KARMA TWEAK

He had begun his hunt in the early morning light, hoping to bag at least one of these creatures before they slithered back from their nightly sojourns into their shadowy underworld of rocks and rat-holes, fleeing the heat of the day.

An hour had gone by, before he heard a rustling sound behind a lantana bush. It suggested the presence of either a snake or its prey, a field rat, or maybe both of them together. He fell into a crouch and moved forward cautiously.

The rustling sound increased in its intensity and he concluded that it was being created by a rat in its death throes. This was a good omen; because the noise masked any made by his own approach and drew the snake’s attention away from him.

A few feet short of his objective, he gently parted the branches of the bush, to reveal not a dance of death, but a dance of love, instead.

The two black cobras were full-grown specimens, each about six feet long. Their bodies were entwined together in a single, shiny braid and the passion of their lovemaking caused them to appear as a single creature thrashing around in furious abandonment. The two tails resembled the prongs of a wildly vibrating tuning fork attempting to fuse together, while, in contrast both heads battled with each other, striking and striving to stay apart.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

The newspapers had dubbed him the ‘Dancing policeman of Madras’.

His stage consisted of a raised rotunda, roughly five feet in diameter, with a conical red roof to shield him from the sun during the day and a circular ring of tube-lights inside to provide illumination at night. This rotunda, located at an intersection along Hamilton Road, was an antiquated relic that had not yet succumbed to an automatic traffic light. Though Hamilton Road was heavily used, the minor road intersecting it at this point was relatively quieter. Most of the policeman’s duties involved traffic control, providing right-of-way to vehicles turning into this secondary road.

His dance specialty was the classical South Indian ‘Kathakali’.

As with many Indian dances, this dance-drama from the state of Kerala, relies on out-flung arm and leg movements, combined with expressive eye gestures. It is normally used to pantomime mythological Indian dramas, and is consequently well suited to convey a variety of human emotions and actions.

The policeman had fine-tuned this art form to carry out his traffic duties.

Motorists loved it! Some of them watched him in such rapt fascination that they forgot the main purpose behind his gestures. Angry honks from motorists behind them, who more than likely wanted to watch the performance themselves, would goad them onwards.

When his behavior was brought to the attention of his superiors, they discussed it among themselves, and decided to bend the rules - they turned a blind eye to his eccentricity.

After all, it was great publicity for the city traffic section.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

"Am I to assume that all the material stored in this electronic memory will stay indefinitely, and that I’ll clearly remember all that I’ve done in the recent past?" Joseph’s voice sounded tremulous.

Eugene nodded his head. "Yes. The training mode has taken care of everything you’ve done these two months, and you will have no trouble in carrying out all your routine day-to-day activities, from now on."

Then he continued speaking, "But, here comes the best part - the training process is not completely over yet. What I’m going to do next, is the coup-de-grace. The tests I conducted so far were independent of your natural brain - I was just checking out the neuro-fuzzy controller circuitry."

He typed in a series of instructions, and with his forefinger poised over the ‘Enter’ key, he addressed his captive audience.

"When I hit this key, the micro-controller gets connected in parallel with your brain. In a way, you could say that I’m the minister who is about to conduct the marriage ceremony between your natural brain and the man-made computer. The two will then bond together, share their duties and co-operate closely. Are you ready?"

Joseph swallowed nervously. "Should I expect some reaction inside my skull?’

The engineer smiled. "No. You will not feel anything different. But, I will be able to examine the changes which have occurred inside your head through my PC here," he stated, patting the monitor on his desk.

He once again waited for Joseph’s answer.

"Okay. Go for it," signaled Joseph.

The engineer depressed the key. As he had predicted, nothing dramatic happened.