Kali the Destroyer

I cannot conceive of a God who rewards and punishes his creatures, or has a will of the kind that we experience in ourselves. Neither can I nor would I want to conceive of an individual that survives his physical death; let feeble souls, from fear or absurd egoism, cherish such thoughts. I am satisfied with the mystery of the eternity of life and with the awareness and a glimpse of the marvelous structure of the existing world, together with the devoted striving to comprehend a portion, be it ever so tiny, of the Reason that manifests itself in nature. - Albert Einstein

Kali was ready, though nervous. This was, as her kid sister would probably say, “off the hook” or something hip like that. Their mother would be mortified at how western the youngest had become, with the horrible diction and the offensively revealing fashion. Both Kali and her younger sibling had long since left most of the antiquated traditions behind. They were raised American, fully indoctrinated and trained. No hope for redemption now.

At the moment however, Kali was concerned only that her career depended on this...thing working. Neither Hindu tradition nor grammatically questionable social bonding idioms mattered here. What she was doing was all on her.

What would be of use now is a strong cup of black coffee and a couple of the little pills hidden away in her office. She needed to be awake. Since sleep was not possible, not right now, better living through chemistry would prevail.

“Just for today” she lies to herself.

“Kali!” Joe’s voice rumbles down the hall to interrupt her inward reflections.

“Kali” he says again as he jogs up to her, slightly winded. Too many cheeseburgers weighed him down. “The oversight committee is already in the building. The director said he wants you to come make nice with the bureaucrats, at least for a couple minutes. Apparently there are concerns they would like addressed before we flip the switch.”

“Crap” Kali silently scolded herself for getting caught.

“Joe, doesn’t he know I have better things to do than entertain existential bullshit from those people?” She wasn’t really asking him. After five years of working together in near endless days, she rarely had to speak for him to know her mind.

“Hey, messenger here...no shooting please.” Joe waves his hands in front of himself in mock defense. “He gave me very explicit instructions, along with very undefined innuendo as to what happens to me if you don’t come. I would rather you go, since I really don’t want to find out what he meant by ‘severe consequences’ if you know what I mean.”

Slumping her shoulders in frustrated surrender, Kali shakes her head and begins a slow walk down the corridor.

“Uh, Kali, they are the other way.” Joe corrected timidly.

“I know.” she growled back. “I need some coffee first.”

“But...” Joe nearly corrects her again, then thinks better. He trudges off in the opposite direction toward the cafeteria. He needs a jolt of caffeine too, before seeing the director sans his partner.

The Director’s dark olive skin stands out against the stark white of the clean suit hood. This and his towering height only adds to his classic authoritative majesty. His dark eyes beam with content as he leads a gaggle of similarly clad diminutive individuals to view the enormity that is the Chamber. The reaction they all have is profound, and priceless. Even though he can only see their eyes, that alone betrays their awe at seeing the scope of his facility.

The shield dome, one hundred meters around and sparkling from the golden panels and LED light banks strung overhead, makes an impression even before it’s purpose is revealed. The gold foil panels, similar to those used on satellites, protects the facilities below from the noisy solar system above. Errant solar flares and cosmic radiological garbage, all but the unstoppable neutrinos are kept at bay. The sensitive electronic systems below are kept safe and sound from critical subatomic damage.

“In addition to the shielding you see above” continued the Director in a well rehearsed presentation, “the outside of the dome is outfitted with an array of detectors and electromagnetic deflectors that literally push any mischievous particles to a harmless path.” He spoke as a proud father speaks of his talented offspring, rattling on about their achievements, awards, and scholarships. “The earth itself provides sufficient protection on the opposite side.”

The Director beckons them farther into the clean room’s viewing window and up to the railing. A large panoramic single piece polycarbonate bubble spans ten meters arcing above their heads and below their feet. “And this is what is being protected.” Throwing his arm across the railing in a showroom salesman gesture, he coaxes their eyes out into the chasm below.

“Twenty stories straight down. Fifteen at the very lowest levels contain the system this facility was built to maintain. The remainder houses the laboratories, food service, residencies, offices, etc. This is a self contained living facility to maximize workforce utilization. We even have an Olympic sized swimming pool.” He watched as their eyes flitted about, taking it all in. “The central shaft you see acts to aid ventilation. In addition to the geothermal heat dissipation we gain from being embedded in the ground, we utilize convection currents to draw in fresh cool filtered air from outside, while the warm stale air rises through the center and exhausts out through regulated openings in the dome. Keeps us quite cozy in all seasons.”

For the few who are seeing this for the first time, gasps of fascination and awe slip their lips. The remainder make excited conversation on how much progress has been made since their last visit. The Director smiles beneath his hood, nearly glowing with the admiration he knows he deserves. The gentle hum and rumble of the construct below his feet amplifies this feeling to an almost erotic state. He forces himself to move along before it becomes evident to his audience.

“If you’ll follow me this way...” and they push on, deeper into the Chamber.

Her mind buzzing now, Kali makes her way out of the busy cafeteria. Coffee cup in one hand, sugary pastry in the other, she heads to the nearest elevator. Even with all the walking required in this place, Kali had begun to notice she was developing a small protruding pooch to her midriff. She looks at it again briefly, then at the pastry in her hand. As a hunger pang bubbles up in her stomach, the fleeting bit of guilt subsides as she takes a bite out of the soft delightful slow death of her cherry danish.

Her momentary bliss is interrupted as the elevator door opens to reveal poor distraught Joe, tail between his legs and anxiety in his eyes. Seeing her, the anxiety turns to elation, then something close to fatherly disappointment, or as close as he has ever been able to come to it.

“I’ve been looking for you everywhere dammit. The director’s gonna string me up by the short hairs if I come back without you this time.” Joe’s brow was furrowed behind his wire rimmed glasses, and he leaned forward over her as if he was trying to emulate the director’s imposing style. He knew this was pointless, but he had to be able to say he tried.

Everyone towered over her in life, so she had grown quite desensitised to people using their height as a way to intimidate or control her. Men in particular, especially the intellectually inferior ones, tended to hover over her. Mother must have foreseen this, having put both daughters in kalaripayattu classes as soon as they were old enough.

“No daughter of mine will ever be looked on as feeble and useless!” Mother would say. And they weren’t.

“Joe, you are so cute when you try to be manly. I wouldn’t make it a habit though. You know I could kick your ass from here to Reno, and not even break a sweat.” Kali looked at him with a half smile, trying to get him to relax, and get off her back.

He was like an excited little puppy sometimes, thrilled every time he saw his owner yet anxious that she might leave him alone, locked in the lab again.

“I was just on my way to the conference room. That is where we are meeting, correct?” She gestured into the elevator, trying to get him to move and let the others by who patiently waited for his large frame to remove itself from the doorway.

He dropped his shoulders a little in relief, then began to turn back into the elevator. “Yeah, conference room. They have been waiting for five minutes now. You completely missed the tour. The director is definitely pissed, you know, in his positive optimistic I don’t get angry I get even sort of way. Why do you gotta pluck his strings like that? I know he can’t exactly get on without you, but hell.” Joe shook his head in confusion, “You are making everyone’s lives difficult when you do that.”

She saw the reaction to that statement in the faces of the other elevator passengers. She didn’t know any of them personally, but by their reaction she could tell they knew her and what she was infamous for doing. Most averted their eyes, finding something interesting on the wall to look at. Others chose to look at their feet, but couldn’t help a sheepish grin. One, a custodian by the way she was dressed, caught sight directly, her head nodding in agreement with a knowing smirk on her face. Kali turned to face front in traditional elevator etiquette, folding her arms defiantly in front of her.

“Ingrates...” she thought. “Didn’t they realize what his majesty would do if she wasn’t here?”

She reached up, nearly on her toes, and smacked Joe in the back of the head.

He flinched, then gently rubbed the spot she hit. “Ow...quit it will ya”

“I’ll take care of it, even if it means falling on my sword.” Kali made sure to say it loud enough so even the ones in the back pretending to ignore the conversation could hear. Office politics was inescapable, even out here in the desert.

“This sucks.” Had she said that out loud? Kali glanced around quickly, but saw no visible reactions. The buzzing in her brain was rising, making it hard to concentrate, but not impossible. Not yet.

***

“All I am asking is for you to tell me what you plan to do with this...thing if, God forbid, she actually succeeds.” Kali could hear the ongoing conversation as she approached the conference room door. She knew the voice, and slowed her pace to catch a little more before entering.

The voice continued. “ I and my colleagues have yet to get a straight answer from you or your project leader on your true intentions for this, this almost abhorrent thing you are building. Nor have you truly defined what contingency plans you have to terminate should it go badly.”

“Contingencies? Go badly?” Kali mused to herself. Can he be serious? Does he think this is some home-school science project? Or perhaps a sci-fi B-movie with rubber masked monsters in a pseudo-reality where physics works only when it’s convenient?

Another voice, the director for sure, interrupted the other. “Understand that this is a very important project to me. I can assure you that I and my people are taking every mode of failure into consideration as we progress. I don’t want to see this project terminate. I certainly don’t want to see it turned into something ‘abhorrent’ by any means.”

That was the director’s ego talking again. Abe had a long history of taking personal ownership of his projects. In this case he not only owed it, you would think he sired most of the employees along the way. And if he was the sire, Kali should have the honor of being his bitch.

She was the one thing about this project, to his dismay most certainly, that he did not own however. “This is science.” She stepped into the room, and onto Abe’s rehearsed lines all in one shot. ” It is pure, unadulterated philosophically neutral experimentation. What mankind later twists it into will be what I consider abhorrent.” She scanned the room, looking for...”Dr. Duggal, so nice to see you again. Please, don’t get up.” Seriously, don’t get up she thought, staring him back into his seat as she saw his weight shift to rise in his quaint yet condescending manner.

“Kali, thank you for joining us at last.” Abe managed relief and annoyance all in one sentence. “Dr. Duggal was elaborating on some concerns of the ethics board.” Abe knew as well as Kali that Duggal was the ethics board. The others on the board were toothless old tigers, with this snaggletooth bastard sitting on top. “Perhaps you can shed some light into the good Dr.’s gloom and doom?”

Abe knew his enemies well, and was very adept at utilizing the strengths of others to fend off those enemies. Kali was his best hired gun when it came to Duggal. If it weren’t for the fact that Kali got off on smashing small narrow minds into the sand, Abe was sure she’d leave him swing in the wind.

“That shouldn’t be too difficult.” She dropped the gauntlet right at Duggal’s feet, just as Abe had hoped. It was time to sit back and enjoy the show. Now if he could just get a bowl of popcorn.

“Dr. uh... Kali,” Duggal was already on his heals. Defensively passive and humble was his natural state with her, and only with her. “Kali,” he restarted, “ I was only expressing an opinion on the direction this research is headed. Don’t you find the potential of what you have created the least bit disturbing?” “Wrong move,” thought the director.

“Like I said before, what you people do with it is your business. I’m not your mother, I’m not God, nor am I my brother’s keeper.” She would fire both barrels and kill him quickly, “I’m doing this purely because I think it is cool as shit, and I know I can do it.” She watched in joy as Duggal winced from her crude language. “You and your ilk, “ She pointed at Duggal and his posse, “you are supposed to be their moral compass. I just design the bombs, you all can decide which poor folk out there are worthy of dropping them on, or not. I am no Einstein. I refuse to feel guilty about my discoveries because the rest of you are a horde of imbeciles.”

“This particular imbecile thinks you can’t do it anyway.” A voice from the far end of the room, hiding behind the others. Kali sees the fine polished shoes with very worn soles propped up on the conference table. She leans a bit to find the face attached to the expensive suit.

“Hmm, interesting.” Kali smiles inside. “And you have a PhD. in...”

“Actually it’s more of a BS degree, mostly in hospitality and entertainment.” The stranger grinned. He loved that joke. It worked well at most parties full of half drunk high strung MBA’s. This girl didn’t seem amused in the slightest.

“What?” Kali was at a loss as to what reaction was warranted here. This was evident on her face. Abe nearly fell out of his chair.

“That means I like to party, drink, and fornicate frequently Ms. uh Kali is it?” He was equally amused at the reaction his statement evoked from that dried up old priest she had thumped. Her’s was just as precious. “But lately I’ve discovered a fondness for mammoth supercomputers and real time bio-simulations. It’s a bit easier on the wallet.”

Kali composed herself quickly, firing back in defense. “Sir, though I do appreciate your astoundingly broad credentials, I don’t have a clue what makes you believe this project is going to fail?

“Oh, I never said the project was going to fail, Ms. Kali.” The mystery guest pulled his feet from the table and leaned in to engage her more fully. “I said that you...” he pointed a finger at her “can’t do it.” He smiled, and leaned back into his chair.

Sleepless nights had Kali on edge. Her impulses were yelling at her to jump the table and pop this antagonizing bastard in his pretty little nose. The rational side of her subdued those impulses, and decided to take a much less litigious approach.

“Who the fuck are you, and how exactly do you want me to kick your ass?” Kali had jumped the rails of political correctness and propriety long ago.

Seemingly unfazed by Kali’s inappropriate inquiries, the man continued smiling and spoke. “Well,” pausing for effect, “I am your volunteer, your test subject, your guinea pig, and above all, at your service.” He bowed his head in mock submission, “ and as far as how to kick my ass, I’d say any way you do it would be a pleasure.”

“Shit” Kali thought to herself, outwardly ignoring his deviant innuendo. The realization sunk in rapidly. If this was the primary candidate, then that meant...

“Yeah, that’s right Ms. Kali.” The stranger could see her iron heart melt ever so slightly.

She was stunned to silence. She could see it now, hiding under makeup and camouflage. Where before her indignant attitude was overcoming her scientific nature, she now observed the telltale signs. The sunken eyes and gaunt features, the fine tailored suit that now hung loose on the shoulders, the well groomed hairpiece, the manicured but fake fingernails, all covered up one thing. This man, who was quite attractive even now, is essentially a walking corpse.

Abe rose from his chair. This wasn’t fun anymore. He put a hand on Kali’s shoulder. “I meant to introduce you earlier. I sent Joe...”

Kali shrugged him off. She’d walked right into this of her own doing. She didn’t need him to rub it in. This was one of the moments of life she despised. It was like she was eight years old, out on the playground with her fellow students, and she had managed to trip over her own jump rope to land square on her ass. The best she could hope for now was to save face in front of the committee and do her best to feign a little sympathy for this dead man.

“I must apologize, Mr...?” Kali paused politely, respectfully, impatiently.

“You can call me...Bob.” The stranger responded, with that impenetrable grin stapled to his face.

“Well, Mr. Bob,” Kali continued, “I had until just now thought the candidate selection was still in progress. I hope you don’t hold this against me. I assure you that for my patients I have a much more refined bedside manner.” She was doing her best not to be sarcastic and smug, which in his case was proving to be easier with the later than the former. Maybe it was the eyes, those lovely yet desperate green eyes.

“Your manners are the least of my concerns Ms. Kali. That has very little to do with remedying my current situation. My only hope is that you are as smart as you think you are. That’s a pretty tall order from what I’ve heard.” That perpetual grin never left his face, even while deriding his only potential savior.

“I am smart enough...” This was all the humility she could muster in light of her mood. She was smarter than anyone at this table, and ninety-nine percent of the people in this facility. She knew the project top to bottom from distributed computing systems to staff nutritionists. He knew that, but what he didn’t know, until now, was her character. He was playing poker with her, and she had given him the most blatant of her tells. The rest he wouldn’t get so easily. It was time for a small bluff.

“...but if you feel more comfortable having the essence of your existence in someone else’s hands, please feel free to contact them.”

“I’ll have my people make some calls.” He was just being a pain in the ass now, trying to keep her off balance. “But in the mean time, why don’t we continue our discussion about your inadequacies over dinner this evening. I hear this place has a superb Italian chef working in one of the restaurants.” He definitely showed he had nothing to lose.

“I hate Italian...” Kali noticed their audience was fixated on her now. She’d almost forgotten the others existed for a moment. “...but if you are as daring as you think you are, you’ll let me prepare something special.” She let that innuendo float out across the table, watching each man’s face as the intention reached the point of understanding in their little male brains.

“I can take it if you can.” Bob’s grin broadened into a full smile.“

“Fine then. Have someone bring you to The Kitchen around six. l should be done fucking things up sufficiently by then.” She had to get a last bit of crassness in for Duggal’s sake. She wouldn’t want him to feel left out.

“Now,” she continued, “unless any of you has a real issue that you would like me to deal with, I have a project to run.” She glared pointedly at each person, just begging them to open their mouth even in the slightest. Having sufficiently frightened them into submission, Kali turned and proceeded to the door. Abe stuck out one of his long arms to intercept her.

“Kali, we will talk later.” Abe half whispered, giving her the best ‘I’m not kidding, you better be there’ look he could manage. Kali opened her mouth to make a sound, but then pictured the look of the woman in the elevator and backed down.

Shrugging, she sighed “Fine” while ducking beneath his arm and walked out the door.

Next Chapter: Joe’s Reality