The Expedition

It was dark, pitch black. My eye lids were glued to each other. I tried opening them but they refused to oblige. I moved my fingers towards my right eye and tried to forcefully open it. A jolt of pain traveled from my eye, through my head down through my spine.
I screamed aloud and the scream echoed in itself, which made me realize that I was in some enclosed space. I remained quiet for a few minutes and tried to figure out where I was. But I wasn't able to remember anything. Where I was, Who I was, or what I was doing in there. Anything!

I heard the sound of gushing water. It was somewhere close to me. I slowly got up from where I was lying. My whole body was paining. I walked towards the sound of water. After taking a few steps, I sensed cool water touching my toes. It was refreshing. It was as though the water contained some sort of positive energy which I felt being instantly transferred to me. I bent down and took some water in my palms and splashed in over my face.

I slowly opened my eyes. It was still dark. I looked around and understood that I was inside some sort of a cave. Ahead, at a distance I could sense beams of sunlight streaming into the cave. Figuring out that that might be the entrance to the cave, I started walking towards the light.

As I slowly pushed myself toward my target, I tried to remember things. There was nothing I knew about myself. I checked the pockets of my shirt and pants for some clue. From a pocket of my pants I got a mobile phone that had only one button, which did not respond to my touch too.

I wondered whether I would get an answer at the end of the cave as I neared it. I slowly walked to the exit of the cave. Sunlight poured over my face and it was like seeing light after centuries. I had to turn around to block the light piercing into my eyes. Slowly and steadily I prepared myself to look at the light. I needed to know what lay outside, and where I was. I opened my eyes with determination and turned around.

I was awe struck!

There lay a huge space shuttle, completely crashed. My God! Aliens in our planet!! 

I tried to check whether there was any trace of alien footprints or something close to the space shuttle. I found nothing.

I found everything even more confusing mow. I didn't know where I was, there was a space shuttle where I stood; my whole body was aching and I didn't remember anything, which possibly meant that I was injured for some time, may be a long time. My head was aching more than before which I guess was also due to my helplessness in finding out about myself. I resumed looking around for clues.

I couldn't believe myself as I looked around. I was enthralled. Though I wasn’t able to remember anything about myself, there was one thing I understood from the environment that I saw around me. As I had suspected, there was no alien attack on the Earth. From what I could make of the surroundings, it was definite that this was NOT the Earth.

I WAS THE ALIEN HERE. 

Yes, this was some other planet! Not the Earth. 'Damn', I swore aloud. The questions that haunted me until now where simple, 'Who am I and Where am I?’. But the recent realizations had brought about a whole new dimension to the situation. I was in another planet now, though how I came here was beyond me. However there was something I was definite of, I had not lost my memory, I might be an important person with highly confidential data within my mind. I would not be by chance that I was here, I might be here for a reason. I realized that it was now more urgent that I regained my memory. More questions started piling up in my head and the addition of each question doubled the pain on my head, which I felt it would burst any time. I really needed to know where had I reached, how could get back home. The Earth would be waiting for me...


I studied my surroundings..The sun light was kind of orange-ish, may be it was dusk here; there were huge cliffs, head held high across the horizon. To my left a lake was flowing with crystal clear water. I couldn't see the sight of any living being there.

After considering the circumstances and assessing the scenario, I had the gut feeling that it was me who came in that spacecraft. I felt that I might get a clue about myself if I enter the space ship. I slowly pushed myself towards the huge spaceship. There were parts of the spaceship scattered everywhere. I concluded that the space ship had crash landed, which explained my body pain. Hopefully with one answer achieved, I believed the inner side of the space ship would give me more answers.

I climbed into the spaceship. There was nothing inside other than what was required to run the spaceship. 'Damn it !', I banged the walls of the spaceship in frustration. As I hit the wall, a door sprung open and a black leather bag fell out of it. I quickly grabbed the bag and opened it.

My hope to find answers by opening the bag however left me more baffled. There was a telescope in the bag. And I had no idea of my relationship with telescopes. May be I was somehow related, God alone knew how. Hoping to be lucky a second time, I banged on the walls of the spaceship again. No door opened up. But again, I got some other signal this time. 'BEEP BEEP', my mobile phone beeped the start up tone. I wondered how the phone got switched on. There didn’t seem to be a charged battery in it.

'Recieving Solar Energy', it displayed.

'Oh, I have a phone that works on Solar energy!', I exclaimed to myself. That was cool! I scanned the phone. There were no contacts, messages or any useful information. There was just one note saved in it, and it had some random decimal numbers separated by commas. I did not understand what they were.

'Okay, I'll now check if I can see anything through this', I said to myself as I took the telescope and got out of the spaceship, after placing the mobile phone in my pocket. I held the telescope in my hand and looked through it. Nothing was clear. There was a portion at the end of the telescope which could be moved. I turned that part with my left hand. With a beep sound a screen slid out and displayed, ' Now configured for...' and some numbers. 'Do you want to change your configuration?'.

It struck me immediately! 'Yes, I want to change the configuration.' I quickly took my mobile phone and opened the saved note. The numbers looked similar to the telescope configuration. 'This must be a telescope configuration, and looking through it might give me some answers', I thought.Then I tried learning how to configure the telescope to the said values.

It took some time for me to learn how to configure the telescope. But finally I succeeded and placed it on the tripod which I found in the bag. As soon as I set it on the tripod , the telescope automatically rotated and set itself up to a particular direction. 'Wow! that may be according to the configuration, cool technology', I thought! 

I was ready to look through the telescope for answers to what I seek. My identity!


I looked through the telescope. It took me trough a journey. It showed me places as it was zooming in to the configured position. I saw a glimpse of the vast universe in this journey. I saw a yellow globe passing by. Then I saw a blue dot which became bigger and clearer. That was the Earth! This meant that the yellow globe would then be the sun. Which in turn meant that the light I was seeing here was not from our sun. It is some other star?'God ! Where Am I? How far was I from the Earth? '.The telescope zoomed more and I was taken to India. Then it quickly zoomed to an open ground which was empty. I stared at that empty ground for a few minutes. Nothing happened. 'Why was this place configured in the telescope? Or was it a wrong configuration?', I wondered. Nothing made sense. But there was no other option for me than looking through the telescope. That was the only hope to getting to know something.

Along with the head ache, I also started feeling extremely hungry. I did not know when I had last eaten. I continued looking through the telescope hoping for a break through. And as a sign to keep my hope alive I noticed some movement.

An SUV drove in and parked in the ground, a Tata Safari. A guy came out of the car and looked around. 4 more people got out and walked towards the center of the ground. They kept discussing something. As there was no voice, I could not make out what they were talking about. I kept watching them. After minutes of discussion, a guy pointed towards me. That view send shivers through my spine. How was that guy pointing towards me? There was no way they could possibly see me with bare eyes, especially when I was in a different planet altogether. All the 5 people looked at me. One guy walked to the center of the whole group, looked at me and waved.

I looked at his face carefully. He was smiling at me. "WHAT!!!", I exclaimed. I could not believe who I had just seen. It was Me!.

I was seeing myself through the telescope.


As questions again filled up my mind, my headache had reached its zenith, and with hunger and thirst over coming my strength I collapsed and fell on the ground. As I closed my eyes, I said to myself in a low voice, ' Who am I, How am I seeing myself....' ...and I became unconscious.


I slowly opened my eyes. I seemed to remember things now. I needed a moment to connect the dots and get a complete picture. But what I saw on opening my eyes was beyond what I was prepared for. I saw 3 living beings standing in front of me. The real inhabitants of this planet. They had well built physique, and were taller than normal human beings. On the whole they looked like humans itself. I was not sure whether to be happy or disappointed. 'Will they attack me for having come to their land?'. But how do I convey to them that I wasn’t dangerous. I was also confused on what language to communicate with them. I noticed that they had placed a headphone atop my head and were thoroughly looking at me. I tried to remove the head set. One alien came towards me and stopped me from removing the head set. Then he gave me a bottle of coloured liquid. I doubted whether to take it or not. He then took another head set and placed in on his own head and clicked on some buttons. He looked at me. 'Can you hear me?', I heard through the head set. His lips were not moving.


"Don't wonder why my lips are not moving. This is a mind communication device. There is no other way we could communicate. Just think what you want to convey."

"Wow, this device is awesome, Never thought a different planet would be so much technically advanced", I thought, and he listened.

He smiled and then said, "You may have this juice first, It will give you some energy"

I had the juice. It indeed gave me energy. I never felt like I had not had food for days."Why do you treat me like a guest?" I asked."What if I am dangerous?"

"We have been noticing you for 3 days, from the time you landed here. We moved you to that cave. Then you came out after 2 days. Yesterday you tried to do something with this telescope. And then you fell down unconscious. Now you are waking up today. From our observation you do not seem dangerous. By the way, What made you come here? Any specific reason? "

This was the question I had been asking myself. But after waking up from the deep slumber I knew who I was, where I was and why I was here, not completely though..some vague memories.. I started to narrate, err, think through the story ...


"We are having a huge water scarcity in our planet. It is a matter of time that the whole world will start fighting for water, which will lead to wars and might even cause complete destruction and end of life on the planet. Foreseeing the situation well in advance, our organization, which is just one among many, has been trying to find sources of water outside the Earth. Our sheer technical brilliance has helped us invent some un-imaginable devices, umm un-imaginable to those on Earth, not here...This telescope and this space shuttle belong to those inventions. Over the course of our experiments, we found this planet, and also felt traces of water here. This was a great positive finding for us. I was appointed by our organization to travel to this planet and find more about this place. This is a space shuttle that travels faster than light. And this planet is light years away from Earth. As I travelled faster than light, I reached here much earlier than the light which reflected from Earth during the time of my departure. That is the reason when I looked from the telescope, I could see myself at the other end. That was myself in the past. Yes, I was seeing the past!


In the past, we had created this telescope which has excellent power and can surpass all hindrances and view things upto this distance.that is, between the Earth and this planet. That is how we set the co-ordinates of the Earth and kept the telescope with me , so that I could see what was happening on Earth, once I was here...."


I stopped thinking.


"So, you want to steal water from us?", the inhabitant of the planet asked me.


"No, I did not mean that", I thought.


"Desperation makes you do such things. As I am able to read your mind, I also read that your mission is to find ways to take water from here to your planet. But there is no way you can take our water to your planet. Our water exists in a different environment altogether. We have a different star for what you call the sun. We have different temperatures. The whole dynamics here is different..and once the water escapes from this environment it will no longer exist. "


I remained silent. Probably he might be right."So, is there no solution for the crisis back on Earth?", I thought.


"This is a crisis that everyone goes through..", he said.


"Oh, man, this is not something that I told you. This is something I said to myself, Damn, this device..", I said to myself, but then I realized these people were much more technologically advanced than we were.


"We do not pollute our environment as we are technologically advanced. I do not know if that is the case in your Earth. But there is a past for us. A past in some other planet. A past which everyone goes through. A past which teaches us lessons. We all have gone through that and reached here at a point of better awareness. This universe is very vast and we were in a different Earth before this. Every end is for a better beginning. "


"I did not understand a word", I thought.


"I'll explain", he said. He took a large piece of cloth and scattered magnetic filings on top of that. He then took a magnet and placed it on the other side of the cloth. The magnetic filings surrounding the magnet aligned itself in the shape of the magnet. 
"See, my hand here is the time, and the magnetic filings are the universe", he said and started moving the magnet with his hand. The filings also moved accordingly along with the magnet. He continued, "See, you can notice that the as I move the magnet, the filing move along and retain the same shape of the magnet. Our  universe is like this. As time passes, the same thing repeats itself, probably at a different location! That is what I told. Probably we were at a different planet in  the past. As time passed we were uprooted from there and started a new life here, As time passes we will move further. We are just one grain of the magnetic filing. You are another grain. This universe is so vast there may be thousands or lakhs more of them. Now, the difference between us and the magnetic filings is just one thing. That we got life, we got sense. With our sense, as time passes, we make our living better..We would have learned from our past. That is one reason we are technologically way forward than you. Because we are ahead of you in time.  Somewhere in the universe, there might be someone better than us, who are ahead of us in time.  "


"So you mean the life in Earth is about to end? And a new Earth will be formed somewhere else in the universe?"


"May be, I am not the person to tell about it.You might only find a solution for your crisis. Well, there is nothing to find. We do know the solution, So do you.. "


"What, what is the solution?"


"The solution is simple to tell, hard to act. You love the environment, the environment will love you back. It will give you whatever you need. That is a lesson we learned from our past.. That is a lesson you will learn. The faster you learn, the better it is for you.."


"Is it late? "


"It's never late..It might not have taken a lot of time for you to pollute your environment.. It will take lesser time to cleanse it. Instead of trying to find solutions outside your domain, try to work on the solution which is in your hands. Educate people, take initiative and love the environment.. "


I stood speechless. I did not know whether whatever he told was right or wrong. But I knew one thing for sure. I definitely had to work for the solution which is there in my hand, not look for something outside my control. We have created our own problems with our own resources and the solution cannot be found outside of it. It lies within.


It was an enlightening experience for me.


"Well I think then I need to go back and work on the real solution."


"Good luck for that", he said.


We shook hands.


All the people gathered there shook hands with me. The inhabitants there had the technological brilliance to quickly mend my space shuttle. I sent a message to Earth that I was returning.


 I entered the space shuttle and started it. As it slowly moved up to the sky, I had a last look to the planet... There was something I had not noticed earlier. The environment was crystal clear. I could not see a tint of smoke any where. The whole surrounding was clean. "Love the environment, it will love you back", his words echoed in my mind. 


My space shuttle traveled towards the Earth. I longed to be back on Earth, now with better cause. I was now more determined to save the Earth from the water crisis. The solution was in our hands. It was our job to execute it. 

Love the environment, It will love you back!




This is a submission for the 'I am Explorer' contest in Indiblogger.