Who would listen to Jack of his alien encounter, after all, it was April Fool's Day, but.. |
A joyous sun shone intensely, as its dazzling rays pierced the obstructing clouds. Life on earth displayed cheerful hues and energy, giving expressions to earth's feelings. Sam: "It seems both sun and earth are joyous, as if they're having an intimate chat" Alex: "That's naive, it's simple, during spring, Earth and Sun draw close to each other, after the long separation during winter. Life is blooming, b'coz it's receiving more of sun's energy", he ended on a cold, logical note. Jack (slyly): "I..find neither the poetic sense, nor the logic amusing. I can sense humour in the air, after all, it's April's start". Jack: "Hey Alex, you still got that gadget, I love to try out its buzzing sounds and beeps." Alex: "Oh...you mean the marvel, I had made out of a signal generator, a transistor and an oscilloscope...well, there's no point telling you all about the rest of the components...", he paused on a gloomy note, as both Sam and Jack were still gazing at the sky. "Alright, I'll get it, meet me in the old warehouse." Jack stuffed a couple of parchments, with some readings scribbled on it, as he left for the warehouse, dragging an uninterested Sam alongwith him. At the warehouse, both could not help notice a trace of a smile on Alex's face, revealing some pride yet unknown to them. Alex: "Guys, you might not contemplate it, but I guess I have invented something..." Sam: "Yeah, something like a couple of trivial mechanistic signals, which we humans deny to understand and bother us...besides, ofcourse you", he ended uneasily. Alex: "Sam, you seems to have a 'sixth sense'. To correct you, it's something humans cannot understand and decipher...not even me..", pausing with a slight despair, "Sam, you have known the 'poetic side' of me, I'm not good with building castles of words and imagery, on thin air, yet I become ecstatic at the beauty of the rhyme, the variations in pitch, and loudness of sound, the patterns....this is a series of signals I came across, by accident, ofcourse its not a simple queue of signals, its all a fusion of coded signals, natural signals distorted by a specific degree..." Jack: "Hey, paaauusse, let me have the gadget, then you continue you discourse" Jack quickly started with the new flashy knobs, he found on the cranky gadget. He took out the crumpled parchments, and decided, how he would experiment different sets of some input values, he had noted. Alex: "Hey Jack, try using the new knobs, I inserted them just to create the nearly perfect set of signals, I was talking about; its sound patterns are way better than a poetry or song, whichever" Sam: "You guys would probably get caught yourselves, thinking you could dupe the nearby military installments and FM transmission stations on this auspicious day, with your pranks". Jack instinctively, played around with the new knobs; as the gadget jumped into action, producing some peculiar set of periodic sounds, and similar patterns on the screen. They had an unhuman beauty, that might grip the mathematicians for long trying to find equations to plot similar patterns somwhere else. Everyone listened with thrill; when suddenly the transistor, picked up a response signal. Everyone was losing their senses due to soaring adrenaline, when Alex lost it all. He shrieked, dashing towards the gadget, trying to refresh a small screen. The gadget, programmed to read all possible frequencies, used by any human, stared blank. Alex (murmuring): "Could it be...unhuman...could it be ....alien ?" "What", croaked both Sam and Jack, wishing they heard it wrong, or feared it was right. Sam: "It's no movie, Alex !! Aliens don't pop out from no-where, you seriously lack the right moment of humour and imagination; The military stations should have picked it up too..." They waited if the response signal appeared again, or an alarm sounded, or if any helicopters/ Hummers came rushing towards the spot. Alas, no-one else picked up the signal, probably only Alex's decoder could decipher it, but at what frequency, the gadget could not tell. After an hour of no activity, they consulted Alex, for further steps. Alex (in a stern voice): "Pack it up !! We're leaving" Jack reached for the gadget, when accidentaly, he pressed the 'Resume' button. A loud response roared again, and Alex thrust down the 'Off' button, in haste. Alex: "Run !! Whom is this jerk inviting ?" They were just dashing out from the warehouse, when Jack tripped across an iron rod, while carrying the gadget. He shrieked with pain and moaned, unable to see the other two around the corner. "Why are they not coming back for me", he mused. Suddenly, fires vapourised a large chunk of the warehouse baring Jack, due to a roaring explosion above. There were no obstructions, no walls, it was laid bare upon. Jack gazed at the two small spaceships still jamming into each other, as fire engulfed it all. "Had the alien pilots died, ...or were they UAVs, were Alex and Sam safe", mused Jack, as he trembled with fear. Jack's mind was suddenly blinded by an intense light, as suddenly a dark strange unhuman figure arose from within the light. Jack stared at his awkward frame, as he approached Jack." "Alien: Don't worry, no harm... They were just scouters from different civilizations, attracted by your signal similar to what they use, that you saw crashing. Um, no casualties, no injuries... There are no-more around your planet, except mine, but I'll be soon leaving. I realize your people would not welcome an interaction with us, their minds are yet immature, they haven't learned much from the experience offered to them, they would take us hostile or attack us...(pause)...I do not blame them, they are just not at that level...I'll be looking forward to the moment, when they would be ready mentally to accept others too, understand them". In a flash, he disappeared, Jack could again see the open fields with a couple of warehouse stuff around him. A distant alien light seemed to be fading away. He mused, what Alex might have thought too, "All we have in common to share are the learnings of universal laws of Physics, astronomy, chemistry, mathematics(no, that's the human's invention, the aliens might have better than that) and all the geek stuff, but nothing developed by us, not the understanding and learning from the calamities around the world, not the implications of our actions, not the universal compassion or sense of humanity...We were not yet ready to face them. A gut feeling inside Jack whispered, "Thank God..Alex and Sam are safe...We'll do it Jack, alongwith everyone, we'll soon be ready, we will keep evolving in all senses, even when we'll be ready...We will bring about a mass awakening...I am still too young, to think much about it, but I will remember this encounter, I'll do something as I grow up. Oh yeah, I need to share this just with Alex and Sam, the rest would not believe me thinking I am making a fool of them, on this very day. They might not find much evidence around the burnt patch of ground, but they atleast think aliens might have visited on this day " "Was this the result of my pranks", thought Alex on a side-note. It was something one could never expect, but from now on, he would do something with which he could see the aliens in the eye, if he ever saw them again, the pranks were worthless, the aliens were superior, they might have better pranks. |