Breakout

The dorm of sleeping children is dark and silent. In all my years here, I’ve never managed to get over its eerie resemblance to a morgue. As I walk down the aisle, past the neat rows of sleeping pods, there is no sound or movement, no sheets being gathered to chins, no bodies turning and settling into more comfortable positions, no arms flung carelessly over pillows. The supine forms lie on their backs, straight and unmoving, entombed in their beds, plugged into their respective modules. In pod after pod, I see brows furrowed in concentration even as the child sleeps.

Five-year-old Kalpana’s bed is at the end of the dorm. The status panel of her GYAAN™ module casts a dull glow on her sleeping face. Session Stats: 8% complete. 6hrs, 23mins remaining. I reach over and plug a tiny drive into a port behind the panel. Nothing perceptible changes on the panel. But within a few minutes, the frown of concentration is gone from Kalpana’s brow.

*

The parents sit across the table from Ms Pi and me. A holo hovers over the table between us.

‘As you can see from her latest Math evaluation, Kalpana is still struggling with basic algebra,’ Ms Pi says, her tone devoid of inflection, ‘while the rest of her cohort is well into Advanced Calculus.’

The parents have said very little so far. It is always the same. The most garrulous and emotive people reign in their impulses and restrict their body language in school meetings. It has nothing to do with how their kids are faring; it is simply human nature to mimic the manner of one’s interlocutors. Faced with Ms Pi and her ilk, in a matter of minutes, parents subconsciously begin to trim their speech, restrain their hand movements, become stiller in their seats.

‘And here is her artwork,’ Ms Pi continues, bringing up Kalpana’s sheet and a sampling of her classmates’ work for comparison.

A series of pencil sketches of flowers. Most are incredibly detailed, with each petal, sepal, stamen, and pistil carefully reproduced, even the leaves in the background traced down to the last vein. Kalpana’s drawing, in contrast, is … well, childish. It stands out in another way, too – it is the only one that is coloured. Bright yellow and cheerful against the stark, meticulous black and white of the others.

The mother attempts a weak laugh. ‘This isn’t so bad, is it? At her age, I could barely draw stick figures.’

Ms Pi takes a micro-second to digest this non-sequitur (for that’s how she would process the remark). ‘The activity is designed to improve the students’ observation skills,’ she intones impassively. ‘Detailing is what we encourage, not decoration.’

The mother retreats into silence.

‘And this…’ Ms Pi flicks her finger again, ‘is Kalpana’s overall progress graph.’

The mother’s shoulders slump visibly. There is no denying it – the tiny red crosses that mark Kalpana’s academic progress are like incriminating little footprints veering well off the path of the stipulated learning curve.

I want to put my arm around the mother’s shoulders and swipe away all these stupid holos. I want to tell Ms Pi to shut up.

They told our great-grandparents computers would make their lives easy by taking over all the drudgery. Instead, they found themselves slaves to their devices. They told our grandparents machines wouldn’t steal their jobs. Look how that turned out. They told our parents AI couldn’t possibly rule over us. And now, here’s an android telling two humans that their child does not match up to its expectations.

I stay silent as Ms Pi delivers her judgment: ‘I’m afraid there is no doubt left that she’s an ‘incompatible’.’

‘But how?!’ the father exclaims, finally allowing his emotion to break through. ‘We did everything by the book. We parted with our daughter when she was barely a week old! We sold our home to pay the fees! We … we gave up everything to get her into AbhimanYU!’

I look away. It’s hard to witness the shattering of someone’s dreams.

*

Abhiman Youth University. The school’s logo shows a child standing tall, her head held high with pride. Thanks to its patented accelerated learning program, GYAAN™, which compresses several lifetimes’ worth of specialised education into less than two decades of a child’s life, AbhimanYU is the most sought-after school chain in the world. Of course, it is only a growing brain that can learn to adapt to the pressures of accelerated learning; an older brain would likely collapse into instability. So, it is a rat race against time itself. Those who can afford it opt for ultrasonic teaching that begins in artificial-gestation incubators, giving their unborn foetuses a head-start before they even enter the world. Others scramble to get their newborns admitted as early as they can afford.

However, not all minds are made for the rigors of accelerated learning.

*

Ms Pi finally manages to dredge up a programmed smile. ‘Please do not worry, Mr Kumar. AbhimanYU leaves no student behind. Kalpana has been transferred to our remedial program.’ She gestures towards me. ‘Ms Maya here will tell you all about it.’

She excuses herself and leaves me to handle the distraught parents.

‘Mr and Mrs Kumar, I am Maya. I handle the remedial program at AbhimanYU.’

The parents give me the once-over. I can practically hear the mother think, ‘At least, she’s human.’

I launch into my practised spiel, ‘In the remedial program, we—’

‘But without accelerated learning, how will Kalpana find employment at Chakravyuh Corp.?’ the father interrupts, his tone desperate.

Ah, he’s come right to the point.

The main reason why people go to such lengths to get their children into AbhimanYU? Guaranteed placement at Chakravyuh Corp.

*

Chakravyuh Corp. sits at the centre of its own universe – a large black hole that grows by swallowing everything in its path. A swirling mass of subsidiaries, shell companies, and holdings, all in a state of constant flux, shifting and changing like the gears of some colossal, incomprehensible, mechanical monstrosity. A labyrinthine spider’s web whose inner workings are opaque to all but those who sit at its very centre, protected and satiated – an elite few, the uber-rich of the world. Yes, Chakravyuh is all that – black hole, web, maze – all in the garb of a modern corporate. What began as a mere tech start-up now rules the world in a global monopoly that dominates literally every aspect of life.

‘Come, be a part of the Chakravyuh Family,’ proclaim the massive holos orbiting its recruitment stations.

But not many on the outside know what happens once you enter Chakravyuh. You are drawn in, with perks and bonuses and other enticements, deeper and deeper into the labyrinth, and even as you congratulate yourself on your illusory success in getting closer to the power centre, you fail to realise that with every step forward, the labyrinth is closing behind you, blocking off all means of exit. If you ever want to turn back, leave, it is too late. Surveillance systems and predictive analytics stand guard in every corner, monitoring, recording, and policing every thought and action, ostensibly protecting employees from themselves. The recruitment holos are right: anyone who enters does indeed become a part of the Chakravyuh, one more cog in its gigantic workings, owned body and soul by an organisation that expects total loyalty of deed, word and thought. Once you enter Chakravyuh, you can never break out.

But to the struggling masses, for whom the world has become a daily battlefield where life is cheap and survival expensive, even the prospect of being a tiny cog in this monstrous juggernaut offers the illusion of stability, and so Chakravyuh’s recruitment stations are swamped by thronging crowds of desperate hopefuls. However, with AI making such deep inroads into what were once purely human capabilities, it is harder and harder for real humans to get in – to qualify for a job at Chakravyuh, one must be no less than exceptional. That’s where Chakravyuh’s education subsidiary, Abhiman Youth University, conveniently steps in, churning out graduates who are trained to think and operate much like machines.

*

‘As you know, AbhimanYU guarantees employment at Chakravyuh Corp for all its students, even ‘incompatibles’,’ I tell the father with a tight smile.

In what capacity, though? Well, that’s in the fine print.

Funny how the uber-rich never seem to use the AI care-bots they sell to the rest of the world. No, they want their own personal staff to be human. The ones who sold the world’s soul to machines ironically crave the ‘human touch’ for themselves.

In other words, ‘remedial program’ is just a fancy way of saying that Kalpana will be taken off the accelerated learning program to be groomed to serve as a domestic helper to the elite at the power centre of Chakravyuh Corp.

‘Please. Can’t you just … I don’t know … fix whatever’s wrong with her?’ the mother pleads.

‘Mrs Kumar, there’s nothing wrong with your daughter,’ I tell her. ‘She is an exceptionally bright and creative child.’

‘Then why has she failed at accelerated learning?’ the father demands.

That was the exact question that used to baffle me in the early days when I was first hired to oversee the remedial program for those who failed at accelerated learning . Why were certain children, despite being perceptive and intelligent, sometimes even more so than their peers, ‘incompatible’ when it came to accelerated learning?

Then, one day, I came across a child who was being monitored for perceived ‘incompatibility’ sitting by herself at lunch, bent over a sketchpad. I peered over her shoulder to see what she was doing. On the sheet was a beautiful but surreal world: a world of purple trees and strange multi-coloured birds and houses whose shapes were unrestricted by geometry but seemed to have a fluidity of their own.

She looked up at me anxiously, worried she had done something wrong yet again. I smiled at her, then on an impulse, reached out and gave her a hug.

‘It’s beautiful,’ I told her.

She relaxed and her face lit up in a broad smile. ‘I saw it in a dream,’ she said.

A dream? I was stunned. The students of AbhimanYU couldn’t dream. The GYAAN™ module downloads happened at night which short-circuited the brain’s natural patterns of sleep and dreaming.

I stared at the picture in my hand. And for the first time, a thought struck me. What if ‘incompatibility’ was not a sign of an overwhelmed brain, a weaker mind, at all? What if it was actually the result of a mind that was pushing back, wilfully rejecting something that was being thrust upon it? A mind that refused to be shaped by a cookie-cutter mould, and clung instead to its own individuality?

Right on the heels of that fascinating idea, came a frightening thought: but for how long? How long could a mind, however strong, resist the sheer, inexorable force of the ‘education’ being forced upon it?

That was the first time that I slipped into the children’s dorm in the middle of the night.

Of course, I can’t tell the parents any of this, so I dodge the question. ‘I assure you, Mr Kumar, my students are all very well-placed within Chakravyuh.’

*

Indeed, they are. Ironically, while the other students of AbhimanYU have to slog their way into the corporate labyrinth, it’s the ‘incompatibles’ who get direct entry into the innermost circles of Chakravyuh. As maids, servers, masseurs, chefs, nannies, and nurses, they walk in and out of boardrooms and bedrooms alike without raising an eyebrow. They blend into the backgrounds of the most important of meetings and have eyes and ears on everything that goes on within Chakravyuh, personal or professional.

And, over the past years, the impenetrable labyrinth has slowly begun to reveal its inner workings … and its vulnerabilities.

*

‘Well-placed, you say? And how is that? What exactly will Kalpana be taught in the remedial program?’ demands the father.

‘Oh, I inculcate in my wards values of empathy, patience, mindfulness, compassion, warmth and care…’

Of course, I also mix in a little something of my own, something that’s out-of-syllabus and strictly off-record.

Nobody at AbhimanYU cares much about monitoring the training of the ‘incompatibles’ once they drop out of accelerated learning. And so, no one has an inkling that it’s not the weakest but the very best minds to enter AbhimanYU that are carefully identified year-on-year by my secret algorithms and gradually weaned off the nightly indoctrination by the GYAAN™ modules, causing them to start deviating from AbhimanYU’s stringent learning curves and be flagged as ‘incompatible’.

Thereupon, they enter the safety of the remedial program, where they can truly come into their own. True to my name, I cast an illusion of ‘remedy’ behind which a child like Kalpana can live up to her name and let her imagination roam free. For it is only in a fresh, free-ranging mind that the spark of genius stands a chance of survival, a place where it will neither be extinguished by the cold flow of calculated thought nor crushed underfoot by the marching boots of focused activity. In the remedial program, I do my best to cup my hands around each such spark that can lead us into an alternate worldview, a fresh perspective, an untrodden landscape, a broad new vista where the bots, trained to walk the ever-narrowing paths of specialisation and super-specialisation and super-super-specialisation, cannot hope to follow.

Meanwhile, even as we lay the foundations for a new world order, with each passing day we quietly undermine the current one. Our malware digs deep into Chakravyuh’s system software and nestles in the gaps between the bits and bytes of legacy code. Our encrypted messages weave unnoticed through Chakravyuh’s communication system, always staying one step ahead of the security and surveillance systems. Our sleeper cells of code, our guerrilla teams of algorithms, our sniper viruses … all lie in wait for the right moment.

They say Chakravyuh is indestructible. But slowly, the pieces are falling into place, that will one day rip it wide open. AbhimanYU’s accelerated learning might be the way into Chakravyuh, but my ‘incompatibles’ will lead the world out of its clutches and into a future where we reclaim our humanity.

*

‘Empathy, mindfulness, compassion … what value do these things have in today’s world?’ the mother says, with a dismal shake of her head.

Officially, these are skills that equip the ‘incompatibles’ to care for the elite. But aren’t they the very thing needed to care for the world itself?

Today, they may be mere ‘skills’ of little value, but in the world that is to come, such rare human qualities will be our greatest asset, our most valued resource.

I smile at the parents. ‘Don’t worry, Mr and Mrs Kumar. Kalpana has a bright future ahead of her.’