In Search of an Answer

Jim was crouching at one corner of the vast field. It was only September yet the nip in the night air was perceptible. He was the guard on duty for the running week but despite his best efforts he could not prevent himself from dozing off every now and then. At yet another violent forward swing of his sleepy head Jim woke up and stared aimlessly ahead. He knew no one would dare to cross the grounds in front of him but still checked from time to time as a routine. Suddenly betraying his confidence a thin strip of purple light started to pour out of the sky right into the middle of the field.

Jim rubbed his eyes and stared hard at the scene unfolding in front of him. He looked up but there was no plane or drone in sight. He shook himself hard attempting to break the impossible dream but the faint light ahead remained consistent. Jim got up and marched ahead fearlessly.

Before Jim managed to reach the spot the stream of light stopped as suddenly as it had started. Startled Jim ran ahead and looked up again. The starry sky looked completely clear. He looked down again only to see a gaping hole at the spot where the light had hit the ground. Before he could make a decision regarding his next step, he saw two men of huge proportions walking out of the hole. The men were similar in size and stature to Jim and they certainly did not intimidate Jim in any way. As they rose to the ground and stood in front of Jim, he took a closer look at them. The men were dressed in garments made of leaves and barks!

A normal man would have been tempted to laugh at their jocular costumes but Jim’s cold and humorless eyes got sterner.

 “Who are you?” he asked in a steely voice as he raised his gun.

The two men looked at each other and raised their eyebrows.

The senior one Ou spoke first, “We’ve come from a faraway place.”

“What exactly is going on here? There was no hole in the middle of the field! Tell me right now whose agents you are or you are dying.” Jim’s voice was louder and authoritative.

“We’ve to ensure that they do not see us as threat,” O, the younger one whispered in an inaudible voice.

Boom! Jim fired a shot at O’s knee.

The bullet stopped just before hitting O’s knee and crumpled into fine dust.

Shaken Jim fired several rounds at both O and Ou but all the bullets met the same fate as the very first one.

Without lowering his gun or voice Jim asked again,”Who are you? Tell me right now! Or else I will take you to our leader Mashooq and you would not want to meet the consequences meted out by him.”

“You’re really a bad judge of character,” said O. “We’d actually love to meet Mashooq. Take us to him.”

This time Jim pondered for a while and decided to lower his gun. He was clearly incapable to capture them by force. If they willingly walked up to Mashooq, the leader, then it would be a safer bet for him. After all Mashooq’s security personnel was prepared to counter all sorts of threats.

 Aloud Jim said, “Our leader does not meet anyone and everyone…tell me properly who you are and what you want. Then I can forward your request to him.”

“We are from a different solar system actually. We are human beings but technically you can call us aliens too,” O explained in a lucid voice.

Jim decided that it was pointless to talk to these two men, every word they spoke seemed completely nonsensical and it made him want to kill them badly. So he took them to a small waiting room instead and asked them to wait in the presence of two more armed men while he himself went in to tell Mashooq about the incident.

Mashooq listened to the story with quiet composure and summoned the two men inside.

As O and Ou entered the spacious and fragrant chamber of Mashooq they found him turned backward and bent down, speaking to a small girl.

“But the bird did not harm me,” the child seemed to protest.

“True. But if you don’t kill it first it will harm you and if you let it harm you today then who knows, it might kill you tomorrow,” Mashooq reasoned as he pushed the air gun back into the child’s hands.

The girl nodded and ran out to complete her incomplete mission.

The tall and broad shouldered frame of Mashooq turned 180 degrees to reveal a face that would have been handsome if he had shaved the beard, had tended to his bushy hair, had lost some weight and had some warmth in his eyes. His current face was closer to the benchmark of ugliness due to non maintenance. But it did not matter to Mashooq; he aimed to be fearful not pretty.

“Ok you two will cut the crap and tell me clearly which group you represent. You have exactly 60 seconds’ time,’ Mashooq ordered and sat himself down on a comfortable couch.

“We truly have come from another planet and we have a purpose. We had hoped for some cooperation but earth seems to house some pretty hostile people!” O said in an indignant voice.

“Ok fine…you want to belong to another star…let me help you to reach there,” Mashooq took out his gun in a flash and fired straight at their hearts.

The bullets crumbled as before.

Mashooq stood up shaken and commanded his men with silent eye gestures.

A tight circle was formed around O and Ou and all the exits were blocked immediately.

Ou lightly hit O on the head and said, “How could you pick a terrorist cell as our gateway to earth?”

“Ou…it was your idea to locate the most powerful man on earth…I had no idea about the nature of his…well…his work!”

“Mashooq first things first…you seem to know very less. Stars are uninhabitable for any life form so we do not live in another star, we live in the fourth planet of the Tau Ceti star system,” Ou said.

“I know…it was a slip of tongue.” Mashooq was annoyed at being corrected. “What’s your deal? Tell me what you want…else I’ll have to destroy you two.”

“You did try to do that once!” chuckled O.

“It will not take me long to unleash nuclear weapons on you and you will be wiped before you can think of the next smart remark.”

“So you are threatening to nuke someone who is standing within your earshot? Empty threats will only bring down your credibility!” O scoffed. Ou put his arms on O’s shoulders and calmed him. He started to speak instead.

“Years ago after the creation of the human race our forefathers were installed in a few chosen planets of this universe. Your earth and our home are two such planets.”

Mashooq looked at O and Ou in disbelief but decided to listen to the story. It would distract the two men and give him time to work out a viable plan to take them in captivity.

 “How do you know this?” Mashooq asked.

“Everyone knows it! How do you not know this?” O said.

Mashooq kept quiet.

“We knew about you guys from a long time ago and have been watching you too. But unfortunately it took us really long to find out a way to travel such a huge distance. We are 11.9 light years apart in space actually.”

Mashooq sighed and signaled something to his men. Two huge recliners were brought and the new guests were offered food and drinks within a few minutes.

“I figured that you must be hungry if you have really come from that far away. In our planet we are very particular about taking care of our guests.”

“Then why is the food laced with sleep inducing drugs?” said O.

Mashooq gritted his teeth.

“We have sensors encoded into our genes which inform us about basic things like food safety. This wouldn’t work if you continuously plan to outsmart us and try to take us prisoners instead of listening to us.”

Mashooq lowered his head for the first time and thought a bit.

“Tell me about your planet. How much more developed are you guys than us?” he asked in a flat tone.

“Well for starters we have done away with competition and comparisons so cannot tell you qualitatively or quantitatively how much better or worse we are. We came here to exchange ideas. There are many areas where we believe we can help you and in return we too would want a big favour from you guys.”

Mashooq was silent but his posture indicated that he was in attention.

O and Ou went on to describe their planet where life was perfect and there was no hunger, pain or diseases.

“We also can modify our behavior. Through superior genetic filtration we can successfully get rid of the negative feelings and enhance the good ones. If you let us, we can instantly turn you into a benevolent saint.” O offered.

Mashooq grimaced at the idea and looked away.

 “Anyway we have brought a gift for you. Here is a set of clothes to fit you.” O extended a packet towards Mashooq.

“What it is it? Another tree?” Mashooq mocked.

 “Our clothes are actually programmed plants so they are self cleansing and they fit us perfectly. We really thought you would appreciate that. It is very good for the health and looks good too,” Ou elaborated.

Everyone in the room broke into laughter now.

“Thank you…I mean it but I don’t want to walk around looking like a cartoon.” Mashooq said as returned the gift. Deep down he suspected a bomb or a spying device to be hidden in the packet.

“And why is being a cartoon bad? In our planet we lovingly call each other cartoons…because cartoons make us laugh!” O was surprised.

“I don’t want to inspire humour! And how come cartoons are called “cartoons” there as well?” Mashooq was suspicious.

“We preloaded your languages to make communication easier…our way of communication is much different actually,” O said.

Ou made another attempt to forge a friendship.

“Listen we can help you to improve lives. You can be happy and can give up killing people. Don’t you feel bad that there are people who would love to have you dead?”

“No.  That’s the basic principle of a fight. Mutual hatred. Why would you want to take that away?” said Mashooq. 

“I have one offer for you instead. If you join my cause and help me to exterminate my rivals, me and my people will give you full support.”

O and Ou looked at each other.

“May be we’ll visit another earthling and see what deal we can strike there…you are not likely to get our point.” O and Ou looked ready to leave.

“No no no no…don’t leave…” Mashooq stood up and almost dived at them. He was feeling very special in a hidden corner of his heart to have been chosen by the aliens. All the years of obsession with the aliens could not win the Americans this special status. What a huge win it was for himself and his ideology! And he could not let it slip away.

“Stay here…stay with me. Tell me more about you. May be we can be allies in each other’s worlds. You mentioned that you needed a help. What is it? I would try to help you out.”

O and Ou were almost pushed back into their seats.

“Well…while researching about your planet we found only one thing that intrigued us a lot. All of you seem to have a deep sense of self love. Your planet is full of horrible people yet almost everyone is in love with themselves.

We noted an exaggerated sense of self importance. On our planet we have everything and we have made our lives significantly better too but we still do not love ourselves. In fact apart from a handful of younger people we all hate ourselves.”

“How is that even possible? It’s a basic instinct for survival…we value ourselves…all of us,” Mashooq explained.

“That’s exactly why we are here. We are emotionally tired and we don’t love being who we are. We want to learn from you how to be able to love ourselves and how to be proud of ourselves even when there is nothing that great about ourselves.”

“So you want to stay here and learn our way of living?” asked Mashooq.

“No we’d rather take one of you to our planet.”

“And who will go with you?” Mashooq said.

“We were hoping that you’d nominate someone.”

“Myself.” Mashooq said in a hurry before anyone else could come ahead.

“Fine. Let us know when you’ll be ready. We need to leave as soon as possible. It is a journey of 238 years.”

“Are you kidding me? There’s no way I’ll live for that long! How did you guys get here?” Mashooq said in a disappointed tone.

“Well for half the journey we came in a super fast spaceship. And then in the mid way we hit upon a new technology where we converted everything to light and travelled at the speed of light for the rest of the path. Then on landing we reconverted ourselves back to who we were. It’s a bit dangerous and we need proper containment else the high energy can cause devastation.

Now our equipment for the conversion to light got damaged and we’d have to travel back by our spaceship.”

“What is the lifespan in your planet? 1000 years? Here we cannot hope to last beyond 90-100 years in a functional state.” Mashooq informed O and Ou in a rueful voice.

 “Lifespan? We will always live. We have edited out death a long time back. In the prehistoric ages our ancestors used to die but we don’t.”

“So you guys are immortals?” Mashooq was amazed.

“You’re not?” O and Ou were equally amazed.

“No!!! None of us are,” Mashooq clarified.

“In fact I don’t think it’d be cool to be an immortal. People tend to think that all hardcore villains want immortality but I, a supposed villain on earth don’t aspire for it. How can you commit to one life forever? I’d be bored for sure. I’ll be ready to give up this life when my time for death comes.”

And in one single moment of epiphany O and Ou had found the answer to their question.

Human beings across the universe tended to place much greater value on temporary things.

O and Ou stepped ahead and gave Mashooq a spontaneous hug. Then they spread out two powerful light streams across the room. One erased the memory of the interaction with the Tau Cetians and the other replaced the hatred in their hearts with love. And then O and Ou started their way back to their base.

They had a lot of work to do. Undoing immortality was certainly going to be the most difficult project of their lives.