Within a year his doubts multiplied like algae in a stagnant summer pool. Raman now lay awake for hours almost every night falling asleep every three or four days out of sheer exhaustion. He stopped looking in the mirror. Krish upped the enhancers one last time. Raman didn’t call him anymore. Krish had done what he could.
Raman knew there was only one path to peace. He had to get Maya tested. Would she agree? She probably would. Raman knew two consequences were assured. One, real or not, after the test he’d lose her. For good. Second, he'd lose his position in the KNOT program. Maybe he could try Xarina one more time.
Xarina instantly quashed his attempt. “How’s the quota coming along?”
Raman was now seized by desperation to get Maya tested. But how? Even if he found a way to get the test done, no one, least of all Maya, could know. Because the worst case wasn’t that Maya would turn out to be a CF. Worst case would be finding out she’s real, and losing her. The other option was to slowly go mad. Or leave her for good!
So he tried that, too. This time Raman told Maya he needed to leave to “work through his angsts.” She didn't say anything. So Raman tried leaving. Three times.
The first time he came back in a week with no answers, then in two and finally in a month. That first time she took him back. That second time she kept him hanging for a week. That third time she wouldn't let him back in. It made his heart and body hungrier for her, her voice, her touch, her chameli. Finally after a month she let him in saying this was the last time. He believed her solemn eyes. When they made love, she cried. He felt the shittiest ever.
Raman’s performance on his quotas was now critically behind. Xarina called him in. Without any preamble, she displayed Krish’s latest report. “Third level Eudaimonic Enhancement — I may have to refer you. Cautionary mark already on your file. You leave me no choice. One month. Fix it!”
Raman didn’t say anything.
“Star officer losing it all for something so stupid. So outdated… ‘real’?!” For the first time Xarina expressed anything close to sympathy.
Raman tried to smile. “I’m working on it,” he lied.
Making Senator at any point in his career was all but a lost dream. There was only one way out. Extremely risky. But everything, starting with his sanity, depended on it. Maya could never know. Raman needed an ally, preferably someone who owed him something. He knew exactly who.
A week later Raman brought Maya to a restaurant in old town Khyber, a place she loved, for dinner. To play the part even more completely, he’d entered the meditation pod that day, after months of having neglected it. He told her he was in the mood to celebrate because he was close to catching up on his quota and Xarina had removed the caution on his dossier.
Maya didn’t ask him how he’d made it up so quickly. She looked particularly beautiful, in a flowing, purple, low-cut silk dress. Her hair was carelessly collected in a ponytail, which only accentuated her neck, her angular collar bones and cleavage all of which gleamed in the restaurant's candle lighting.
As they sat down to dinner, he inhaled a whiff of chameli on her that took him back to the Mandakini. He looked at her jaw. The vein was calm. It made him feel guilty. How had he traveled so far from that paradise?
He ordered a lot of wine. And added a double dose of soporifanes Krish had prescribed for his sleep, into Maya’s glass. By the end of dinner she could barely walk to the transporter. She was out before they got home.
A little after midnight, Raman let Dr. Roshan into the house. It had been over two years since they met. She wasn’t pregnant anymore. Raman’s atypical delay — something he’d prepared an elaborate explanation for — in submitting the Roshans’ file meant he'd bought them more time in civilization while their baby grew stronger. He’d eventually have to submit but the more he delayed, the more the Roshans owed him. He wondered why he risked that for them, but that delay was proving useful now. Especially, since an accomplice like Dr. Roshan understood very well the need for such a test.
“I can run the DNA and the biochemical. Not a full biometric or femto for obvious reasons. One invasive tech may be needed. Will take me a few hours to complete. Is she out?” Dr. Roshan asked as soon as she came in.
Raman noted again that familiar feeling with the doctor. He nodded. “This will be clean, right? No blood?”
Dr. Roshan scoffed. “You have no idea what they make us do to people and insist we not leave a trace.” He didn’t want to know. They proceeded to their bedroom. Raman opened the door and motioned her in.
Maya was laying on her back on her usual left side of the bed. The foot of the bed was closer to the door. Dr. Roshan moved up to the left side of the bed to look at Maya. She stopped short. Raman was behind her and couldn’t see her expression.
Before Raman could catch up to her, she gently turned Maya’s face towards her. Then she traced Maya’s blue vein with her fore finger.
Raman came up to her. “All okay? I gave her a couple of soporifanes.”
Dr. Roshan’s expression shifted as if returning from elsewhere. “How old is she?”
“Not important. Any problem?”
The doctor shook her head. “I’ll put her fully under before I continue.”
She performed a few basic checks. Raman could tell she kept returning to Maya’s face. Maya’s vein looked strangely aware, as if it was awake, watching them.
Then the doctor turned to Raman and asked him to leave the room.
Raman was surprised. But Dr. Roshan looked resolute.
“I’ll need to see the results,” he insisted.
She nodded. Raman went to the living area and sat down on the couch. He must have dozed off because the next thing he knew, Dr. Roshan was shaking him. “The tests are done.”
He looked at the time. It had been over three hours. He followed the doctor into the room. Maya looked beatific sleeping as if she’d not even been touched.
There was virtually no evidence of the doctor’s handiwork. Too bad we’ll lose someone this skilled to snow country. Lately he'd heard rumors that snow country was building out a sustainable way of life. Even rumors about a younger population, better fertility rates. A few too many talented people were choosing to move there. Still, how far could they get? And for what? Extreme sacrifice for something not that important. He buried these thoughts.
Dr. Roshan picked up her tablet and showed Raman the test results. “It’s all there. Nothing extraneous. Unadulterated human,” she announced flatly. “Give me another hour or two to make sure she comes out of this.” She motioned him to leave.
Raman staggered out of the room into the bathroom and threw up. He walked back to the couch and must have fallen asleep again, because Dr. Roshan was shaking him awake for a second time that night. “She’s okay. A little blood pressure dip. But it bounced back. I gave her some accelerants. She’ll wake up in four or five hours.”
At the door, she turned to look at him. “Give us three months.”
He wanted to hug her, but she kept her equipment box between them. He noticed it had a little insignia in the corner. A little bunch of white flowers. Chameli? Before he could say anything, she was gone. Raman realized he didn’t even know the good doctor’s first name.
Maya and Raman slept in for most of the next day. When Maya awoke, he told her they’d both had too much to drink. She didn’t say anything. His beloved Maya. How could a man get so lucky?
Their days resumed as before. Maya was attentive. But quieter. She seemed tired, and slept more. Something had changed. She couldn’t possibly know, could she? He vowed to never doubt their love again. His sleep got better. He told Krish he'd finally made peace, and asked to lower his enhancers.
Raman needed to focus on his KNOT quota. But he found he had no stomach for it. He asked for a reassignment.
Xarina shook her head. “You can’t ask for it back.”
Raman nodded.
Xarina exhaled. “There’s leniency for those with heavy angsts. The Center needs brain scans of your angsts. I saw the psych report.”
“I don’t have them anymore.”
“We know. Residual data.”
Raman nodded, a little nervous. There was no way they could know. He’d been careful to cover his tracks and he knew Dr. Roshan was rock solid. He went in for the scans.
Raman took a few days off and insisted he and Maya get out of Khyber, to spend a few days in the newly opened old Delhi town. All of it was virtually created from what was once a town of havelis, temples and mosques in the old subcontinent. Quaint and beautiful, even a little musty. Those generations were easily amused.
It was a place Maya would love. Something about the place’s atmosphere left him sad. Maya walked around, quietly touching a few things. But she didn’t talk to any of the elderly who sat at the street corners.
A few days later the full scan report showed up on his desk. He’d been cleared. And he had a new assignment entailing a pilot program — convincing the most promising young men and women in Khyber to accept Cyborg partners. He sat in his module reading about it. Perfect enabling partners for promising, ambitious youth. The cosmos would be the limit for what they could achieve. Productivity’s next frontier!
Except that he knew deep down that if he were on the receiving end, he couldn’t do it. This was for the young. Maya and he were thankfully past the age for it. A twinge of guilt accompanied his relief.
The sadness he sensed in Maya persisted. Her uncanny sense of knowing worried him. She couldn’t possibly know! That night he had a dream — once again playing ball with his father. This time however when the SereniGuard carried him away and he turned to look at his father, his father was his younger self from when Raman was three. When the SereniGurad had first moved in. As his father strode to claim him, Raman woke up crying. He wanted to call his father and tell him he’d left KNOT. That day, he told Maya about his dream and his intention. She smiled, almost her old smile. Raman’s heart expanded. He’d give anything to get her spark back!
Raman still had one task left to complete. Dr. Roshan’s file had resurfaced. Xarina wanted to know why it was pending from his last assignment. He made a case of due diligence, “The Roshans are A-calibre people I put on my exception list. Worth trying third level incentives, especially with two kids I thought they’d cave. I’ll complete a final check and determine.”
He got a week to get it done. He looked in the file and noted the good doctor was Dr. S Roshan. There was nothing more. Odd. He made an appointment to visit the Roshans. Only the doctor was home with their baby girl who was walking about with her mother’s calm. She looked at him directly. Large jade eyes.
Raman entered and told the doctor they had a week. “You’ll be escorted to the snow country border within hours of my submission.”
She nodded. A week went by and he submitted the report.
That evening he found a note attached to his transporter. Old fashioned words etched with a stylus on a leaf. The kind that left no trace or trail. From Dr. Roshan,
“I’m telling you because you’ll find out soon enough. The new CFs are more sophisticated than current tests can detect. New protocols are classified. But Maya is real. I KNOW! As real as I am.”
Raman stopped reading. Maya? How did she know Maya’s name?
He couldn’t recall how he got home that evening. Maya was gone. She’d left him a leaf-note too. His second one for the day.
“I’m pregnant. I’ll never allow KNOT into our lives. You are what it produces. Unable to believe. Unable to love. I’ll raise our child with my people.”
— Maya
Raman sat down and reopened Dr. Roshan’s note to read the rest:
“We’re leaving for snow country tonight. Come with us.”
— Sameera Roshan
Maya’s sister!
Raman packed a bag. Besides the basics and a thick jacket, he had bought for Khyber winters but never used, he only packed the pen Maya had given him on his birthday and his mother’s rudraksha necklace.
If he left now he could get to the snow country border before morning. Then he’d have to find his way home — to Maya, to his real family, and to the Raman he’d lost a long time ago!
The End
Glossary of Hindi/Urdu terms
Zari - Thread traditionally made of fine gold or silver used in traditional Indian-subcontinent garments, especially as brocade in saris etc. This thread is woven into fabrics, primarily silk, to make intricate patterns and elaborate designs of embroidery called zardozi.
Nani - Maternal grandmother in Hindi
Khyber - No relation to current day Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa region or its residents; except perhaps being considered “ungovernable” even if for entirely different reasons.
Haldi - Turmeric.
Chameli - Jasmine flower or plant.
Tulsi - Basil, is considered holy, a sacred plant in Hinduism and is widely used in traditional medicine systems like Ayurveda.
Rudraksha - A seed traditionally used as a prayer bead in Hinduism, Buddhism, and other spiritual practices. The seed comes from the fruit of the Rudraksha tree (Elaeocarpus ganitrus), which is found mainly in the Himalayan region.
Ganesha - Ganesha is a Hindu god with the head of an elephant. He is one of the most popular deities in Hinduism.
Murgh Musallam - A traditional dish of the Indian subcontinent that consists of a whole chicken marinated in a mixture of yogurt and spices.
Kashmiri - from Kashmir, a northern state in India with a part of the Himalayas.
Kaju - Cashew.
Haveli - Refers to a traditional mansion or large house, typically found in the Indian subcontinent.
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Loved the ending. Very powerful story, it has a strong message. The insane obsession with productivity in your fictional society is a such a sobering reflection on today's world. Congratulations Deena for this amazing story! Looking forward to reading more. Perhaps even set in the same universe.
Sad and hopeful. Glad Raman packed his bag!