VERSUS
That loud sound woke me up. I
checked my clock, which read 6/6/2779, 4.00AM. My first thought was that the rumors
have become true. It could have been the Martian attack. I jumped and ran to a
window. The horizon was under fire. A fire so bright and flaming, we can’t
create even in computer graphics, something beyond human imagination.
Next was a sound of what seemed
like one hundred thousand mosquitoes in chorus. I couldn’t bear it and ran for
the sonic shield to protect ears from bleeding or getting mad. Few seconds before
wearing the sonic shield I screamed out of pain. “To hell with war! These
Martians were peaceful with universal citizens. Heard in the grapevine that the
Martians became greedy once they came to know about infighting of the
Earthians. They wanted to rule Earth, which our leaders didn’t agree and capturing
or destroying Earth became their goal. With their technological advancement
they can make a Yoyo of Earth and make us see the center of gravity by blowing
out the northern hemisphere.
There was silence for a while.
Just when I thought of updating this in my favorite social network, by sending
my thoughts after thinking of my UID and DNA code, the public hologram address
system of the government was activated. It surely means a panic situation. I
came to the hall to see the hologram projection of a government official. “We
are under attack by Martians. We need you join us to defend Earth. You will be
part of the world army. Your transport code is ihdnaG$#5^@#.
I went to the transmitter of the Teleporting System, soon I was at the Indian Army Headquarters. After a series
of psychological, physiological tests a final list was selected to represent India
in the world army. We wore the special suits given to us and boarded the
Lightning Powered Jet which carried us to the international space station in
seconds. My neighbor was asking “Will they serve Dosa?” I said “Don’t get
caught by a Martian,you will become Chutni!”. Jokes apart I too was concerned
about fighting the mighty Martians. A planet smaller than ours, but with people
few times bigger and smarter than us. It would be difficult to beat them in one
to one combat.
I couldn’t take my personal robot
for the war duty. People were so reliant on them for brushing, putting on
clothes, sometimes feeding.
There were rumors about Martians
letting the POWs hang in the space to dissolve in the universe. My only hope was the years of research on Weapons
of Mass Destruction which were advanced, built to fight within our nations, put
to ‘good’ use now.
In the International space
station, we floated to our commando training room. Enroute I saw an empty hall,
but with noise of a crowd. Suddenly a voice from the stage shouted “… and
that’s how you wear the invisible cloak”.
Commando training covered
everything about Mars. They showed the map, key places like Olympus Mons (Biggest
mountain of all the planets),Valles Marineris (a huge canyon), Borealis basin and
few more. Videos of their weapons were shown (hacked and downloaded by our
Chinese experts). We were warned to wear
anti Eraser shoes. Eraser is a Martian weapon which when pointed at humans can
erase the body parts exposed to its Xenon light. The next video was shocking
and chilled my spinal card, in which few Martians slashed the Eraser on an
Earthian in the stomach and the stomach portion was gone fully and we could see
a building on the other side through him. Not even a single drop of blood. The
upper half, from chest to head floated above the foot to hip bottom half for
few seconds and then both halves dropped to the Martian ground like two sand
bags.
During lunch, I befriended a
Japanese guy named Akira something. I got a samurai with me in our attempt to
save the world, not mine or his world, but our world. The threat of world piece, brought world
peace, if not the world will become a peas. I thought whether I might age
slowly if I get a chance to live in Mars, having 686 days year. The thought was
interrupted when I recollected that 95% composition of Mars is Carbon di oxide.
No one would like to live a life with closed nose.
Akira told about how the Martians
used to convert Earthians as Martians. He said it was simple, take the Earthian’s
mind, subject to a safe radiation to change it to a Martian mind and inject
that mind into a Martian dead body. A French beard (guy might not be French)
joined us and told about how once a Martian told the answers to our world’s top
most I.Q test without seeing the questions. I was sure about one thing, nobody
can beat the Earthians in the art of scaring. If not for the war I would be
visiting my family virtually and eating my mothers’ real food at this time.
Our hand held weapons, though advanced,
depended on fire power, probably because bullets might not help kill the rocky
Martians. If we could convert all the bullet points from corporate world into
actual bullets. “Hmmm…!” I thought, “We could win, only by a miracle!” One need
to live to love or hate.
Heard the Martians launched
cyber-attack also, through email which when opened exploded Argon bomb. Few
other email attacks made the receivers lunatics or injected biological virus. Have
heard of somebody suggesting pesticide for computer virus in the early computer
age.
An alarm sounded and we all
boarded our individual space cars. I prayed that there is enough fuel in my
space car as there won’t be any filling station on the way. We could see enemy
space vessels approaching Earth, thanks to a powerful micro telescope, capable
of showing distant objects at cellular level. The horizon fire I saw earlier was from those
vessels. Even at 56 million kilometers distance, they could fire so precisely
that they might miss in one in a googol chance.
We had a big air force combining
the super powers with smartest fighters of our world. Martians had air bases in
Phobos and Deimos, moons of Mars. From Deimos they might try a close range shot.
They started firing again. It
started as a single spark of light in the space, which split into 100s of
bursts each producing another 100s of bursts like a fractal image all directed
towards Earth. As they approached Earth, a blue shield started circling the
Earth, which I came to know later, was a layer of hydrogen coolant, in launch ready
state to defend against Martian fire attack. The blue shield was broken in few
places, which were fixed by writing on the coolant. The poor Martians didn’t
know that Earthians had started writing on water centuries back.
Anti-radiation liquid was
distributed to Earthians to neutralize any radiation by Martians to pollute
(even more?!) Earth’s water resources.
A Martian attempt to suck Oxygen
from the Earth’s atmosphere was beaten by our world army engineers. Martians
could suck only CO2. There was an attempt to stop the earth’s
rotation by most advanced magnets which could kill Earthians and all inhabitants
of Earth by affecting the biological clock. An ‘alarming’ situation was averted.
We spoiled their attempt to enter
Earth, through Genetically Modified seeds which when sown, produced Martians, not
tomatoes. UNO alerted the world to stop buying cheap but great yield seeds
which were penetrated by Martians through few Earthian spies who, for money,
were ready to kill mother Earth to live like royal slave in Mars. The value of
freedom will be known for such guys, only when it is not there.
Couple of IIT grads invented a
mechanism to redirect sun’s light using powerful but small space lens, resembling
what grandpas were wearing in 20th century. As the rays started
beaming towards Mars what could possibly make the red planet redder, we got a
message of peace from the king of Mars.
When everything was settled and
the world came to normalcy (read infighting started), I resumed my duty as a
school teacher. My colleague had a different story to tell that he befriended
the king of Mars in inter(planet)net in the most popular site called Phasebook,
with the user name of Marlyn Manroe, sending the 4D(4th Dimension a
secret) holographic colorful model in
highest definition, asking him to come alone to a park in Jupiter, …
blah blah … and the world army had him as hostage. He said the Mars king was so
bulky that he could actually make only one step in any direction like a chess king.
So that’s the story of the attack
on Earth and the surrender of Mars. The world folklore had the story of how
enmity with Mars started when Curiosity killed the cat, a real Martian cat
centuries back.
