by Atri Kundu
This was not the first mission to reach Genesis though. His position in the society and great persuasive skills made possible the first space exploration in four hundred years. Project Asylum. Three satellites were launched simultaneously, each one reached Genesis but the mission was a terrible failure.
“Ten seconds…nine…eight…”
These four-hundred years were tough for humanity. The third World war in 2539 had still not lost its poison by 3169 when the fourth one broke out. Every country, city, and province was reduced to dust. Factories and industries crumbled, nuclear smoke filled agricultural fields, cities and forests burnt to ashes. But our race wasn’t the one to go down that easily. Slowly but steadily we made it. Not as different countries, but as one humanity.
However, by then it was too late for our Earth.
“Three…two…one. LAUNCH!”
A large window carved out of the spaceship body and started sliding away like an automated gate. A strong beam of light hit my eyes, even through the glass shield of my drone. I blinked and squinted. The light bathed my entire drone in an eye’s blink, caressing me with the morning’s first glow on the new world.
My fingers wrapped tighter around the two levers that protruded out of the dashboard. Each one had a set of buttons on them. I pressed the red one. A sudden vibration rattled my drone. Blunt and thick metallic sound followed the jerk. In five seconds, I felt another quake and the drone moved free from its shackles. The vibrations seized and my drone flew out through the cavity of the window.
Out in the open, the light was stronger and brighter. It wasn’t sunlight but light from the twin stars around which Genesis orbited.
“How is it everyone?” Marlene spoke. Her voice sounded rasp, spilling out her desire to be here, to see what I am seeing.
Our view of outside was shut as thick titanium curtains covered the glass windscreens of our drones, a safety from sudden attacks. I looked at the huge screen before me, which displayed a detailed view of the new world as captured by the cameras.
Before my eyes, was a wide landscape that extended into the horizon, white with thick crusts of snow carpeting it as long as I or rather, the camera could focus. The sky was blue, far bluer than we could even imagine on nuclear-polluted Earth and behind the white, puffy clouds the stars played hide and seek like a child free from all the worldly tantrums. Bright starlight fell on the snow, glittering like a bed of diamonds.
A dark beauty, I sighed. I heard others replying to Marlene, but I kept quiet.
“Now focus,” Corrie sounded irritated at our meek happiness. “I am going in. Follow me.”
We did. His drone took a sharp acceleration, reaching the five-thousand mph mark in a few seconds. With a flip of my thumb, I pulled the ignition key. Red, hot plasma boosters pushed my vehicle faster than a bullet through the air. I held tight the two livers, occasionally dipping to get a closer look at the ground and then gaining altitudes to avoid hitting giant mountains.
Suddenly, I felt Corrie’s drone slowing down.
I did so too. His voice was on the speakers. “The ground seems firm enough to land. Can you get us some samples Ryan?”
“Yeah, sure” he replied like an obedient student.
Ryan’s drone paused in the air, its wings slid inside and it began losing altitude. Three duralium legs sprang out of its titanium body and hit the field of snow. Years of accumulated dusty snow spread in the air under the impact and the entire machine trembled both ways. My heart skipped. I adjusted my camera vision and zoomed in on the image. The ice bed was cracking.
One of the legs skidded and it received another shock. Then it came to rest, perfectly balanced on the three legs.
But for how long? Did Ryan notice the cracks too? An irresistible wish to warn Ryan choked my breath, but I couldn’t. Corrie would not like my interference.
A long portion from the drone’s body carved out and came down like stairs. Ryan walked down the stairs, dressed in the space suit and as soon as his feet touched the ground, a choked happiness fumed out of every other drone that hung in the air. Even I found myself smiling.
Ryan Roosebolt, the first man on Genesis!
He stood there motionless. Slowly he stretched out his arms as if taking in the eternal beauty of this new world. Who would believe, witnessing him now, that he came from a planet devastated with wars and unbreathable air where people live in an artificial environment that can support life for only a few more generations. “If there is Heaven, then it is here,” he exclaimed.
“First make sure it is welcome for humans.” Corrie bellowed again.
How could this guy look like a human? He never acted like one and yet, since the day I joined the United Forces, he was at its crest. Even in this mission he was given the most responsibilities. The higher-ups never briefed us the entire details of this mission. The only thing they insisted on was that we had to follow him, no matter what.
Ryan carried with him two machines. In one, he took samples of the ice and air in different compartments. Then he busied himself in the technical stuffs I’d never understand.
Our drones formed a circle in the air around his. We divided the vision on our main screen into footages of different cameras and scanned the air, land and the horizon. My pulses were on a sharp rise, due to two reasons. The ground beneath Ryan could crumble at any moment and they could come out from anywhere anytime.
They were the inhabitants of this world.
They were the reason behind the failure of Project Asylum forty years back. One of the three rovers landed on a weak ice spot and crashed inside but the other two were taken down by them. But before going down, one rover did manage to take and send back some pictures, including pictures of a green grass field and a creature firing a blue ball of fire at it.
The first picture was our hope and the second was despair.
Almost after thirty minutes, Ryan returned to his drone. Metal wings spread out; once more it trembled and then took flight.
Seconds after its legs lifted from the ground, the crack in the ice deepened and it broke apart into a cavernous opening.
I released my breath which I was holding so long. Ryan changed his trajectory and headed back towards our ship where the samples would be tested. The rest of us headed forward, Corrie’s drone leading us.
Our speed touched six-thousand mph. Mountain ranges, glaciers, craters and miles long stretched fields of ice passed below us. At places the ice layers were thin enough to give glimpses of the cold and pure bluish liquid that streamed below them. Maybe water, I thought and I prayed. The sky rapidly changed colors, blue to grey as the snowfall intensified and reduced our visibility. We increased our altitude, and flew above the thick, white sea of clouds.
Genesis was so much like Earth. So much and yet, no sign of civilization so far. Was Marlene right in her prediction? I shuddered as the thought crossed my mind. No, it can’t be. We can’t go back to Earth empty handed. There’s nothing left there.
Miles of destroyed towns, uninhabited deserts and oceans that had fed on most of the land was the new Earth. Only a part of what used to be Europe centuries back was now left. No borders, no separate countries—41,827,451 was the count of humans measured three years back. We can’t go back there.
Water filled my eyes. I gulped down my breath and tried to gulp down the fear and emotions but I couldn’t. I’m not Corrie McClenaghan. I can’t even pretend to be a machine.
“See, water!” A sudden shout put ripples of sense back into my body.
“Even its sight makes me thirsty,” George sounded happy as usual. “But wait, is it salty too?”
I divided my screen in two, one part showing me the sky and the other focused far away. I could now see it too—a huge water body rising in the horizon and as we headed more towards it, it appeared like molten blue-diamond spread over a long area. “It must be water,” I spoke the first words in two hours. “If there is water, there must be life.”
Corrie ordered Sam to take
sample of the water. Her drone landed on water and took the sample and headed back towards our ship, leaving the five of us in our search for life.
***
We flew at almost top speed but the ocean seemed to be never-ending. Stretched to the horizon, its turquoise blue color occasionally glittered under the starlight. It had waves too, gentle and low, kissing the little rocky islands scattered randomly. And for a moment, I even imagined myself standing in one such rock, with the blue liquid washing my feet.
“It’s pure water and pure oxygen too.” Marlene’s voice suddenly buzzed loud on the speaker. I squeezed my teeth tighter. Our mission was finally getting its results, rays of hope dawning on the horizon.
Sudden exclamations of joy and surprise rose among us but Corrie replied calmly, “Details please.”
“I… umm… we studied the samples here,” she was breathing heavily, excitement and happiness enveloped her voice. “The air has mixtures of nitrogen, helium, hydrogen and oxygen. The oxygen percentage is high enough to sustain human life for millions of years. No UV rays or such radiations in the atmosphere, confirmed the team on Endeavor. And I guarantee that the water was pure, no salt and nothing poisonous, just pure water.”
“Finally we have some good news. Well done Marlene and rest of the team.” Corrie sounded content. So was I. Pure air and water, that’s all we need to build a second Earth. Father did a great job tracing this planet out of the millions and billions of others in the infinite Universe. The only thing we needed now was land surface to give roots to the new human civilization.
So, is this it? Our new home?
An old memory flashed before my eyes. I was just a kid of nine. One day returning from the neighbourhood park, I’d asked my father why do we live inside these translucent dome-like things. I had a strong belief that father will tell us that it protected us from alien invasions and vampire attacks.
But he didn’t. Instead he said that those domes are bio-shields that sustain pure air and suitable atmosphere inside them for human beings to live which were no more found outside. Even today, I could picture him looking up at the sky as he had said, “Aliens may not be that bad, son. Very soon we’d have to depend on an alien world for our own survival.” That was my first lesson of science. And the beginning of my dreams.
But then how I ended up being a United Force’s general, quietening all the chaos and fights inside our greenhouse, no one really knew.
Well, maybe the vicious cries of the rebels did. And the barks of radioactively infected animals did too.
“Syl, we’ve made a big mistake in our calculations,” Marelene’s sudden words shattered my glimpses of the past. She had disconnected from the main server, her voice was now connected privately to my server.
“Why, what now? We have oxygen, water and I’m sure we’ll find green lands too. There isn’t any mistake.”
“There is,” her voice choked. “And it was so obvious all this time. Time is relative, you know, it bends and warps. Time will actually appear to move slower near massive objects, because space-time is warped by the weight. So, as we passed through the time holes, time moved outside the holes as well. Ofcourse, we predicted this earlier but in the end father solved it by…”
“Hold on a second,” I intervened. “Can you be a little, less scientific?”
“Well okay, forget the space-time inconsistancies. What I mean to say is, in the three years of Earth time we took to travel to Genesis, hundreds of centuries had passed here already. And this Genesis is no way the one we pictured it to be.”
***
“I’m getting something on my screen,” Corrie paused.
“There. There. I can see land!” George broke into a joyous shriek.
“Not just that,” Corrie bellowed. “I saw it a minute ago. There are some movements down there. First sight of alien civilization.”
We all froze at his words. We were already in their land? Corrie’s words proved true in seconds and as we moved a little forward, our screens were filled with images of aliens. Not just one or two but an entire empire.
“Prepare for war. Ready every weapon that you have at your disposition.” Corrie sounded dead serious.
War? Why so soon? We knew nothing about them yet.
“Destroy everything you find moving,” he said. “Taking down an entire empire won’t be easy, but we are trained for this day. Let’s do it.”
No one said anything in reply but I could restrain myself no longer. “We came here to find life, not to destroy. Destroying a civilization was never the mission.”
“This was always the mission,” he explained with a touch of serenity in his voice. “Our mission is to make Genesis habitable and this is a necessary step towards it. We have seen what they did with our satellite rovers, they’d do the same with us otherwise.”
“It can’t be.” I felt a stab in my heart. He must be lying; humans can never be so selfish. We quarrel, we fight and our history is filled with bloodshed but we can never eliminate an entire race just for our needs. But then the thought that we were never really described the mission stopped me from saying anything else. We were only briefed the do’s and don’ts but I always felt a certain secrecy weaving around it.
“Why were we never informed of this before?” I demanded.
George had the answer. “Then none of us would come here, right?”
“That’s right. The past wars threatened us so much that humans now flinch from the sight of arms and blood. They’d never willingly opt for another full-scale battle. But I know what should be done must be done, to save our race.” Corrie paused. Weapons slid out of the wings of his drone and he dropped his altitude by some ten thousand meters. He was fully prepared for the fight. “Human beings are born predators,” he said.
My drone hung in the air like a bird frozen in time.
I watched the other three drones line behind him as we did in the trainings. In these few moments, Corrie changed to a new man, talking more to his sub-ordinates and active and focused. “What we are seeing lies some thirty miles away, but as we go near them we have to carefully stay hidden as much as we can. We have a pretty advanced alien civilization for our enemy.”
“Yes, sir.” Sharp, steady voices replied in chorus.
“Drop your altitude to thirty-thousand feet. It will keep us in the cloud cover until we get them inside our firing range. And I guess, you all know your positions.”
Once more a chorus replied him.
“What are you doing Syl? Join the formation.” Jane said, sounding puzzled and irritated both.
For a moment I didn’t know what to reply. How can I just eliminate an entire civilization? To save humanity? That would be the most selfish act in human history and most inhuman too. “I can’t. I don’t agree with this.”
My words arouse surprised reactions from the most. “What exactly do you mean, Silvestre?” Anger and annoyance reflected visibly in Corrie’s voice.
But I had enough of fearing him, enough of following him. “We are not some hungry predators. This is inhuman; mission or no mission.”
“There’s no point,” George insisted. “Follow him. That’s our job, our duty.”
I felt Corrie’s drone vibrating, he was preparing both the helium and plasma boosters. “You are wrong, Silvestre, we are predators. We have a purpose and if you don’t want to co-operate, then back off.” His drone took off and the other three followed him.
I am sorry, but I could no more be just a robot following commands. Determined and clasping my teeth together, I accelerated. Immediately I pushed the lever and my drone dropped in altitude far below the others and soon overtook Corrie. Then I pulled the lever again and tilted it, raising my drone to block his way. His drone paused in mid-air, and so did the others.
“We should try to communicate. We can try to sort things out; fighting should be the last resort.”
“I remember telling you to back off,” he retorted. “I can fly through you, if you insist.”
“I am always ready!” Though his voice reached me through the microphone, I could picture him seating in his seat and that vicious, inhuman smile hung from his lips.
Others said things to persuade us, but those voices hardly reached me. I switched off the screen, and slid it away, baring the transparent glass shield of my drone. I didn’t need the metal curtain to protect myself and I raised it. Through the glass screen, I could clearly see the blue sky, puffed white clouds and Corrie’s drone a few meters from mine. A view that was no more artificial.
I pressed a switch, and my entire drone rattled to the point of breaking but in seconds, my helium boosters were ready to go. His were too. I pressed the livers tighter, adrenaline gushed down my veins.
“CUT IT OFF. NOW!” A strong bellow reverberated through the metal walls. I shuddered. Marlene. She can be scary at times. “Dare you two move an inch and I’ll immediately shut you down.”
She could definitely do so if she wished to; she was the one sitting at the main controls. I heaved a sigh. I wanted to teach that man a lesson. “Syl, don’t forget what we are here for,” she said with extreme authority. Then paused for a second. “But Corrie, I think, we should consider what Silvestre is saying. Let’s think of some way to communicate.”
“As you say,” he replied calmly. “You are the scientist here. Though, I hardly think it will work. They shot down the rovers previously, and will do the same with us.”
“Do you have any plan Syl?”
Suddenly I felt all the focus shifting to me. Plan? I didn’t think of any, but their reactions made me feel that I should have. I’d been too rash. I gulped for air. “Yeah. Yeah, I thought of something,” I hesitated, groping for words inside my mind. “I can go to them and try to persuade them.
“Never heard of anything more stupid,” Mar bellowed. “You’ll get yourself killed at first chance.”