99 Palms: Horn OK Please (16 page)

“Wait! Stop! Don’t throw any more pebbles!” yelled Derek, extending his arms trying to make sure we obeyed.

“What’s wrong, bitch? Scared you’ll lose?” said Goose, laughing as he threw one pebble at Derek’s boat.

“I said stop, you moron! Look at the boats! They’re all being sucked toward that votive stupa, the second last one from the extreme corner!” said Derek, pointing to the Stupa at the farthest end which was most difficult to reach among the closely lined Stupas.

“Oh man! That’s right! It’s like all the water’s being drained inside that single Stupa! Dude, This is it, we’ve found the underground tunnel. It’s right there under that votive Stupa. It’s draining out all the water!” said Hound as we all jumped over the railing and into the just-made-pond.

Derek was right, all the rain water was being sucked in right under the small votive stupa. There definitely was an opening somewhere. We groped around that small votive Stupa for over an hour. Every brick was felt and every corner was pushed and pulled. It was pouring real hard but we didn’t care. The votive Stupa seemed to be guzzling in water as though an endless pit lay underneath that.

After an hour, finally giving up as my fingers started to ache, I stared at the Dhamek Stupa and cursed under my breath. The
Swastika
symbols on the massive cylinder only stared back at me, mocking me. The symbols that were once a part of our nightmare that Lind couldn’t offer an explanation for. The top of the Stupa looked so unfinished from where we were, as we helplessly watched all the water being sucked in underground. Our frustration and helplessness reached a new low then.

“Chuck it, Hound. At least we know that there is an underground passage right here. Let’s go back to the resort before we fall ill” I tried to pacify Hound.

It was close to 5:00 PM and the guards would start chasing us out. They had turned sympathetic towards us for they had seen us exploring the Dhamek site like no tourist had ever explored before. They were cool with us. We had crossed a few palms with silver and now we could walk in anytime of day or night.

“No wonder Monica’s Great-grandpa used dynamite. I feel the ol’ bandicoot’s frustration” said Goose navigating skillfully among the potholes that people called a road.

“Dynamite wasn’t invented then. He used gun powder. Anyways, we’re not vandals, we’re bounty hunters”, quipped Hound staring at the road.

No one spoke as we headed back to the resort. We were pissed to the core.

***
 

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

***

Roses are red and violets are blue,

Sometimes, the things that we see don’t really seem true;

There may be more than what the eye can see,

The Nine Unknown have mastered the science of chirality;

Perceptions are limited by what we see, hear, touch or smell,

Maybe, there a different world out there, you just can’t tell;

Invisibility is not magic, it’s an application of pure science,

We would get to know soon, we would discover the Ley lines;

Voodoo & dark arts are rooted in superstition,

Actually, with hyper-science, one could become an apparition;

Barriers of the mind are not known to people like you & I,

We could be invisible, not seen through the naked eye;

Secret doorways & entrances to Shambala are everywhere,

The Nine Unknown have built them, you’d find ‘em anywhere;

An out-of-the-box approach to things helps at times,

Cracks could appear in reality when your cuckoo clock chimes;

Change your glasses, let your mind roam a place really old,

There could be dark secrets you unlock, Lo! Behold!

If smiles and Imagination makes you say ‘Cheese’

Drive on, as that is the philosophy behind Horn OK Please…

***

The Swastika symbol and Chirality:

We reached the resort and were greeted cheerfully by Lind. It felt good. After a while, having had a bath and changing into dry clothes, we looked human again. Making ourselves comfortable and having ordered a few drinks, I filled Lind in with the afternoon’s turn of events.

She seemed to look yonder, seemed distant and then she spoke with purpose, “Would you believe if I told you that you are unable to find the secret entrance to the underground passage for it is invisible? It’s an application chirality by the Nine Unknown!”

“What have you been smoking, love? You seem delirious!” I asked Lind, as I took her glass of wine away from her.

“No, Chief. This is exactly what I have been researching on for the past few months. I feel extremely stupid that I just didn’t think of it before! It’s chirality!” said Lind, her eyes wide.

“Think about what? What the hell is chirality anyways, woman? Can you not speak English like the rest of us or is it too difficult for your over-educated ass?” said Hound, unable to hold back his frustration.

“I’m sorry, Hound. Let me explain. It is one of the sciences that the Nine Unknown wrote books upon. Playing around with the properties of light. For example, look at the
Swastika
. It has many special features. Entirely made up of vertical and horizontal straight lines in a square, it has the ability to provide the visual feeling of rotating anti-clockwise when it’s actually spinning clockwise. It has the property to twist and bend light. That’s chirality!” said Lind as she took her glass of wine back from me.

“So, Swastikas can twist light? This is called bending of light? Big deal. So what if we keep seeing the symbol in our dream. Tell us more, Lind”, said Goose as he fished out a pen and drew a Swastika on his napkin and stared at it.

“
Swastikas
have the ability to twist and bend light, make things invisible. We’ve just made a very small breakthrough in this field, the research paper of mine I was telling you about this morning? It’s all about using meta-materials to bend light and make things invisible. Not a field modern man knows much about, Goose”, said Lind as she looked around the table, hoping for a reaction.

Chiral
Swastikas
! Was this woman crazy?

An Invisible entrance:

“To become invisible, an object must do two things: it has to be able to bend light around itself, so that it casts no shadow, and it must produce no reflection. While naturally occurring materials are unable to do this, a new class of materials called meta-materials is now making it possible.

Bending light around an object requires a material to have a negative refractive index. That’s all!” said Lind, shrugging her shoulders.

“Plain English please? What’s a Meta-material and what’s refractive index?” I asked, taking a sip from my glass.

“Chief, refractive index is a property that dictates how light passes through a medium; it's the reason why your stirrer will look bent when dipped into your Bacardi. If your rum had a negative refractive index, it would make the stirrer look as though it were bending back on itself!” said Lind, towing with the stirrer inside my glass.

As Derek, Goose and Hound stared in disgust at my glass, I suddenly lost the urge to drink from it. It seemed to be teeming with all kinds of shit that Lind just spoke about.

“Imagine a non-metallic cloak that I were to wrap you in and you would turn invisible. The cloak would have to be made of a very special material that needs to have a negative refractive index and has the ability to bend light. That special material is called meta-material in science. OK?” said Lind as she looked around to see the nodding of heads.

“Now, imagine if we were to have the knowledge to create a door out of this meta-material that would be invisible to the naked eye, would you ever be able to find it? And just to make sure that only members of a secret society were to know of these secret entrances and they were to build mega structures all over the world and mark them with
Swastikas
to symbolize the presence of such secret entrances only to those few?” said Lind, pointing at my glass again as I wondered why she couldn’t point at someone else’s glass instead.

“Wow! So what you’re saying is that the secret entrance we are looking for could be an invisible one, invisible to the naked eye and the Swastikas on the Dhamek Stupa seems is just a marking for members of the Nine Unknown to know that there’s such an entrance around the place?” I asked, as I tried to make sense of what she was talking about. It did seem like a possible explanation.

“That’s exactly my point, Chief. That’s the power of this dangerous science. These meta-materials are artificial materials that do not exist in nature. They can scientifically be designed in a way to bend light waves around themselves, thereby rendering themselves invisible to the naked eye. Since they possess a negative refractive index, they can bend electromagnetic waves – such as light, around them and be invisible” Lind tried to explain.

“I dare say that not only the secret entrance to the underground passage at the Dhamek Stupa is invisible. More so, the underwater Stupa itself is an invisible votive Stupa of many doors, built with some strange bricks of such meta-material which is not in the grasp of our scientific knowledge today!” said Lind, looking at her empty glass for a change. Maybe, the wine had turned invisible.

We stared at her in utter disbelief for right now, only that seemed to be a plausible explanation at the Dhamek Stupa.

“Tell me, would an invisible object be solid? I mean I distinctly remember touching the top of the votive Stupa today and felt nothing”, said Goose, trying to understand the whole concept as I saw invisible steam come out his ears. His brain was definitely cooking.

“Goose, please understand that meta-materials are just artificial materials engineered to have properties not in nature. They gain properties from structure, not composition. So when such a meta-material would create chiral elements, it would still be a tangible, solid chiral meta-material. So you would have felt it had it been at the top. It’s not there. Now, do you know that one such expert in this field was Jagadish Chandra Bose? In 1898, he is said to have constructed chiral
Swastikas?
Way ahead in time, it is whispered that he was a member of the Nine Unknown on earth!” smiled Lind, seemingly pleased with herself.

Acoustic cloaking, the mystery of the hidden temple:

“Wow! That’s interesting. But tell me, you said that the underwater Stupa is also made of this meta-material that makes it invisible. Wouldn’t it be discoverable by sonar?” said Hound, pointing at the stirrer in my glass. Again. Why me?

“Excellent question, Hound! There is also a concept of meta-material acoustic cloaks. Imagine covering an entire submerged Stupa underwater that bends and twists sound waves by intentional design? I have done it myself in a lab when I submerged a small cylinder inside a tank and have made it invisible between sound wavelengths from 40 to 80 kHz. Advance this science to the levels of the Nine Unknown, would we ever be able to discover it? Remember, we are dealing with men of pure science here!” said Lind as she dipped a slice of lemon inside my drink. I stared at it. I wish I could cloak it and make it invisible from these jokers.

Echolocation, Using Sound to discover the Secret Door:

“So all these wise-asses from the secret society on earth, how do they find these secret entrances? If one of these secret agents were to come to Dhamek Stupa and find out the secret entrance to take a ride to Shambala and back on a spinning donut made of chiral meta-material?” said Derek, staring at his bruised fingers and broken nails from morning.

“Crudely put but very well said, Derek! I would suspect that they would use a device, an instrument that would create sound waves of a particular frequency that would ring through the air. This process is called echolocation. This is exactly how bats use sound waves to locate objects that are invisible or at a distance. Animals use echolocation for finding food, orientation and interactions. Similarly, a device that would emanate sounds at a particular frequency would make the secret gate visible!” said Lind, visibly pleased with Derek.

“Sweet God! The dream! Our dream!” exclaimed Derek, standing up, spilling my drink all over the table till it turned invisible.

“What’s the problem, you fool? You just made me spill my magical drink!” I said, trying to wipe my trousers with the napkin.

“The mystery of the
Swastika
symbols is solved, thanks to Lind. We know the secret underground passage exists and the symbol proves the presence of the secret entrance. What are the objects unsolved from our dream still, eh?” said Derek, grinning from ear to ear as he lit up a cigarette.

“The English alphabet ‘R’, the potato and the Tibetan Singing Bowl?” I asked, getting up as the rum was seeping into my underwear, right down to the epicenter of the universe of my existence.

“Dude. Ditch the English alphabet ‘R’, we’ll figure that out. Between a potato and a Tibetan singing bowl, what would help create sounds?” said Derek, puffing away, showing off.

“Put the potato in the bowl and roll the wooden stick on the circumference of the Tibetan Singing Bowl that comes with it free?” I asked, wanting to piss him off.

“Keep hitting the singing bowl with the potato till it rings out loud in a particular frequency?” said Goose, chipping in to tick off Derek.

“Hit the potato with the stick that comes free with the Tibetan Singing Bowl?” said Hound as we all laughed out loud.

“Bastards!” said Derek smiling, “Face it, I am not as dumb as I look”. He was right. He was dumber. But this time he had cracked it. It was the Tibetan Singing Bowl that could show us the secret entrance.

“Come, let’s get you dried up, Chief. I’ll make some coffee for you”, said Lind as she came close to me, playing with my shirt buttons.

I put my arm around Lind’s slim waist and before walking away, turned around to see Derek, Hound and Goose grinning from ear to ear as I flipped the birdie at them. Finally, it was coffee time for me, the last one among the four of us but certainly worth the wait. Lind was beautiful.

Goose would pick up a Tibetan Singing Bowl from the hotel’s curio shop tonight and we’d all head right back to the Dhamek Stupa early morning, right before sunrise. This was the only logical explanation left.

We’d have to sneak into the heritage site. No big deal. We’re meta-humans with invisibility built into us. I can be invisible, ask my ex-girlfriend, she’ll tell you. After our break up, she sees through me.

***