Kinesis (Part - I)

Epilogue

The loud and continuous ring from the bedside alarm disturbed his sleep. Sitting up, he looked around the small room that was hidden in the shroud of shadows and darkness. He groggily stood up from the bed and made his way to the bathroom. A tired face stared back at him as he looked in the small mirror on the wall. His body was aching as if he had just undergone strenuous exercise.

Suddenly his phone rang. He walked slowly towards the phone kept near his bed while muttering to himself.

He picked up the phone and growled ”hello?”.

Sweat started appearing on his forehead and his feet began to tremble as he listened to the person on the other side. He continued to hold the phone to his ears even as the line went dead as though expecting somebody to say that this was a joke. But when no one replied his feet gave way and he slumped to the ground.

Then he started crying.

Chapter 1

I started walking towards my car as the sunlight slowly crept up my lawn. I took my car out of the garage and eased into the traffic on the main road. The morning rush greeted me with its surly candor and as if by pre-defined custom, soon everyone slowed to a crawl and finally to a standstill. I waited as the traffic signals and the people stuck in the jam followed their routine and as usual entered my office late.

“The boss wants to see you.” the security guard said to me as I showed him my ID card and pressed my right index finger on to the bio-metric device.

“Okay.” I nodded.

I walked past the huge glass doors in the direction of the lift. My phone rang the instant I had pressed the button for the top floor.

“Hello?”

“Hey, its me, Jennie.”

“Hi, what is up?”

“Just called to tell you that the boss was looking for you”

“Yeah, I Know”

“Well you should also know that he was not in a good mood”

“Thanks a lot for the heads up”

I had just finished talking, when the lift doors opened. I walked up to the boss’s secretary and she waved me in. I knocked twice before entering.

“Come in. Take a seat” My boss said as he turned around.

“Thank you sir. I heard you wanted to meet me. Was it something urgent?”

“There has been a breach in Sector-31”

“But there is a breach in most of the sectors every day. We will find the culprit and deport him back, sir.”

“The culprit has been here for the past 5 days”

“What? How could we have missed that?”

“That is why it is urgent. And there is another thing; he has committed a murder too.”

“This is serious. I will put a team on it right now.” I replied, the tone deceiving my calm exterior.

“Make sure that this information doesn’t leak out. Limit your team to a minimum”

“Okay, sir”

“That will be all.”

I quickly got to my office and started the computer. As i sifted through the company roster two names popped up. I called up Jennie and asked her to call them immediately.

It had been 5 years since I started working for this place. Everything was top secret.  Even the name of the organization was not disclosed to the employees. This all started when the governments of the world found out that we were not alone in the universe. And the most shocking part was when we found that the “aliens” were more similar to us than we had expected. Not just similar, exactly the same. The parallel universe theory was real. There were millions of other human beings living on millions of other Earths with every major and minor possibility in action. There was a huge influx of people traveling between these worlds to see how their other “self” was doing. For some time such activities went unnoticed as minor excursions. But then something happened which sent shock-waves through every one of these worlds. Identities became blurred and a spate of crimes began to occur which led to growing chaos. Alarmed at such incidents, governments across the entire void decided to create a first and final line of defense in the form of this organization which would track the influx of people so that any such eventualities would never be realized. As a part of this organization I was involved in round the clock surveillance and prevention of any breach.

Now, someone had once more broken the rules. This time it was our Earth.

I finished my report and mailed it to the boss. Soon the intercom was ringing. I picked it up slowly.

“I have read through your report. Are you sure that you want these two people on the project?”

“Yes, sir I am very sure.”

Soon two people walked into my office.

“Take a seat.” I said

“No thanks” the taller of the two said while the shorter one sat into the seat in front of me.

“Jeannie must have updated you on the scenario.”

Both of them nodded their head.

“Raghav, I want you to go to the site of crime and look around. I want the report on the crime scene by tomorrow. You will get the preliminary report from my secretary. ” I said to the tall, blue-eyed guy.

“Fine.” He replied as he walked out of the room.

“Asif, I want the entire details of the portal that was breached, the time and stage of development of the said portal.”

“Why do you need the stage of development?” the short bearded guy asked.

“To see what we are dealing with. You do know that  there are different possibilities in all these worlds, right?”

“Yes.”

“So there might be some planets which are still in the prehistoric times and some which have advanced so much that time machines have been made and banned. Hence I need to know the ability and knowledge of the culprit.”

“OK, I will do whatever I can.” He replied and started making his way towards the door.

“Make sure that you don’t speak about this to anyone” I instructed curtly.

“Whatever you say, Boss” he replied with a smile and then was out of my office.

I sat down in my chair and looked out of the window. It was going to be a long day.

to be continued ...

-Sidharth Sunish