Seeing Red

Nothing ever really changed on Cerise. 

The sky was a fiery orange in every direction. A uniform red sea of rock stretched from horizon to horizon, almost uninterrupted, except for free standing stone hills that erupted from the surface on occasion. These hills, sometimes hundreds of metres tall, did not look like anything produced by blind geological forces. Thousands of granite steps folded and locked together to form one intricately patterned hill. Anywhere but on Cerise, one would think them abstract monuments to a forgotten race of giants. But here, their geometric precision was natural, and did nothing to detract from the timeless permanence of the world around them.

Nothing quite changed on Cerise, except for the monsters.

The exterminator was looking at one right now. Lying flat on his stomach, he peered through the telescopic lens briefly again. Yes, it was definitely a yuni. It was roughly the size of a horse, but that was where the similarities ended. Every inch rippled with powerful muscle, where it was not covered by a near impenetrable scaly armour. Between fissures in the plates, two metre spikes would be propelled like bullets, if the creature felt threatened. And this was all what he could see of the back of the beast, because if he was looking at the front of it, he would be dead in a second.

The digital watch on his wrist beeped numbers at him. (The exterminator insisted on calling it a watch even though checking the time was what he did the least with it.) Eighty two metres it said. The yuni’s mace like tail swished once, as it scanned for prey. 

He could take it out with a bazooka from this distance if he wished, but then he wouldn’t have it to protect himself from something bigger and deadlier than yunis. And yes, such things existed. He continued to crawl forward.

Sixty metres. Beep. 

Fifty metres. Beep. 

Forty four metres. The watch beeped something different, a lower frequency tone - an alarm. He was too close.

“Alright, alright,” he told himself. 

He had heard of exterminators being ripped to shreds before they could aim an already loaded gun and let a shot off. The statue like creature in front of him was deceptively quick. Taking a deep breath, he fell into an almost deathly stillness. His forefinger tensed, ready to pull the trigger.

And then suddenly, he felt, rather than saw a movement off to his right. The exterminator had no time to see what it was because, in a blur of motion, the yuni had swivelled around and was looking at him directly. He resisted the urge to shield his head from the inevitable barrage of spikes. It would make no difference. Instead, he ignored the whizzing and clanging of the flying missiles all around him, and slapped a button on his skin suit to switch to the bazooka. 

The yuni charged. 

Where one would have expected a face, there was something, but it was hard to call it a face. A lipless, gaping hole where the mouth should have been, was full to bursting with teeth. Where the nose should have been, there sprouted an immense horn. If there were eyes, they weren’t like any he had seen on Earth. But its face was not the most terrifying thing about the yuni.

It was its speed. The yuni had a pair of wings, because of course it did, but it could not really fly. Instead, it combined the lift generated by the wings with the power from its four strong limbs to accelerate to incredible velocities. 

Clawed hooves screeched, and wings like blades swished, louder and louder, until his whole world was nothing but sound. The bazooka clicked into existence by his side. He had no time to aim, but hopefully he didn’t need to. He punched the side of the cylindrical surface of the weapon, and there was an explosion of fire. And then, there was silence.

The exterminator became aware of the thundering of his own heart. It felt like he was about to burst. He watched the yuni disintegrate into chunks of flesh that sprayed in all directions. The watch beeped an upbeat tone. One down, three to go. There was blood, a lot of it, but now, only a second later, he could not see it at all. He knew it was there, but it was so well hidden away in the red gravel and the red rocks, that it might have never existed. The display on his watch told him that he had no bazookas left, and advised that he request an extraction as soon as possible. 

He was safe for now, but he stood there for a long time and stared at the fist sized chunks of flesh that lay all around, as the sky howled at him. There was no wind on Cerise, there would be no drifts of sand that would pile up and bury them away. But nonetheless, when his heart no longer hammered a painful beat in his chest, a long time later, he could no longer see anything but rocks.

___________________________________________________

The exterminator had done this many times before, but something was different this time around. He could feel the beginning of a strange new emotion gnawing at the edge of his consciousness. 

“It’s just like a hangover,” he told himself aloud. You don’t stop going to parties just because you have hangovers the next day. That was all it was - the aftereffects of a nightmarish experience. The yuni would have cut him open in an instant. It was do or die, right? Besides, he was doing this for the greater good, because the future of humanity was at stake. Even in the comfort of his own mind, the grand pronouncement rang hollow. 

He was nearly back at the shelter when he recalled that something had spooked the yuni. It had to have been a lizzo that had unwittingly stumbled into his hunt. Just as the thought occurred to him, he spotted one foraging in the distance. He made a snap decision; he would destroy the nest. While lizzos were usually no more than inconvenient pests, they were hive animals and they had been known to take down exterminators in packs. 

“Better safe than sorry, “ he mumbled.

Unscrewing a tiny pouch attached to his utility belt, he picked up a marble sized something and tossed it in the direction of the lizzo. The creature paused to watch it arc towards the ground, and then continued to forage like nothing had happened. Momentarily, his watch beeped that the lizzo had swallowed the bait. 

He didn’t really need to follow the lizzo, because the nugget that it had swallowed was a smart explosive that would go off once it detected that the lizzo was back in its nest, but the experience with the yuni must have dulled his senses. Scrambling up smooth granite steps, he climbed the hill higher and higher, until his legs began to wobble at the thought of a fatal fall. Presently, a cave opened into the heart of the hill. 

Chittering surrounded him all around as lizzos of all sizes snoozed in warm recesses. A part of his brain half heartedly noted that he was in grave danger. But he only had a moment to observe that the lizzo he had followed dropped its collection of rocks on the cave floor, and that other lizzos - identical in every way, except they were much much smaller, no bigger than chameleons - were crawling towards the stash, when the cave lit up in a flash of light. The exterminator turned and left before the bomb went off. The howling sky masked the unearthly screeching from the cave. Nearly.

___________________________________________________

He was back at the shelter. It was a spartan room, and there was barely any space apart from a bed, a bathroom, a small fridge, and a workstation. The yellow and black logo of Terraforming Corp was slapped on everything from the computer wallpaper to the faceplate of his skin suit. Considering they were the ones arranging his trips to Cerise, it wasn’t that odd. A caption accompanied the logo: “Planet of Monsters”.

The exterminator was still a wealthy man, by any measure. He had made his money by being one of the first to start a grey market interplanetary shuttle service, and he had made a lot of it. One trip to Cerise was a dream for your average Earth billionaire; this was his sixth. He had made a lot of money, but most of it was gone. Suppressed rage simmered under the surface. He sipped a beer as he contemplated his situation.

If he culled two more yunis, Terraforming Corp would reimburse his travel fare. The monstrous face of a yuni appeared unbidden in his mind’s eye, and he shivered. The adrenaline of the hunt seemed like a distant memory. He could try and tag a dino instead, but he put that thought out of his head. He had never heard of anyone even seeing one, let alone tagging one, so that was a pipedream. While a part of his brain coldly worked through the numbers, another part wondered how he had ended up in a situation like this. He had so much money! He had thought he would keep coming to Cerise forever. He had even entertained a vague notion that when the terraforming project was complete, and the first human settlement had sprung up, he would stay and volunteer as a glorified security guard. But that was before today; that was before he had almost died trying to conserve ammo. Was it the sense that he was moments from death that bothered him though, or was it.. was it that a friend’s betrayal had brought him to that edge?

______________________________________

It was a new day, but the term was arbitrary. Cerise always had the same amount of light, a pleasant cloudy tropical illumination that never varied. The sky continued to howl its perpetual lament. He had heard that massive planet wise storms raged in the upper atmosphere hundreds of kilometres from the surface, and the only sign of all that violence was the howling that seemed to come from all directions at once. 

The exterminator checked his watch. He never booked the same map each time, so he could not go off on memory. Green lines lit up indicating the sectors he had already covered. A tiny ticker on the right blinked that he had 42 hours until extraction. He turned left towards an unlit sector.

The rhythmic clomping of his boots on the gravel lulled him into a stupor. Despite his best efforts, his thoughts drifted in a now familiar direction. He chuckled at the irony that the only business partner he had ever truly trusted, even gone as far as calling a friend, the only one he had rescued from crippling debt, the only one he had cared about, had been the one to betray him. He had stolen all of his business, and most of his wealth away from him. Perhaps it was a fitting lesson. In his line of work, the murky semi-legal world of human transport, there were no true friendships, only alliances of convenience. 

“Every good deed is its own punishment.” He chuckled at his own wit.

And yet, he knew deep down that he did not truly believe that. In fact, he had only got into this business as a way of helping a friend who had found herself on the wrong side of the law. 

“What now?” He frowned at the watch. All it ever did was beep and boop, but the exterminator felt like it understood him, and he understood it. Now, it was telling him that he was very close to the edge of the map, and that he had to turn away. He sighed, but complied. Another sector done, and no yunis spotted. How many more trips to Cerise could he afford?

Something glinted in the distance, and nothing should ever glint on this planet. The exterminator instantly fell to his stomach and clicked a button on his skinsuit for his rifle. Scanning back and forth with the zoom lens, he quickly spotted the source. There were only two ways he could ever spot another human being on Cerise, and both were so unlikely that he never planned for it. But it was undeniably a human being that shambled slowly into the crosshairs. It was a pirate.

Annoyance flashed across the exterminator’s face. He had heard about pirates who had somehow missed extraction and been stuck on Cerise for longer than they intended. They survived by stealing from other exterminators. If the pirate spotted him, he would kill or maim him for sure. Yes, he could not see what kind of weapons he was carrying, even through his zoom lens, but.. 

He watched the pirate shuffle and stumble aimlessly. His finger hovered over the trigger. It would be so easy. Pirates were no longer tracked by Terraforming Corp and he was perfectly entitled to kill anything that moved in his map. Besides, if the pirate hung around in his sector, he might mess up his hunts. And he might have weapons and ammo he could use. He snorted and pressed the button to launch a flare instead. The pirate flinched at the light and sound and ran. The exterminator watched him through the lens until he was sure he had crossed over into a different map, and disappeared behind a rock hill.

“Just perfect.” He shouted at his rifle, as if it was the rifle’s fault he didn’t shoot. When it didn’t answer back, he smacked it with his palm and it collapsed back into his skinsuit. All his previous trips had passed without the slightest hitch - there was not even a stray lizzo attack - but this one, the one that he needed most to be issue free, the one after the betrayal that had left him with next to nothing, was just one disaster after another.  

“Ah well, it can’t get any worse, can it?” The sky continued to keen, and he took it for assent. But he was wrong. It would get worse. 

It was the last sector in the map, and he was almost done with it. There was nothing there, no yunis, just a solitary granite stepped hill. He stopped to press a button to confirm extraction. Four hours, the watch beeped back. He was only a few hundred metres away from the shelter, when he spotted a lizzo dashing away in a mad sprint. But the strange thing was, it was not running towards the hill, where presumably its nest must be. It was running away from it. That was when he saw the hill move. 

The world shook. Rumbling that jarred him to the bone threatened to knock him off his feet, but somehow he managed to stay upright as he sprinted towards the shelter. The exterminator swore to himself that if he survived this, he would never again come to Cerise. He was done. He was done. With each planet shattering step, the rumbling got louder, and the dino closer. With each planet shattering step, everything in his eyeline danced a mad dance, rocks rose in the air, stayed suspended for too long, before they fell to the ground. And then they jumped again, higher this time. Distant hills throbbed in sync with the inexorable drumbeat.

And then he was inside the shelter. He curled into a foetal ball until the rumbling and shaking went away, after what felt like hours. A flashing light on his work station told him that there was still three hours until extraction. Calmer now, his brain observed professionally that he had just spotted a dino. All he had to do was report the coordinates, and his trip costs would be waived away.

“I know. I know.” He told his trembling fingers. Instead of doing anything, he opened the hatch to the surface, and sat on his haunches. His watch blinked red warnings, but he ignored it. A lizzo scuttled into view. The exterminator pulled out his pistol, the smallest in his weapons cache, and pointed it at the creature. The lizzo froze.

“So you know what this does, eh?”

A strange feeling gnawed at the edges. He put the pistol away. 

“It’s your lucky day. One of your kind saved my life today. Maybe it was you?” He squinted and peered closer at the beast, that was peacefully scooping up Cerise rock, only a few metres away. It was about the size of a dog, but scaly like a reptile. A frill of tough skin surrounded the monstrosity that was its head. He ignored the teeth, and the claws, and focused on the frill. It was folded away into a saggy pouch at the moment, but he knew that it could flare into a hood twice the size of its head when the creature felt threatened. He knew that already, but what he found interesting was that it was covered with an intricate orange pattern. 

“You are one ugly bastard, you know that.”

“And you could take my leg with one bite, so I have to take you down. But next time. Off you go!” He finished, the last sentence a touch louder. The lizzo paused at the sound for a moment, but then scuttled out of sight leisurely. The exterminator finished his beer, and left the planet.

________________________________

Three months later, he was back, and to the same map. He told himself that it was because of the dino. He hadn’t reported its coordinates, and he wanted to hunt it himself. Bringing down a dino would mean free Cerise trips forever. Terraforming Corp would probably even send him a nice hand written letter thanking him for his services to humanity. 

It would not really be that hard. You did not have to be an expert tracker to follow a building sized creature on a planet that did not even erase footprints, even if said creature could camouflage itself as a hill. And he was a good tracker. On the other hand, if he didn’t take down the dino, he would not only never return to Cerise, but he would likely be in a lot of money trouble. From the richest man in the world - or close enough - to swimming in debt, a tale as old as time.

It would not really be that hard. So why rush? He grabbed a couple of bottles of beer and refilled them with a touch. Snapping open a small foldable stool, he sat down under the flaming sky and sipped beer. Was it really an unchanging world? The atmosphere in Cerise was hundreds of kilometres thick, but the giant red star it was locked to was immensely bright, and close. Surely, if he only tried hard enough, he could spot it? Were the clouds really uniformly thick and opaque? The star was so close to Cerise that it would take up half the sky. He stared, unblinking at a patch of sky, until he was convinced he could see the faintest arc of starshine.

He closed his eyes for a second.

Chunks of flesh rained all around him. Wind - wind? - whipped them into a demonic maelstrom, as rivers of blood rushed in torrents and disappeared into black volcanic rock. The howling sky melted into screeching, and the cave, and burning lizzo children, and his eyes snapped open.

There was a lizzo standing in front of him, less than two metres away. Had he really fallen asleep on the surface of a planet of monsters? The lizzo was so close, he could count the fangs in the gaping maw that passed as its mouth. The frill around its head pulsed, as if in anticipation, but did not flare out. The intricate orange pattern around it was beautiful. Why had he never noticed that?  A part of his brain wondered if this was the same lizzo that had run away from the dino and saved his life, and the same lizzo that had come to see him later. The rational part of his brain scoffed, assuring him that such an occurrence was exceedingly unlikely. Besides, lizzos did not go to ‘see’ anybody. 

He sat as still as he could. “So you are here to get me before I can get you, eh?” he whispered softly. There was no way he could draw a weapon before the lizzo reached him, and strangely the thought comforted him. Perhaps it was not quite comfort, but a lack of tension. He did not have to be on edge anymore, it was out of his hands. 

The lizzo scuttled away, with the chaotic, yet perfectly balanced, gait of a chameleon. The exterminator tried to let out a sigh of relief, but he had not been holding his breath. He wondered about the yunis. Were they pack animals too? He knew their only food source was the lizzos, and the dinos preyed on the yunis, but he wondered what the yunis did otherwise. Did they have elaborate mating dances? Did they even have sexes? Did they even reproduce? The image of the charging yuni was branded in his mind. The whirring blade like wings, perfectly adapted to the planet, cut through the thick air like butter, the cloven hooves that gripped the gravelly surface for maximum speed. Swish. Crash. Crash. Swish. Crash. Crash. A mad symphony, with the howling sky an enthusiastic participant.

Even the hills did not seem as eternal as they used to. Subtle changes in light caused the granite steps to gleam dully. He wondered for the first time how they came to be. Why was he here on Cerise?  His head throbbed and his skin burned with a fever. The exterminator shut the hatch and lay in bed, but his racing thoughts would not slow.

The planet of monsters had an austere beauty. All he needed was to track the dino, shoot a couple of bazookas at it, and he would never have to return again. Even if he could. The planet of monsters was not an unchanging vision of hell. It would only take a couple of hours to track down the dino. It was an absurd video game world of exterminators versus pirates, yunis versus exterminators, dinos versus lizzos, humanity versus monsters, monsters versus monsters, it was all a synthetic lie. Humanity’s saviour - remaking an ugly, cruel world into a golden haven. Revulsion flooded through him, and his stomach clenched into a painful knot. His trustee watch beeped that only an hour remained until his scheduled rest. There was no point heading out now. He drifted into a tortured sleep.

____________________________________

The next day, the exterminator walked directly to the nearest edge of his map, and crossed over. His watch blared warnings, so he ripped it off his wrist and tossed it away. It had been his only companion, but his decision was made. He continued walking in spurts, pausing to scan the surroundings with his most powerful lens, until finally, he spotted the other exterminator. He looked ridiculous in his orange camouflage skinsuit, as he lay flat on the ground, clearly tracking something. Was it his dino? He jiggled the lens until it focused on a yuni in the distance. The yuni hadn’t seen either exterminator yet, and continued to serenely, methodically scan for prey. It was a difficult shot at this distance but he could take down the yuni, and then the other exterminator would have a couple of options. He could shoot him dead, no questions asked, because he was trespassing after all. Or he could agree to negotiate some form of resource sharing with him. 

The exterminator pointed his weapon at the yuni, and pressed the flare button. The yuni was probably too far away to spot him, but he did not care. The yuni started and charged in the direction of the flare, and within moments was out of range of the other exterminator’s weapon. The other exterminator turned his gun towards the direction of the flare, and sprayed bullets wildly, but there was no one there. 

Beyond the Unknown

I did have some solid science fiction speculation behind this one, but it seems to have got lost in the mysticism. And I'm trying to do something I've dodged in the past: portray the protagonist as an emotional entity, and not just someone who unravels a beautiful new world. Caustic criticism is welcome.

It was an important day for the planet, a fact that most of its inhabitants were blissfully unaware of. Amidst the tiny subset who occupied the sprawling mission control centre room however, the sensation was almost heady. There was a palpable, yet indefinable something that hung in the air; a powerful emotion that, to the biased eyes of Ack, seemed to be a mixture of too much euphoria and too little anxiety. Perhaps the secrecy associated with the operation gave these men and women a feeling of shared megalomania; a form of lunacy most dangerous, as its only symptom was a heightened sense of rationality. Perhaps this primal emotion was yet another manifestation of that blasted agon. After all the time and effort the Organization had spent in trying to weed it out, it was still around. He felt the beginnings of an uncontrollable rage. It would soon spread all over his body like a tidal wave, and he would end up doing stupid. He tried to call upon his extensive scientific training to fight it, perhaps with the naïve hope that the anger would simply be cast off as something wasteful. The same logic and the same rationality he had always prided himself on seemed to fuel the rage. Falsehoods! That was all that his logical arguments were. They were all lies! He turned to face the smartly dressed woman seated in front of him.

It was the Age of Space. But this was no space faring generation Carl Sagan would have envisioned. Where was the death knell for religious superstition? Where was the drug that would open minds and heal the world? This was supposed to be the time when the foremost sentient beings of the planet would finally accept the responsibility that status entailed. This was supposed to be the time when humility would rise up and smite down petty parochialism. If there was a plot to this tale, it was one the characters did not understand. The sentients were to finally take the first steps into planetary adulthood. Where had it all gone wrong? More and more people began to ally themselves with the idea of sentient pride. This notion became so widespread that it got a name of its own, a name that carried no traces of its negative origins. Agon. Perhaps this agon was created in anticipation of a first contact. Perhaps it had always been there, subliminal, waiting for the right stimulus. New religions drew on the sentient race’s rightful claim to the vast riches the Universe possessed. Governments launched multitudes of spacecraft into the sky, ostensibly with scientific motives. The truth, and retrospection never lies, was that they waited for War. There were hostiles out there. They only had to seek them out with the right tools.

To the world she was an ordinary space trader. A filthy rich and politically well-connected one, but still she was just another person who had made a fortune off extraplanetary minerals. The media adored her; not only did she possess a delectable holier-than-thou religious persona, but was good looking to boot. She was closer to middle age than youth in reality, but this only seemed to add to her aura, not take away from it. She was perfect, and she was the head of the Organization. The cloudhead-in-chief if you will.

“I know why you requested for this meeting, Doctor. And you know perfectly well that we cannot act on mere hunches. Sorry.” Anyone else would have come across as harsh with that sentence, but not her. Certainly not her. The ease with which she controlled others, her calm, her beauty, everything about her, despite himself he felt the stirrings of an old infatuation. He fought it back. He had waited weeks for this meeting, and he would have his say.

“Well, I cannot emphasize the graveness of the danger we might be exposing ourselves to. The tablet… “

She cut him off. “The tablet speaks of a mythical tale that you established was simply a cover for the complex mathematical data it hid within. They did not want to appear anachronistic in any way, and what better way to do so than cook up a tale of world destruction? The wrath of the Gods is all-powerful and we must atone for our sins.” She smiled sweetly, and the whole effect was to reduce his Ack’s misgivings to adolescent fatalism. But she was so tolerant, wasn’t she? She would forgive him for his indiscretion.

Ack was not done yet. “I agree, madam. But why? The question here is why? Why would they go to such lengths to hide the data? The levels of indirection in the mathematical data were so complex and in such abundance that you are forced to ask the question – What if there is meaning to the story?”

“I’m sorry, Doctor. I cannot help you here. I understand your concerns, but you, of all people, should understand the magnitude of the task we have set ourselves. We cannot fail. We simply cannot.” A slight change in intonation told him that the meeting was at an end. The virulent rage that had been gradually building up in him lately set off on its usual process of delicate seduction. He hid his trembling hands under the polished desk in front of him. He had more to say, plenty more, but he would have to go.

They were believed to be just another group of religious nuts. A drop in the dirty ocean, a face in the noisy rabble, they were mostly ignored by the establishment. At the time when pride in one’s species was at its zenith, these people rejected the agon. They claimed that sentience was the only true law of the Universe, and that it was everywhere. Why do we not see it then? To this they had an easy answer: other sentient races cannot be seen because they lie outside our ‘natural’ laws. If only we look hard enough and long enough, we will eventually find an anomaly. With this hope they turned to the stars. For many, many years they waited and watched. What they sought was not the bustling alien metropolis of the astronomers; instead they looked for the signature of a massive sentience, a slow, brooding power that worked at galactic time scales on the fabric of the cosmos itself. They came to be known as the cloudheads.

Ack walked into the mission control centre. He noticed that he had drawn the attention of a couple of his physicist acquaintances, and waved cheerily back. Once again his conformism disgusted him. Why should he try so hard to keep others happy? Let them see the veil of hopelessness that surrounded him. Let them see him for what he really was. If he was right, what did it matter now? Before his rebellious thoughts could come to any kind of fruition, he found himself distracted by one of the monitors. It showed a feed from the probe’s left panel camera. Twenty three light years away, in the heart of the predicted ‘anomaly’, space looked like anywhere else. Black. Featureless. The huge timer board that hung from the ceiling of the control centre informed him that the probe was in position and would discharge its payload in a little over an hour. A new emotion swept over him. Determination, and a sense of purpose he thought had been irretrievably lost. He would study the tablet one last time.

The evidence came not from the stars, but from the soil of their own planet. It was a piece of clay, a tablet which told the story of a long dead race. It should have been nothing more than a run of the mill archaeological relic, but for a series of incredible coincidences. First was the takeover. The Organization (this was what they had begun to call themselves) had its usual share of wealthy benefactors, like any other cult. One of them was a beautiful young space trader who went by the colloquial tag of Tel. One of Tel’s numerous archaeological consortia had found the tablet, and after exhaustive study concluded that it was nothing more than what it seemed. By way of giving him something to do, Tel handed over the tablet to a young cryptographer at the Organization for analysis. This young man was yet another in the growing group of intellectuals who had been seduced by the cloudheads’ metaphysics. Ack was what his friends called him, and he was one who took his work seriously. He immediately realized, with the mathematician’s eye for patterns, that the system of grooves that covered the tablet were not random. After painstaking work, he uncovered something akin to a scientist’s report. It spoke of a weakness in the ‘vortex’ of existential flux, a weakness that could be broken through with the right amount of energy. The cloudheads had finally found their laboratory, and nothing would stop them from conducting the experiment. They would launch a space probe to the ‘anomaly’ and use it to rip a hole in spacetime. Oh, yes, that would send the other sentients a message.

He studied the tablet in his chambers. Every ridge on the otherwise smooth surface, every scratched alphabet in the story, he knew by heart. He also knew that there were parts of the hidden cipher that had been decoded but not understood. They held the key to his puzzle. Increased sounds of frenzy from the control room tickled his eardrums. It must be nearly time. He began to despair, and wondered whether he should go back to the control centre and just watch the detonation. Then it happened. The only orgasm that the thinking mind can experience: a surge of pure pleasure that accompanies an almost Platonic transfer of new ideas to the scientific theoretician’s saturated brain. He suddenly knew what the story meant. A cold chill washed over him. The Guardians were real. He had to tell the others. He had to, there was no time. They were going to come for them. But, even in the moment of his greatest triumph, he could not totally ignore sensory percepts. The mission control centre had gone completely quiet.

The story the tablet told was not something knew. It spoke of excesses; it spoke of punishment and it spoke of redemption. They had overreached; they had delved into the books of the Gods, they had learnt too much and now they had to atone for it. The Guardians would come and destroy them all for their impertinence. The story, especially after the mathematical secrets on the tablet were unravelled, seemed particularly allegorical. It was ignored. The cloudheads did not quite know what would happen if the ‘anomaly’ was torn apart, but they knew that it would expose the Universe of a higher sentience. Perhaps it would show a Universe in which stars, galaxies, or even groups of galaxies would be the tiniest of its constituents, or perhaps it would reveal an infinity of Universes enclosed within those miniscule entities called quarks. The cloudheads went underground. This was a long term project and needed the utmost secrecy. They certainly had the financial backing; they just needed the right technology. Oh, yes, they were going to send a message, and not just to other sentient races.

Something unexpected had happened. The screens still showed the same dull black swathe of nothingness, but this was not any feed from outer space. The feed was lost to the mission control, on all cameras. The result of the detonation was unknown. What if the probe itself had been destroyed? No one spoke. Perhaps they were all hoping for something to happen that would convince them that years of work had not just been lost in a heartbeat. Ack barely held in check a strange new feeling that threatened to overwhelm him: it was mostly euphoria with a tinge of anxiety. Something was going to happen, and he would be damned if it would happen to all of them. They did not deserve any of it. There was no malice in that thought. It was too late for that. He made his way back to his chambers, just as his brain convulsed in the throes of another magnificent vision.

Plato, and the ancient Greeks would have loved to see what he could see. The Universe was... Ideal. They were everywhere, and everything existed because of them. They were breathtakingly beautiful and immeasurably perfect. Maybe you could call them a source of boundless light, but putting words to his vision would be sullying its infinite purity. It was such a noble thing, he could hardly bear to look at it, but it was everywhere. They were here to take him. How could he ever have thought they meant harm? He understood their purpose. They had to maintain the equilibrium between the levels. Was there somebody who controlled them? Was there a sentience that stitched together the laws of sentience itself? Oh, how perfect they were! He suddenly felt forgiveness. He pleaded with the illuminated nothingness around him. Don’t take the others. Just don’t give them what they want, that should keep the barriers in place. It was always about him. He was the anomaly and he would fix it.

The Return

This story's been written for the annual TheScian science fiction short story writing contest. If you notice any similarities between this one and 'The Last Hour', that's because I adapted some ideas from this story to that one, not the other way round. The main theme of this story had been in the procrastination pipeline for quite some time - deadlines really do work miracles, you know!


When the end came, no one was ready for it.

A slow, staid, patient Earth was rudely interrupted from her ceaseless plodding by something extraordinary, something inexplicable. A chasm had opened up near the edge of the Solar System. It was a rift in space time that would, perhaps, not stand out among the many similar scars the Universe heedlessly sports; nonetheless, it would go on to ravage the spinning rocks that huddled under the light of an average star.

The Earth watched as the little scratch rapidly evolved into a tear. Not in the least bit fussy, it feasted on an endless supply of edibles nearby, eventually becoming so engorged that it started spewing material back into the Solar System. More than a cosmic perversion of excretion, this material, which was almost completely radiation, was a harbinger of death. Spectacular planet-wide storms that could fit a hundred of herself raged across the gas giants. The Earth did her bit in trying to stir up the scurrying ants- freak storms lashed the surface; brutal levels of heat and radiation almost physically pushed back the inhabitants into their dwellings. It did not work. The little people who had built structures millions of times their own size, and had looked into the distant furnace of the birth of the Universe, could not feel the pulse of their own planet. The weather remained a tempestuous beast, and resisted all attempts at domestication. Global warming had once brought the planet to its knees- yet no lessons were learnt. Perhaps they could never be. Meteorologists mumbled about ‘cyclical unpredictability’, a phrase that did not require too much skill at deciphering jargon to identify ignorance. But the human race was too far along, too heady with the knowledge of its own superiority to notice anything wrong. Even fearful whispers that tried to resurrect the ghost of global warming were ignored. That was about when the ozone layer started evaporating.

A dispirited Earth had perhaps underestimated the sheer tenacity of this species. This was after all the same creature that through thick headedness, and occasional well-intentioned stupidity reduced most other creatures to museum artefacts. Human scientists predicted that in five hundred years, a combination of radiation, heat and floods would make the planet uninhabitable. To the Earth’s exasperation, the little people only viewed this as another engineering challenge. They would go underground. They would seal themselves off from the harmful environment outside.

They would launch the Earth out of the Solar System.

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In a roughly circular room, whose walls were mostly transparent except for the section which served as the writing board, sat around twenty people. With some difficulty you could perhaps identify that these were the same human beings that had once swarmed the planet. But evolution, and hundreds of generations underground had been harsh on them. They were tall and gangly in a way that would have seemed painful to surface human beings. They had pale, waxy skins, negligible hair, and fragile, almost child like limbs. You could immediately see that they were not physical people; they had an innate economy of movement that seemed closer to plants than animals. All but two pairs of eyes looked up as the prayer reader sedately walked into the room, swept clutter off the solitary desk, and opened the Zustra. One of these indifferent pairs of eyes belonged to a young man called Marek. He slouched as low as possible in the stiff backed chair and tried hard not to listen to the prayer reader’s monotone. Everything the man said seemed to repeat itself eventually. Today the reader spoke about the divine light, an otherworldly illumination that would save them all from a meaningless existence. Under the pretext of stifling a yawn, he raised a slow hand to his mouth, and from underneath, grinned at a woman two rows away.

This woman, who was known as Bili, had been on several occasions on the verge of dozing off, only just managing to rouse herself each time. She had stolen a handful of surreptitious glances at Marek. Each time he had appeared to have been staring ahead with fierce concentration, a posture which she knew meant the exact opposite. Presently she saw him grin at her, and slowly crook one of his fingers over his thumb in a characteristic gesture. She returned it, and both of them turned to look at the third of their group, a tall, thin (even for them), solemn young man who was sitting in the row closest to the reader. They never could understand Fisek’s fascination with the Zustra; they were alike in so many ways, but Fisek’s obstinate desire to see good in their holy book amused and frustrated them. There was no way they would be able to catch his attention now. They went back to carefully ignoring the reader.

'It has been foretold that a time will come when we will no longer cower under the soil like worms, but rise and reclaim what is our own. There will be signs, yes. The Lord will tell us when we are ready…'

A couple of hours later, the three of them were making their way through a little tunnel that led to their housings. Fisek was unusually cheerful.

‘What about the plan to break in? Don’t you think we should do it today? I know that sentry – he’s a jolly friendly chap. I can talk him into taking a walk with me, I think.”

Marek and Bili looked at each other for a moment, before loudly complaining that, yes, the plan was on, and he would have known it too, if he had not been so busy sucking up to the reader. Nothing could dampen Fisek’s spirits today, though. He had asked a question in the prayer session that the reader had called ‘delightfully profound’. He chose to ignore the barb, and hastily began to formulate plans for their latest adventure.

'Today’s perfect, you know. Even Grandfather won’t be around. Today’s the sleeping day for him.’ Marek said with undisguised glee – his grandfather was known for his age-defyingly keen eyes that had scuppered many an ingenious plan. Bili nodded assent, pointing out that her parents were away on some repair work. While Fisek did not agree outwardly, the fact that he did not disagree, the others knew, was as close to consent as he could get. They thrashed out the final structure of the plan – they would leave just after lunch, when everyone would be resting. They would take the infrequently used tunnel coach, and get down as close to the Temple as possible. As for what they would do next, they came to the conclusion that planning too far ahead was about as useful as trying to dig their way to heaven, and would cross that bridge when it came.

‘I am starving, you know. And we need to rest before we go to the Temple.’ Marek said cautiously. The others frowned but said nothing; lunch was a real chore, and a painful one at that. Human beings’ physical strength had atrophied to such an extent that having food had become a protracted process. Eating too fast, or eating too much was very dangerous and could even result in death; even with sufficient restraint most people required a rest after the action. Marek often joked, to Fisek’s indignation, that the only thing humans did was pray, sleep, have food, sleep, pray, sleep and so on in an endless cycle. Sex was strictly monitored by the administrative council. Again it was an act that could severely exhaust a person; it could only be done with proper legal consent.

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The Temple was a strange thing, seemingly out of place in the world of these underground creatures. It was built of brick, not rock like the other structures; it stood over thirty feet in height, towering over the other structures which rarely, if ever, had more than two levels. The little aerial that poked upwards from the terrace was its highest point; it was so high up, that it was rumoured that standing on it, you could touch the tunnel roof with your outstretched hand. There was another thing about this structure that was unique. It was not spherical. In fact it had a distinct bilinear symmetry which many of its visitors found disconcerting.

Physical distinction is one thing, but the truly remarkable feature of the Temple was that no one really knew what it was for. It was like an outcast that was shunned not out of revulsion, but a fear borne of religion. Most people believed that it was haunted – there were numerous popular stories of how glory seekers had unaccountably perished within its mysterious confines. Youth has an incorrigible recklessness that it wears with pride; Marek, Fisek and Bili had always mentally classified all such tales under the ‘superstition’ column.

‘You know, I am not sure the sentry will take kindly to seeing you two there.’ Fisek pointed out. ‘He knows me, I’ve been here a couple of times, and he thinks that I’m a bit of a vagrant, but a harmless one. I don’t think he’ll think the same of you.’ He winked to take the seriousness out of his words.

Therefore a nervous (and relieved) Marek, and an excitable Bili crouched behind a rock while Fisek walked with what he evidently thought was a casual gait towards the sentry. The sentry looked rather terse and suspicious, and just when the two began to wonder if they would have to do something to rescue Fisek, the sentry cracked a sneaky smile and walked away with him. As they hastened towards the entrance a thought occurred to Bili.

‘What if it’s locked?’

Marek swore colourfully, but there wasn’t too much time to think of an alternative plan. On reaching the rather battered door of the Temple, they noticed that it did not even have a latch. Bili mentally thanked the Zustra and its authors for foisting such a convenient superstition on the populace; it did not for a second occur to either of them that the place might actually be dangerous. The door creaked rustily open.

The room was full of books. Many were stacked in gigantic piles, some even rising twenty feet into the air and appearing to merge with the rafters high above. Others were strewn across the floor chaotically. Even the disorder did not quite manage to give the impression of recent use. What felt like centuries of hardened grit completely muffled their footsteps, and every book was covered with a uniform dust coating. Marek tried to step over the piles, but there were so many that he gave up, and tried not to look at what he was walking through. He felt slightly dizzy; the only book he had ever seen in his life was the printed version of the Zustra, and that too only once. Bili, though seemed to have recovered quickly and was already rifling through a moderate sized pile. She picked out several titles that did not mean anything to her (‘An Evolutionary Study of Butterflies’, ‘In Defence of War’, ‘The Impending Asteroid Catastrophe’), before picking out an exceptionally thick tome called, ‘The Great Project’. Tucking it under her arm, she decided to go and check if Fisek and his new friend were on their way back. They had walked away in the opposite direction to the door; so she stepped out, walked to the edge of the front wall and stuck one careful eye beyond.

To her absolute shock they were only a few feet away. What saved her was the fact the sentry was not looking ahead at that point; he was staring into Fisek’s solemn face, rapt. Fisek, though, saw her, and started. The sentry noticed this, and made an unconscious motion as if to face ahead. Fisek reacted instinctively. He hugged the older man tightly, completely obscuring his view. Bili dashed back into the Temple and dragged a bemused Marek outside. They sprinted like they’d never done before. Their chests complained, and their legs felt like they were on fire, but they were too frightened to stop. They only looked back after reaching the rock, managing a momentary glimpse of Fisek before they fainted from sheer exhaustion.

Bili woke first, into an anxious face that was only a few inches away. Fisek moved away hurriedly, embarrassed, and also a little relieved.

‘So he didn’t see us then.’ Bili said rhetorically. Then something occurred to her, something that had been bothering her from even before she had stepped into the Temple.

‘What exactly did you tell that sentry, that he became all chummy?’

‘Oh that.’ Fisek looked embarrassed once more. ‘I just told him that I knew a good spot for illegal sex.’

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The only book that the trio managed to salvage from their adventure turned out to be a very useful one. It was a book unlike anything they had ever seen. It did not seem to trust itself; every time it made an assertion it offered bundles of facts, figures and quotations to back it up. It primarily detailed the chronological development of an underground network of habitable tunnels to save the human race from what it called the ‘Quantum Anomaly.’ It took a while for them to realize that the book was talking about them, or at least their ancestors, and even longer to see that the Zustra was itself based on this story.

The Earth watched the scurrying ants delve deeper and deeper towards her core. Geologists identified isothermal contours under the Earth’s surface up to two hundred kilometres below the Earth’s crust. That was the easy bit. The difficult part was to map the whole of the Earth’s plate tectonic system so as to find the most stable areas to build the habitation tunnels in. Any such mapping can only be correct to a certain degree, and so the scientists backed up their data with heavy redundancy. There would be at least three independent tunnel paths connecting any two habitable zones. The provision of air, food and water stumped them for a while. Any form of mechanical machinery would not do. The most optimistic estimates predicted a million year journey for the planet, and no mechanical machine could run that long. They needed self-sustaining systems that could, given enough time, repair themselves to perfection. For the first time in their brief history, humans did something that appealed to the watching Earth; they turned to nature. The humble animal cell, they realized, was a spectacularly robust self-sustaining system that put to shame any of their own creations. An era of bioengineering ensued, with impressive results. A hierarchical and completely closed food web comprising an assortment of manufactured bacteria, algae and fungi was built. This miniature ecosystem was then assimilated into wafer thin layers of bio machinery that could ingest the abundant rocky matter in the Earth’s crust and mantle, and expel oxygen and water vapour. The tunnels themselves were organized in a roughly spiral fashion. Interconnecting maintenance tunnels and steeper arms that connected two isotherms broke the pattern at regular intervals. Every tunnel was coated with layers of bio machinery that tried to do away with human intervention as much as possible. Temperature control to a certain extent was possible; but exoduses to higher or lower temperature habitable zones would be inevitable. Meanwhile, the Earth began to wither and die as the relentless heat and radiation took its toll. Still she watched the humans, their bluster and new found purpose, and hoped that they could still rescue her. The little people sweated for several generations over the problem of how to eject the Earth from the Solar System, before they hit upon a deceptively simple solution.

They blew up the Sun.

‘They got it wrong, you know.’ Marek did not have to refer to the book (which they had dubbed the ‘Azustra’) to let them know what he was talking about. They had discussed nothing else during the three months since their last adventure.

‘They thought that they had to build the perfect system that would eliminate the need for human operators. All that it did was make technological innovation redundant, and us how we are today. Timid, slow-witted and steeped in ignorance.’

Fisek was not prepared to forego his love for the Zustra. ‘The Zustra says that a massive famine hit the first pilgrims. I am willing to bet that the first underground dwellers suffered a severe food shortage. Perhaps, the machines did not work as expected. Or maybe there was a fight. Whatever it was, I think the problem was not fixed, and we adapted to lesser quantities of food, with the end result that we became such languorous creatures.’

Bili who never had too much patience was debates piped up, ‘I think it’s time we went on our next adventure.’ She paused, taking in the tolerant smile on Fisek’s face, and the carefully concealed excitement on Marek’s, and said, ‘You gave me the idea you know, with your stupid machismo arguments that prove nothing and mean nothing. I think we should go to the Earth’s surface.’

Marek laughed derisively, while Fisek attempted to launch into a measured counter-argument. But Bili loudly cut through their voices, and said, ‘The Azustra has a detailed map of all the underground tunnels. Tunnel coaches should take us to up to within five kilometres. And then on I think we can follow the maintenance tunnels all the way to the surface.’

Marek looked stunned and lost for words, while Fisek looked stunned and eager to speak. ‘How do you know all this?’ he asked her quickly.

‘My parents inspect the tunnels, you know. They tell me all about it.’ Noticing the smirk on Marek’s face, she added, ‘You may find it hard to believe, but the old people know a few things too. Anyway, from my parents’ description of the last habitable zone, the connecting tunnel we used for the exodus, and the current habitable zone, I think I have a fairly good idea as to where we are in relation to the Earth’s surface.’

Now Fisek seemed lost for words. Marek gave an admiring whoop and gave her a brief hug, saying, ‘And here I thought we would spend the rest of our lives telling our grandchildren how, in our greatest adventure, we fainted behind a rock, scared of a guy who was looking for illegal sex.’ Bili let out an involuntary giggle. Fisek, though, looked thoughtful and did not smile.

‘We could actually die here.’ Fisek said in a hushed tone. ‘This is not a silly break in, where the worst that thing that could happen would be that we would be denied food for some time. The Azustra says that the surface is a poisonous pit deadly to all forms of life. The Zustra says that we will receive some sign, something that will tell us that we can go back to the surface. I don’t think we should go.’

Bili and Marek looked at each other. It had been like this for some time. The Azustra seemed to have the opposite effect on Fisek as it did on them. It made him withdraw more into himself and become even more cautious than usual. This change in his demeanour unconsciously modified their response to Fisek’s statements. They would feel an irrational urge to do the exact opposite of what Fisek said, despite any evident logic. They reacted this way once more. Separately, and mentally, they confirmed that they would indeed go on this adventure even if it ended up killing them. Friendship, however quickly doused any rebellious flames, and they sat down to try and convince him to change his mind.

‘My parents use these suits when they go into the higher tunnels. They provide a breathable environment for five hours and maintain a constant temperature and pressure. I reckon they should work on the surface.’ Bili said, with Marek nodding vigorous assent. Fisek looked unconvinced.

‘Look,’ Marek added with a look of great solidarity, ‘I know it’s a scary thing. But I thought that was what we lived for. I promise that if we make it out of this alive, we will never go on an adventure again.’ Fisek looked slightly mollified, and Marek continued, ‘I just remembered one more thing. The Azustra spoke of habitability probes on the surface that would tell us when the Earth reached a habitable zone. Perhaps this is what the Zustra means by the divine signs. Maybe the probes have broken down; or maybe we have forgotten how to interpret the signals. Anyway, my point is that the probes may already be telling us something, and we don’t know it yet.’

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Fisek had not spoken a word during the three hour coach journey. Marek and Bili had started off brightly, with Marek’s wittiness apparently fuelled by the thought of imminent danger, but they had quietened down fast. Their stolen suits had, unsurprisingly, not fit them well at all, but even the extreme discomfort did not loosen their tongues appreciably. They made their way across a dark, dingy maintenance tunnel. This would, according to Bili, lead to the first of a series of maintenance cars. Marek decided to break the oppressive silence.

‘I never realized how much the bio machinery actually did for us. I mean, they even supply light that we don’t notice. Look at this godforsaken place. I can’t even see what I’m stepping through.’

Even Bili could not bring herself to say anything in response. A little while later they found the first maintenance car. It was a plain cuboidal box that moved on a dedicated set of metallic tracks. It did not have too much by way of furniture, and could only accommodate three people with difficulty. Further conversation was stifled as they fell promptly asleep after setting the car on its way. They travelled in two more cars in a similar fashion, wondering, during their infrequent waking moments, if the lack of any significant obstacles thus far would manifest itself in one major catastrophe.

Their fourth and final car juddered to a halt midway through its journey, jolting them awake. Immediately they knew that something was wrong. There was too little light – in their earlier journeys there had always been enough light to read a book by. Now they could barely see each other’s faces. It was also cold, bitingly so. Peering through the tiny window in the wall of the car, they could see that something dark and fuzzy completely obscured their path.

‘What do we do?’ Marek asked slowly.

‘We could go back… The car can go either direction. Besides, I don’t think we can go further.’ Bili responded in a way that left no doubt as to what her choice was.

‘No.’ To everyone’s surprise, it was Fisek who said this. ‘I think we are close, very close to the surface. These are just little tests that we need to pass before we are deemed worthy to see the signs.’ As Bili and Marek looked shocked, Fisek added bracingly, ‘I was just winding you up. Besides, it is only now that our adventure is starting. Wake up, you poltroons, put on your suits and let’s be on our way.’

They stepped out of the car and into a dim light, whose source they could not trace. The entity that had blocked their car did not look quite so perfectly black now. The heightened illumination highlighted brilliant shades of green, red and yellow. A slight breeze played on their faces, and set several somethings within the dark mass aflutter. Meanwhile, Fisek seemed to have shaken off the stupor that had possessed him throughout the journey. He enthusiastically moved forward to study the entity. Presently, his voice came back to them, echoing in the enclosed space.

‘I don’t believe this. This stuff is bio machinery! It’s just gone a bit out of control, that’s all. Still it is bio machinery, and it should be harmless to humans.’ Before either of Marek and Bili could say anything, he stepped into the dark mass and disappeared. They waited for a while, but he did not appear. Closer up, the dark mass seemed much more like a giant trap to swallow unwitting humans. Slowly, unwillingly, they stepped into it.

Marek could feel a thousand little somethings brush past his suit, feather light in their touch but not really uncomfortable. Perhaps it was only his imagination but he could feel an acute intelligence emanating from the entity. He fancied that it was a slow, brooding creature that was contemplating impassively whether to let them pass. A gentle whispering played back in his suit’s speakers. It was most likely the breeze ruffling the ‘leaves’ (as he had mentally christened the fluttering things), but once more he fancied a sentience within the dark mass. It was talking to him now. He could not see anything at all; it was as if he was all alone in a private universe of dark colours, soft sounds and pleasurable touches. Bili had only been a foot ahead of him in the beginning, but he had no idea how far ahead she was now.

The ‘forest’ seemed to stretch interminably. Marek had long since lost the capacity for thought, and was only putting one foot in front of the other mechanically. Then, suddenly, his foot stepped into empty space. He flailed wildly, but the dark mass around him parted easily and offered no support. As he fell forwards, the forest cleared abruptly, and he noticed a ledge only a foot in front of him, but at a slightly higher elevation. He stuck out a hand, and ignoring the sharp pain of impact, firmly grasped the top of the ledge. He clambered over painfully using the last reserves of his physical energy and passed out on the hard tunnel floor.

He woke up to voices nearby. Bili’s and Fisek’s. A moment of incoherence ensued, before his brain recovered and pumped his system with a heavy shot of giddy joy. They were alive! All of a sudden he too felt Fisek’s conviction. They were close. It wouldn’t be long. Bili and Fisek noticed that he was awake and they hugged each other tightly, never before closer to each other than they were now.

‘We had been studying the maps while you were asleep.’ Bili announced. ‘I think we are near what the Azustra calls the porthole. It is a sort of chamber that connects our underground environment to the surface’s. It should theoretically link directly to the ground level, but we suspect that the entrance might be clogged up.’

‘By the way,’ Fisek said a little sadly, ‘we only have an hour and a half left on our suits. Returning to the tunnels in time will be hard.’

Marek did not listen. An overpowering feeling of recklessness swept over him; he desired nothing more than to carry on and finish the task. Looking at the eager expressions on his friends’ faces, he suspected that they too were feeling the same way. As they made their way through the tunnel, a thought occurred to Marek.

‘The tunnel was broken, wasn’t it? I am not sure if I dreamed it, but I thought I saw molten rock in the gap between the ledge and the forest.’

‘Forest… Interesting term… Apt, though.’ Fisek seemed to roll the word in his head and emerge with a favourable appraisal. ‘I think the plate movement stuff the Azustra goes on and on about must have broken through this tunnel. In fact I suspect that it is the fracture that caused the bio machinery to multiply uncontrollably and clog the tunnel.’

Presently they reached a dead end. The tunnel had long since given way to a more cave like structure; one that sloped gently upwards and had rough rock walls. They had been travelling for an hour, and the patiently rising path had only served to whet their rapidly growing enthusiasm. They physically felt the ground getting nearer with each step. Now they found themselves facing a blank wall, and their suits would only last for a measly thirty more minutes. The three of them sunk to the floor in despair, desperately tired, but too scared to sleep. But Bili noticed something that got them excited once more.

‘What’s that vague scratching noise I hear?’ She cuffed Marek hard around the head to draw his attention. The expression of morbidity on his face gave way to excitement as he too caught the noise.

‘There is nothing inside the cave that can cause that noise.’ Marek said rhetorically. ‘Unless of course the rocks are less stupid than they look and are actually talking to us,’ he added in a brave stab at humour. ‘That means that the sound is coming from the surface.’

The portion of the cave roof nearest the dead end wall rose only a couple of feet above the ground. Marek and Bili squeezed into the cramped space there, and began to dig at the roof furiously with their gloved hands. Fisek seemed to have been worst hit by exhaustion, and lay on the floor nearby, not moving, but not asleep. In a matter of minutes, their scrabbling fingers broke through the mud and into open air.

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There was a star in the sky. It was very, very big; it was so large that its disc covered a third of the sky in one direction. But it was not as hot it should have been. It wasn’t bright enough. It was too big! Wispy clouds waded through a bright blue atmosphere. A rusty signpost swung creakily near the entrance of the porthole. It said, ‘Welcome back!’

‘It’s the divine light.’ Fisek spoke in awestruck tones. For once, Marek did not disagree. They had been walking for a long time. The world around them was nothing like their home. Everything seemed to be in constant flux: the ubiquitous sand, the air and the suspended water particles moved around them restlessly. Their suits had been long since been discarded – the air outside was so much fresher. They had seen something glitter in the distance, and had set off towards it. Now they could see that it was a water body. They peered into its murky depths hopefully, but nothing moved. Earth was ready but Life was late to the party, apparently.

‘And the divine light shall free us from oppression. We will rise and reclaim what is our own.’ Fisek intoned quietly. Marek and Bili had gone to study a strange looking instrument that lay half buried in the sand. It looked vaguely familiar. Rifling through the Azustra, Bili quickly identified what it was. It was a habitability probe. Even after carefully comparing the diagram with the original, they could not identify anything obvious that would have stopped it from doing its job. Then it occurred to them that they really did not know what it was supposed to do. All that the Azustra told them was that it would give an appropriate signal. Marek laughed loudly. Never before had he appreciated how similar the two books sometimes were. All three of them lay down on the soft sand, and fell into a carefree sleep.

The Earth watched, as glad as she could ever be, as her favourite children returned to her surface. In what would be a blink of an eye to her, they would rapidly re-colonize the planet. The alien star whose diminished light warmed the surface would fuel the rapid spread of life, and the planet would be green once more. The Earth, thanks to her long memory, knew something the humans did not. The alien sun that had infused her with a new life was remarkably similar to the thing that had brutally scorched her surface all those years ago. It too was not of this universe; it peeked through a thinning of the veils between universes, a thinning that diminished its ferocious intensity to acceptable levels. But something about the uncanny coincidence worried her immense sentience. Why was it here at all?

You can also read it here and here.

The Experiment

Another Shaastra 2009 entry. This was the for the 'conventional' SF short story writing contest and had a 3000 word limit, but the topics were provided once more. This one's about a world where the government has made laughter illegal.

Humanity had a revelation. Or at least the tiny portion of humanity that controlled the rest of humanity did. Humour, the government loudly proclaimed, was the root of all evil. The justification offered for this very serious statement was quite simple. Humour cannot exist by itself; it feeds on Sentiment and leaves it hurt and wounded. Or to put it another way, every joke needs a butt. As a government spokesman once said,

“Why do wars happen? People are angry, and so they fight. Why do people get angry? They are angry because they are offended, and they are offended because their sentiments are hurt.”

This is where the government spokesman gleefully introduced the damning role of humour by pointing out that it is most likely someone’s idea of a joke that starts a war. Similar arguments, with the help of several solemn computer scientists and logicians, reduced child trafficking, drug abuse and serial killings to applications of humour. Having inarguably established the role of humour in humanity’s decadence, the aforementioned government set out to eradicate it. And here they hit their first roadblock – how do you identify humour? A group of solemn looking psychologists locked themselves in a room for a week, and came up with the answer: laughter. Laughter is the physical manifestation of humour and can be detected; anything that can be detected can be eliminated. Engineers and biologists were hired in droves to work on a laughter detector that would be cheap, effective and unobtrusive. Mathematically speaking, numbers always work, and out of all the collective effort arose the Rideometer. A term like Laugh-o-meter, for instance, was discarded as being too frivolous, and not really indicative of the profound task it was meant to accomplish. Latin was found to be a suitably serious etymological source, and hence the name.

Incidentally, the perplexed few who managed to appreciate the humour in this theory were promptly removed to a safe place where they would be unlikely to hurt themselves and the rest of society. The opposing political party, in what might have been the first such incident in history, found themselves in total agreement with the idea, and actually undertook campaigns supporting the incumbents.

The Rideometer was soon installed in nearly every public place in the country. It is believed that in the two centuries that passed since its invention, it had successfully “eliminated any concerns about overpopulation”, as taken verbatim from a stubbornly invariant government propaganda leaflet. Unofficial figures put the number of disappeared at over two billion. The remaining people were naturally averse to humour, and as generations passed, began to lose the biological ability to recognize a joke. Laughter came to be considered an infectious disease, the sort that could lead to entire cities being quarantined. Tickling, people observed, led to laughter, and this was entirely unacceptable. A vaccine was promptly invented that gave people immunity to being tickled.



The best of medicines, however, cannot kill every single germ, and so was the case with the Rideometer. There was a pocket of the capital city Kilmar that survived all purges. Perhaps the government felt that this crime ridden, gang infested corner of the planet did not have any humour to be expunged. Or maybe the government did not wish to pick a fight with the sort of people that believed a bazooka should be given to every three year old. Either way, if someone had to be born who would go on to change the way the country was run, it would have to be here in the Underbelly.

No one would have thought that this young man of twenty two would be that person, just by taking in his appearance. He was like any other youth in the Underbelly, tall and built like an ox. There was perhaps one thing which would have given him away, if anyone had been able to recognize its significance: the laughter lines around his eyes that made him look prematurely old. As it was, the only thing that came of it was the occasional volley of juvenile taunts targeting his grandfatherly looks. This didn’t really bother him any more. What did bother him was the fact that he hated most things in the world. He disliked the way people beat up each other if they couldn’t agree on each other’s favourite colours. He despised the way people dragged themselves to work everyday, heavy in the foot, and returned home, if anything even more tired and weary. Was everyone a machine? He often dreamed of leaving the Underbelly and plying his trade in the city.

Karman, as this young man was known, forcefully interrupted his musings and tried to concentrate on the forge in front of him. He worked in the largest of the Underbelly’s numerous weapons factories as an apprentice blacksmith. His was a coveted job, as his master often reminded him, but this prestige was something he just could not feel.

“Are you slacking off again, Karman?”

It was the master, a man who never did any actual work it seemed. However, he had a million eyes, Karman felt, which he used to keep watch over the young apprentices.

“This is not working you know. It is only my friendship with your father that’s keeping you here. If it was up to me, I would thrash the laziness out of you with one of those poker irons. It is worthless little scoundrels like you that I fear will destroy the Underbelly.” He paused to wipe the spittle that had collected at the sides of his mouth.

“I never asked you to stop work to listen to me. Get back to work, and watch that barrel. The way you are making it, anyone who uses it is only going to blow himself up.”

This rant in itself was nothing new, but Karman was feeling particularly disconsolate today. Before he could let better sense stop him, he retorted – ‘Why don’t you do some work for a change, Honourable Master? You sit there and become fatter by the day.”

The Weaponsmaster said nothing. He stood up, extracted a poker from the fireplace and walked over to him. “I’ve had enough of your insolence. Consider this a friendly warning.” And he branded Karman on the cheek with the red hot iron.

Karman ran till his legs began to feel like slabs of rock, and further. But the pain did not go away. He went back to his favourite place in the Underbelly, a little cave in a hilly region near the border. He wept for some time, and then contemplated a rather novel feeling that seemed to be washing over him in waves. He felt capable of murder. While this seems like status quo for the Underbelly, Karman had always been passive to the point where he preferred sitting alone in a dark room to going hunting with the other men. Now, he found himself plotting numerous methods of revenge, all of which ended with a gruesome death for the Weaponsmaster. The feeling eventually passed and another emotion took hold of him; one that seemed cruelly out of context. He felt like laughing. Usually he would stuff one fist into his mouth to stop it, a lesson painfully learnt from innumerable childhood beatings, but this time he let go. He laughed till his stomach complained, and laughed so loud that startled birds in nearby trees flew away to find quieter housing. The cave rumbled back a growled response as the sound travelled full circle through the stone, but he still didn’t stop. When he finally did, he wiped involuntary tears from the corners of his eyes, and realized that somewhere amidst the racket, he had actually made a decision. He would leave the Underbelly, for good or worse.

The border, as the name suggested, separated the Underbelly controlled regions from the rest of the city. Perhaps in the past it had bustled with activity, with both sides trying to sneak spies to the other. Today, it was a barren, desolate place, overgrown with shrubbery and barely passable at all. One sentry was all that each side maintained, in a weak nod to their once vigorous enmity. Karman knew the area close to the border quite well; he never passed up an opportunity to come here and soak in the sheer beauty of uninterrupted silence. He knew where the Underbelly sentry would be, and also knew that he slept sixteen hours a day. As he crept towards the barebones shack where the unfortunate sentry dozed, he realized that he had timed his visit right. Even from a distance of twenty feet he could hear the snores. He crossed the rampant undergrowth quickly, eager to put some distance between him and a potential pursuit.

Presently he noticed a thinning in the greenery. This could only indicate that he had reached the government controlled side of the border. He slowed, and eventually stopped to crouch behind a largish rock. He had caught sight of what could only be the sentry’s shack, though the smooth black stone and blinking lights near the doorway suggested something entirely otherworldly. The building was slightly lower down the slope to him, and through the window, he could see the silhouette of a sleeping man. This fact cheered him up immensely; some things really are universal! He made his way slowly towards the shack, having established that there was no other route. Just when everything seemed to be going well, something happened that reiterated his faith in a humorous God.

As he neared the shack, the lights near the doorway began to blink and change patterns rapidly. This must have been some kind of an alarm, as clatters and bangs from within indicated that the sentry had woken up. Karman froze, hoping the alarm, which unlike the ones back in the Underbelly did not seem to rely on an ear-shattering din to do its job, would quiet down by itself. It did not work, and when Karman heard the sound of the doorway hissing open, he realized that he had left it too late. He was in the open and had nowhere to go. The sentry, who was just as fat and timid as his counterpart on the other side of the border, looked thoroughly shocked to see another human being, and made valiant attempts to extract a weapon from its wall casing. He managed it after some frenzied grappling, and before Karman could stop playing the rabbit caught in the headlights, had hefted it and fired it.

A pleasantly surprised (and unhurt) Karman opened his eyes after a few seconds only to see the sentry writhing in pain on the ground in front of him. He had accidentally shot himself! Karman was so relieved at his incredible stroke of luck that he burst out laughing. The hitherto quiet alarm took offence to this act and promptly raised the ear shattering din he had expected all along. The blinking lights, he noticed belatedly, were part of a bigger machine, a machine that his love for history put a name to. The Rideometer. He unfroze and began to sprint down the path away from the shack. Only seconds later, a group of veiled men and women had surrounded him and wrestled him to the ground. As he contemplated the number of ways he would be tortured by these people (whose presently hidden faces were uniformly replaced by that of the Weaponsmaster), he caught snippets of their whispered conversation.

“Is he actually from the other side?”
“Oh my god, if people start crossing over, we actually have a chance.”
“Yeah, those guys are supposed to hate the government.”
“Wait, we are getting ahead of ourselves, maybe this is a spy.”
“He’s listening to us!”

At this point something hard and heavy made contact with the side of his head and Karman lost consciousness before he could wrap his head around the unexpected things he had heard.

When we woke up, he found himself in a large comfortable room, warmly ensconced in a luxurious blanket. He rolled over, and observed that he was on a bed that seemed big enough to hold at least one fifteen foot giant, or five normal humans. His head still throbbed painfully, and his groping fingers soon identified a pebble sized lump on the back of his head. Further contemplation was interrupted by a cool female voice.

“Welcome, person from the other side.”

Karman swivelled around to stare into the part of the room that was shrouded in darkness. Apparently there had been someone there all along. A woman stepped out from the shadows, looking grim and morbid. She was rather short and petite, and dressed like a soldier, with her numerous pockets bulging with exotic weaponry.

“You know, you are the first person to cross over that we have managed to capture. Those government agents always beat us to it. You are extremely lucky to land up here.” Noticing Karman’s suspicious expression, she assured him seriously, “Don’t worry, we won’t hurt you. Sorry about that lump on your head, we can’t be too careful you know.” She looked into the shadowy region she had recently vacated, as if expecting a wild animal to leap out.

“It was the fact that you did not have the vaccination marks on your forearm that convinced us. Anyway, welcome to our group, and as soon as you are ready, tell me, for we have plenty of work for you.” Karman had no idea who they were and why they wanted him to work for them. He compressed all the doubts assailing him into one admirably concise question – “Who are you?”

At this, the woman nodded to herself grimly, as if expecting that question. “Thank you for asking. That was the final test you know… if you had not asked the question, my guards would have shot you immediately.”

She said her name was Risa and that she was the head of a small group of rebels. Karman listened to her ramble about how life was so bad under the government, and how they were all so unhappy. At this point he interrupted, feeling a little bit perplexed. “But what exactly is your problem? All you’ve said is that you are unhappy.”

Risa dithered for a bit about ‘poor ambience’ and ‘misdirected focus’ before finally admitting that they had no idea. Pre-empting questions about the pointlessness of their existence, Risa added, “We are comfortable with each other, that’s all. And we hate the government.”

As Karman quickly became accustomed to the ways of the rebels, he discovered many more things about them. For instance, he realized that the term ‘rebels’ was a bit of an exaggeration for the pathetic bunch of anti-social misfits that they actually were. They had never actually engaged the government in any sort of warfare, and when Karman inquired about casualties, they actually shirked away from him as though he’d said something distasteful. More importantly, however, Karman began to see that the rebels were a lot like him, even if they had no idea about it. Many things he heard Risa, and the others say, he’d said to himself before. They disliked the violence that teemed all around them. They hated the drudgery that their daily life had become. They missed the lighter side of life – the sports, the laughter and all the fun things in the world. As they had never experienced any other way of life, they became gloomy and frustrated.

Karman soon found himself a job. He had never thought of himself as a teacher, but now, as he often privately congratulated himself, he was the best humour theorist the world had seen. He gathered to himself groups of adoring kids and explained the finer points of wit, and the subtleties of sarcasm.

“One form of humour is all about connections. You laugh when someone uses his/her imagination to link obscure things. Free your mind, forget everything your parents have told you about the world, and you might just understand.” He narrated them a joke, a personal favourite about an ant and a foolish elephant. To his delight, a few of the kids actually laughed. Emboldened by success, his battered and bruised knack for wittiness recovered quickly.

The children were then taught how to make fun of other people, an act that resulted in quite a few thrashings before the adults gradually got used to it. He also taught them the fine art of slapstick humour. Boys and girls were forced to contort their faces and bodies in spectacular ways in an attempt to elicit laughter. The unfortunate ones were also made to slip on banana peels, swim in pools of muck and have their pyjamas ripped off by their impish friends. One day, when one of the kids commented on how he looked like a prospective thief who had tried to sneak down the chimney, only to find that the fireplace had been lit; he realized that his methods were working. The kid had of course been referring to the ugly burn marks on his face.

Memories from his previous life slowly faded for Karman, but for one person – the Weaponsmaster, the man who had permanently disfigured him. One night, in the middle of one of his usual nightmares about the same man, something unusual happened. He imagined the Weaponsmaster laughing. This notion was so ridiculous that he awoke with a start and laughed till his sides hurt. During the next couple of days, Karman waxed lyrical on the joys of exaggeration. He suggested that the kids try and imagine their least favourite members of the government doing impossible things. The obese law minister, one kid proudly claimed, had just attempted a spectacular pirouette and landed flat on his backside. To Karman’s delight, this technique seemed to work on the adults to a certain extent. He vividly recalled the day he caught Risa in splits, having attempted to imagine the prime minister choke on a fish bone while trying to laugh. But Karman discovered the best technique of them all, last. Laughter, he realized was contagious, and therefore the best way to make people laugh is to make them see other people laugh. With this observation, the most humourless of the adults gave in.

Several months passed this way, and when Karman finally felt that he had done all he could, he approached Risa with a plan.

“I think I know how to topple the government.” Risa, who had been sipping some kind of tasteless fluid, nearly choked on it. With as much dignity as she could mutter, what with tears streaming from her eyes and a spluttering voice, she asked “What do you mean?”

Karman explained how he had long since come to the conclusion that you could not fight the government on their own terms, bazookas, hand grenades and all. The rebels had to use the one thing the government could not stand: humour.

“You don’t have to kill the leaders to topple the government, you know. You just have to discredit them.” Risa nodded noncommittally, not really following. Karman clarified himself, once more employing his unique talent for briefness.

“You have to make them laugh.”

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It would either be the finest hour for the rebels, or their most miserable. Karman had insisted that they not immediately carry out their plan. They had bided their time and chosen the day when they would be able to inflict maximum damage. It was the only time of the year when the entire Council of Ministers appeared together to address the public. It was the Annual Solemnity Day.

Karman took in the imposing monolith that the Auditorium was. Built with the same ubiquitous black granite as the rest of the city, it towered over it, looking like an immense Eye that never blinked. It was rumoured that it could seat the entire population of the city if needed. Today, it was needed. Karman who had seated himself in the first tier of seats squinted into the higher levels, privately amused by the rows and rows of glum looking people. That would change soon, he told himself. A minister was speaking about the purpose of existence, and how it was our duty to do our duty with the utmost seriousness. As the words began to blur into an indistinguishable whine, Karman was rudely awoken by Risa, who was sitting beside him.

“The Prime Minister’s speech is nearly done. Get ready.”

The Prime Minister finished his long winded polemic and opened the session for questions. Karman stood up and his hard earned first row seating (it was nearest to the dais) paid off rich dividends. The Prime Minister pointed one flabby finger, motioning him to continue.

“I would like to thank you, sir for opening our eyes and letting us see what humanity is truly about. I believe that if we are not serious about the things we do, we do not deserve to live at all. Thank you once more.” The Prime Minister tried hard not to visibly preen and managed to arrange his features into a TV-friendly grimace.

“I would like to seek your blessings so that I can imbibe some of your purposefulness into my worthless life.” The Prime Minister started at this statement and looked rather foolishly towards the assembled Council members for guidance. The Council for its part looked appropriately stony, and the Prime Minister had to make the decision for himself.

“All right, you can approach the dais, but you only get a moment. But the government always approves of righteous citizens, remember that.”

Karman approached slowly, looking around at the many Rideometers that surrounded the platform. He thought grimly that he had never felt less likely to burst out laughing. This was it, two months of planning had gone into this, and it was up to him now. As he started to climb the stairs, he deliberately tripped and flailed around wildly, trying to regain his balance. The rebels swung into action. A bucketful of carefully manufactured slime was flung from one of the upper tiers, and Karman fell smack into it. As Karman attempted to get up, his trousers ripped. A couple of titters broke out from the crowd, and while the Council looked thoroughly shocked, none of them relented just yet. It was the children’s turn now.

The rebel children burst out laughing. The Auditorium shook with the sound and the Rideometers went berserk. The adults looked stunned at the sudden turn of events, and hesitated. This momentary pause was enough for laughter to work its magic. Soon every kid in the auditorium was rolling around on the floor; quite a few adults joined in too. The sentries looked lost – they just did not have the firepower to shoot down half the city.

Karman lay on the ground, covered in slime and sopping wet. He had his torn pants to thank for an uncomfortable breeze that played around his legs. His simulated fall had turned out to be slightly less simulated than he intended, and a sharp pain knifed through his calves. Groaning, he stood up, and watched, as time itself seemed to come to a standstill, the Prime Minister crack an unwilling smile.

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