2016
One summer evening, as the Earthling is wandering around the beach, she finds a bottle buried in the sand, probably washed ashore along with the shells. It is still wet outside - it could have been brought to shore recently, or the ocean had been running over it for centuries, she can't tell.
The Earthling is young and educated, but not a learned scholar or linguist, so she does not recognize the lettering outside the bottle. Nor can she, when she takes out the contents, figure out what's written on the piece of - paper? leather? It's written in a completely unrecognizable script. Then, with a not so sudden recognition she has still not found a way to explain, she can read what's on it effortlessly.
By the time she is done reading it, she cannot hold on to it any longer. Her hands tremble in a spontaneous manner, and she tosses into the ocean the writing, as well as the bottle. The two fly and roll away into the ocean, carried away instantly by the receding tide, as if on cue. The Earthling walks sullenly back to her home which sits on top of the seaside cliffs, and can't help but think about what she just read, all through the night. For the rest of her life.
2076
The Earthling is now a grandmother of three. Her husband passed away a year ago. She lives by herself in the house on the clifftop. She has not told anyone about the letter. People would call her crazy, of course. She knows what she has to do now, she cannot wait any longer.
2077
The police cannot find any trace of her at the home. The missing person report from her family came out late in the night, and since then the search is on. Not a trace. They never see her again.
7076
The people of Earth are leaving the planet. Day by day, the population on Earth dwindles, and the New Planet has much more appeal than this now barren place, which is dry as hell. Food is scarce and costly. It is cheaper to take the trip and move to the New Planet than to survive the rest of life on Earth. Only the faithful few - the Believers - remain. The Believers will never leave this place they call home, and would rather die than leave for the alien world others were now calling home.
The Believers have come to be this way since they found a writing on a cave wall. It was in a script they could not read, even with their advanced skills. They asked their Reader who had somehow been able to interpret it with her powers. What she told them after reading it was so startling, so potent, that they became spellbound and enslaved by it. It spoke of a messenger who received a message from the Unknowable once, then disappeared. It spoke of what was needed to save those who chose the Earth over new worlds. Since then they have taken every word of the letter, and everything the writing said, as the only truth - the only.
The rest of the people left because they believe in a letter they found, which they say instructed them to leave the Earth. Since then, they started developing ways for them to settle down on the New Planet. They tried to convince the Believers to join them, but to no avail.
So, on and on it goes. Like a bloodline. Every few generations or so, they find a writing so mystical, so powerful, it creates whole new subcultures, religions and Believers, as old ones wither away or fight themselves to death, or convert to different beliefs. The letter from the Unknowable lives on, even while the Earth is slowly engulfed by the Sun over time, and civilizations move to new worlds. Some who find it, simply disappear like the Earthling - who knows what happened to them? Others find their own interpretations and fight over its meaning.
The letter from the Unknowable keeps finding its way.
-Binod Pant
Comments
Post a Comment