Science fiction. The Invaders

 

#Sciencefiction. The Invaders

It was late at night, and the thought of Invaders coming from their galaxy to collect the captives, was not letting me sleep.

We kept these captives in pens for them. Although they belonged to our community, once shortlisted, you were moved to the pen, and without any protest we let the Invaders take them as captives to their planet. For what, only the senior members of our planet know. 

Tonight I am anguished because one of my best friends has got shortlisted and has been moved to the pen. It has been an emotional slaughter for me from the moment I learned about it. 

Now he is in the pen. Unfortunately it happens to be only 45 paces away from the place where I live. I have been looking at him from the window of my room for an hour now, and he too has been constantly staring into my eyes. 

Tonight his face wore no discernible emotion. Otherwise very lively and jubilant, tonight his face was experiencing emotional frost. Maybe that is why I could not see the face of the friend I knew so well. I just saw a face that looked despondent and less responsive to anything around him. At the moment, I suppose nothing mattered to him, nothing at all. 

For him and others in the pen, this was the beginning of the end. A feeling where everything lies in a state of permanent frost: emotional frost, sentimental frost, and the meanest of them all, the will bitten by deep and almost remorseless frost. And tomorrow morning when the Invaders will land, it will mark the end of everything for them. And for me, the end of a friendship and everything it had begotten us.

“But, should I let it be so? Should I let my friend’s world end forever and never see him again? Never at all.” These were the thoughts I was dealing with as I looked at him and others in his pen.

“Maybe I could do something? Maybe I should do something?” These were the thoughts that arose from nowhere. Nowhere, because I did not want to entertain any such thoughts due to the fear of being banished from the community and forced to live at the edge of the planet, where nothing grows, except endless moments of hoping, until hope too gives up and dies at the Southern edge of the planet. And this thought, forced me, or at least somehow convinced me that these thoughts about rescuing my friend from this misery and undeserved fate, was not my responsibility.

“But what if I am in the same pen tomorrow? What will I do and what will I expect from the person who shall be looking at me from the same window? And what might I expect from this person at the window if he were my friend, as close to me as was my real friend in the pen right now?” These questions infuriated me and I once again began contemplating rescuing my friend. Finally after a few minutes I said to myself, “Let me do it. And I shall deal with the rest as it follows!” At least this is what motivated me to leave my room and walk towards the pen. Walk towards the pen, but not sure what to do and how to do, whatever I would do next? But do it I shall!

And eventually I stood right in front of the pen, where men and women felt more lowly than a pig, especially when someone was shortlisted two weeks in advance and left there at his/her fate i.e. until the Invaders arrived and claimed their captives.

While I stood in front of the pen, I wondered what would they do with such meek and frail men and women, when they are more of a liability than a resource that can be put to use in order to yield something productive. And when I looked at my friend, it felt as if time had handcuffed him and tied him to the stake where time and everything with it stood still. Only to prolong his pain, and make him suffer longer. Somehow even time turned very heartless in this pen, because it too punished them by moving so gradually inside this pen. And right now, my friend was its sufferer and its sole object of rebuking and admonitions.

Slowly I moved closer to the pen, none of them could even open their eyes, but for whatever reason, my friend's eyes were wide open. He often used to joke during our childhood adventures that he was born with eyes wide open. And tonight, he proved it. I had no reason not to believe him. 

With his eyes wide open, his lips began shivering softly, and as he tried to part his dried and chapped lips, a white, slimy but slightly hardened spider web like film widened with his opening lips. It was his dried saliva that, due to thirst and hunger, had turned thick and dense. And somehow he managed to say this, “How are you Ahfseil?”

I looked at him speechlessly, and responded with a smile that could not project itself in my face, “I am here and I want to take you out from here Rahmeil. I will.”

Then he tried to smile, but he could not, as if his cheek muscles hurt, and more than anything else, his will to smile hurt terribly. But he managed to say this, “You are joking. Nobody has ever escaped from the pen And we are digitally locked with this pen, via the chips inserted in our wrists. So any attempt will be futile, Ahfseil. Please do not attempt it.”

I thought about it and told him about the short #sciencefiction story titled: The Navigator, that I had read some time ago.

“It is a very interesting #scifi and I am sure you will love it. I sought some inspiration from it and figured out a solution to disrupt the signals emitted by this chip. Here is a wrist band which is packed with three layers of iron dust, two layers of magnetic dust, then two layers of mixed magnetic and iron dust, along with some raw sheep wool. It should block the signal, if not block it, it will definitely disrupt it. By the time the authorities figure out what is going on, we would have vanished into the forest. I only need you to be strong. I am ready, are you Rahmeil?”

He stared at me with a lot of effort and with concentration that seemed too tiring for him, he extended his arm from the pen. I took out the wrist band and tied it across his wrist. And asked him to move towards the door of the pen. His other inmates did not even wink their eyelids. And it was good, because we could leave without causing any panic. I knew I was being selfish, but they too were free to run, as long as they wanted to.  

Opening the digital lock of the door was a major impediment that kept my friend from claiming his freedom. And there was no way it could be opened; and I was not one of those computer geeks from HollyWood heist movies. My knowledge about computers was good, but not at the level that I would be able to hack into a system, so I applied some basic and hardcore logic.

Each pen received a direct power supply from the electric post standing adjacent to it. And tonight it had been thundering for many hours now. And usually on our planet, when there is thundering and lightning, electric posts sometimes experience outages. So, I activated my drone, and after gaining some height, it sprayed a highly inflammable liquid on the waterproof casing that acted as a dedicated electricity supply management and regulation unit for the pen where my friend was held captive. Then the drone shot a small metal pellet at the box and it was on fire. In a few seconds it overheated and the autocut device disconnected the power supply to the pen.

We had a few minutes before this waterproof case would be identified by the main power management system as a faulty power node and automatically initiate a physical visit, by some expert. 

The door of the pen, opened, and I held my friend's hand and we were about to run towards the forest, when I asked him to wait. I rushed into the pen, tried to wake up a few of the captives, and informed them they could run if they wanted to because the door of the pen was open. But all of them declined the offer. Purely based on one belief, that it is impossible to escape from here because the system will anyhow pinpoint their exact location. So, I left them there and we both ran towards the forest, without stopping and as far as we could run from the pen.

We must have been running for 20 minutes, when my friend felt the need to rest and take a deep breath. Which we both did. We were sitting on a big boulder, when we heard sirens blowing from every direction. With this announcement throughout the safe zone where our community lived. “One of the captives has escaped and Ahfseil has helped him. They have ventured into the unsafe zone of this planet. The forest! We request all residents to stay indoors while we comb the area with aerial drones and terrestrial robotic hounds who have been fed with their scent markers.”

We both looked at each other because we both were very scared of mechanical hounds. They were more fierce and merciless than real, wild and hungry hounds. And right now they were after us, and with our scent markers, they were bound to locate us in a few minutes. We could hear their mechanical barking getting closer and closer. While I was struggling to decide the next step, Rahmeil said something very interesting, “ Do you remember the small stream that flows to the Northern edge of this mountain? We will have to run through the stream and at the edge, where the water pours into a huge cave. We will have to jump into the cave. It is our only chance. We always wanted to do it as children, maybe we can be those children now. What do you think?”

I got down from the boulder and held his hand and we rushed towards the stream, there we removed our shoes and began running through the shallow water of the stream. In a few minutes we reached the edge. Here we tightened the grip of our fingers and we jumped. It was so distant that I think it took us 45 seconds to hit the surface of the water, with a huge sound that echoed across the cave. And then it was the cave , the water reservoir that flowed deep into the cave, and us, trying to find a solid surface to climb and breathe.

We managed to climb a jagged end of the cave and we found bunker-like shafts in the cave, each on top of the other. And the moment we saw them, we knew it was our place to sleep and rest. Without saying a word we did what we quietly, and already had accepted as our next act.

The robotic hounds were barking desperately now, because they had lost the trail of our scent. And the wind near this area always flows in the opposite direction of the stream, and this also wiped out our trail of scent in the air. I knew they would call reinforcements and advanced thinking machines to locate us.

But for now we were safe, and nobody had ever ventured into the cave, because here every signal gets blocked, so it was impossible that they would use drones or robots to fish us out. But they could use bionic men to hunt us down. To me that seemed unlikely because we both were very unimportant. Only that the Invaders will be arriving tomorrow and due to this they need the missing person back in the pen. Who right now is with me. 

They will need Rahmeil at any cost, because his biological profiling has been shared with the Invaders. And if he is replaced by someone else in the pen, the Invaders would know. That will be like inviting doomsday in advance. So, to retrieve Rahmeil, they will go to any extent, but not immediately and I hope my guess is correct.

However, inside the cave everything was quiet. There was complete silence and we all made the best use of it. We slept for 2 hours. And were woken up by the flight of a few bats.

As we opened our eyes, we saw  a few bionic men descending into the cave using ropes, we ran deeper into the cave. There at the farthest end, was a small gap filled with water. It led to the other end. Other end of the cave, or this planet, I had no idea at all. But squeezing through this gap filled with water was not an ordinary challenge. We had no choice but to accept it and force our way through the gap.

I tried it first. After holding my breath and pulling my stomach inwards, as hard as I could, I somehow crossed the gap. Rahmeil followed and we were standing on a huge wet rock with a slim film of water flowing under our feet. As we took a few steps forward, the view we saw was spectacular. We had indeed arrived on the different side of this planet and here nobody could find us. It was the Northern end of the planet, the wild and human population free zone.

We were sure about it, because it resembled the description of the Northern edge provided by the experts of this planet when we first arrived here. And had the bionic men been able to follow our trail, they could have easily found us by now. But today luck and everything else that makes up good luck, was on our side.

With a lot of difficulty we climbed down and became part of the new world. And both of us seemed to have the same question, “how will we survive here?”

There were plants, trees, animals, flowers, fruits; with every means to kill and many means to get killed by as well. And in this moment we decided to be the survivors and assumed our warrior mode.

We ate a few fruits, then we fished and slept. And we slept for a long time. In the morning we rose to the loud noise of the turbo engines of the Invaders’ spaceship. We could see it flying in the sky as it entered the atmosphere of our planet. I could only imagine the helplessness of everyone in those pens and our community that lives on the planet that is actually owned by the Invaders, and the men and women in the pens are a part of the deal: Price for an asylum. For all those who want to escape from the dying Earth. Where climate change and global warming have caused destruction at an unprecedented scale.

The Invaders, who are from different galaxy, always visit this planet every 3 months to claim their captives. Without this payment in the form of captive men and women, all of us would be deported to the harshness of the Earth. But it is a heavy price to pay in return for refuge on a planet that actually belongs to all. And the seniors from our community have so far failed to end this exploitation because of their guilt, that they stocked up on Earth. By being excessively avaricious and being reckless when it came to using the natural resources of the Earth. And here we are today, paying with the lives of our dear ones. 

But here too, the powerful are spared this fate, and soon this planet too will be Earth-like if the Invaders offer them its absolute control. 

What do they do with these men and women? I have no clue, and we have been living here for 2 years now. The common citizens do not know this secret.

But nothing matters for now, nothing at all, because my friend is safe and we are alive. Maybe we will find the answers to these questions and then form a new order, a new hierarchy that is just towards all. And we will quell the Invaders and end their atrocities.

Maybe we are better off here until the selfish and power hungry generation of men and women have been buried in the graveyard of time. Then we both shall be ready to establish an order that seeks peace and progress, for all and with the participation from all. And avoid an Earth liker fate for this planet.

Now, I must join my friend and find food for ourselves, and a place to stay.

By the way, #scifi novel, They Loved in 2075, is unlike this short scifi story, because it is about a different battle, a different plot, though it talks about global warming and climate change too, at heart it is a romance #sciencefiction, that tries to explain how humans will evolve in 2075? And why will the human race be going through emotional crisis and many other forms of crisis in 2075?

It will be right to say that the #scifi novel, They Loved in 2075, is a preemptive step into the 2075, where humanity is destined to confront many forms of crisis. But to hope and hope for the best is everyone's right, and They Loved in 2075, offers this right to us, it offers this hope to us! Just like all best selling #scifibooks offer us hope to persevere and never give up good pursuits.