We Must Run

“You are vital to us. As vital the government, and the aliens. You are the opposition, the counter-balancing force; the proverbial rebellion against the establishment that every one of us supports somewhere in a corner of our hearts. You kept the government in balance Seemantkar. We were afraid that if you were gone something else would emerge in your place, and we would not be able to control that so well.”

 -- BY Cyril Gupta, (Artwork by Erin Wells)

Rohan Mehta was gazing pensively at the busy street below from his office on the top-floor of the tall defender-pack headquarters when the telephone bell rang.

“Hello.” He said into the mouthpiece.

The answering voice belonged to Sohail, his chief operator. There was a slight tremor to it. Mehta knew what it meant.

“Another?”

“Yes chief, he’s in sector 5. This one’s traveling rapidly. He’s also well-shielded. We’re barely getting a signal.”

“You know the motions Sohail; make them.”
 
Mehta disconnected the phone and reflected. He didn’t want to speak to Seemantkar on the radio. It was always the same, so utterly predictable that the monotony had made it unbearable even for a man like Mehta, but Mehta knew the motions too, and he had to make them.

“Hello, how are the old joints today?” Barun Seemantkar spoke with the special glee in his voice that he reserved for the occasions when a runner broke through the cover.

“I wish you’d worry about your people more than my arthritis Seemantkar. We would both have a little peace,” he replied.

“What and put you out of a job? Don’t you know that your entire department runs just because I exist.”

“Why don’t you let me retire now? These old bones don’t like the excitement anymore,” Mehta spoke tiredly.

“Let’s play the game some more Mehta. It won’t be long now. Don’t you want to know who wins at the end?”

“That’s what you always say, but we’ll have to exchange the pleasantries later, right now tell me-- who is the runner?”

“Oh, you don’t know him. He’s a new hand.”

“Has to be, I killed all your old ones.”

There was silence on the other side for a moment, when Seemantkar spoke again the glee was replaced by a calm strong resolve.

“It won’t worry me even if you get this one too Mehta. I have eternal patience,” Seemantkar said.

“Eternal patience is a nice thing to have. Too bad I can’t say the same about me. One of these days I will just get you instead of your runners.”

“I’d love nothing more, love nothing more…” Seemantkar chuckled.

Mehta left Seemantkar chuckling and went back to his gazing. He disliked his job. In the last 12 years in the force he had got more people killed than during his tenure in the army.

Some say that the Final War was inevitable. On the surface human kind seemed to be pushing towards nobler goals in life like peace and progress, but inside they were all competing. The competition was all-pervasive. Everyone was in the race, individuals, companies, religious cults, and nations. It was a mad rush to grab the most, to steal everything from the others. And the Final War was natural progression.

The Final War began like all wars do, on a minor point of contention. This time it was a terrorist action against a city in India, just a little off the country’s coastline. A lot of people died and to quell the tremendous outcry against the security failure, the government blamed another nation and attacked it.

The world quickly divided itself into two factions. What began with a freak missile-bombing incident soon blew up into the war to end all wars.

In the dilapidated building that served as his headquarters, Seemantkar turned to Rajeev.

“They have begun the chase.”

“So soon?” said Rajeev.

“It is never late enough for us. Their equipment is better than ever now.”
 
“And the flycars? I heard they built a faster model.”
 
“Yes. Let’s hope they are not fast enough.”
 
They knew what the chances were. Not all of what Seemantkar has said to Mehta on radio was true. Things had changed. There were not many who were willing to do the run anymore, and those who did were unsuitable. Both Seemantkar and Rajeev knew they’d be dead within 2 kilometers of the edge if they ran.
 
“Let’s hope Josh makes it to the core. He is our only hope left,” Seemantkar sank lower in his big wooden chair.
 
“He is a special kid Barun. His father almost made it to the core, and his mother was just 1 kilometer away when they got her. He is our best runner yet.”
Seemantkar knew that too. Josh had really been a special kid. His father and mother were both devoted to the cause. They had trained Josh right from his childhood. Josh was the fastest, the best recruit he had ever had, but he was only 15.
Rajeev spoke on cue as if he could read his thoughts.
“He’s of age chief. We did not make a mistake. His mom and dad sacrificed themselves for the run. And he chose to honor them by running.”
 
Seemantkar often wished that he had thought of a better solution. In the beginning he had tried ships and vehicles to travel to the core, but they were easy targets for the automated gun turrets at the edge. No vehicle ever made it past them.
 
Running was an easier solution. They would take the runner to the area in a car and drop them off near the edge. On foot the runner could slip in undetected by the machines. Then he would run through the ruins of the city until they reached the core where massive residual radiation from the bomb would kill him and bring back the aliens.
 

 
Josh leaned on the wall for support. He had been running at top speed for the last one hour and he was out of breath, but only barely. His tough training had prepared him for the chase, but not for the bleakness of his surroundings. All around him the walls had fallen or were crumbling. Charred with years of neglect they seemed to be crying out in anguish. He couldn’t stop, or they would be on him.
 
He started running again, taking care to weave through the lanes instead of following a straight path. His pursuers would find it harder to predict his course that way. He was only fifteen kilometers from the center and from salvation.
 
Meanwhile, multiple packs of frantic hunters had already assembled. The chase had begun. They had the latest in bio-detection technology. Scanners that could detect a heartbeat three kilometers away, yet nothing showed up on the screens. The runner was well-shielded. They would have to rely on the traditional hunting methods.
 
“Keep your eyes peeled. He is bound to leave some trail.” Yelled pack leader Sohail as he got into his flycar.
 
Sohail had led successful chases before. This wouldn’t be any different. The runner would be caught well before he approached the center. The heavily shielded flycar protected them from any radiation.
 
The runner was inside a house. He knew he couldn’t relax for long, but retaining energy was important. He couldn’t afford to collapse. He took a swig from the energy drink he was carrying in a shoulder pouch as he looked at his surroundings.
 
The house was deserted, just like the rest of them in the zone. The furnishing was surprisingly clean, and although the paint had peeled off in places, the place looked ready to move in. He took a last look at the home that once housed a family like his, and set off for the run again.
 
The radiation zone was big, and there were lot of places to hide. Still, the defender-pack had done a consistently good job. No runner had made to the core yet. Josh’s training had made him resolved to be first, as it had done for every runner before him.
He was on his way again now. Swerving through the lanes, sticking to the course he had memorized so carefully.
 
Unknown to him the defender-pack was already on the trail. With their instruments that listened to every sound in the zone they were already fanning out in their flycars, eager to intercept the runner, no matter what course he took.

The evening sun was setting before his window. Rohan Mehta sat in his office watching it. This was new. No runner had made it to the evening uncaught. He hailed Sohail almost every minute, but there was no new development.
“We thought we had discovered his trail. But we were wrong. If there’s really a runner in here, he’s a ghost.”
 
Sohail’s words were not reassuring. Once the darkness fell, it would be even harder catching him.
 
***
 
 Josh lay absolutely still on the floor. He was in a small room in a house. Probably a store when the house was still used. He was tired, but he couldn’t lie there too long. The search teams must already be nearing. They were very methodical, searching every house, every nook. Once they were near, his body-shields wouldn’t save him. He would be detected.
 
Taking a sip of the energy fluid he was carrying in the suit, he stood up and started off again. Running slowly he remembered the things his father had said to him when they trained. It was only two years ago, but it seemed like a distant memory.
 
 “Josh, we must run. We must run so that the aliens will come back again and we can tell them how the regime they installed oppresses us. We must run for liberty, and for freedom.”
 
 They ran everyday. That’s the only hope they had. That’s the only way they knew. The government was a perfect dictatorship. It robbed the people of their freedom so subtly that no one realized how chained they were. They were watched at every step, their actions monitored closely. Each word listened to. At the slightest sign of unrest, they were shuffled to another location, or assigned to a correctional facility.
 
In fact most of the people were glad for the rule, for the vigilance and even for the oppression. The world was under one government for the first time, and a stable government would ensure that there would be no more wars like the Final War.
Josh wasn’t born while the Final War was on, but his father shared his memories. The Final War was the biggest war ever fought on the planet. Death harvested its crop in billions.
 
Then one faction summoned the courage to use the weapon they all feared -- A nuclear device. One that towered over the tiny little blips that were burst in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The bomb utterly destroyed the city it was cast on, but before that faction could celebrate its victory, they lost a city, then two, and then more.
 
But before humanity could destroy itself completely, the aliens came.
 

 
 The aliens were waiting right outside the edge of detection. Waiting for the war to blow over, or for the humans to make that tactical mistake. The use of nuclear technology for killing was considered an abomination in the galaxy, and any race that used nuclear purpose for aggression was considered fit for elimination.
 
“It’s not because we want to put an end to wars, or want peace. You can fight all the wars you want. Go and kill yourself with arrows, gunshots and if there are people still left, napalm them. Just don’t use a nuke, because that weapon can’t just destroy people, it can destroy planets.” The alien ambassador had summoned the world leaders and told them.
 
The many races of galaxy were careful. They had seen nuclear technology being developed to the point where it was powerful enough to burst entire planets, and then being used. That’s why the United Galaxy banned nuclear weapons, even when they were insignificant like the ones that used in the final war of Earth.
 
The aliens wanted annihilation of all human technology. The humans wanted to be a part of the galaxy, not an outcast. They argued and bargained and finally reached a settlement.
 
The world would be under a single government. If the human beings behaved they would be considered a part of the galaxy, and ultimately be included in the United Galaxy council, but if there was even one more death due to nuclear technology, the aliens would strip humans of all their technology and the planet of all its minerals. Human beings would be stuck in a perpetual stone age.
 
The runners were rebels who tried to get into the fast shrinking radiation zone of the nuclear explosion of the Final War. Their aim was to get near the core of the explosion and die there. Even if one runner was successful, the aliens would be back. The government would be demolished and the runners hoped they would bargain all over again.
 
“It’s only a threat that they’ve made. The number of humans that live on the planet today cannot possibly survive in a stone age, and the aliens’ rules forbid them from genocide.” Seemantkar told every runner at the time of recruitment.
So far the theory remained untested. The runners all perished in the way. Every one of them killed, or picked up by Rohan Mehta’s men.
 

 Josh surveyed his surroundings with dismay. He had come further than any other runner, but now he no longer had the shelter of buildings, and houses. It was all open ground now. The core was very near, but to reach it, he would have to risk detection.
 
 It was time to use the device his father had given him.
 
It was a hologram bot. The bot could float over land at a rapid pace, and could generate a hologram as it moved. It was set to display a hologram of Josh running. His father had said that with 10 of those one could virtually guarantee making it to core. Unfortunately, there was only one of the kind, and that would have to be enough.
 
He set the hologram bot for maximum speed and let it loose. The bot traveled fast, displaying a very believable image of Josh running. The bot also mimicked other attributes of Josh’s life signature. It left a trail of scent, mimicked heartbeat, body-heat and even breathing. It had a fair chance of fooling even the best detection machines.
 
Drawing himself up to his knees, Josh ran in the other direction. With no place to hide, he was a bright target in the open ground. He hoped the bot would buy him enough time to reach the core.
 
***
 
 Sohail stared at his airship’s life-signature detector. There were only small blips, suggestive of tiny mammals, probably rats. They were the first to adapt to the increased radiation among mammals. Each year they spread further into the radiation zone.
 
Suddenly a big blip appeared. Sohail’s face lit up. It would be the runner. It could be nothing else. Sohail directed his boys to the blip’s co-ordinates. They fanned out just in case the runner diverted his course.
 
***
 
 Josh felt his heart throbbing. It wasn’t just all the running. His wrist GPS monitor showed he was almost at the core. In another 20 minutes he would be inside it. There was no one to stop him yet. Maybe they had followed the decoy bot. Now he ran as fast as he could. No reason to push his luck further by delaying.
 
At the other end of the hunt, Sohail saw the blip appear nearer. He was moving fast, but not as fast as a flycar. He would be caught soon. He radiod his team. When the time comes, it would be better if they were converged and ready to deal with any escape attempts.
 
Josh was running as fast he could. His breath was coming out in gasps, limiting the much needed oxygen intake. His body ached to stop, to fall down and lie panting, but his mind carried it, every step a battle, every step an agony.
 
Josh was worried. He should be in the zone by now. But he noticed nothing different. He looked down at the wrist-monitor and almost stopped in exultation. He was in the zone. He had made it to the core where the radiation was the strongest. His body would be poisoned beyond healing.
 
He plowed on because he didn’t dare stop. Deeper and deeper into the core, the radiation would go up. His little hand Geiger counter showed him the level was rising with each step. When he was over the bomb-site, the counter would be at the maximum level. He touched the capsule hanging from a chain around his neck. He would take the final measure there, but he couldn’t stop before he reached that place.
 
In his flycar, Sohail was surprised to have fallen for the trick. The run had been too easy even by the low standards of most of Seemantkar’s runners. He was deceived, the runner he had followed was a decoy and original runner would already be at the core by now. It was a calamity. He knew that the Earth would suffer, but oddly his immediate thoughts were about Rohan Mehta’s reaction when he heard of this.
 
No matter what, he had to bring the runner in. They could deal with any fallout later.
 

 
Seemantkar sat in his room thinking. Rohan Mehta wanted a meeting with him -- A personal meeting. This was very unusual, but it was an opportune moment for unusual things to happen. The runner had made it. The 15 year old boy-child had achieved success where scores of others had failed. He was in the zone. His last message confirmed it. There was no message after that one.
 
The defender-pack might have got him, but it would certainly have been too late. Josh was instructed to take the final measure, consume the capsule on his chain as soon as he got to the bomb-site. He would die immediately.
 
So Barun Seemantkar decided to grant Rohan Mehta that meeting. Through all these years Seemantkar had spoken to him many times, borne his taunts, and taunted him himself, but he had never met the man. Now he would meet him face-to-face and together they would wait for the results of his victory.
 
***
 
Rohan Mehta sat alone and unarmed in the crowded coffee house at the heart of the city. This was the place Barun Seemantkar had asked him to come to. His instructions were clear. “Don’t do any nonsense.” Rohan Mehta didn’t plan to do any nonsense anyway. All he wanted was one short discussion with the man who kept him in a job, and he had been waiting for more than 10 minutes for him to appear.
 
The pesky waiter accosted him yet again. “Would you like to place your order now sir?”
 
“No I won’t. Didn’t I tell you I was waiting for someone?”
 
“Who could be brutish enough to keep a gentleman like you waiting so long?”
 
Rohan Mehta looked carefully at the waiter. Tall and lanky with long unkempt hair, he would be in his 30s. He had a serious look of intent on his scraggy face. Rohan Mehta smiled.
 
“Why don’t you sit down and tell me just what kind of brute that man is.”
 
“Thanks for the invitation, but first I must have your order.”
 
“I’ll have whatever you’ll have,” Rohan Mehta said.
 
Two minutes later the waiter re-appeared with two piping hot cups of tea. He placed one before Rohan Mehta, and sat down with the other in front of him. Rohan Mehta took an experimental swig; it was flavored with cardamom.
 
“So you’re Barun Seemantkar.”
 
Seemantkar nodded. “Yes, and what do I have this pleasure for?”
 
Rohan Mehta straightened. “Coming straight to business are we?”
 
“Time is precious Mr. Mehta, especially when your government has so little of it.”
 
“Suits me perfectly,” Rohan Mehta said.
 
He paused, collecting his thoughts.
 
“Seemantkar, we got the boy.”
 

Seemantkar frowned. “I know you did, but he got to the zone. He died in the zone. The aliens will come as promised. Your oppressive government will be over-thrown and we will talk to the aliens about a new system. A system which truly cares about the people.”
 
Rohan Mehta smiled again. “No one is coming Seemantkar. There are no aliens.”
 
“Your government and you will never stop being treacherous. Josh died in the zone, and the aliens will come.”
 
“If the aliens were truly coming, do you think I would have the time to seek a meeting with you?”
 
Rohan Mehta let his sentence sink.
 
“I’d be in prison by now, waiting to be executed for failing the establishment so badly. Don’t you think so?”
 
Seemantkar said nothing, but his frown became deeper.
 
“How can that be? Josh died in the zone. The aliens must come, they said so.”
 
“Seemantkar.” Rohan Mehta leaned over. “What if I said there are no aliens?”
 
Seemantkar didn’t miss a beat. “You’d be lying of course.”
 
Rohan Mehta paused. “I am not. Not this time.”
 
Seemantkar laughed an unconvinced laughter. “You bring me here to tell me a bluff; so transparent a bluff that even a fool can see through it…”
 
Rohan Mehta raised a hand to pause him. “You believe what you’re told Seemantkar. Just like everyone else. There are no aliens. There never were.”
 
“But after the explosions… They came. I saw it. We all saw it. The great ship, the envoys, we heard them too.”
 
“We created them Seemantkar— the establishment.”
 
Rohan Mehta took another small pause.
 
“Do you remember the nukes? We weren’t the first to use them, but we wanted to be the last. So many cities were destroyed Seemantkar, and this – New Delhi – was the greatest of them. We didn’t want that to happen again, so we created the aliens. It was a rash idea. A desperate chance for peace, but it worked.”
 
“But the ship. It was all so real…”
 
“Smokes and mirrors, just like a cheap magic trick. We designed the flight vehicle -- an extra-large, oddly shaped flycar. Did you see it first-hand? Not many people did. Most of us watched the recording, and listened to the leaders from both factions. We believed what we were made to believe by them. They misled us all”
 
“It can’t be true! Why would they do something like that? The opposite faction – they were at war with us.”
 

“Nobody was winning Seemantkar. And we all knew it. We wanted to quit, but by then establishments from both the sides had worked their people into an all consuming hate. So over-powering that the people would choose their own destruction if they could destroy the others in turn. The leaders wanted to quit a long time ago Seemantkar, but they were trapped in their own game. The people would not let them quit.”
 
“And the aliens were the solution?”
 
“Yes. The aliens were the solution. The proposal was brought forward by a team of anthropologists from the opposite faction. They said that the only way the warring populace would stand together was if they had an external threat.”
 
“It was all a con…?” Seemantkar’s disbelief was no longer so strong. If the aliens were coming, then why did Rohan Mehta need to tell him this story?
 
“An elaborate con. Designed to save the planet, and to unite the people in spite of all their differences. Tell me; what significance do human cultural differences and religions have when aliens arrive? Did God create the aliens too?”
 
Seemantkar thought about the period after the war. The knowledge that there were aliens had really brought the people together. They believed that the aliens were benign, but they also believed that they were powerful enough to destroy Earth. Living under a challenge like that, most of the world’s citizens had set aside their differences and concentrated on taking humanity forward. The world adhered to the rules, and rebellion was spat upon. That’s what motivated Seemantkar and the few other anarchists. They could not live in a society so single-minded.
 
Then Seemantkar’s thought drifted in a different direction.
 
“All these years. You knew this all these years… and yet you allowed so many of my people to die running? How could you kill them so heartlessly?”
 
Rohan Mehta flinched. He knew that question would come, and no explanation would be enough.
 
“I was assigned a job. I had to do it just like everyone else.”
 
“But you were different. You knew! And yet you allowed us to run to our deaths. No! You sent your people after us, and killed us… I sent so many people to their deaths; all for nothing? Why didn’t you tell me earlier Rohan Mehta?”
 
“I couldn’t tell you. If I had told you, the aliens would have been exposed and you would have called off your movement.”
 
“My movement? So futile… So useless… And I come to know after all these years. My life has been a waste.” Seemantkar spoke in a voice filled with tremendous pain.
 

“No Seemantkar. You are vital to us. As vital the government, and the aliens. You are the opposition, the counter-balancing force; the proverbial rebellion against the establishment that every one of us supports somewhere in a corner of our hearts. You kept the government in balance Seemantkar. We were afraid that if you were gone something else would emerge in your place, and we would not be able to control that so well.”
 
Seemantkar reeled back. “So I was an unknowing pawn. You let me exist because I was useful to you. But now after so many years, after I sent so many to be executed you’re telling me this. Why Rohan Mehta? Why?”
 
Rohan Mehta looked at his tea-cup. “I never knew I had a conscience Seemantkar. Or maybe I had buried it so deep that it never emerged. Not till two days ago. You sent in a child Seemantkar; just a child. You brainwashed him so that he committed suicide in the zone. He could have done so much with his life, but he never got the opportunity-- all because of you and me. I can’t pay this price any longer.”
 
Seemantkar stared at Rohan Mehta. Was it just his imagination, or had the man grown ten years while they talked.
 
Seemantkar spoke softly, almost in a whisper, “And what do you want me to do now? Now that I know the truth.”
 
Rohan Mehta straightened up. Again his old self.
 
“We need you Seemantkar. The world needs you to do what you’ve always done… But now there will be a few changes.”
 
***
 
 In his headquarters Seemantkar sat on his old, worn-out chair looking at the day’s newspaper. His core team sat before him. “The headline says that the government won’t be killing the runners anymore. They’re going to use stunners and try to capture our runners alive. I don’t know what to make of it Seemantkar. Is it because of the public outcry because Josh was so young? If only he had succeeded like we first believed,” said Rajeev.
 
Seemantkar threw the paper down, and waved his fist angrily in the air. “Publicity stunt! The government is afraid of us because we are generating so much public-support for our cause. That’s why they want to seem compassionate. But we will not let them fool us gentlemen. We must run!”

  -- BY Cyril Gupta