Humble Beginnings

Brainwashing 101

Faux Contact

Faux Contact

I

“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”

Arthur C. Clark

“Database management is far more complicated in today’s world than we would want it to—“Samir passed the words from one ear into another as Professor Rakesh Chatruvarthy explained to class the challenges faced by a programmer in database management in modern programming. It wasn’t a boring lecture, definitely not. The united taps of the keyboards as his colleagues made notes on their laptops was palpable, everyone engrossed in the lecture. But not Samir, his mind wandered to the upcoming vacation this summer to his Aunt’s house, and her delicious homemade Tandoori Chicken. These lectures were useless anyway, the interesting bits never came up in the finals.

Fluttering above the android smartphone of Samir was a peculiar little creature the size of a wasp, shimmering yellow wings adorned its golden centre. From a distance it would fool you to be a wasp but on closer inspection it was clear, the wings were too shimmery, the sting wasn’t quite straight and a hundred other little details that were not quite right. It was like an impression of what a wasp would look like to someone who didn’t know what wasps looked like.

Samir’s gaze shifted from the window to his phone and he noticed the little creature. He focused on it more closely, the wings had caught his attention. He didn’t know much about wasps but he was sure they didn’t look like that. He nudged his friend sitting next to him, Rohina to check it out but she was too deeply indulged in the mysteries of data management. Samir noticed its shimmering wings, the geometrical centre and the curved sting, his curiosity rising with every detail he noticed.

It’s better than this useless lecture anyway he thought as he picked up his bag. He opened up a zipper on a small pocket and carefully brought it near the creature. Slowly, he captured it in the bag and closed it. He picked up his pen and poked a hole in the bag, he didn’t want the thing to run out of oxygen or whatever it survived on.

“-and that’s why the future of the database is cloud. That’s it for today. If you got any questions you can mail them to me.” Professor Chatruvarthy and the students started packing up their systems.

“The class is over genius.” Rohina said as she nudged him. Almost everyone had left the class, he really got caught up in that creature. He picked up his bag and rushed out of the class and caught up with Rohina.

“Hey, I need to check up on this bank work my dad told me to. I’ll catch up with you later today.” He told Rohina.

“You and work, Fool someone else.” She smirked.

He needed to be somewhere the creature couldn’t fly off but he didn’t want to go home either, so he went into one of the labs in his college, and sat in one of those little cubicles labs in colleges have.

He bounced his bag on the table eager to find out more about the little thing, he unzipped and opened the pocket slightly. The creature was silent as it sneaked its way out, Samir took out his android smartphone and opened the camera application, which as usual took a second longer than it should. He focused on it and captured the picture but all he got was a blank shot, it had moved! He tried again but as soon as he clicked the picture it moved out of the frame at an incredibly fast speed. The creature is intelligent and fast, really fast. Maybe it’s an insect from outer space; He chuckled as he thought about it. Curiosity got the better of him and he dropped his phone on the table. Slowly, he pointed his finger towards it trying to touch it, it wasn’t moving now.

His finger touched it and it transformed, the geometric wings curved around and fit perfectly into its body pushing something out through its head. The sting flattened, harmless now. The most curious transformation was the head, in place of the insect like body now transforming was a USB connector, the head pushing in and the USB connector coming out. The creature had now transformed into a fancy looking USB drive.

“Definitely not from outer space.” He said to no one. He booted the system in the cubicle, he wasn’t sure what he was going to find but he was sure it was something valuable.

The system booted up and he plugged in the USB drive.

II

The whole system went black and there was just a line of text in white.

“ARE YOU READY TO PROCEED?”

He pressed enter. Nothing happened.

“ARE YOU READY TO PROCEED?”

He typed Y and pressed enter. There was another line of text below.

“PLEASE REINSERT THE DEVICE.”

“Okay little wasp, show me your mysteries.” He said as he reinserted the drive.

His body went rigid and his head slammed into the keyboard of his laptop. As soon as he had pushed the drive it had pushed back a virus carrying poison in Samir’s bloodstream using the sting. It replicated in his vessels quickly cutting off his blood supply. The virus had immobilised him and he would be dead in a couple of minutes. The stick plugged itself out and converted itself back into a wasp like creature.

The screen read another line of text and blacked out.

“TARGET ELIMINATED.”

********

This Impatient Little Boy

This impatient little boy of age ten,
With his blue side bag and quirky glasses
It was a fine day with a playful breeze
Tapped his feet and saw the cars pass by,
The Toyota, the Maruti and the Mercedes!
He waited for his mother on the street,
The Crowded road in front of his school. 
Where vehicles and people were aplenty
His father told him it wasn’t so once,
For he did go to this very school,
Spoke proudly about the time long gone. 
When the road was clean, Spotless!
There weren’t so many cars so many people,
A lot of turf and not a trace of litter.
The boy couldn’t imagine that distant time.
As he waited all he could see,
Was litter and people too busy to care.
As the garbage played with the road, a love affair!
Garbage in all of its manifestation,
Cans of mountain dew and wrappers of lays,
Skin of orange riddle the space. 
People too busy to care
Walk without even so much as another glance, 
Caught up in the ways of the world, in a Trance!, 
That was when the boy saw it, 
One man. Just one man! Lifting up the garbage,
In his clean clothes and slip on shoes. 
No one now dared to litter as he 
Picked up the can, picked up the wrapper. 
The boy joined him and a miracle happened, 
 People gathered to clean the streets,
That day He went home and told his dad, 
The time that once was has returned, 
The road is clean, spotless! 
All it took was one man and 
An impatient Little Boy. 

Himanshu Goel

Purgatory

THE DARK LIGHTHOUSE

The Dark Lighthouse

There's too much light,
The need to escape,
A beacon of black,
Where darkness dwells,
It consumes all,
Except the eyes,
Which consume black.
The Eyes of sin.

The sun is down,
The stars are gone,
Everything is right,
Everything is justified,
Boundaries are blurred,
It's all in transit,
No light no dark,
No joy or regret,
A place to get lost,
A place worth getting lost,
The Dark Lighthouse.

The Apple and Checkmate

The Apple and Checkmate

The battle is lost ,
And soon will be the war ,
It was just a bite ,
But now its a deep scar,
She lies fallen ,
There is noone to save her today,No dwarfs that are pure ,
No prince so sure,
The apple lies besides her,
She couldn't resist,
Just a bite,
And Innocence lost the war,Amongst the corrupted ,
She stands true but poisoned,
She is Waiting ,
For death or her saviour,
Its all the same,
Just end the game ,
Check and mate.