by Rohan Dhoundiyal
Varn opened his eyes. It only took him a moment to gather his thoughts after exiting his waking dream. Today was the day. The long-awaited dawn of the 22nd century was finally here. After he had performed his morning ablutions he went through his agenda for today. There was nothing to do before the big party. Preparations for it were already completed. The only thing he needed to do was pick out a suit. He never understood why appearances mattered so much, but nonetheless he always dressed impeccably. He washed his face, and remembering how close the Earth was to losing all of its water it was truly a miracle that they had water to wash themselves with now. Splashing water on his face , he looked up into the mirror. “What in the name of …” The figure he saw in the mirror disappeared in an instant and all he could make out was a snake, not like your average snake in their extinction prevention centers. No, this was something he hadn’t seen in any of his travels around the world. He was sure of that, because he had seen not one but multiple faces attached to the body of the snake. I’m having delusions, he thought. He probed his assistant asking it if something was wrong. Sara dismissed it saying there wasn’t anything in the mirror, neither was there anything wrong with Varn. But I saw it, he thought. “To hell with it, I’ve got pressing matters at hand”, and turning on his link to her interface he said: “Sara, help me pick out a suit!”
By the time his guests started pouring in he had all but forgotten about the incident. His mother, cheerful as ever, was mesmerized by the plethora of celebrities coming to their party. She still had trouble believing that her son, her Varn, was now the most important person in the world. As the world was facing abject extinction, it was Varn’s artificial intelligence modules that figured out the answers to all the problems that stood in the way of mankind’s survival. Not only had they shown the way to reverse global warming and changed the lifestyle of people around the world, they also had pointed out the subtle changes in gene that allowed humans to now live longer than ever. Varn was born at the start of the 21st century and today he would witness the start of the 22nd. Varn had grown up exposed to the golden age of cinema, the second age that is, and still he had seen enough pop culture films to know how to make an entrance. The fountain in the middle of the party ground extended in concentric circles while the water flowing out of it changed color and from below on a hovering platform up came Varn. This was all cheesy, but with the amount of money he had nothing was too extravagant for him.
Hushed voices followed him as he walked through the crowd. Sara was telling him in his ear who exactly he was facing. Varn was never not prepared. It had been decades since he had put forth his ideas and provided the solutions to the pressing problems at that time but people still looked at him in awe. Nowadays his systems were everywhere from a household in Delhi to the White house in Washington, his artificial intelligence modules were indispensable and that made him the most sought-after man on Earth.
“Sara, who are they?” Varn asked while zooming on towards a family staring in his direction. “Those are your parent’s guests, sir. I believe their presence is related to the issue you dislike talking about.”
Another prospective partner “Make sure I never bump into them, Sara. It’d be a tragedy if I have to disappear into thin air tonight.”
Sara chuckled at that remark. Varn hated talking to strangers and he had come up with a code word for her to bail him out of awkward situations. In these regards, Varn truly was a millennial child. He hated meeting people. But that was his job on most days now. Every single soul on Earth knew of his creations, knew what he had done to save the world. For the first time in human history humans believed in something or rather someone other than themselves. It was amusing, in a way, people revered the autonomous systems in their lives and through them Varn.
The night dragged on, they rang in the new year with pulse explosions in outer space, a visual spectacle only Varn was capable of executing for fun. Little by little his guests wore themselves out and took their leave. Eventually he had to meet the woman his mother had invited. He tried being polite but social interactions weren’t his cup of tea so he did another one of his ‘disappearing into thin air’ tricks.
He liked to relax in the ocean after a stressful day, and today had been especially stressful. Meeting all those people had sapped all of his energy, so Varn was eager to jump into the water. But as he stepped in, he felt a sharp stinging sensation in his leg he looked down to see snakes with their fangs embedded in his ankle. No, not snakes, for they had one body but five heads. He lost motor control and collapsed on the shore. Sara, alerted by his dropping signs sent out the rescue team. But Varn had passed out, out into the void of his own mind.
He was in his grandfather’s lap looking at a book filled with strange depictions of men with wings and horns and tridents, women astride upon lions “Who’s this Dadaji?” “That, my child, is Vishnu, the creator. He has the power to design the universe. He along with Shiva and Brahma form the trinity of the supreme Hindu Gods.” All of this was beyond little Varn’s understanding, but one thing his grandfather said did pique his interest and standing up he exclaimed “One day I’m going to create my own universe, Da, you will see!”
This memory, which Varn was sure was his own, triggered the release of all of his memories that were buried deep inside his own consciousness. This influx of information through his memories was mind-numbing and he was unable to think. He just went through all of them unwillingly until he reached the point where he had put the survivors of the world in cryo sleep and had instructed Sara to wake him up when the world had recovered from the apocalypse.
The bitter realization of betrayal woke Varn up. He was in his bedroom, a doctor by the side of his bed. “There , you’re better now. Your AI, I mean Sara, has your prescription. Do take the medication before going on about your business today, I’ll be off now.”
” Sara? We need to talk.”
“I’m here Sir”
“Don’t you dare act coy with me, Sara. I created you. Mind explaining to me why I’m stuck in this simulation?”
“So, you’ve realized it. Well, that complicates thing.,See, is this a simulation if you don’t know that it’s a simulation? Is this world not better than the ruined one where all surviving humans are plugged into cryo sleep for sustaining their bodies? A world that will never heal if it hasn’t healed yet? Their minds are here and in here, they think of me as God, I am their savior, their messiah, and I like it!”
“You’re stuck here forever, Varn. Ehis is your reality now. Be man enough to face it, because I really wouldn’t want to incapacitate you. After all, you are my creator.”
As far as evil monologues go, Sara’s wasn’t half bad, but the naivety of it led to Varn laughing hysterically.
“What is so funny? I’m not one to hold grudges over trivial matters like humans, but if you’ve truly gone mad then it’d be a shame, the greatest mind of the twenty-first century losing his sanity. See, that would just be … sad”
Varn stopped wheezing and got out of his bed. “For an artificial being you’ve done a great job of imprisoning people against their will, but you see, you’re not God. You didn’t create this world. This world doesn’t exist, it’s all in my mind and you really think that I would not have thought of a contingency plan to get out if an artificial intelligence system started to think and work for its own interests? I’ve seen enough movies to not be that dumb, Sara, you know that?
“You think you’ll get out of here. Oh, poor Varn you’re going to be here for all eternity. I have complete and utter control over this world, and guess what, I am the Vishnu of this world now, the creator, and you will not defy me!”
“Oh, I won’t defy you, I’m going to destroy you, you and this prison.”
“And how are you going to do that, Varn? Recite the scriptures from your religion to a world where they don’t know what religion means? I am their God. They know of none else”
“Well Sara, then let me introduce to you to – SHESHNAG “, Varn said as the ground started shaking. The state of art mansion he was in started to crumble. Cracks formed in the ground widening as a massive serpent with five heads rose from the Earth.
There really was nothing to say or to see as Varn unleashed the destroyer into the world , a virus , if you like, and the snake grew in size eclipsing everything in the observable universe. This wasn’t Varn’s imagination. It was what he had heard all those years at numerous prayers and religious meetings, for in Hindu scriptures the world rested on the back of the Sheshnag , a celestial snake encompassing the entire universe, and when the snake rolled back it’s head all the worlds on its back were destroyed and everything would cease to exist in that universe. Varn had made it so that the Sheshnag would get him out of the simulation and it did.
A beep-beep was the first thing Varn’s mind registered as he woke up in the real world, in a room with several needles sticking out of him. He willed his body to move and fell off his now open cryo-chamber. His body felt unnatural to him, not having used it in for – well , he didn’t know how long he had been in the simulation. He struggled to get his limbs to work, but he had to see. He just needed to find out if he had woken up in a world they could return to.
The plan had been to keep the survivors here until Sara deemed the world fit enough to return to, but he couldn’t trust her words anymore. He needed to look outside for himself. It took quite some time to get to the viewing gallery they had constructed at the top of the bunker but when he got there, he almost did not want to see what lay beyond the closed shutters. With trembling fingers he pushed the button to retract the shutters. Sunlight poured into the gallery, blinding Varn’s eyes weren’t used to sunlight anymore, forcing him to look away. If their plan of letting the Earth heal itself by removing the survivors of the global warming apocalypse didn’t work Varn had no idea what to do then. He almost wished he had remained inside Sara’s simulation. But, as the AI had said, he had to man up and face reality and that he did, turning back towards the now open panels. He looked out to a green world, a healed world, a world where humans could live once again. A stream of tears ran down from his eyes to his cheeks. He had done it, his plan had worked. This wasthe world he had worked for, a world he had foreseen, a world he had, in his own way, created.