VORTAL: SHOCKWAVE – Excerpt#3

3

In Which Sarla Gets An E-mail, Viveka Clicks On A Web Link, Sarla Calls Viveka For Lunch–And Gets A Very Hostile Reaction, And Viveka Finds Herself Gone, Baby, Gone.

3.1 Sarla

People think that being a celebrity columnist is all about attending parties and socializing. I suppose that’s true of most of what they call “Page 3″ columnists these days. But for me, it’s about stating a point of view that hasn’t been expressed before. Making people aware of a new aspect of an important social issue. That’s why I write the columns.

I was supposed to be reading the proofs of my new book, but I had to finish my weekly column first. I know the paper it appears in is a Page 3 rag, but it also happens to be a rag with the largest circulation in the city and if I could subvert it to present the other side of the story, well, why not? At least that’s what I told myself each week when my deadline loomed near and I wondered why I’d ever agreed to work to a deadline for a column in a newspaper which spent more column inches covering parties and fashion than real news.

When Viveka knocked at my door that afternoon, I was still trying to find the Pepsi ad that had sparked off the idea in the first place. You probably know the one I mean: the one in which Shah Rukh Khan takes a sly dig at a Hrithik Roshan lookalike. There was a rumor that Hrithik Roshan was starring in a Coke ad featuring a grossly overweight SRK lookalike, as a rejoinder to the Pepsi ad. I didn’t know whether or not that was true, but the issue raised some interesting questions about celebrity models and advertising ethics and it was just the right kind of balance between the ‘in the news, in your face’ topics that BT liked to cover and which gave me some scope to take the Page 3 types down a peg or two.

In fact, Viveka peeped in just when I’d found the right tape and was fast-forwarding on cue, searching for the ad. I never resented the demands of my kids on my time; it wasn’t because I thought I was a ‘mother first, last and always’ but because my kids were also my best friends.

She said she had a problem opening a file attachment on her comp and wondered if I could help out. I smiled at her. The only thing that interests me about computers is the fact that they make it a lot easier to write and revise text. As far as I’m concerned, they’re just super-efficient typewriters. And of course, e-mail is a miracle drug.

“Try Mikey’s comp,” I suggested. “Your father said he keeps upgrading it so much that it’s probably equivalent to some sort of a supercomputer by now. I’m sure his PC would be able to open your problem file.” From what she’d described about her problem, it sounded like an upgrade problem, I told her, and Mikey’s computer would definitely have the upgrade—or if it didn’t, then nobody else’s would.

She said that was an excellent idea and left. I forgot about her instantly. By then my deadline was looming. I’d already got a polite but anxious e-mail from the sub who coordinated the page, asking if I could send it in a bit early because they had a whole lot of pictures of some beer baron’s new yacht to lay out and needed to figure out how to fit my column on the same page.

I winced when I read that e-mail: rubbing shoulders with a beer baron’s new yacht (and several new trophy girlfriends, I’m sure) didn’t jibe with my idea of journalism, but I reminded myself of the lakhs of readers who would read my “brilliantly presented arguments” and maybe think twice before buying their next heavily sugared and caffeinated MNC cola.

(The quote is from Vir, who made my day when he praised a column I’d written last month on the pros and cons of American movies doing so well in India. Every once in a while, he says something like that which makes me think it wasn’t such a bad idea marrying him.)

After viewing the Pepsi commercial a couple of times, my thoughts fell into place. I only had to touch the keyboard, and my thoughts flowed from my mind down to my fingers and appeared as words on the PC screen.

About an hour later, the column was written, revised and re-revised. I logged on to e-mail it and downloaded my new mail.

There were several new e-mails from my publishers, editors, friends in India and abroad, and of course, the junk mail—“Have Viagra delivered directly to your mailbox!”—that always irritates me hugely. Besides the fact that penile enlargements are not high on my list of priorities.

When I first saw Mikey’s e-mail, I almost mistook it for spam—that’s the correct term for electronic junk mail I’m told. Then I saw his name in the Sender column and relaxed. I clicked on the e-mail heading, thinking it was so like Mikey to e-mail me instead of talking.

This is the mail that opened up. Mikey’s E-mail. Or so I thought at the time.

To: sarlavats@redmail.com

From: mikeyvats@redmail.com

Subject: Fwd: Fwd: Fwd: Fwd: Fwd: WARNING: DO NOT VISIT THIS SITE

Date: 29 Jul 00 11:18:05 CDT

>>>> This is the website you’ve been looking for:

>>>> http://vvv.vvv.net

3.2 Viveka

Do you wish to enter the Vortal?

I stared at the question on the screen. It looked like one of Mikey’s hacker things. Some kind of security program he had installed to prevent anyone else from accessing his private files. Maybe I had accidentally clicked on something I shouldn’t have clicked on.

I know how touchy hacker wannabes can be: I’ve known my share of them back in the States. So when that weird black screen and the question came up, my first impulse was to just walk away. No point wasting my time trying to crack this or whatever it was. I could have gone to my own comp and See-mailed Steve from there just as well.

But Steve’s film was in this comp. The file. And I didn’t want to lose that. So I decided to just tap a few keys and see if I could get past the security screen. Maybe if I pressed Escape? In my somewhat limited knowledge of computers and their glitches, that was one that almost always worked, so…

So I pressed the button.

And the screen changed instantly. But instead of the program quitting, as it should have, the screen went black again.

Then another line came on. This one said:

Are you willing to pay the Price?

I sighed. I hated this hacker crap. I tapped the  button again, several times, then I tried holding down Alt-Control and hit Delete. That should definitely Quit the program.

Instead, the screen went black again for a moment, and then another line appeared:

For the duration of your visit, your soul will be forfeit to the Webmaster. If you agree, proceed.

This time, I actually stopped and took my hands off the keyboard.

I mean, there was something weird about this whole charade. Even if it was one of Mikey’s hacker programs, what sort of question was that? “Your soul will be forfeit”– I didn’t like the sound of that. This may sound a bit strange coming from a Michigan U grad with a post-grad diploma from Columbia U, NY, but I happen to be spiritually self-aware. Not religious, mind you, but definitely spiritual…And the idea of forfeiting my soul, even if it was only a figure of speech, didn’t appeal to me.

I decided to stop right there. Forget the file. I would go call Steve from my comp and when Mikey got home that evening I’d ask him to retrieve the file.

But as I turned to go, I thought I heard a voice whisper: “Viv.”

It was Steve’s voice. I was sure of it. I turned back and stared at the screen. But it still showed only that last creepy statement.

I frowned, trying to understand what was going on. The only logical thought that occurred to me was that somehow I had connected to See-mail and Steve was already online, talking to me. But because of this weird glitch on Mikey’s comp, I couldn’t see him.

As if on cue, he spoke again. “Viv?” he said. “Did you see it?”

“Steve!” I said. It was him then! Damn this hacker program. Then I had an idea. Maybe if I just pressed the See-mail button again, it would make this stupid Vortal thingie go away and…

Without thinking, I reached out and pressed the See-mail button on Mikey’s computer keyboard.

And the screen changed. Snap.

And my whole life changed with it.

3.3 Sarla

I puzzled over Mikey’s e-mail. What website had I been looking for? I didn’t recall asking him to recommend any website to me. In any case, I felt he spent far too much time surfing the Net. Even buying a complete set of all four Harry Potter novels didn’t seem to have awakened his interest in reading.

But perhaps it was something he’d come across in his travels through cyberspace and thought it might be of some interest to me. Probably a literature website? Or a writer’s resource? I doubted that. Mikey wasn’t really the sort to even spend a moment on anything that didn’t interest him, let alone to recommend it to someone else. And there was something about that e-mail and that link that…well, I don’t know what I felt exactly, but it didn’t feel right, somehow.

My cursor hovered over the link and I was tempted to click on it. If only to see what it was that Mikey thought I would find so interesting.

But just then, another e-mail from my publishers came into my inbox. It was the Executive Editor and CEO, David, urging me to finish going through the proofs of my book and courier them back to Krishan, my desk editor, so that they could meet their tight production schedule.

I took his advice. Logging off at once, I turned to the large stack of typeset pages and began poring over them, pencil in hand. As always happens, I gave it my full concentration and everything else ceased to exist for the duration.

When I looked up again, more than two hours had elapsed. Someone was knocking on the door.

I called out to the person to come in. It was Mala, our new housemaid-cum-cook.

“Memsaab, khana lagaa doon?”

I looked at my watch. Was it past 1 o’ clock already? There were still about seventy pages or so left to check, so I decided to break for lunch and finish them in the afternoon.

“Theek hai,” I told her. “Viveka-didi ko bhi bolna lunch will be served in fifteen minutes.”

She went out and I took a minute to freshen up. She was waiting when I came out of the bathroom.

“Viveka didi not there,” she said.

I frowned. I clearly remembered Viveka saying she was home all day today. Something to do with watching Steve’s film.

I walked down the corridor to her bedroom. Empty. Then I saw her computer screen with its unusual animated screensaver—she’d designed it herself—and remembered. She was probably still in Mikey’s room, using his PC to read that problem file.

Mikey’s room door was locked. I knocked on it softly. We always knock before entering in our house. That’s the kind of family we are—respect one another’s privacy.

There was no response. Not even a “One sec, mom, be with you in a minute”.

I waited a few moments longer, thinking that she might be in the bathroom or on the phone.

Then I knocked again.

When there was no reply this time, I assumed that she was absorbed in something. Viveka has inherited my intense concentration, just like Mikey, while Vaibhav has Vir’s more easygoing multi-tasking nature. I called out, “Viveka, bete, lunch is ready. Come before it gets cold.”

And I started to walk away.

I had barely started down the corridor when I heard the sound of the door opening. It made a bit of noise, as if she had to fumble with the latch a couple of times before getting it open. Which was odd, because all the latches work so smoothly and perfectly—Vir takes his time but always makes sure he gets the job done first class.

I turned back, and saw a head peeping out from around the door. Her hair was so wild and disheveled, it took me a minute to realize that it was Viveka looking out. What had she done to her hair? It had looked fine when she popped into my room earlier.

“Bete, lunch is ready.”

She started so violently, I got a shock. For a second, when her head snapped towards me, I thought of some wild animal. Like a predator about to attack. I frowned. What was up with her today?

“Were you able to open that file on Mikey’s comp, bete?” I asked.

She stared at me fiercely, with an expression I’d never seen on her face before. “What’s wrong, Viveka? Why do you look so–“

I stopped. She had opened the door a few inches further, and I could see a little more of her now. Her shoulder and part of one leg. She was wearing some dress I’d never seen her in before. I couldn’t even begin to describe it, but it certainly wasn’t the jeans and tee shirt she had been wearing just a couple of hours ago.

And her hair wasn’t just disheveled, it was tangled, wild, as if it hadn’t been combed in days, and as I looked intently at it, I could see that there were actually things caught in it. Was that a fragment of a dried leaf? How could it be? She had been in Mikey’s room all this while, hadn’t she? What was going on?

“Viveka?” I said, unsure now.

She kept on staring at me with that same fierce, intense expression. Her eyes flicked briefly to look this way then that, as if she was trying to…what? Understand where she was? That was what it looked like, but that made no sense whatsoever. She was home, after all.

She continued to look at me with that same predatory expression.

And for some bizarre reason, I began to feel afraid, very afraid. Of my own daughter.

3.4 Viveka

I felt a strange sense of disorientation. The way you feel when you’re travelsick.

Or when you’ve been on the roller-coaster one time too many and have just gotten off and are standing on steady ground at last, your head reeling, your blood roaring in your ears, and your eyes blurry and unable to focus clearly. I wear contacts and sometimes if I spend too much time at the comp, things become blurry and I have to stop and stare into the distance for a while before my eye-muscles relax again.

But this was different from anything else I’d ever felt before.

It was like I was standing still and yet rushing forward at an incredible speed. Like being on the world’s fastest escalator ride, moving so fast that the world around me was a blinding haze of light and color.

This weird sensation lasted just a few seconds. I was forced to shut my eyes and for a moment I thought I was going to puke.

And then it passed.

And the world returned to normal. Or so I thought.

I opened my eyes slowly, my ears still ringing from the after-effect of that…Whatever the hell it was.

And what I saw shocked me speechless.

I felt myself starting to panic, breathing faster and shallower, hyper-ventilating. I turned to look this way then that, trying to convince myself that this was not real, that I was still in Mikey’s bedroom. That this was some kind of bizarre hallucination.

I turned around and then around again, trying to accept the evidence of my senses. To believe that what I was seeing was real. How could I be sitting in Mikey’s bedroom one minute, and then be here the next minute? In this…place…wherever it was, whatever it was?

I closed my eyes and opened them again. Shook my head, looked up and down again, tried to breathe slower, calm myself.

But nothing changed. I didn’t go back to Mikey’s bedroom, to my house. I was still here. In this place.

It was impossible. Yet it had happened. That disorienting sensation, that feeling of flying through space, of being taken. Apparently, it was all real.

It was as if some great force had picked me up physically and flung me through a doorway into another world.

A world where Bombay, Mumbai, the world as I knew it, was no more.

And another world had replaced it. A nightmare world.

3.5 Sarla

How could I be terrified of my own daughter? My ‘biggest baby’, as I used to call her. My sweetest, most well-behaved, obedient, intelligent and independent child of all.

I tried to get a hold of myself. There was surely some logical explanation for her strange appearance and behaviour.

“Viveka?” I said again, still feeling unnerved by the strange way she was staring at me.

I took a step forward, intending to go to her, to touch her forehead. Fever was the first thought that came to my mind. She did look feverish. Almost animal-like with that intense, vulpine look on her face. A hungry, crafty look.

I suddenly found myself unable to walk all the way to her. My feet just stopped. It was fear, I knew now. Despite the evidence of my eyes, my other senses were already screaming to me that this was not Viveka, this was not my daughter standing there before me. This was someone else… someone dangerous. My instincts knew the truth at once.

But my conscious, rational mind couldn’t accept what my instincts were telling me. How could it?

“Bete?” I said yet again, trying to connect with her. If only she would speak, just once. If I could just hear her voice.

She parted her lips. Finally, I thought with a faint sense of relief.

But instead of speaking, she howled.

Really howled, the way a wolf or some other predatory creature howls. Baring her teeth.

And what teeth they were—yellowed and filthy as if she hadn’t cleaned them in weeks. Her open mouth was like the dark maw of some wild animal. I felt the blood drain out of my head. Those teeth, those eyes…the way she howled made my skin creep.

“Viveka?” I cried out. “What is it? What’s happened to you?”

I forced myself to move again, to go towards her, to comfort her and hug her. Help her. I was her mother after all. And something terrible had happened to her somehow, even in the safety of our own house.

The instant I moved, she broke off that awful, soul-scraping howl.

And she leaped right at me. Her hands reaching out like claws, mouth bared like a vixen pouncing on her prey.

3.6 Viveka

I forced myself to breathe normally, to avoid hyperventilating as I tend to do when faced with a crisis. I closed my eyes for a moment, covering my face with my hands, trying to re-boot my consciousness, to start again to understand my situation.

This is what came to me:

One moment, I was sitting before my brother Mikey’s computer back home in Bombay, India. The next moment, I was in a world that was like no place I’d seen before.

No, that’s not quite right. I had seen this place before. It was Pali Hill, the Westward side, with a view of the sea and Carter Road. Or what should have been Pali Hill and Carter Road. It looked totally different but geographically it was the same place. I realized that now, with my eyes closed.

Slowly, my breathing a little calmer now, I uncovered my face and looked around again.

Yes, I saw it now. This wasn’t just Pali Hill. It was the exact same spot where our building stood. It was just that the whole region had changed so drastically, it had seemed like another world at first.

Instead of the mass of buildings and roads and all the other stuff that make up our civilized Bandra suburb, the Beverly Hills of India as some people call it, there was only devastation.

Shells of ruined structures lay scattered around for miles in either direction. They were the shells of buildings and houses, but not the kind that we have in the real Bombay. These were strange, squat constructions, none higher than a single floor.

Even knocked down, burned down, destroyed, I could tell that they were not modern housing, not even modern village housing. These were the kind of stone-pile and wooden cottages that existed in medieval times in India. Even before the Mughal era. And even then, they were not like the typical medieval Indian houses I had seen in history books or museum recreations. There was something essentially different about them, but not being an anthropology or architecture grad, I couldn’t tell right away what that difference was.

But where was the Bombay I knew? It was as if it had never existed!

The tall skyscrapers, the arcing flyovers, the endless causeways, they were all gone.

Instead, fires billowed everywhere, obscuring the landscape with clouds of dark, evil-smelling smoke. The ground was blasted and pit-holed, like a war zone. Large craters pockmarked the land at intervals of a few dozen metres as if there had been artillery shelling or aerial bombing. No, not quite. It was more like the kind of pockmarked landscape caused by cannon fire. I knew this because another one of my Columbia U friends, LuAnn Bowie, was a Civil War re-enactment performer and was always watching movies set during the American Civil War: this landscape looked like the fields of Virginia after General Lee had passed through on his way to Florida.

Except this wasn’t an American Civil War movie, it was real, and I was in Mumbai, India.

Even the sea, the beautiful Arabian Sea that I had a view of from my bedroom window at home, was horribly changed. It was discoloured and covered with a scummy layer, like a stagnant pool in a gutter.

The wind groaned and whistled through the ruins of the structure I was standing in, stinking of odours I couldn’t recognize. It made me gag with revulsion.

Carried on this stinking wind were the sounds of people screaming, gunfire, explosions and God knows what else.

How had this happened? Clearly, Toto, I wasn’t in Kansas anymore. But how had I got here? The last thing I remembered was that bizarre screen on Mikey’s PC asking me those strange questions. Something about a portal. No, not portal. Vortal. Surely entering that command hadn’t brought me here? How could a computer programme transport me to…to wherever the hell I was.

One thing I knew for certain: I wasn’t dreaming or imagining this. It was vividly, terribly real.

I looked around at my immediate surroundings, searching for something, anything that could help me make sense of what had happened.

I seemed to be standing amidst the debris of a house. A simple structure, just four brick walls and a thatched roof. More a shanty than a proper house. But from the ruins scattered everywhere, it seemed that this was the kind of house everyone lived in. The splintered and heat-fused fragments of various household items lay in the debris around me—remnants of cooking utensils, clothes, wooden furniture. Simple, crude things, at the level of what you might expect to find in a Indian tribal village maybe, not a 21^st century Indian metropolis.

A sound from afar distracted me for a moment. I walked to the Eastern side of the plot. I looked out in the direction that should have shown me a view of Khar-Danda on the left, old Khar and Bandra in front and Linking Road-Turner Road-Hill Road on the right.

Instead, what I saw blew my mind.

VORTAL: SHOCKWAVE is a complete fantasy adventure in one book, as well as the first of a series, The Vortal Codex. It is also directly related to my Ramayana Series, Gods of War series, and other series. Signed copies of the limited edition large paperback are available at Rs 400 per copy, delivery by courier free anywhere in India.

Click here to continue reading VORTAL:Shockwave
Click here to order VORTAL:Shockwave within India.
Overseas deliveries are currently not offered.

Nov 27, 2009 | Ashok | Comments Off