See Part I of this story.
The trees in Europa are so green they are blue. Seko stared at a willow through his window and made a mental note to pluck some leaves. He had just received a message that he was needed back at earth with immediate effect. The message had come directly from the Universe Ism ruler. Seko already knew it was a matter of magnitude proportions. A summon by the ruler was unheard of. He was so mysterious and scarce that he was almost mythical. After 11 earth years he was going to depart from Europa at last. He was born on earth but came to the island domes as part of his studies. He never went back. He loved it here. There was plenty of unspoiled oxygen and terraformation had created a wonderful environment. The shuttle was leaving in one hour, he already had the special pass authorised from the Ism directorate. The mere sight of the stamp was enough to send the guards scrambling to salute you or even kiss your ass literally.
He felt special. The flight back to earth took 5 hours. It was a shuttle of moderate proportions, not equipped with light speed enabling Alcubierre drives. He liked it that way, ships which contracted space scared the shit out of him. He could take weeks to recover from the journey.
He arrived in Nairobi at the evening just when the sun was setting. He did not miss it. The air was even stuffier than he left it though the pull of gravity was less, way much less than he had imagined it would be. He was almost floating. It was unnatural. He was picked up by a uniformed ism soldier who led him to a vintage limousine from the old earth. ”Will I be bequeathed the ruler’s head in a platter or something”, he joked to the soldier who was weaving past hover-cars at breakneck speed. No answer. Seko gave a light chuckle to himself and continued looking for anything new on the roads since he left. There was nothing, in fact people were less than the norm. This was another very unusual factor. Human beings loved earth beyond logic, many of them since centuries immemorial had adamantly refused to move to new planets and colonization. They held the earth dear, their mother. They arrived at the gleaming towers that housed the Universal Ism headquarters in no time. They were just as he remembered them. Dreary and scary. The people who worked here were always gloomy as if they held the weight of the world literally on their heads. Right now they did. Seko was ushered in to the office of Earth director in a hurry. The director was a huge man. Broad shoulders, demeaning walrus-moustache, deep booming voice and all. His face was grim. Seko noticed that he had some traces of hair on the top of his head. A very rare occurrence, the feature had been out-evolved. He felt like laughing at him the way the laughed at a boy who had the same back in school. He held it back. ”Seko, we have been expecting you. I hope you are fully nourished.” Seko wondered what this had to do with anything. ”Earth is very dear to us and it would be sacrilegious if one day we lost it. We have discovered an anomaly in our immediate space. In exactly nine months, 2 days and 6 hours, a black hole will form right beside our orbit to the sun. I think you know what happens after that. It is your job to stop it from forming.” The director said with an air of finality.
Seko was confused, he was not an astrophysicist nor was he a scientist by any definition. He willed his time away at Europa by writing poetry and occasionally editing for the news organization there. There must be a mistake somewhere. ”Sir I don’t see how, I am not a scientist and I have very little understanding of how black-holes work.” He said. ”You will be given all the knowledge there is by microchip implantation to your diencephalon. It’s a simple matter. Have you ever been acquainted with time travel? Of-course no, it is illegal”. He answered himself. ”We are the Ism though and after numerous deliberations you have come out as one of the candidates to travel back in time and rectify this problem. We have traced your lineage and we are lucky to find that you have an ancestor who was a scientist and who contributed much to the problem we are having.” The director said. ”With all due respect sir, I have to decline. I am sure there are better people suited for the job other than me.” Seko said. ”You do not understand young man, that option is not available under any circumstances. Doctor Meniz will be with you soon for orientation and implantation. You will leave in one month so that is what you have to familiarise yourself with what the chip does not make clear. Feel free to ask any questions. I believe we have come to an understanding. I am now leaving for my walk. Say hi to your great, great, great grandpa and don’t look up my family when you are there”. The director said as he picked up his cane and walked out leaving Seko perplexed.
Dr Meniz was short and rather pleasant in contrast with the director. He walked with a slight hunch as he led Seko to the lab. The first task was the chip to fall in place. Seko had never been fond of implants but his life had changed dramatically since he received the message in the morning. He was about to do many things he was not very fond of or straight out loathed. In this period he met the other three candidates. Yeggi, the tall engineer who wore old fashioned glasses and mumbled to herself. She was an expert in time travel and also an historian of some sorts. Adua, the only extraterrestrial in the group. He/She, Seko could not differentiate came from a planet in the Andromeda system. Adua was an expert in black-hole formation as well as white holes. He/She was involved in the construction of several of them in Andromeda which were used to keep in place moons and planets which had broken orbit. Why he/she had chosen to work on a dangerous project to save the earth Seko had no clue. There was Kik, a temperamental scientist who always had his brow under sweat. He was responsible for the invention of several deadly weapons and he also relished the idea of blowing up moons. To his surprise Seko was the leader of the group. He was tasked with making the first contact with his ancestor and making sure the coast is clear.
***************
I woke up the next morning with a massive headache. This was not a good way to start a day promising to be weird. The first thought was of the former human or post-human species lodged in my lab. My shoulders slumped. They were going to stay slumped for a very long time. A frown would also materialise which at last would take a plastic surgeon to wipe off. I took my hover-car to the lab. I walked inside to find Seko hunched over the bench with another creature. This was definitely not a post-human species. It was not bipedal for a start. It floated mysteriously just above the ground and buzzed all over my lab swiftly. This did not give me a second heart attack though. I was past the stage partially due to the events of the previous day and partially due to the fact that I was still a little bit inebriated. ”Hello Seko, who do we have here?” I asked cheerfully. ”Oh, where are my manners, this Adua. Adua, meet my once upon a time ancestor. He will definitely help with these calculations,” he said to the creature which turned to me and made what I presumed was a bow, or an insult. ”Nice to meet you Adua, now Seko, would you for the love of God explain to me what the hell is happening,” ”Chill out mate,” he said cheerfully ”see I familiarised myself with your slang to sound cool, chill out”. I was not about to ‘chill out’. ”No Seko, for the record that slang does not belong to this age and even if it was I do not use slang in my conversations. Now tell me what the hell is going on”. I realised I was getting agitated.
”Okay, okay mate sit down and have your precious coffee.” He said. ”Do you remember a paper you wrote 2 years ago about the formation of artificial worm-holes as a means of space travel?” ”Yes but it was only a theory and it does go against many laws of physics, it is not tenable,” I replied. ”Well, my old man. Some of your former colleagues did not think so and right now as we speak they are in the final stages of setting it up. It will not succeed, not now anyway. It will remain dormant for another four hundred years. When it does form then, in our time, it will not be a worm-hole but a black-hole. A black-hole smack in the middle of the solar system. Its size will be capable of collapsing the whole of the Milky Way. Sucking it unto itself. You would not want that to happen, would you? Your job is to help us stop them.” His cheery self had disappeared with his little speech. ”We need an old rocket which to refurbish as soon as possible, I am sure you can get us one old man”. I was not happy he was calling me old man but then again I was his great, great to infinity grandfather.
Obtaining a rocket discreetly was not an easy task. There were few of them just outside Nairobi in Athi river mines. They were dumped in old missile silos used in the world war three. The good thing is that they were not heavily guarded as they were regarded useless. We transported there in the nightfall by my hover-car loaded with 3D printed confusing contraptions which were to be used in repair. They had spent the whole day printing them with fascinating efficiency. There were two bored guards by the entrance strapped with laser rifles. We alighted and crept by the shadows until they we were a few meters away, then Adua materialised and said hello. They fainted. I summoned the hover-car and we bundled them in an air-lock inside. After that it was a breeze. Once inside they selected an old NASA space plane which was used to transport supplies to the International Space Station and the moon later. Seko said it was more than they had wished for.
We printed several drones and programmed them for the repairs which they did efficiently. In a few hours it was as good as new. The next step was weaponry. It was at that moment that an apparition occurred just beside me and off it went with some of my sight. Out stepped two creatures which looked like Seko. They did not even bother acknowledging me. Later I learned it was Yeggi and Kik. They spoke very little. Kik got down to work installing weird equipment to the sides of the plane. By the time he was done it looked more menacing than a Russian military chopper. We launched in the wee hours of the morning. A few minutes after we did, we got a message from the ground space control that we were not allowed to launch any rockets and especially old ones. We were asked to abort and we promptly declined.
The next warning was not so polite. It was a ground to air missile which missed us by miles. The next one was four heat seeking missiles capable of breaking in to space. The plane responded with its own which destroyed them. Several others were released to the same result. The real battle was ahead of us.
Several satellites in the orbit were already armed in readiness for the rogue plane. Their sheer number was overpowering. Kik’s massive veins on his forehead bulged as he fought them and neutralised them one by one. He was hitting them with missiles of his own creation which de-fragmented them in to several million pieces and to avoid creating space junk sent the scampering back to earth, breaking orbit and in to atmosphere. In a sense he was infecting every piece with smart nanites. Nanites which I had created in my lab. We soon settled on the orbit and started scanning for the construction team. When we saw them they did not seem perturbed. What was a mere space-plane against their five massive spaceships?
One of the spaceships was holding the supercollider which was in the process of accelerating the collision of the particles. The mission was to annihilate it. Remove any trace of it’s existence. We fired a warning shot high above them in the dismal hope that they would move away. They charged their weapons on the four ships and activated defenses on the fifth one. This was not going to be easy. We advanced in what was soon to become a battlefield.
The two ships in the flanks closed on us and simultaneously rained torpedoes on us. It was the time for Kik’s shields to prove their character and they really did. While the force from the attack threw us around, nothing penetrated the hull. It was like stabbing a cerrusite plate. This went on for five long minutes without any retaliation from our side. We took down the lead ship in less than a minute blowing it in to smithereens which like the satellites broke orbit back to earth. This prompted the other ships to form a triangle in defense of the one holding the collider. They made it too easy for us. Kik sent a volley of nanites enhanced photon torpedoes and soon we only had the mother ship remaining. We systematically destroyed it’s propulsion and weaponry system as they intended to take it to the future. Doing so would enable them to track any changes done in the field and disable them from their own time-line going onwards. Kik once again proved useful by equipping the space plane with cloaking mask which enabled me to go back to earth invisible.
Nairobi is in utter chaos now that I am back, and so is every place on earth. There are conspiracy theories on what really happened yesterday but nobody can guess the truth. I will take it to my grave.
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Minimalist Eric 