Midnight, on the
bridge… he was watching as usual at the skies with his telescope. This might be
normal for any regular astronomer, but not for one who has a gun pointed at his
head and is aware of it.
------
Even as a kid,
Dalek had an out of the usual lifestyle. When neighbourhood kids were fed
showing moon in the night sky, his dad fed him showing Hoag’s object and
Magellanic clouds through their telescope. Though his dad’s curiosities were
limited to observing the heavenly bodies and naming them after his favourite
Star Trek characters, Dalek’s dreams were always bigger.
Dalek’s everyday
needs were limited, but his scientific curiosities could not be quenched by
doing any of the usual corporate ‘menial’ jobs. He tried the different space
research organisations, but realized that doing what you are passionate could
be possible only if you have the right political and spiritual connections.
He finally
settled for a teaching job at the university. The pay was minimal, opportunities
to get funding reasonable, but the autonomy, and more important, the immense
talent pool in form of students who needed nothing more than their own curiosities
to do good work made him settle for it.
“I don’t intend
to be a good teacher. But it helps my own objective if I inspire a couple of bright
minds towards the subject” he quips. And he was skeptical about the business
houses. “All the brilliant minds and precious hours that could be spent in
discovering science and developing technologies are wasted in improving balance
sheets” he’d lament
-----
Dalek has the
knack of getting ideas from random encounters. “Only chaos can give the
greatest ideas” he’d say. It takes seven minutes for light from Sun to reach
Earth. He once read in ‘Superman’ that Clark Kent could see the death of his
mother planet Krypton 20 years later from Earth, because Krypton was 20 light
years away from Earth. He pursued it further, if you have a mirror at such long
distance from earth, you can actually see how earth was years ago. “Think about
the possibilities this can have in the field of history, archaeology, even
criminal investigations” he’d tell his research scholars
But how would
you fix a mirror so far? The solution came from one of his students who’s a
physics major; use all heavenly bodies out there as mirrors. Different bodies
reflect different electromagnetic waves. These mirrors would reflect something
that can be transcripted back into visual medium.
The idea got
viral, and Dalek without even spending a penny was able to command thousands of
fellow researchers to work towards its implementation. To top it off, he laid
out everything he created and every information garnered in public domain.
Anyone interested can pick up from where he had left and create their own
theories or inventions.
Accolades and
awards poured in. Corporate houses with bigger resources picked up his research
and developed technologies which were far more efficient and made huge profits.
Once asked about it in an interview he said “Different people have different
motivational needs, for them it’s monetary. I am happy as long as there is
progress in technology”
Beyond a point
Dalek felt the ‘Mirror’ technology has reached self-sustenance and didn’t need
any of his assistance. He started craving for new challenges. That is when I got
this opportunity to interview him, and that is when I’ve planned to execute
him.
Dalek, the
likable inventor is a façade for the evil genius he actually is. I was working
on a neural signal interpreter (aka mind reader). Like all young inventors I
reached out to him for demonstration, and stumbled upon his ulterior motives.
He always dreamt big, do things his curious brain wanted to do, and found our
societal inefficiencies as hurdles for scientific development. He was garnering
people and resources to ‘Try and Take-over the world’
------
Dalek was
waiting at the bridge for me, felt it was a wonderful location for photo-op. The
interview began. After initial niceties I pulled my gun at him.
He looked at me
and said “I know you’ve come here to kill me.”
I was startled. “I
have developed methods to look at future recently. I have removed the bullets” he
beamed
“Don’t bluff,
your mirrors can never reflect light from the future” I said.
“Black holes, can
absorb everything including light, and it seems they are time independent” he
explained. “Am ready for the interview whenever you are” he continued watching
at the skies with his telescope.
“As you’ve realized ‘world domination’ was my
objective, it still is. Only my means have changed. I used the ‘future reader’ to
do ‘what-if’ analysis on alternate courses of action for better scientific
development. And nothing came near to having free spirit govern individual
decision making. ‘Initiative’, it seems, has greater correlation with progress
than discipline and intellect” We completed the interview with the useless gun
still in my hand.
Next day he
messaged “Good thing you didn’t bring your mind reader. I did bluff yesterday.
But I got my next idea thanks to you. We are planning to invent a device that
can read future.”
‘Only chaos can give the greatest ideas’
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