Amicus- III

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Amicus, as much as it has apparently worked as a short story, it was originally meant to be my fourth novel, and a prequel addition to Quantum Skip. Lead by my thirst to experiment, I decided to finally have a look at how much better a story can be read, accessed, and comprehended on an opensource platform than a long, expensive, and standardised novel. And it seems, it performs much better. I am not dropping any hints of anything upcoming, but either way, I would like to thank you, the reader, for sticking around for over 6500 words of fiction, and providing me with the necessary incentive to complete what I started only as an experiment.

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The steel door opened behind Amicus, making a prolonged metallic screeching noise. He had been inside the interrogation room for half an hour’s time now, and he had stopped wondering about whether or not Themis, Apollo, and Hades, who were taken into custody along with him, had given him away. The horrendous comfort level of the naked stainless steel armchair in the shivering cold had stopped bothering him now. 

The woman in her twenties who emerged like a huge shadow being casted upon Amicus, despite only being a little over five feet tall, sat opposite to him. She was physically attractive and much resembled Kalpana. Perhaps it was because of the peculiar height at which the powerful lamp was adjusted to the wall. She was wearing a dark grey woollen suit. Her eyes, shielded by the steel rimmed glasses that rested upon her nose, indicated her sleepy state, despite her being relatively active back at Siddhique’s place. But it was, however, justifiable, for what Yunus was able to pull off that night.  

“From here on now, we have two ways to go”, she said in a polite tone, “Your Papa will be called in as a computer science teacher at the Doon School, where your education will be sponsored by the state for the two years as a scholarship for excellence. You never return to Allahabad again. For a person of your records, it only seems plausible to the people around you to see you be successful in life. Though we will make sure that you are forgotten for who you were, and will only be remembered for what you could do. Second, your Papa is forced to resign from his current job, and is prohibited forever from earning a comfortable wage. You, and your entire family, are forced to live under the shadow of bureaucratically forced state negligence and poverty, about which you’ll never be allowed to speak. You will, for as long as you want, meet and live with people with a much lower socioeconomic and intellectual standard, something you are a bit too clearly known to despise. The first option is viable if you give me, here and now, the key to the cloud instance, on which the ledger is stored. The second scenario continues to unfold in any case other than that. You will have no time to think, since we expect your answer to be in your family’s favour, hoping that you understand them being in such a situation as mentioned in the second scenario is solely because of you. Measure your next words very carefully, Yunus Amicus, for they might determine whether or not you’ll ever be heard in the future”, she completed.

“The ledger has your name on it”, he uttered hesitatingly, after taking a moment’s time.

“That’s nonsense”, the young administrative officer opposite to him said, with a tincture of fear in her tone, almost certain about Amicus bluffing.

“Isn’t it? Or is it?”, Amicus was not as terrifically well versed as the initial threatener herself, but knew one thing as it was: The person who you might want to think cares about you the most, might as well be the person who knows about you the most, with the capacity of giving it all away, should the need arise, “Didn’t Mr Siddhique tell you that the ledger has names in it? And not just references to untraceable offshore accounts? That he would not use his daughter, the young and brilliant Divisional Commissioner Faheema Siddhique’s name, along with other shady oligarchs he does business with, as an escape goat in case the ledger becomes public, and to keep any such thing from happening on his partners’ parts?”, Amicus could feel Faheema’s breath getting warmer as the texture of nerves on her forehead became more pronounced, though her face remained expressionless. But it was a candle, her visible frustration, that the wind easily blew away.

“The ledger, Amicus”.

(One hour and forty five minutes earlier)

“Define letting go Amicus, for me, please”, Hades said on the phone, while walking towards CCD to reunite with Yunus, Themis, and Apollo, “No, Redolor, I am not being emotionally complacent. I am asking for specificity. Okay. Understood”, he said coldly and hung up. The International Liberation Alliance, the ILA, was an organisation of social workers, not necessarily known publicly for extortion or finterrorism, and was much active among the younger generation. Redolor was in command of its more militaristic actions.

Back at the cafe, not long after Hades had arrived and took his place, Amicus shifted in his chair uncomfortably, unable to finish his latte, unable to speak, unable to think, and obviously unable to just walk away.

“Yunus”, Themis called out. 

“Yes?”, he said, rather surprised.

“Not just yes. Call Kalpana, tell her you are coming over, connect to their wifi, install the virus on her laptop, get into Siddhique’s local database, and upload the ledger to the instance. Do her stupid assignment, enjoy her family’s hospitality or whatever, and walk out”, she said, in a revesionary tone, “We have gone over this three times. We know you heard the plan loud and clear, and that you know exactly what to do”,

“It’s not so simple”, Amicus let out a heavy sigh and said, before proceeding to empty the coffee mug in a single gulp.

“It certainly is-”, Apollo began, “Kalpana is not so simple!”, but was interrupted, “Don’t you get it? I hung up to her face just an hour back when she needed my help, out of spite. Why do you think she’ll agree to having me over and use her laptop in the middle of the goddamned night!?”,

“Because that’s who she is. And that’s exactly how she took advantage of you, and that’s exactly what makes you, you. A gullible teenager who thinks humans work on some absolute algorithm governed by universal objectivity and rationality. That not doing your part might dissolve the algorithm at their end, but at your end it must always be sturdy enough to be able to keep taking hits for their faults, because you hopelessly cling on to the notion with the last of your corroding nails that one day, they will too, have an algorithm as righteously oriented as yours.”, Hades said.

“Excuse me?”, Amicus said.

“Do you really think, after two years of a delusional friendship built around taking help and occasionally giving gestures of compassion in return, that Kalpana has as much self respect as it is required for her to not pick up your call when she needs your skills, albeit you saying or doing whatever you said or did when she approached herself?”, Hades said, leaning forward on the table, “We don’t give two shits about what happens to her, her family, or your friendship with her. But don’t lie to yourself every time you get comfort from the thought of her being hurt by your rejection”. Hades said, and sat back.

“How am I lying to myself?”,

“Because she would be hurt by your rejection of her plea for help as a friend only if she ever cared about your acceptance of her as a person. You ain’t getting any vengeance out of it”, Hades said, “Now, make the phone call, and make it happen”. Amicus thought about it for a moment, reconciled Hades’ words in his head, ran them through the various conditional blocks in his mind, and decided that he would do it. He pulled out his phone from his pocket, and saw three missed calls from Kalpana herself. The phone would have rang upon her calling even when it was on DND, but she had made herself out of his starred contacts’ list not a while back. He called back.

“Hello?”, he said, not as diplomatically as he had said the other time he was on the call with her, “Yes, I am ready to help you. Right, right. Although there’s one problem. I will have to come over and design the poster on your laptop, since mine’s graphics card is not functioning”, he knew that the obscure detail was enough to convince the not so tech savvy person on the other side of the phone, “Okay, then! Will be there in fifteen minutes”, and he hung up. The soothing “bye” in her blissful voice was still evocating him, but he snapped back out of it.

“I had tried very hard to stay away from her, and I want nothing to do with her once this is over, I want nothing to do with her”, Yunus Amicus said.

“Try convincing yourself of that. Because as I said, on our part, we don’t give two shits”.

(Fifteen minutes later)

“You are tall. Are you sure you are fifteen, boy?”, a reaction similar to that was the reaction he had received at least once from every adult he had met, during any period of his life in terms of age, since he had started walking. Be it the principal of his school, his Papa’s friends, his Mummy’s cousins, the local dairy shop owner on his birthdays, and this time, it was Ahida Fatima, Kalpana’s ammi.

“It is no achievement, really. I am genetically obligated to live with it, along with the curiosity that it attracts from people”, and this was the response he most often gave. To a great many people, such a response came as rude. But not to Ahida begum, as he called her, since she had been on the phone with Amicus quite a few times, courtesy to her daughter’s inability to pick up, and by his mere tone of talking and his selection of words, she had deduced what kind of a person might he be in real life. She was right, moreover, to quite an extent.

“I mean, Kalpana did tell me you viewed the world from quite a height. I never realised how much more literal the statement was than metaphorical”, Ahida begum said.

“Can I please come in?”, Yunus, already weary standing at the doorstep of the grand white bungalow of Aftab Hussien Siddhique in Ashok Nagar, said. He was quite a bit impressed by the architecture of the place, which was a blend of Indo-Western and Victorian era British styles of building. He walked in through the luxurious interior, shook hands with Faheema Siddhique, someone he had immense respect for, met Kalpana herself in the library of the house, right by the living room, and borrowed her laptop, and started working.

‘Merely after watching the first three episodes of Stranger Things, I sneak out in the middle of the night from my house to meet with quasi extremists. I have coffee with them, and decide to infiltrate a white collar criminal’s house for a ledger that can disrupt global geopolitical and financial balance. The white collar criminal also happens to be my perceived ex-best friend’s Dad. Perfectly normal. Perfectly goddamn normal, that’s all. Mummy’s so right about the ill influence of Western media’, he thought to himself.

While he was plotting the outlines for the poster, Kalpana sat beside him, scrolling through instagram. 

‘Very busy, indeed’, he thought to himself, perhaps even mumbling it. 

“Said something?”, she asked, alerted in the slightest, “Nope”, he responded. A few minutes later, when he was almost done with the poster, she was called to the kitchen by Ahida begum, and she got up and left Amicus alone, with her laptop, connected to her home’s wifi. Amicus looked into the file browser of the Windows 11 interface of the laptop, and found an unmounted drive labelled ‘Local Storage’. 

Of course it was inaccessible. Uptil now. He opened up a new incognito window, and logged into Google Drive with one of his forty five fake IDs. He downloaded the Background.jpg file that Themis had given him and saved it in the laptop’s SSD. The virus was embedded into the image, and was now installed on the router of the house, after he initiated and cancelled a test print job from the file browser with Background.jpg attached to the test document, with the printer being connected to the router directly via ethernet. The entire process behind the thing wasn’t as magically smooth as described, as if right out of a Mission Impossible movie, but Amicus would rather have me spare the technical details.

He waited, and in a few moments’ time, the disabled mount button next to the file became clickable. But he still waited because Apollo had told him, “I will have to, and can turn off their internet for two minutes, so as to give you time to disable the server’s notification system, so that when their storage unit containing the ledger is mounted on the laptop for accessibility, the admin of the server remains unnotified. And you know what you have to do next”.

The library had wooden utilities all around, and the floor was covered by a thick white carpet. It was well lit, and the light shone upon the various books of varying lengths stacked side by side, sorted in regards to genres, authors, editions, and formats on the bookshelves.

For a moment there was pin drop silence, when the internet went off, and he heard Faheema yell, “What the hell just happened?”, he knew her not as a person who spent a lot of time on the internet or media in general, and was slightly astonished at such a reaction. A slim stream of sweat ran down his forehead as he mounted the drive, opening it via root on the console. His fingers trembled as he typed in a string of characters which acted as commands to disable the notification system, thinking about all sorts of things that might happen to him if he were to be caught. He then started to look for the ledger, and found it, after running an algorithm on the console window that would sort out the most relevant data in regards to what might look closest to transactional histories. He uploaded it online to an Oracle database instance, and locked it, and logged out. His job was done. 

“Yunus”, he heard the euphoric voice call out to him again. He didn’t respond, “Yunus!”, he looked up suddenly to make direct contact with Kalpana, “What’s wrong?”,

“Nothing”, he said, letting out a long sigh and giving a sly smile, “Nothing at all”, he looked back at the screen, switching windows and closing the other ones, “The poster is complete”, he said, and Kalpana smiled back. 

“Thank you so much. Dad’s called you in the backyard. He is setting up a bonfire”.

They talked about money, they talked about people. They talked about greed, and they talked about ambition. Both were victims to sleepless nights, both were no strangers to people being shitheads, therefore they didn’t feel bothered by each other intervening in the one night that might have allowed them some sleep after all. Hussain Siddhique and Yunus Amicus were getting along. It was already three, and he had decided to tell his parents that he was off to an extremely early morning walk, because it was going to take time. 

Siddhique left his place from near the bonfire when he saw Faheema signalling him to come hither. Only Kalpana and Yunus Amicus remained.

“I am sorry, alright?”, she said, leaning forward towards the fire, her white sweater and brown hair dangerously close to the flames, “I was really very busy that day, and had too many responsibilities, personal and academic, in my head, and a few problems that I can’t necessarily share with you. I know I might have looked a little selfish then, or more than just a little selfish. But, Yens”, that’s what he called him occasionally out of, as he saw it now, symbolic adoration, “I am really sorry. I will be there now, whenever you need me”, it was not the first time he had received such an apology, and he saw it as hollow as Robert Hooke’s crook, but he smiled either way, a comforting, happy smile.

“You know, Amicus, I believed, for a moment, that I could be your perfect mentor”, he saw Siddhique approaching, “But you are already far beyond me, boy”, he said.

“You forgot to clear the notifications already sent. One of them included the security alert from when you installed the virus”, Faheema said with disappointment in her tone that Amicus could not rightly comprehend, walking by her father. ‘Did I, though?’, he thought to himself, “That’s sad”, he said, calmly, listening to the wailing police sirens in the background. He glanced at Kalpana, “This might be the last time we talk. You only apologised to me after a month when you needed my help, leaving my life to hang and dry in the rays of anxiety while at it, despite being aware of the insomnia, the depression, and the panic attacks. So just so you know, Kalpana, you are a terrible human being who takes advantage of people. I wish to never see you again, and I wished you had left my life and had never called me after the fiasco”.

(The Present)

“My associates are currently on their way to see a district prosecutor. The data, however, that will be provided to him, will vary”, he said, sitting back on the interrogation chair, “If I leave before a certain point of time, he will be provided the sort of data that will force him to let your father retain his wealth and freedom, acting as an informant. A certain point of time after, and he will have everything to put Mr Siddhique, and perhaps you, behind bars for a long time, leaving you and your family under a heavier debt”, Faheema clenched her fists and grinded her teeth, and then transitioned into a sly smile, as if she had waited for it. A deal was made that would work the best for all parties involved, for the time being.

While leaving the police station, walking towards the Thar that stood a few metres away, through the early morning fog, Faheema said, “It’s ironic how my sister was able to have the better of you over three years, and not the much more vindictive Amicus that that presents himself around anyone else”.

“Huh?”,

“You could have not done it too. It was vengeance you wanted”, she said, giving only a hint of a smile. Amicus understood the possibility of her feeling liberated.

“Well, your sister never really responded well to texts”, he said, and they both chuckled softly. He took a pause and said, “Please tell her I meant every word”.

Two weeks later, at ten in the morning, Amicus was crossing the road to get to Apollo Pharmacy, not very far from the statue of Themis near the Allahabad High Court, when a truck approached him at a dangerously high speed, and ran over him, leaving his body to shreds, unrecognisable. The newspaper stated that it was an angry and drunk truck driver who had a fallout with his vehicle’s owner, and not that the Greek God of the Underworld was quite done with the mortal, and the mortal himself had come to know a little too much of the Gods that governed the world he lived in.