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.”
********
