Wednesday, February 27, 2013

Tiktaalik- I


                   (My first attempt at a science fiction, read and comment if you like it)

George woke up with a start, his dream fading bit by bit like a far away land. He gulped and searched for his hot coffee to wet his dry throat, his blurry vision settled on a mug on the wad of papers that had filled the last 6 years of his life, he smirked while picking up his cold coffee for all those equations and calculation had seemed blurry even with his horn rimmed glasses till a night 8 months ago when epiphany had struck. He swallowed a sucrose filled coffee and put on his frames to see the results of the simulation. The bar showed 46% complete with an estimated time of 4 hours. He had been running hypothetical scenarios for controlled mutations for the past four months, each baffling him with the smaller and smaller chance of survival rate. The best organisms with small life span and huge number of individuals which had already been extensively studied on were E.Coli, so he put his wager on them. The Physics part of it was fairly easy, at least compared to the chance factors in the organisms. He checked his Swiss, the radium illumination which always reminded him of Nina. He set aside the manual and sleep walked into the wash room. The light was harsh on his dilated cornea, which contracted instantly. He sprayed some cold water over his face and stared into his eyes in the mirror. The tired eyes of a geek who had transformed from a lab rat to a celebrity, he had changed world view and was about to change the course of the world, or so people thought. The world that loved him from far away would never get to know the real George Will. In pure sense of honesty he felt no pressure of it, except on the face of public confrontation, where people’s awes accumulated a fear, a dark and crumbing emotion. His lab was another world where things were simple, where unknown lurked but did not scratch his back constantly.
   The craving for fresh air drove him out, into the ill maintained green house, on the terrace.  The skyline between his smoke puffs from his e-cigarette was soothing. Between puffs he drifted over time…..time that filled him full and emptied him, moments that had pressed him against the wall and moments those gave him wings to fly………..
It was his graduation year, his thesis was over and all he was doing was counting days. Mood swings were the trends of the time, so he and Karan, his mate has decided to put an end to shallow moods through the best feasible option- weed.  Fun was like the curve of Tan theta between 0 and pi by 2. Slow motion became a reality, ear to ear smiles got pasted onto their faces and thr escalation stirred his thoughts towards Nina.
'Nina……I just wanted to see her, talk to her, go on a long walk with her. She got me!!
Sometimes even more than myself!!........ If time would be right I could kiss her and blame weed..
So with Karan at shoulder I swirled around the campus like butterfly for the right flower. One of my expensively maintained spy, texted me her location - “ seminar hall ”. Some Paleontology hype about a fish that could walk, I couldn't care less. We entered the hall from back, when the speaker was shouting enthusiastically and urging the audience to chant the word ‘Tiktaalik’. Before my eyes adjusted to the dimmed lights Karan had spotted Nina…….my angel (sometimes shady). We made way through the seats of some awestruck sophomores, depressed post docs and absent professors. Found some doctoral students seated right behind Nina. Emptying the seats was easy, just intimated them that their guide was going crazy searching  for them. Through my eyes Nina was like the Sun in the solar system, all else was space.. ..empty space. She said hi! and I settled with a long breath filled with her pheromones. I whispered into Karan’s ear,” Don’t let me do nothing stupid!”. He nodded .
 All else was a blur that evening, except some picture perfect images. One was the taste of ripe strawberries, a close quartered stare into Nina’s eyes and a stupid graph, a distance v/s time plot of field of vision and geological time.'
    George shivered from the morning breeze on the terrace, his e-cigarette was showing a low battery and a chill went up his spine, he didn't know because of the breeze or Nina. As a science student, especially as physicist he was trained and told repeatedly, that miraculous minutes were myths, myths for the mad.  Life had held a lot of buts for him, this was one….. the day his life changed, the day he had borrowed money to get high and never paid back the debt, for it couldn't be paid in money. Walking back George saw the words "Staff Researcher" on his door, he always felt words could just not carry the weight of their meanings, their implications, words merely remained a medium and their realization was an idea, an idea that fills every corner, every inch, till it become the person and even more, trying to explain that in words in itself was a paradox.
 Back at his computer the loading bar showed 67%, for science took ideas, effort and most importantly patience. George sipped away stale coffee from his mug, with NASA printed on it.