12.3 Vhy
Both Mahesh and Mikey were working furiously on the comp, arguing, bandying verbal insults, but somehow managing to get something done. I sat down for a moment, covering my face with my hands and prayed silently that they could do what Mahesh said: reverse the effects of the Vortal on our family.
The waste paper bin lay at my feet, by the edge of the bedroom door. Inside it lay the greasy cheese-sticky paper wrapper that had contained Mikey's burger. The burger he had been eating when Mahesh and I came to this world through the Vortal.
As I sat there, looking at that wrapper, something stirred in my mind.
I'm not a tech kind of person, like Mikey or my Dad. My thing is more creative, lateral-thinking, drawing on the right side of the brain kinda stuff. I probably couldn't have understood the whole science behind this Vortal thing even if both Mikey and Mahesh had sat and explained it to me in child-clear language for an hour and a half. In that sense, I'm a real Dustin Hoffman/Rainman.
But there was one thing that I had understood clearly about the Vortal concept. That there were infinite alternate worlds, some similar to our's, others totally different. You could pass from your world to any other world, using the Vortal. But each time you did so, someone from that world had to come back into your world, in exchange. What had Mahesh called it? The Balance? That sounded like a good way of describing it. There was a natural balance to be maintained. So for every person who went through, another came back.
But earlier, when Mahesh and I came through, Mikey hadn't gone back to our world. Nor had any person gone back in my place, to Balance our coming here.
I looked at that burger wrapper and this thought grew and grew in my mind, until it carommed off the interior of my brain and threatened to burst free like a bullet ricochetting in my skull.
I glanced up and saw that both my 'brothers' were still pounding away, clicking and otherwise furiously engaged in a tech argument like Bruce Willis and Ben Affleck in Armageddon.
I stood and moved until I was in direct eye view of Mikey, but not as easily visible to Mahesh. Then I waited until Mikey glanced up in my direction, which wasn't for several moments, 'cause Mikey can get pretty damn obsessive and self-centred at such times. But he did glance up occasionally, rolling his eyes at something Mahesh said, and shaking his head vehemently. And at that moment, I frantically swished my hands in the air and caught his attention.
I beckoned him to come to the door, and used the classic finger on the lips gesture to indicate that he shouldn't say anything to Mahesh.
It took him a moment, and I had to repeat all my actions twice, but he got the message. After another brief debate on code and code-bugs, whatever that meant, he shoved his chair back, stood up and said, "I need an effing cold drink before I can deal with this crap again," and came towards me.
I said nonchelantly, "I could use one too. What about you, Mahesh?"
Mahesh didn't even bother to look around as he said sullenly, "I'm fine, thanks. I'll keep working. You guys go ahead."
I went out of the bedroom with Mikey, slowly, carefully, shutting the door behind me. I put my arm around him and tugged him back--he was already on his way to the kitchen to get the cold drink. "What?" he said irritably. "What?"
"Mikey, listen. Something's wierd here." I told him about the Balance and how Mahesh and I had violated it by coming through to this world without two people going back in our place.
He frowned. "Maybe he just flipped any two other people over randomly through the Vortal, to keep the Balance. What's the big deal?"
"The big deal is that it doesn't make sense. The only way we can get things back to normal is by undoing what we've already done, not disrupting things further, right? So how can we just go flipping people back randomly through the Vortal? Think about it, Mikey, it doesn't make sense."
He shrugged, still not getting it. "So what's your point?"
"So what if Mahesh, your counterpart in there, was lying to me. What if he can control who goes through the Vortal, and when and where to. What if he actually has more control of the software than we think he does?"
He raised his eyebrows, his pudgy cheek quivering. "Yeah, so?"
"So he could be playing us. He could be lying to us to get us here, with some ulterior motive."
"What ulterior motive? He's nuts, we already know that." Suddenly, his eyes widened. "Oh, crap."
I turned back to see Mahesh standing at the open bedroom door, staring sullenly at me. "I thought you said you believed me, Vaibhav. You told me you believed me."
"Mahesh," I said, "listen. I do believe you. But I'm just trying to understand something."
"There's nothing to understand," he said quietly. "Even if I explain the whole thing to you from the start, you wouldn't understand. Not now. Because you've chosen your side, and if you're not with us, you're against us."
I blinked at him. "Mahesh, what are you talking about?"
His lip curled in a sneer. "What did you think? That I'm just a teenage nerd who accidentally stumbled upon this whiz thing? No way! I created the Vortal, you fools! And I did it so that I could shape worlds to be the way they ought to be. Not messed up like they get when some imaginary God in an imaginary heaven manipulates lives and emotions as if we're just dolls to be played with. I'm going to give some order and meaning to life. And that's all thanks to Him. He taught me how to use my own natural talent to do this. He knows stuff you guys couldn't even begin to understand. He's God now. God of the Vortal. And the Vortal controls everything. Whatever you do, you can't win. You can't beat Him."
I was silent for a long heart-stopping moment, stunned by this extraordinary speech from my normally man-of-few-words bro. Then I remembered: he wasn't my bro. Not really. My bro was standing right here beside me. And he looked as stunned as I probably did, staring at his duplicate.
"Mahesh," I said very carefully, not wanting to set him off again. "Who is this He you're talking about?"
He smiled bitterly, a sad, angry, frustrated smile. It was the smile of a spoilt teen who would rather do something dangerous than deny his own selfish wants, of a brilliant young man unhinged by the sudden brutal loss of his entire family, of a young tech genius who had evidently been seduced by some mysterious older person who was mentoring him like Michael Douglas mentoring Charlie Sheen in Wall Street without realizing that he was being seduced by the Dark Side of the Force.
"The Webmaster," he said.
And then he raised a tiny gizmo, some kind of remote control, and pressed it. I saw the flash of an infra-red light blink once, activating something on his comp.
And then I was hurtling through the Vortal again, to God alone knew where.
The waste paper bin lay at my feet, by the edge of the bedroom door. Inside it lay the greasy cheese-sticky paper wrapper that had contained Mikey's burger. The burger he had been eating when Mahesh and I came to this world through the Vortal.
As I sat there, looking at that wrapper, something stirred in my mind.
I'm not a tech kind of person, like Mikey or my Dad. My thing is more creative, lateral-thinking, drawing on the right side of the brain kinda stuff. I probably couldn't have understood the whole science behind this Vortal thing even if both Mikey and Mahesh had sat and explained it to me in child-clear language for an hour and a half. In that sense, I'm a real Dustin Hoffman/Rainman.
But there was one thing that I had understood clearly about the Vortal concept. That there were infinite alternate worlds, some similar to our's, others totally different. You could pass from your world to any other world, using the Vortal. But each time you did so, someone from that world had to come back into your world, in exchange. What had Mahesh called it? The Balance? That sounded like a good way of describing it. There was a natural balance to be maintained. So for every person who went through, another came back.
But earlier, when Mahesh and I came through, Mikey hadn't gone back to our world. Nor had any person gone back in my place, to Balance our coming here.
I looked at that burger wrapper and this thought grew and grew in my mind, until it carommed off the interior of my brain and threatened to burst free like a bullet ricochetting in my skull.
I glanced up and saw that both my 'brothers' were still pounding away, clicking and otherwise furiously engaged in a tech argument like Bruce Willis and Ben Affleck in Armageddon.
I stood and moved until I was in direct eye view of Mikey, but not as easily visible to Mahesh. Then I waited until Mikey glanced up in my direction, which wasn't for several moments, 'cause Mikey can get pretty damn obsessive and self-centred at such times. But he did glance up occasionally, rolling his eyes at something Mahesh said, and shaking his head vehemently. And at that moment, I frantically swished my hands in the air and caught his attention.
I beckoned him to come to the door, and used the classic finger on the lips gesture to indicate that he shouldn't say anything to Mahesh.
It took him a moment, and I had to repeat all my actions twice, but he got the message. After another brief debate on code and code-bugs, whatever that meant, he shoved his chair back, stood up and said, "I need an effing cold drink before I can deal with this crap again," and came towards me.
I said nonchelantly, "I could use one too. What about you, Mahesh?"
Mahesh didn't even bother to look around as he said sullenly, "I'm fine, thanks. I'll keep working. You guys go ahead."
I went out of the bedroom with Mikey, slowly, carefully, shutting the door behind me. I put my arm around him and tugged him back--he was already on his way to the kitchen to get the cold drink. "What?" he said irritably. "What?"
"Mikey, listen. Something's wierd here." I told him about the Balance and how Mahesh and I had violated it by coming through to this world without two people going back in our place.
He frowned. "Maybe he just flipped any two other people over randomly through the Vortal, to keep the Balance. What's the big deal?"
"The big deal is that it doesn't make sense. The only way we can get things back to normal is by undoing what we've already done, not disrupting things further, right? So how can we just go flipping people back randomly through the Vortal? Think about it, Mikey, it doesn't make sense."
He shrugged, still not getting it. "So what's your point?"
"So what if Mahesh, your counterpart in there, was lying to me. What if he can control who goes through the Vortal, and when and where to. What if he actually has more control of the software than we think he does?"
He raised his eyebrows, his pudgy cheek quivering. "Yeah, so?"
"So he could be playing us. He could be lying to us to get us here, with some ulterior motive."
"What ulterior motive? He's nuts, we already know that." Suddenly, his eyes widened. "Oh, crap."
I turned back to see Mahesh standing at the open bedroom door, staring sullenly at me. "I thought you said you believed me, Vaibhav. You told me you believed me."
"Mahesh," I said, "listen. I do believe you. But I'm just trying to understand something."
"There's nothing to understand," he said quietly. "Even if I explain the whole thing to you from the start, you wouldn't understand. Not now. Because you've chosen your side, and if you're not with us, you're against us."
I blinked at him. "Mahesh, what are you talking about?"
His lip curled in a sneer. "What did you think? That I'm just a teenage nerd who accidentally stumbled upon this whiz thing? No way! I created the Vortal, you fools! And I did it so that I could shape worlds to be the way they ought to be. Not messed up like they get when some imaginary God in an imaginary heaven manipulates lives and emotions as if we're just dolls to be played with. I'm going to give some order and meaning to life. And that's all thanks to Him. He taught me how to use my own natural talent to do this. He knows stuff you guys couldn't even begin to understand. He's God now. God of the Vortal. And the Vortal controls everything. Whatever you do, you can't win. You can't beat Him."
I was silent for a long heart-stopping moment, stunned by this extraordinary speech from my normally man-of-few-words bro. Then I remembered: he wasn't my bro. Not really. My bro was standing right here beside me. And he looked as stunned as I probably did, staring at his duplicate.
"Mahesh," I said very carefully, not wanting to set him off again. "Who is this He you're talking about?"
He smiled bitterly, a sad, angry, frustrated smile. It was the smile of a spoilt teen who would rather do something dangerous than deny his own selfish wants, of a brilliant young man unhinged by the sudden brutal loss of his entire family, of a young tech genius who had evidently been seduced by some mysterious older person who was mentoring him like Michael Douglas mentoring Charlie Sheen in Wall Street without realizing that he was being seduced by the Dark Side of the Force.
"The Webmaster," he said.
And then he raised a tiny gizmo, some kind of remote control, and pressed it. I saw the flash of an infra-red light blink once, activating something on his comp.
And then I was hurtling through the Vortal again, to God alone knew where.
posted by Ashok K. Banker at 12.10.05
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