“The angry god of El Niños smiles!” The PBS news headline ran, as biblical rains hammered California for 10 weeks, ending the 20-year drought in a glorious flood. It was the year 2020.

Sacramento was in the eye of the storm. A week before, Professor John Reiffer at California State University there, was relieved that Robbie Bischoff had returned after a self-imposed exile. The brilliant kid had walked away from his research on gravity a year before. The professor had just about written him off as a lost cause. He was barely recognizable, having lost 50 pounds.

Three graduate students, who had sought to continue Robbie’s research, had quit after spending only months in the underground lab.

“It’s just too damn quiet down there…” one had quipped apologetically.

Robbie had stuck with it for 5 years. No wonder the young man had vanished without any goodbyes.

Tej Singh, Robbie’s housemate, returned home late that night after a two-day bender at his lab. He was surprised to see Robbie’s door open. He had assumed Robbie wasn’t coming back. Now his mud-caked shoes lay by the front door. Peeking into his friend’s room, Tej saw an orange backpack stacked in the open closet. Robbie slept on the floor, on a thin sheet, his rhythmic breathing matching the breeze coming in from the open window. Tej quietly closed the door.

It was blistering hot when Tej awoke the next day. Day 7,300 of the drought brought dust clouds high up in the sky. Robbie sat at the kitchen table, drinking his tea, staring at the painting of a lush-green meadow.

“When did you come back?” asked Tej.

“Last night,” answered Robbie. “I did not want to wake you.” 

“No, I was in the lab for the last couple of days. Mongolian hackers,” replied Tej.

Robbie nodded, and continued to meditate on the painting.

Tej asked, “Where did you go?”

“Here and there.” Robbie answered cryptically.

“That explains why we could not contact you. Your parents were worried sick. They called their Congressman and anyone who would pickup the phone in DC. All they could find out was that you had boarded a flight to New Delhi. Even the Indian authorities had no clue about your whereabouts. What the hell man! You cannot just disappear like that.”

Robbie sipped his tea, eyes closed.

“Say something! You know how it is these days. A fellow disappears without a trace in that part of the world and it sets off all kinds of alarms. They assume you crossed over to the side of the Jihadists. Where were you? What were you doing?”

Tej could not stop himself. He’d felt helpless over the past year, comforting Robbie’s worried parents .

“The Himalayas. I spent a few months on Mount Kailash near the Tibetan border.”  Robbie replied.

He had weathered, looking a good ten years older. What once must have been a lush beard, had recently been scrubbed away to re-enter civilization. His leathery face bore the after-effects severe weather exposure; like the skin of Sherpas. He seemed more at ease with himself now. He spoke very less, content with letting the conversation hang in mid-air; a sense of leisure about him.

The storm arrived that evening. When the first drops fell, Tej assumed the neighborhood kids were throwing pebbles at the window, to get him to come to play basketball.

He yelled without looking up from his laptop, “Not now guys! Busy.”

When he heard incessant drumming, Tej looked up from his laptop to see the rain splash in.

Tej walked out to the porch to see the unfolding spectacle. Robbie sat on the bench, looking out at the sheets of water pouring down from the black skies.  It was a remarkable sight-The bare branches of the birch trees danced in the wet breeze, a few bluejays huddled on the banister. Flashes of lightning lit up the world around them in a brilliant tulip red.

Tej glanced at Robbie, who smiled as though he knew it was going to rain; as though he had made it happen.

At first, the thirsty earth absorbed the water. But soon, the water puddled up and formed little streams. Gutters filled up, plastic trash gently bobbed on their way out of town. People and animals were caught off-guard and escaped to high ground.

The next day, the weather channel reporter on TV was at loss of words. “Unprecedented! Unbelievable!!” the man exclaimed.

“I have been doing this for twenty years. I’ve never seen anything like this. Things were calm yesterday, and we wake up to this,” he pointed to the giant screen with the image of clouds over the entire state of California; Sacramento buried under the swirling epicenter.   

“The drought is over!”

Tej could not shake the notion that Robbie had something to do with it. 

I don’t speak much English. Just a little when talking to clients who hire my taxi here in Dubai; “To where Sir,” “Twenty Dirham Madam”, that sort of thing. I am good with money, driving and directions, so getting the job done has never been a problem.

I came here ten years ago. My passport says my name is Babu Chacko and people call me Babu. It is not my real name; I don’t like it very much. But this name has kept me safe. Like me, a lot of men here have escaped from circumstances back home. One man, and I won’t say who, robbed a bank to pay for his passport and visa! Here, nobody notices us. We are the faceless population that moves this city. The lucky ones clean the bathrooms in the airport; the unlucky ones work in construction. On a Dubai summer day, you can boil a bowl of rice in minutes outside! But these poor workers don’t get a break. 

A bunch of us came from fishing villages near the town of Thalassery, at the southern tip of India. The beaches of Thalassery are very popular among filmmakers. Film companies from Bombay and Madras flock to these beaches all the time. I saw a French movie being made there once and I was the errand boy on the set. My job was to bring coconut water and tea to the crew. But one day, the movie crew disappeared without paying my dues. Turned out that the director had died of food poisoning. Dead from drinking tainted water, someone told me.

Since I was the errand boy, police suspected me. I escaped with just the clothes on my back, and some money I had after selling ancestral property. But I swear I had no hand in that man’s death. The police always go after poor people like me, when they had no one else to blame. Sure I made the tea from water from a tanker that used to contain kerosene. But most people would only get upset stomachs. The man was just weak. An Indian would have been just fine; we can digest rocks. If you ask me, these westerners have such weak constitutions because of all that bread and cheese they eat.

I have been driving taxis in Dubai for the past ten years, and have done well for myself. Actually, driving taxis is only one part of my life here. I offer other services too, which is really why I am here. I know people in many places- in government ministries, of many countries. You wanted to get a Chinese uncle an Indonesian passport? No problem. You want to buy a Chalet in the Swiss Alps, but can only pay cash. I can get that done. How does a taxi driver do all that? That is my superpower. I know all the right people, at the right places. For the right price, I can get things done. 

I must thank the gentleman, who offered to write this for me as a gesture of good faith. He was a passenger I had picked up at the Royal Meridian. Most of my clients don’t pay attention to the little brown-skinned driver. Mr. Bischoff was different. He was curious to know about my life and how I ended up driving a taxi. I told him my story, and he offered to write it up. He did as he promised, and even read this out to me a few days later. I must confess, everything sounds grand when you hear it in English!

I do hope you will visit our fine city. While you are here, look me up if you need a ride, or have a job for me. Just ask anyone at the airport about Babu. I have done business with almost all of them.

“Binu Estheppan: Murderer!” the headlines screamed. There was a dead Frenchman with kerosene in his gut, in Thalassery morgue in Kerala; kerosene that came from Binu’s tea stall. By the time the news hit, he was on a flight to Dubai as Babu Chacko. He had left India for good in July 2016.

“He who gets caught is screwed; He who runs is lucky.” This thought ran in his head, as a blistering hot Dubai wind hit him. The wind kicked up dust around him; smell of gasoline fumes and cigarette smoke filled the air. He missed the cool ocean breeze of Thalassery.

The Indian travel agent, who had procured his fake passport, had assured him, “Suresh, my man in Dubai, will take you to your hostel; A/C room, comfortable bed. You will have a good life there. Don’t worry. “

Suresh waved as Babu walked out of the arrivals gate.

“Babu oh? Travel agent Mani sir’s man?” he asked.

They took a taxi to Muhaisnah at the eastern edge of the city. He talked non-stop, oblivious to Babu’s silence. Babu was relieved that the man had not recognized him.

Muhaisnah is a sprawling camp filled with south Asian migrant laborers. People call it Sonapur- the city of gold. Just like El Dorado, Sonapur draws thousands with the promise of prosperity. People live in appalling conditions, while saving up to send money home. His hostel was a ramshackle building.

The travel agent had cheated him. There was no running water or A/C. He shared a hot apartment with two men, who were not happy to see him. Rent was half his salary, but he was thankful for the job. He hauled cement bags as a construction worker. By the time the 12-hour days ended, he could barely move a muscle. But that wasn’t to last.

His Armenian supervisor called him to his office one day; there was a layoff coming. Babu dreaded returning to India. The Indian media continued to keep the story of the fugitive tea-maker alive. Thankfully the Syrian war and the American elections dominated the headlines. But he knew there was a noose waiting for him if he returned.

One evening after work, Babu noticed Aziz Omani, an old Jordanian taxi driver, struggling to change a flat tire. He stopped to help the man. That little interaction quickly developed into a friendship. Aziz offered him homemade Falafel for dinner the next day. Babu brought him chicken curry in return. Soon, Babu was a regular at the Al-Jabra taxi stand, cleaning cars in return for driving and Arabic lessons.

Soon he could speak passable Arabic, and drive well. The taxi company offered him a job, which could not have come at a better time. The construction company had closed and he had 2 weeks to find a job, or leave the country. He gladly accepted the offer.

Months went by. The job gave him confidence; “You are no different than these people. So what if they own Bentleys, and oil fields? They still eat and shit like you,” he reminded himself. He lived alone after his room-mates, who had lost their jobs, left. He quickly made changes; a comfortable bed, AC, and a new wardrobe. People noticed and word spread.

Suresh pushed open the door and stepped in unannounced, one evening. Babu, who had been listening to an Arabic-to-Malayalam translation on his iPhone, looked up irritated.

“Endha? What is it?” he asked.

Suresh stared speechless, at the changes in the room. No more filthy mess of unwashed dishes, cigarette butts, and stench of urine. The pleasantly cool room smelled of jasmine, Sufi music filled the air.

Suresh stammered, “Hhhello? Babu sir?”  and surprised himself.

He considered the workers beneath him. He even held on to their passports to intimidate them.

“You are looking good. New job treating you well?” Suresh asked.

Babu smiled a bit warily, “Ok. Not bad”

“Not bad?” answered Suresh. “That’s not what I hear! Tell me, how did you find a job so quickly? “

Babu had expected it. “Ah it was nothing. It was the grace of god you know. I was just lucky that’s all.”

Suresh represented a life he wished to leave behind. He cherished his freedom and Suresh was a threat. It was time to cut all ties to his old life.

“Hey Suresh! I have urgent work to finish. We will meet soon. I will call you.”

Suresh could not believe it. The little twerp was pushing him out!  He had to show Babu who the real boss was.

“Babu wait! I am getting 2 guys next week to work at the refinery. They need to stay here, so I need the keys. And don’t forget, I need your passport too. Sonapur can be quite an unsafe place. These Arabs will kick you back to Thalassery if your passport disappeared.”

Babu, about to close the door, stopped. His face twitched a little.

“Really? How are you going to do that?” he asked, in a quiet menacing voice.

“Do what?” asked Suresh nervously.

“How are you going to keep my passport safe, when you are dead and buried in the desert?”

It had rained last night too. That’s every night for the past month, which is normal for this time of the year in Uganda near east Africa. We broke ground for our new factory on the very same day the rains came. The ground is saturated with water now, making the digging even more laborious. The men complain of the leaches and the fire ants. Fat from dieting on an inexhaustible supply of food, the ants bite and hold onto the skin with a deathly grip. Trying to brush them off is of no use; pouring salt water or kerosene is the only way to kill the little critters. Can’t blame them though; for decades, these ants know humans only as food.

In the records, this little piece of land in a Kampala suburb was the site of a church that had been bombed by Idi Amin’s forces in the 1970s. But they had done a lot more than raze a church to the ground. The site is one of thousands in the country that Amin, and the military dictators after him, used to bury the dead.

I am jolted back to the present, when someone shouts, “Stop!” and the sounds of digging ceases. Then I hear sloshing outside my office door. One of the construction workers barges in, his sweat-soaked clothes reeking of decayed flesh. His eyes bloody, no doubt from drinking too much hooch last night. Anyone will want a drink or two, after weeks of digging up the horrors of the past.

“We found another body ma’am,” he said calmly, his body weighed down by what he had seen.

“That is twenty bodies just this week,” I sighed. “Ok. You know what to do. Tell the foreman to call the police again.”

Within the hour, the police will come and haul the remains away. A technician will take samples for DNA analysis, and the search will begin for the next of kin to reveal the news they already know. It seems pointless, but it is necessary to maintain peace; to help families move on.  It’s important for people to realize that the state cares.

This is how it has been since I was appointed the minister of peace of our good country in 2030. When we are done here, there will be a basket-weaving factory standing in this place. There is a car conversion factory not far from here. Things are getting better now, but gruesome discoveries like these make me question my decision to return. It has only been a couple of years, but it seems like a long time ago that I was a successful investment banker in London. Like so many other MBAs from the famous California State University in Sacramento, I lived the high life in Europe. But I returned home to Kampala to tend to my grandmother, when she was dying from cancer. I never left.

These days I think of her a lot. She was Tanzanian, and had a cynical sense of humor. “Ayo. Be careful about digging up old stories in Uganda,” she advised me once. “Nothing is buried that deep here.” I miss her more now than ever before. She had been the president of the country, and a very loved by her people. She was one of the first women to enter politics in Uganda, after giving up her cushy job in a Johannesburg firm in 2020. Since then, Uganda has produced more CEOs than any other nation in the world. There is a very simple explanation for this remarkable turn of events.

Whenever there is a war or uprising, they always killed the men first. Since there were very few men left in the country, the women took over the job of running the government. Generations of young girls and boys have grown up seeing their mothers and grandmothers become ministers and presidents. I think that breeds a certain degree of willfulness and focus in the young children that serves them well in boardrooms later in life. I know it helped me.

To people who have seen a lifetime of peace, it would sound mighty odd that a country would need a ministry for peace. But it actually makes sense. Peace is a precious national resource, just like minerals, wildlife, fisheries and forests. It needs to be cultivated, nurtured and monitored carefully. Our mandate was simple: No war, negotiate. No conflict, compromise. I understand how this might be misconstrued as being weak. After all, picking up a gun and shooting anything that moves is what we had done for more than a century.

That’s where Karma Pays helped. At the time, it was a small stealthy startup that my friends from Sacramento had started. Uganda is where they first set up shop. This is where their revolution began.

It’s not much to look at now, but you should have seen Clarksburg in the 1900s, after they found copper in the nearby mountains. While the mining companies made money for a century, the people built a thriving community. This town, which is at the tip of the Siberian Peninsula, was the bedrock of culture and business.

Then the music stopped.  After they sucked the land dry and destroyed everything, the mining companies just packed up and left. But they abandoned a wasteland in their wake; for years afterward, not even a blade of grass could grow here. The rivers turned red when the rainwater came gushing out of the ground: as though the earth bled from its wounds. The greed, of the industrialists, and the politicians who pocketed their payouts, destroyed our lives.

We were too poor to bribe the bureaucrats, so they turned a blind eye to our plight. We only saw them during elections when they came by asking for our votes, and making empty promises. This situation was the fuel. The spark came when the government decided to raze our beloved opera house on Solzhenitsyn Street, to make room for a highway. When the bulldozers arrived on Monday morning, something broke in us. I had never seen my father so upset. He put on his parka, grabbed a shovel, and, mad as hell, yelled, “They don’t hear us when our children are born deformed. They don’t care when we die of hunger. Now they want to take this away too. If it’s war they want, it’s war they will get!”

He then stomped out of the door to join a growing crowd in front of the Opera house.

Uncles, aunts, grandfathers, children; anyone who had strength in their legs stood in defiance against the demolition crews for weeks. Protests grew into a rebellion. Pretty soon, the disgruntled farmers and workers formed a militia and demanded to secede from the motherland.

The situation quickly got worse after that. The governor sent a battalion of soldiers to control the situation. We had daily curfews, tanks patrolled the streets and living conditions became intolerable. But our resistance was strong. The opera house became the symbol of our struggles. Gun battles killed scores of civilians, but that only strengthened our resolve, and the war escalated. Soon, planes dropped bombs on the little town. The opera house was the first to be reduced to rubble. This was the land where entropy reigned supreme: Chaos ruled the day. 

One by one, all seven of my brothers and sisters left town. My parents forced them to leave. But I didn’t; I stayed to fight the fight because our cause was just. As luck would have it, the media picked it up. The Moscow correspondent of The New York Times covered us extensively. Photos of my battle-weary 70-year old father, and my soot-covered fifteen-year old face, captured the attention of the world. They ran a series of articles, titled “Davids of Charlesburg face the Russian government Goliath”. There was a massive outpouring of sympathy and the issue raged on in the United Nations for months. But diplomacy worked too slowly to prevent bloodshed more quickly. I was beginning to think that we got our hopes up in vain, when agents from Karma Pays came calling one day.  Soon thereafter, the tide started to turn. The government negotiated a peace agreement when we eventually had the upper hand. Peace and prosperity came soon thereafter. We had our first harvest of grapes couple of years after that: wine never tasted better.

It’s the year 2040 now. Weary after a hard day’s work at the farm, I stopped by at La Nigra Tuo-the only bar in town. Someone had an ironic sense of humor when they named a bar, “The Black Hole”, in the forgotten language of Esperanto. I like the bar; it’s small and unassuming.  The bartender slid over my drink: a Vodka with 2 ice-cubes and a soybean. The soybean is my homage to an old American radio show called The Prairie Home Companion. Father used to play it in the car all the time, just to remind us that there was still culture out there.

My two little girls, Anna and Rebecca, are home sleeping. I see them playing in the yard, without any fear of bombs raining down, or if a sniper might have them in his sights, and it warms my heart. I know the sacrifices were worth it. My name is Vlad, and you shall soon see how Karma Pays helped us do it all.

You have probably heard of people who hit the jackpot; I am one of those people.  I tell you this: Making money, that’s the easy part. It’s the burden that comes after, for which you are never prepared.

I am Tej Singh. A billionaire at age 28, I almost died when I hit my jackpot.

I’ve always been an entrepreneur. By age 8, I ran lemonade stands in my Schaumburg, Illinois neighborhood and sold my successful taco truck business before I turned 18. I put myself through college to study computer science and launched my own tech firm in San Jose, California by the time I was 22. That venture failed, and so did the next one.  Then, on July 20, in the year 2025, lady luck smiled.

A Russian hacker group took over the Internet on that day. Everything; the stock market, banks, utilities, universities and government websites; crashed and complete mayhem ensued. Just as I hoped, only a few servers of the company Factorial Inc., repulsed the attack. They were based in Reykjavik, Ekurhuleni, Palo Alto, Essen and Luxembourg. We chose the cities just on a whim; the first letters of the cities spelled out R-E-P-E-L.  Only the REPEL servers survived the hackers. We saved the world’s richest company that day. Rumors spread overnight about the competing bids for my company.

It’s nice to be a hot firm in Silicon Valley. My phone rang nonstop: Investors and reporters, wanting face-to-face meetings with me. It’s quite an ego trip; Air smells sweeter, everything appears more colorful. The euphoria lasted for 3 days. That’s when the other calls started; late at night, always untraceable and very unpleasant.

These were the same people who broke into our labs earlier. We had installed cameras all over the place after the first break-in.  The footage for the second break-in showed a couple of dark SUVs driving around in the parking lot at 2am. Five hooded figures expertly cut open a hole in the window. Once inside, they spread out, picking laptops of key technical people in the team. Before leaving, one of them spray-painted Chinese symbols on my office door. A tech later told me with a worried look on her face, “Tej! It says they will be back for more!”

One of the late night callers said, “We will triple any offer you get. Think carefully before you make any decisions. “

The next one was Russian, and he warned me, “There are a lot of bad apples out there. Who knows how these people might take it, if you decided to reject their offer…” and hung up.

When my team heard about the threats, they forced me to hire a security detail. But having a couple of burly ex-boxer bodyguards next to me did not help me feel secure.

Factorial came through with a buyout package unheard of in recent memory-75 billion dollars, and I got 50%. I signed away my company that Monday. There was a lull in those ominous phone calls when news broke and I foolishly let my guard down.

It was the eve of Thanksgiving. I had given the day off to my guards. After a great party at Chez Panisse in Berkeley and bar hopping afterward, I caught the new BART midnight train back home to East Palo Alto. There were only a couple of passengers in the train car. I figured they were probably drunk too. I shivered as I got off the train at 1am. A freezing wind from the bay blew my hat off and I bent to pick it up. I heard a dull thud just then. I figured someone had closed a car door and then heard another thud. A hole popped open on the wall of a booth nearby. I wasn’t too drunk to realize someone was shooting at me from afar. My heart pounded as I crouched low, and ran.

I am a good runner even with a few drinks in me, and I ran at an incredible pace that night. I ran across traffic to reach the south end of Bay road, and quickly lost the 3 men who were after me. I love this little town- it’s always busy with people out and about on the streets, no matter the hour.

Robbie Bischoff, my hermit of a house-mate, waited at the house, his Ford Explorer idling. He had all the money he would ever need, but he still drove that 40-year old rust-bucket. I had called to tell him that someone was after me.

All he asked when I jumped into the truck was, “Where to? The bunker?”

“Yes. To the bunker.” I replied. 

I disappeared from the public eye just like that.

It is peak summer noon in the Chambal valley, in central India. It feels like a 100 square-mile saucepan of boiling water. I am no stranger to heat; As a journalist covering environmental issues, I have spent months in the Death Valley, the Sonoran and Saharan deserts. But this place is something else. Chambal Valley has trees sprinkled here and there; emaciated things that cling to life with great tenacity. But there is no respite from the relentless heat even in their shade. Add to this, the red ants whose bites leave scores of welts all over my body. It has been more than six hours since I stepped off a truck here in the middle of this valley.  I am here to see a farmer, who has slowly become a force to reckon with in the year 2030 geopolitics.

I see him through my binoculars. He is at least a mile away, so it will be a while for him to get here. He is very reclusive, and would only talk to me in in a remote wide-open rendezvous point, not in his farm. So I am stuck wilting away in this heat.

He lives here with his clan. He is a farmer, mechanic, and some kind a visionary. People from far away places such as Sri Lanka, China and Malaysia know of him.  They call him Car Baba!  I would like to know what makes him such a star among his followers. I was in New Delhi a short while ago, and saw his face smiling back from every wall and vehicle.

What has that got to do with environmental journalism? Quite a bit actually: he fits into this larger global movement that has tumbled governments and bankrupted the energy and automobile industries in the last decade. I have been tracking the operatives of this covert organization that, I am convinced, is behind the peaceful uprising the world over. I suspect that this man is a key figure in that organization.

I watch him hobble over to the old fig tree, where I sit sweating and brushing away the ants. It is 110 degrees in the shade, and he hands me a flask that is filled with piping hot Chai. He is tall, but a damaged ankle steals a full foot away from his height. He walks with a painful-looking limp. The constant strain of limping, and cultivating this rocky land has taken a toll. Leathery skin hangs off his gaunt face. Bushy eyebrows cast a shadow over the eyes that sit in sunken sockets. If there could be a human equivalent to an old Hyena, it would be him. I find it hard to believe that he could inspire a revolution, and suspect if I may have been misled by my sources.

“Hello. Heard you wanted to meet me,” He asks me in hindi. His deep voice surprises me. He speaks purposefully, weighing his words carefully. His voice would definitely make people take notice.

I nod, and thank him for the chai.

“How may I help you, Madam?”

I ask him if he knew who I was.

“Yes. You are that reporter lady who wrote about the last of the tigers dying in the Sunderbans. It was indeed a very sad story. ”

He has touched a raw nerve with the mention of the tigers. It was a story I covered a few months ago. I was trying to rescue a pair of beautiful young Sunderban tigers, the last of their species. They were marooned in a mangrove on the swamps of the eastern coast of India. A rapid increase in the sea levels had cut off all escape routes.  They drowned by the time I could get them to safety. I witnessed a species go extinct, right before my eyes. I wrote about it in National Geographic magazine. Oprah and Sasha Obama were moved by it, and soon the story went viral. It launched what I call a biblical Ark moment: a United Nations mandate to protect at least a pair of every species on the planet. Despite all the positive attention to the issue, I blame myself for the extinction of those tigers; it was a raw wound. His comment brought it all back to me. I stopped to collect myself, and changed the topic. I ask him if he read the news or watched TV lately.

He answers wearily, “Madam, I am 5^th class fail. I don’t know any English to read fancy papers. In any case, I have no time. My grandson is a fan of your work; he told me. He wants to be a reporter just like you.”

I ask him about his family.

How many children did he have?  Ten.

Grandchildren? Thirty.

Great grandchildren? Ten.

He also has fifty aunts, uncles and cousins living with him. I tell him it is really nice that he has his entire family living with him, in this age where children drift away as soon as they are old enough. 

“I am lucky. It’s god’s will that I have such a loving family.”

I say I only knew him by the name his followers called him: Car baba.

“That is just what people call me. My real name is Gumnam Singh. Do you know what my name means?”

I know what it means and tell him.

“Unknown. That’s correct. Unknown Singh. No idea what my father was thinking when he named me Gumnam. I must have been an accident. “

“I can’t blame my father either. He constantly worried about bandit attacks, droughts and our crops. We worked very hard in the farm, trying to grow what we could. If the rains didn’t come one year, the pests came to wipe out the crops. If the pests did not come, the bandits came to grab everything. So when I was born, I was just another mouth to feed. He might as well have named me Amangal Singh. Do you know what that means? That’s right Unfortunate.”

What of his parents then?

“Father died when I was ten years old. I have worked in these same fields since then.”

He is surprisingly open about his life. Of course, I have still not broached the topic that I am really here for. The one thing I have learned in my career about talking to people, is to let them talk. Sooner or later, they open up just a little bit more.

“We tried to make a living raising crops. The soil here isn’t that good. Also, there are lot of deer and wild animals that eat the crops. It is always a struggle. I was born in 1990, when people in India preferred socialism. Since then, this country experimented with capitalism, which quickly descended into disastrous dictatorship for a few years. We even went back to having kings and queens for a while.  People remained either very rich, or very poor like us here. All that changed, when Karmic law was implemented. That changed our lives.”

There, that is my opening, the talk about Karmic law. For a man who claimed he was an ignorant farmer, Gumnam is a very good student of history. He had summarized a hundred years of Indian political history in a nutshell.

I ask him about his reputation as Car baba. How did he become Car baba? If I explained it to you, no one would believe me. I need him on record.

He looks at me as though I am out of my mind. “Madam. Now what do I tell you?  I am just a simple farmer, working hard to take care of his family. If people give me names, what can I do about it?”

I point to a poster of his face on the trunk of the fig tree. It reads in bold hindi, “Come one. Come all! Come to get Car Baba’s blessings at Basanthi’s House and be freed of all your worries.”

“Does that look like just another name to you? These people think you are god! I have travelled to many countries Gumnam sir. Never have I seen such devotion”

I needle him.

“People tell me about this magic that you do. Is it real? Where did you learn it? “

“I have no idea why they call me that madam. They think I am one of those people who can make cars fly. I tell you it’s a lie someone is spreading about me.  I don’t know anything about any flying cars. Look at me. I am an old, illiterate, handicapped fellow. What would I know about cars? ”

I begin to think that he is another one of those fake swamis: Another imposter, like those others like him who pull out gold chains from their beards, or claim to heal incurable diseases by sprinkling holy water. I think this Car Baba is a hoax after all.

Then I see it.: a glint in the distance. Not close to the ground, but a few hundred feet above the stacks of hay piled up high behind the two-story brick house. A dark spot that looks too big to be a bird. It’s a metallic black object that hovers above the ground.  The object glinted in the late afternoon sun.

There is no imagining it.

IT IS A FLYING CAR!

Like a painted canvas, the orange and black stripes of the Bengal tigress contrasted starkly against the green leaves of the mangrove trees. I could see her hungry green eyes peer at me through my binoculars. Then she jumped into the water, and started to paddle swiftly towards us.

One of the guides in the rubber dinghy shouted to warn me, “She is in the water Manahal!!”   

“Joldi Cholo! Joldi Cholo!!” I screamed, in my strongest accented Bengali words for “Go faster!” I find that I speak Bengali much better when I am in danger. The men pumped the engine hard, as if that would make the little boat go faster. The motor whined as it struggled to pull the combined weight of 4 people and the heavy equipment onboard.

I watched her struggle to stay afloat, laboring hard against the currents. I sat paralyzed, gripping the slippery ropes as she drew closer, trying not to think of being tossed overboard, or what might happen if she swiped the boat with her razor-sharp claws. The waters were beginning to get rough with another storm approaching fast, and the boat violently rocked back and forth. She was within inches of the boat, and then she was gone.

The last of the Sunderban tigers drowned, right before my eyes.

It was a good day to die; Warm, not that humid, with everything colored orange in the most beautiful sunset I have ever seen.

She had leaped toward us in a desperate attempt at grabbing anything to eat. I estimated that she had not fed in over a week, cut off from food supply by the sudden rise in the sea level. Banno: that was the name we had given her. She was a beautiful healthy animal, weighing in at 500 pounds when we tagged her a few years ago.

Unlike their terrestrial cousins in the forests of mainland India, these coastal hunters usually thrived on a diet of fish. Rising sea levels had decimated their fishing holes, forcing them further inland. It was not too long before they switched to hunting humans. Like any lazy hunter, they preferred the old, the invalid and the children. The villagers hired hunters to kill as many of the cats as they could find. Although they were very good at stealth, the tigers were no match for drones and high-powered rifles that the hunters used. For a while, there was even a TV reality show on the hunt. That year, in 2025, the hunters massacred hundreds of the tigers. 

Soon, there were only 2 left: Banno and Samwise, as if they were destined for Noah’s Ark. Samwise’s tracker had disappeared a few days ago. Now I watch Banno sink, taking our hopes with her.

As an environmental journalist, I have covered all kinds of heart-rending stories- Elephant poaching in Kenya, whale-hunting in Norway, and dolphin slaughter in Japan. You may have seen my articles in National Geographic from time to time. I won the Pulitzer for the elephant-poaching piece. That article created an outrage, leading to the arrest and execution of the poachers. Furthermore, it was the catalyst for a popular uprising, leading to the overthrow of the corrupt Kenyan dictator. The elephant population recovered wonderfully after that. There is no happy ending this time. I was witness to the extinction of a magnificent species.

I think about the day I fought off 3 boys over a goat. I was eight, and I had just saved the goat from being slaughtered for Eid. My brothers were not very happy about it; they had looked forward to seeing the blood spurt out from its neck. But I would not have any of it. One little girl, I argued and fought off three of them successfully! My grandfather, a distinguished magistrate in Lahore, Pakistan, had watched the whole thing from his study. He called me into his study soon after that. No child was ever allowed into his study; that was his domain, his office where he met with his clients. A tall man with a stern, but serene demeanor, he sat me down and stared at me for a few seconds.

Then he asked calmly, “Manahal. That was admirable the way you argued with your brothers. But it is a worthless goat. What made you want to fight for it? “

Twenty years later, I still remember my reply, “Because the little goat had no chance to live without my help.” He knew then that I would passionately take up fighting for rights of the exploited. He encouraged me at every step in my life. He overruled my parents, and even paid for my air-tickets to go to study in California to pursue my passions in law and journalism. It seems like that was a long time ago. Every story that I cover, tells me how precious little we have, and how much more we could do to protect it.

With Banno dead, it feels like I lost a child. I am going to take time to recover. I am considering this call from my editor to check out this miracle man in central India. “Car Baba”, they call him.

Though it sounds a bit outrageous, I have a gut feeling that it would lead to something monumental.

I am in the 5-Coffins. It’s my room about the size of 5 coffins, which has been my home for the past 5 years. The name is a pun, like the 4-Seasons hotel of the good old days. My room is about a mile under the city of Sacramento. It’s not a prison; I actually volunteered to be here. My name is Robert Mildred Bischoff; you can call me Robbie.

The 5-Coffins is a lab affiliated to the California State University in Sacramento, built in collaboration with Stanford University’s SLAC Linear accelerator lab. A 2-billion dollar endowment from Factorial Inc is what enabled this lab for the Gravity-Identification Project. The money hardly makes a dent in the company’s revenue. Factorial is only the most powerful company in the world, with interests in pretty much everything; from search engines, to cars, spaceships, and mercenary drones-for-hire, all of which run on those engines. Since they build so many things that fly, I bet this “gift” to the university is somehow connected to their business plan for the next century.

The lab is stocked with the state-of-the-art equipment to detect and track Gravitons. What are Gravitons you ask? Since you most probably are no physicist, I will state this in the most basic terms possible. Gravitons are sub-atomic particles that, theoreticians have claimed exist and cause gravity. No one has seen or detected them. Why might they exist then, you ask? Because the math says they do. If no one has found them yet, it’s because people are not smart enough to build devices that could sense them. So yes, 5 years ago I thought I was smart enough, and made a career choice to sit in a dungeon deep underground. I was going to be the next Einstein.

There is a simple reason the lab is buried so deep. The ground beneath Sacramento is perfect, as it sits at the edge of two tectonic plates. Access to the earth’s core is far easier here. But I suspect they put the lab out here in the middle of nowhere, because no one comes here anymore.  It’s the year 2022, and the 20-year drought has decimated the west coast. If I went up to the ground level, all I would see are duststorms and rusted railroad tracks; no people. I don’t venture out much though; I have sometimes gone months without seeing the sun.

I have a hammock in a corner, right above the toilet. No cellular network or even a phone line down here. The tiniest electro-magnetic energy or radiation could skew the results. So, like in the 20th century, I actually keep lots of books down here. I have read a lot about everything. I don’t walk or even move for hours when I run the experiments. Movement causes static to build up, which introduces noise and ruins my experiments. The ability to sit motionless for hours turned out to be a valuable skill very soon, as you will see in a few podcasts.

I sit around watching 20 monitors all day and night. That is all I do. The sensors that sit deep in the earth’s core send out electromagnetic signals, which show up on the screens. I am looking for spikes in the signals, and so far there have been none.

Now I feel like Sisyphus. Like him, I am cursed with a never-ending task. Sisyphus had to move a boulder up a mountain for eternity, and I have to look for shy particles. You have caught me at a pivotal moment in my life.  I am done. I hate this work; if I spent another second watching these darn monitors, I will lose it. So, I am going to take the elevator up to civilization, jump into my wheezy 2010 Ford Explorer, and race down the dirt-covered highway to my advisor’s office. Once I barge into his office, I am going to tell him this:

“John. You have been an understanding advisor all these years. But if I did this anymore, I will give up on a career in science and become a big rig driver. I need to clear my head. So I am taking some time off, and I don’t know when I am coming back.”

What am I going to do after that, you ask?

All I can tell you is what John Muir once said, “The Mountains are calling, and I must go.”

Hello, welcome to a special edition of BBC’s Current Affairs.  Today is Tuesday, September 6^th, 2050.  I am Maria Akiloye, coming to you live from the Wits Linder auditorium in Johannesburg, South Africa. We are here to commemorate the remarkable milestone of 10 consecutive years of world peace.

The Council for Planetary Affairs (or CPA), which replaced the United Nations a while ago, has done a magnificent job of organizing the gala. Over 200,000 children, women and men have descended here in the last few days; this is the party of the century! I have covered many events in the past 30 years, and I can tell you with great confidence, this feels markedly different than the United Nations summits of the early part of the century. There are no metal detectors, bomb-sniffing dogs or helicopters hovering above. To tell you the truth, it feels more like a large farmer’s market, than a somber event that one would have expected.

For one thing, people are talking to each other, as though they are old friends catching up after a long time apart. Here I see an old Chinese lady talking in Mandarin to a Spanish boy, who responds in his native Catalan; and they understand each other perfectly, laughing at each other’s jokes! That’s because of clever technology that helps people to mingle. For example, I can talk in my mother tongue, English, and a Russian farmer sitting across from me would hear it in real-time in Russian. The CPA has worked very hard to make this a true marketplace for ideas, and it sure does feel that way. There are thousands of beanie bags, mats, sofas and pillows scattered all over the place, and it actually looks like a college dorm. I hear laughter, music and children’s giggles everywhere. For a meeting celebrating peace and happiness, there is plenty of that to go around here. 

A United Nations meeting in the year 2016 looked very different: staid and very formal. A national representative, like the president or the prime minister, read a printed statement, which translators translated into the various languages. The meetings were tense, tempers exploded, and every humanitarian resolution was mired in political overtones and ultimately ended in vetoes. It’s very ironical that the national borders had to disappear for this sea change to happen. Now let me tell you about the stage where the speakers will be seated.

The stage is the size of 10 basketball courts. A hologram of the earth, beamed live from the International Space Station, hovers in the middle of the stage. The global surface temperature, shown in large green numbers, reads a healthy 57.5 degrees Fahrenheit. That temperature, which essentially shows the cessation of global warming, is a somber reminder of the incredible struggles we endured to get here; all that death and destruction.

There are 7 empty wooden chairs on the stage, awaiting the founding members of the CPA. I see a few of them; Manahal Khan, Gumnam Singh and Vlad Popov; mingling in the crowd. They shake hands, share laughs, and are taking their time coming to the stage. Their exploits have made them household names and people hold them in very high regard.

“They are one of us,” an old man from the northern territories exclaimed when I asked him what made the CPA so well-liked the world over.

Tej Singh, the reclusive chief of the CPA, is expected to arrive very soon.  Not much is known about him. He does not talk to the press, and no one has seen him in the last 3 years as he vested all his energy into this summit. The media frenzy started as soon as it was announced that Tej would deliver the keynote address. Rumors are rampant that he has a major announcement planned. 

As I mentioned before, there are 7 founding members attending the gala today. The 7th chair will remain empty. The disappearance of one of the founding members, Robert Bischoff, is still shrouded in mystery. We are hopeful that Tej will shed some light on what happened to Robert, and how they developed the Karmic technology that changed the world. It promises to be one interesting and exciting story. Stay tuned.