RAM FELT A SENSE OF DREAD RISING ALL AROUND HIM.
Em was in the middle of informing Ram about her observation on Sandhya and Chandra. How she suspected that any one of them could be the culprit they were looking for, the one that was trying to hypnotize or monitor him.
But then as if she were a computer program whose screen froze at first due to a glitch but started to show various images or code quickly, one after other, often one image overlapping with previous one, she displayed abnormal reaction, finally asking Ram about how he felt when Sandhya and Chandra's gazed at each other affectionately.
What was going on?
Was she really been hacked, or her new freedom that she gotten from him, the emotional baggage as well as others had burdened her?
Ram didn't know.
Ram didn't think he remember seeing her behaving like she did now. There might be one possibility that every time Em's glitch happened, their enemies might have hypnotized him.
But Em lived inside of Ram, she couldn't exist few feet away form him. Ram didn't know how or where she were inserted into him when the Old Man had transferred his powers. How can his enemies find that part of his body and install a glitch or virus or hack Em?
Em was an A.I. and he believed that she had many subroutines within her to monitor such changes. But as far as Ram knew, she hadn't observed any of them.
Were his enemies successful in installing a glitch or virus as he had suspected?
Ram had so many questions and not enough answers.
What should he do now?
He couldn't directly ask Em.
She was already emotionally burdened after Ram rejected her request to change her appearance after she found out that Emily Roxane was an illusion Aunt El created to entertain him. She didn't exist in real world.
She then started to rebel against him, doing things that would infuriate him or make him almost lose control.
If he were to inform her about this, Ram was worried that she would lose her sanity, or at least an A.I. version of sanity.
Should he consult Aunt El about his?
No, he didn't think so.
This issue was more larger and complex than either of them.
That left him with informing all the elders who were involved in training him. Even though there might be a chance that one of them might be either their enemy or were monitoring him for their own purposes, he still had to do it.
But they had many other concerns that demanded their attention other than training him.
In case where Em really had been hacked, then there might be a chance that even their assistants could be hacked.
Even if that were not the case, they would make sure that none of their assistants were hampered with, and ultimately that leading them to remove the glitch or virus from Em.
So he called for the elders.
Before any of them could express their displeasure, Ram informed them about what happened with Em.
After discussing for few minutes, Elder of Air said, "We will have to extract Em from you and run intense tests upon her before we could decide if there was anything that was wrong with her. Meanwhile, you would be unconscious," they said and injected him with anesthesia.
Soon, Ram lost consciousness.
***
When Ram gained consciousness, it was the next day.
He was all alone in the room where he had been when he woke up and find Aunt El in disguise and though she were Elder of Air and he tried to convince her not to kill him.
Where were they ? Had Em really been hacked and they realized that even he was infected by her and they decided to isolate him from others as if he had contracted a deadly virus that could wipe them all out? Or had they discovered that he were an alien and they are doing this as a necessary precaution?
Ram scoffed at himself.
No, if he were an alien and they did this to confine him, he had already met with them and they should confine themselves like this.
He was getting way to nervous and his head was swirling with so many questions theories that his head started to ache.
As he was imagining answers for all of them in his own way, Ram was hyperventilating.
Someone opened the door of his room and he was heaving loudly.
As Aunt El appeared in front of him, Ram forgot about everything and he ran towards her and threw his arms around her, hugging her like his life depended on it.
Ram heard a curse followed by a tingle that spread all over his body and soon, Aunt El hugged him back.
"Boy, what are you so worried about?" he asked.
He told them his theories and she gave him a nervous chuckle.
"You really thought of yourself as an alien? If I knew you would think to such extreme, I would've stayed by you all night," She said, while patting his back.
Ram felt himself calming down, he remembered the times when he had hugged her in the past and soon, warmth spread all around him.
Even though the whole world was against him, if Aunt El was there to protect him, he would stay calm and face them.
After he broke the hug, they sat at the edge of the bed.
He wanted to ask her about how Em was, but he was unable to bring himself to say her name out loud. "What happened?" he asked instead.
Aunt El looked nervous and that made Ram breathe in short bursts. She took a deep breath, put her hands on his shoulders and stared into his eyes. They were filled with warmth and Ram calmed down. "I know what I am about to tell you might be shocking to you. It's better if you prepare yourself," she said.
Ram's heart pounded and he couldn't bring himself open his mouth. He nodded his head.
Aunt El squeezed his shoulder. "We have checked Em in all of the ways that we know, we ran tests against her, even put her under a very thorough Virus Protection Program. Heck, we even analyzed the glitch by feeding it into the simulation many times again and again. We couldn't detect anything. She was perfectly alright.
"If we hadn't seen the recording of her glitch, we would've thought that she were safe. But the glitch made all the difference and we can't decide whether Em is safe for you or not. We discussed amongst ourselves and decided to shutdown Em till we find anything concrete," she said.
Ram was shaking his head, his fists clenched. His heart started to pound so loud that it was all he could hear for the moment. But all of his attention was on their decision to shutdown Em. "NO! You shouldn't do this to her. She's Em after all. She had served the Old Man, your father and also other Elders as well. There was now way that she was in the fault here. If your scientists couldn't find out the reason for the glitch or the virus that had impacted it, then you should hire someone who can detect it. You have pretty big connections right. Can't you do anything about it?" Ram asked.
Aunt El sighed. "I know that Em is your best friend. And also the fact that she had served many Elders earlier to you. But you were the first one to give her the freedom and she was emotionally unstable.
"She started to behave as if she were small kid and was even rebelling against you. We don't know whether it was the result of her being an old A.I. or because of the glitch.
"Even though we shutdown Em, she would still be inside of your head. She would just be sleeping. And the way to activate her again is within our hands. So don't try to do anything funny. Until we found what could be wrong with her, we will not power her up," she said.
"How are you going to do it if she were asleep?" Ram asked.
"Don't worry we have made a duplicate copy of her in our lab equipment and as we are speaking, we are testing it thoroughly. If we find anything wrong with her, we will fix her and if it worked, we will update Em with the fix and power her up. Until then, promise to me that you wouldn't do anything funny. Please keep yourself in check, you have to trust me and focus on your training," she said.
When Ram didn't reply, Aunt El sighed "I did the best I could. If you had approached me alone, we might have isolated her for the time being and ran tests privately. We would have found the glitch and also the fix. But now…" she trailed off. "All I can say is that I am sorry. Trust me and get ready to train with Elder of Water," she said.
Ram hated himself.
If only had he informed Aunt El before informing others, this wouldn't have happened.