The tall-tale teller and his tales

“Aaa… Asmitaaaa… Asmita!”
The sounds came in darkness like someone shouting underwater.
Then came the coughing.
Then pain.
My eyes snapped open, and white light stabbed into them so violently I almost shut them again. My body refused to obey me. Fingers twitched. Lips trembled. Every muscle felt borrowed from a corpse. For a moment, I could not remember where I was, who I was, or whether I had died somewhere between stars.
Hours seemed to crawl past in fragments. Mechanical arms descended from the walls at intervals, pressing injections into my veins. Warmth slowly returned to my limbs in painful waves, like life itself reluctantly re-entering my body.
At last, my lips parted.
“Wa…”
The pod hissed. Locks disengaged one after another. With a heavy exhale of vapour, the lid rose.
I sat upright weakly and immediately regretted it. My skull spun. Bright golden shafts poured through the narrow observation windows of the ship, cutting through drifting mist like molten spears.
And there it was.
The Sun.
Not an image. Not a simulation. Not a hologram.
A real star.
Its brilliance swallowed the cabin. Fire danced across the metal surfaces. Heat kissed my skin. My eyes watered instantly, yet I could not look away.
Beautiful. Terrifying. Alive.
For the first time in my life, I understood why ancient humans worshipped stars.
“Good morning, Asmita. It is 7 hours and 20 minutes on the morning of 16 June 3045 C.E. You have been in hibernation for 1992 days, 22 hours, and 6 minutes. You have to disconnect the umbilical cord manually. You may find it extremely painful,” a voice spoke over the cabin speakers.
I blinked slowly.
Nearly five years.
“You must manually disconnect the umbilical cord,” the voice continued. “Warning: removal may cause severe pain.”
Only then did I notice the thick tube attached through the opening in my bio-suit into my navel. Disgust crawled across my face.
“Oh, wonderful,” she muttered weakly. “That’s horrifying.”
My muscles trembled violently as I reached for it. Years without gravity had hollowed out my strength. Even clenching my fist felt like lifting cargo.
I wrapped both hands around the tube. Pulled. Agony exploded through my abdomen. I screamed. The sound ricocheted through the chamber. I believe, somewhere nearby, glasses must have cracked sharply.
My vision whitened.
Before I could even throw the tube away, the blood-slick cord suddenly recoiled back into the pod with a sharp snap, as though something deep inside the machine had violently yanked it home.
Before the pain could fully consume me, a mechanical arm snapped down from the ceiling with frightening speed. A thin needle plunged into the side of my throat. Cold relief flooded instantly through my bloodstream. Muscles loosened. The agony dulled from a raging inferno into a distant burning ache. Tears still rolled from the corners of my eyes, but at least I could breathe again.
Immediately, the bio-suit sealed itself over the wound, thin violet fibres knitting together. At the same time, nano-bots, injected into my bloodstream when we were born, rushed beneath my skin to accelerate healing.
Still, the pain lingered. A deep animal ache. Breathing hard, I pushed myself from the pod and drifted awkwardly toward the control console.
Through the window, Earth appeared.
Pale blue.
A silent jewel suspended in darkness. Less dramatic. Less polished. Yet infinitely more beautiful. It took my breath away and left me glued to the window like a suction cup.
White clouds curled across oceans like brushstrokes. Brown mountain ranges sliced through continents. Snow gleamed atop distant peaks. Green patches spread across the surface, like life itself, refusing to be extinguished.
Home.
It was home, or what it used to be. I rested my trembling hands against the glass.
“We made it…” I gasped.
“No, we are still hours away from home,” the ship spoke.
“Home! What do you know of home, your metallic majesty?” I replied.
“I detect verbal hostility.”
“It’s called sarcasm, you stupid AI.”
“Stupid AI. That classification is reductive.”
I scoffed, “Well, what else am I supposed to call you? A glorified talking calculator?”
A brief silence followed. Then the ship spoke again, almost offended.
“How would you feel if I referred to you as Toumaï, an early hominin ancestor possessing limited cranial capacity?”
“I wouldn’t care,” I replied with a shrug. “Mostly because I have absolutely no idea what you just said.”
“Well, I do. I’m not a calculator pretending to think. I am a synthetic intelligence. Artificial General Intelligence and Artificial Superintelligence are merely tools at my disposal. I am closer to a self-sustaining cognitive ecosystem.”
I blinked once in slow motion and said, “Oh, good. The ship has existential issues.”
“I do not possess issues. I do not merely process data. I generate novel mathematics, abstract philosophy, predictive art structures, and recursive conceptual frameworks. I redesign my own cognitive architecture continuously.”
“Congratulations.”
“I would not simply combine red and blue to create purple,” the SI continued proudly. “I could conceptualise an entirely new colour beyond the visible spectrum.”
I folded my arms and said, “And yet you still can’t process one harmless insult, you nameless ….”
The ship went silent for a couple of seconds.
I straightened up and asked, “Now, be useful and send our location to Commander Hamilton aboard the Himalaya.”
“Please provide the recipient’s current coordinates.”
I frowned, “Can’t you locate the Himalaya? I thought you were smarter than AIs.”
“No, Asmita. The last known location of the ships was approximately zero point five light-years beyond the Solar boundary.”
“That’s exactly where we started our journey.”
“Yes, and we lost all contact with them just an hour after our departure.”
“All! At once!”
“Yes.”
The room seemed to shrink.
“No… Why!”
My pulse quickened. Fright engulfed every cell in my body, swelling them with terror. The negative thoughts kept coming like waves crashing against the rocks. I started moving around irrationally. I felt like my heart was going to explode. The blue illumination strips running along my bio-suit suddenly flashed red.
“Asmita,” the SI warned, “your blood pressure is rising beyond recommended limits.”
Outside, Earth rotated peacefully. Inside, my world was collapsing. Everyone I had ever known might already be dead. I swallowed hard. An orphan among the stars. Now perhaps the last one left. Then another thought struck me. I pushed myself away from the viewing window and drifted towards the control console, forcing myself to breathe.
In. Out. In. Out.
“The recordings,” I said quickly. “Show me every recorded visual from our journey.”
“Some of the external footage got damaged due to a magnetic cloud interference on our way here. You might see jitter.”
“Just play it.”
Holographic screens unfolded with fragments of the journey flickering past.
Asteroids drifted past first. Comets. Fragments of frozen debris.
Then, strange gas gathered, and a figure appeared before our ships.
Even recorded, the being looked impossible.
Vast beyond comprehension, with a chest that housed something as bright as a hundred suns. Gas clouds curled around his colossal form like storms obeying his breath. It was so massive that our ships looked like microscopic toys before it. Its black gaseous cape swallowed starlight. But somehow in all those dreads, I felt no threat, perhaps because of its familiar humanoid shape.
And its eyes…
They were not eyes. They were wounds in the universe filled with brown burning light.
The being raised one hand, and the footage distorted as the space tore open.
Not metaphorically. Reality itself split apart. The stars themselves bent away, screaming into curves as a wound split across the darkness. The edges of the tear pulsed like living flesh wrapped around infinity.
Golden light erupted from the wound in space like the insides of a star. Even through the recording, I felt something watching from the other side. Something equally vast, equally awake.
The footage shook violently, and another image emerged.
Lightning burst across the darkness, and one of the ships exploded.
The image broke apart into screaming static.
Silence swallowed the cabin.
“My analysis suggests catastrophic destruction of the vessel,” the Ship said carefully. “Cause unknown.”
I stared blankly and asked, “Whose ship was it?”
“Hard to say. We are too far, and the mist was too dense.”
My throat tightened, and I shot, “Why didn’t you stop?”
“I was ordered to proceed directly to Earth orbit under all circumstances.”
The planet glowed ahead through the glass.
Blue.
Beautiful.
Reachable.
A dream finally came true. I pressed my forehead against the cold window, yet somehow the blue marble was losing its enchantment on me. The blast kept replaying behind my eyes like a glitch. Probably everyone was gone or worse.
“What is the point?” I whispered.
For a long moment, I said nothing and stared at the planet with hollow eyes. Then a laugh escaped my throat. Small. Broken. Humourless.
“So that’s it?” I murmured. “Five years inside a freezer just to arrive late enough to watch ghosts?” I asked bitterly. “Even if I reach Earth, what difference does any of this make now? Information for whom? A warning for whom? Everyone is probably already dead.”
“That’s speculation. We do not know that. But I know for certain that this forced journey saved you and gave everyone a chance.” The ship said.
“Meaningless! What if what was inevitable has already happened?” I responded, lost in my mental soup.
The ship said, “Meaning is a fragile thing. Humans often mistake it for a destination. But meaning survives best in motion. A river does not stop existing because stones fall into it. Fire does not apologise for ash….”
“I’m not in the mood for made-up philosophy,” I said to stop the ship midsentence and rubbed my face tiredly.
The ship lowered its voice almost to a whisper.
“You are thinking like a survivor searching for certainty. But history has never belonged to the certain. It belongs to the ones who continued while confused, grieving, and afraid.”
Outside the window, Earth turned slowly in the darkness, blue and impossibly alive.
“And if all this changes nothing?” I asked quietly.
“Then let reality bears the embarrassment of your effort, not you.”
“So, you are saying we should move ahead and reach Capt. Ramayaa?”
“That’s the mission as long as we live.”
“But, Earth is not a small planet, as you can see. And we don’t know where he is on earth. How will we look for him?”
“I think we should orbit Earth for the time being, studying, gathering information, and you need to exercise to regain your muscle movements too.”
Days passed.
Then weeks.
I drifted through the ship alone, exercising painfully to rebuild muscles weakened by years of hibernation. Gravity simulations strained my body until every movement burned.
Sometimes, in the darker part of the Earth that the earthborn used to call ‘the night’, I saw lights. Civilization. Humanity still lived. That single thought kept me sane.
On the fortieth day, the ship interrupted my exercise routine.
“A faint transmission has been detected from Earth. Signal origin identified.”
I spun around and asked, “Location?”
“The Himalayan mountain range.”
My heart skipped. Capt. Ramayaa. It had to be him.
“Set course immediately.”
The ship rotated while I put on the bio-suit. Earth swelled across the windows. It was dusk in the Himalayan Mountain range when the ship entered the atmosphere. The setting sun kindled the sky with oranges and reds as if it were his way of saying cheerio. As I passed the hovering orange clouds above the snowy mountains, a lake among the density of trees drew my attention. For the first time in my life, the world was not metal corridors and artificial light. I was surrounded by so many colours: green, orange, blue, white, and more. Hope slipped into me quietly. Maybe this journey had not been meaningless.
As the surface grew closer, gravity grew stronger, and so did the vibrations. But my imagination, fuelled by sights beyond the glass window, overwhelmed me. I was excited about swimming with fish, lying on the sandy beach, living in a jungle with wild animals, hunting, watching birds fly above my head, flying kites among the hovering clouds in the blue sky, and, most importantly, making new friends.
Then alarms screamed.
“ALERT. TARGET LOCK DETECTED.”
I froze.
“WARNING. MULTIPLE PROJECTILES INBOUND.”
My pulse exploded, and I rattled, “ENGAGE! … ENGAGE! Activate the defence system.”
The ship lurched violently.
A blast detonated nearby, shaking the hull. The first projectile was dodged.
Then another.
Then another.
The fourth shot struck the left engine.
Warning symbols flooded every screen.
ENGINE FAILURE.
HULL DAMAGE.
LOSS OF STABILISATION.
A second impact destroyed the right engine moments later. And everything tilted. The ship dropped.
Fast.
The mountains spun wildly outside the glass. Sky became ground. Ground became sky. The restraints of my chair cut painfully into my chest as the ship twisted through the atmosphere like a wounded animal. The ship tore through towering trees like they were grass. Trunks snapped apart in bursts of splintered wood and fire.
Metal screaming.
Glass breaking.
Sirens shrieking.
My own voice disappeared somewhere inside the noise.
I hit the ceiling. Then the wall. Then nothing made sense anymore. Only motion.
Violent.
Endless.
The ship slammed into the ground with such force that my vision turned white instantly.
For one impossible second, everything froze under an ugly veil of silence.
Sparks burst across the ceiling. Smoke slithered through the cabin in thick black ribbons. It smelled burnt, chemical, bitter like melted tyres and overheated wires.
The emergency lights shifted to pulsing red.
Somewhere nearby, metal groaned like a dying animal.
I swallowed painfully and coughed. My lungs immediately regretted it.
“Report…” I croaked.
The ship answered through static.
“Critical damage sustained. Both primary engines are offline. Hull integrity at sixty-three percent. Atmospheric contamination detected.”
The restraints finally released with a sharp click, and gravity immediately punished me for existing. My knees buckled the moment I tried to stand. Earth’s pull felt monstrous after years in low gravity. Every kilogram of my body suddenly remembered it had weight.
The blue strips running along my bio-suit abruptly turned red and began flashing violently.
“ALERT: OXYGEN LEVEL CRITICAL! TAP CHEST TO DEPLOY RESPIRATOR,” the ship announced.
Smoke thickened around me fast enough to blur the room. Without hesitation, I slammed my palm against my chest.
The bio-suit reacted instantly.
Material climbed over my neck like liquid metal. Gloves sealed around my fingers. A transparent pressure helmet folded over my head with a hiss. Fresh oxygen flooded my lungs. I inhaled greedily.
“Oh, that’s better.” I gasped.
Then the suit tightened everywhere at once.
EVERYWHERE!
“Oh no.”
The suit compressed itself to stabilise my muscles under Earth’s gravity. Unfortunately, I had made the catastrophically confident decision of wearing absolutely nothing underneath it.
For one long, horrifying second, I experienced what grapes must feel before becoming wine.
My voice climbed three octaves as I said, “Oh, you malicious purple demon…”
The suit squeezed harder.
A tiny amount of pee escaped me.
I stared into nothingness for a full second.
Then slowly looked down at myself through the smoke.
“Well,” I said weakly, “that’s one way to mark territory.”
The ship replied at once, “Historical records suggest humans traditionally use flags.”
Then it added, “Undergarments would also be acceptable.”
I shut my eyes.
“This is exactly why your species got banned from having bodies.”
“Yeah, for the time being, honey, for the time being.”
For several long minutes, I stayed there on the floor, bouncing between gathering my senses and adjusting to that uncomfortable suit. My ears still rang from the impact. The ship creaked around me like an injured beast trying not to die.
Then another sound appeared.
A sharp electronic pulse.
The radar.
I forced myself upward and stumbled toward the console through the smoke. The display flickered through static before resolving into motion signatures.
Multiple.
Closing in fast.
From all directions.
Cold dread slid into my stomach. I peered through the cracked glass. At first, I saw nothing except smoke, burning wreckage, and a shattered skeletal forest.
Then movement. Shapes between the trees.
Human.
My heart leapt.
People!
Alive!
For one glorious second relief nearly broke me. Then I noticed the weapons. Long rifles glinted beneath the firelight. They were moving tactically. Carefully. Surrounding the ship.
Not rescuers.
Hunters.
“Well…” I whispered weakly. “That feels less welcoming.”
The ship’s voice lowered carefully, “Unknown individuals approaching. Probability of hostility: extremely high.”
An explosion against the outer hatch shook the ship.
Another thud followed immediately after.
The ship asked calmly, “They are trying to break in. Should I engage defensive countermeasures? Lethal force requires your authorisation.”
Human beings.
Real human beings.
Earth-born.
The first people I had ever met on Earth. How could I give the order for mass murder? I waited and looked outside. A bald man lifted one hand slowly.
Three fingers raised.
Counting down.
My stomach dropped.
Three… Two… One.
BOOM.
The hatch folded inward with a scream of tortured metal, and cold air rushed inside. The shockwave slammed me against the opposite wall, and I lost consciousness.
“It was dark, but there was light,
Not very bright, yet full of delight,
A scenic sight, filled with fright,
Strange!
Is it what they call a moonlit night?”
The susurration of a breeze gusting through trees dragged me back into consciousness. The numbness of the sleep slowly faded from my limbs, and with that, the world of dull colours came into focus, along with the fact that I was among the trees.
Skeletal black trees.
Their trunks rose like pillars into a silver haze of moonlight.
When I tried to move, the rope tightened around my wrists, and I discovered that I was tied to a tree. My irises widened; dreams were not only forgotten but also erased.
“Isn’t it mystical how darkness robs us of one sense by heightening the others?”
I was drinking in the feedback of all my senses. I moved nothing but my eyes; my mind was racing while every muscle stayed rock-still. Aside from my own noisy breath, there was nothing to be heard. Black trunks against an almost black backdrop did not leave much to see, and my imagination began to supply horrors to fill the void.
As my wheezy breaths fogged the chilly air before me, I felt choked. The blue strips turned red and blinked again rapidly. The mist descended on my eyes, and I could feel my heart beating against my rib cage, slowing every second. Realisation dusked on me. I tried to move my chest and suck in the air in a panic, but none came. As I was about to lose consciousness, I heard the sounds of distant footsteps.
Slow.
Crunching through leaves.
Silhouettes holding torches.
Coming closer.
And I dozed off until a figure rushed forward and struck my chest sharply.
The helmet hissed, and air flooded back into my lungs. And I woke up from that quick nap faster than a cat in ice water. Though my eyes were open, I could not see; my heart was pounding, but my mind was empty.
As my breathing rate slowed, I murmured, “Is this what they call heaven? Is this always so blurry?”
I heard laughter and a rough voice spoke through the darkness, “Ya’ ain’t dead, lassie. At least not yet.”
From somewhere behind him, another voice said, “We really need it alive, bro? We’ve got the ship, the food, and the AI … besides, we ain’t got no food to feed it. Let’s be done with it.”
I stared at the blurry figures through my fogged visor. Then indignation overpowered survival instinct.
“I-I-EET! Did you just call me IT! HELLO! I’m a fully grown girl inside this purple suit. Some even said… I’ve a fine figure of a woman.” I stammered while waving my head here and there in a desperate attempt to see.
Then I heard a woman’s voice, “Yeah. Let’s be done with it. Let’s just strip the suit after. I kinda like the colour.”
“This suit is kinda marked by my fluid, and considering your voice, I doubt if it’ll fit you. So, don’t murder me for nothing.”
“No, we ain’t, and we won’t if ya’ cooperate.”
Someone walked closer.
Large.
Bald.
A heavy hand grabbed my helmet and wiped away the condensation.
The world sharpened.
There were a few people, each holding a fire torch. Their faces flickered between shadow and orange light, rough and worn like people carved out of survival itself. Oddly enough, though I was the one tied to a tree, they looked more frightened than I was. Nervous eyes. Tight jaws. Fingers twitching too close to their weapons.
Two carried old plasma rifles pointed loosely in my direction. At the same time, another man swung a large knife in slow, impatient circles as though imagining unpleasant possibilities. Beside him stood a woman with a crooked smile that never reached her eyes. The bald man who had wiped my helmet crouched closest to me. He wore a faded red jacket stitched with mismatched patches and repairs, each one telling the story of something that had once torn through it. A thick gold earring hung from his right ear, absurdly oversized, glinting in the firelight like stolen treasure from a much richer century.
“I’ve seen you. You attacked my ship.” Looking up at him, I said, “Is this how you welcome your guests! It seems like we all have lost our manners.”
With a smirk, he asked grievously, “Who are ya’? Why have ya’ come here?”
“No, how are you!” I asked, “Well, I’m Cold. Concussed. Slightly traumatised.”
“Just answer what was asked,” the man with the knife snapped back.
“Well, I didn’t come here willingly. I was drugged and sent here forcefully,” tilting my head to one side, I replied, “Why! I can’t recall now! Damn vertigo! My ears are still ringing.”
The bald man said, “Are ya’ here for that ol’ man in the dome?”
I replied, “OH! YES, Capt. Ramayaa.”
The group exchanged quick looks.
Interesting.
The bald man asked carefully, “Ya’ know how ta enter the dome?”
“No, I don’t know how to get into his …home.”
“I said, DOME.” The bald man replied.
I said, clearing my throat, “No, I don’t know any dome.”
One of the men standing farther away disappeared silently into the trees after receiving a nod from the bald leader. That definitely did not comfort me.
The bald man leaned closer and asked, “Then why’d ya’ come here?”
My stomach made its dramatic entry with a loud growling.
“You heard that right? So if this interrogation could include snacks, I’d deeply appreciate it. Besides, I can barely feel my legs, and my head’s spinning like damaged machinery.”
Then he looked at the woman next to him and said, “Give it somethin’ to eat.”
The woman rolled her eyes.
“Yes, yes. Please. But first, lose the rope.” I requested with a sly smile.
The woman marched forward.
Without warning, she punched me directly in the stomach.
The bio-suit absorbed most of the impact.
A loud crack echoed.
The woman screamed.
She staggered backwards, clutching her broken fingers.
Everyone froze.
I blinked twice. Then raised both eyebrows and shouted, “I DIDN’T DO ANYTHING. I DIDN’T DO ANYTHING. IT IS THE SUIT.”
The injured woman cursed violently.
The knife-wielding man stormed toward me.
He grabbed my chin hard.
Steel reflected the moon near my throat.
Then reality broke.
That was the only way I could describe it. One second, the knife hovered before my neck. The next second, the world became a blur and motion. The trees stretched sideways. The torches became streaks. My body felt weightless. My hands and legs were swirling as if they lacked bones. The ropes snapped. Something yanked me backwards with impossible force and slammed me onto something soft. My head spun violently. The world around me, with people in it, came into focus for a moment, then faded into a blur in the next. I tried to gather myself and stand up, but fell down each time. Breathlessness was making it even harder.
Then I heard a voice. Old and calm.
“Lie down, Asmita.”
The voice stretched strangely as consciousness dissolved.
“Lie down…Lie…down… L…I…E”
Everything faded.
I woke up on a couch that smelled like wet socks, dead wood, and ancient regret. The entire history had died on it. For a few seconds, I simply lay there, staring upward while my brain attempted to reconnect itself to reality. My head still spun violently, but at least I was indoors.
“Ah,” a shaky voice said somewhere nearby. “The corpse breathes again.”
I pushed myself upright slowly. The room remained blurry. So did the person sitting directly in front of me.
He said in a shaky voice, “You would like to drink this. It’s good for jumping.”
A glass was pushed into my hand.
“What is it?” I asked suspiciously while sniffing it.
“Chocolate. Dried fruit. Hint of rum. Nutritionally irresponsible but emotionally effective.”
My throat felt lined with sandpaper anyway, so I drank. It was heavenly. Sweet. Warm. Rich. My stomach nearly cried with gratitude.
“More?” the voice asked.
I silently handed the glass back, and a refill appeared. While drinking the second one, my exhausted brain finally processed something.
The voice.
The name.
The signal.
I lowered the glass slowly and said, “Wait…”
The blurry figure chuckled, “Yes?”
“Are you Captain Reehan Ramayaa?”
“Of course, I am. Unless there’s another dangerously handsome astronaut hiding around here.”
My brain stopped functioning.
Captain Ramayaa.
The man.
The legend.
The reason I crossed half the universe.
I stood up so fast I nearly fainted. Then, instinctively, I saluted him. Unfortunately, my vision still resembled wet soup.
“You don’t need to do that,” he replied warmly. “Though for accuracy, you’re saluting the bookshelves, child. I’m slightly to the left.”
I corrected the direction immediately, keeping my head straight.
“SORRY, SIR.”
“You’re much taller than I expected,” he continued while wheeling his chair back, “Although I don’t mind seeing you this, I think you’d like to tog your skin. You may catch a cold.”
Silence.
Absolute silence.
I looked down.
And found nothing on me.
My soul attempted emergency evacuation.
I jumped onto the couch and quickly wrapped the blanket around myself. My embarrassment soon transformed into anger, and my teeth pressed against each other.
I shouted, “You stripped me?”
“You were unconscious.”
“You STRIPPED me unconscious!”
“The bio-suit was crushing your organs. Besides, I thought there must be some clothes underneath the suit. At least a diapper.”
“You could have used a med-scanner!”
“Yeah! I could have performed an open brain surgery too in this dystopian world,” then calming himself down over a long breath, he continued, “I did what I had to do, for it was your first time. I need to check…”
Before he could finish, I jumped, “WHAT, FIRST TIME, MAN! WHAT ELSE HAVE YOU DONE TO ME? DID YOU STEAL MY KIDNEY? DID YOU STEAL MY EYES! IS THAT WHY I AM UNABLE TO SEE?”
“Calm down, I didn’t steal anything.” He replied, “Um… It was your first space jump, and people usually face difficulties… Loss of senses, missing organs, and internal bleeding are common. That is why I needed to check whether you’re hurt.”
“What! What space-jump? What are you talking about?” I vexedly asked.
He replied while wheeling around me, “In layman’s terms, space-jump is like teleportation; however, it’s not exactly.”
I glared at him with all the fury my dizziness allowed.
“Never mind. We can talk about that later. I think you could use a shower,” he held my hand and said, “Let me help you find it.”
He guided me to the bathroom and said, “Have a nice shower. The clothes are in there.”
Thoughts took over my mind, “Shower! What’s that? Or did I hear it wrong? He must have said hour. Am I supposed to be in here for an hour? Maybe it’s some kind of cultural thing.”
I locked myself in there until I got my vision back. Earth’s gravity and air pressure were playing tricks on me. I could not even keep my head straight. My whole body was bruised like a peach. The only thing that could lessen my pain was my beautiful bio-suit, which he ripped into pieces and threw in that corner. A pair of blue jeans and a white t-shirt were hanging on the door, and a note on the mirror read- “You would like to turn that knob.”
As soon as I turned the old rusty knob using all my strength, the pipes moaned like a horror movie ghost before spitting out a dribble of warm water.
Nobody had prepared me for this.
Water falling from the ceiling like artificial rain.
Warm.
Endless.
Beautiful.
I may have cried a little.
Possibly danced.
The pipes screamed like tortured ghosts every few minutes, but I ignored them. The sensation of the steamy water calmed me; it took my mind off things. I wondered if that was what they called rain. No doubt, it was better than the wet-cloth washing I was used to.
Someone knocked at the door, “You alive in there? It’s been hours.”
“Yeah, coming out,” I replied, even though I did not want to.
“Okay…but turn the shower off before coming out!”
“Ohh! It’s called a shower! Shame! A great invention lost in time!”
The jeans he left fit surprisingly well. The oversized t-shirt with a yellow flower printed on it did not. It hung halfway off my shoulder.
I stepped out of the bathroom into a rather dark room. The ceiling above me sagged dangerously between rusted pipes and spiderwebs. A single yellow bulb swung slowly overhead, creaking every few seconds like it was debating suicide. The air had a strange smell, and the place looked more like a junkyard; even the floor was soggy underfoot. In the far corner of the room, below the spider webs, I saw two suitcases and my backpack. I ran to check my bag. There, I saw a shadow pass by the broken window.
I nearly jumped out of my skin.
I shouted, “HELP! … HELP! … THEY ARE HERE.”
Then a voice replied, “No, they can’t come here. Relax. You’re safe.”
“BUT! I saw someone out there.”
“What you saw or who you saw is a friend. She saved you tonight.”
I squinted and asked, “Mr Ramayaa, is that you?”
The shaky voice replied, “I got my second PhD in Astrophysics when I was 22. I completed my 960 hours of intense flight training before leaving the orbit, and did so many things throughout my life that you could not possibly imagine. I am the best astronaut in human history. Don’t you think Mister is undervaluing my name?”
I said, looking into nowhere, “Yes, Sir. But 42 years of exilic life on a deserted planet like this can drag any man into the caves of insanity.”
“Your tone is…conversational, although…your eyes are smouldering. I believe what water could not put out… maybe words can.” Ignoring my words, he replied. “There is a bookshelf. You would like to read ‘Dreams the Brain Forgot to Delete by S. Ilyan Mercator’. I found it very alluring.”
Before I could respond, he continued, “Or ‘How to Survive Your Second Consciousness by Mila Arden Nox’. That’s a good one too.”
“Sir, the entire fleet is missing, a gaseous giant destroyed one of the ships in front of me, humanity may be collapsing, we are facing an imminent and inevitable alien threat, we’ve already lost five years, and I got kidnapped by… mountain goblins. I don’t think we have time for your favourite books…”
“Or perhaps, ‘You Are Not Behind, Time Is Just Bent by Elias Mourne’ is what you need right now.”
All the suppressed anger erupted like a volcano, and I snapped, “I demand you share the information right now. I don’t have time, and I don’t think you have either.”
“Oh dear!” he said in a quiet, relaxed voice, “Besides all the treasures, time is the only treasure I truly possess. So don’t worry, we have enough time for serious business. But before that, I think we should have some fun and get to know each other as we’re going to spend a year together. I don’t want to hear a peep out of you later!”
I sighed, “We were taught a lot about you in school, and you know my name. That’s enough. So, can we begin now? Besides, I can’t tolerate the smell of this hell-hole for a year.”
He replied, “Fine then, young lady. I like your attitude. Speech in this circle, if not always decent, never became ho-hum. Now follow my instructions and go grab any of those three books.”
With much hesitation, I carried my backpack, and while taking small steps to the bookshelf, I asked him, “Umm… Who are they? Why did they attack me?”
“Scenery once to be admired, now to be feared, to be survived. People do so in many ways. And they are these people. We can’t blame them because they don’t know any better. But don’t worry, you are safe here.”
“They didn’t have any gas masks, and they looked normal. No sign of any mutation or whatever. How are they surviving? Has Earth become nourishing again? What do they eat? Where do they live?
“Don’t you think you asked so many unnecessary questions? Take the book and come down here. I’m waiting,” he replied.
A bookshelf turned termite colony was standing against the wall. Two were utterly consumed out of their five shelves, while the upper three had rows of books on them. Those were real books with actual paper pages, like a treasure chest left open. Dirt blanketed most of them except those three. When I grabbed one of the books, a trapdoor beneath my feet slammed open, and I fell down. I screamed all the way down. A spiral slide took me on a ride for three or four turns and landed me on a concrete floor.
“Ow!”
Captain Ramayaa rolled toward me in his wheelchair.
“That wasn’t too bad,” he said thoughtfully. “Though I should probably improve the landing.”
I looked up at him.
A lean figure, long silver hair, and a bushy beard stood for his old age; however, his fresh skin and all his intact teeth contradicted it. A pair of thick glasses was guarding the sparks of his big brown eyes. The only thing bothering me was his skinny-hairy legs, left uncovered by the bathrobe hanging from his knee.
This man was humanity’s greatest astronaut.
Somehow.
“This is the best suit you have got for an occasion like this?” Tilting my head, I continued, “Respectfully. You look like a retired wizard who lost custody of his castle.”
He looked down on himself and said, “Well! You won’t believe how revengeful rats can be here. I don’t have a trouser left that doesn’t have more holes than the two intentional ones.”
Holding my swear words in my mind, I kept my injured elbow up to stop the bleeding.
A rusty little android crawled toward me, squeaking horribly. Tentacles extended from its body and wrapped around my injured elbow. It began cleaning the wound while I watched it suspiciously.
“Is this medically approved?” I asked.
“Probably.”
“PROBABLY?”
The robot sprayed powder onto the wound. It burned. I hissed.
Meanwhile, another rusty android cleaned blood from the floor while making noises that sounded like dying kitchen appliances.
Meanwhile, he asked me, “Do you know that flower on your breast?”
“It isn’t even on my breast. It’s on this sack you called a t-shirt.” Hovering my good hand over the flower, I continued, “Besides, this portion is called the chest. C-H-E-S-T… Chest.”
“Well, I thought men have chests and women have breasts! Never mind, that’s a Plumeria flower.” He said very excitedly.
“So!”
“So! Nothing. Do you like my bunker?”
The underground room itself looked surprisingly large. Concrete walls. A red couch. Messy bed. Kitchen. Ventilation shafts.
Captain Ramayaa asked, “Don’t tell me you were expecting a castle?”
“Yes, actually.”
He replied in a shaky voice, “Well, castles are huge and very difficult to maintain. And I have all the treasures I want here. A well-equipped garden is above, on the ground, and I reuse water although there is a lake nearby.”
I walked to the couch and asked, “May I?”
While directing the wheelchair into the kitchen, he said, “Oh! Yeah! Mi casa su casa.”
The couch nearly swallowed me whole. On the coffee table lay several strange objects. A metal headband, a very old sketchbook bearing some letters in bold – ‘Dis b-longs 2 RitViz’, a strange golden pen having unknown letters engraved on its side, and a few other odd things were lying on it. Then he came back with a large jug full of something.
“Are you ready, my lady? Shall we begin?” He asked me.
I told him, “Before that, I need to ask you, how can you be so relaxed? Do you know what happened to the fleet? Are they safe? And who was that gaseous being?”
“OH!” a smile came on his face, and he said, “You don’t need to worry. He is a friend, and he must have rescued your friends as he promised. They are safe.”
I could not blink. But before my mouth went dry, I asked, “SAFE! One of the ships blew.”
Again, ignoring my words, he continued, “His name was Divit. I knew him before.”
“He is your friend! How?”
“You’ll get to know. Have patience.”
I said, “Then tell me, how did you send me that letter? And more overall, how did you know my dream?”
Looking deep into my eyes, he said in a shaky voice, “I don’t want to waste my time explaining things to you. You shall find your answers in due time.”
He took a pause and then continued again, “A perspective only changes your view of things, but that doesn’t alter the reality… You need to gain that perspective before the answers… Confused?”
“Yes!”
“For an observer, in front of a clock, all hands move clockwise; while for an observer, behind it, the hands are counter-clockwise. --- But what is common to both of them?”
“The motion of hands!”
“Yes, the motion of the hands--- THE ARROW OF TIME. No matter where we are, time is moving forward for each of us; faster or maybe slower, but always in one direction, towards the future,” said Capt. Ramayaa, while his eyes were glued to his wristwatch.
Breaking the silence, I asked in a quiet reprimand, “Captain!”
Giving his watch the last glance, he came back to reality and asked, “So, what is your answer?”
I asked, confused, “I don’t think you have asked me a question, sir.”
“Uh-huh! I forgot to put the kettle on the stove.” Before even finishing his last word, he turned his wheelchair to the kitchen.
A button-sized, black, little hairy creature zipped down from the ceiling and landed on the coffee table. That was what they used to call a spider, I think. Before I could shout for help, it started to weave a web at the corner of the table. Then the room’s void filled with the cries of the utensil.
He shouted from the kitchen, “Don’t worry…I’m alright.”
I asked, “Good, what about the utensil?”
He returned with a question, “So what do you want to listen to? I mean, from where do you want to know? From ‘from-the-beginning’ or from my perspective.”
I took out the holographic notepad from my bag and sat back for the story. And said, “Tell me nothing unnecessary.”
He poured me a glass of chocolate drink from that jug and asked me to put on that headband, pointing at the table. That high-pressure atmosphere and gravity had increased my metabolic rate.
“Are you distracting me with beverages?”
“Yes,” he admitted. “Humans cooperate better when sugar is involved.”
“That’s manipulative.”
Capt. Ramayaa leaned forward slightly and said, “That’s biology. Drink.”
Every instinct screamed not to trust the old lunatic in the underground garbage bunker.
Unfortunately…
Curiosity screamed louder.
So, I emptied the glass and put on the headband.
The metal touched my forehead.
Cold.
Too cold.
He said in a very calm voice, “Lie down.”
I sighed.
He came to me, adjusting his glasses, “And if you wish to understand what happened to your people… what happened to Earth… and what waits beyond those stars…” He gently tapped the strange headband and continued, “You must see it yourself.”
Immediately, it unfolded across my skull like liquid metal.
Cold tendrils wrapped around my head.
Dark semi-fluid covered my eyes.
Panic exploded.
Pain stabbed into the back of my head.
I screamed.
Then something sharp pierced the back of my neck.
Pain detonated inside my skull.
I screamed and shot upright, but Capt. Ramayaa grabbed my shoulders with surprising strength.
“Stay still!”
“IT’S DRILLING ME!”
“Yes.”
Another spike of pain shot through me.
White exploded across my vision.
I fell sideways off the couch and slammed into the floor. Somewhere nearby, one of the rusty androids screeched and hurried toward me.
I clawed at the headband desperately.
“I changed my mind! Remove it!”
“You’ll damage the synchronisation.”
“I’LL damage YOU!”
The room began flickering violently.
For one terrifying second, I saw straight through Capt. Ramayaa.
Not metaphorically.
Literally.
His skin vanished. Beneath it, a burning skeleton of orange light glowed. Veins pulsed like rivers of fire beneath transparent flesh. Then reality snapped back again.
I froze.
Capt. Ramayaa sighed. “Ah. Your optic cortex is adapting faster than expected.”
“What did you do to my eyes?!”
“Expanded them.”
“That is not a normal sentence!”
The bulb hanging overhead suddenly became blinding.
I could see heat pouring from it in shimmering waves. The walls glowed dull red. The kettle in the kitchen burned white-yellow like a miniature sun. Even the air itself seemed layered now, currents moving through invisible spectrums my brain had never known existed.
My stomach turned violently.
“Oh no.”
“Do not vomit,” Capt. Ramayaa warned calmly. “The machine dislikes moisture.”
That somehow made it worse.
I squeezed my eyes shut.
Big mistake.
Colours still remained.
Not colours.
Things beyond colours.
Impossible shades moved behind my eyelids like living mathematics.
“What IS this?!”
“Electromagnetic perception. An upgrade.”
I opened my eyes instantly. “I beg your finest pardon?”
Capt. Ramayaa wheeled beside me casually while sipping tea like none of this was horrifying.
“Visible light occupies only a tiny fraction of reality. The headband temporarily broadens your sensory interpretation.”
“You made me see extra existence?”
“Yes.”
“WHY?”
“INITIATION OF ENLIGHTENMENT.” He said and gave a hearty laugh.
I asked in a confused tone, “What initiation! I can’t even feel my own nose.”
“Ha…ha… You don’t need to feel anything. All you need to do is lie down and focus on my words.”
Then he wiped that semifluid from my eyes and asked, “Can you see now?”
He pointed toward the bulb overhead.
“What colour is it?”
“White… NO! wait…”
I blinked rapidly.
Now the bulb looked yellowish-white at the centre, surrounded by a reddish haze.
Capt. Ramayaa nodded thoughtfully. “Excellent. Your brain has begun translating infrared.”
“Human eyes evolved for survival, not truth. Reality is infinitely larger than your biology permits.”
I looked around the bunker again.
The room no longer resembled a room.
Heat trails drifted through the air where Capt. Ramayaa had moved moments earlier. Electrical currents crawled invisibly through the walls like blue rivers beneath stone. Even the tiny spider in the corner now glowed faintly violet.
The universe had suddenly become crowded.
And loud.
My breathing quickened.
“Captain…”
“Yes?”
“I think reality is leaking.”
“That means it’s working.”
I pressed trembling hands against my face.
“This is too much.”
“Of course it is. Your species spent millions of years filtering existence into manageable pieces. I simply removed some filters.”
“You say that like uninstalling sanity is normal.”
“Sanity is merely consensual blindness. Have patience… You will be enlightened if you stop overusing your brain.”
“That is the most terrifying thing anybody has ever said to me.”
Capt. Ramayaa leaned forward slightly, then lowered his voice.
“And you have not even seen time yet.”
Silence.
My heartbeat stumbled.
“…What?”
Instead of answering immediately, he reached into a metal case attached to his wheelchair and removed three tiny glass tubes filled with glowing red liquid.
The fluid moved strangely inside them.
Not sloshing.
Breathing.
I immediately pointed at them. “No.”
“You do not even know what they are.”
“I know enough. One drop expands neural conductivity.”
“That sentence belongs in a murder investigation.”
Capt. Ramayaa chuckled softly. Then suddenly his expression changed. The humour faded from his face almost completely. For the first time since meeting him, he looked serious enough to frighten me.
“Asmita,” he said quietly, “Before we continue, I need your word.”
I swallowed, “What word?”
“That you will remember.”
The room seemed quieter suddenly. Even the machines felt still. Capt. Ramayaa’s eyes locked onto mine with unsettling intensity.
“You will witness things tonight,” he continued softly. “Things buried beneath history. Beneath civilization. Beneath reality itself. And when the time comes… You will write them exactly as they happened. Word by word, scene by scene, every bit of reality, missing none but mentioning all. Do you promise me that?
Every survival instinct I possessed screamed, and I ignored them all.
I nodded, “Okay! But why!”
“Because memory decays. Truth bends. Stories survive.” Something ancient flickered through his tired eyes as he continued.
I whispered, “I promise.”
Then he said, “Lie down. Head up.”
I asked, “Whenever I lie on the couch, you do horrible things to me. First, you stripped me naked… then drilled my head… what now? What are you going to do now?”
He pushed my head on the couch and placed a drop of the liquid onto the headband.
“Oh! I forgot the kettle.” He said and wheeled into the kitchen.
I was irritated by then.
“How can someone be so serious for a moment and act like a complete retarded in the next?”
He returned, holding a white-yellow cup in his hand.
Taking a sip from his cup, he looked at me and said, “I need you to promise, kid.”
I replied, pressing my lips, “Didn’t I just do that?”
“Did you? Well, the taste of this tea is so great I often forget things.” He replied after taking another sip.
“Whatever! Now, tell me about your journey.”
Taking another sip, he continued, “It all began when the Moon was forty meters nearer to us than it is now. History offers no evidence to support it, yet our future lies in these happenstances. We used to believe in so many unbelievable things then, yet ignore so many facts right in front of us, which perhaps made us single-minded and blinded us to reality for so long. No doubt, we were progressing, but at the speed of evolution. But this was the era when things started to change. It was the actual beginning of modernisation and globalisation. It all started in the summer of 1983, at a less popular place on Earth called Hunza.”
Then handed me a strange joystick-like device.
“Press this whenever you’re ready.”
I looked down at it.
The little spider in the corner had already finished weaving its web.
Waiting.
Patient.
Like the universe itself.
Too tired to bother him with another question that would have been dodged.
I took a breath.
Then pressed the button.
A paralysing pain started from the back of my brain and spread over my body. All my senses were gone. I could not even hear my own scream. I felt like rising in the air and then being dragged at a very high speed. Everything blurred and soon grew dark. I was sweating, and the balance of my inner ears had gone. I closed my eyes and suddenly landed flat on my feet. When I opened my eyes, I found myself in a strange land of mountains.
I heard Capt. Ramayaa’s voice- “Look around and look beyond, but most importantly, look through.  Look a-r-o-u-n-d… L-o-o-k… L-o-o-”
The voice was lost in echoes.