Operation NOVA

Chapter 1 Akilan opened his eyes. Then he closed them, and opened them again.

The second time, he looked around — with the blank stare of a person whose thoughts have been wiped clean, trying to figure out where he is. A white sheet of paper that has never been written on, an unburned DVD, an empty slate: that kind of clean. There was some sort of loose connection in his brain. It was a struggle to think clearly, as though his mind had been restarted in safe mode.

He was shocked to see that he was in some kind of steel incubator.

What was he doing here? Why had he come? He had no memory. He felt like a groundnut in its shell. Would the shell open if he kicked it? He couldn’t move his legs. How had they closed the metal on all sides? Did they put him to sleep, and make a mould out of fibreglass? His head pounded: krrrr , krrr , krrrr . He tried to hold on to his thoughts, but they kept slipping away. He looked blankly around at his surroundings. He was lying down, his limbs splayed out.

His exact height, his exact width — the pod had been tailor-made for him.

To his side were some feather-touch buttons, glowing blue.

Has someone locked me inside a giant computer server by mistake?

The devices inside the pod were difficult to describe. It was like being in the stomach of an ultrasound machine. Directly above his head were some bubble controls. Like the settings dial on a clothes iron, for woollens or silk or whatever.

What kind of place is this? Why am I here? Was I captured? Are we playing hide-and-seek?

“Hey!” he said, pointlessly. There was no way his voice would be heard outside the pod, he was sure.

What a fix this is! Cha! He tried to rewind. Yesterday had been Vinodini’s birthday. Like a good boy, he’d wished her “Happy Birthday, Chellam!” at 12 am via cell phone text. On Facebook, a silly chat exchange — Today is a golden day, a day with a beautiful dawn. A smiley emoji in reply.

“Let’s go to a theme park,” had been her simple request.

At the theme park they’d had pepper popcorn, Coke, chips, and Italian Delight flavour ice cream, which made for quite a galatta in the stomach. On top of that, the rides were rough, turning and spinning the two young lovers, testing them.

She had worn a yellow churidar, a yellow sticker pottu on her forehead, a yellow ribbon in her hair. Vino in yellowest yellow, yelling with excitement as they’d zoomed around on the roller coaster, their stomachs doing crazy dances. She’d held on to him tightly. Her hair had flown over Akilan’s face. Their lips had come close to each other. There would never be a better opportunity than this, and he made use of it. She had put on a shocked expression, but he could tell she wasn’t upset. There would be more opportunities to shock her.

Slowly the memories began to seep in. After the morning with her at the theme park, he had spent the evening at a bar with his friends. Did I overdo it? Did I pass out at the bar? Or at a friend’s place? Maybe once I passed out, they stuck me in here as a prank?

Is that the reason for this pounding in my head? I tried to refuse the vodka after the beer, but Mohan wouldn’t listen. Oh, my head! This must all be one of Sekar’s jokes. I’ll give him a good kick once they open this thing. He felt like someone had bashed him up and left him for dead.

With whatever mental calories he had remaining, he decided to try to figure out where he could be. It definitely wasn’t his home, and it wasn’t his office — nowhere he’d been before. A lodge? No way. By now, the exhaustion he’d felt when he first opened his eyes had mostly evaporated.

Was I in an accident? Have they admitted me in a hospital? He tried to lift his hands and legs. They felt normal, but it was a struggle to raise them. He realised he was wearing some sort of skin-tight garment that seemed to be made from plastic. Somehow his body did not feel like his own. Something was wrong. Different. Strange. He had escaped from normality and now everything was mixed up, he thought. The clarity of the thought surprised him.

When he tried to move his limbs, he felt an extreme calm, as though he were floating. Had he still not come down from his high? It felt like he was waking up after many days of sleep. Must remember never again to drink in an unknown bar, he told himself. Though he doubted he’d stick to the resolution.

How many times could he keep looking around at this lid? If only there were space to sit up, lift his head a little, stretch his arms and legs. Some small relief, like a window. But there was nothing of the sort.

I’ve been turned into a lab rat! Those scoundrels! Is Santosh responsible for this? He studies aeronautics. In college he made a dummy flight for his project. It must be him!

He searched methodically for a door that could release him. Unh-uh. The thing was sealed on all sides. So how did they close me in? The place where he had slept was not a bed. It was a fibreglass platform, but with the impression of sleeping human form. Sinking into that space had been a pleasure.

Where’s the cell phone? He examined the ceiling of the pod inch by inch. Maybe there’s a camera? The blue glow from the buttons caught his attention again. What if I press one?

He pressed one.

“It is 5.10 am,” said a woman’s voice.

The programmed digital voice startled him. After that, there was no sound.

Am I taking part in some sort of competition, to see how many hours one can stand to be alone in one place? Is this a game? He wished for a TV, a tablet, some books, a chess set. There were no such articles to pass the time.

He could sleep, just keep sleeping. The bed was the only thing there… and those buttons. Akilan pressed the same button again. “It is 5.12 am,” it said. Had it really been only two minutes? Immediately, he pressed the next button.

“Food or Water?”

“Food,” said Akilan.

There was a quiet hum.

“Enough,” he said, almost without meaning to. Inexplicably, his stomach was full.

“That is for one week,” said the same woman’s voice.

“For one week? Santosh, stop joking around, da!” He pressed the third button.

“How can I help you?”

“I need to get out!” said Akilan, insistently.

“After 6 am.”

He glared at the button, irritated. Are they filming a Truman Show of what I’m doing in here? he thought angrily. With all the frustration in his heart, he tried to kick the wall in front of him hard… but his leg just floated towards it and gave it a gentle tap.

Where was I last? After we hit the bottle… that’s right, we went for a film, Mohan and I. Where is Mohan? Have they kept him locked up in the next room? Or is this one of his tricks? They seem to have captured me while I was watching the movie. There was that cool drink he brought me. Then…? Yes!

The mist cleared some more for Akilan.

So this was the reason he talked me into coming for that worthless film? That scoundrel!

He slept for a while. Sometimes with his eyes closed, and sometimes with his eyes open. He bit his nails. He dug in his ear with a finger. He pressed the first button again.

“5.57 am.”

Just three more minutes. If I count up to 180, surely the door will open. 1… 2… 3… 4…

177… 178… 179…

He looked around, wondering where the pod would crack open.

Then, with a zzzzzzzzzz sound, the roof lifted. Looking all around him, Akilan saw a row of pods just like his, unevenly arranged in an enormously broad theatre. It was like being inside a huge machine, a gigantic railway carriage. Other people who had been sleeping, just like him, were looking around at each other. They were all dressed in identical blue skin-tight clothes.

To Akilan’s left was a European girl; to his right, a Chinese man. Quickly, he scanned the other beds. Each face was from a different country, and every face wore a confused expression. Each person looked at the other with fear and hostility.

In the centre of the wall, in glowing letters: GL 581 G. On either side was a stack of machinery that looked like a cross between an electrical transformer and a gigantic bank ATM. The silence was so intense it made his ears buzz.

The words Oxygen Deficiency Controller and Oxygen Converter glowed above the machines. Through square glass panes, they could see open land, land covered with lush green growth. Not a single building.

“What place is this? Who brought so many people here and put them in uniform like this?” Almost everybody had the same thought.

In answer to everyone’s question, a disembodied voice announced:

“Greetings, guests from Earth.”

(Translated from Tamil by Rashmi Devadasan and V Vinod)

(Tamilmagan’s sci-fi novella is part of the upcoming The Blaft Anthology of Tamil Pulp Fiction: Vol 3)

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