The Improbable Man(part 3)

Read second part here. And click here for the first.

Keshav checked his watch. He had been in the metal booth for some fifteen minutes. Keshav thought that because of the hyper time loop chamber, he must have been away for only a few seconds. He adjusted his watch to fifteen minutes back and nervously held the door controls of room 2691.

Tentatively he entered the room.

Keshav saw a man lying vertically in a glass chamber, filled with a bluish liquid substance. And there were various panels and meters monitoring the man’s biological parameters. Keshav could see that T.I.M was moving, as he gained more of his consciousness.

T.I.M was fitted with a respiratory mask, to provide him with oxygen. Keshav considered disconnecting the oxygen cylinders. But then Keshav realized that T.I.M would probably knowingly/unknowingly kill him if he made a direct lethal attack.

What other options do I have? Thought Keshav.

A lullaby to keep him sleeping? Well it’s worth a try.

As Keshav was just about to start singing, T.I.M opened his eyes. He looked at Keshav and smiled.

T.I.M tapped on the glass tube, very rapidly in a particular rhythm and it shattered into microscopic pieces.

Wow, he was able to find and play the resonant frequency of the glass to make it break. That’s impossible.

But no. It’s not. It’s just highly improbable.  

T.I.M casually walked out of the shattered tube. He didn’t seem very concerned by the fact that he was entirely naked.

He seemed to be in his forties. And he had a lean body with very dark skin. T.I.M looked like a typical villager, except for his forehead which was just slightly larger than normal. He had short hair and a broad jaw with a sparse beard.

He approached Keshav, who was still standing by the door and warmly shook his hand.

“Hello Sahebji, kaise ho aap?” T.I.M asked.

“B..bbas thik hu.”replied a nervous Keshav.

T.I.M laughed. “Chalo badhiya hai.” he said.

There is nothing else to do now, but to keep him busy till the bomb explodes.

“Nahi sahib woh bomb nahi phutega.” T.I.M said. And suddenly his words and demeanor had lost all warmth.

In broken English he continued “I not know what these people tell you. But I not bad man. I no kill any good person.”

A confused Keshav said “What? But the bizarre deaths and tragedies?”

T.I.M said “They all places where your people do experiments. My gift not making bad happen. But preventing bigger bad happening. If those all places not destroyed, more people would died. More people killed.

Pata nahi kaise, but I always know where these people have experiments. Somehow I reach there. Into future I look and see how they going to destroy others. So before they do that I destroy them.

Just have to think and I can destroy.”

T.I.M smiled sadly.

Keshav was having an inner conflict.

Who should I trust? A beautiful female scientist or a naked hairy man?

“Aur sahib, I let your people make me sleep, because I see in future that they bring me here. And I see also how later they going to use this place to make bad weapons. I not let that happen sahib.

I will think and everything but me get destroyed.”

Keshav pleaded “Don’t do it. This is a place of science. We want to bring hope to the future of our race. There are so many breakthroughs we can make. A cure for sickness. More efficient renewable energy sources. Saving our endangered species. We can do GREAT work!!”

T.I.M eyed Keshav calmly.

“Sahib you not bad. But your leaders not want what you think. They want power. Anyway they will try to get power.”

“But how can you be so sure that what you see is true? It is only one version of many possible realities that could take place.” Argued Keshav.

“When I young sahib, I no interfere.

And when I no interfere, result always being what I already seen in head. I only see truth.

In ten minute sahib I destroy this place. Please before that go. And make other people leave. Go sahib go.”

Keshav stood still as his heart beat rose steadily.

Is he telling the truth? Or is this just his warped belief? We all have our crazy beliefs..I don’t know..I DON’T KNOW!!

But then Keshav thought over everything that had happened so far. And realized that he did know.

What I do next could change everything..

Then Keshav decided what he had to do.

And did it.

EPILOGUE (15 years later):

The five rabbits stared at each other. Then looked away. And then stared again. Suddenly they transformed into miniature T-rex dinosaurs and playfully attacked each other.

The breeding experiment of the rabbit-T rex had succeeded. Though a Jurassic Park would still take another decade. But as Keshav Satpute, the director of C.R.I.P, gazed at the tiny T-Rex’s playing with each other, his heart felt light.

C.R.I.P had not managed to save the world as yet. But the world was slightly better off with a few of their discoveries and technologies.

And it all happened because of that one decision Keshav made fifteen years back.

That moment, when Keshav stood before T.I.M, thinking over everything that had happened, something struck him.

In his two years at C.R.I.P and five years of studying in the most classified scientific institutes, never before had he seen a successfully operating hyper time loop chamber.

He concluded that either the one in C.R.I.P was the first successful attempt, or the booth had been a mind processing chamber. The ones that sent low frequency signals to the brain making the person believe everything told to them. And do exactly as told.

But it could not be a hyper time loop chamber. Because if it was, then the magnetic circuitry of Keshav’s watch should have been completely destroyed.

So it must have been a mind processing chamber. Which explained why Keshav did not notice his watch continuing normal functioning. And also why he started carrying out a suicidal mission, for which a scientist like him had no training.

For a person put through a processing chamber, to ever break the command given was extremely unlikely. Impossible, Keshav would have thought.

But with T.I.M around, the probabilities worked more in Keshav’s favor to regain control of his brain.

After realizing the truth, Keshav managed to convince T.I.M to give him an hour to evacuate the innocent scientists and important scientific discoveries.

To evacuate such a highly secure facility should have been a really difficult task. But again The Improbable Man’s presence made it easy.

Sometimes Keshav felt guilty about the scientists that he left behind. He wondered for many years whether T.I.M had been right about them.

After the destruction of the facility, T.I.M readily agreed to be kept in custody of the U.N.

It took six years but all of T.I.M’s accusations proved to be true. For those years Keshav who had also been kept in custody, was released and given a prominent place in C.R.I.P.

After the trial, T.I.M vanished from his prison cell.

In the later years, there were no more strange accidents or tragedies reported, around which someone of his description was ever seen.

Keshav thought that perhaps this was his last mission and having completed it, he had gone on somewhere else.

Someplace that was possibly beyond the understanding of Keshav and all his advanced science.