"Just for a minute" - My First Sci Fi story

It was a regular bright sunny day of May 2010. John was sitting on a park bench in MIT campus. He was watching his wife Linda playing with children. Everyday John spent there an hour thinking about how he and Linda will bring up their own kid. He has thought of names, kindergarten school and even the furniture of their child’s room. Linda was eight and half months pregnant now. John who recently achieved Nobel for his theories on “Incompleteness and Axiomatic Systems” could not ask for any thing much better from life.

On their way back to home Linda had complaint of pain. She was feeling uneasy from the morning. It was second time she complaint about the pain. John was sure that this cannot be the labor pain as there is still 10 days left for delivery date but he decided to consult doctor. Both of them rushed to the hospital. The sight of hospital makes John feel like sick. John heard the news of his mother’s death in a hospital when he was eight. Since then he hated hospitals. Linda knew this and asked him to wait outside. He did not wanted to let Linda alone in her condition but his childhood fear of Hospitals won, he decided to stay outside the building in the parking lot. He spent whole night in his car, struggling to overcome his fear and enter the hospital again but he couldn’t. The night passed. At the time of dawn the cell ringed and doctors asked him to come inside. He asked him of the condition but doctors restrained themselves from telling anything on phone. This brought a wave of fear again to his body. The memories of the night when her mother died re-lived in that movement. John decided not to enter the hospital, but what about Linda how is she, is everything fine, is the child okay, why did they hospitalized her; all these questions which were bothering him since last ten hours were now unbearable and finally his love for Linda surpassed the fear he was living in for years. John reached to Linda’s room. She was sleeping may be unconscious. Soon doctors came in the room. John asked for his baby. Doctors reported to John that there are complications in the delivery and they were not able to save the child. The words had an effect worse than knife on his ears. His heart ached as if it will tear apart in pieces. He wasn’t expecting this. He wanted to cry out the pain but even the tears didn’t support him at the moment.

Time works in a mysterious way. It has the virtue of letting us forget the worse we faced, but in the case of John, Time also refused to give a helping hand. It has been six months now, Christmas is on the way. Everyone is excited and full of joy but not John. With every passing day, every tick of clock the sorrow and grief seems to grow. His relationship with Linda also changed. Despite of the love they had, they could not spend time with each other. Being together reminded them how excited and desperate they ere about the baby. Linda after trying hard to connect herself with john gave up and finally left John. Though he had resumed to the normal lifestyle everything seems to be superficial now. His thirst for knowledge and science seems to be quenched by the grief. It was 20th December 2010; he decided to visit the same park where he went with Linda on the day she was hospitalized. Sitting on the bench he recalled the day. How happy and contented he was, but now ?

All of a sudden everything seemed to be paused. The leaf falling from tree up head got stuck right before his eyes in the air. Is this the sense of dying. Is the pain and sorrow of his is so grave that he is going to die from it. But who cares, the death may surpass the life like this. These were the thoughts that flashed his mind in that very moment and then perhaps feeling contended with his fate he closed his eyes.

“He is fine and soon gain conscious” the words when felled on his ears and he opened his eyes to see where he was. He was hoping that it might be the hospital and in case he is dead it may be heaven. He tried to guess but it was not easy. He found himself in a big white floored room, big because he could not see the walls any where near. Floor of the room which first looked like marble actually was a little transparent below which he could see the dark black space with some stars shinning. He was convinced of his death but then to his surprise a woman came from nowhere and asked him how he was feeling. It was a confusion, what happened, where am I, am I alive is this heaven where is the God. Words came out of his mouth quickly all in form of questions. He wanted answers, it was like his zeal for answers returned and the last five minutes were really the first time after the incidence that he could think of anything else.

“Calm down Sir, you are safe and alive. Dr. Rudwick will soon assist you”. The lady replied and left. John kept looking for the way where she was going. He wanted to see a door, a wall or anything he might be familiar with but the lady disappeared in the whiteness of the floor. How it could be? She hardly walked ten steps how could it be? Why can’t I see her. She doesn’t use any door. How could she? There weren’t any. So what happened to her? Does the floor swallowed her, or is it my vision fooling me? Again a stream of questions started flashing in his mind.

The lady came back. This time she was not alone. They were seven in total, three women and four men. This time John also noticed that they were all dressed in white and the cloth material was also like floor only difference was, it was less transparent and more flexible. One of them introduced himself as Dr. Rudwick. Before John can start again with his endless list of questions Doctor said “I know there are a lot many things you want to know. That’s why I am here. Whatever I have to tell may surprise you or even may horrify you but I request you to let me finish”, the voice was sharp having the perfect modulation, the look on his face was blank and the eyes still.

“Please take your seat and listen to me carefully, my name is Dr. Rudwick and this is my team. We were assigned to bring you here and let you understand our motive. As we finished the first face completely now I am going to tell you something which will answer all your questions. You have been brought 1200 years ahead of your time. In your system of time frame we could say you are presently in 3208 AD. Your position in the space is also different. The place you are now is not Earth but a GHH or ‘Galaxial Human Habitat’. It is an artificial living environment developed by Achrians. Do you understand what I have said till now? “. “NO” John replied, “is it some kind of joke are you people trying to make fun of me? “. “Absolutely no John, please look around and try to convince your self of what I had said now. It’s only when you are convinced of this, I can tell you more.”

John was given his own room to relax and think. Each object, view and event around him made him realize the words of Dr. Rudwick. He had a bed to sleep which looks exactly like floor, but it was soft and comforting. The food he was provided was tasteless. He asked for water and got a pack which was perhaps made of gel. Despite of its appearance, the gel pack felt exactly the same way as water when put in mouth. He spent time looking down from the floor at the open space. Trying to figure out whether it was real or work of some animation guys who worked for Hollywood. The more he tried to understand the more he got confused. Finding no way out to this dilemma he decided to understand the scenario from different perspective. Being a scientist he was used to analyzing events and drawing conclusions. The very nature of his which was suppressed by the grief of his child’s death and divorce was now again began to reflect in his attitude. Being not able to understand the events he tried to understand the cause for them. Assuming that these all is Hollywood setup and everything around is unreal and fake. Why would someone do this? Who will put in so much just to disguise him? He looked in the all possible aspect and concluded that whatever Dr. Rudwick stated had a high probability of being true.

It took him about a day to come to this conclusion. He was not sure of the time as he could not see outside the rooms; as there were no walls around, there were no windows through which he could see day or night and the floor which was a little transparent always showed the same view of free space filled of distant stars. The clocks on the other hand which measured time were incomprehensible. They had no legs, and the numbers on it were too large and complicated to be considered as time. He once asked a man at dining what is the time. The reply he got was a series of numbers followed the alphabets ‘CGU’.

The team of seven members along with Dr. Rudwick came back. “Are we good to start again? Yes, but I have some questions to ask. Sure I was expecting questions from and according to our knowledge of your time we had made a list of things which may be troubling you. Dr. Maria will describe them to you. ” After this the six of them left the room. This time John was not amazed of seeing them disappearing in the floor. He had understood that it was just an optical illusion created by fine layer of glasses and prism the walls had. Anyone at a distance from the wall could not see them and no matter from where you are in the room if you are near a wall you will find agate to leave the room. Dr. Maria switched on projection box, a device which John first confused with an ash tray. What she described was the” history” of human race or for to be precise the Universe, from 2010 to the “present”. It took her around two days more to go through all the major details. Though she had visuals and voices from different times from different places to assist and describe the “past” the whole story of “history” was too fascinating to believe. The visuals which at first had people from countries followed latter with creatures from different planets, solar systems and galaxies, and then to hybrids.

John took it all in. Year by year, one race to other he understood all. After Dr. Maria completed her presentation she concluded, “the present date and space position is “1010.253 CGU”. As you now know first encounter of Humans with creatures from Galaxy Xeta the date and space system was changed from solar time to the intergalaxial unit for measuring time and space dimensions. The whole concept of CGU is complicated but to give you an idea 1010.253 CGU represents Galaxy of tenth order in first two digits, position in that galaxy by third digit, Time dimension as seen in that space by fourth digit and digit after decimal for defining the race for which the time is defined. Human race is assigned “253” on the basis of chronological order of our discovery.” John asked “What do you mean by our discovery?” It means before human race was discovered by XETA race they already had successful communication with 252 other living races from various corners of different known galaxies.

After the session John was given some more time to relax. This interval past quickly as John was too busy in experiment with the things around and think on the History he learnt which was presented to him in form of a story.

After the same interval (a day) which John now understood is 5 CGU according the clocks, the team of seven people came. This time John had only one question in his mind. He asked them why he was summoned here. Dr. Rudwick who John now knew the head of seven members said, “As in your times, man always competed with one another to strive for excellence and pride. In the context, not much has changed. We still compete with each other. The only difference is now the spectrum of competition includes all the known races, and in stead of being “intra-race” we had expanded the realm to “inter-race”. The problem we are facing is no matter how hard we try we cannot get ahead of other species. We had put all our resources in finding out the reason for the same. After a long series of experiments and theories we now finally able to deduce, what you have predicted centuries ago. Any system will produce maximum output if the axioms of the system are completely defined for all operators. In our case the operators are situations we have to face which are well defined. The problem exists because of infinite set of axioms. In case of humans these axioms are nothing more but feelings and emotions. We have tried to find a possible solution to eliminate these redundant infinite axioms and end up with only a few of them which are useful, but despite of our efforts we are not able eliminate all of them. We want you to help us in achieving our aim for the betterment of human race.” You want me to help you in eliminating the treasure of feelings and emotions humans have? said John. “What have these axioms or what you call treasure of feelings have given anyway? You lost a child who did not even born, your wife for whom you cared so much left you in vain, you felt so terrible that the whole world started to seem superficial to you. Since the incidence to the time we have taken you here, you have been nothing but a miserable man who can only feel sorry for the losses he suffered. Its not only those six months we are taking about, we also know what happened to you latter. After the incidence you resigned from your college and spent rest of your miserable life in dark. You wasted all you had in you; your brilliance, life and more importantly what human race could achieve from the inventions and discoveries of yours which never happened.”

The words of Dr. Rudwick reminded the incidence to John. Once again the pain of which he was given a break came to him. The memories of the night when his mother died; how he lost his child and then Linda. He again started feeling miserable and suffocated by the griefs.” I need time to think” he replied to Dr. Rudwick and left. He spent a long time in his room, thinking about the time he shared with Linda.

“Rudwick is right. Feelings had only given me pain and sufferings.” At last John said this to himself and agreed to join them in there endeavor. The job was not easy. It took John about a year to achieve the goal, but at last his hard work paid. The team which John headed came up with a solution to eliminate human feelings. The final day of experiment came. To experiment whether the medicine was successful or not it was tried on a small child. John asked why we can’t try this on adults. He got the answer that a grown up is considered valuable asset and government cant afford to risk them. Childs on the other hand are not trained and hence less valuable.

In order to conduct the test first the child was observed. John saw him playing with his toys, watching cartoons, shouting and running for hours. It was then time to give him the medicine. John was a little hesitated but finally gave boy the pill. After this the boy fell asleep. The stress could be seen among all the team members. Everyone was worried and kept a regular check on the boy. John too was uneasy, but his worries were not considerate for the boy or the experiment. Ever since he started examining the boy, the memories of the time he spent in parks got stronger and stronger.

The boy was now awake and ready to be observed. John was called and they started the observations and experiment again. After the preliminary results were deduced it was proved that the medicine worked correctly. The team members complimented each other but John was not there. He left in the middle of experiment. He went to his room started thinking what he had done. “No more pain, no more sufferings”, he said to himself,” but why can’t I be happy as others. My experiment was successful. Still what is the reason for my anxiety? ”

The word spread quickly and the President did not waited to introduce the new medicine.

The words of the president of Earth when he first introduced medicine were.

“Life is a chaos an unpredictable mess which enjoys the liberty of being excluded from the laws of finiteness and hence the results and outcomes are undefined, useless most of the time. The very success of a species depends on the level of control it can have on the LIFE (Universal SYSTEM as defined). It has been proven that by reducing the fluctuations of this system we can enhance the productivity of HUMAN RACE and achieve the aim of being PURE RACE. I hereby present the solution to this chaos.”

It was made compulsory for all the people. But due to limited production rate only a part of population can be provided with the medicine. John got a chance to visit one of the colonies where these medicines had been distributed. As he moved along in the colony, he got near the local hospital. He was no more afraid of hospitals now. It may be because he had nothing more to lose there. He entered inside. He saw a couple who recently had a baby, a teenage girl who got hurt while playing. He left the building with a shock. It was the first time he realized what he had done. “I have converted living beings into walking machines, he said to himself” and rushed to the president.

“You should stop distribution and production of the medicine. I have committed a big mistake. I should have never done that. We have no right to take away the right of humans to have feelings and desires. They may make us feel depressed and sorrows but how can one appreciate the feeling of joy and happiness if he never had felt the pain and sufferings. I am responsible for this sin and want to correct it. I will work for finding an antidote of what I had made. God may forgive me then.”

“Sorry Dr. John but this is not possible, ever since we started consuming the medicine we have seen much growth. The medicine gave exactly what we though of. You have done a good job ut what you are asking is unacceptable. I think keeping you here will bring more of such thoughts in your mind. It is in best interest of all to send you back to your time.”

“That’s it, that’s all you have got for me.” John said.”Yes, you my leave now,” and President gave orders to send him back from where he was exported.

John shouted; pleaded, even threatened to stop the medicine, but no one listened. He was given no chance to rectify his mistake. He refused to go back and urged to let him stay. Perhaps by staying I could convince the president, he thought. But all was waste. No one listened to him. Dr. Rudwick who was given task to bring him was order to deport him back.

“Are you alright, is everything fine? Should I call 911?” John opened his eyes and looked around. The place was familiar, but the floor was not white and the light was yellow. John found himself in the garden. “What date it is?” he asked, “its 20th December”, “no the year the year which is it??”, “its 2010, are you alright.” “I am fine but what happened?”” You fell unconscious for about a minute or two” “For a minute, just for a minute”