A Bridge Made Of Madness

Dr. Saraswati Pandit (33) Is mapping gravitational anomalies in the Thar desert. In a jeep. Accompanied by her loyal but exasperated assistant Rohit, she heads out in the sandstorm. After months of mind numbing boredom they have found something interesting, or rather - something interesting has found them. Saraswati, Rohit and the jeep are seemingly swallowed and spit out by what can only be described as a hallucinogenic wormhole. 

While Saraswati and Rohit try to make sense of what they saw, they are called to the head office of IGI (Institute of GeoPhysics - India) where she is forcibly hired by an extra governmental organization headed by Trinethra - A woman that can only be described as dangerous.

A series of unfortunate incidents later they find themselves at the ‘Dome’ - A man-made island off the coast of Gujarat (Arabian sea). Its official purpose was stated as a pure-science observatory, but what they discovered in the Dome was anything but pure-science. Just like Saraswati’s childhood night terrors something was rotten on this dome and it stank of madness. Her obsessive need to be rational and her predilection for anxiety, drew her closer to another dome-resident - The night guard with amnesia. 

Saraswati,and Rohit together with the Nightguard discover that the dome is a breeding ground for insanity and many have lost their minds autonomy on it. An Ancient danger has awakened and Trinethra in her bid to harness the malicious power has corrupted her own mind and sacrificed many others.

An Ancient intelligence wants to break out of its cage and consume the world. Saraswati wants fame and recognition, Trinethra wants the power, The nightguard wants his memories back and Rohit just wants to go home. Follow them as they unwillingly discover the purpose of the intelligence and how it has manipulated humanity through the ancient times. 

Chapter 1

CHAPTER ONE

Big Leap for a Jeep

"The void welcomes you"

"I have loved the stars too fondly to be fearful of the night" - "The Old Astronomer" by Sarah Williams

The plaque which was a gift from a friend rattled and fell down from the dashboard of the Jeep.

"Jhilmilis going to go bust any time now boss," Rohit said, throwing a quick look at Sarasvati as he tried to talk over the sandstorm and the sputtering engine of the old Jeep.

"Her name is SS Enterprise," Saraswati said with a tilt of her chin without even taking her eyes away from a fixed point in the sandstorm raging in the heart of the Thar Desert "and she will be ok." She picked up the plaque and put it in her side bag.

"I don't know how any of your equipment functions with this much sand, but I know cars and dear Jhilmil are about to give up."

"Jhil.. Enterprise has been through worse. Keep driving. Straight.. Keep straight damn-it. We really need to get to the next location where we left the recorder and that would be the last of it. We can go back to the safety of our tent" 

Rohit brought the Jeep to a sudden halt 

"First of all - i reminded you well in advance about picking up the equipment which YOU had left there but like always YOU didn't listen and second of all- There is a bloody wall of sand ... I can't go straight, hell I can't go anywhere like this. I can't see a thing!"

"Rohit! You never did remind me!” She said “and even if you did, you should have reminded me harder” she raised a finger as he was about to interrupt, arching her eyes she said “You said you liked adventure.. THIS is an adventure." she gestured to the howling cocoon of sand rattling their now silent Jeep. “Just Drive. We will be fine” She said 

Rohit only managed to give a sullen glare.

“why am I getting buried in sand because you can't listen to common sense” 

Sarasvati narrowed her eyes "I told you to pack it up this morning”

“No you didn't!” He said. “All i remember is some mumbling about yea i suppose you should and you went on to ignore me as always” 

Saraswati sighed and rolled her eyes. “Rohit we have to move NOW.. Move, if the data gets wiped or lost we will have to start again next week.” She could see the clogs of his mind moving. He was trying to articulate the words I quit. But he never quite managed it. He hadn't managed to leave in the last ten months, and she was sure he was not about to do it now.

She smiled and shook her head as he restarted the Jeep.

"Go to Rajasthan they said; Work for a mad scientist they said; it would be fun they said" Rohit muttered as he struggled with the gears of the ancient Jeep.

She never asked who these 'they' were, and it didn't matter 'they' never made any sense. She adjusted her flying goggles as she peered into her GPS Navigator. They were surely lost, surely Rohit can handle the directions she had to worry about the sensitive instruments they left out in the open. She twisted in her seat to look at the instruments.

“Huh. This is bad.” She said, “This one’s not beeping” She said and slowly her heart sank to her stomach.

“Shit, all of these look fried” She said looking at the instruments she had planted in various parts of the desert.  

“What What ?” He asked. “Are we screwed? Am I getting my stipend next month?”

Somehow the wind and sand howled in unison creating an even bigger racket. She didn't have the heart to tell Rohit that they will anyways have to come back next week because even if the data was lost it was not going to be enough, and yes his stipend was always at risk.

“I just hope the data was transmitted before it got fried. We really need the data for our funding” She said sheepishly.

“Oh dear. No. if we tell your crocodile boss that we fried the expensive equipment then we are done. Even i know that much”

He was right but she didn't really care, maybe she will care later but right now, she felt something else. For one she felt her heartbeat in her ears, Something had changed in the atmosphere. Something cold and nasty was sending a chill up her spine, she gave an involuntary shiver. That something was invading her mind. No. no. no. no not now. There was no reason for anxiety right now.

But then this didn't feel like an anxiety attack. If anxiety feels like the world is against you this feels as if the world is no more and she is alone. A terrible thought told her that this sand cocoon was it and there was no one else left in this entire world. The darkness around them grew and grew unnatural.

Rohit couldn't see anything and drove blindly cursing and muttering at every bump and jerk. They were both startled with the previously dead equipment in her lap and started beeping frantically. 

“Shit what the Hell? You said it was fried?” Rohit asked as Saraswati shrieked. She hurried to keep them in the back seat as if they were radioactive.

"9... 8.. 7..." the GPS device started a countdown. Why?

"Sears" Rohit said with a note of panic in his voice.

"SAARS what the flying fuck is that"

"6...5...4.." Sarasvati looked up from the GPS and saw Rohit's face.

His eyes were wide in pure confusion; the flecks of gold in his brown eyes were visible because the sun was brightly glinting off of his pilot’s goggles.

The sun? But they were in the middle of a sandstorm which was still howling around them. Where did the sun come from?

her eyes went straight to the place where Rohit's attention was focused, and the countdown on her GPS device stopped

0 You have arrived 

A Bright golden disk with the blackest of black hearts enveloped them.

Even Sarasvati screamed, and she knew that even Rohit was screaming, but they couldn't hear each other.

Then she remembered the first lesson of her high school science class

Voice doesn't travel in vacuum

#

They only had 10 seconds, at the most 15 if they were lucky. They had no time to notice that there were stars everywhere. They screamed till their throats were raw. It was good that they did because if they hadn't, death would have been immediate through air embolism.

They stopped screaming when they had no air left in their lungs. She noticed Hundreds of thousands of stars littered the endless sky – some of them impossibly close.

The silence was eerie, nothing other than her frantic heart threatening to burst out of her rib cage, her ears threatening to pop out.

Death was imminent. She still couldn't take her eyes off of a brilliant nebula of blue and yellow on the left of her vision and even as the saliva bubbled and boiled on her tongue in the zero pressure of the actual vacuum, she felt wonder and happiness. What a strange place. Was it a dream? Did they crash and this was a last few attempts of her mind to give her hope? Or was this real?

She looked at Rohit, his beard still speckled with the sand from the desert. His wet eyes were astonished, and she wanted to laugh. The grumbler was rarely surprised, But then she also wanted to apologize. He fought tooth and nail but still came with her.

"Sorry" She mouthed, expelling precious air and wasting precious seconds.

She could see his eyes brown speckled with gold, as he narrowed them, He would have huffed if he could.

He shook his head.

Her vision blurred and stars went out of focus.

Her only regret was that no one would know.

Rohit looked alarmed, maybe she was swaying, and he made a last-ditch effort to save them.

He hit the reverse gear.

Bless her electric heart, Jhilmil responded. Sarasvati felt the oddest sense of movement in an utter vacuum. She wanted to laugh at the fact that Jhilmil the Jeep worked in her dying dream, and at the fact that Rohit thought to hit the reverse gear, but her vision darkened and she felt warm before she passed out.

***

Too warm

It had been so nice in the vacuum or dream or whatever it was. Sweat trickled down her forehead and down the side of her face. definitely day time in the Thar, but she struggled to open her eyes,

The sand and the sweat muddled together to grate on her skin creating a paste and she wanted to peel off all her clothes and hit a cold shower. This thought finally managed to rouse her. The Thar was ever as ugly as it was beautiful, the sand dunes stretched for eternity and back, bathed in the evening sun they looked like mountains of gold dust. Everything else was stark black in contrast, all figures were silhouettes, shrouded in mystery.

Sun.. Sun.. she wanted to remember something about the sun.

Her heart started beating too fast as she collided into consciousness 

She felt giddy as she fumbled about. Sarasvati opened her little recording device, a gift from her nifty father. Entirely superfluous for a real scientist, with a lab and 24-7 monitoring, but for her particular brand of wacky science, the recorder worked perfectly.

"whacky my foot, we are going mainstream baby."

Sarasvati started recording her monologue in a fevered voice that could only rightfully belong to little girls.

"Rohit is still unconscious. He should by all logic be still alive as I am." Sarasvati continued to speak in her microphone as she jumped up on her seat to undo Rohit's seat belt and feel his pulse.

She felt a steady pulse and sighed in relief

“Rohit Rohit, Wake up” she tried again. She wanted him to concur what they had seen. She wanted him to confirm that she was not mad. 

She still couldn't wrap her head around the experience.

She grabbed hold of her Helio-spectrometers attached to the roof of the Jeep and detached the meter.

Sarasvati breathed in slowly as she saw her own dying star on the horizon.She caught her breath. 

Rohit coughed, spluttering sand everywhere, and woke up. He tried to get up and groaned. 

“Oh god. My head is going to explode… ugg… What was that?”

“Good good you are up. Did you see the ring?, the blackness? The stars? Did your saliva bubble on your tongue or was I having a weird reaction?” she asked as she buzzed about the vehicle trying to detach every instrument to get them ready for the lab readings

Rohit's mouth widened as he tried to get out of the Jeep to get to Sarasvati who was buzzing around like a hummingbird on cocaine.

“Yes, yes and weirdly yes. Bubbling saliva ew. What are you doing? Is any of this equipment working? Did it not get overloaded when we entered that strange place? 

“Note 2 - get all meters tested for radiation damage" she said in to her recorder

"What? What about OUR radiation Damage?" Rohit said as he finally jumped out of the Jeep and bent over with his hands on his knees, making retching noises.

Sarasvati narrowed her eyes.

"I TOLD you to wear sunscreen – SPF 130 minimum”

"oh .. oh.. you speak as if you KNEW this was going to happen!" He paused and added “wait did you actually know this was going to happen?” He asked 

“What? No, of course not. I am a scientist not an astrologer. How would I know?” She asked fiddling with the instruments ``but it was amazing wasn't it?” 

"I can't believe you" he said sounding angry and then with a real note of panic he added

"you have a weird rash on your neck and your forehead"

He made to sweep aside her hair when she jumped as if burned

"Hey back-off touchy" She extended her hands to maintain distance between them “Let us go to the college lab, we have computer time reserved for this week. We need to get all of the data processed.” She said touching her neck gingerly and observing her neck exploratorily. “Oh and yeah you also have some of those rashes on your hands'' 

“What?” He exclaimed looking at his forearms in dismay “No no no this is bad we were surely exposed to some radiation. we have to get to the hospital to see whatever this is”

“Really you think this is serious?, I don't know, it seems like just some rash.” she said turning to him “Besides I can't wait to get my hands on this data” she almost pleaded. She would never normally plead with him but when it comes to health he was almost immovable.

Rohit had crossed his arms and was ready with a rebuttal 

“No.. listen. Dr Shekhar would be there at the college lab and we would take his opinion. He is a doctor” she said. Quiet pleased with her idea.

Rohit opened and closed his mouth, unable to say no. He gave it a thought and then finally nodded. “Ok fine let's consult this doctor of yours and then the lab.” 

“Great I will message him that we are coming” 

***

Doctor Shekhar turned out to be a nervous-looking man with gray peppering his otherwise stark black hair. After a long suffering sigh muttering something akin to ‘not that kind of doctor’ he gave them both a once over and a diagnosis.

 

“I don't know what the two of you have been doing, But this looks like frostbite. it's not tender so no worries, but if it doesn't go away in a few days then report to the dermatologist at the city hospital and don't trouble me” He said in a hard to hear mumble.

"Don't you want to know how we got the bruises?” Sarawati asked and he responded with a tired expression. “No” He said, it was the very first clearly enunciated word “What you two do in that Jeep of yours is your prerogative” he said with his hands raised and an affronted expression.

Saraswati’s eyes widened along with Rohit’s mortification

“It's not like that”

“Absolutely nothing like that between us” 

They said almost simultaneously, jumping to make Shekhar jump from his conclusion.

“This has an absolutely scientific backstory” she said pointing to her neck and shekhar looked tired all over again 

“Ok ok forget all that - we just want someone else to know what we saw and corroborate please come to the data processing center with us”

Sarasvati was glad she had come to Dr Shekhar. He was the most clear minded senior scientist she had befriended at this place. They made their way through the empty corridors and courtyards to the data center. Most graduate students have gone home to their regular lives and the college bore a deserted look save for the janitors and the stragglers.

Sarasvati had her own server space and computers she had rented for the month. Sarasvati's dream of a fully functional lab in the heart of Rajasthan was on hold till she proved her worth to the Overlords of Geomagnetism at the IIG(Short for Indian Institute of Geomagnetism) where she worked as a junior research fellow.

 

Rohit followed Shekhar and Sarasvati inside the dedicated workspace carrying all the disparate equipment from the desert 

“Uh Sars? Where do I keep these?” He asked huffing from the climbing up 3 storeys “and is someone going to steal their elevators? Why do they close after sundown? And why am i the only one carrying all this heavy duty stuff” 

"Ok don't start with your complaints now. if you would learn how to work the instruments you will get some real work.” She extracted the gopro-esq camera from the pile in his arms. “Link up the spectrometer to the server, the readings will take half an hour to download; meanwhile, I will get the camera linked to the computer." Saraswati said without pausing for breath

 

"How come you always get to do the fun stuff?" Rohit started linking up the whatever-meter to the server.

 

"Dr. Shekhar" Saraswati took a scholarly pause for emphasis "as you know my research is about the geomagnetic fields of Thar and their patterns.

 

"Mostly boring standard work" Saraswati waved around her hands "We analyze the differences in the contours and chart them in the magnetic map. I added a variable in the form of sun-storms, and I saw that the magnetic fields change during solar storms."

 

“I thought you were a geologist?” He asked 

“Geophysicists - stars, asteroids, gravity, magnetism. All part of my research”

She said while booting up the server "its very niche work. Anyways No one at the insti has shown any excitement, I am trying tooth and nail to get a bigger grant by trying to prove the impact. In a month, I will be fighting with the university grants commission to expand my research, until suddenly today we almost lost our equipment to the sandstorm today. Now if that was not a big enough concern. We experienced something that is so strange that I can't even begin to explain it, much less set timelines on how long it might take for me to understand it.

 

“Bad news boss - The wiring is fried in these” Rohit said with hands on his hips, The age old position one takes when contemplating an annoying conundrum.

Saraswati closed her eyes “Damn it Rohit!”

“Not my fault” he said raising his hands

We’ll deal with it later. Let's look at the footage and the Magnetic field detector readings.

They pored over the readings and found out that nothing was right and they were all losing their minds. 

After hours both of them sat with their hands in their heads and Rohit was snoring on an office chair.

“So let's paraphrase - you have no magnetic field of the sun for 10 seconds, you have no plasma readings for 10 seconds and the footage shows what looks like the horsehead nebula at an alarmingly close distance” Shekhar pretty much mumbled through his hands.

“This is something else saraswati” He said finally enunciating clearly. 

Sarasvati nodded “What do you think?, I mean I know what you just said implies we weren't inside the solar system for 10 seconds. But is that even possible? Is this a big cosmic joke?” 

It was a deep and terrifying question to be asking so late at night. Somewhere above her the stars strewn in the night sky twinkled and beckoned her to try her luck again, somewhere near her rohit mumbled in his sleep and Dr Shekhar suggested she sleep on it.

The computer beeped telling her that all data was now synced with the main IGI server.