The World Between

“So whats your magic number my lady?” Abbey half seriously asked the girl standing nearby in the other queue

She disdainfully ignored him before giving him a go-to-hell look.

I really liked it.

“Why do you even bother with all this earthly crap” – I said

Not being put down by these small incidences he continued to grin thinking about his next prank

“Well I just want to enjoy my life you know. And why do you always get that awefully serious man. Ok now tell me – does this hurt – “ He said while pinching me on my arm

“Oouch…ya it does. And it will do till we enter the gates”

“And shouldn’t you now start thinking of the gates too. Aren’t you curious which one of them will you go into? I mean you spent whole life working for this moment and…” – I said as his eyes steered away from me

The queues were very long.  I could barely make out the figure sitting at the counter sending people to the two gates. How easy would it have been if the concept of bribe was not that alien concept here; I wondered. Anyway, time didn’t matter but getting stuck with Abbey here was a pain enough. He is one heck of a fellow constantly grabbing attention of others. We entered the queue at the same time and started some chat to kill some time. And now,within few minutes he’s on arm pinching terms with me. Though I kept on cursing him, he has actually alleviated the mood of the crowd here…which, otherwise would have given me a nervous breakdown standing in a queue waiting for your settlement and wondering about your whole life.

Finally after what seemed like hours our turn came. There were only two people sitting at the counter. On the left, sat a man who looked like in his 80s with white hair and long white beard. He was wearing a round glass with a big black frame and occasionally tilting his head down to look at the crowd from top of his glasses. He had a very different aura with him. His forehead glowed like a sun and the wrinkles on his face only added to his demeanor. Next to him sat a relatively younger man who was handing down documents the older guy asked. He had a big moustache and strong physique. Behind him I could clearly see rusting almirahs with files and parchments about to spill out any moment.

They both were evaluating every mortal’s life through these parchments and files but I guessed it was the older guy who was making all the decisions. And then I realized that he was Chitragupta– the God who keeps account of good and bad deeds of every human being on earth.

 Good God …so Hindus were right – he is evaluating everyone’s Karma. I wondered if he ever made mistakes in counting your deeds. If he was always sure that his accounts were correct. What if he does a calculation mistake? He can’t always be right…I mean 20,000 years of human existence and billions and trillions of lives lived…what are the chances that he was perfect. Afterall,  accountants do mistakes all the time, so what makes sure that he did not send say Adolf Hitler to Heaven and Mahatma Gandhi to Hell because of some misplaced files, or a “Lets have fun day” at his job. And what about his account? – Isn’t this a conflict of interest. For a pang of a moment I thought of asking him these questions but then decided otherwise.  

Behind the counter I could see the two entry gates. They were not much different from each other as I expected. They both were having an identical golden arch with some divine artistry done on them. But I was quite sure that there would be hell of a difference between them on the other side…literally!

On one of the gates two beautiful angels played harps in their hands and welcoming people inside. It suddenly reminded me of beautiful air hostesses welcoming you on board while collecting your passes. I shrugged at the weird juxtaposition. But it was a no brainer that this was the heaven’s gate.

The other gate had couple of bouncers who were dragging tough nuts to the gate who failed to accept their fate. People were crying and cursing and trying to “resolve” their issues in earthly manner with these bouncers, but in vain.  So this is where they put bad guys for eternity. I thought.

At this point I turned to Abbey who was unusually silent for last 2 minutes and was looking at the bouncers. I guess he is quite afraid now.

“Hey man…I hope that pinch did not hurt you much. Even if it did, please don’t tell Chitragupta man. Please man ..” – Said Abbey who now finally looked sober at the deciding moment. I don’t know about his past but based on what I have seen of him, bouncers are gonna love him. Playing pranks on people for petty pleasure must not have gone well in Chitragupta’s books !

Well I don’t have anything to worry about. I paid all my taxes. Lead an average life. Did justice to my work and everything…no chance I’ll be put to hell. I thought.

“Tell me man….please” – by now Abbey was shouting at the top of his voice to get my attention.

“…Yes….ya ya…I forgive you…don’t worry” – I said

“Abbey Choudhury” – shouted the younger fellow over the crowd

“Y…Yes…that’s me” – said Abbey

I wished him best as he nervously stood in front of Chitragupta.  While the younger fellow retrieved a thick dusty file, Chitragupta tilted his head to look Abbey in the eye who was now clearly sweating.

HE started going through his file - “Hmmmm, an interesting case…to have done so many things in one life time is quite unique. Well, not necessarily all in a good way but yes so many things…”

“So what do you think Abbey….hmmmm?...whats your number hmmmm? “

“S…Sir.. I really don’t know..but …but I tried sir…this is how you made me..and I tried…” – Abbey was now shaking with a fear of what might await him in hell. Bouncers were now fixatedly looking at him. I guess they have already made up their mind that Abbey won’t go down quietly.

At which point Chitragupta tilted his head towards the younger man and discussed something. After which he gave a smile and shouted – “Plus Two”!

Hearing this the two angels started playing their harp and one of them politely signaled him to come to heaven. Abbey could not believe it and neither could I. Plus two? – it couldn’t have been narrower than this. After that thick account of deeds he had two more good deeds than the bad ones. Well I don’t know how he managed his life but he finally was relieved and thanked Chitragupta and his assistant. Before I could completely absorb the Abbey’s fate, came a voice piercing the crowd - “Vaibhav Thakur”

 “Yes. Here.” – I answered

“hmmmmm…interesting……hmmmmm”

“hmmmmmm…..so what are the odds” – I could clearly see Chitragupta smiling as he turned the pages of my account….

“hmmmmm…”- he then gestured his assistant to lean forward

“Take a look…you might be interested” – Said the accountant God who was, for the first time of what I saw, grinning

“Tell me what it is….see don’t play games with me…I am not Abbey that you are taking so much time to decide”

“hmmmm?....oh…well actually you are worse”

I..am going to hell? That’s not possible. I have lived a good life. I never thought that my life would end like this. And I did everything right. I never dropped the ball….but…I have a negative balance…no…this can’t be right.” – I scrambled to find words as my sentences turned to gibberish thinking about the misery which lay ahead of me in the hell; beginning with those two bouncers

“This can’t be right Chitragupta” – I said. But my voice got lost in the assistant’s giggle who was still looking at my account wide eyed. There was a mysterious happiness in his voice.

“See Chitragupta Sir. I don’t know if there is a mistake in your records …but I can’t have a negative karma…I am telling you that I am not going to hell…I did not do anything wrong….you must have made a mistake…” I said while realizing that tears have rolled off my eyes. I could still see a big smile on assistant’s  face through my watered eyes.

“No No you are not. Hmmmmmm….” Chitragupta continued …. “You are not going to hell”

“See…Your number is exactly zero!. Your good deeds perfectly outweigh the bad ones…so you can’t be sent to hell..but at the same time you can’t be sent to heaven too. This has not happened in the last 4000 years….do you understand…hmmmmm?”

“What do you mean this has not happened in 4000 years.?”

“hmmmmmmm? It means that it has not happened in last 4000 years.”- answered Chitragupta

“ So now my child you’ll have to service me till next time this happens. Believe me…it is still better than hell. And I see that you have done some finance also…that will help….hmmmmmm?”

“Sir you are forgetting something” – said the assistant still smiling unmanageably

“hmmmmmm?....oh yes….you have served me well for 4000 years…I don’t know if this new guy will keep upto but since you deserve it ….now I declare the Nirvana upon you…Trishanku.”

Disclaimer: According to Hindu mythology, Trishanku was left hanging between Earth and Heaven in a tussle of wills between Devas and guru Vishwamitra. Well, I took some creative freedom to employ him at the court of Chitragupta. Hope this disclaimer won’t irk RSS now ;) 

yrevocsiD ehT

(Year:  -1100, Day: -26)

“Yes I knew. And it was fun. So, lets celebrate this in the cafeteria. Your treat !”

“So you knew about this all along. And you were just messing with me”- I said while still trying to cope with the fact that I was wrong.

He pressed the remote control again.

“…so this was Prof Stephan Sagan who was….”

“This discovery has changed the way we looked at our existence and the fluid concept of causality. Our efforts to prove the existence of parallel Universe which exists alongside us have failed before this. A parallel Universe, the habitants of which live as close to us as our next door neighbors, but defy our reach. We don’t interact with each other. We can’t even see each other as we live in perpendicular dimensions. Its like living on a photograph and not able to see another one just held millimeters from each other. But this is the moment when I can say with great pride on behalf of whole scientific community that we have been able to prove its existence. We don’t yet know about any intelligent life as such but yes there is a Universe out there waiting to be explored. I congratulate all of our scientists on this grand achievement.”

“And now we break to telecast a very important discovery by physicists at GSI who achieved a major breakthrough today in our understanding of Universe and laws of nature. The director of Global Science Institute- Prof Stephan Sagan is with us today who will throw more light on this”

And before I could argue further, he pressed a button on the remote control and a familiar voice filled the room.

“Ok. Now I just want to see the look on your face. Turn on the television, the director is making an announcement now”- He said

And he gave me a crooked smile.

“See, that’s where you are wrong. There are no such particles. There is a prescribed set of rules in nature which each Universe will follow, regardless of wherever they are. The concept of causality should be the same everywhere. You remember the paper by an Indian scientist published in the Year -1136 which said that reverse causality is impossible and even imagining that intelligent life can evolve with such assumptions is pure rubbish.” – I said defending my bet

“You remember our bet on reverse causality right? Well, I have found some new arguments for it. And I guess after this discussion you will owe me a few thousand credits and a treat. Now I understand that even if I produce relativistic conditions by accelerating particles closer to the speed of light, the absolute causality will be unaffected. But If I were to tell you that there are particles which can travel at less than the velocity of the light then in such a Universe, causality will be opposite of our Universe. Cause will only happen before the event. Imagine that!  ”

And he entered suddenly in my laboratory.

There is a hypothesis that there are some particles called Tachyons which constantly travel at the speed greater than light. The speed of light is a lower limit for such particles and can’t be breached. For such particles events will come before the cause and its as normal as for us to see cause happen before the event. (My brother Gaurav, however, correctly points that the definition and philosophy of their “cause” and “effect” will be different in such Universe)  I just tried to imagine what kind of intelligent life might exist in a Tachyon filled Universe. 

Message in the Bottle - Final Part

Hello Friends,

First of all i have to apologize for this very long delay in the 2nd part. Life's been quite happening since last few months - got a new job in consulting, relocated to bangalore and got stuck with hectic schedules and lots of travelling. I will now try to  keep this blog alive and update it at least once a month. 

For now, i hope you will like the final part of the story. Please give your honest comments. (Which my wife already gave me in form of grammar lessons :D )

                                                                      -Continued from Part-I-

“Wha…..What?...but how can it be?...”Now- it was my turn to stammer

“A trick once is a trick twice” It was his turn to smile

 “But I eliminated the existence of the time machine…its ….its never invented. I made sure that he finally agreed to me ..then…then how did you?..”

“Universe is not dependent on us to change its course- myself. So little was understood about time when you invented this machine. Isn’t it? Well I have made some progress in that area in last 10 years. I discovered many things …time is…its…enlightening… its a way to God’s mind...its not a simple eraser to correct your mistakes…I made a mistake by trying to correct it…and now so did you”

“But I changed the past…I changed the cause of the future which I saw happening…didn’t I?” –I asked…”Didn’t YOU?” I added suspiciously

“Yes yes..i did..i did exactly what you are doing now. I changed the course of the world but only for some time…I changed the cause but I couldn’t change the end. Time works in mysterious ways !”

“What do you mean?”

 He was 50 now and his withered face reflected what he has gone through. He took a big sigh and stared at me.

“I was very happy when I changed the course of time. Just as you are now. And so I thought. After going back I found what I expected ….time machine was not invented…I was an average man with a desk job…I had my family…I had my life back…and I was quite happy …but only for a few years. And then I received the biggest shock of my life when I found out that our dear professor has disappeared. The report was identical to what it was when I was eliminated by GRAW in the original timeline. …only the characters were different. And then I realized that….that..”

…and then it hit me.

“That he also knew about it ” – I mumbled to myself

‘Yes…you only prevented yourself from going further on those equations but the professor advanced the knowledge. And succeeded.”

And then, I was scared…not for myself or the professor but scared from the realization that Universe had corrected itself. I realized that I tried to alter something which was far beyond me. I did not realize how and why, but that happened. And then I was scared that Universe will correct itself to what would have happened. There was a bigger force of which I knew nothing about but which was always working to set things right. Maybe wrong.

“But there is way even this can be corrected. Now let me begin from the beginning and then I will tell you what to do next”

“Do what? ..now wait a minute. I came here taking a big risk to set things right..i can’t even yet absorb the fact that you are standing in front of me. I don’t understand anything now and I don’t want to mess with timeline anymore. And you too shouldn’t myself. Now keep me out of it. I will go back to my time and won’t dare change anything…whatever may happen. Moreover don’t you realize that whatever we do we won’t be able to change the future. “

“Don’t jump the gun. Listen to me patiently first. ” – He interrupted me with a serious tone in his voice

“Ok ok…I am listening”

“You remember how we thought that Universe branches out going forward in time.” – He said matter of factly

“Once you stand at a decision point in time, Universe will divide itself into multiverses corresponding to the choices you have”

“I know that much. Our choices change the variables which decide the future course of the universe. “ – I added

“Yes. In fact remember the quantum physics’ interpretation of many-states-universe where multiple Universes exist and all decisions keep splitting the universes on the basis of their probability”

 “Now since you have raised this point isn’t this the basic assumption you and me made when we tried to alter the past to change our present Universe. “ – I asked

“Yes we did. And the physics is right. But we were wrong. More specifically our interpretation of underlying physics was wrong. We failed to realize that once time machine was invented- all the border of time dissipated ..the words like past, present and future hold no sense after that. Take yourself for example…you are standing in your past talking to your future. “

“So whats your point?”

“My point is that Universe does not distinguish between time at all ! Universe in fact does not simply split going forward but it just splits. Forward and backward in time are just our notions. It’s a self aware system which only tries to maintain a consistent relationship between its various dimensions…including time.”

“The moment at which you and 10 years before you I, changed the initial conditions, Universe branched itself backwards to create alternate initial variables which resulted in the same final outcome”

“Are you saying that Universe forced the professor so that the ultimate timeline remains the same” – I was shocked at my own words.  If what my future self was saying was right then there was a deterministic universe…there was a  fate , a destiny for everything… existence of ‘The One’..even a God perhaps” – I just shuddered even imagining the physical and philosophical implications of such a discovery.

“But that means nothing can be changed. Its all decided for us?”- I managed to ask

“Yes and No. Actually here you are missing one very important point” – He smiled again. Like teasing me to solve a complex puzzle

“The change which we did…the dent which we made in the Universe…the delta we created in initial variables …took ten whole years to heal. In other words we delayed the ultimate timeline itself by 10 years. The creation of timemachine and events that followed were all delayed by 10 years. The Universe took a definite time in trying to self correct itself.”

“Had the dent been bigger or in other words had the change done by us being significantly large it would delay it even further. Think about it for a moment – a simple lecture given your past self delays the invention of time machine itself by 10 years. So theoretically…a very drastic change in initial variables will have such an impact that Universe will not be able to heal, and time machine will never be invented. Well… at least not by you or the professor”

“Which now brings me to the task of creating a bigger dent which you’ll have to do. “

“Wait a minute. I don’t agree with you. Even if you and I manage to create “a bigger dent”, how can we be sure that this time it will correct everything. We have seen that Universe corrected itself out. What if this doesn’t work. We have messed up with time too much as it is. Theres no guarantee that some other guy will not uncover those fundamentals anyway. Its quite a simple fundamental you know and the equations have been around for 100 years.”

“EXACTLY” – He smiled as if he knew that I’ll say it.

“You don’t think that you are the first person to unravel those fundamentals and build a time machine. Do you?” – He was grinning now

“I have travelled Vaibhav…I have travelled a lot…been to times unheard of…seen things in time…past and future.” – For the first time in the evening he looked tired now. There was a definite pain on his face. Pain of knowing things which should have gone unnoticed through history books. Pain of living through the times and watching the human civilization grow and probably eventually die in the course of thousands of years.

“I also thought of myself as the first time traveler of humanity….but I have met others…Yes. There were others. Some of them well before even our great-grandfather’s times. I shouldn’t tell you more about them but this is one thing you should understand- the reason why time machine did not exist before your time is because the ones before us, came to the same conclusion. They travelled and tried and experimented with time. But they realized that the only option left with them is elimination of the prime mover – the time machine. It happened again and again and again at various times and timelines without a fail. And today you too won’t fail me. All of time travelers before us made a dent on the universe …so that time-machine won’t be invented again….and today we’ll have to do the same. We will have to……”

He paused for a moment.

“….. kill the professor”

“What. Are you mad???”

“See myself…that’s the only way. We have to do this. Nothing else can prevent this from happening. All time travelers bear a responsibility…this is ours”

“But why? There should be other options. Lets try talking to him. I did that with my past self. We can do it again.”

“You think I haven’t tried that ?” – He said

“The Universe is a paradox Vaibhav. The more we try to deny it the stronger it becomes. If you delay it….a bigger dent will be required later…this is the only way…and trust me this is not the first time I am doing it.”

“Yes. You heard it right. I have done everything to bring Universe to the normalcy. It was just  hit and trial…the bigger my delta was….

“But I am very tired now” – he sighed

“….and I can’t do this on my own now. I need your help. Do you trust yourself?” – He asked

I weighed my options. What if he is wrong. But I sure was definitely not right – and he was a living proof of that. I thought about the knowledge which will never be found again. And what about those time travelers. Will they continue to try and prevent this Universe from inventing the time-machine forever. I did not have any answers but only a future self to rely upon. I guess probably this is the ultimate timeline which Universe drives. Perhaps this is what the Universe wants. But if this fails- I’ll end up like him…a time traveler trying to change the course of timeline forever. I guess he won’t want anything bad to happen to his past self.

“Ok. I’ll do it” – I said looking into his tired eyes