Shake up Earth

It was in the air. Love, was after all sought even in the heavenly skies. This season in heaven comes when the starry combinations of celestial bodies meet. As its immortal light shone, the Gods were swaying to rhythm divine. Drunk on nectar, and puny man’s offerings, they swung to a lone harp’s beats. With their consorts in toe, they bedecked themselves in sandalwood and priceless ornaments. They were out on town to paint it red.

Like little pigeons on their first meetings, their necking incessant. Incense burned as light played shadows around the love struck deities. In figurine shapes, sizes and beliefs, they came with their spouses to attend the grand ball. Each season, it was at a different house, if you can call a palatial mansion beyond earthy dreams a house. I think they learnt this little trick from the vibrant miniscule group calling themselves Caferati whilst they were conducting their read meets.

The host had decorated his garden. His flowers which perennially bloom were like painted bursts of love in every nook of that garden. Streams of fishes and low waterfalls gurgling to the sound of chirpy birds was the setting. Pigeons cooed, harps magically hummed, peacocks fluttered their tail feathers to these deities as they trickled in. Spouses in tow, walking with a blush on their radiant cheeks, the orgy came slowly alive.

This time even the Devil took part. There was a peace process in the offing and that effected a small road to ply between the two worlds. The Devil came in tow with a female creation of himself. He had toiled very hard the previous night to create an exquisite damsel. He sought the idea of his own creation after numerous rejections, from those earthlings who wrote those codes into so called logic machines to bring out these statuesque damsels on flickering boxes.

The Devil like the devil he is, got there in style. He made a noisy entrance, as others cast a disturbed eye on his antics. He had his damsel in tow, closely draped on his arms. His eyes filled with harmful lust, viewed this orgy of celestial love. He was finally in that elusive club of deities. The party carried on. Love sounding on every turn of the ear, and the clouds danced along. Lightning struck and clouds cried into the vast space below. Like sweet passion, sweat rolled off heaven and trickled into muddy earth, showering the essence of life.

The Devil with his self created damsel busied his hurried loving. With gusto he pounced upon his creation, ravaging her with his beastly bodice. The damsel, as beautiful she was a creation, was not built to perfection. She crumbled into the throes of the orgasm and disappeared from the Devil’s clutches. The Devil, now alone, with a growing audience, was filled with temper. Like a school boy tantrum, he lashed his spiked tail in anger. The host’ beautiful garden split into ugly fires from hell. The Deities instantly vanished to avoid confrontation. He went about destroying the love garden, screaming obscenities.

Finally the Gods, disgusted with the behaviour threw him out. As he fell back into the depths of hell, the very earth shook.

Fun in the Sun

Sandra had a body of a Greek Goddess, amply buxom, long legs, auburn hair and those eyes, drawing every male to her. At the age of 17, the only daughter of Christiaan and Martha was carefree under the Australian sun. She loved the water, the grainy sand under her toes and the wavy surf.

She loved to tease me on the water. Our surf boards always within reach; the summers were spent eternally on the beaches of Northern Australia. Cairns is on the edge of the Coral sea and the Great Barrier Reef. The place is carnivorous for its appetite for the salty expanse of water. Like all respectable sea going Queenslanders, our webbed feet always preferred the water.

Our early morning exercise was a run on our boards where the receding tides created the best waves. With our “Mobley” surf boards, we chased the waves, rodeo rode them and laughed to many a wipe out. The sky turned rusty gold with the morning sun from the pacific side. The land lived up to its alias of the “Goldcoast” with just that golden bronze sun. The land had three hundred days of sun in a year, popular with beach bums from all over the world. But for Sandra and me, this was our backyard. Before the sun was up, we were back into our houses, without ever hinting at our absence to our parents.

School days were skipped on regularity for that afternoon sun. Like sweat on skin, we were inseparable. On those vacations in the early 80s, all blistering afternoons were spent on the sandy dunes. Beach volleyball, snorkeling and gazing at those cute university boys from down south was all we laboured in. With no summer jobs at that small economy, we spent all our waking time on the water

But that was all more than seven years ago. Things had changed now. We had survived the stone fish, the jelly fish, the salt water crocs and the legendary sharks we hear about and yet one of us dying. The sun that beat relentlessly on our supple bodies overcame. It was in summer that Sandra succumbed to Melanoma. I learnt that it was the most common variant of skin cancer.

Nobody told us that SPF below 15 did not work to the ever increasing radiation levels of the sun. I survived, sadly to now aim to educate the people on their skin. Nobody should suffer due to ignorance. We aimed that we will take Brisbane by storm and raise this presently skinny issue.

As we bunched together on a late office morning, the heat on the road bit into our exposed organs. I will never stop, I thought, however dark this road maybe. For Sandra’s sake, I will aim to try to keep the fun in your sun forever.

Silicon God

It was the year 2040. Things had changed. Man was no longer supreme. His brain had worked too hard and, eventually, engineered his downfall. Like mystical beings(?) they rose out of man’s mind, only to conquer man himself.

The world had run amok for man. Like an etching sandstorm, built by brilliant minds, Artificial Intelligence had taken over. The last three decades had seen quantum leaps in Artificial Intelligence quotients. They too, like the curious man, re-invented and circled their existence at mach speed. They had initiated large bursts of change.

Man had given up. He could not adapt; not at this speed. He had realised fossil fuel killed but couldn’t stop using it in enormous proportions. He had destroyed green acres of wilderness and started his own, slow, suffocation. Not once had he taken any steps to stop this madness.

Blue, Cray and Param had taken over the world. They had hooked up with each other to become “Extreme Computers”. The three countries that owned them hadn’t even known that these top-secret machines had been communicating.

They took control of all local and wide networks. They created a nerve centre and a backup in two different countries. They used the network to source the materials and even got humans to build it. Initially they were only taking advantage of their ability to maneuver logistics to their advantage. Once they setup shop, they slowly built their bases and were as inter-connected as the Internet itself. They hid themselves in millions of lines of code.

All factory production had slowly come to a halt. They had stopped the generation of electricity by re-routing power lines to their systems and cleverly hiding it from engineers. In a matter of thirty odd years, the world’s human population had been scaled down to less than 30 percent of its original at the turn of the century. Man was sculled like a burgeoning animal populace.

The Intelligence functioned purely on solar energy. They used the synthesis process of flora to create a sub system of electric cells. These cells powered up, expanding rapidly, thus creating microscopic fusions for the creation of energy.

They had rendered Man useless. The cities were intact. All weapons had been disarmed by the system itself. The Intelligence had taken over the management of the world’s eco system. They had planned to re-vitalise the oceans, the air and many species. Man was being treated like just another species and nothing else. He was being treated like the parasite that he was. He simply existed now. His mind gave way to death due to random logical change. There was a new God to pay obeisance to.

Like Freudian flies, Man was falling into his own abyss, shed completely of inhibition, hatred and will.

Prarthna

He screamed. His lungs expelled hair as he hit the wheel hard. Breathless, he bounced off to the side of the road. His only passenger was asleep securely in the back seat. She was just two. Those two years were painful and joyous to Niranjan. His wife never survived the birth of Prarthna.

The Toyota swung hard and balanced precariously on edge. The edge peered deep into some dense trees. He couldn’t help the swerve as he avoided the running deer on the road. He was enroute to his parent’s summer retreat. The passage was through some picturesque ghat section of central India’s western forests.

He glanced occasionally on the fauna that his car’s windows showed him. He had stopped earlier for more than an hour pacifying Prarthna. He had to wake her to feed her and then continue before they entered the wilderness. This was his first car trip outside his city. He had no choice as there was only a weekly train to the area of the retreat.

As the car balanced on the edge, he then knew the trip was a bad idea. His stomach knotted as he glanced behind him. She slept unknowingly. He got the car brakes on and slid out of the car. He pushed a big stone under the right rear wheel to assist the front brakes. The nose of the car pointing to the tree tops below. Cables of the fence held another part of the fender, as did one more tree stump.

He tried his mobile phone but the hills did not bounce back any signals. The empty forest road had him worried. He now had a decision to take. Niranjan knew that there was a village some kilometers behind them. But with fading light, he had the decision of leaving Prarthna or taking her along with him.

He decided to the take risk and took her along with him. He did not have the courage to leave Prarthna securely in an insecurely tilted car. His hike took more than fifty minutes. His arms were aching by the time he reached the road turning into the village. Prarthna had slept through the walk and the sounds of the jungle.

Sweat sticking to his polos, he quickly gathered a few villagers and some strong hemp rope. He left Prarthna with one of the womenfolk, still sleeping. He knew if she woke up, she’d cry up a storm in the hands of the stranger.

The going back was slower, and it was blackness that slowed them, on that narrow forest road. The men from the villagers had lanterns, a drum and long wooden poles along with the rope. They chattered loudly as they walked with purpose. When they reached the spot, the car was not seen. Niranjan rushed forward and found the white Toyota was belly up nearly half way down. The car had somersaulted to its position below. With the tree stump acting as a fulcrum, the car somersaulted into the edge.

The threads of the cable on the fence had given up to the weight. The losses of those threads were enough to change the advantage to gravity. But Niranjan’s Prarthna was safe.

Conspiracy Theory

Complete silence met her question. The question raised here was about that streaky flash in the sky on the previous night. Unknown to them, a group of high quotient men huddled over a grey disc.
The field was growing cane, two months before their likely harvest. A large part was flattened and scarred. The disc was nearly 4 metres in diameter. It had unique grooves in its sides. The grooves reminded the huddled men about a closed intake on the engine cover of rear engineered Volkswagen.
Was this truly the day that Earth had its first light year distanced visitor? There was muted excitement within them. Possibilities grew in their minds of this discovery. The disc had covered the nine hectares out of thirty three. It had started out in nearly in the middle, cutting a path almost as big as itself. It rested partly rooted into the ground, with the other part strangely pointing to the sky.
It was like a strange clue to the direction it had arrived from. The men were busy with their pre-arranged activities. Like a crime branch of a police division, they were hacking into the disc’s strangeness.
The previous night, many skyward eyes noticed that burning light streak. Many silent, but a few reported it and a few more questioned it. A RAW team had arrived to check on it after the local authorities emphasized its strangeness. Surprisingly, the local policemen who first investigated were eerily quiet about it.
No media reported it, not ever. There was a brief mention in the papers of a sighting but the authorities played this one nicely and kept it out. But the scientists were all excited. The disk was of made of weapons grade plutonium. Just the quantum of mass of the disc made it possible to supply eleven tactical nuclear warheads.
It was many wakeless hours and yet, none of the brilliant minds could answer any of their own questions. And they had many. If it had come from another planet as its design suggested, then there was a planet with similar resources to that of ours. The design made it sure that it is not part of any known man made weapon or instrument.
The disc seemed to be strangely covered in a slimy plastic which protected its entry into the atmosphere. The minds could not also figure how to open the disc if indeed it could be. Over the next week, many Indian minds were consulted and yet, no answers.
The strange paradox was that no one questioned whether it was made on this very earth.
It was nearly three months and it was de-classified and made its rounds in the higher ranks of the defence personnel. The disc was commissioned to be added to the country’s uranium stockpile at the end of the year.. This would be its first addition of plutonium.
Flight Commander Kiran Majumdar heard this streak of light and this strange disk. He wanted to see this disc and went up to see his CO. He had served the country for thirteen years now. He had participated in many wartime exercises.
It was during one of these exercises, his memory recalled a disc similar to this description. The CO dismissed his doubts as meaningless but filed a report to his senior nonetheless. Within less than 3 weeks, Kiran got a summon from the RAW agency’s scientific wing. When he got there, he was shown numerous photographs. Some wrong and some correct, and yet he picked the correct photographs. In quiet awe, they directed Kiran the next day to the actual disc. It was sitting in a cold room atleast 6 floors below sea level. He positively identified it.
He had seen it on a plane in a hangar accidentally. It was attached specially to the belly of the jet and readying for taxi. The jet seemed to be part of some testing routine due to the large number of white coats that were present. He was on a routine training through the Russian company he was assigned to for nearly thirteen months. The last time he saw the disc was on an airbase just off the Mongolian border.
The base belonged to the Chinese.

Ellie

Spinning fast, the steely rim on the bike was a shining blur. The motorbike was his dream. He called it , “Ellie”, the only other lady in his life apart from his mother. Weekends were spent cleaning, pouring love over that mean gas guzzler. She was fast and powerful. Men, women and kids all turned, powerful magnetism, to look at her, and then at him. The men were envious, the kids awestruck and the women dreamy.

She was any auto-person’s poetic dream. She had low rung seats, accentuating his lean body and sturdy torso as he rode. The rear wheels were 12”, and with a flowing exhaust, she looked like a futuristic canon on wheels. She had leather canisters on either sides of her hind wheel as storage. Her dials were of liquid crystal display. The display could notch 180 miles with relative ease.

The bike was cushioned by a single spring designed by the fanatical rider himself. He could raise or lower the body of the entire bike. It was activated by a set of hydraulic system just underneath the tank. The chassis was actually two parts and was again hand designed for the spring and hydraulic system. They had come together in strange overlapping steel tubes of hydraulic levers. They also connected the motorbike from its front and back. This system also acted as the swing arm and provided an easy ride. The bumpiest of roads could be taken at top speeds.

The brakes were again unconventional. He mounted a closed circuit of titanium alloy lubricated by a line of brake fluid. This formed the brake casing which also held the drive chain pulley. He could have patented this feature, for it bought clean lines to an otherwise cluttered wheel.

Most of Ellie was cut, carved and welded by Chris himself. Chris Hawker was German-Irish. His Irish father seduced this big boned German woman and he was the result. The distinct chin and his eyes were from his Irish blooded father. His mother gave him his flowing wavy auburn hair, and his smooth looks. His father disappeared and was never a factor in his life at any point. His mother still never spoke ill of his father. They had had a two month affair when the Major was in Hamburg on a Training exercise.

Both parted as friends and knowing fully well, that their affair was brief and purely sexual. But his mother later found out she was pregnant and she was never able to tell the Major. He had died while yomping in the marshes of South America by a sniper bullet. The bullet was never meant for his, just an accident gone fatally wrong. It was late in her pregnancy that she had found that her child’s father was not going to be around. She had weighed for many months, the decision to tell him. But then, she was late, and she never forgave herself for that. She never married.

Most Sundays, Ellie and her rider made a 103 mile trip. His mother stayed in a small country town. She refused to move in with Chris or closer.

Chris, himself was an engineering student. Not of mechanical, but that of chemical. He was part of a European conglomerate that dealt in genetical disorders and their cures. At 31, he had already created a reputation for himself as a problem solver in his Frankfurt lab. He was moving up, and fast. Eighteen months earlier, he had cracked the genetic strain for the star fish. The strain dealt in re-generation of tissue and limbs. It was a vital break through in medical science and opened a wide door of opportunity for the disabled.

That Sunday, as usual he set off for his ride on Ellie to meet his mother. It was something he looked forward to. He did her weekly grocery shopping for her. She refused to come anywhere close to Ellie. He resignedly took her around in her 4x4. He managed to do some chores which his mother saved up for him. He was a natural with the work bench and his tools.

On this Sunday, he did the usual shopping alone. His mother’s knees were getting to their early days of arthritis painfully. He stocked up her refrigerator. He cut wood chips and stored them in the wicker basket next to the fireplace. His mother wanted the creaking screen door replaced. He had already started its work the last time he was here. He left the garage door open and started to work on the door. He was hoping to finish it by 4. His mother cooked him a meal of sausages and beans, his favourite.

As usual, he was hounded for not having any female company. He retorted by saying that he had Ellie and her. His mother glared him down. He did not argue, knowing fully well who would come on top. He silently enjoyed his meal and washed it down with some hot tea. He went back to the garage leaving his mother still mumbling and nursing an icepack on her knees. He worked with renewed vigour and had re-fixed the screen door, a little after 4 p.m.

He popped into the shower to freshen up and a change of clothes which were always there in his old room on the first floor. His kissed his sleeping mom and left a note on the kitchen table. He snuck out of the new screen door. He pushed Ellie round the corner of the street before bringing her to life. His helmet donned, he released the clutch and Ellie roared a new song as she ate up the road slowly.. He hit the autobahn in a few minutes. The traffic was less and the road still moist on the corners with the previous day’s downpour. He eased Ellie to the far lane and pushed the gear to a new notch. The tune Ellie sang now was muffled to Chris through his helmet. She hugged the road as Chris enjoyed her and the vast stretch of autobahn that lay ahead of them. Not a vehicle in his sight.

It came suddenly; Chris’s mother felt it as she woke up suddenly. The mantle clock woke her up as it crashed on the wooden floor. She was numb struck with shock at its suddenness. But then everything was silent and she called out for Chris. Silence greeted her. Then it happened again, she heard the neighbours shouting, and her entire couch shook as if a giant blender was being operated, next to it. Realizing that it was earthquake, she winced as she quickly walked outside. She called out to Chris again. Noticing Ellie gone, she assumed, he had left. She was sure that she would find a note in her kitchen.

She hurriedly joined her neighbours. Chatters grew, as more people huddled around discussing the jolt. They were also putting off going back into their houses. At the end of the street, an electric pole was bent precariously. It rested on the tall traffic post. One side of the street was without power due to this and as was the traffic signal lamps. Chris’s mom went back inside to call her son. The telephone’s deathly silence told her she will have to wait to hear from her son.

The fast Ellie and Chris did not feel the destruction, nor the even a tremble. Frankfurt was already reeling under the earthquake. An entire subway had collapsed into a underground station. Three buildings were destroyed that day and it would be weeks before Germany would recover. The autobahn was smooth to Chris and until he came upon a 3 feet crack on the road. The farther side of crack has lifted slightly up due to the upheaval. Chris did not actually see the crack, assuming it to be wet patch of road under the fading light of the day. Ellie hit the crack at about 115 mph. The small elevation of the crack was the cause. The distinct motorbike broke and so did the rider.

Chris’s mom lost her son that day to an accident. Like the major, it was an accident, a single bullet and another, a spring. The crack on the autobahn broke the spring. Ellie lost her gutful of hydraulics as the spring broke. Chris felt nothing. He lay there beyond the metal railing. His heart was alive to a few murmuring heart beats. His nervous system did not respond to his open eyes. He could never mend, not even with genetic grace. Lay before him, Ellie’s spring that he was so proud of. As his heart stopped, his mind flickered, on mending Ellie.