WARNING: STRONG READER DISCRETION ADVISED. This piece depicts explicit content that some readers may find discomforting. My intent is merely to depict reality within the confines of fiction and not to cause offense. 

Part 3: Sachita Whatever-Happened-To-Her
----------------------------------------------------------------

The silicon chip was to be planted under the skin of the forehead because the forehead had no hair and therefore had more exposure to the outside environment than other parts of the brain. The chip was self-learning, meaning it could store, analyze and use information it had come across. It was also self-healing whereby it could  correct any errors encountered in the process of its operations. Lastly, it was self-destructible meaning under a certain set of defined conditions, such as an external command,  it could cease to function.

My creator, on painkillers for the last two hours, cleaned the center of his forehead with Dettol, used a blade to make a small cut in his skin and inserted the chip, applied anti-bacterial ointment, and used a Handyplast to cover up the puncture in his skin. My body is petite in size. Smaller than the clipped nail of your pinky finger.

Within seconds the monitoring device hooked onto his laptop picked up first the signal from his brain. It  started with blip on the screen and soon turned into a deluge of electrical activity. He smiled at the sight. The joy generated a distinct type of current. As did his anxiety, pain, frustration, affection, anger, jealousy, greed, sexual desires, hunger, thirst as I slowly learned.  I noted the chemical composition of his synaptic fluids at the time as well as his heart rate, breathing rate, adrenalin and hormone levels during each of these events. I was programmed to measure sub atomic activity and duly memorized my findings.

It was on the second day of my existence that I noticed interference in the electrical field. It was early in the morning and his maid had come to serve him tea. She was a women with gray hair, wrinkled skin and large eyes. I detected a new kind of electrical current. The intensity of the current varied with how close she was to my creator. I was picking up her electric fields.

"I know how much you love me, Ishwari didi" my creator blurted in his sleep

"You must have read my mind, raja, I was just thinking of that" exclaimed Ishwari didi, his mother's helper, and the one source of consistent  love for him in his family. "I don't know how I will handle your wife when you get married. She better treat you better than I do"

"Didi, don't fight with her" my creator said

"You read my mind again, I was just thinking I will kick her out of the house if she didn't treat you right".

The electrical activity was overwhelming. The system could experience an overload if  multiple current fields were detected faster than they could be processed.

"This may not be my own house, but I have raised you since you were little, and if she so much as asks you to fetch her a glass of water, I am going to drag her out by her hair"

"Just like your mother-in-law once did to you when you came home late ?" my creator smiled and asked..

"How do you know all this stuff, raja. I dont  ever recall telling you" an astonished Ishwari di replied

"I have a headache" my creator said.

The chip crashed. Upon automatic reboot, the self-healing adapter kicked in and picked up unprocessed activities. Total downtime of missed activity was 180 seconds. What transpired in those seconds I dont know. The next recorded signal started with Ishwari didi wiping a tear from the corner of her eye as she rubbed my creators head and asked "How did you fall to cut your forehead like that?"

***

When I first saw my creator's mother, she was coming home and he was leaving and they crossed each other at the main door of the house.  I detected a strong but short-lived signal in him denoting affection. This was  immediately followed by a longer signal denoting anger. As she got closer to him, I picked up activity from her brain that  I had come to associate with affection. It was the strongest such activity I had recorded till then. Much more intense and lasting than that detected in Ishwari di.

"Mamu, don't worry I'll be back soon. I'll eat dinner at Ranjan's place" my creator told her

"I was just going to ask you that. Ok, that's fine. Don't drive too fast" she said as he tied his laces and went out the door

"Are you okay? " she asked after him

"Yeah, and I wont drink at his place"

"He is such a drunkard, I was just thinking about that. That whole family is full of drunkards. They will all have liver cirrhosis pretty soon if they go on this way"

***

The initial signals I detected when I first saw his dad were of anger and apathy on my creator's part. There was jealousy and frustration on his dad's part. It was late at night when the doorbell rang, the servants were fast asleep, and my creator had gone down to open the door knowing full well who would be ringing the door bell at that hour.

He shut the door after his dad and was getting ready to bolt it, a common practice in robbery-prone Kathmandu, when he blurted out "Yes, I have made love".

"What!? I will give you two tight slaps. What are you talking about? Who asked you that?" his dad's eyes were as big as an angry tiger's

"I dont know, I thought you did" he replied

"Are you drunk? Are you taking drugs?"  his dad said  but surprisingly retreated upstairs without  pushing the matter further "Somat nabhako keta"

" I could have sworn I heard him ask if I had ever made love" he muttered to himself

He went upstairs to his room and remembered Sachita, my namesake, also Suvit's sister. He loved her. He desired her. He recalled every moment of their time together. An increase in the levels of vnorepinephrine, serotonin, oxytocin, vasopressin, nitric oxide (NO) and  prolactin was observed. He fell asleep soon after.

"My dad thinks I am a handsome kid. Ha, ha, what a joke. I'll never sell my looks to the devil like he did" his electrical activity decreased significantly after that point.

***

I had been programmed to find and re-position myself to that point in the brain that was most conducive to detecting electrical activity. I  had to  move away from under the skin on his forehead to a much deeper position within his head. By then I had become  cognizant of the different types of emotions he experienced and the physical events that triggered them. I could tell what made him happy and what made him sad. I could tell why he would get angry and what he would do when he was angry. I learnt what food he liked and how he liked them cooked and served. I knew whom he liked and hated. I knew who liked him and who did not.  I learnt of those slim bodied girls with long silky hair on TV he desired and what exactly those desires involved. I knew of the books he read and movies he watched growing up that bred those types of desires.

***

He went to the passport office  to renew his  passport in preparation for his trip to America. He was going to visit Srijan, his childhood friend and cousin. At the issuing counter, I detected resentment signals from the issuing officer. There was greed too. He thought my creator must have money and began to think of  a way of telling him his  passport could not be issued till next week unless he paid a small sum under the table. My creator, acting on my findings, and  without being asked, said he was a college student and smiled. He got his new passport the next day.

He went to Yeti Travels to pick up his tickets. The girl behind the counter served him with great reverence because of his family's connections to her boss. Midway through their conversation, he smiled. I detected a short blip of sexual tension in her that quickly faded. I passed this information to my creator. At the end of the twenty-minute conversation, they had exchanged email addresses. This was not the first time his smile had resulted in blips of sexual tension in the opposite sex, or one occasion, as a placard-carrying Blue Diamond Society rally marched by , on people of his own sex.

He visited the Annanpurna Coffee Shop right after getting his tickets. He sipped cappuchino and ordered a pineapple pastry. The waitress was expecting a fifteen-rupee tip. He thought he'd give her thirty and share his happiness.

***

The runaway bumble bee
------------------------------------

He became aware of the unintended consequences of my existence one day  at a wedding reception. As buttoned-up waiters served cocktails and appetizers to the five hundred-plus guests at The Everest Hotel in Baneshwor, his mom glanced at Pradip uncle. I deteced love and lust in her; he detected love and lust in her. He hated her. The thought of her with any man, even his father, was disgusting enough. The whole idea of her with that fatso Pradip made him sick.

His father meanwhile, slightly inebriated from the three pegs of Chivas Regal he had consumed, looked at Kaushalya aunty and right there, before his very eyes, he vividly saw them naked in bed!

Shocked, he closed his eyes and covered them with his hands. What was happening to him? This had never happened before and he didn't know what to do.I  have now learnt to  decipher  electric signals from other people's memory centers and serve  them up as real images to the vision processing parts of my creator's brain.

Soon he saw the lives of every one around flash in front of him. How Rana uncle hated Bahuns. How Sharma uncle could not stand Ranas, Shahs and Thakuris. How Amatya uncle though Bahuns and Chettris should be  driven out of the Kathmandu Valley,confined to a concentration camp in India and starved to death wearing only  their janais. How Pandey uncle thought Newars should be exterminated along with all the water buffaloes in Nepal. How they all loathed Madesis or "Marshyas" as Shrestha uncle thought of them.

He did not want to know these things. Rana uncle, Shrestha uncle and Sharma uncle were some of the finest people he knew. They were the creme de la creme of Nepali society. Educated at the finest institutions in the world, they were the best Nepal had to offer. It was painful and unbearable for him to find out that those he had thought of as heroes harbored such dark prejudices and hate inside them. Doctors, engineers, pilots, lawyers, politicians, teachers, bankers, businessmen, industrialists, chartered accountants,  business analysts, IT specialists, farmers, landlords, shopkeepers, spiritual leaders were all no different from  barbarians and savages in the deepest corners of their minds. Their smiles, their handshakes, their degrees, name, fame and wealth were just pretty edifices hiding the rotten and stinking garbage decaying inside of them.

He could not bear it anymore and ran out of the hotel. He drove as fast as he could towards Maharajgunj. There were times when he was momentarily blinded by too many images forming in front of him. His mind was seeing things his eyes were not. He could not differenciate between the physical reality his eyes saw and the virtual reality his mind created. He seemed to be constantly moving back and forth between them and could not tell when or where one stopped and the other started. As he passed fifty-feet from a cop in Durbar Marg, he heard the cop softy cursing and swearing  about arrogant mother-fu**ers driving like  mad men. The cop wanted the Maoists to overrun the valley and imprison all those  rich and  corrupt people who drove expensive cars that were smuggled into the country. He yearned for a day when the rich would plough the fields and patrol the traffic and he would live in one of their mansions.

Amidst all this, my creator saw Jogi Parmanand standing on the side walk and slowed down to offer him a ride. How come there was a lake in Durbar Marg right outside of Sherpa Hotel? Why was Mr Dwivedi, his high-school physics teacher, standing with a peace sign infront of Nirulas? What an ugly beard he had grown.

He then heard a deafening bang. His blood pressure immediately dropped and his heart rate  fell. He felt sharp pain in his head and chest. Overall electrical activity in his brain dipped to a very low level. He was not speaking or moving. His head was on the steering wheel. There were footsteps running towards the car.


To be continued