Friday, September 9, 2016

Enduring criticality

This is not a made up story. It is not a historic account either. For whatever happened that night threatened to leave no witness. Many say it is just a myth, a legend made up by the very old lady who stays near the crematory.
But then again without smoke there is no fire either.

It was an extremely turbulent night with intense thunderstorms. The crew members had already warned everyone to put on their life vests in case of emergency.

The lightnings around in the clouds were literally breaking the air, and we're at the brink of breaking the very space itself. It was very very difficult to know where the boundaries of the earth, the ocean and the clouds lay.

For the little girl it was like magic, it was like all she had heard from her father about atoms and the enormous power that holds them together with each other as well as with themselves, was coming to life in front of her.

Her dad had lost his prestigious job due to his theories and beliefs which to the rest of the community seemed not only heretical but also strangely apocalyptic at the time. The accident at South Pole during his experiment came to be responsible for his being ostracized by the entire research community as nobody could believe it wasn't foul play, in fact quite contrary!!

She was too young to know about all that. All she saw was enormous and deafening lightnings. But she couldn't keep watching as the air pressure dropped and fluctuations became huge. When she woke up, none of the people who came with her  were anywhere to be seen.

She could not even be sure where she was or how she got there. All she could see was these people running around with gadgets in their hands, happily!

She could never ever be sure that she actually made it through that amazing night when the elements played their most resonant symphonies. She could never understand what happened to the world she knew that night. She could not believe all this wasn't a dream, a nightmare.

Except when she slept at night. The storm had taken a toll on her. It had devoured the crew and remaining passengers. Her wonder somehow had saved her life!

 She cried every time there was a thunderstorm hoping it would be strong enough, for thirty years. Her father's insights about quantum fluctuations and wormholes were not heresy after all!

A couple of years ago, she had stopped crying and become content. Nobody knew why.

The conversation between Prof. Ozabi and Prof. Miller and their pace on the trail were both broken by the shriek of one of the boys-calling the old lady out for trick or treat.

 Prof. Ozabi smiled and told his colleague-little does the boy know that the old lady's deafness owes to her obsession with being in the middle of thunderstorms and that nobody knew where she came from one fine night thirty two years ago.