We drove back and reached in about twenty five minutes because of the empty roads.

In fact, I hardly drove, simply rocketed the car; it practically flew. Before we could do

anything at all, I had one very important stop to make.

My entire journey in unifying the community was useless if it meant execution

without the reconciliation of my friends. The first real people who were with me

throughout everything I went through. And though our fight was not as long lived as

most disputes, or as melodramatic as a grand Shakespearian brawl, we were in the

midst of a greater war that could not be fought in isolation. Sometimes it really only

takes a few moments apart to realise the strength of what you hold with someone and

understand how necessary it becomes to condition that split-end, before the possibility

of never seeing eye to eye with your own self over what may be a regret, becomes a

pressing concern.

First, I stopped by at Nin’s mansion. She is the reason I came to Silverns, in the first

place, and before anything, I had the responsibility to make sure that she was able to

finish her work.

My heart was pounding – I felt she would not be there again. There was silence

everywhere. I was the only one who was allowed to enter the mansion because the

guards recognised me, so Ekene and Badriya waited in the car. Going up the steps, the

large, spacious and cold mansion felt even more alien to me, since there was no

hustling and bustling noise from the miscellaneous staff as they were absent. In my

mind I had prepared an answer for Nin’s sister Min, a short but not so sweet, ‘No

thank you’ and to keep walking on, in case she tried to stop me since there was no

way I was going to waste time in pointless banter anymore.

But I had no such interruption, since there really was no one and it dawned on me

that Nin would also be absent. But to my surprise, I saw her sitting in her room at her

desk, writing something. She did not even look up since her bedroom door was

slightly ajar. Even though sunshine permeated her room through her crescent shaped

window, she had a little table light on.

‘Nin?’

She immediately stopped writing, and remained still. After a few moments elapsed, I

added,

‘I’m sorry.’

She looked up with a pained expression, and raised eyebrows. However, Nin, our

most talkative friend, remained silent. Words would have added nothing more to the

picture, since her eyes conveyed everything. They seemed to press at me to go on, and

allow me to say all that was left unsaid and to clarify all that was better left unsaid…

‘To put the blame on the psychiatrist, who was ten million times worse than Jeter’s

father… would not be right. I agree she was able to break through my so called shield

and defence system and was able to erase that enamel of false bravado that I had, of

not being affected by the eliteratti’s words of hatred. But it was only after I faced my

own demons of insecurity because of that was I able to really confront them. I finally

took that step in making contact with father myself…’

Nin was quiet, yet her eyes told me to not stop… if I had begun to tell her the course

of my inner and outer turmoil reaching some form of resolution, there was no need to

break that flow and cause interruption.

‘I had to go to Left Arrow and resolve some matters. It was selfish of me to pin

everything on you, Jeter and Harris. I still agree, with what I said to you before, of

how you guys are privileged and how you would probably not be able to understand

the immediate pain of being displaced, which I now understand I do not feel either.

Yes, you are privileged, but you have a personal battle that you are fighting too. We

are all fighting personal battles, and it is not fair to assume we must fight one single

battle in order to be together. I ask you to forgive me for scathing words that were out

of context. If it was not because of Jeter, Harris, or most importantly, you, Nin, the

amount of change we have been able to achieve would never have been possible. You

gave me the opportunity to actually put my profession less, identity less and purpose

less self to good use, in going after a cause much greater than all of us, and in a space

where I was constantly shunned, still am. But most importantly Nin, you guys gave

me the greatest gift of all: your friendship. Why would you befriend someone like

me? Or open up to me? I was after all only there for your research… but the humanity

you showed me, puts all my words to shame. I am very sorry. I hope I did not

jeopardise your novel because of my absence.’

Nin’s eyes began to shine. Maybe because they got a little watery. My last statement

made her smile, and give out a little laugh.

‘No, I am working on it. You are not so late after all,’ she said with a beam.

I smiled back. We both embraced.

She was briefed a little bit more about what happened in Left Arrow and what had

become of the village due to the large amounts of crowd that could not be controlled.

Nin acknowledged how the situation was indeed more pressing than previously

imagined.

After I had told her my side of the story, she said to me,

‘Mind if I clarify a few of your misunderstandings from the previous, ahem, time we

met, that I do think we should not bring up again, by the way.’

‘Yes, yes of course, what? But first tell me where are Jeter and Harris? None of you

were here in the morning either.’

‘Harr is at the examination centre as he had his MCAT today. I reckon that he would

be done with it by now. Jeter is at school, he has not come back home yet because of

the great fight he had with his father.’

‘What, why?’

‘Which brings me to what I was going to tell you,’ she said smiling still, ‘the reason

you received those some what off messages from Jeter yesterday, was because one of

the engineers working on the grand computer scheme had hacked into his PAD, on

orders of Uncle Kit, to give you subtle hints at what the adults wanted to project in us:

a hierarchical relationship. Jeter wanted the PAD he gave you back, so he could show

the un-hacked version to his cousin, also a computer engineer, to form some sort of a

virus blocking software, so that we could communicate without such interceptions

form outside.’

I was dumbstruck.

‘And, you remember how my car was not there? Min had created a massive fuss and

took that specific one for her own trip to the Silverns mountains because father had

blocked her credit cards. We had come to tell you all this last night when you know,

the uhm, unexpected volcano eruption happened,’ she said.

‘I see,’ I said clearly embarrassed by what my mind led me to perceive, ‘where were

you and Jeter in the morning if Harris had gone for his MCAT?’

‘We were in school. Naturally we were angry at you. And thought it would be best

to spend some time away before we got heated up and said some things we did not

really mean either.’

I was moved by her maturity and their sensibility in knowing that the situation was

just a heated hot mess, and nothing more, even though it was burning. I took a seat by

her and told her I wanted to go and clarify the situation with Jeter too.

‘In a moment, let me just add one sentence to this paragraph, I think it will make this

really perfect,’ she said, writing away like a lightening bolt.

I stretched out my arm on the sofa, as it was not used to so much driving and

touched what looked like Nin’s older books called ‘You Don’t Have To Speak’. I

turned the back of the hardcover book and read the blurb. It was about a dystopian

society where the entire world is digitally altered and instantly writes what you’re

thinking, similar to telekinetic mind reading. This action eliminated the faculty of the

tongue completely. No one talked anymore.

‘Oh gosh, Nin!’ I said, ‘I am so glad we were able to talk to one another! Although it

seemed like you were enacting your book as your eyes did most of the talking to me

during what I had to say!’

‘I… know…’ she said, while concentrating on what she was articulating in her book,

‘done… for now!’

‘I have guests with me from Left Arrow waiting for us in the car. Badriya is here

along with the descendant of the banished member of Silvern’s golden quartet.’

Nin widened her eyes. ‘The teacher?’

‘Yes, her name is Ekene,’ I said, ‘and she is here to help us present the petition to

Judge Firdous.’

‘Well then, let’s xuxx ourselves to Jeter’s room,’ Nin said.

Apologising to Jeter was relatively less emotional and more rushed. It was kind of

hilarious since Nin was saying most of my words for me.

‘Hurry up now, Jeter!’ she excitedly exclaimed, ‘Badriya and Ekene are waiting for

us downstairs.’

As the three of us walked towards Nin’s gate, Harris arrived right at that moment,

and we banded together going where I had parked his car. He was so dazed after his

examination that it took him a while to properly process that we had gotten together

after a while.

‘It is not that I didn’t know the questions, it is just that the day was too long! I am so

tired! And I’ll do anything but go back to my room right now! There is no way I can

stand looking at all those diagrams right now,’ he explained.

After a little while, Harris exploded. ‘What is going on here!’ he asked, ‘Why is

Badriya here?’

‘Well you could say the miscellaneous are fast running out of breath in Left Arrow!’

I said, ‘Harr, the place is mad crowded. There are no empty spaces anywhere!’

‘What are we going to do with the one thousand signatures then? You think Judge

Firdous will care about how many people wrote down their names here?’ he asked

concernedly.

‘Harr, yes! This is supposed to be a peaceful negotiation, or else the miscellaneous

will be driven to madness! There will be mutiny everywhere. If the eliteratti want to

avoid that, then Judge Firdous better pay attention to this!’

Jeter’s PAD started to ring. It was his father.

‘Where is your friend, son?’ he said without any greeting whatsoever, ‘Pervez Sahab

is waiting! He has readied the chip!’

‘We can’t come right now,’ Jeter replied, ‘we are on our way to Aunty Firdous.’

‘Why on Earth are you going to her? Look, since I know all of you are together, go

straight to Pervez Sahab’s. He knows where she is!’ and with that Mr. Kit hung up the

phone.

‘Well, father sure knows how to play us right. We are not going to go inside until

Pervez Sahab tells us where she is!’ he said.

‘Jeter, you and me both know it will not work,’ I said while steering the car, ‘they

could lie to us, heck, this entire aspect of Pervez Sahab knowing where Judge Firdous

is could be a giant lie. But, something tells me we should still make a small stop at his

laboratory.’

‘That could imperil everything!’ Nin cried out, ‘at least to really make sure, we

should stop by at her courtroom. If she is there then we can show her we mean

something and if she is not, then we go straight to the lab, no questions asked!’

‘I don’t know why, but I have my doubts that she’ll even listen to us,’ Harris

repeated, ‘she has a long history of being unreasonable and now she sure as heck is

not going to change!’

Harris had a point and got me thinking. That is when I said:

‘You know, Pervez Sahab told me he was working on a special invention back when

I visited him last.’

‘Well, what about it?’ Jeter inquired. Even though my statement was rather

incomplete, it piqued everyone’s interest.

‘He never told me what it was, but it felt like he did not tell his eliteratti circle what

it was, either. That day when he carried out those horrendous experiments on me…’

‘You want to trust a man who carried out horrendous experiments on you?’ Badriya

spoke out, ‘look, I know our situation is bad but can we really believe such a guy

would be working for our cause?’

‘It does not look like it, but that is precisely what the scientist wants to project. He

does not want the eliteratti to think that he has a soft spot for us, which is why he

went through that elaborate scheme. If they find out, then his new invention will not

get funding. But that is not what will sound convincing at all. On my last visit, the

miscellaneous evacuation programme had already begun but he had hidden his

miscellaneous secretary in his lab. Why would he want to save her?’

‘Unless, he’s in love with her,’ Badriya speculated.

‘That… that can’t happen,’ I said.

‘And why not?’ Ekene spoke finally, ‘you are here talking about changing the world,

and you think an inter race love connection cannot exist?’

‘Ekene, that is absolutely OK,’ I said reassuringly and as calmly as possible, ‘it is

just that, you know from a common point of view, Pervez Sahab is very old. He

would probably have great, great grandchildren by now.’

Nin let out a laugh.

‘So the fact that his secretary was hiding in the laboratory definitely hints at the

bigger picture… and at the possibility of him disagreeing with the way the

miscellaneous are treated… like disposable tissue papers, and not as real people.’

Our discussion of possibilities ended right as we reached the laboratory. The entire

gang walked into the tangerine building and stood by the desk. From my last visits, it

was understood that there was an underground pipe that took us to the laboratory, as

there was nothing on the current floor except for that vacant secretary desk right in the

centre of the floor.

‘We need the pipe to take us down to Pervez Sahab’s lab,’ I said.

As soon as I said that, the voice automated computer that had replaced the real live

workers addressed that pipe query for me.

‘I will inform the scientist that you are here,’ it said, ‘and then if the scientist

confirms your appointment, the pipe will appear shortly,’ ending with a beep

signalling that the computer had said what it needed to.

There was a pressing concern in our heads, was the computer advanced enough to

understand almost everything that we said? Did that mean we had to be very careful

about what we said. Before we could think these thoughts a lot more, the pipe

protruded out of the ground for us.

‘Go on,’ the computer said, ‘the scientist is expecting you.’

Since the pipe was not big enough to carry all of us inside, we really squeezed

tightly next to each other and were quite literally packed like sardines. As we went

down and saw Pervez Sahab sitting on his tool, cutting some sort of agar block, he

looked at me and ejaculated, ‘Butterfly! At last you have come.’

We exchanged greetings and he was stunned to see the entire group present.

‘Well, well if it isn’t Mahmood, Joyce and Kit’s kids,’ he said, ‘what brings you all

here? And visitors from the left?’

He was stunned.

‘I will explain to you why I am here,’ I said, ‘and it is not because of the chip. I am

afraid none of us have any time. This here is Badriya and Ekene from the left, sharing

the same concerns such as us all, the well being of the miscellaneous.’

‘Good to meet you all,’ he said, but edging closer to Ekene he said, ‘you… you are

Rutendo’s great, great grand daughter…’

‘You knew my grandfather, personally?’ Ekene asked.

‘Yes, I did,’ Pervez Sahab replied as he was overcome with the fondest, bittersweet

nostalgia we are gripped with on so many occasions in life, ‘he was a great man. The

only one with the sensibilities, I cherish now in our colossally dark world.’

It turned out that Ekene’s grandfather was a close friend of Pervez Sahab’s father,

and the two of them had shared their scheme for great and equal education for all. His

son was now going to carry on the legacy, even if he was so many decades late.

‘Come, I’ll show you my invention,’ he said while adding, ‘uh young lady,’ to

Badriya, ‘kindly do not touch my other inventions.’

Badriya had been going through a table full of tiny oddball creations and seemed to

really like one as she picked it up and asked, ‘what does this lovely pink liquid do?’

What she held up was a tiny glass with a fluorescent pink colour and the labelling,

‘Disclosure’.

‘Oh that! It is a special liquid that helps remove stubborn layers of make up or

concealer. I made it at one time for a drama production that happened in the South

wing of Right Arrow,’ Pervez Sahab informed us.

‘Ooooo,’ Badriya squealed excitedly, ‘mind it I take this? It will come in handy for

me during upcoming productions.’

‘Sure, I don’t see why not,’ the scientist added.

He then showed us what he had been working on. The invention was a device

application that enabled people to put in their skills and work out which profession

suited their capacity the most along with catering to the way they looked. The person

would start by putting in their gender and the vocation they were born looking like,

and then the app just cancels it out as irrelevant. It then asks the careful question: if

the person is a dreamer who wants more or if the person is content with following

what his or her family have been doing. And that is when the doors of possible skills

and helps the person outline a plan to make the educational journey a little more

enlightening and a little more organised. The application that could help project two

spheres of learning: one, the profession that the person wanted to have and two, the

other spheres of knowledge that should be open to all – a revolutionary tool in the

orthodox Silverns, indeed.

We felt mystified – simple as it was; there was something beautiful in the endeavour.

It was going to help unshackle the imprisonment in a realm of distortion in an

uplifting way.

‘If it cancels out the gender and vocation,’ I couldn’t help but ask, ‘why put it in?’

‘Because man needs a conscientious indoctrination of how to be de-indoctrinated if

that be a thing… they need to be told it really does not matter. Nothing does. Except

your will… and how much you’re willing to risk,’ Pervez Sahab replied.

‘There are some people who really excel at what they look like,’ he added tenderly,

eyeing all my friends.

Jeter and I looked at one another. We smiled.

‘What of me Pervez Sahab?’ I asked after a while. ‘How do I identify which

vocation I am since you know clearly,’ the hand gesture across my body finished the

sentence for me.

‘Well, you get to tap a special option and that is,’ Pervez Sahab showed me the

demo version on his screen, ‘open visionary’ beside that circular symbol with the

ringlets inside it; my birth stamp.

‘Thank you for giving our kind such a pleasant term,’ I added, feeling pleased.

Pervez Sahab had struggled with this application for a while because of the times

around him. He tried several times but could not muster up the courage to go ahead

with such a dynamic plan until seeing our resistance in an absolutely pressing world,

when he felt that the invention became all the more necessary and relevant. But

having exhausted his resources on other experiments, he really required funding for

this one and so he agreed to make that ‘chip’ – clearing its context for us once and for

all. The chip was nothing but a ruse to appease the growing tensions over his

allegiance to the eliteratti and the insecurities that they felt, while ironically gaining

funding for the very thing they opposed through this very agreement.

We told him to carry on with it as we had a petition that was a testament to how

many people wanted change and the opportunity for a better life. He then showed us

how he had made that chip after all and enabled a person to do absolutely anything

and be under the control of the one who would command it. So we took it from him,

and decided to threaten putting it on Judge Firdous to kind of expedite our petition for

change, should the need arise, which it obviously would. We then asked him where

she was, and like our guess played out, what Mr. Kit said was mere bluff. He did not

know where she was.

‘How do you know she will not arrest you all?’ Pervez Sahab asked suddenly in a

concerned tone, ‘it is just a matter of, approximately two to three days when their

computer system will be attached to all key areas of Right Arrow. Till their procedure

is complete, they could easily shut down the disruption you will cause by putting you

away.’

‘Father won’t jail his own son, or Harris, or Nin…’ Jeter replied weakly, as though

he were unsure of it himself.

‘Your father is a ruthless man,’ the old scientist asserted, ‘and he stops at nothing to

showcase his power and authority. Such men don’t know the meaning of sympathy,’

he began to walk around the laboratory, ‘I just hope you all are aware of the possible

consequences of this blatant barge in you’re orchestrating. Have a blueprint of

contingencies ready, why don’t you.’

‘You’re right sir,’ I acknowledged, ‘with them you never really know what might

happen. But I think the idea of a potential uprising from Left Arrow, you know, if the

petition is ignored and all, might result in a little improvement for the miscellaneous.’

‘Yes. Let them jail us,’ Ekene chimed in boldly, much to Badriya’s chagrin, ‘now

that we have a motive and are trying to do the right thing, we must collectively

understand hurdles will not stop but only increase.’

‘We will get through this together,’ Nin added calmly, squeezing Harris’s arm as he

too expressed a totally rational, though decidedly unattractive sense of apprehension.

Everyone’s feelings were justified. I, however, felt since we were now armed and

dangerous with a steely will, we could make our way to Judge Firdous’s courtroom

wearing confidence as our shield of honour, and put up a great battle. We would

require Zeus’ thunderbolt to tip the scale of war to our side, but even without it, we

were like Achilles. The infamous weak heel’s concealment would be the matter of

fate.