Everything around him went foggy and when he shut tight his eyelids, water fell off like a juicy lemon being squeezed. Gah, fuck no, it’s happening, he thought and looked around the metro, and saw someone deep into their phone. Perhaps looking at old photos, old memories. Verma’s Emotion Prevention Mod came with an evil side effect — it pulled sad memories and emotions from people nearby. He had installed the mod to suppress his memories, memories that would be tagged tragic by the built-in AI engine. But all the mods sold these days came with serious defects. The markets were full of them, and they nauseated him like the smell from a rotten mango. However, they still sold like hot cakes because it was so much cheaper than getting a therapist.
I need to get off at the next station, he thought, even though he was two stations away from his destination, Chowk. He would now need to get off at Katra and he hated Katra. It was always crowded, unpredictable, and felt like people were out to hunt others and pinch a buck from wherever possible. It was just too much hustle all the time. The spirit of Katra was a notorious god always looking to transform people. The most cool-headed person could walk there and come out feeling drastically different. It was like a car wash for the soul but not in a good way. In the past, in its markets you could buy all kinds of foods, cookware, clothes, electronics, and home furnishings. Now it was a dumping ground for dysfunctional mods from around the world.
He had gotten his mod installed from a corner store in Katra-the worst buy of his life. A 60% off on a Diwali sale. Perhaps better than medication which could kill you overnight. According to the packaging it released proprietary waves to suppress the grief. Maybe it did, nobody really knew these things. Only one week in he had realized that not only was it weak at suppressing his grief, but it also acted like a receiver and sucked in grief transmissions from other nearby faulty mods. Now, he needed to run away whenever triggered by someone else’s grief, putting the barrier of distance between himself and the contagious sadness. Katra was a whole civilization of these faulty mods communicating with each other in a way much better than humans. He was getting exhausted just thinking how there would be a mod getting a hard-on somewhere in the market.
Removing the mod was not something he could trust doctors in the city with. Like the mod sellers, they were mostly hustlers but that was not the reason for his distrust. He blamed them for the death of his mother. In three months, it would be half a decade since her passing; dead because of incompetence of the doctors who could not identify a treatable infection in time, dead because of this morbid city where everyone just wanted to benefit off other people.
He got down at the Katra station, next train was in 25 mins, but it could take longer. Metro trains were always getting delayed during rush hour. He had never understood why there was a rush hour in Allahabad. It was a city of old retired people so where were all of them traveling to all the time?
The Katra market’s architecture hadn’t changed in decades. All shops built tall and slim like the Flatiron building-everything stacked on top of each other over shelves and you had to ask the shop keeper for any item you wanted and then they would pull it down for you. The things sold in the shops had changed certainly-from a bazaar of pots and pans to a mandi of defective mods.
He stepped into the market, expecting the mods in the market to open a line of communication with his mod anytime and for foreign grief to wash over him like an annoying neighbor emptying a bucketful of color in Holi.
Fifteen shops in and he still didn’t feel anything, so he started looking around for the sucker of the day who was absorbing all the shit in the market today-and yes, there was a woman possibly sucking every manner of emotion in the market with a dozen mods, not counting anything hidden by the clothes.
Her face had a painful expression as if her fingers tips were being needled. She was also wearing what looked like smart glasses or perhaps some mod for the eyes. He decided to stay away from this emotional blackhole. She was doing him a great favor.
They made eye contact and he realized she wasn’t in pain; her eyes were the eyes of a junkie loaded up on a cocktail of emotions. She was high on alien grief.
She sickened him. He waved a rickshaw puller to take him off this place. As if as a counter reaction, she waved in his direction.
“Hello. Can we talk for just a couple of minutes?” She asked him.
He got down of the rickshaw and asked him to wait.
“Yes?” he said.
“I am Maya, a journalist for modIndia. Not sure if you have heard of it.” She paused for a second but immediately continued as that question hung in the air like smell from a Gobhi paratha, “We are doing a feature on the failed mods and how they have impacted the victim’s life. Are you willing to talk to me regarding your experience, Sir?” she said.
“What experience?” he said, now that he was better able to understand what this was.
“These are all modscopes” She said as she looked at herself and her mods, “They can analyze defective mods.”
He was still looking puzzled, so she continued. “…And yours is off the charts bad, so I thought we can talk?”
Did he want to talk though? In the middle of the bazaar, deep in anxiety he didn’t even want to hear his own thoughts.
“I don’t know, I have to be somewhere, sorry. You can give me a contact and I can connect later.” He said.
“You will never get anywhere with that baggage.” She said as she moved away.
“What baggage,” he asked.
She didn’t reply and hailed a rickshaw.
“I apologize but as you can see, I am rather skeptical of this place. Can we talk somewhere else?” he said realizing that this conversation was not as useless as he had initially thought it would be.
She nodded and signaled him to get on her rickshaw. Verma’s rickshaw puller threw a bhenchod in their general direction which bounced off Verma’s shoulder and Maya’s rickshaw puller negotiated a new rate for the added bulk of Verma’s.
“So, can you get me a new one?” he asked as they were being pulled out from that Katra.
“I am a journalist!” She looked incredulously with a face that was already regretting all decisions that led her to this encounter.
“My name is Verma. I am sorry, I don’t know why I asked you that perhaps because of the fuckery of this market. I don’t know what you want to know-I can talk about which shop gave me this piece and how it fucked my life.” He waited for her to look at him and tell him what was it that she wanted him to talk about and how that was going to benefit him. She continued to look straight ahead over the shiny sweaty shoulder of the rickshaw puller. The sweat drops were reflecting a sun star in a lame effort to blind the passengers.
“Well, Verma ji, I am doing an article on this particular mod. I have heard stories like yours who have had terrible experiences with this model.”
He chuckled.
“You know what, I bought this mod after reading a review in your magazine.” He said.
The rickshaw puller had got down from his seat and started to drag the rickshaw through a minor hill. The beads of perspiration creating a trail of his path on the road.
She tweaked something on one of her mods.
“Review units are typically in better condition. For obvious reasons.” Why did she hail him down if she was this much uninterested in him?
“Hmm perhaps.”
“Have you tried to sell your grief-there is a huge market for that.” She said, probably referring to the black market where you could sell your feelings to be consumed by western artists, writers, and rich people in general looking for varied experiences. He had initially thought she was one of them. Perhaps she was.
“Is that what you referred to as baggage back there?”
“Well, you seem to have a lot of it. My mod-scope started screaming its lungs out when it noticed you. You have a lot of pain, and you are applying a band aid on an amputation.”
The rickshaw was moving towards civil lines.
He wanted to ask her if she had anything else to ask him or tell him. “Why did you stop me?” he asked.
“When I hailed you down, I was just doing it for my story but the readings from my modscope made me think some more. I still don’t know if I should do this.” She said as she fumbled about in her bag. She was herself trying to think of the reason why she had hailed him down. Perhaps it was not him. Perhaps it was his mod which had made her do this.
“What’s this?”
“It’s a pre-paid mod with 15 days of validity left. You can get it installed anywhere or yourself too, simple DIY videos available online.” She said.
“What does it do?” he asked.
“Gives you death. You can dial in the number of hours you need to be dead in the companion app. You know …like a trial. You can use it to see if that’s what you would end up liking. Maximum dead time is dependent on the days of subscription left. Since only 15 days are left, you can do 15 days retreat.” She said.
“Really?” he wasn’t even aware there was such a thing.
“Yes, and it’s a genuine part with warranty and shit, not Katra made. I have personally used it.”
“And..?”
“And what?”
“What was the experience?”
“Everyone gets a difference experience. Our lives are different so will be our deaths.” She said.
He palmed the mod. She got off at civil lines. The rickshaw puller refused to go to Chowk. He paid their fare and saw her disappear in the crowd. He moved towards a rickshaw stand to hail a new one. The summer heat was on full blast. He felt like he could melt any minute now. He still needed to get to Chowk though he couldn’t remember why he wanted to go there. Was there any need to really do anything or be anywhere? Perhaps he should go back to Katra. He remembered reading about a mod that could extend subscriptions of other mods by an illegal hack. Yes, he will get back to Katra.
Originally published at http://freakverse.wordpress.com on July 12, 2021.
