PonderingTwo

It’s a quake!! Earthquake!! I shouted as I felt the earth shook beneath my feet and immediately ran through the series of stairs leading to the compound of my building. I witnessed the ceilings giving up, crashing onto the ground with a loud thud and eventually leading to the collapsing of the building. Those who had enough time to escape survived, rest just vanished into the thick cloud of dust. Pool of blood got mixed with the cement, iron rods, broken and crushed limbs and every other remnant of the building.

I removed a paper television from my left pocket of trouser, enlarged it and tuned it to a news channel. It said, “Major earthquake near Mumbai, epicentre still not known.” I flipped through various news channels and it said the same thing. “Epicentre of the quake not known yet and the Richter Scale for some reason do not show the measurement of the quake.” “That’s weird, extremely weird”, I thought. “If it’s a quake, it has to be recorded on the Richter scale”, I screamed. A few of the towers surrounding my building also collapsed within minutes of this massive shake of the earth’s crust. This made me sure that the news channel have got it all wrong as those towers were built with the quake proof technology which can withstand the quake up to 10 on the Richter scale.

As I was still collecting myself, coming to the terms of what had just happened and digesting this news, the screen of the paper television blanked out. Before I could check the other channels, a recorded voice message popped up on the screen and said,

“Congratulations!! You ignored our repeated warnings and alas you have to pay the price.

REST IN PEACE – EARTH.

Yours Lovingly,

The Martians.”

And it kept voicing it in a loop. For a moment my heart was in my mouth and my ears still couldn’t believe what it had just heard. I heard it again and again till it got absorbed into my systems. I remembered about reading in some science fiction about Earth getting attacked by aliens but always believed that it was just impossible and ridiculed the writers. “We are the super force and nothing such thing would happen”, I would say to myself. But this was simply unbelievable to me. If this is true, all my belief about us cannot be attacked by aliens seems to be false and just a belief.

The screen again went silent for few seconds and again came up with some cranky voice.

“You fools! It is not a quake. It’s an invisible nuclear bomb hurled at the city of Beijing in China, reducing China to a mere dot on the map. (Sounds of laughter in the background) In spite of our repeated warnings you didn’t mend your ways, kept polluting the planet and in turn causing a grave danger to the intergalactic ecosystem. You are doomed Earth, you are doomed!!.” (Loud sounds of uncontrolled laughter were heard in the background before it again went silent.)

My mouth was in a momentary O-shape, eyes just seemed that it would pop out into my hands and practically each and every part of the body had gone numb. I sensed that panic would soon grip the entire world.

Mysteriously the radio frequency had not been disturbed by them and the radio jockeys were screaming on top of their voices reading out what the audio clip of The Martians said. “Very generous of them”, I quipped before letting out barrage of muted expletives.

Till the year of 2779 AD, technology had evolved and advanced beyond imagination. From paper TVs which can play the role of radio, play stations, mobile phones, and remote control for cars to ships that can be used as airplanes to vehicles that can fly to altering the human’s own molecule structure and so on. But invisible nuclear bomb made me feel as if we are the inhabitants living in the 19^th century.

“Is this the apocalypse?” I wondered with fear in my eyes.

The paper TV again came to life with just the voice of the PM addressing the nation, urging and inspiring each and every citizen to come out, form your own army and fight the Martians in any manner to protect our mother Earth.

Before she could say anything further, the voice muted permanently with the sound of the Martians laughing at our fate with an ever increasing tone, was the only thing left to be heard.

As I turned around, I spotted a huge aircraft descending at a speed of light without any noise, splitting into many tiny aircrafts and spreading evenly before the main aircraft landed on the ground. “There is no time to express the astonishment on viewing that marvellous feat”, I said to myself and sprinted at a lighting speed crossing miles and miles within split of a second by altering my molecule structure. Yes, this scientific marvel made us “superhuman.”

As I was sprinting, sharp laser rays emitting heat equivalent to the sun passed by me. Thankfully it did not harm me but left me gasping for breath. I soon found a group of people forming a human chain, joined them, holding hands and generated enough body heat to create a layer of thick sheet around ourselves protecting us from those rays as well as the surroundings.

More and more people joined but it just didn’t seem to be enough. The speed, power and the precision of the attack from the Martians was making it extremely difficult for us. For a moment we were almost about to give up when an IAF plane whizzed past us with a barrage of hypersonic laser missiles with a speed of more than 10 mach aimed at those tiny splitted aircrafts. But even a series of missiles could not knock one tiny aircraft. Eventually it did after taking almost five long minutes.

“This doesn’t seem to work. We need something better”, I thought. And immediately an idea sprung to my mind. I asked all those having flying cars to rev up the engine, generate enough temperature and replicate it to a fire ball. Meanwhile along with the help of others, I tried generating electromagnetic pulse causing whirlwind of sorts gulping everything in its way. Once we had generated enough electromagnetic pulse, we directed it wherever those tiny aircrafts were. And much to our relief they could not offer much resistance and were sucked into the whirlwind. At the same time, the fire balls kept circling the whirlwind causing those aircrafts to melt just as the ice kept under the sun melts. We continued till all the aircrafts were demolished whereas, the bigger one was taken care by the IAF.

Blood had started oozing out from our bodies but that did not deter us. We fought till the very last aircraft was down. Microscopic cameras attached to us recorded everything. And within minutes everyone around the world was able to view it due to seamless Bluetooth connectivity.

A sense of uprising was felt in everyone of us. Though it was just a small victory against the Martians and their mighty army we ourselves felt surprised on what the ‘unity’ can do within us.

With our heads held high and with a renewed spirit within us we marched forward to take on the battle against the Martians.