A short story: The Test

The Test

Hallowed be his name; his kingdom it was— he thought to himself. What were the odds?

Why, it was no one but he; he who had never thought to have tasted the savouriness of success in a more manifesting manner, and now he, a boy of fifteen called Binay, believed he had.  Half, or rather three quarters, of the class had failed the Physics assessment. The generally celebrated topper among the lads sulked more at present than when he would miss the full marks by a score or two; even then, he vainly flipped though the sheets to check if the evaluator had made a mistake in adding any mark to the total. Back-benchers laughed about everything, it was all a stomach rending jape to them, each told a lower score than the previous and laughed harder—the new lowest scorer the hardest—and then they reminisced the treatment they received at home after they had told their parents scores of previous tests in other subjects; and now they too, one by one, proceeded to sulk.

Students had begun to queue up at the teacher’s table, to clarify why they did not deserve any more, and, majorly, to convince the teacher that they indeed deserved more. Meanwhile, Binay, in all his humble mediocrity, could hardly believe he had scored more than the topper. The news of his marks hadn’t come directly from the boy’s mouth, but, you know—toppers can hardly keep their marks secret. Binay managed an awkward grin in his attempt to hide his triumphant feeling of superiority with an untrue humility, when boys from the neighbouring benches came to know, and soon he was in the limelight. He lost possession over his answer sheets, as they were passed around and across the room, from one pair of hands to the next, from one desktop to the other, and stealthily they compared their answers to his. Then one of the lot discovered what was awry, finally. 

“Hey, Binay!” some boy called out to him from the benches behind, and Binay replied with “Yeah?”

“Man, you sly fox,” he chukled.

“What?” said Binay, unprepared— almost hurt.

“You answered an extra question,” answered the boy named Chetan, “didn’t you?”

To that, his first answer was no answer at all. What was he supposed to think of it? Involuntarily, a scowl formed on Binay; incredulous, he broke into an unwelcome sweat. “And you got some marks for it. That made the impossible possible, eh?” Chetan laughed, and induced the other boys to giggle along. In his excitement, Binay hadn’t really cared to add up the marks. He wasted no time in grabbing the paper from him, and started scanning every mark for every answer. “Why don’t you tell the teacher?” blurted one of the boys. “Honestly, we’re so jealous”, said he, and displayed his teeth in a ritual that begged to not be called a mere grin.

Binay contemplated the number of friends he had in the room, who could help him evade getting caught, or at least stand for his cause. He knew why he didn’t have any; he was so unpopular— good, honest, shy kids never—oh wait! Where’s Atul?  There; Atul stood in the queue, shaking a leg with sodding impatience and riveted to his answer sheet in a keen glare, perhaps still having trouble digesting a low score. Binay had to believe it, the evidence lay naked before him as he bent over his sheets, and when he looked up to meet the phantom gaze upon him, he saw the till-hence undisputed topper, unfairly stripped of glory, looking straight at him, eyebrows barely apart.

To Binay, he was the sovereign who had sniffed the usurpative ploy of a disgraceful schemer.

“Let me see it”, mouthed the lad, and stretched out his arm from two rows away. Binay couldn’t remember any recent time when he had been so afraid of losing something. Promptly, he shook his head like a dog drying itself. The topper grunted subtly and beckoned Binay’s answer sheets towards himself, again. Binay observed the situation at the teacher’s desk; it was Atul’s turn to be denied hope— from what could be made from his shrunken face and the frequent wan smiles he smiled to preserve polite acceptance of the teacher’s judgement. Then Binay’s answer sheets fluttered away.

“Hey, hey! Hey!” Binay exclaimed loud and clear for the world to hear. The topper had some friends that qualified more as worshippers or sidekicks, or so Binay thought of them; and one of them had got hold of his test papers and was sneaking it to the boss that the big topper boy was. Like a sink, the commotion sucked in the bustle in the air not fast, but steadily. Binay had thrown out his arms to get back the classified documents, which added to the drama in the scene. Everything happened swiftly. The moment the teacher started addressing the actors in the act, Binay burst with complaint.

“Ma’am, he took my test paper,” he said, pointing at the accused, “and isn’t giving it back!”

At times like this, one expects the superlative degree of raptness of attention from the class. With bovine expressions and simian curiosity four score eyes gorged on the scene. The poor kid of a criminal meanwhile tried to stutter an excuse and was mercilessly cut short by the teacher.

“Shush! Not a word! Have I permitted you to sneak a look at other people’s answer sheets? Too curious, aren’t you, Damodar?”

“B-But Madam, I never—”

“No; have I?”

The boss sat showing hardly any concern, he sat like a young man who had never asked for a surreptitious look into some kind of personal belonging; if he was anxious at all, he hid it well— and stared blankly at the prime suspect. Binay imagined himself in the shoes of the boy who took his papers to begin with, and decided that the awkwardness of the situation itself would make him feel so guilty he’d wish he imploded into a singularity. The poor boy fumbled at the options he had, and finally got overwhelmed by the urge of spitting out—

“Sorry. I’m sorry, Ma’am.”

“Are you, now? For all I know, you could be saying that just for its sake.”

Damodar, the boy, was bereft of an ideal reply; despite knowing no one could prove it, he said he meant the apology. He looked at Binay, appeared to have remembered his whole motive, turned to the teacher to say something, and cut it out for goodness’ sake.

“You shall have a score deducted from your total, nonetheless, for causing the ruckus.” Binay almost heard the teacher say it. He played out the furthering of the spicy plot in his head; seeing Damodar with his ruined ego and all, pleading with the teacher to let him go and his marks stay. Then he returned to the world on hearing the teacher tell Damodar to give back the papers to Binay, but when she said, “Never mind; give it to me” instead: he sensed peril.

“All right,” the teacher announced while sneaking a peek at her watch, “it’s time; the class ends now. Give your papers back. Come on, quick!” The period ended with the sonorous ring of the school gong, and Binay sighed in his head, oblivious to any smart reason behind his caution. That was it. The school gave over for the day.

Besides being afraid of crowds, yet always craving to be unanimously adored, it was in Binay’s nature to ruminate pointlessly. The subjects of his brooding made him imagine hypothetical scenarios and far-fetched philosophies too preposterous to be shared, and it was customary for him to be caught off guard, to the extent that sometimes he would be completely lost when a stranger asked for directions to a nearby place he walked past daily; like on another day, he had stood flabbergasted when asked for directions to a nearby school in the locality, before Atul had rescued him and answered on his behalf. This time, heading down the stairs, he imagined he felt a demonic presence about himself. The feeling wasn’t mild enough to let him ignore it. It was a sixth sense— of being rained with loath, of suddenly becoming a centre of attention, but looking around, he only saw other pupils merrily accompanied by each other or hurriedly scaling down the stairs. Then a tight, gentle slap landed on his back.

His astonishment was followed by dread, except Atul’s voice called out to him, “Oy brother, ha’ much have you got?”

Binay relaxed before tensing. Atul was quite a compadre of his, the friendship extended beyond sharing lunch or notes; he had his trust on him and his company just made him feel good. But of course, he had unjustly got to best the topper by four whole marks! The question was whether his chum knew. Binay decided to go with a negative as the answer. He said, “You don’t know?”

“Uh, no. Was I supposed to?”

“Well, I topped the test, mate.”

“Oh, really?”

“Yes”, His pitch rose and then fell through the single syllable. Then he told him the number.

“You know what people are saying?”

“About what?”

When Atul kept staring at him, Binay said, “Let me guess; me, isn’t it?”

“Yes.”

This was what he had been dreading. Atul knew. Atul knew that his pal who he had perhaps thought of as an epitome of sincerity, had had all its stock compromised when the time had come to own up. Binay consoled himself with the idea that anybody in his place would have kept quiet—perhaps ... or would have they? He felt the apprehension crawl in. His schoolbag felt heavy with his guilt. “Well, I don’t believe them", Atul said at length. "I know you. Honesty spews from your bones; and honestly, at times to brook it is too much to be asked of me”, and he smiled dryly. Binay made a face at him, and he shrugged. However, he could not help noticing the unwonted sharpness in his voice. “But hey, guess what—”

*****

Binay lay face down on the edge of the road to the station; the fall was more inglorious than it was mighty. He climbed to his feet with some of his own exertion, and some help from a fellow pedestrian. Then he dusted off the dirt off his school trousers, and breathed deeply. His left trouser had cleaved at his knee— which now issued his blood forth, and it seeped into the remaining dirt clinging to his skin. Under the flaming, melancholic sky washed with the dregs of daylight, he looked westward, where his anonymous rival had disappeared.

Atul had not come along. His mother had come to pick him up for a prearranged visit to his maternal grandmother. Binay had seen him and his mother off in their Chevrolet. Unlike the other days when 

Atul would accompany him till the railway station, where they parted ways for home, he was walking alone.

That very day, he had had a sweet notion shattered by Atul, which had shaken him up badly. His agitated self had been walking with a newfound testiness, which had also caused him to walk faster than usual, and which Binay was aware of. This way, he had walked till he was a little less than a kilometre away from the station— when a random schoolboy, from a different school to his, walked past him. He had seen the lean, fair lad blithely walking faster than him, while he was falling behind by the second—that was all he had made of the scene. Binay’s nostrils had flared and he had ever so slightly increased his pace. That hadn’t helped him anyway, because the moment he had caught up, the fear of being outvied had become mutual. Backing away would have been ignoble, or so he had thought, while breaking into a run without any apparent reason would have earned him unwanted attention, or so had he imagined. To his horror, though, Binay had concluded that they had now become eternally locked in a dynamic deadlock.

For ages on end, they had walked. The intense competition that had underlain the mere sight of the duo walking fast, from the perspective of a third party on the street, was imperceptible. The finish line was at hand, Binay had thought with glee. There! There was the train home, approaching the station, so close-by.

Without a warning, Binay’s fatigued knees had buckled, and quickly the fateful fall had befallen him. His fellow racer had perhaps bothered to stop. Or he hadn’t. Binay was least bothered.

That was decided; he had lost again. The pedestrian showed his concern for him, advised him to wash his wound with some water and hurried away. He was alone; but the fact was, he had lost again. Atul had yanked him down from cloud nine; he was not the topper of the Physics assessment. In fact, if he was to be believed, the one who had topped the test— was Atul. His sour face at the teacher's table had been completely unrelated to the marks affair; the teacher had only chided him for being somewhat impolite. Binay felt thoroughly betrayed.

Before he carried on, though; on his shoulders— the bag felt lighter.

Beginnings of a Novel

Make Way for the Thhawls

Prologue

One can look at all events as ineluctable, reasoning that all decisions are illusory, perhaps always driven by the stimuli about us; or, one can be as convinced that our free will does bear our future, after all. The sole thing, about the inevitability of which we don’t argue about—and do fear—is the end of the individual; thoughts of an Existence without us, our atoms homogeneously scattered about the Earth, the universe—such musings make one feel strange, sad… hollow within. Humans, in tales and in truth, have ever sought after its cure—healthy, youthful immortality is arguably the greatest desire anyone can ever nurse. Yet when we broaden the perspective, we get to behold the primal, abstract element comprising deaths— Change. It is the one thing that has reigned with unquestioned suzerainty since it all ever was.

  
We cannot know by looking at a stagnant pond slathered over by a mushy mantle; or by looking at the mountains; or by gazing at the limitless expanses of the night sky. Change, as tireless as it is in its relentlessness, is everywhere; we are either too slow or too quick to feel it with our biological apparatus. Nothing—not even our ability to conceive the world—exists without Change. There's another abstract entity, called Mind, which shelters our memory; and regardless of how unfaithful the latter is to one, our memory of Change and a pinch of imagination breeds the illusion of Time—and Time, well, as infinite as it is against the instantaneous extent of our existence, it indeed is the master of all.

There was a time, not long ago, when humans first realised the grand scale of Existence—that we are insignificantly puny and short-lived when placed against the macrocosmic backdrop. We discovered that there are unfathomably myriad worlds and bizarre, beautiful happenings, up above, far from what’s familiar to us; even the universe that we suddenly knew to be so immense—had perhaps had a point in cosmic history when it was born.

The Big Bang has become a synonym for how it had all begun; the term is used by all people aware of it, from laymen to erudite cosmologists—it has been veritably the sole rival to look in the eyes of religious theories of Creation; and to back it, there are some astronomic deductions, pun intended, one of them being the growth of space itself. It is concluded, that the further an object is from us, the faster it recedes away—as if the universe is a three dimensional surface of a four dimensional balloon in the process of blowing up; well, now that is for mathematicians to make sense of, but the scientific viewpoint of creation had spawned a festering pimple too. Intellectual minds wondered if the universe was headed towards a scientific Armageddon. Believe me; all of the theories that are there about it are equally despairing and cold; especially, given there is no promise of eternal life—immortality— in such a scenario.

There is perhaps an idea that could be less soul-rending; that Existence progresses through cycles of birth and death and endlessly so. This is potentially enough, as an idea, to awe the brooding human psyche. It is a mere thought—as crippling it is for the Mind to think—that there has been an incomprehensibly immeasurable number of universes, each possibly governed by different natural laws, all of which would have expanded, twisted, fluttered, spread or unfurled into full bloom, before beginning the downhill ride to imminent and absolute oblivion, to birth another, or even a handful more— to remake the history of Change, to set the clock ticking afresh...

*****

Amidst the aeonian void of space, never floated a speck, so full of grace...

A stupendous biconvex lens was suspended in the placid nothingness. Near and far, bubbles, spheres and crystal structures, big and small, gave it company, all in a constant restless scurry, but one would miss it if one was too fast. Tugged by its brutish, mysterious pull, like an obedient servant, a similarly shaped object, but smaller, rolled and wobbled along the itinerary around the great beast of a world, with a typical, cosmic sloth. The smaller world—a satellite—was alive.

Cutting through the bewitched ether nestling all celestial things, a little, rogue object, not tied to any parent world, was rudely going to buck past. The satellite world dragged its course towards itself, and now it plummeted down through its enchanted, wispy mists.

Down it hurtled, coming ever closer to the surface, and slowing down over time’s passage. In the end, it made contact— and was instantly obliterated. The surface bulged up where it happened, and from a newly made hole, a glow emanated.

Nearby, within a snug, squat tower standing up from the surrounding black underbrush, a being was furiously scribbling on a sheet. The thunderous ring triggered by the impact was still sending waves of reverberation through the tower, and through the being, who felt very disturbed by it. The final, dying wave was the strongest, which shook everything. To the Being’s frustration, he— yes, because ‘he’ personifies much better than ‘it’, and because it is male chauvinistic— observed the accidental, unwelcome line drawn by his shoved hand right across the loads of scribble. The fluorescent blemish glowed at the Being’s bushy external organs, and he stared back at it for a while.

That was not a matter now; his job was done. He was a scientist, on the quest to comprehend the world around—and guess what—he had, somewhat. He had discovered things about his universe, as in those that would make it go poof! He was sure that at some point, all the celestial objects were much further apart than now; there had to have been a time when rogue meteors wouldn’t intrude this often. The Great Ether was crumpling up. His universe was going to take everything with it when it would—he pictured with his pacific wisdom—end.

He was a self-aware Being after all, spewing sentience from deep within, and his inclination to question it all was very justified indeed.

Stashed away in an unobtrusive corner of the eternal Great Ether, going around Great Wah since a very, very long time, was the satellite world of Lil’ Wah. Of the many regions on it that crawled with diverse life, the latter collectively called Voscans; the Being was a part of the zone called Dee-Biyel, and of being its part, he was definitely proud—boastful, precisely— for the belief that its inhabitants consisted of the superlative degree of elites and intellectuals of all the races on Lil’ Wah.

His paranoia about an irreversible end drawing near to the world, his dreads he had ever told about to his fellows, all of them—were ultimately and agonisingly, proven reasonable. He couldn’t have felt more victorious, despondent, guilty of finding it out himself, or more inclined to loathing everyone to emptiness. This was it, after having lived, survived for such long, this was the long awaited news for all Voscan-kind. His calm was gone now. End was edging close, and there was no escape from it. Everything that mattered would be immaterial in a future rather near.

Well, for virtually immortal organisms, soon can be anytime in the future. The universe changed at its own comfy rate, he couldn’t deny it, but he thought it was accelerating. He had to do something—but what? What in the Wah?

Some people (bear with me with that word, it would convey my point better) knew the ingredients required to slow down Change, slow down Time, and perhaps even reverse it. Called Uuls, those Voscans lived in the far past history. Each of them was wiser than all Voscans on Great Wah and Lil’ Wah put together. One of them had prophesised that the End was unavoidable, and that was the last of the Uuls. There had been none ever since. No one knew why Uuls had never tried to exercise their power and keep the End at bay; it was lore that when one of them did try, it was catastrophic. However the Being thought, Uuls were never born; one had to become an Uul. Yet he had no clue how.

With his scruples bursting with the discovery and an eerie sense of responsibility, he exited the tower. He desperately wanted to talk to somebody. The twinkling, sparkling, transparent void about him was feeling warm; or was it he that was going cold? He looked around, and behind the black bush, noticed something. A cone of light shone up toward the sky. The Being was drawn to it instantly; is that where a—the— meteor… the thingy ran into this place?

The ground bulged up. In the centre, there was the bright, gaping hole. The Being studied it with awe, and came nearer. He extended his hand involuntarily (yeah, he has a hand now, trust me). What he saw struck him with utter stupor.

In the purple-blue glow, his hand disappeared. In response, he quickly pulled it back, and stood still.

He tried to figure out what happened.

He slowly extended his hand again, and his hand disappeared in the light. As he looked, through his perfectly transparent hand, he saw on the other side, three other Voscans gaping at him.  The trio had probably come to check out the meteor-bulge; and one of them was his disciple. The Being was a preacher of sorts; followers he had too, and they were devoted to him madly. For a long spell though, he had been away from them, out here in all clandestinity.

The disciple opened an awkwardly placed mouth; he uttered faintly, “Master Ow-Klith! You are... an... Uul!”

Ow-Klith, the Being, had forgotten; there were foolproof ways to identify an Uul, one of which was that they were transparent under some lights—like in the glow from the impact site of a Divinorb from the Ether.

Ow-Klith, now Ow-Uul and enlightened, felt a pulse of emotions pass through himself. He had so much to know, and so much to make known.

Probably, to be continued...

A poem: Musings

Musings

Amidst the aeonian void of space

Never floated a speck, so full of grace.

Forged from cinders, fused by fire

Damned to an end upon a cosmic pyre.

Spawned by gods, or birthed by the Laws—

Inexorably headed to End’s gaping maws.

Born to lead, rule, for the good, or to die

Our world had never mattered beyond the sky.

Fleeting, flickering, and frail is life

Futile is every onerous strife.

The winds of Change blow eternally

Yonder or here awaits destiny.

Ineluctable, unflagging, Change reigns suzerain:

All of Existence for it to feign.

Unalterable be the future,

Or be it what we make;

It's not for one to brood

The steering is one's to take.

Imprisoned in one’s mind,

Shackled to a wall of infrangible brick,

The portal to Reality lets in a view;

Here instincts command; scruples speak.

There’s nothing pricier than time or hope;

No fate is sealed till given in to;

Every bit of sentience is the centre of its universe,

And stellar matter is no different from you.

In every dust grain, or fallen leaf

Every abhorrence or beauty to see

Every storm cloud, every asteroid—

The cosmos thrives, as in you and me.

An Illustration for Terrible Lizard

An Illustration for "Terrible Lizard"

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A short story: Terrible Lizard

~A Short Story~

Terrible Lizard

There are not many out there who acknowledge the fact that we are not supposed to be here. People in the bygone days believed that we occupy a special place in God’s handicraft, the cosmos, which was made by Him in His leisure, which He just thought of making after an eternity of doing nothing. That might not be true, because existing on a mote in the boundlessness of space and time, we are anything but special.  We neither know why we are here, nor what will become of us at the day’s end. Yet we are fortunate enough to be able to ask those same questions, and confusing ourselves in the process. Putting this in another way, let’s just say we are fortuitous to exist— we meaning us, humans. Millions, rather billions of years of evolution and coincidences have paved way for us to become masters of our biosphere— not of Earth, obviously, as the Earth doesn’t care what we do with things on it; whatever we do ultimately decides whether our DNA survives or not— countless species have lived, been deemed unfit for survival amidst terrene agents, and thus dwindled gradually into oblivion; in the abysmal depths of prehistoric epochs dwell the ghosts of a smorgasbord of life forms never to be revived. But, if the survival of the fittest gene is in the premise of a species’ immunity against earthly antagonists, nature has not been exactly fair.

It all began when interferometers on Earth detected gravitational waves once again; significantly more noticeable this time than when they were discovered way back in 2017. After that, there was the appearance of an unidentified, otherworldly object, which was tough to make out from the black background of space. An amateur astronomer from China had at first caught it through her telescope, while gazing at the Moon. She had reported looking at a seemingly distorted portion of the sky, with some misshapen luminous blotches around a spot, including the curved image of a pinwheel galaxy where none had ever been observed before. It was soon trending news, with all sorts of conjectures and speculations popping up, including those of aliens, black holes and what-not creating gravitational oddities. Among those who came across the news in the hours that followed (considering the speed of those kinds of news which sound like juicy, gingery rumour), were those who took the whole business to be a hoax, those who thought that the end was nigh (who were a handful only) and those who believed nonetheless reluctantly, on finding no other explanation. Finally, scientists from NASA said it could be the first direct evidence of an Einstein-Rosen bridge warping spacetime, since a black hole so close by would suck the moon right in, while subjecting the Earth to extreme tidal forces; and as for a matter of aliens, they could not trash the idea either. They were practically celebrating and calling it a providence, as atheistic as scientists probably are, that humanity even had the chance to behold such an object— an entity known to science-fiction nerds as a wormhole.

Scientists all over the world instinctively prepared themselves to study it, and to extract every last bit of information they could glean out of it. It was just when they had trained their instruments onto the enchanted piece of sky (after they had gone as far as to surmise its likeness to a wormhole, which was only a mathematical result of the theory of relativity so far), when the thing disappeared. It disappeared just like that, without a trace. The sky was smooth, dark and uninteresting as ever before, like nothing out of the ordinary had ever occurred. It was there in the sky for two days, and on the third, it was gone. It was then that the world suffered a while from unavailable satellite signal, which disrupted communication for a few hours all over the Earth simultaneously. Some people found it really uncomfortable when they tried to connect the event with the glitch in the sky. Notwithstanding, nothing occurred that would pose a lasting harm, and humans continued going about their business—mind you, nobody forgot about it. Looking at mind boggling videos on the internet that talk about impending doom or extraterrestrial invasion is one thing, and having the whole scientific community talk about a peculiarity up above in the world so high, right next to the Moon as an addition, is definitely nothing forgettable.

It was days since the spotting of the ostensible wormhole, and its unexplained, subsequent disappearance, and there was no eerie occurrence afterward, at least none that was bare to detection. By this time, scientists had had sleepless nights trying to conclude something credible and rational, from what was brought to their notice by a random woman who was awed looking up into the heavens through her cheap telescope. The enthusiasm of the common folks gradually died down, more and more resorting to the ‘hoax’-explanation—the phenomenal craze was reduced till it stood on the threshold of insignificance in a few days. In the meanwhile, however, the Moon was noticed to be rotating in a funny way—meaning, with a new period of rotation. While the Moon has for aeons been facing the Earth with just one of its hemispheres; never having naturally revealed its ‘dark side’ to Earthlings—it had now begun to turn relative to the viewers on Earth. This was something which was entirely eerie. The sapient apes on Earth were out of all clues, and frantically searching for explanations, they could find them only in supernatural, vague ones—which actually did better at spooking them out even more. And of course, scientists, relentlessly curious by profession, were as unyielding as ever.

*****

High up beyond the atmosphere of the Earth over a particular spot on the ground, in a geosynchronous orbit, a communication satellite was contentedly busy in its job. Floating dumbly in the vacuous void, it was falling toward the Earth always, yet the planet’s curvature and its own tangential velocity prevented it from ever reaching the ground—the ground always curved away before the natty piece of technology was pulled all the way to the surface by gravity. Destined to be part of the many pieces of space debris in the satellite graveyard that enveloped the planet, it was too dim-witted to ever feel morose about such a realisation, and thus carried on with falling.

As if its official consent would really matter, nature behaved awkwardly in a sneaky way, a few kilometres away from it. A wee little spherical thing began to take shape, or rather began to crunch up a sliver of the all encompassing darkness lit with glowing dots. A black ball it was, which grew in size, ripples breaking across it till it gave off lights from some distant part of the universe. The electrical power coursing through the satellite’s machinery was abruptly shut off. In the meantime, the sphere finally gained a stable size, grim and menacing. The satellite bobbed once or twice in the void—which was not natural. Then, the sphere’s surface rippled all the more, and a tiny, bluish white spot of light appeared on one side, moving across it and expanding, its image severely distorted like the image of a light bulb on the edge of a patch of dry surface on wet, black marble. The mote of light grew till it had the shape of an exotic piece of intelligent design. Then it emerged in all its glory.

The spaceship broke the surface of the sphere like a reptilian newborn rending open its eggshell with its snout, to be born into the world. The petrifying monstrosity of its build oozed an inexorable ambience into the surrounding space, and with a certain ego and the powerful, unmistakable pride of a galactic conqueror, it slowly sailed forth. It was bigger than the International Space Station, or even the R.M.S. Titanic; passing through the axis of two humongous coaxial rotating rings was a tube, where lights periodically blinked on and went off at different places. The Ship swam through the void, propelled by an invisible force, and sinisterly came ever closer to the ignorant Earth. Once close enough, it decelerated to a stop, blithely ignoring the gravity of the immense mass of the planet right ahead. A ring of glowing gaseous matter appeared around a junction of the tube and diffused into space, and a paraboloid capsule at the leading end of the tube gently jerked loose from the junction, and quite predictably, sped toward the Earth, effulgent propellant flickering at its rear end. Some more cylindrical portions separated from the Ship and dived into the atmosphere of the Earth, following suit. Our satellite never came back online— it continued to orbit the Earth, now useless— the newest addition to the expansive space junkyard.  

The modules from outer space descended quickly, and with each passing layer of the aerial shroud of the Earth, they heated up. The particles of the entire columns of air between each one of them and the ground could not move away in time, and as the same columns were compressed, they heated the objects compressing them. Like angels kicked out of Heaven for bad conduct, they came tearing through the sky, now glowing bolides. The descent continued for some time. In a flash, one of them exploded in a mighty spectacle.

Pieces rained down from the destroyed capsule, and a clump of black smoke hung suspended in the sky for a while. The other duo of survivors detachedly kept falling, as if such an “accident” was expected. They fell freely for quite a spell, and by this time they had moved rather far apart from each other. Then one of them let loose a piece of fabric, and then two more, which fluttered and unfurled into objects closely resembling parachutes. With a jerk, its freefall slowed down—but the remaining one kept falling, disintegrating bit by bit, and suddenly a formidably large piece separated from it, and the wasted capsule, or what was left of it, exploded with a smaller blast.

After plummeting for a long while, the sea rushed up to the second capsule, and it splashed into the waves. A hiss was produced as water turned to steam from the heat. The other piece was nowhere in sight—perhaps it had landed on solid land. Yes, there was land within a few kilometres. It was the Indian Ocean—the Bay of Bengal, precisely—and this place was abundant in islands.

In the distance, a group of fishermen were rowing a boat. They were not the regular kind of fishermen, though. Falling under the administration of the Republic of India, the region was a Union Territory, a sovereign area under Indian protection. More interestingly, these waters, and few of the many islands sprinkled over here and there, had barely even received wind from the civilised world for a very, very long time; practically never, in history. That made the fishermen a group of Sentinelese, a primitive people indigenous of the Andamans, who had never in effect been touched by civilisation, and thus had never developed past a Paleolithic stage. They were some of the few living relics of prehistory, like a window opening into the ages past.

Just like any other day, they were out to arrange for food, hunt fish— turtles, if fortunate enough. It was all usual for them, striving to make ends meet, making sure that their community survived for another day. This was until they saw stars shooting down from the sky. Awestruck, they watched, till one of the shooting stars noisily splashed into the water, and their awe instantly morphed into uncontainable curiosity. They rowed over to the fallen angel, and saw an object which they almost certainly attributed to the gods. The material had melted and cooled at places, producing small, wave-like textures that gave a strange, unearthly aspect to the object. One of the men rose, and tried to poke it with a spear, and they heard a metallic ring when it made contact. They were not ready for a hatch silently sliding back, and a black rod emerging with a smooth, mechanical hum, which stared at the brown hominids motionlessly. They talked in their vernacular tongue. “This one is quite interesting”, one probably said. “But it is not food”, said another. A yellow tinged white light glared from the tip of the rod, startling the men. The light remained on for a few moments, and moved like a searchlight as the rod itself moved—the cone of light was initially over the fishermen, and then made a 360°, probably scanning a panoramic view of the environment, feeding the information to... whoever was inside.

Suddenly, there was a brief whistle, and a “PHISHSHSS!” as gases were exchanged across a newly made crack on the surface of the craft. Levers worked, gears turned and a quiet, high pitched sound issued forth into the air. The men saw the crack widen; a doorway was opening. With ignorant stupor they watched on till the process reached completion. Hesitantly, they peered inside. What they saw blew their sodding wits.   

There was a vivid display screen, two wheels and a load of a complicated working of tubes, switches, panels, buttons, flaps and wires. The inside was lit by an unsettling blue-white glow. However, what surprised them the most (by far) was sitting amidst this mess— the form of a humanoid creature. From neck down, it was covered in a black, baggy suit. It had four limbs; two legs and two arms— each of the hands were concealed inside a leathery gauntlet up to the knuckles, which exposed four fingers; four indeed, with an opposable thumb and an unusually long index finger that gradually thinned towards a pointed tip. The face was absurdly shaped; like a lizard, or a reptile, but without any muzzle jutting out; and behind its head and down its neck, feathers of various colours bristled and moved stiffly in alarm. It had two bowl shaped craters above its jowls on each side—perhaps auditory organs. On either side of a pair of gaping slits in the middle of its face, which were perhaps its nostrils, two yellow eyes with flaming red pupils darted about in what could be comprehended as fear, panic or nervousness. And the face! The expression was so relatable, like a hapless kid’s, who was troubled by a bully. On its arm, the creature wore a weapon with the basic shape of a trapezoidal cannon, which had rounded edges and a series of yellow lights along the sides. The being had pointed it towards the Sentinelese, and was clumsily bracing itself with the free arm from any potentially hazardous blow from them.

Each party stared at the other unblinkingly, petrified. A while passed. The creature suddenly seemed to come back to its senses, though unnoticeably so, and with utmost caution, intended not to alert the inhabitants of this alien world, it reached for a button, smoothly and ever so slowly. Then one of the uncivilised men made a bad move.

He yelled madly and thrust his spear towards the being’s torso. Before the blade could penetrate the clothing donned by the extraterrestrial, the latter, possibly out of reflex, activated some switch which did a horrific deed. A handful of projectiles zipped out of the weapon that it had in its tense grip, and with wet, crunching sounds, tore into the attacker’s bare chest and belly. The poor man did not have time to voice the sudden pain, as instantaneously, while still lodged, the pellets burst violently. Bits of bone, organs and blood spilled out of his shredded, perforated trunk, more out of his back than his front; perhaps the pellets were deliberately designed so.  The man was dead before he hit the deck of the boat.

Terrified, the four living souls looked upon their comrade, who lay ripped open, and then looked at the beastly extraterrestrial and its wicked weapon. The creature almost expressed repentance, and mouthed something hardly audible, in frequencies high enough to be just around the ultrasonic limit of their ears. In all, they heard chirps, which made them panic all the more. The creature pressed a button which it had originally intended to, and the display screen came to life. It turned to the screen. A painful grimace appeared on its face all of a sudden, as its body heaved. It soothingly rubbed its scaly, plated throat, then scratched it and finally clawed desperately at it, its ‘nostrils’ alternately flaring up and closing; it looked like being suffocated. Its condition worsened, it seemed, before it squawked like a bird and pressed a button on the gauntlet— and a Sentinelese seized the moment.

The man, with boiling blood in his throbbing temples and revenge on his mind, drove his spear between the eyes of the creature— it sank deep with a gut-wrenching ‘CRACK!’ and a jet of red liquid exited one of its nostrils. Immediately the creature contorted its face, and slowly relaxed, as its arms fell limply by its side. The man did not stop at that. Screaming wildly, he pulled the spear out, slimy red coils sticking to the blade, and stabbed the creature’s body repeatedly. Each of his stabs that could tear through the tough fabric worn by the being, made the same red fluid spew out.

Their job was done. They perhaps had found the hunt for the day— except, this one had taken a life. The Sentinelese proceeded to load their boat with the carcass. The whole incident was witnessed by the strong breeze and the waves of the Indian Ocean. The men presently prepared to row back to the shore.

               Wandoor, located to the south of the South Andaman Island, is just another seaside town, except it stands thirty-six kilometres east of the publicly restricted North Sentinel Island. Arriving from Port Blair—the capital of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands— tourists like to visit this place for the white sanded beaches hugging the cyan-blue Indian Ocean under a cheery blue summer sky and for other site seeing. One fine afternoon, a carcass washed up on the cheerful shore.

The locals were freaked out by the form of it, and tourists smelled adventure. It looked horribly real and organic, yet so unnaturally engineered by nature that the first glimpse could just not, in one’s mind, conjure up any image of fauna ever to have walked upon the Earth. The carcass had no sign of rotting, or any marks of a fatal wound. It was impeccably fresh— as if it could have, at any unpredictable instant, been up and walking. What was interesting was hardly the shape of the deceased creature, but the fact that it wore clothes; clothes as in a baggy, one-piece black suit, with  a leathery gauntlet covering the hand and one-third of one arm, exposing strange fingers. Simian instincts kicked in, and people slowly began to gather enough courage as to poke with sticks at what appeared as a remnant of a tail-like appendage, then turn the body over (it lay face first) to look at the visage clearly. Then authorities came to know of the strange encounter, and finally decided to take the matter in their hand.

The carcass came in possession of the police, who in turn decided to hand it over to the National Institute of Ocean Technology in Port Blair, practically one of the few nearby places that could make sense out of it. The driver, of the truck which carried the package from Wandoor to the capital city via road, had later reported to have heard faint chirps and scarcely audible, high pitched squeaks coming from the carriage.

*****

Dr. Ayas Alam beheld the stupefying shape of the carcass found at the Wandoor coast. No believable explanation dawned on him. “When was it found, they said?” he asked his colleague. The colleague was a Bengali called Dr. Jagadish Barui, and was some nine to ten years younger to Dr. Alam; the former possibly was a descendant of one of the (eventually freed) prisoners of the Cellular Jail from the days of the British Raj. “Yesterday; sometime around late noon. It was discovered by locals. Or a tourist, maybe”, replied Barui.

“Where do we even begin?” Dr. Alam sighed. Barui was waiting for this moment, it seemed. “Oh, Dr. Alam, we do have some… apparent clues.” The senior scientist glanced at him quizzically. “Sorry that I didn’t tell you. Coast Guards on patrol found a craft-sort-of thing… something resembling… well, a vehicle, abandoned in open sea—a few klicks east of the North Sentinel Island.”

“What are you saying! Have they been collected? Brought back… I mean?” Dr. Alam said, fascinated. “Brought back—yes. And they have also been transported here. And…”

“And…?” Dr. Alam nudged him to continue. “There was a bunch of some things resembling parachutes, floating on the ocean. Except the fabric did not resemble nylon. Or anything man-made. Tests are ongoing, in one of our labs. There were some pieces perhaps from another... craft... over the—”

Barui’s voice trailed off.

Dr. Alam had been looking at the floor for the last few moments, and looked up— to find a statue of Barui, in flesh and blood. The statue gulped hard, and managed to say, “Did you... d-did you see that?” his terrified gape was riveted on the table behind Dr. Alam. He unquestioningly turned to the table. “What? See what?” he could not make out anything weird.

“The body... didn’t you see?” Dr. Alam plucked out a handkerchief from his pocket and mopped up cold sweat broken across his forehead. “What do you mean?” He turned to face Barui, and it was clear that the former was trying to conceal a feeling of some uncanny air, rising and swirling in the room.

“Look! Now!” Barui urgently bluttered out, and at the same moment, grasped his senior by his shoulders and swung him around. Both of them saw it—the hand. The corpse’s left hand was raised, and the fingers twitched. Its mouth subtly opened, and they heard what could be described as a whispered, hoarse chirp. Its eyes were partially open, glazed. It turned its head towards the marine scientists and pointed towards a water bottle across the room.

The men stood paralysed. It was alive all along. It was alive; right under their noses, and they had never doubted its deadness. The animal squeaked helplessly. Dr. Alam’s benevolence won over his paralysis, and thinking the creature wanted water, he reached to it the bottle. The being snatched it from his hand and sprang down from the table. It desperately tried to reach the water inside; it bit at the cap, tried to break it with brute force and finally twisted it—to its own success. At first it sniffed at the clear liquid, tasted the drops adhered to the neck of the bottle (the scientists observed it had a tongue), took a moment to decide, and downed it thirstily.

“Is that an alien? Like, from outer space?” Dr. Jagadish Barui finally uttered. Dr. Alam looked at him, and then at the extraterrestrial. He tried to communicate, waving his hand, and jabbing his index finger into the air above him once or twice, meaning to gesture at the sky. The creature finished with the water, and stared at the human. It seemed amused.

“Are you from space? Some other solar system?” Barui tried his luck at making himself understood to the ‘alien’. In reply, it made complicated avian sounds from its throat, almost like a well developed language.

“How could it have come from another solar system? It’s so... earthly— so terrestrial”, Dr. Alam pointed out to Barui. “Well, do you really think it is of Earth?” Barui was naturally unconvinced, “Meaning; we live on this planet, and we have never come across a reptilian humanoid as sapient as this one. Plus, it is wearing clothes.” As they conversed, the reptilian humanoid was perhaps contriving a devious ploy, they thought suddenly. They looked at it, and they observed it to be doing something with the gauntlet it wore.

Its fingers nimbly glided over switches on the gauntlet. The scientists watched awestruck at how human it looked in the action. It moved close to the nearest wall. What was it up to? The humans could not decide. Then a beam of light shot forth from a source on the gauntlet and struck the wall. Was it laser? Was it going to melt the wall? What for? But what the humans saw, in all their humility, they could never have imagined in their wildest dreams.

The beam expanded into an elliptical patch of light on the wall, like that of a movie projector on a screen. Then, a video played.

There was the image of a planet against a pitch black canvas. It was blue, and very familiar. It had patches of land— awkwardly shaped continents. Swirling in large clots above them were white clouds. One half of the planet was shrouded in darkness, the one facing away from its star. Then there was a single, lonely greyish ball, some distance away from the planet, suspended in the void; for some unknown reason, it convinced the humans that the planet was their home, and its satellite, their Moon. It was their planet, against the word of a prophet, possibly from a time when their species had not set foot upon it, because what they saw next confirmed it.

The scene changed. It was a scantily forested area. The distant horizon was flanked with some mountain range. Tall grass swayed in the wind. Then a huge beak appeared from nowhere (from the edge of the video) and tore out some of it in its mouth. The view moved to focus onto the bearer of the beak and— God! Barui coughed sharply. It was a dinosaur! A ceratopsian it was, to be accurate (the triple horned type, like Triceratops). Then a more bizarre view unfolded. A wetly shiny, writhing appendage appeared from the top of the elliptical video, and gently stroked the enormous frill of the ceratopsian. It perhaps belonged to the entity making the video. The humans could not believe the information that their eyes fed their brains.

The video showed more. It showed the Video-Maker, concealed in a strangely shaped, bluish green, (other than the appendages) all-covering jacket, with a black, vitreous dome in the middle, like some alien spacesuit. Some small theropods scurried in the grass. The Video-Maker picked one up, as it chirped piteously. Then the appendage appeared again to pacify it.

The view shifted altogether—now it was inside an immense—hall? Possibly, thought the humans. It was mostly lit with a strange, green halo. On one corner of the hall, there was a huge, transparent dome. And in it, there was a complete ecosystem of dinosaurs, but they appeared so distorted, as if reflections from a badly bent, twisted mirror. Then they saw the image of a planet once again. This one was clearly not the Earth, because of the scarcity of blueness on it. Brown and ochre prevailed much more than blue, and there were clouds on this one too. That was where the video ended.

Dr. Alam could not keep steady. The creature tried to explain itself and the video, with shrill, cryptic squeaks and chirps. Aliens had visited the Earth, after all. The Fermi paradox could be ditched at last; and they had come in the age of the dinosaurs. 

“Umm... Dr. Alam?” Barui said eventually. He looked at him. “So, aliens had come to Earth?”

“Apparently. And—” 

“They took a bunch of dinosaurs with them to their planet?” Barui cut in. “Why would they do that? As some form of memorabilia from Earth? Pets for their offspring? That’s ridiculous!” Dr. Alam tried to say, “Yes, but—” 

“And where is their planet anyway? It takes eras to traverse interstellar space, let alone intergalactic travel. And this—this dude, or what—some alien; it does not nearly resemble those wiggly armed, neon washed creeps from the video—”

As Barui impatiently prattled on, Dr. Alam tried to keep his cool. In the end, he interrupted by raising a hand before the junior's face, and put an index finger over his own lips darkened by his smoking. Barui seemed to understand, and calmed down. Dr. Alam slightly jabbed his chin into the air, toward the Creature's direction; Barui followed the invisible arrow the chin shot, and looked at the other side of the lab, upon the Creature.

They saw the terribly humanoid life-form, staring back at them. The small eyes stared hard, perhaps even through them. Bio-luminescent, were they? The fiery, scarlet rings that formed its irides seemed to pulse with a glow, the deep, focused, intelligent gaze stabbed at their inner core, charring their very skeletons. The scientists stood immobilised. Then the Creature, suddenly, seemed to lose interest, and turned its head away; it looked out of the half open window, up at the sky... 

“Doctor Alam! Might I disturb you now?” The booming voice came from the corridor. Dr. Alam tried to proceed to the door, to intercept the owner’s path and block him from seeing the alien. It was already too late, and Dr. Mehul entered. Of course, he saw it, and his reaction was not exactly pleasant, unsurprisingly. He gasped, choked on his own saliva and exclaimed “It’s alive! It’s ALIVE!”

The duo caught him, calmed him down, and kept him from going berserk. The alien squealed in fright, and then squawked threateningly. It had no weapon, or it might not have hesitated to use it. After the two scientists had explained their own account, Dr. Mehul understood. Slowly, he began to piece together what he had come to inform.

He said that the remains of the craft were being studied, when holographic, three dimensional animations were accidentally turned on inside the ‘cockpit’. “Look here, here is a video recording”, Dr. Mehul eyed the alien suspiciously while he showed the video to Jagadish Barui and Dr. Alam, from his smart-phone.

They could make out what it showed. High rising structures huddled together, hugging each other, an animated simulation of an advanced civilisation. Ugly creatures walked on the metal lined, smooth ground. Then the structures stood ruined, dilapidated, collapsing. The ugly creatures were seen flopped down in tubs; they were shrivelling up, leaving behind pools of blackish yellow fluid. “These are dying; what do you think?” asked Dr. Mehul. One of the creatures was seen with a dinosaur, a small theropod, which hopped upon the creature’s body excitedly. “So these creatures went extinct, for some reason or other. These, I mean,” Dr. Mehul said, pointing at the Video-Makers, and looked at the alien accusingly. Then an animation showed the external anatomy of the troodon-like dinosaur, which they had witnessed moments ago. The theropod’s shape changed, stepwise. The arms grew longer, the snout shortened, the skull got bigger. The tail shrank and the posture became more erect. Once again, the scientists watched in awe. “Is that simulated evolution?” asked Barui.

There was a long pause. “Most probably”, replied Dr. Alam. He sighed deeply, expelling the stupefied air from his lungs.

“These creatures had come to Earth when the dinosaurs ruled it—the land, the air, the oceans”, he talked as if in a daze, his gaze extending out of the open window. Dr. Mehul picked up the trail, “They had taken back Earthlings to their home planet, we cannot imagine why. The dinosaurs slowly replaced the Video-Makers, and evolved in a separate, Earth-like environment.”

“But how did they manage to travel from so far? Did they live in space?” Barui inquired. “Maybe. Maybe not. Remember the wormhole madness from a few weeks ago?” reminded Dr.Mehul. “Another was observed, days ago, a little radially further out from the geosynchronous orbit of Earth. And there was what appeared to be a humongous Mother Ship. Why, there was a second wave of glitch in the communication system; remember? Didn’t you see the news?”

“Okay... but—what about the dinosaurs happily adapting to the new planet? They appeared to have no difficulty at all! The new ambience should have out and out killed them; God knows what the air is composed of, even if it’s breathable. God knows if the sheets of blue were even water, whether the life forms were based on carbon molecules, or silicon, or nitrogen! It was the dinosaurs who should have gone extinct, just like they did here. And, if you ask me, they are gone for a reason. They were unworthy.”

“They might as well have been carbon based, living on a very Earthlike planet; how could you know?” said Dr. Alam. “And they were interstellar travellers, man! They could have engineered the dinosaurs’ DNA, perhaps. And that perhaps caused their Armageddon. I just can’t understand how they found the Earth—even our Solar System, for that matter—from the millions of other stars in the galaxy; or the universe, if they are not from the Milky Way. I know—their precursors on their planet had come here, and they had probably made some kind of a cosmic map, yet... Maybe they had been searching for a long time, never having been successful until now.” Now another doubt crossed Dr. Mehul’s mind; pointing towards the alien, he said, “And this being had no trouble fitting back in its original environment here? The Earth has changed a lot since their kind was here the last time.”

“Well, you must’ve heard, they are an omnipotent race!” Barui’s tone lingered between light sarcasm and mockery at Dr. Alam. 

“Exactly”, said Dr. Alam, “Maybe this one ingested some concoction—a chemical, or something, which accelerates evolution from many years to a few hours. That was maybe when it played the dead; getting ready, actually. I am running out of believable explanations.” 

“You really think any of this makes sense?” Barui was unconvinced. “Yeah, trying to dig out sense, we’re getting at just non-sense. Sort of”, said Dr. Mehul. 

“Never mind...", he paused to look at the incredulous junior.

"Jagadish? Do you think dinosaurs were wiped out because they were unfit? Do you not know that modern humans have lived only a fraction of the time they had? You are too early to judge; we are mere toddlers as a species compared to the archosaurs— which was not a species, though; they were what we identify as dinosaurs today. Towards the end of their glorious rule, nature’s unforgiving wrath descended upon their world all of a sudden—and their reign was reduced to minerals interred beneath the Earth’s strata.” 

The others were dumbfounded. They had forgotten about their live specimen too, perhaps. Barui finally found some words, and spent them on a sardonic hindsight, “Dr. Alam, why, you should've become a geologist... or maybe even a palaeontolongist!” Dr. Alam didn't deign to show his annoyance.

The loudest sound  at the moment was the rustling of palm leaves outside, stirred by the sea breeze. Then, Dr. Alam's lips quivered, a sombre declaration bubbled up from his innards and into his mouth. He arranged the words, and solemnly, let them flow, “Dinosaurs have come back to reclaim their world. This time, they have had a head start of a longer evolutionary history...” He paused. Prophetically, he went on, “I don’t expect it to be pleasant business—an encounter with advanced, colonial dinosaurs.” 

When he awoke from his trance, the Doctor blinked, and turned towards the Terrible Lizard; the Dinosaur. 

It was already out of the room, out through the window, and its feathers stood in rapt attention as it defiantly looked up to the Heavenly Dome, square in the face. Its companions were about to descend with all the necessary tools and equipments.

Far away, a bright streak made a fiery cut across the sky's unblemished, cerulean canvas.

A short story: Sapience's Dark Side

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