'If your death could bring your family a happier life, what would you do?'

Mrs. Roy woke up with the same question in her mind in the middle of the night, not finding her husband beside her. The bed was cold beside her and the pillow was flat. The children were asleep in the same room, one bedroom was the most they could afford. The bedroom door was locked from the outside. Mrs. Roy started knocking. The knocks turned into bangs. The bangs got louder.

'If your death could bring your family a happier life…'

The girls woke up and watched their mother thump the door with her palm. They could hear her cry and see tears rolling down her cheeks. But what could they do? They were just kids.

'…what would you do?'

The door broke open, the lights turned on, and there was a scream…
A fallen chair, below a hanging body, below the ceiling. Mr. Roy gave his answer.

'I choose to die'

Mr. Roy was not the only one who committed suicide that night. The government thought they were supporting farmers by providing their families with compensation after their death. But what that ended up doing, was gifting the farmers ropes to hang themselves with.

Mrs. Roy stopped eating properly, and hardly spoke to the girls. Fourteen-year-old Aarthi was the only moral support to her Eight-year-old sister Deepti.

“Look, up there! Our dad is one of those stars. He is still watching over us from there”, she said to Deepti one night, pointing to the sky.
“Don’t lie. Those stars are up there from long before”, little Deepti couldn’t be fooled easily. She would spend an hour every night looking at the stars since she was five. She knew exactly which star appeared in which part of the sky.
“They are very far from us. When a new one is born, it would take a very long time for light from them to reach our eyes. So we can’t see new ones yet”, Aarti explained.
“But I want to see dad right now”, little Deepti asked.
“Then you would have to go closer to him, up there in the sky”, Aarti said, stretching her hand and pointing at the sky above her.
That's when Deepti made up her mind. When she grew up, she would become an astronaut and meet her dad in the sky.

But Roy family was very poor. Even with the compensation from the government, Mrs. Roy could barely support the education of her children. Aarti dropped out of high school and worked on the farm with her mother. Deepti eventually realized, she would not be able to afford to study in a decent college. Her dream of becoming an astronaut eventually faded away. But she wanted to fly, at least to get as close to her dad as possible. She now wanted to become a pilot.

“I’m sorry Mrs. Roy, pilot training school would cost more than 20 Lakhs”
“Please, my daughter has already given up her dream to become an astronaut. She wants to fly. Isn’t there any way she can become a pilot?”
“You can’t afford pilot training, but there’s something else that you can do”
“What is it? I am ready to do anything for my daughter”

* * *

Present day…

“This is flight attendant Deepti Roy, we have turbulent wind ahead, so we request you to keep your seat belt fastened. We will land in Kolkata in one hour and twenty minutes. Thank you.”

“Excuse me”, an old man called.
Deepti walked to him slowly balancing herself on the slightly vibrating floor of the plane.
“Yes sir, do you need any assistance?”, she asked in her soft voice.
“I feel nauseous”, the man replied.
“It’s common in turbulent weather. Don’t worry. Here, you can use this bag. I’ll get you a bottle of water. Do you need anything else?”, Deepti asked in a comforting tone.
“No, thank you”, he replied.
“If you feel uncomfortable, you can take your mask off”, she said and went back to get a water bottle.
Even though the COVID-19 spread had reduced, flight travel still required people to wear masks as a safety precaution. Enclosed spaces with air conditioning could spread the virus faster than open spaces.

Deepti picked up two water bottles and as she walked back, two men were standing in the middle of the cabin. One of them was the old man who asked her for assistance. The plane was still vibrating slightly due to bad weather, but the two men stood stiff with a wide stance each, without taking any support. Their eyes were wide open, staring at Deepti like wild animals.
“Do you need any help?”, she asked.
“Tell the pilot to take this plane to Mumbai”, the man standing in front said. His voice was deep and harsh as a tiger’s roar.
“Sorry sir, this plane is going to Kolkata”, Deepti said, slightly frightened. But her voice didn’t show any fear.
Two other flight attendants walked in.
“Well in that case I have to talk to the pilot myself”, the man said and began walking towards the cockpit.
Deepti and another flight attendant, Priti blocked his way. “You cannot go in there, sir”, Deepti said, with her head raised and eyes looking straight into his.
“I think you are not understanding what’s going on. Well, let me explain it to you”, the man said. “There are two bombs under the cabin, in the luggage section. If you don’t do as I say, this plane will become a large firework in the sky”
Some of the passengers started screaming.
“Silence!”, the other man yelled.
One man from the passengers started speaking. “Do you think we are fools? You think the security will happily load luggage carrying bombs into the plane?”
“Oh don’t you worry. We have our ways to get stuff into planes. Just like the way we got this in”, the first man said and pulled out a large knife from his pocket. The other man simultaneously pulled out his knife.
Deepti and Priti stepped back from the man. Passengers started screaming but at a lower volume this time. Parents started holding their kids tightly. Some passengers closed their eyes and started praying. The plane was hijacked.


At around the same time, at the Indian Institute of Astrophysics (IIA) in Bangalore, Dr. Ram Gopal was on his night shift duty. He was running an analysis on the desktop computer. His research partner Dr. Shiv Prasad was on leave, so he was alone in his cabin that night.
He placed his smartphone below the monitor with the highlights of that night’s cricket match playing. The two monitors above the phone performed different calculations and displayed continuous results of the simulation. The monitor on the left had a long code with some parameters being displayed below it. The monitor on the right showed an animation of two circular objects revolving around each other under their own gravity. The frame rate of the animation was very low, rendering one frame every second. Perhaps due to the resource-intensive simulation. The computer continuously ran at full power with its fans at full speed all the time. Ram had to increase the volume of his phone quite a lot to be able to hear the commentary clearly.

The simulation was very slow, it took almost three hours for the two objects in the animation to come noticeably closer to each other. Ram finished watching the match highlights. He minimized the animation window on the right monitor and opened up a few research papers. One of the papers was titled, ‘Orbital dynamics of a double neutron star system’. Ram was studying a double neutron star system 500 light years from Earth. The simulation was a part of his research. He studied the papers and did some calculations for two hours. He opened the animation window again and saw that the two objects had come much closer to each other. He realized it will still take a while for the simulation to finish, so he went outside for a walk.

IIA had a beautiful campus. There were many trees and plants with colorful flowers all around. At night, the colors were barely visible under the street lights, but Ram liked the cool and fresh air, and the sounds of crickets. It was too late to call his wife and have a chat. His children were probably asleep too. There were other scientists and students taking a walk around the campus too, but Ram liked spending time alone.

After about an hour of fresh air, he returned to his cabin and looked at the simulation. The computer fans were spinning much slower and the computer was quieter than before. The two circular objects in the animation had turned into one black circle. The space around the black circle appeared warped. Light from stars appeared to be stretched and bent around the circle as if they were thin white wires. It was a black hole. Ram was satisfied with the result as if he expected it. He scrolled through the hundreds of parameters on the other monitor. Then, he suddenly stopped after seeing something peculiar. The numbers he was interested in were 2.3 arcseconds and 20 Light Years. He typed in some code and executed it. It took around ten minutes for the execution to finish, but the numbers remained the same. He took out a few sheets of paper and started doing some calculations taking some parameters from the simulation as reference. By now his hands were trembling and he was sweating. After he was done, he stayed silent for a while, trying to take it all in. Then he jumped from his chair and dialed the number of his research partner, Dr. Shiv.

“He-Hello, Shiv?”, his voice was trembling.
“What’s it, Ram? I was asleep. What’s so urgent?”, Shiv spoke, still half asleep.
“I was running th-the simulation for the N-2-62 neutron star system and-”
“Ram, I have to wake up early tomorrow. We can talk about the results later”, Shiv said.
“Shiv, listen, the gamma rays are headed toward our solar system”, Ram screamed.
“What do you mean?”
“They will reach here in less than a century.”
“What? What are you talking about?”, Shiv asked.
“I think Earth is in danger, Shiv”, Ram said in his trembling voice.

Continued in chapter 2...

© arpan