to train. Aniket has a problem waking up, but he trains passionately the moment he does. Even in his drug addled days, Nate never had a problem with his physical performance. Only, his martial arts didn't improve after many years. It was a pity.

'What did that brat do?' Nate's voice was rough and deep. He thought Aniket did something to upset Anita again. This time, he may get a beating from Nate.

Anita shook her head and pulled Nate's hand that was holding her head. She covered her face with the big, warm palm until her tears subsided.

'Nate, you wanted to know whether your wives committed suicide, right?'

Nate's heart shook at the use of the word 'wife'. They were indeed his wives. Nate pressed his forehead against Anita and pressed his eyes close.

Anita comforted him. They fought a lot over the past weeks. But only about Nate hiding things. Anita liked Aniket's Maa. She was very glad that they had become family. Only, just like the last one…

'Nate, originally One from seventy years ago, was not named Aniket. But history changed as soon as Aniket started researching in that direction. One's original history was completely wiped off. Just like King Adharma, the founder of timekeepers.

'But we still know this much because of being the first ones to watch this space. One has folded space in order to control XO. In those days, XO has gone berserk, due to it being colonised by a microorganism that lives inside the body. Simply put, the swarm of nanobots became underlings for a swarm of microorganisms. Except, it was undetected for a long time. Progeny codes and action directives were full of glitches.

'At the moment, the mother was about to completely fall into chaos, One had run into a temple…a powerful temple that worshipped the phallic temple. He tied himself up to the idol and folded space within himself. He actually became a child!'

'Phallic…child, what?!'

'Nate, this is the literal truth of what happened! You can doubt Aniket, you can doubt me. Don't doubt the king!'

'Niti, you're saying, a man folded himself like a piece of cardboard and became a child.'

'Nate, people have been studying space for centuries. Timekeepers have been around for a long time. But you know as well as I do, spacekeeping only started fifty to sixty years ago. It is still in the fledgling phase with no developments, when man has already covered the solar system. It is not like spacekeepers don't get money or resources. Why haven't they never shown anything? What is ever greater than all the present achievements in the cosmic era?'

'It is because they don't believe space can be turned into a habitable space. There's something about solar flares upturning all existing space technology. They want to invent something else…maybe.'

To Niti's insistent look, Nate cried, 'God's sakes!'

He put her aside and went to the loo. Found a little corpse inside. Nate removed his hand from the light switch.

Whatever he told Anita last night made Aniket very restless. He went and slept in the bathroom where it was dark and tight.

Nate sat on the commode and touched his head. 'So why did One hug that rock penis Niti?'

Anita peeked and saw the situation. Her poor husband didn't get to relieve himself. Hopefully Aniket could be driven away by the noises of the conversation.

'In those days, One interpreted a visual document made by a historical cartographer. Except, the cartographer made a record of all kinds of shapes in history. It is very subliminal. It was the holy book of a certain tribe. One's pod made an operation to steal it.'

'They stole it from a small tribe?'

'The book was being held by a drug lord that enslaved the tribe. They stole it and then returned it. One fed the data into his XO–'

'But in those days, images can't be fed into XO. They didn't have XO in their retina and in their brain.'

'Precisely why One is One, husband. One was a bit like…' Anita's eyes pointed to their good son curled up with his head on the commode wall.

'Okay, continue.'

'One used to repetitively draw topological maps by hand. He trained his XO to encode any image that it sees. Any image with fractals, that is. Any image that can be self-organised in a fractal dimension. For instance, a coastline is able to self-organise, a crystal or an architectural diagram is not able to.'

'I see. So natural patterns…'

'More than that. But generally speaking, yes. While he was reading the book, with only few exceptions to his rule, One was able to manually feed everything to XO.

'And this encoded Indhan, the holy book, was able to compress all the data in XO's satellite and consequently all the data in the servers. One was a lowly level seven, like our…' Anita pointed to a certain drooling brat on the floor. Some people have the entire genius in the world, but cannot even raise in levels.

Perhaps Aniket heard her contempt, he rolled to the other side and hugged the shower curtain.

'He couldn't access all this data,' she continued, 'However, he basically put all of it in this XO based Indhan, closed the book and went to the temple. He noticed some kind of interference with XO during his operations in a similar temple before. There, he opened the book and forced XO to leave the awareness it was holding on to. A germ had created that awareness. He used medicine to suppress that germ beforehand. Killed XO's ego, reorganised its entire database and hid his own information.

'At this moment, the suppressed germ became free. It fought viciously against the timekeeper, causing a hormonal imbalance in his brain. He went mad.'

'Why didn't he take the suppressants again?'

Anita shook her head and pointed her eyes at Nate's son. This time Nate didn't understand. He opened his mouth to ask and then suddenly understood.

Anita mouthed 'drugs' at the same time.

'Niti, are you sure, the One you talk about is not our own kid?'

Anita smiled and shook her head. She continued without missing a beat. 'Actually, this is the point where One convinced his podmates. His madness helped him express his theories. He was until then, inexpressive…like…'

Nate touched his head. He could tell where this is going.

'Just like how it was with us, controlled drug usage was permissible at that time, even for warkeepers. While one podmate went to catch a researcher who can kill the actual germ, the other one stayed and controlled the dosage. They wanted to suppress the germ without overdosing One. Except One had gone mad. He believed that he was about to die. So he hugged the pillar, the god I mean, and, perhaps prayed to the pillar to save his life.'

'And then he turned into a boy who sang devotional songs?'

Nate remembered there was a statue of a boy in his fathers' prayer room. A boy was hugging a phallic symbol with a mesmerised expression. Nate was hit on his noggin for laughing. He was told that the child was praying to god to save him from certain death. Moved by the child's pure devotion, the god appeared and defeated Yama, the god of death, and sent him back to hell.

'That's you, Nate. That's the story of every timekeeper. All children in our fold are such pure devotees, and the god came for all of us.'

Nate was a precocious child. He didn't believe all children are good. But One's image was just like their hopeless boy, Aniket. He couldn't help but hope the god will come and kick Yama's butt for One.

As for Aniket, should he ever fall into that situation, the god better have good humour. Why would the devil be taken by the king of hell? The devil is the king of hell! He was just fooling god with his devotion. No doubt, for revenge!

'Well…'

'Well what?'

'That is exactly what happened.'

Nate didn't talk for a while. The night doctor fed him a bottle in the middle of the night. A certain rascal has occupied the bathroom. Nate had been coddled as a patient by Anita. But now she forgets all about him when the son comes. Nate was highly discomforted.

He kicked Aniket's butt and woke him up. 'Get out.'

Aniket's drugs were taken away. He was not in a good mood. He scratched his stubble and his sticky hair. He decided to go raid the pharmacy.

Anita kindly reminded his disappearing back, 'Dear, you're peeing in a cup before breakfast. What would you like? Eggs?'