Forced To Evolve

I observed him carefully as he walked to the door. I knew that time was running out but suppressed the urge to check my watch. I took a deep breath and started counting in reverse under my breath. "Ten, nine, eight, seven..."

I was mentally repeating the countdown being flashed on the screen that took all the space on the wall in front of me. Mukul reached the door by the time countdown reached 7 and he seemed to hesitate while holding the doorknob. Then he took control of himself and twisted the doorknob but the door didn't budge. The countdown had by now reached three. Mukul let go of the doorknob and backtracked quickly to get a good view of the screen. I stopped watching him and focused on the screen. The countdown seemed to have frozen at 1 and then after a long time the dial changed to 0. Then the screen switched to the camera set up at the head of the tower.

The team of the soldiers had set up this camera in the morning itself. They wanted a nice, good picture of the rocket shooting upwards. The camera worked brilliantly. The rocket had already switched on the engines. All that I could see were huge streams of fire being spewed by the rocket and then without any warning, a dense smoke seemed to rise. The rocket seemed to totter then it regained its balance and then with a groan it tottered again. The supporting beams must have given up, I thought.

I am to this day amazed at the calmness I showed at that moment. People around me had already got to their feet, shouting and screaming. I sat amidst them staring at the screen, minutely observing the shots that got displayed on the screen. The rocket at long last keeled over. The personnel inside the rocket must have switched off the engines, for now, the yellow tongues of flames were no longer dancing at its tail. The cloud of steam and various gases conspired to form a cloud that seemed to expand rapidly around the fallen figure of the rocket. 

Everyone raced through the hall to approach the glass wall of the auditorium. Even I had to join them for the screen was now showing only thick fumes of the gas. I found Mukul huddled in a corner, all alone, staring with open mouth at the rocket. His only son was inside the rocket and the fact that he was unable to do anything for his son made his mind go blank with panic and terror. I stood next to him and observed the many ambulances and fire engines racing on the tarmac to reach the rocket. Then for no reason, I looked up towards the sky. I believe I was going to curse the god for the tragedy and I was taken aback. I saw something like a bolt hurtle through the sky. For many days, I was the only one who saw it. People especially the committee set up to investigate the mysterious crash of the rocket disbelieved me. They cast aspersions on my sanity, but I stuck to my guns. 

Anyway, I am jumping ahead of the story. When I decided to pen down my version of the tragic events that played out in the wee hours of Monday 28th Sep 2515, I had decided to keep the chronology of events in order so that the readers could comfortably follow the chain of the events.

What I saw for a fleeting moment was that an object fell from the sky on the rocket. The object fell freely, must have been falling freely for quite some time but no one noticed it because everyone was paying attention to the keeled over the rocket. The object on its fiery downward journey was leaving behind a trail, but the trail was disappearing almost as fast as it was being made so that for a naked eye it looked as if a lightning bolt travelled through the sky. I watched the lightning bolt fall all the way down on the cloud of the gas that had enveloped the rocket. The rocket instantly exploded. The boom of the explosion shook the glass wall next to me like it was made of paper. The insulated glass wall sustained the damage saving the lives of all those people who were hiding behind it. The rocket explosion formed a crater that was almost 200 metres wide. Everything inside the crater got vaporised. The bits and pieces of the rocket as well as of the ambulances and fire engines were hurled all around just like the shrapnels packed inside a bomb. Some pieces were retrieved near the lake which is almost 10 miles from the rocket centre. 

We were trapped inside the observational tower. The only way out would have led us back to the village and no one wanted to leave now. Mukul had collapsed on the ground near my feet. The shock of losing his son must have come as a terrible blow to him. Some of us had the sense to drag the unconscious men and women away from the wall and to make them lie straight and to loosen their clothes near their necks to make breathing easy.

The soldiers had now opened the other access doors to us so that soon I found myself in a jeep heading to the newly formed crater. I picked up some pieces of flesh as well as burnt uniforms. Then I realized that I was behaving in the most atrocious manner possible. I was surrounded with death and the mangled remains of human beings. People all around were either weeping disconsolately or were collapsing on the bloodied ground. I didn't want to be called a heartless bastard and so I forced my eyes to jerk some tears. I had to think of my father to force my eyes to water. He used to beat me bad, my father did, and every time I used to think of the beatings that I received at his hand my eyes always watered up. So for the next two hours or so I did my bit trying to help near the crater and managed to drop a stream of tears all around. I was constantly looking out for any evidence that might give credence to what I had seen.

Amidst the burnt up ruins, it was next to impossible for me to find anything but then I found it. There were two black rocks, both of them the size of my fists. They attracted me. They called out to me. They looked very familiar to me. Then it hit me. I had seen them in my father's cabinet. I sat down on my haunches and stared at them. Yes, they had the same design on them, three wavy lines each one having a large dot in its centre. That was the logo of the Earth Space Army. 

When I picked them up, they were smoldering so I had to wrap my scarf around them. Then picking up a good moment to escape, I hitched a ride on a jeep that was going back to the rocket centre. Then I walked out of the busy rocket centre. Everyone in the village had descended there. With every passing minute, vehicles were screeching to a halt outside the rocket centre. People were rushing from the nearby villages and cities to marvel at the spectacular end of the rocket.

The rocket was meant to head to the Earth to seek forgiveness and aid for us. We had been living on the A-321, an asteroid. Our ancestors had been deported here some 400 years ago. They had been found to be violent criminals and the people on the Earth didn't want to keep them on the Earth. One fine day the criminals were rounded up and sent to live in the various asteroids. The people on the Earth were not heartless. They set up domes for us to live with proper biospheres.  The biosphere supported a thin atmosphere on the surface of the asteroid A-321 that allowed us to move about.

Initially, the Earthlings tracked our people but then some 100 years ago they disconnected their communication lines with us. Our ancestors had to survive many frightening months before they found that they didn't really need any help from the Earth. We thrived on the asteroids. Some of us even went to other asteroids and tried to colonize them. No one could live on those asteroids, of course! For that, we needed to setup biospheres and for that, we didn't have tools or materials. Everything was going on fine when some 10 years ago it was found that some components of the biospheres would run out of battery. The committee established to determine the extent of the danger posed to our community by the said failure of biospheres declared that our very lives were at stake, that once the biospheres stopped working we would all die.

The idea to build a rocket was mooted by Mukul. He was our resident expert on such matters. He was a cold-hearted scientist with rude manners. He hated his father too. Even though he was 10 years older to me, our mutual hatred for our fathers made us friends. That didn't stop him from trying to kill me to steal my girlfriend, but I survived the attempt and overlooked it. There was no point in losing a friend for such a trivial matter. His wife learnt of the assassination attempt and ensured that Mukul never got to meet my girlfriend again. 

The idea of building a rocket to reach out to the Earthlings soon got a life of its own. Everyone contributed towards it, worked on some or other part of it and ensured that the rocket finally got ready for its maiden voyage. When the time came to decide on the passengers, I argued for sending some children in the rocket so as to sway the sensibilities of the Earthlings. Once that motion was accepted, I made a very strong case for inclusion of Mukul's son. Mukul was dead against it, but his own son volunteered for it so Mukul's disapproval counted for nought. The satisfaction I had felt at Mukul's tearful farewell to his son had already assuaged my anger at him for trying to kill me. The explosion of the rocket and the subsequent death of his child thoroughly purged me of my anger towards him. But I digress.

When I reached home, I straight away went to my father's cabinet. After his death, all his stuff was passed to me. I fished among the various collectibles and finally found the rocks that bore the logo of the Earth Space Army. I took out the rocks that I had collected from the crater and compared them with the old rocks that my father had stolen from one of his friends. There was no doubt about it. I sat down and thought about it. It was quite clear to me that contrary to our beliefs, the Earthlings had been observing us and that they had destroyed the rocket sending us a clear message that our entreaties would be wasted on them. I couldn't figure out why the Earthlings decided to destroy the rocket while it was still on the ground. There had to be a message in that act too, I knew it, but I couldn't figure it out. 

When the committee was set up next day to investigate the failure of the rocket, I presented myself and shared my experiences and my thoughts on the matter with them. At first, they mocked me. No one among them believed that I was speaking the truth. They told me that there were radars that kept track of any foreign object entering our biosphere and that there was no reading on those radars. I interrogated the radar operator and forced him to admit that the radars had been shut down for weeks. Then the committee got the idea that someone among the passengers might be carrying the rocks of the Earth Space Army. I had to use the spectroscopic analysis of the rocks to convince them that the rocks that I found yesterday were recently made and that all the rocks that we had with us were at least 300 years old. 

At long last the committee members were convinced of my arguments. They looked helpless in the face of my evidence and my arguments.
“Friends”, I told them, “I believe the Earthlings don't want us to approach them. There is not much time left for us to stay here in any case. Without the biosphere, we are not going to survive here. If we can't go back to the Earth or expect any aid from the Earthlings, then we will have to move away from them and by that, I don't simply refer to expanding the distance between us. My father worked for a group of people who believed that humans have to evolve so that we can live with less dependence on oxygen and water. To force the humans to evolve, my father and his friends experimented with human bodies. After a lot of tweaking and turning, they found an optimal way of combining human cells with animal genomes and machine-based solutions that allowed a human to live for some years without oxygen or water. My father used me as a guinea pig. He modified me in ways that I am still finding of. He inserted these cells in my body and they have now replaced some of the organs in my body. Another three or four years and I would be completely transformed. My father didn't want me to lose my humanity so he would beat me regularly and stop only when he would see tears in my eyes. He wanted me to remember those tears, but I don't see any reason why I should do that now. In any case, I am no longer a human. I propose to you all that you should opt for these changes in your bodies as well. That way we will be able to travel to any place that we want to and settle over there!”

“To the excellently put question by George, I would like to inform you that all these changes in me are irreversible, but they won't be inherited by my child. I can still be a father to a healthy, normal human child!”

“Don't be scared of pain in the transformation. It will take you at least 10-12 years to finally reach the state when we can start travelling! The biosphere will be able to sustain us for next decade. By then, almost all of you would be ready!”

“What should we call us? I don't know! Honestly, I never thought about it! Why not call ourselves the Intrepid Discards?"