Awasthy recalled

Awasthy fixed his eyes on the horizon in front of him. His voice became heavier. He went into deep thoughts recollecting his days when he used to work with Susan. His eyes continued to remain fixated beyond the horizon.

A group of researchers is working on methods of advanced human-computer interactions in a giant laboratory. Susan Kar has a team of six scientists working with her. Susan Kar is a middle-aged lady, a child prodigy. She was having white-colored hair with slightly wrinkled skin, face long as her sentences but eyes small with slightly curved black eyebrows.

Susan Kar was about to start her inaugural address to her team. She from time to time delivers addresses divided into two categories i.e. Long addresses which are meant for all her team members to keep them motivated and Short addressed which is only for team members when they meet her individually. While the Long addresses are two-way mode of communication, Short addresses are only one-way mode of communication she tells (read yells) and her team members have to listen. Today it was her Long address:

'Dear team members, this group wanted to overcome the limits of traditional keyboard-mouse based interaction to a system where the computer itself reads the state of mind of the user, interprets it to perform tasks accordingly. Similarly for the output instead of a command-based system a graphical interface with human-face could be used who can talk to the user much in the same way as humans interact with each other in their day to day conversations. The computer will know about what the user wants and most of the tasks the computer should be able to do on its own. It is going to be the next technological revolution. It could probably reshape the relationship of mankind with machines. Is there anyone of you who can help us achieve our dream.'

Susan placed both her hands on her waist pressing the formal white shirt. Team members replied that they are with her. Everyone applauds and the address ends.

Awasthy blinked for a moment, adjusted him in the seat and continued:

Susan Kar is sitting in her office at Bell labs. The office is bigger than everyone else's on her team. The big table is adorned with a glass top lying in the center of her office room. Bits of papers which are slid below the glass appeared floating due to its high refractive index. The dustbin underneath the table has been filled with shards of research papers Susan did not find worthy of her recommendation. The white colored door is as expressionless as her face. She is going through the latest clips of Google news on her computer sipping her lemon tea.

'So hot..,' she tells herself. She browses through the news items thinking about why there is nothing great in the news section. Everything in the news section is nothing but the same old thing taken over from the recent tweets of rich and powerful people. Susan is no less than disturbed with a knock at the door.

It is Ramesh Awasthy, a young member of her team. An Indian ex-pat who has come to the USA for Ph.D. and then remained there ever since. A tall dark handsome guy with an accent that everyone recognizes as Americanized Indian while others recognize as Indianized American. Dressed in his crispy formals Awasthy checked whether his white shirt is tucked in his black pants properly, indentations of his hair have not changed since he stood up from his seat.

'Come in.'

Awasthy enters into the office of Susan Kar. Before Awasthy says anything Susan asks about his progress.

'What's exactly you did in the last few weeks?'

'I made a new type of cursor. A computer cursor which can speak .. not only speak but understand and perform.'

'What all can it understand and what can it do?'

'Everything .. everything that a normal human being can do. It understands language and converse with the user. Once it is given the needed administrator privileges it can perform whatever tasks the user wants. Most tasks it can perform without the user even instructing about it. Very similar to what you said in your Long address.'

'What... Long address.. '

'Well Dr. Susan.. the address where we had the opportunity to hear from you.'

'..it was a motivational address though a long one. Dr. Awasthy. Where is the code, can you demonstrate?'

'Yes, it's all in this USB drive.'

Awasthy puts USB into the desktop of Susan Kar. Awasthy clicks on the program file named cursor_code in the USB folder. After a few seconds a long vertical white bar decorated with much smaller horizontal bars at the top and at the bottom appeared. A small pair of eyes appear out of both sides at the top bar. A little pair of hands about one third from the top and two feet from the bottom bar appear.

'This is the splash screen of my program,' Awasthy tells Susan after she gets a glimpse of his new cursor code.

'Ok.. then ?'

'Wait..'

Another window opens on the screen with menu options of <Language>, <Edit Cursor Design>, <Volume Control>, <Speed of animation>, <Redo>, <Undo>, <History>, <Font Size>, <About Me>, <Check for Upgrade>. Below the top menu there were the menu options, below the menu options was the WorkSpace very much like a page in the word document.

'Blank?' Susan gets curious.

The white vertical bar collapses into a small black bar with a similar but scaled-down in size and comes up on the top left corner of the new window. The new window was an instance of WordPages, the word processor on that computer.

'Susan, this is the Cursor Program which we are looking for. The next cutting edge invention of computer technology. The earlier breakthroughs in computer technology came in the areas of hardware or networking but this advancement comes from the field of computer-human interaction, an advancement which has the capability to disrupt the market.'

'But so far it has not done anything apart from-,' Susan abruptly cut her own sentence, 'Frowning... Dr. Awasthy .. just joking.. '

In the meanwhile, the cursor changed expression by raising its eyebrows.

'Dr. Awasthy.. ask him who am I?' said Susan pointing at the Cursor with a pencil.

'You are Susan Kar chief of Group 2 specializing of human-computer interface. A graduate of MIT and a doctorate of both MIT and Caltech. You have worked with tech giants like IBM, Google and now you are working at her own Susan Research Labs launched three months back. Your educational background is two PhDs. Your strengths are that you can eat at any time and work at any time. Your weaknesses are-.' The Cursor wrote on the WordPages.

'Ok stop.. I got it. It knows so much about me... It is brilliant work Dr. Awasthy. I need to get into the code and understand it. I shall call you later.' Susan said with a raised head holding her pencil in between hands.

Awasthy leaves the office of Susan Kar.

As soon as Awasthy left Susan opened the code of the Cursor program in the USB and started editing the code of the cursor program.

Mega-event

All the leading experts of computer science from academia, industry, as well as individual enthusiasts, have gathered in the Exotica Halls in the center of the city. The local senator Ronal Stump has also arrived in his Limousine. The event management company called Exotica had arranged the event. All the guests have arrived on a personal invitation. The invitation said like this:

'You could not attend the announcement of the discovery of the Aeroplane. You could not attend the discovery of the first computer, but now you have the opportunity of attending an event which will change history and create a new future. Don't miss.'

Susan arrives with Awasthy at last and climbs the dais. The invitees are eagerly waiting on their seats for the announcement. The anchor welcomes the guests including the chief guest-the local senator and invites Susan to the podium.

The lights of the Exotica hall get dimmed slowly except at the podium where Susan is once again welcoming all the guests for gracing the event with their presence. She also welcomes all the viewers who are watching this Mega Event online. She begins:

'This is the day which is going to be remembered for centuries. Another great invention of science has come through. This invention will enable human society to transform its economy, education, transport, entertainment, industrial production and whatnot. This invention is so powerful to propel mankind into the next industrial revolution. And all of this was possible with the help of Dr. Awasthy, a bright talented, diligent, well informed zealous computer scientist. With the help of Dr. Awasthy I was able to create this new invention.'

The last sentence of Susan pierced into ears of Awasthy like an arrow breaking apart his trust of Susan. Hiding his anger behind his smile he looked at Susan scornfully. Susan smiled back at him while continuing her oration. Awasthy's mind wanted to leave the stage but his body waited for the right time.

Susan has just completed the oration and has invited the attention of viewers for the demonstration of the new invention.

Sound of sparks came from the mike of Susan tripping its sound. The lights of the auditorium brightened slowly. Susan repeated her words loudly but without a microphone no one could hear anything. A well-built man in black formal coat comes on the stage, snatches the microphone from Susan and announces:

'Today's event has been canceled. The subject of the event has been declared classified. You may please leave the auditorium one by one.'

The curtains start to come down and the guests start leaving discussing among themselves the possible reasons behind the cancellation. A guest whispers in the ears of his wife that most probably this was an announcement about invisibility. She replies that this could also be about faster than light travel. Another guest guesses that it could have been about zero gravity that's why it has been classified.

After everyone leaves, the black coat-wearing man on the stage asks for the inventor of the technology. Susan immediately claims that some of the code has been developed by Dr. Awasthy but it is not greatly insignificant. All heads turn towards Awasthy but he is not traceable anywhere.

At the place of no direction

'Dr. Awasthy why did you disappear in between the event,' Susan asked while increasing the speed of her vehicle.

'Which event you are talking about. That was foolishness. I asked you not to hold it. First we needed to build the right atmosphere and then only go public about it. And for your question about why I left.. you took all the credit yourself even without writing a single line of code. So, I was not needed at all.'

'Dr. Awasthy... I was the boss and I gave enough credit to you. I edited the code written by you, made it speedy and efficient so that it is at least presentable before the world.'

'Presentable, huh. I was still working on it. I would have made it perfect the way I wanted. That's why they say you need intelligence even to copy from someone.'

'I tried to do exactly that but somehow Government agencies got to know. They captured all the source code and destroyed it.'

'They will never destroy the treasure of the millennium. You did not have a vision for the path-breaking research our team was doing. After the debacle of the Mega-event, I have to run away from place to place re-build my career all over again which was at its peak back then.' Awasthy came closer to Susan leaning his head.

Megan decided to interrupt. She raised her hands pushing Susan and Awasthy away from each other who had come closer during the argumentation, 'Well I understand both of you have differences about the past but please concentrate on the present.'

'I also created the entire BitConstitution, the rules of the world of cursors.' Don't you forget.' Susan defended herself while applying a sudden break to avoid a boulder.

'Megan you still do not know. She was trying to perfect the code and in the end she created another huge problem. Some problems are not avoidable unlike this boulder.'

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