Genre: Thriller
Rating: Safe
Word Count: ~2600
August 8 2012, Convocation Hall, IIT Bombay, Mumbai, India.
It was a sunny day and on any other day, Sundar would have appreciated the weather but not today and certainly not inside the closed hall. His senses were not functioning and his mind was completely blank. The silent beating of the heart and the emptiness of the mind was offset by the slow murmurs in the hall where Sundar stood on one side, just near the dias, with few other PhD students of IIT Bombay who were graduating this year.
The hall was a rectangular shaped auditorium with stadium seating arrangement. Sundar looked around, watching the students seated in the hall. All the male students were dressed in white kurta and pajama and female students were dressed in white salwar kameez or white sari. All the students were wearing variously coloured dupattas (uttariyas). The colors indicated the degree with which the student was graduating. Sundar was wearing a peach coloured uttariya. If someone were to look at the hall from the top, it would probably look like a white canvas peppered with colors of the rainbow.
The session began with the institute song -
Antar mama viksit kar
Antaratar hey
Nirmal kar, ujjawal kar
Sundar kar hey
Jagrat kar, Udyat kar
Nirbhay kar hey
Mangal kar, niralas kar
Nihsanshay kar hey
Yukt kar hey sabke sang mein
Mukt kar hey bandh
Sanchar kar sakal karm mein
Shaant tumhara chhand
Charan-kamal se mera man
Nispandit kar hey,
Nandit kar
Nandit kar
Nandit kar hey
This song, which is translated from Bengali, was originally written by the great Indian poet and polymath Rabindranath Tagore. The song asks the divine one to grant the virtues of enlightenment, diligence and fearlessness. These three form the essence of a strong academic spirit. As the song was being sung by a student in the most melodious voice, Sundar closed his eyes and the five years he spent at the institute flashed in his mind. In the last five years, he had faced his own weaknesses. He had to push through when the chips were down and continue on despite repeated failures. After several struggles he had published a few of his works and finally submitted his thesis titled, "Models for Precise Aggregates and their Applications to Trend Predictions". The words of the song entered through his ears, into his soul and resonated with his experiences. For a brief moment, he was overwhelmed and a drop of tear appeared in his eye. But he quickly wiped it away and kept his emotions in check. He had always dreamed of this day, to be a scientist and the dream was about to come true.
June 23 2015, Aryabhatta Labs, Kroogle Research, Hyderabad, India.
The computer displayed a Fedora desktop with a gnome terminal. Sundar typed in a few commands into the terminal to execute a program. What followed was an array of numbers being spit out at intermittent intervals onto the display. The program finally ended and an image popped up displaying a graph. The graph showed 1% improvement in advertisement prediction. Sundar had just created a new model which would increase Kroogle's advertisement revenue by at least a million dollars. Sundar leaned back on his chair, and took a look around. His colleagues were all sitting in their cubicles with their heads buried in their computer. When Sundar graduated three years ago, he expected himself to do something exciting in his life, not just make several million dollars for an MNC. He has very little to complain though, because the job paid well and with this new model, he can certainly expect an increase in salary and a bonus. However, as a child, he had always envisioned scientists in their white lab coats saving the world and over the years, he very well knew, how far was reality from his dreams and yet these three years have played a part in burying them entirely. He sighed a little and went back to looking at his computer. He opened the Thunderbird email client and began checking his email.
He saw three emails from his father and he could see that there were image attachments with all these three emails. He surmised what these images were. He had strictly told his parents that he is not interested in getting married for at least a few more years and despite that, his father would keep sending new photos every few weeks or so. He simply skipped over those emails. Then, followed a series of emails from the technical discussion group from within the company. He noticed a C++ question asked in this discussion that he could probably answer. He immediately wrote up an answer to that question and send it as a reply. Then there were a bunch of emails congratulating one of his colleagues who recently announced his wedding engagement. Then there was another thread discussing what gift to give the colleague on his wedding. Sundar had earlier suggested gifting a cactus plant with a passport size photo of every member of the team stuck on the thorns. The team simply replied back saying, "we know now what to gift you on your wedding".
The next email was titled, "Your thesis on Aggregate Models and Trend Prediction is interesting!" Sundar was a little startled and pleasantly surprised. He opened the email:
Hi Sundar,
I recently came across your thesis on Models for Precise Aggregates and their Applications to Trend Predictions. I must say I found it quite fascinating. The fact that one can look at a set of joint distributions and then characterize prediction tasks on them with some simple assumption is pretty cool.
The email then went on in detail about what the person found fascinating in the paper and the technical aspects and assumptions that they found to be somewhat restrictive. It finally ended with,
We are looking to apply your models in the work that we are doing. Unfortunately, due to several constraints, I cannot exactly disclose the organization I am associated with, nor can I disclose the nature of our work. But we are very keen on hiring you. If you are curious, then please drop an email soon, so we can schedule your interview this weekend itself.
Sundar checked the email of the sender, it was simply 'manandsuperman@kroogle.co.in'. It was a plain email id, although, Sundar did like the reference to George Bernard Shaw. He dismissed the email as a hoax, but hesitated to delete the email. He opened another application called texmaker and began writing a latex report on his new model and attached the graph which supported his claims. He then attached the report in an email titled 'I just made a million bucks' and send it to his manager. He checked the time, it was ten past twelve. He looked around and his colleagues were all getting up to leave for lunch. So, he screenlocked his computer and went along with them.
The lunch discussions at his company were usually were active. Anything from sports, films and politics would get discussed over the lunch table. Sundar would actively participate in them whenever he could. However, today he was distracted. The spoon he held in his hand grabbed a clump of rice from his plate and took it to his mouth. The hand worked like a machine and mouth chewed reactively, but his mind was somewhere else. Precisely speaking, it was still on the email he had read just before sending his report and coming for lunch. Although, he was almost sure that the email was a hoax, but the details with which it was written suggested otherwise. He could not help it, his curiosity was piqued.
"Sundar, are you ok, you have been quiet for a while now", his colleague asked him while poking him with his finger. Sundar quickly turned around and replied, "Oh, I am fine, just thinking about a minor issue, but its nothing". Soon after, he joined in their discussion and put that email issue at the back of his head. As soon as he returned from lunch, his manager came up to him and shook his hand, "Awesome work dude!" to which Sundar smiled and replied, "Thanks".
"How long before we can launch this model into production?", his manager asked with a querulous look.
"There are some technical challenges to overcome but if I sit with the engineers and work alongside them, we should be able to push this into production in a week!"
"Fantastic, are you free now? If the engineers are free as well, we can set up a meeting and go over your model and come up with list of things to do."
"Yeah sure, I am free."
"Ok, I will talk to the engineers, set up a meeting and send you an invite."
"Sounds good."
The manager walked away and Sundar returned to his desk. His manager worked fast and the meeting was soon set up. Sundar spent the rest of his day in the meeting, going over the details of his model with the engineers and addressing the technical challenges involved in implementing it. When the meeting ended, it was already close to the time, he leaves office. However, just before he was about to leave, he opened his email client, clicked on the email sent by manandsuperman and sent in a reply,
I am interested.
Soon enough, a reply came back from manandsuperman,
1. Attached are your air tickets to Vizag on the weekend.
2. Our driver will pick you up at the airport and take you to the meeting place.
Sundar just stared blankly at the screen for a minute wondering what exactly happened in those few minutes.
June 27 2015, Vizag Airport, Vizag, India.
It was 8 in the morning and Vizag had a pleasantly cold climate. As Sundar stepped out of the airport, he saw a man holding a placard with his name on it. He moved towards that man and indicated to him that he is the one whose name is written on the placard. The man smiled and guided him to a car nearby and they drove out of the airport.
Vizag was being developed as a smart city by the Government. So, there were several ongoing constructions that were visible as the car made its way through the city. Soon, the scenery got boring and Sundar fell asleep. When he woke up, he yawned and stretched his hands. With eyes half open, he noticed that he was still in the car. Then, he looked outside for a bit, only to be surprised by trees that surrounded the car. His rubbed his eyes and fully opened them to realize that they were in a forest. He got shocked and scared and asked the driver, where they were. The driver coolly replied, "Sir, we are in Kambalakonda Wildlife Sanctuary". Sundar got so scared that he immediately tried opening the doors, but they wouldn't open. The driver looking at his passenger through the rear view mirror told him to take it easy as they will soon reach the destination. Sundar curled up in a corner and sat motionless.
After half hour, they made their way to a cabin near the Kambalakonda lake. The driver stopped the car, got out, and opened the back seat door to let Sundar out. The driver pointed out the cabin with his finger. Sundar, who was still in shock and fear, thought about running away. But he was too deep into a wildlife sanctuary to pull this stunt safely. He decided to rather move towards the cabin and figure out what is going on. He slowly moved towards the cabin and as he moved towards it, he noticed that it is shoddy, and looked as if it was not cleaned for a long time. Soon, he began to wonder if this is some elaborate prank, but if it was, it certainly was an expensive one. For a brief moment, Sundar thought that this could be some serial killer, but he actively pushed such thoughts away from his mind and soon found himself in front of the cabin door. Sundar took a gulp and opened it.
The inside of the cabin was empty, except a table two chairs and a man sitting in one of them. The man was reading a binder in front of him. As soon as Sundar entered the cabin, the man looked up from his binder and stood up to greet Sundar with a wide smile.
"Mr. Sundar, welcome, welcome. How was the trip? I hope there was no trouble reaching here.", the man said extending his hand to shake it.
Sundar just shook his hand and looked around. His eyes wandered towards the window that showed the still water of Kambalakonda lake and his mind contemplated thoughts of how to escape from this cabin through the lake.
"I imagine this must be a shock for you. I am sorry that we have to be so unconventional, but that's the nature of our organization. I am sure you have several questions, but before you ask any of them, I want you to sign this NDA."
Sundar took the NDA form, read through it. It was an ordinary NDA form which every company gives, so he took out a pen from his pocket and signed the NDA. As he gave back the form, he asked, "Where am I?"
The man looked puzzled, "I was sure your first question would be, who are you? But well, to answer your question, you are at Kambalakonda Wildlife Sanctuary."
"No, I mean where am I? What am I doing here? What are you doing here?" Sundar started reeling out his question, partly in frustration, partly in impatience and partly in fear.
"Well, well, before I answer all those. What did you think about the email I sent you and my criticisms about some of the assumptions in your model."
"You are manandsuperman?"
The man nodded a yes.
Sundar sighed and replied, "The class conditional distributions being same is a simple assumption. It holds in several applications that we were thinking of at the time when we created that model. We could not find any reasonable applications where our assumptions did not hold.",
"Well, we have applications where your assumptions don't hold and we have data in which your models can show interesting improvements, if you can make it work. Will you be interested in working on such data?"
"I am here, aren't I?" Sundar spat out in frustration. He plumped on the chair in front of him, without being asked to and held his forehead.
The man chuckled a bit, "Of course, Mr. Sundar!" The man held out another form in front of him and told him, "This is an employment offer. If you are still interested in what we do, you can accept this employment offer right now or you can reject it. You can accept this offer and reject it later as well. Of course, you will be still under our NDA, so you can't tell anything about us to anyone. The consequences will be dire if you do so. However, the work is exciting and very important, I can assure you that. I would accept this offer if I were you, Mr. Sundar."
Sundar lifted his head to face the man, grabbed the offer letter and signed it and gave it back.
The man checked the signature and turned towards Sundar, "We are an organization that work directly under RAW. Mr. Sundar, welcome to Crime, Assault, and Breach Investigation Network a.k.a C.A.B.I.N".
cue stylish music
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