The capsule was designed to air-condition until Tam shut it down. This was in advance of the journey being so strenuous that he would go unconscious once he landed. He awoke with a start. He’d slept seven hours. There was an incessant beeping coming from the main console. He’d slept right through the irritating sound. He yawned and cleared his eyes. Focusing, he could see that December 26, 2007 was flashing again and again. Tam pushed a button.
Tam this is an emergency message. You’ve landed in the wrong year. I repeat, you’ve landed in the wrong year. It is December 26, 2007. You’ve been briefed as to what to do in the unlikely event.
“Fuck!” He’d said it aloud, to no one.
Please do not panic. You’re to continue on to Mumbai. You must try to find a similar group of activists to observe. But the experiment itself is to be performed at your discretion. You must, however, go to the Asiatic Society in Mumbai and find out as much information as possible about the group.
Good luck, Tam.
Tam exhaled a huge breath and shook his head. Of course, he’d messed it up. Prior to entering the capsule, as part of his training, he was repeatedly informed of the possibility that he may be dropped in the wrong year. The agency had perfected landing in the correct geographic location with no problem. It was the year that was problematic. Still, only ten percent of missions had landed in the wrong year. So this would be a major upset.
His head felt like he’d gone on a seven-day bender. He opened his drug kit and injected himself with vitamins, electrolytes and adrenaline. He had to bury the capsule. The sun was five hours away from coming out. He was worried but as he began to dig he found the soil very easy to work with. Half of the capsule had been buried in the crash landing so it took him under two hours. He had to inject himself with more vitamins and adrenaline to get through this last leg of his journey to the hotel. He sucked down one of the raw juice and protein drinks provided for him. He was most concerned that he would be too tired at this point, when he’d have to socialize and speak in Hindi, but he was very energized. Slaphappy, he began walking. He walked an hour before there was ample vegetation. The place where the capsule landed must’ve been a dead lake. As soon as he reached the first row of trees, he stopped to hide the shovel in a tree. He grabbed what appeared to be a pen from his pocket protector. In fact, it was a miniature spray paint. He made a horrible attempt at stenciling a lotus blossom on a tree so as to mark the spot where he’d left his shovel. He took a deep breath. He could smell something sweet. That must be honeysuckle, he thought. He continued walking while inhaling deeply and closing his eyes each time, before exhaling. He passed farms with crops that he didn’t recognize. His senses were being peaked at every level. Nature as the earth was meant to be. Tam’s entire life, he’d never seen such a thing.
All the produce of the future was grown from artificial lighting. There were people in the future who romanticized, like Tam. Some farmers were renowned for making it feel like historical times. They would emulate a farm as authentically as possible, indoors of course with artificial lighting, but replicating a traditional 1800s farm. Tam could now say without assumption, There’s nothing like the real thing. He was walking it, breathing it. There was a mist hanging in the trees, like a thick sheer veil. It hung over fields of yellow flowers.
He got to a highway in two hours. He was supposed to land in the year 1965, when the highway was much further away. He was shocked to see asphalt on it. The highway had four lanes. All far more advanced than he was prepared for. The only instruction he’d been given about this decade was that it was a time of serious advancements for India, it would go down in history books as the Indian Boom. This decade that Tam had landed in, marked the beginning of it.
It was around 5 a.m. when Tam found a teashop many drivers stopped at for breaks. He asked the clerk if he could somehow hitch a ride to Mumbai. The clerk smiled in surprise. Tam thought his accent must be bad, but the clerk was amazed at his fluency. Tam spoke in English instead,
“Hello sir, I’m in need of a ride to Mumbai. My car broke down and fell in a ditch.” The clerk furrowed his brow. Tam had a strange accent, not like any American accent he’d ever heard.
“Where is your driver?” the clerk asked him.
“Driver?” Tam repeated. No American would be driving himself between Pune and Mumbai.
“The car fell in a ditch,” Tam told him, this time in his sparkling Hindi. The clerk gave the customary whatever head gesture assuming that something was lost in communication.
“I will ask around for you, sir. You’re tea is coming.”
Although there were many drivers stopping at this teashop it took quite sometime for the clerk to find a ride for Tam. The clerk told him,
“It is difficult, sir. Most of the cars are full capacity. This is just a place to take some tea and rest from the drive.” Tam was very gracious. He strolled and found behind the small food shack there were more chairs. He took a seat near a tree. He was again in awe of the lush trees. The sun was an hour away from rising but already the light was coming through, bleeding from the horizon. He was mesmerized.
“Stay put. Doctor is coming!” The driver was so worried that he'd called a doctor. When the doctor arrived, he did nothing more than furrow his brow at Tam’s strange American accent. In the days that followed, Tam gathered that a good amount of Americans were present in Mumbai and Dehli at this time and Tam’s American accent stood out as eccentric. Only his American accent. His Hindi was impeccable, so he began to only speak in Hindi to protect his cover.
Tam did not leave his room for two weeks, per instructions from the agency. He felt ready after a week, but the room service and television grew on him.
He found that landing in the wrong year hadn’t affected him much. In fact, he’d been over briefed in a sense, but that could only come in handy for him. It was very tongue-in-cheek, but Tam also gathered that Americans were viewed as ignorant. And Tam could always coast on this, if he accidentally gave himself away.
He’d primarily only dealt with bellhops and maids until the day he finally emerged to have breakfast in the hotel’s restaurant. From the moment he was seated he was accosted at all angles with five-star service. Right this way, sir. Right away, sir. Tam wasn’t accustomed this kind of pampering. In fact, he’d never in his adult life been able to relax this much. From what he'd seen so far, his hotel was one of the swankier establishments in Mumbai. He stared excitedly at the menu. He could feel someone watching him. Far across the room, he spotted a young woman observing him. She quickly looked away when he caught her. She looked up again and held his gaze, smiling. Again, that night at dinner he saw her in the dining room. He muttered to the waiter to seat him adjacent to her. He was curious she was very pretty. He ordered and sat waiting for his food. Their eyes met and she chuckled.
“It’s you again,” she said. Tam wondered if she was safe. He still had to be on the lookout for rogue agents. The HSA had no doubts that other countries were participating in time-travel experiments. But Tam trusted this girl’s ease and genuineness.
“I’m sorry,” she said, “You just look so bewildered.” She had a British accent. He cleared his throat,
“India can be overwhelming.”
“Ha! The understatement of the year.
And what in particular, is overwhelming you?” she asked.
“The sights and sounds. It’s hard to say.” Tam hadn’t left his room but he’d been glued to looking out the windows which offered a lot of action to observe.
“It can be very claustrophobic,” she said.
“I don’t know. It’s not that. It is chaotic but there is so much life.” She raised her eyebrows in surprise. She’d assumed overwhelming had a negative connotation. She was intrigued, questioning whether he was as goofy as she thought. They chatted for quite sometime. Tam’s stomach was grumbling.
“This food is taking forever,” he said. She laughed,
“Yea most places make the food to order here, so it takes a long time. Plus they are just laid back compared to you rush rush Americans.” Across the room Tam spotted the silver platter approaching his table. He was enjoying Indian food, he'd never been this excited about food in his life.
“Would you like me to take you around Mumbai, sometime?” she asked. He was surprised she offered. She seemed kind of full of herself.
“Sure. That would be very nice.”
“My name is Nina.”
“I’m Tam. Nice to meet you.” He smiled sweetly as she insisted on another criticism.
“What a strange name. What kind of name is that?” He’d forgotten to go with the name Tim, more common at this time. He was saved by the arrival of his food. And the arrival of her bill. She excused herself and Tam dug in on his beloved buttered chicken.
“They died when I was very young.” Nina softened.
“I knew there was a beautiful sadness in your eyes.” They’d spent the afternoon walking.
“You’re far from home on this continent it must seem like another planet,” she said. He looked down at the ground sadly pondering his sister for a moment. He wondered if he would ever get back to see about her.
They continued to walk and he inhaled deeply as they passed a flower vendor. Strings of mums used for offerings to the gods. How amazing, he thought, that their gods require flowers, incorporating nature.
She smiled at him.
“Taking all those smells in?”
“It is amazing,” Tam said. He didn’t sense her facetiousness.
“Mumbai has been voted the fourth most polluted city in the world,” she said.
“Hmm, yes.” He furrowed his brow, he’d forgotten that to her things were getting worse and worse.
“I don’t know,” he said, “It’s not so bad.”
“I do love the smell of the mums, and the paan.”
“Everything is so bright here,” he said innocently as they passed a storefront of a sari store. On display were huge silk hues of mauve, burgundy, yellow, and fuchsia. Nina was touched by his awe. She was born and raised in London. She’d never traveled to the states. She was beginning to think it was horrible based on Tam’s exuberance.
“It is pretty here. I love the banyan trees bursting through sidewalks. Wait until you take a drive. North or south, it's stunning,” she said.
“I had a very friendly guy give me a lift here from Pune. He seemed to know everything. I’d recognized some folk song and he got very animated. He gave me lessons on Indian classical music. He was very commanding, he dominated the conversation. I just kept nodding and listening. He made one point over and over. ‘Sir, you must see all of India to know this music. You think you have heard it but not until you see it, then you listen again.’” Tam and her laughed.
“He’s right,” she said.
“Hmm, well I got a small taste of it when the sun came up. A slow song came on, with a shehnai playing. The fields were dewy.
It was-- I don't even know how to describe it.”
Tam couldn't tell her that as soon as he stepped out of the time capsule he felt energized. He couldn’t say that in only one hundred years the world will change drastically. From reading books the world’s snowballing history always made sense to him. But once he was in history he found himself wondering how it could’ve been poisoned. He could see there was no lack of crime with the overpopulation but there was no lack of feeling and compassion, either. He couldn’t believe that it had survived this long and that soon it would be virtually gone.
He’d been in India a month and he was still in awe. This country was bleeding soul out of every crack, pore and orifice. He could sense in Nina the struggle of east and west. He could see in her eyes a little less life, while the eyes of the Indians sometimes made him want to weep because of their beauty. Not because he felt sorry, but because they were so big and innocent. Different hues of brown. He’d never seen eyes like that in the future. He was unaccustomed to having such passionate thoughts and feelings. Tam had never cried in his life. But since he’d been in India he’d on occasion had the slightest welling of a tear in his eye.
Tam suspected that the eyes in the future were different because of the computers. If people stared at natural things all day their eyes would form a different softer more serene shape.
That was in fact how Tam first spotted Agent Kalarni, as he later came to know him. He could plainly see that his eyes were not like the others. It was striking because Kalarni was one hundred percent Indian. Only in his bloodline. Kalarni had spent his life in America. And although he was from the future, he’d perfected his accent to match this time period. He was such a phenomenal actor that Tam doubted himself. He’d observed Kalarni at the nearest teashop.
One morning as Kalarni finished ordering his tea, Tam recognized that he was the same man he’d seen in the HSA headquarters. The day before he entered the time capsule, he’d gone to HSA headquarters and saw an angry man rushing out of the building. Tam really thought himself nuts. But he saw Kalarni each morning at the teashop, and each time, the memory flashed in his mind, the look of frustration on Kalarni’s face as he huffed out of the headquarters. Then, he’d hear Kalarni’s impeccable American accent and think himself insane.
Eventually the mystery man made eye contact with Tam. Tam was surprised when he approached him one morning and took a seat at Tam’s tiny café table.
“You don’t mind do you?” He looked sinister with beady eyes of the future. Tam was visibly ruffled.
“Uh, no. I’m almost through.” The man continues gazing at Tam in an abrasive manner.
“You look interesting to me. Can I ask you,” he searched around him, “Do the letters H-S-A have any meaning to you?” The man then moved his hand close to Tam’s forearm. He then followed a custom performed only by men of the future. He lifted his left hand’s index finger and pressed it into Tam’s forearm. This was an electronic verification, with a custom HSA encryption. Tam was relieved.
“The name is Kalarni,” he said. He looked less sinister. Upon seeing a familiar face, Tam was overwhelmed with realizing how lonely he’d felt. Beautiful as it was, it wasn’t home or familiar. He was alien, and not because he was American.
“They sent me out the day after you,” he said. Tam said nothing feeling nervous. He smelled a rat. He’d dropped into the wrong year where population was bubbling over, surrounded by a billion people and this one person was an enormous threat to him.
“Look. Don’t worry. No one goes alone on missions. This kind of thing is standard with the agency. I know this is your first serious mission.” Tam wanted to ask questions but he was still suspicious.
“Have you bothered with your test box?” Kalarni asked.
“It was a shaky landing and the test box had a leak. I had to dismantle the whole thing.” Tam lied. Nothing was wrong with the test box. He’d destroyed the it because he didn't want to perform the tests.
“Yeah that kind of thing happens a lot. They are still fine tuning it,” Kalarni said. Tam was relieved that his lie was feasible.
“So are you on research recon?” Kalarni quipped. He was referring to the Asiatic Society’s extensive library. Tam nodded his head in response, resenting Kalarni’s implication.
“That’s the worst. I hate it if there's no test. It’s like what’s the point right? They really need to get their shit together.” Tam felt waves of disgust pass over his belly as he thought of the “tests” he was supposed to have performed. He fought off nausea and pushed back his seat excusing himself.
“It’s been nice meeting you but I’ve got to get a start on my day. Should we meet at the hotel for dinner?”
“Sure. Sure. See you then.” Kalarni smiled what seemed a genuine smile as they parted ways.
Their encounter was bittersweet for Tam. Kalarni’s presence was two-fold. On one side there was the fact that Tam could not defect. Tam was being shadowed by Kalarni. Shadowing was customary at the agency, but he assumed that people were briefed about it ahead of time. This was very strange to him. One of biggest perks was that the agency could no longer stream constant video and audio of his life. He could be free, for this short time. He should have known. But he wasn't doing anything suspicious. He'd fantasized about staying in India, a silly fantasy he’d been toying with. He couldn’t fathom going back to the dead lake to get that stupid capsule up and running.
On the other side of it was the fact that Kalarni’s presence was a guarantee that Tam would have to get back to the capsule and get “home.” Just having a familiar accomplice made him feel secure that he would get to the future again, and his first thought at this was relief. Strange thoughts to evade his mind considering he’d spent a blissful month in Mumbai’s streets. But no matter what the fantasy, Tam knew he would make it back to the capsule because of his sister, Rosemarie.
Tune in next month for the final climactic installment of this series, "Thebox IV."
Tune in next month for the final climactic installment of this series, "Thebox IV."
