And the Clock was Ticking
Mani M. Manivannan
September 13, 2013
The magistrate was used to these late night knocks at his door. That is the price one pays if one is the only authority who can grant last minute stays of execution for the death row convicts. Desperate lawyers would try every trick in the book to keep their clients alive for a few more minutes of their miserable lives.
He folded his lungi in half and threw a towel over his shoulders and walked to the door. It was two in the morning. He sighed. As he opened the door he saw the jail superintendent and a distraught looking young man.
"Sorry for waking you up in the middle of the night your honour. This young man claims to be a professor and a Presidential Scholar at the C. V. Raman institute. He has an incredible story to tell and I need the sound judgement of someone of your calibre to do the right thing."
"Very flattering" said the magistrate. "Come in and make it quick. And it better be good or I am throwing both of you out."
"Pardon me your honor" said the young man. "Sorry for disturbing you this late but you have to stop the execution of the four death row convicts if you want to save the world."
The magistrate was irritated at this lunacy and turned to stare at the superintendent.
"Professor, tell the magistrate what you do at the institute."
"Your honor, I work on a top secret project for the government to communicate with the people in the future and I just had a breakthrough."
The magistrate was getting impatient.
"Sir, your name is bigger than that of King Solomon for the people of the future and you are the symbol of wisdom to them."
"Go on young man, there is only so much flattery one can withstand at this time of the night."
"Sir, the people of the future were desperate to communicate with us. It seems that one of the four convicts will go on to invent a 'Nuclear Quencher' that can extinguish any nuclear bomb after serving time.
Supee looked at the magistrate with a quizzical eye.
The professor continued. "All four will serve a life sentence, learn a lot during their jail time and try hard to pay their debt to the society. And they help each other towards this goal."
"And if they are all executed, earth's time line is so warped that a global thermonuclear crisis wipes out the planet."
The magistrate looked at the young man with incredulity.
"Your honor, all lives are interconnected and each has a purpose. Our own beliefs tell us that even asuras had a purpose in God's plan."
"Professor, that may have been true. But don't forget that each of them was killed by the Gods. Our Gods were quite fond of death penalty."
"Your honor, that may be true. But today, you hold the future lives of untold billions humans and other living things in your hand. You just need to stay the execution until I have a chance to convince the appeals court. You need to make the call."
"Can we let the vengeance of collective conscience overcome our humane nature and deny these evil men a chance to reform and actually save billions of lives?"
"You decide" said the professor.
The clock was ticking.
