Science fiction. The bottom

 

Science fiction. The bottom

We have been looking for their tracks for a very long time now. Everytime we turn around we feel hopeful that we will be able to find their tracks and this is how it has been now for almost a year- Galaxies, lifeless planets, star systems; wherever we go, we only search for their tracks. Tracks that would lead us to them.

But we have not been able to find any track for almost 12 months now. But, we still have not allowed poignancy to invade our resolute minds, and keep us from achieving the goal of our mission. Because if we do not find their tracks, we will never be able to reach our planet. We shall be left as nomads travelling through cosmos, seeking a destiny in every destination. Only to realise that our true destiny lies in finding their tracks and then accompany them on a voyage that would lead us to our planet.

For many of us they are our only way to go where we belong. So far all our efforts to find our salvagers have only led us into the event horizon of unyielding fate, where we appear to be getting drawn into a cosmic reality that is locked from all sides by forces that are averse to us finding them or they finding us.

Right now the easy and only victims of misfortune that has taken a liking to us; and it on purpose seems to prevent us from finding their tracks. Because its spate of agonisingly torturous moments, that it always succeeds in weaving with our fate, is far more stubborn than our relentless attempts to find them and their tracks.

So, our leader, who had been following his instincts so far, seems to have given up, because he has reached a saturation point when it comes to his space navigational instincts. He is unable to make new guesses. And in this state of indecisiveness, he has chosen to take a pause somewhere in the cosmos, where there are no stars, no planets, no lights, just us; and our spaceship, and our misfortunes that have taken a vow not to spare us until we are not lost in the cosmos. Which we actually are, because we are in the part of the universe where we have no idea in which direction our planet lies.

It could be anywhere. It could be to our left, to our right, it could be right ahead of us, or we may have left it far behind. But right now, there is the limitless cosmos all around us, and we appear to be trapped in it. Because every direction appears to be the same. And if we do not find their tracks soon, the oblivion of the universe will find us and then we will be left there forever. Like a moth, that on approaching a bright light moves away to another source of much brighter light, and when it reaches there, it finds another source of light that is even brighter. So it continues forever. Hopping from one light to another, and in doing so it is never able to kiss the light that would transform it into the moth who always finds the source of light to kiss and romance with as long as it is alive. Tragedy of the moth who wishes to kiss every source of bright light.

At the moment we are exactly like this moth. And our plight is regrettable. At the same time one that redefines hope. Hope that seeks its reason to survive from every particle present in the Universe. And as our hopes are scouting for these specks of encouragement, we are waiting in our spaceship for at least one of them to kiss our dying spirits and offer us the encouragement we seek with a lot of eagerness.

We have been in this region of the cosmos for almost 1 month now, and our leader has chosen to surrender before our misfortune; and now we are gradually being gripped by the belief that we all suffer from tactical inefficiency when it comes to cosmic exploits. Whatever those exploits might be.

We are in the darkest regions of the cosmos, and based on our time detection machines we have been here for over 2 months now, and if we do not move somewhere soon, we shall be stuck here for more than a year. Because in 2 days this region of the universe will warp space to such an extent that even if we travel outwards we will always travel back to the same point, over and over again.

And you can imagine the mental state of the crew who are aboard the spaceship that has been seeking a trail of hope for more than a year, and is now stuck in the dark zone of the universe, for almost 2 months. We are like convicts of the space who are due to be hanged. As we stand at the gallows with ropes tied to our necks, the hangman is busy smoking his cigar. Everytime he takes a new puff we get anxiety shocks and the cigar is so damn big, that it seems it will never reach its butt. And we stay there waiting to be hanged; and it is the cigar that shall decide the moment of our hanging, the end of all our anxieties. It is as tragic as this and as satirical as this!

Still, everyone is hopeful that our leader will do something spectacular very soon. And that soon has to be sooner than 2 days. Any later, and we shall be locked in this region for 12 months.

He is aware of this but he does not say anything, he has turned unresponsive. Similar to the moth who has been hopping from one light source to another, and now he appears to have no energy left to flap its wings to travel to the new light that appears to be very very bright. It can see its inviting brightness, it wants to kiss it, it is missing to dive into this inferno of love and light, but something is preventing it from doing this again. Once again!

It could be that the moth needs to conserve its energy before it bears flight again and commences its quest to seek new lights. Where every light is brighter than the one already visited. And the moth knows it is going to be a never ending flight, so it has chosen to regain its madness, its passion and its purpose to kiss what actually kills it always!

And caught in this moth-like dilemma, we seek hope from the eyes of our leader. Who in return seeks it in our eyes where he sees only darkness, deeper and darker than the universe that is surrounding us and waiting to claim us as its trophy of cosmic supremacy. That always favours the brave who are wise too.

And in our case, we have been extremely brave, but our wisdom for some reason has chosen to be less willing to travel to the extreme of its own limits. We are caught in this situation and thus our collective wisdom too is caught in it. Because our collective wit has failed us as has our courage.

We spend another day in the spaceship and now we have just one day left, before we shall be the prisoners of this region for another 12 months. We are aware of this danger, yet we avoid it by convincing our minds to expect something ingenious from our leader, and we know it, yet we do not accept it, that he is expecting something similar from one of us. Someone amongst us. Who, even he does not know!

We had only 12 hours left before we would be caught in the warped space. Now few of us had managed to shift our focus from our leader to the time detection machine. We knew everything and every moment was working against us, yet we were unable to tell ourselves that we should be up against our misfortunes and claim what is ours. Rightfully ours!

Then, as the digital clock kept advancing towards the moment we all dreaded and did not want to be dragged into. Our leader placed his hands on the ground and pushed himself up. He turned his head around with robotic movements, with an inquisitive reflection in his eyes. As if he were seeking answers to his own doubts and questions from our faces- Our blank and expressionless faces; and our eyes that reflected nothing, but a bottomless feeling of hopelessness. 

Whatever it was that he was seeking from our discouraged faces and hope deprived eyes. Finally, it seemed he had found his answers and he occupied his seat. The place from where he had always guided the spaceship in the right direction for almost 4 decades now. And he gathered his remaining reserves of courage, looked at us and said,

“This may be our last flight together, and it may lead us somewhere; or to the bottom of the universe. Are you willing that I lead you on this journey where there is only one surety? That nothing can be said for sure. Because I too am not sure, but it is my intuitive guess that this is it and there is no other way. None!”

We did not say anything- We could not say anything. But we all agreed with him with our eyes and with our hands lifted slightly higher than our heads.

And as he took command of the spaceship, it sped past the darkness of this region, that seemed to chase us wherever we went. And no matter how fast our spaceship flew it always found us. We were being dragged into the abyss of darkness and it was becoming very apparent now.

Finally, ah! Finally, after a couple of hours we were able to see a streak of light and our spaceship flew towards it.

As we entered the region of light, we were again cast into it like the same fateful moth seeking light. 

In our former situation we were like the moth that was totally confused. Because when it approached a source of light, the next or succeeding sources of light appeared brighter; and it kept seeking them one after another. Endlessly! Until its wings could not flutter any longer. So it died without kissing any light, none at all.

And now the moth had been cast into an ocean of light, where there was light everywhere, evenly distributed bright light. And now it was confused where to kiss it. And this feeling turned the moth into a delirious lover of light. Who saw it everywhere, so much of it, that now it did not understand where to begin its suicidal dance of romance.

Earlier it was confused which one to kiss, but now it is confused where to kiss it. It was an ocean of light with no end and no bottom. Because no matter how far or deep our spaceship flew it did not end. 

Earlier we were chased by darkness and now we were trapped inside light. So much light that every direction lost its visual discernibility. There was everything everywhere, yet it was a space dominated by nothing and nowhere. And we were travelling through it, as if seeking something in nothing, as if seeking nothing in everything. We were the prisoners of time and light. Both of them!

But our leader kept flying through this bottomless ocean of light. A new region of light that we had never seen before. There was nothing like it. And if we could return to our planet alive, we could be the only ones to have witnessed it. And if we did not return to our planet, we may be the only ones to have died like moths, who died inside so much light that they did not know where to kiss it. And in this anxiety the brightest and endless light became their tomb. 

At this moment of extreme sadness and endless grief, our leader asked all of us to solve an astronomical situation that we were a part of.

“There is endless light here, so much that it does not seem to end. And we being space explorers, we do not believe in magic, we do not believe in miracles, we only believe in science, and it is our only religion. And here is what this light tells me.

We are in a galaxy where there are many stars, densely packed stars, and we have entered a zone where we are at a safe distance from these stars. To the extent that we are traversing through their cascading light effect. And if we leave this ocean of bright light, we may enter the main influence zones of these stars, and at that point we shall be baked like moths kissing the sun. 

And if we go by our legends, this galaxy exists to the North-West of our planet.

But our problem is this: We know where we are. But if we continue like this we may never reach anywhere. I either have to turn left or turn right. But in doing so, we may enter into the main influence zone of the star and get baked.

But if you look at the light brightness reader device. The brightness in this region is at its peak, but it varies slightly by micro points in a few regions.

And I believe these are the regions where the main influence zones of these closely packed stars end and begin. If we travel through one of these regions we shall be able to leave this galaxy. When that happens, by knowing the direction our spaceship took, I can factor it with the North-West direction, and then we can easily reach our home planet.

Now, you all please get to work and provide me with this calculation, so that we can escape this ocean of deceiving light.”

After months of silence, months of inaction, we all appeared to have gained our hope, our reason to show our last display of courageous wisdom. So, we all began working on the different intensities of brightness that our devices had recorded. And after a lot of collective effort, we figured out 10 spots where the intensity of brightness was lower than other regions.

We shared it with our leader. He looked at it and once again addressed us with some twinkle in his eyes,

“Cowards die every day. The brave die once. And for you and me that once may be today. But if we make it through we will be able to narrate a tale of extreme bravery everyday as long as we live. Are you ready to pass through this region come what may?”

We all applause and said this, 

“Let us dare to be brave for if we can't do it today, then it cannot be done any day!”

And our spaceship went through the region pointed by us based on our calculations. And in 1 hour we were in the space that we could recognise. A cosmos that appeared familiar; and then as the spaceship realigned its direction, we flew towards our planet. As we got closer to it, we left the darkness behind and the endless brightness too.

We had managed to travel from the bottom of the universe to the place where life existed. And here we were looking at the bottom of the universe from the height where its depths did not scare us anymore. Because we had scaled its depths and come out alive. All it took was a single moment of hope, a single moment of courage. And a leader who was willing to lead because he was willing to risk it all. And when needed be silent, motionless, and think of the best way a moth could kiss the source of light, where every new source of light was brighter than the previous one. He indeed was a leader who knew something very well, that we were not aware of:

“Shall I flee away into past days, and with some fond pretence cheat myself to forget the present day!”

Finally he had realised the importance of the present day while the rest of us only kept looking at the digital clock and only thought about how close we were to being trapped in the warped space. But, he acted, and finally when he was thrown into the ocean of light, he did not behave like a startled moth, unsure where to kiss it.

Instead, he decided to die within it and fall into it, because he knew moth belongs to the light as much as the light belongs to the moth. Only he knew, just him!

This was about our exciting journey through the warped dimension of space. There is a more fascinating, adventurous and romance packed science fiction story, titled: They Loved in 2075, that shall leave you spell bound. Because it is a story of a lover, who is a leader as well, and how he falls in love and rescues her, while she rescues him right back!

Science fiction novel, They Loved in 2075, is about the resoluteness of true lovers and how they overcome the trials of life and their battles with reality.

Because they knew: 

Irresolution is a heavy stone rolled up a hill by a weak child, and moved a little up just to fall back again!

They Loved in 2075, is a romance scifi where the two lovers roll up their passions, desires, hopes, feelings of love, to the peak of reality, and balance it there perfectly. Only with a lot of resoluteness and devotion. Because they believed in love and in each other. And most important of all, they were willing to indulge in the romantic dance of the moth, who is always willing to die for what it loves!

To experience scifi romance that is emotionally enriching and mentally thrilling, please do refer to the scifi novel : They Loved in 2075.