Sometimes, scientist's minds are very complicated. They fail to see things in their simplicity.
Pod Dharma is the oldest and most significant pod in timekeeper history. It appears poor in wealth, but it is very rich in heritage.
Even if all of timekeeper history is shrouded in myth, there is something many know about Pod Dharma. That it is the pod of the 'Royal Family'.
In other words, pod Dharma is the pod of King Adharma, the founder of timekeepers.
The reason excellent geniuses like Nate and Anita were given as mere tutors to a child was because the heir of pod Dharma is very significant. Nate and Anita were mere children. Even masters from Level 2 used to teach Aniket in his so-called 'home tuitions'.
A pod with such a deep heritage and history naturally has many secrets. Aniket had twisted his bum and jumped down the basement levels ever since he was a toddler. After some effort, he was able to find some good things.
The virgin harbour was one of those things. But it scared his mothers. So he was hit by them. Aniket had never been spanked by his mothers, so being spanked made him remember the location even better.
The thing spacekeepers call a virgin harbour had been called by another name in pod history.
Entrance to Hell.
The name cannot be said to be metaphorical. Aniket spent most of his childhood years sleeping by the ridge in the underground caverns, watching white apparitions flow in the abyss under pod Dharma.
Even five hundred years later, this would be the largest, most vivid virgin harbour in the world.
As the basin that connects to nine shadow realms, the virgin harbour pod Dharma possess is clearly the greatest in the world.
However, in those days, shadow realm had not been discovered. Even Aniket who played in the virgin harbour did not know anything about it.
He only heard from his mothers that he was watching souls queued up for judgement in the underworld. A certain three year old was not only not afraid. He was sceptical!
He wanted to find out the truth throughout his life. But as though it had become the final frontier, this was a battlefield Aniket never could conquer.
Presently, he received the message from Anita as he stood over the same ridge. He watched the apparitions pass underneath him with a lethargic speed.
He brought out an instrument called sulam one of his mothers used. It is in its most basic form an instrument used to embroider. But his mother Mariaka used to use a much bigger one with a leaf shaped head and insert into his tongue. It was some sort of religious ritual they used to do in a temple. It never hurt at all while doing it. But it would hurt a lot for days afterwards.
His moms used to fight a lot because of that. But mother Mariaka was very strong. She always won the fight. It was just that she wanted a good impression in front of Anita. She never took him to the temple again after Nate and Anita came home.
Presently, Aniket brought out a sulam that was as long as his hand. The leaf shape at the end of it symbolises both the needle's eye and thread. This thread is the thread of perception. A long and unbroken chain, God's.
It was a religion instrument and was not sharp. Aniket slowly sharpened it using his metal sharpener. It nearly took all day.
When he was done, he took off his shirt and slowly measured the position of his heart. Aniket's heart was not at the same place as normal people. Sometimes, even he didn't remember the exact position.
In his childhood, it used to be behind the sternum, right in the middle of the ribcage. It used to make him feel very constricted, but his moms didn't want to take the surgeons' opinion to operate. The doctors aren't familiar with Aerog physiology, so it is expected they will bring in all kinds of experts and make it public knowledge about the world's only Aerog twin. Timekeepers have clandestine operations. Letting medical records leak before he even started was out of the question.
So they simply taught him to be calm. Each mom had her own method to make him calm. One used science, one taught him music. One put the sulam in his tongue, presumably to stop him from rambling.
Of course, none of that worked, until Nate secretly took him away and had the doctors remove a rib. At that time, Nate was pretty young and was also afraid of pod Dharma's influence. Even Anita didn't know about this. Nate would bring out the rib and joke to cheer him up, 'Nikki, look, it's your wife!'
'My wife?!' Anita was here?
'That's right. It's your wife, Eve. Take care of her.'
Never joke about Genesis to the son of three artkeepers. Aniket went home and waved his rib triumphantly. He boasted about his wife supporting her husband, blah, blah, blah. After what felt like thousands of years trying to be calm, he was rapacious. He couldn't feel his heart at all!
So Mariaka took the help of her sisters and cast the rib into a tall sulam. They broke it into thirty-two pieces with the tip of the needle being the symbolic last piece. Afterwards, they threatened the brat to have intercourse with it. Since he's now 'married'.
Aniket boldly said that he will! Even before Anita whose pod he may enter after growing up.
No one ever knew how much Aniket loved that stupid rib. Because it left him, he could breathe for the first time in his life. He could feel normal and happy. He also always loved Nate like a son loves his father because of this.
Having ascertained the position and checked the spacetime coordinates of his parents, Aniket nodded and threw up the sulam before he caught it with his hand.
"Wife, let's have intercourse."
He inserted the sulam slowly into his heart, through the gap created by the missing rib.
As expected, it didn't hurt at all. Just like making love.
Pity, they were both virgins, but the wife seemed to take all the pain. She struggled to breathe. Grit her teeth to swallow the scream inside her throat.
There were tremors, palpitations, shocks and discharges. Blood. Just a little. But it scared Aniket.
Poor wife.
Why is it that he didn't feel pleasure at all? Asking the wife for permission and getting a nod from her, Aniket caught the red ruby leaf, the eye of perception on the sulam. He pulled out and breathed.
Then he plunged.
He shivered. This must be the thing they call sexual pleasure.
Wife, check out.
Or should I call you husband because you fill me inside and out? Aniket laughed. The heart's position must have changed again. Aniket couldn't feel it as usual.
So he let the husband make love. Poor husband. Must not be reading my submission.
He keeled over and accepted the sulam into his heart. The moment the tip pierced the back, his body stopped moving.
What a satisfactory climax.
He ejected himself out of the chute. Brought out the whip. Ready for round two.
Aniket walked himself into the virgin harbour.
***
Guard Lan researched the Hell King's videos in his spare time. There was a lot of spare time since there are no problems in the World Prison at all. No equipment to be changed, no riots, no emergencies.
It had been a few months since T.K left the prison. The guard regiment expected things to get back to how they were. Not a single prisoner went out of line, however. Instead, everyone was exhibiting symptoms of mental illness. They were all assailed by the same nightmare of the Hell King dragging them to the underworld and punishing them.
Meanwhile, the Hell King was posting pictures of babies in his prison media account. It was unclear how he managed to spread the seed while in prison and even more unclear, what kind of torture looking at cute little things was supposed to be. Truly raised everyone's hackles.
The Hell King was an enigma to all, but for some reason, no one dared to look into him. Not even the guard regiment. When Lan heard he was a timekeeper, his three world views had smashed.
'What is a timekeeper?' he asked himself, numbly, many a times.
This question itself was hard to answer. The easy thing was watching videos.
Wrong.
There are many horrific videos on the internet of real life situations. Lan often brings his popcorn with them. This time, he only brought the bag. Whether to hyperventilate or to puke, paper bags have long proved their worthiness.
Luckily, there were some videos of Hell King that can still be watched. All videos of him have been compiled over twenty years by the entire regiment, and some prisoners in the media lab. The only ones that didn't make Lan nauseous were of two kinds. Those in which he practices martial arts. Not the whip. Whip made his stomach jitter badly. The other kind were of the times he spent in the women's prison.
These were…a little kinky. To be fair, the timekeeper was sent to the women's prison to help himself. From what Lan gathered, the man did not avail this option until after half the sentence had passed. Understandably, his preferences should've acquired some kinks.
There are few countries in the world that now have the death sentence. Which is why, even though the World Prison was very large, only one of the seven sections was a death row section. Also the Hell King's favourite section. He spent his Sundays there with quite the relish.
The women's prison can directly be reached from this section. There aren't even any gates or barricades.
Only, the virgin harbour lies in between.
No man had ever braved crossing the virgin harbour without a time folder. Also called a pocket watch for convenience. There aren't any working pocket watches in this era. Mechanical science itself has changed a little after folding space and Dignified Realm became the new reality