The Journey

My air-car landed in the midst of a snow-covered stretch of rocky land. It was dusk. The sun had set. The sky was misty.

I set foot outside my air-car. It was really cold. Even in my metal suit, I was still shivering.

Suddenly, three men clad in animal skins advanced towards me, as if coming out of nowhere. “They must have hidden behind the rocks when they saw my aircar coming.” I thought “How can they survive in this cold, barely clad in animal skins?”

I wondered which part of the world I had come to, where men still dressed like this. One of them carried a torch. So at least they knew about fire. But they still seemed really primitive.

Back home, probably on the other side of the globe, the man had made remarkable progress. We had overcome the hurdle of the population explosion by now building houses and commercial complexes in the sky. The transport and pollution problems had been solved to a great extent ever since flying automobiles that worked on air as a fuel were introduced. These automobiles we called air-cars.

That morning, I was on my way to the office in my air-car, when my air-car suddenly got trapped in a whirlwind. The whirlwind turned into a cyclone that traveled across the ocean and had probably brought me halfway across the earth. “Where am I?” I wondered “In Antarctica?”.

The man with the torch began to turn hostile. I signaled to the men in animal skins to stay calm. They seemed to understand my sign language. I conveyed to them that I meant them no harm, that I had lost my way and come very far and was really thirsty and hungry. I asked them for food and water and promised to leave their territory by the next morning. I was hoping that the GPS in my air-car would help me get back home.

Surprisingly and thankfully, they understood my plight. They served me water and some meat roasted on the fire. I realised that their cooking skills too were primitive. It was plain roast meat with nothing else. As hungry as I was, I ate it without complaint. I preferred to spend the night in my air-car for the fear that they would attack me. The next day, before sunrise, I started my journey home.

As a token of thanks, I left my watch at the entrance of their cave. Maybe it would help them to discover time!