Saturday, October 13, 2012

Raging Fire

“Click!... Click!!” dying echoes of plastic hitting against the metal made him emotional. This wasn’t the first time, but it was different, a more soothing effect, with the cool breeze caressing his hair. He liked the fire, slowly burning its way through the paper and the burley tobacco, as he inhaled. He had promised himself to quit, but this was the last one. The fire still raged, far off, still visible, burning everything he once loved, wiping out all the beautiful memories, his friends, his family, his home. He liked heights, the feeling of being at the top, so he loved this place, but he didn’t know how he got here. He wasn’t worried, not in the least. If anything, he was relieved, of a huge burden. It was the right thing to do, or so he told himself.
 “Click!... Click!!” It was a clear autumn morning, with a few distant cars buzzing on and off. “When you are in college you have to enjoy such things,” she told him long ago, and so he was out on a stroll. He was energized, despite being awake for last 40 hours. “It is finally done, I guess I’ll be pretty famous now.” he said as he lit his first cigarette in a few months. He had been busy, working hard to finish his masterpiece. Even if he was a genius, it was a pretty difficult thing to accomplish, almost a miracle. He couldn’t imagine how she must have felt when he told her that she will live. Yu was dying, since everyone they consulted told them so, “there is no cure for it.”
She was all he had, ever since he came to Hong Kong, a year ago, when his family died in a terrorist attack. “If only he had been there, for celebrating his own graduation, then he won’t be alone,” he told himself, as he packed his stuff to leave Mumbai. He trashed everything, burnt everything that could fit in a municipal container, and left, to be alone, to repent for his negligence, his cold attitude, his life. “You seem new here, let me show you around.” her cheerful smile made his resolved heart melt in a second. She cared, and made his life bearable. He decided to be mediocre, never to achieve anything, never to celebrate, and she supported him, knowing that it was a waste. He could have attended a med school anywhere in the world, but he holed himself in this unknown school, just to fulfill his promise to his mom. He smoked a lot, more after he started living here, even more in restricted places, looking for trouble, looking for punishment, but she got him out every single time. Sometimes, he was afraid that he didn’t deserve this happiness, but that bright smile on the pale face lit by the moonlight, or the flowing hair in warm summer breeze made it all seem trivial. And one of those days, she didn’t show up. She had fainted in her classroom and had to be taken for a hospital visit, the first of a seemingly endless succession of treatments. That is when he decided to fight and take back what belonged to him.
No one had seen him work even half as hard. It was difficult to convince the dean, but he caved in after seeing his record, to let him work on a pet project. No one had the slightest idea how to splice a DNA, not unexpected though, but he pulled through days, and weeks, and months, and years, persevered in face of constant failure, and finally managed to find a way to systematically correct each and every cell in her body. His research was paying for itself, since each accepted paper and every intelligent visitor brought in more money. This also provided him the freedom to explore new horizons, with the huge arsenal of instruments he got his hands on. He tested on all kind of animals, observed them, but she was to be his first human experiment. And finally, when there was not even the slightest hope of an accepted treatment, he reluctantly agreed to treat her. After checking in everything – emergency kit, food, water – he sealed himself shut for experimenting on the one person he needed the most. Everything went smoothly, to his surprise, against all his experiences so far. She woke up right away; her pale ruffled face glowed with the same smile he loved. “Too perfect!” he thought, as he chatted to her about everything he did in last 36 hours, and a planned holiday in Macau, and how he burnt the rug while cooking and replaced it without her knowing, and some other stuff.
He went out after what felt like eternity, went out in the world again. “Let’s celebrate,” she said “Campus 7-11 have a nice strawberry cheesecake.”  While at it, he also bought some nice cigarettes for a personal celebration of his triumph over god. During research, he had come across an amazing way to remodel bodies. It was simple actually; tremendously increase the regeneration rate of cells, and controlling slowly mutating cells to create superior features. Knowing the limits of human body, he had no other choice to make Yu live as long as him after the treatment. It was his gift for everything she meant to him. No one knew about this since human modification is still prohibited. “Now, they will know and they will see,” he thought. He had already decided that once this was over, he would hand over the technology to international defense organizations, to carry out a vendetta on terrorism on his behalf. And he was smart enough to know that this will put him in a whole different league of scientists. “Dreams do come true,” he mumbled, watching the sunrise. She was obviously sleeping and it was a couple hours until her next check up, so he went back to their home, filled with piles of trash by now. He tried to remember the last time he cleaned, but failed and then, dozed off even before entering the bedroom, crashing to the floor, right through the cobwebs, making a huge cloud of dust which eventually settled right back on him.
It was a huge ballroom, filled with creatures right out of a dystopian science fiction. And there was a familiar music playing as he danced with Yu. Her eyes were slightly bigger now, well so were some other parts, but it made her all the more remarkable. A huge military man came up to him, shook his hand as he praised him. “Thud, thud, thud...” he saw huge red splatters on the colonel’s suit, he turned to look as Yu poured out a semi-automatic rifle on the only human in the party. “What did I do wrong.....” as he died; and woke up to find the hospital emergency staff and his neighbors in his face. They rushed him out, as he came to realize that they had broken in. Seeing his phone filled with messages removed the last doubts that the disaster has actually happened. He had missed the check up, and the three after that. The nurse told him Yu was psychotic, and chomped off a patients thumb. Few others got hurt while isolating her from general population, and there was huge uproar in the facility. He knew he should have kept her in observation for a few more hours, but it wasn’t really the time for hindsight.
“Click!... Click!!” smoking in a hospital was prohibited, but who cares after being comatose for a few years. He distinctly remembered the moment when he drove past the countryside and just a few unrelated noises after that. He didn’t even care about other patients in the ward, he was brought here just a few hours ago, after waking up suddenly. “Don’t do that,” she said, “it hurts.” “I’ll be out in jiffy missy, been here for a damn long time. You take care.” The lighter fell from his hand and through the shooting pain, it took him a moment to realize that it was his thumb stuck in her teeth. Next moment he was on a cart going to another operating theatre, like deja vu. The hospital took the responsibility to reattach his thumb but he still wanted to yield a shovel on everything around him. He thought it was anger and it was justified, but it kept growing, until he began to drool and jumped on the first surgeon on his side, and soon, it was a bloodbath. There was this unbearable heat in the throat, water didn’t even register in his brain. He craved for human flesh, and blood. He had to be shot 5 times before he stopped moving. The whole place was quarantined after all the living victims developed similar symptoms.
He cried out “Zombies,” as he tried to explain to him why he cannot be allowed to enter. He was brought here by emergency staff, but now none of them had access to the building. All the authorities had been notified, staff and patients on unaffected floors were evacuated to the top floors, where they waited for the rescue chopper. Surprisingly, there was no media, even after an hour. He demanded to be taken to the lab where Yu was, the huge crowd waited outside the hospital, and more crowd brought in by the commotion. He, and the other locked out doctors, were instructed to cover it up as a routine fumigation. He was surprised that even after few hours of such a huge commotion, there was no sign of media vultures anywhere. Suddenly, a ambulance came through, and a tall man grabbed him as soon as the doors opened.
“You have created monsters.” He didn’t look like a doctor, but he was a professional. He explained, “The security guy told us the whole story from the beginning, and so we secured your sweetheart, the CCTV tapes and one of those dead zombies.” “All of them are dead, you understand, their bodies broke down under intense pressure created by your technology, everyone except your superhuman girlfriend. I give her a few hours.” said the doctor as they looked at her hideous and deteriorating body through the fibre glass. She no longer recognized him, didn’t answer even to his desperate cries, or the banging on the glass.
It was a matter of national security, a huge advance in bio warfare. All evidence was wiped off clean, no loose ends could be allowed. He was one big link, but losing such a huge asset was not affordable, especially since he had not published a single detail about the process, but just the cure for the disease. He was given a choice either to join them, or to spend life in an isolated dark cell for human experimentation and mass murder. But it was the least of his concerns right now. He agreed to all their demands, brought in his research, taught the process to the new co-workers with unreal clarity and vigor. He was tired, but he completed all the formalities, and followed all the orders to such an extent, that he was allowed to go out of the facility on the day he came in. He was dropped at his house, but he didn’t go in. He walked, letting his intuition carry him for the last time. The hospital was still burning, no loose ends, as he walked off the highest building, into the dark, silent pavement.

1 comment:

  1. nice one, again!!.. but seems too compressed and short for the theme chosen

    ReplyDelete