Note: This chapter starts Part-III of the novel.

I am sitting in an archaic office with Sabina waiting for the Boss. She is busy with her meditation. The office is neat and clean but looks like I have come back to the 1950’s. There is an old wooden chair and a cemented desk. The window with a sill is made of old grey steel and glasses marred with different shades of brown dust, giving it the appearance of a veteran that has survived years of wear and tear. The only thing which looks odd is a poster of IIT Kharagpur on one of the walls. The poster is old. On it are subscribed the words ‘Dedicated to the service of the nation’, the tagline of the Institute. Sabina is looking into her phone. I hear steps coming towards the office and the door opens. A tall, healthy woman, around fifty years of age, wearing a black salwar and blue jeans, enters with a jolly look on her face. She has a long face with an imposing nose and walks erect as if her spine is tightened up with a band. Sabina turns around and rises. She hugs the woman while I make a pretense of rising up. She motions me to keep sitting and goes to her wooden chair on the other side of the desk.

‘So, he is the handsome young man in search of meaning?’ she asks Sabina.

‘Yes’

‘Good.’ She now puts her hand forward for a handshake and I take it.

‘Nice meeting.’ I say.

‘The pleasure is all mine dear.’

‘He is an alumni of IIT Kharagpur.’

‘Yes, your father told me. That is the reason I accepted taking him in.’

‘How long do I have to stay with him?’

‘I wouldn’t want to take any more of your time. I will take over from here.’

Sabina smiles, stands up, shakes hands with the Boss and leaves the room. Being alone with her fills me with little apprehension. But the overwhelming feeling I have is that of excitement. Sabina had not said anything to me, except that the Boss would help me. It is like a new challenge that is coming my way, something that could help me out with the problem. I am a little child waiting for a new toy promised by his father. I am desperate to get along the activity now and see what it is all about. I watch Boss taking out a form from her drawer.

‘You would need to fill and sign this form before we could start the process. It’s a sort of contract.’

She hands me few sheets of papers. I flip them over. They are around ten pages of rules and regulations. I am in no mood to read them.  As I flip through the pages, I hear her say.

‘Read the points carefully Kabir. You would need to sign the form with the full knowledge of what you are going to go through. We don’t want to give you any surprises.’ She smiles.

As the Boss sits there, I go through the points one by one. The first five pages talk about a technology. There is a detailed explanation of a machine, how it works, and what kind of side effects it would have. I am intrigued, is it a joke! I have never heard of such a machine in my whole life. I have a wicked smile on my face as I look up at her. She is clearing her desk.  Are these people more nuts than me! I want to laugh out loud sitting there in the wooden chair but keep the humor to myself. The next five pages put the onus of anything going wrong on the patient and take away any responsibility from the Boss. It details things which could go wrong with me if I went through with the process. I could go completely insane, develop new enemies, have greater suicidal tendencies and so on. At the end, there is also a clause which forbids me to speak about the process to anybody without permission. I don’t see any other choice but to sign it. I have come a long way for this and I have faith on Sabina. I take out the pen from my pocket, sign the document, and hand it to her.

‘I will look into your memories today. We will start from tomorrow.’

‘Finish fast.’

She notices the rush I am in. ‘I would recommend being patient with this process. It may take some time dear, it’s a complicated process.’

‘How long?’

‘God, you seem to be catching a train. I cannot give you a timeline now dear. Hopefully it will not be long.’

‘The contract, things going wrong. Has it happened?’

‘Yes, unfortunately it has. We have seen failures.’

‘Where, they now?’

‘Sorry, I cannot disclose anything to you. You should not worry about the others. Let’s get you sorted out dear. Let’s start.’

She presses a button under her desk. The wall opposite to her noiselessly starts opening up from the middle. As the other side becomes visible, I see a sophisticated room, very different from the archaic one we are sitting in.

‘Let’s go in,’ she says.

We enter the room. It is like a planetarium I had been to in Delhi. The walls and the ceiling are screens painted dark red in color. Red lights illuminate the room. There is nothing except two big sofas in the middle. She sits on one of them and motions me to sit on the other.

‘Feel comfortable. You can lie down if you wish to.’

‘Am fine.’ I sit down.

She presses a button on the side of her sofa and the floor screeches. A device comes up through the floor. It is the same device which was drawn on the contract. There is a thin cylindrical tube on the top of which rests a plate with two walls. The black colored device is covered with buttons as if thorns were protruding out of a rose stalk. The tube is shining yellow. It looks sleek. The room feels as if sun is shining over a red tinged sky.

‘As you would have read, this is a device we call Traumafinder. Please put your head between those walls.’

I stretch forward and put my head on the top of the tube with small walls on two sides. She presses one of the buttons on the device. There is a click and then a sound like the camera reels unwinding. I stay there for fifteen minutes.

‘Now you can take out your head.’ As I make myself comfortable the device turns towards my head.

‘What does it do?’ I ask her.

‘There is a complex electronic Artificial Intelligence system in the room below. It has mapped your brain. They are processing your memories. It will take some time.’

It was true, what they had written.

‘Who created?’

‘IIT Kharagpur engineers created it. They were afraid that it could be misused. Hence, they wished to destroy it.’

‘How you have it?’

‘Well, it’s a long story. To cut it short, my husband convinced them of the use of the technology in curing mentally ill patients. So, they donated it to us under certain conditions.’

‘Interesting.’

‘You would not believe the kind of people who we have helped. This is a secret project.’

‘Names?’

‘I can’t. They belong to some of the richest and most powerful families in this country.’

‘Wow.’

‘It has to keep running dear. We need to use it at certain intervals to keep it functioning.’

 White lines write over the red background of the walls and ceilings. ‘The Systems are ready.’ Boss looks at me.

‘The system has processed your memories. I will study them today. You can come tomorrow at the same time. We will start then.’

I leave her office and come back to my hotel room. I sleep the whole-time skipping dinner.