GENRE: Science Fiction
WORD COUNT: ~1700
RATING: Safe!
"Mr. Kumar, are you ready?"
Mr.
Kumar adjusts his tie, gently tugs on the collar of his suit and
straightens his neck, as he faces the reporter and the cameraman.
"Yes, Miss Vinita, I am ready."
Miss Vinita motions for her crew to start recording.
"Hello
and Welcome to The Hum. Today, we are with Mr. Rajesh Kumar who claims
that he has some information regarding the events that lead to the siege
of May Day." She turns from the camera to Mr. Kumar, "Welcome Mr.
Rajesh Kumar"
"Thanks for having me"
"Can you tell us a little bit about yourself and how you came across the information that you plan to share with us today?"
Mr.
Kumar takes a deep breath, leans back a little on his chair. "Now, I am
a grandfather with two beautiful grandchildren, but my connection with
May Day began 50 years ago on 14th February, 2018."
"What happened on that day?"
"I
was offered an internship" Mr. Kumar gives a brief smile and continues,
"You see, back then, I was a 19 year old student, studying literature
in a local college in Mumbai. Like any young student, I had a desire to
go for an internship, preferably abroad. I knew my chances were not
great, given that I did not have great academic record, but I still
applied to several universities and even corporate internships for which
I was eligible. As I had surmised, I did not get a call back from any
of the places I had applied, except one, Brecht Inc. They took several
telephone interviews over a period of two months. I was feeling a little
bit lucky, a little bit happy and worked really hard to look good in
those interviews. After all that, an offer of 6 month internship was
finally made by them."
"You mean the same Brecht Inc. that the government had claimed were responsible for the siege?"
Mr.
Kumar looked down, he placed his hands on his lap and gently rubbed
them, and then he stopped. "I will tell you what Brecht Inc. was and
then people can decide whether they were responsible or not."
"I am sorry, it is a bit cold in here. We can try to quickly get this interview over with."
"No, it is fine. I understand the circumstances quite well, you don't have to feel sorry about it"
"So, what was Brecht Inc.?"
"Brecht
Inc. consisted of handful of people and a few researchers. While it was
officially known to have funded by a few angel investors, however, in
reality, it was a crowd funded company where the names of the common
people funding the company were kept anonymous."
"So, you are saying that Brecht Inc. was actually a company founded and run by a portion of the general public?"
"Yes, a fairly large portion in fact."
"What were they trying to achieve which required anonymity?"
"Their
goal was the completion of their project Resolution. This project began
on January 1st, 2019 which is also when I joined them for the
internship. At the beginning I did not know what the project was
intended to do. My task as an intern were two-fold: 1] convert the
definitions contained in the dictionaries into a certain format that was
supposed to be read by a computer and 2] input basic facts about the
world which are not readily available on the internet into a computer
system."
"That is very strange. Did you not feel anything odd about all of it?"
Mr. Kumar let out a small laugh and said, "I was a 20 year old, on an internship, in a foreign land. What do you think?"
Vinita smiled a little, and pushed further "So, what it is that they were trying to build?"
Mr.
Kumar looked down, scratched the back of his head and then after a
while, he tilted his head towards the camera and said, "they were
building an Intelligent system".
"You mean, they were building robots"
Mr.
Kumar vehemently shook his head and stressed, "No, no, not at all. They
were building an intelligent system that would parse arguments made in
favour and against several laws in the congress. The system was designed
to find flaws in each argument, check facts being quoted by the
politicians and discover links between the law and any corporate project
that might be affected by them." Mr. Kumar took a short breath to slow
himself down, and then continued, "You see, people were concerned that
the laws being passed in the Congress were being influenced by
corporations. While this may not hurt people in the short term, but it
can have long term consequences. Many news analysis teams had cropped up
over the internet at the time who demonstrated several discrepancies in
the argument made by politicians in Congress. However, humans can
identify only very few patterns and can see only so much far ahead,
while machines; machines can be made to identify much bigger and deeper
patterns and figure out consequences that may not be readily visible. To
do this, lots of machines and smart applications that can store and
analyze large amounts of data were required. Maintaining and building
such a system required lots of engineers and researchers and all of this
culminated into Brecht Inc."
"Why the anonymity, I don't see anything illegal here?"
As
she finished this question, the ground shook and a small rumbling sound
echoed through the cold underground tunnel. Vinita and her crew looked
at each other and then at Mr. Kumar. Mr. Kumar adjusted himself on his
seat and said, "The people were afraid that they may feel a pushback
from the government if they came to know of the existence of this
system. The idea was that Brecht Inc. would parade itself as just
another news analysis agency and existence of the intelligent system
will be kept secret. In the worst case, a few people who are the face of
the company may experience problems, but at least most general public
can be safe-guarded from unnecessary problems."
"You told us that you were not aware of the intention of the project, when did you get to know this information?"
"2
months into my internship. As it happened, I was not the only intern
working there. Also, several million people were contributing from
remote places. After just two months of data, the system was performing
way better than the researchers had anticipated and it was already
producing amazing results. We held a small party wherein a drunk
engineer clued me in on this project albeit unintentionally", Mr. Kumar
smiled as if recalling that scene from his memory.
"This was near March of 2019. How did this seemingly harmless project end up in the siege?"
Mr.
Kumar became grim. He rested his elbow on the arm of the chair and
rubbed his forehead. Then, he shifted his hands down to rub his eyes. He
looked up, those red eyes now visible, "A week after government agents
came and shut us down. As it happened, our system managed to breach and
locate some confidential government files and link them to certain
foreign policies being debated in the Congress. It would not have looked
good for the politicians, if that information had gone out. The agents
had identified everyone connected with the project and almost all of us
were given a choice - either shut up and never talk about this or be
charged with treason for hacking confidential data. All of us took the
way out. The agents held back and took the engineers and researchers who
worked on this project along with them."
"What did they do?"
"I
don't know, but just two months afterwards the siege happened. Later,
when government announced that Brecht Inc. was responsible for the siege
and incarcerated those engineers and researchers involved with Brecht
Inc., I figured that something went wrong in those two months and
government is making Brecht Inc. take the fall for it. It is pitiful how
the politicians could not see past their protecting their own image and
allowed anarchy to follow." Mr. Kumar leaned back on his chair and
looked up at the ceiling of the tunnel which were showing signs of age.
There was a tremor again and another rumbling sound echoed and this time
it was far more louder and far more clearer.
Vinita, realizing that it is almost time to wrap up, asked a final question, "Why? Why after all these years? Why not earlier?"
Mr.
Kumar had a pained look on his face, mixed with embarassment as he
answered, "I left the country in June, as I was supposed to. While the
country was still in the confusion and shock of the siege, the
infrastructure was still functional at the time. When I came back to
India, it was different life and siege was not my problem anymore. At
least that is what I thought back then." Mr. Kumar eyes were brimming
with tears, took out a photo from his pocket and showed it in front of
the camera, "This is my daughter. I lost her during one of the raid
attacks." As he said this, he looked at the picture, his eyes requesting
her to come back. He wiped his tears and continued, "Now, I have two
grandchildren left and I want to protect them in any way I can."
At
that moment, lot of sharp sounds were heard. The sound of metal
clanging on brick walls was easily discernible. The shooting crew was
quick on its feet, they wrapped up their equipment quickly. The crew
members began running and Vinita tried helping Mr. Kumar. He refused her
help and asked her to escape. As they were escaping, the shooting crew
saw Mr. Kumar being caught and chained by several sentinel robots. As
she was escaping, Vinita turned the camera to her, "We are confident
that stories such as these will continue to give direction to our
struggle and one day we will find a resolution to this tragedy.
Remember, The Hum is always present everywhere. Now, we end this live
global transmission."
