[Maelstrom - Chapter 05] Samuel Oslo

No one man should have so much power. I had been trying to piece together as much detail as I could find about Maelstrom. I first saw him on the news when he was called Ironbot. He had stopped a speeding car with his hands. It was unbelievable, seeing a living breathing superhero on the TV screen. It was something straight out of a fantasy.

I was not interested in the suite per se. I was interested in the man. The second time he came on screen was four weeks later, when he saved a plane from crashing. His suit was different, it had been redesigned, and now he could fly. What sort of genius could devise something so incredible? Was it one man, or a team of men? It could very well be a government project. I hoped it was not.

The internet was a massive orgy of discussions on Ironbot Maelstrom. As is the case with most such things, he was being called divine by some and evil by others. Some even called him an extra-terrestrial. But the more I studied the suit and it’s motions, the more it became apparant that he was only human. And I became convinced that I could build a similar suit. Such an endeavor would require resources and time.

I made elaborate design sketches. And it became evident to me that I was quite close to building my own Maelstrom suit. It had taken me only a day to design the suit completely. Maelstrom was on the news almost on a daily basis. He’d brought down the crime rate in the city. This was something I intended to rectify. For every hero, there must be a villain. I couldn’t imagine my city of sin turning into some sort of a cub scout camp full of do-gooders.

It was during the crafts hour the next day that I got my hands on the various materials that would be used to build the suit’s main structure. The cardboard was thick enough. It couldn’t stop bullets like Maelstrom’s armor, but it would have to do for now. I traced out the design on the cardboard and cut the various pieces. I glued them together and marveled at my own ingenuity.

While the other inmates were drooling and working on various silly crafts projects, I was on the way to become a super-villain. As I put on the suit, I could feel myself change. The suit transformed me into the super-villain that I always knew myself to be. The nurse smiled at me. I walked over to her.

“Why are you not afraid woman?” I asked her. She burst out laughing. “Why should I be Samuel?”

Insolence!!! “Because I can hurt you my love,” I said and grabbed her. The guards and male nurses rushed over. But I was unstoppable. I jumped at them with blind fury. The suit prevented the needles of the tranquilizers from reaching my skin. I grabbed the baton from one of the guards, and charged down the hallway, swinging the baton hard on anyone in my way.

***

“These are live images from Clearbrook Asylum, where moments earlier, 16 inmates escaped led by Samuel Oslo. Oslo was arrested 2 years ago for bombing the 23rd Street precint station. Authorities have launched a massive manhunt to capture the escaped criminally-insane inmates. But so far, there has been no…”

[Maelstrom - Chapter 04] Paralysis

She had lied when she said she’d stopped drinking. I could smell whiskey on her breath as I drew close to kiss her. I hesitated, but kissed her just the same. I knew that what had happened to her was cruel. And that I should be spending more time with her. “Did you have dinner?” I asked her. She shook her head, not taking her eyes away from the sea. It was cold on the balcony, but she sat on her wheelchair wearing only a satin shirt, motionless.

“You don’t have to come home this early from work you know,” she said almost monotonally. There was frustration in her voice. Lately she had grown a disturbingly melancholic. And I came home earlier than usual to be with her. I’d been thinking about quitting work, to spend more time working on finding a way to make her walk again.

When I lay on the bed next to her at night, she turned to face away from me. Simple conversations had become awkward to begin, or continue. I held her; she didn’t react. “Everything will be fine,” I told her, mustering as much strength as I could. But I knew she didn’t believe me. Eventually she’d drift off to sleep and I would go to the lab.

She was paralyzed from the waist down. It had been abrupt. She had complained of back aches for days, and then one day, she couldn’t walk. No one really knew why or how it had happened. It had something to do with her spine, one specialist had said.

“Activated,” the main system monitor said, and then the lab flickered to life. I had been working on an artificial leg for her. I hadn’t known at that point that she would die before the leg would be completed. And that the work I did on creating the leg would, along with my need for revenge, drive me to make the machine that I am now wearing.

“…the hydraulics have suffered complete paralysis. The plane has lost all contact with ground crew and is feared to have crashed, killing…” - the newscast was confused and jumbled. I had been scanning various channels for any news of incidents requiring my attention. Finally something interesting was brought to my attention by the suit’s AI - a commercial airline, having 342 passengers on-board had lost radar contact over the Atlantic ocean after reporting damage to the engine.

I had to fly supersonic to reach the location where the plane had last been seen on radar. There was no sign of the plane in the air. Hacking into the IATA mainframe, I was able to retrieve the flight information, that could be used to search for the plane. A weak distress signal in the plane’s radio frequency was being detected a few miles to the north. It was fading fast. I flew to the source. The plane was still in the air, losing altitude. I tried hacking into the plane’s computer, but it was offline. The pilots were flying blind, and without any computer assist.

They had a short range radio on board. “Turn off manual control,” I told them. They looked at me through the windshield. “I am Maelstrom, and I can carry the plane to safety,” I said reassuringly. They nodded, still stunned to see me. They would have remembered me from the news a few weeks ago.

Flying with a plane on my back was, needless to say, a piece of cake. The wings generated unwanted drag and lift, so I had to slow down considerable. It took me close to three hours to land the plane and fly off.

After four weeks of re-design and testing, I would be back on the news the next day - this time, with a cooler name.

[Maelstrom - Chapter 03] Flight

I had been on the news for only a week after I had taken the suit out for it’s first spin. They called me Ironbot. What an unoriginal name. Eventually the interest died out. I was surprised that people could move on so easily from encounters with the extra-ordinary. Though I knew that a superhero had to be anonymous, I craved recognition. And a better name.

The suit required more test runs to allow the onboard computer to perfect the exoskelatal motion. I felt selfish for having invented so many things that could find use in improving life, and yet not revealing them to the public. But there was a higher probability of it being used to do harm than good. A subcritical reactor and an energy amplifier that fit in the palm of a hand could power dangerous machines of war, self-learning neural networks that form the AI of the suit could plan and execute wars of un-imagineable scale, and an exoskeleton driven by these technologies could defeat entire armies.

As I put on the suit, I remember what the old man said in Poe’s ‘A Descent into the Maelstrom,’ - “It took less than a single day to change these hairs from a jetty black to white, to weaken my limbs, and to unstring my nerves.” This machine I had created could very well lead to my own undoing. Already, I could sense urges within me to put on the suit constantly. I found myself wearing the suit to walk around the house. The feeling of being like a God was addictive.

“Activated,” the programmed voice said when the system was ready for the test. The turbine turned at a default rpm even when I was not in flight. I could feel the vibration on my back, making the suit feel like a living, breathing organism. I walked over to the balcony and jumped. It was a stupid mistake. The flight system was still not calibrated exactly to follow my commands. One of the goals of these tests was to solve that issue. Thus, the turbine only came up to power once I had landed on the sandy beach below, face down. Though wrapped in a cocoon of ultra strong alloys and fiber-glass, inertia knocked the wind out of me when I hit the ground.

I pushed myself up and the turbine kicked in completely, propelling me through the air. I was now flying. It was incredible. The exhilaration of flying - actual flight - is indescribable.

I spent almost four hours flying around, long after the calibrations were completed. Theoretically, the suit could fly into space. The life support system of the suit however needed further work to support such a journey.

In order to develop this suit, I had put off fighting crime for too long. All the required calculations and adjustments were completed. The suit performed everything that I asked of it. I could fly, hover and perform other superhuman tasks. As I contemplated the tasks ahead, I thought of Nietsche’s Superman. I also thought about how much hubris this suit brought over me. I must get my feet on the ground. I turned on the news and radio scanners. It was time I really did something with my powers.

[Maelstrom - Chapter 02] Redesign

I had been conflicted about whether to make the suit fly, ever since I stopped the kid in his speeding car. It would mean I have to spend more time preparing to fight crime, than fighting crime itself for now. But a more pressing issue was at hand - the suit used up fuel faster than anticipated, a large chunk of it spent to cool my body under the hot exoskeleton. As I held the tiny reactor used to power the suit in my hand, I realized that a subcritical reactor alone, such as this, would not be sufficient. But adding an energy amplifier was out of the question too, it would make the suit too bulky. Unless the cyclotron in the amplifier was reduced in size…

The solution to the cyclotron problem occurred to me when I was walking down the beach. Her memories haunted me, but I needed to get out of the lab to clear my head. I felt her hair on my face, and her skin on my skin. I sat down and ran my hands through the wet sand. There were seashells lying around. And then it struck me - the spirals…

It had been three days since I began work on the new energy amplifier for the suit’s subcritical reactor. I had the working model in front of me. I pulled out the control rods in the reactor and released the particle gates in the cycolotron. The laser lit up, and the reactor core came up to subcritical mass. The power reading showed a four-hundred-fold increase in energy…

I modified the suit to handle the power. The possibilities were tremendous. Wearing the exoskeleton, I could now lift weights equivalent to a 747. Speed was still an issue, I had to tone down the speed to ensure that the motion did not hurt me. Because of the increase in power, I could add more memory and processing capabilities to the suit’s computer. It was only a matter of time before I could fly…

As I became more absorbed in my work, I realized that there was a part of me that did all this not for revenge, or to satisfy an inner urge for justice, but to become invincible. That primal urge to become indestructible fueled me through days and nights on end, as I worked on the suit, redesigning and refining, testing it’s seemingly inexhaustible limits…

Adding turbines to power flight turned out to be easier than I had first thought. The main engine was fixed on the suit’s back. The suit’s outer casing had to undergo significant changes to allow this to happen. The intake for the turbine was on the suit’s shoulder. Additional turbines to stabilize the flight was fixed on the feet and knuckles. The hard part was programming the five turbines to work in tandem…

And then I was done. As I looked at the improved suit, an odd sense of awe came over me. It was like looking at it for the first time. I stepped into it. It was infinitely more confortable than before. I did not feel like I was wearing anything more than the body glove. The additional processors and memory allowed the suit to calculate it’s movements with more precision to mimic my own movements. I could topple concrete walls with the same effort it took to push a stack of dominos. It was heady, and I realized that I could lose my sanity…

Ironman Rocks!

Here’s why I loved Ironman -

1. Robert Downey Jr. is a rare male actor who can draw equal number of admirers from men as well as women. He’s a man’s man and a ladies’ man. And here, not only does he transform himself into a really cool male hero - by which I mean he drinks, he is sarcastic and he is a womanizer, but he also oozes a searing bad-boy sexuality.

2. Jon Favreau directs this movie knowing exactly what the audience wants. He begins the movie with an AC/DC song and ends it with a fight between two men wearing mechanical exoskeletons. He keeps the movie light, intelligent and exciting.

3. The best parts of a superhero movie/comic revolve around the transformation of an ordinary man into the superhero. So, when Tony Stark designs, builds and tests his Ironman suit, I was having goose-pimple overload.

4. Bald and bearded Jeff Bridges plays a surprisingly dark villain. There is something that really strikes a chord in me when father figures turn into villains.

5. Gwyneth Paltrow. ‘Nuff said.

6. Ironman’s suit, and other technological miracles in the film are awesomely cool and really believable.

7. Killer soundtrack.

[Maelstrom - Chapter 01] Wishing for a Wing

The curtains were flailing in the wind and I could hear the sound of waves. I remember opening my eyes and wincing at the pain in my back caused by last night’s recklessness. She wasn’t there on the bed next to me. But I could still feel the warmth of the sheets where she had laid. I took her pillow and brought it to my face, taking a deep breath, consuming her lingering fragrance.

I walked outside to the beach and saw her swimming in the sea. She waved at me, calling me to come over. We swam in the warm sea and lay on the beach, her head on my chest. She looked at me after a while and said smiling, “You are getting old.” I brushed her wet hair from her face and asked, “How can you tell?”

“Well,” she said with a glint of mischief in her eyes, “you were too tired by the time we finished last night, and now after a swim, you are breathing heavy and your heart is beating a bit too fast.”

 

“Elevated heart rate.”

I come back from my reverie hearing her programmed voice in my ear. The readings on the helmet screen confirm that I miss her terribly. I must put the past aside, atleast for now, to see what this suit can really do.

I scan the news channels too see if anything was about. There was a police chase in progress downtown. I had hoped for a crime in a less crowded area to make my debut. But a crimefighter cannot really choose the location of a fight can he? I haven’t yet been able to integrate any sort of transportation devices to the suit yet, so for now I must rely on the modified motorcycle.

As I ride down the tunnel to the exit through the forest, the absurdity of the very act of becoming a superhero hit me. Will it all turn out to be like in the comic books? Is everything going to be as black and white? Will these battles that I am about to fight fall in the simplistic category of good versus evil? Is a vigilante a hero?

I see the police cars in front of me and race ahead of them. The stolen car was being driven by a kid. I use the suit’s scanner to lock in on his car stereo. I can see his thermal metrics on my helmet’s screen. He panics when I turn off the music in his car. I say to him through my distorted voice, “There are two ways out of this mess you’ve brought upon yourself boy. One, is to pull over. And the other one, involves a lot of pain.”

He takes a sharp turn, and I struggle a little to keep up with him. I really could use a better transport. I realize that the suit is not completely ready. But for now, this will do. I race ahead of the car and get off my bike. I stand in the middle of the road. He can see me. I wonder what I look like to him. Is that awe I see on his face? Surely he has read and fantasized about superheroes. And now the look of awe vanishes. Self preservation had taken over. He steps on the accelerator and the car charges at me.

My helmet screen shows results of numerous calculations that the suit’s semi-AI was working on. I hold out my hand and lean forward, bracing for the impact. I cannot let the kid get hurt, so a stand-still is not an option. The car hits me, and I make sure that my footing skids on the road, decelerating the car, bringing it to a complete stop in a few meters. Television cameras on helicopters were capturing the events, and thousands of people at home were watching it live. I could have cut off the engine or enabled the brake by gaining access to the car’s computer the moment I had seen the vehicle. But then, that would have killed the dramatic effect.

I must confess that I am enjoying the attention. The kid steps out, looking stunned. The police cars had caught up and the cops came with their guns drawn out. I walk over to the motorcycle and get on. The kid was handcuffed and taken away. “Step away from the vehicle,” they shouted.

The chase didn’t last long, I had slowed them down a bit by occasionally tinkering with the car’s electronics. As I take off the suit, I smile knowing that years of hard work had paid off. The suit was nearing completion, and all the features built in so far, worked flawlessly. If only I could fly like Superman.

“System shutting down,” her voice says as I walk away.

[Maelstrom - Prologue] Activated

[A work of fiction about my imagined life as a superhero. Laced with the elements and cliches that I love about comic books in general and specifically that of self-made superheroes. Born out of my anticipation to see Ironman and the joblessness I enjoy at work today.]

From the beginning, it was obvious to me that things will unfold in the fashion as it had so far. I finished college, got a job, made money, started my own business, took some risks, got rewarded a hundred fold, and then I folded my cards. It wasn’t that I was tired or anything. It was a progression. I’d made my mark as a man could wish for. I have all the money in the world, and all my childhood and youthful ambitions have been accomplished.

And now it has come to this. Act two - wherein I set out to accomplish new ambitions.

As I look at the suit suspended in front of me, a chill runs down my spine. Doubts fill my mind about these new goals I have set for myself. Am I truly capable of being reborn? Can I transform myself into a hero that this world dreams of having, and now so desperately needs?

I cast these doubts aside, for these are questions meant to haunt lesser minds. I have seized everything I have wanted so far, and this will be no different. I undress and wear the black, skin-tight body glove, which will protect me from the uncomfortable exoskeleton which I am about to wear on top. The screen to my right lights up, showing my body’s metrics. So far so good. Every readable metric was being monitored in realtime. My heart rate is a bit high, but that is understandable - it’s not everyday that you test your life’s greatest work.

It had begun before I had stopped working at my company. Initially, it was just a hobby, a very expensive and time consuming hobby. What started out as a body armor - inpenetrable, indestructable - was now a full-blown war machine. And it stood in front of me, stunning in it’s freightening possibility. I walk over to it and touch it. The nano constructed surface was soft and flawless.

I put on the helmet first. I can see my metrics and the metrics of the exoskeleton on the helmet’s screen. It reads my brain waves and adjusts it’s sensors to make sure the input levels are optimum. I step into the suit and it latches onto my body glove. More readings light up on my helmet’s screen. All systems were operating at 100 percent. I take a deep breath and whisper, “Lock” (I still haven’t been able to just simply think it, for that is enough for the system to understand.) I hear and feel a loud click as the exoskeleton conforms to the contours of my body.

“Activated,” her voice said in my ear. The aural output for the system was her voice. I’d programmed it in as a reminder of why I must do what I am about to do. For if she hadn’t died, I wouldn’t have taken this path of vengeance.

Unlike the heroes in the comics, I do not see this part of me as an alter ego. This is an extensions, an enhancement, an improvement. I haven’t thought of a name for myself. For that is for them to decide, when they see what I am about to do.

The Idiot

The sad downside of being a multi-talented narcissist like me is that you spend almost all your time day-dreaming of a better life. And you have elaborate dreams wherein you become master of the universe. All the while, you secretly imagine someone – who previously had put you down or ignored you – suddenly realizing how great a person you are. You, meanwhile having a nonchalant, ironic expression on your face, graciously forgive his oversight with a grand gesture of something.

But how can this be a downside? As long as you can convince yourself that you are meant for greater things - and that great things, no matter how far-fetched they seem, will come to you in just a while - it’s fine. However, this is a precarious existence. For inevitably, and definitely, you will realize that your dreams of being a world famous film-maker or the next big rock star are just that – dreams. Thankfully, these sad moments of painful epiphanies are easily overcome by convincing yourself that maybe you should cut back a little on your elaborate plans, or even make your big goal into a collection of smaller and easily attainable goals. So, you can be a short film-maker or an indie/underground singer, and then become the famous film-maker or the rock star.

I now realize that the frequency of these cut-backs, are starting to increase exponentially since I started working. Not only do I spend less time thinking about my college-boy ambitions, I spend even lesser time doing anything towards fulfilling them. This progression seems to finally lead to the death of all ambition.

Maybe it’s time for Plan B – which being the commencement of work on the next Booker winning novel. (The very act of making that plan gives me the high already. I wonder when this too shall pass.)

Voices - Futurama, Family Guy and The Simpsons

Billy West from Futurama

Seth MacFarlane, Alex Borstein, Mila Kunis and Mike Henry from Family Guy

Dan Castellaneta from The Simpsons

The Idea of a Home

Jhumpa Lahiri has a new book out. I bought it a few days back, and have been reading it as and when I can find the time. It’s a lovely book - elegantly written, as is her forte, and beautifully layered. I was a little taken aback however, by some of the criticism that she has been getting for her work. The biggest of which being that she is covering the same ground she covered in her previous books.

I feel she has never repeated herself. The only common things in her novels are the immigrant woes of first, second and third generation Bengali immigrants. By stating that she is covering the same ground because of this is, for the lack of a better word, retarded. Would you criticize Garcia Marquez for using magic realism in all his work? Or Bukowski for being nihilistic?

Michiko Kakutani’s review for Lahiri’s Unaccustomed Earth in the New York Times begins -

“Jhumpa Lahiri’s characters tend to be immigrants from India and their American-reared children, exiles who straddle two countries, two cultures, and belong to neither: too used to freedom to accept the rituals and conventions of home, and yet too steeped in tradition to embrace American mores fully.”

She goes on to say -

“Ms. Lahiri writes about these people in “Unaccustomed Earth” with an intimate knowledge of their conflicted hearts, using her lapidary eye for detail to conjure their daily lives with extraordinary precision”

And as far as I’ve read the book, I concur with her views. A writer, no matter how great he/she is can only really write from experience. Stories are borne from their lives, from the lives of others around them. (There are exceptions of course - Kafka’s Amerika comes to mind.)

To paraphrase Rushdie, can you imagine Hemmingway without America, Balzac without France, Dostoevsky without Russia, Neruda without Chile? Then how can you criticize an Indian immigrant author of writing about Indian immigrants?

And really, what is fiction after all? What is it’s relevance in the world today? Isn’t fiction a means of creating a personal point of view about things, that until the book came out, were in most cases trivial to others? Isn’t it about finding the extraordinary for others in the ordinary of the self? So when it comes down to looking at the merits of a novel, or a collection of short stories in this case, the subject matter or the familiarity with characters should only be a footnote, not a criteria. Shouldn’t the quality of prose, the techniques, the devices be of more importance?

We all have an idea of a home. For some of us, home is a constantly unfolding narrative, without a singular location. This idea is what keeps us going, a home we had, or a home we hope to build. I know I have digressed quite a bit, but to criticize an author’s idea of a home seemed a bit like a cheap publicity stunt to me.