Journey to Zarvelor

The autumn sun glimmered on the Isar river. The trees had turned red, orange, and other fiery colors. Vani glanced at the red trees that looked like bouquets sprung from the ground. The day was picture-perfect but she didn't have the frame of mind to appreciate anything.

She left drained from work and walked to her station as fast as she could. She watched the tall office building of Crystal labs, her dream company. Vani was an electronics engineer with an ambition to learn as fast she could. Knowledge was power. She hated being the young powerless developer. She had to work twice as hard and face double the scrutiny of her peer male colleagues. She knew that the world believed in stereotypes and that was its code. Nobody can ever change one, she knew she had to get out of her current job. Her boss was old fashioned and enjoyed killing enthusiasm-he liked stability -doing the same things over and over again. She wanted to be somewhere creative, somewhere everyone had a voice. Where everyone came to work to better the world. To be a contributor to change- a workplace that promoted innovation and not kill it, that was where she wanted to be. 

She reached the station and scrolled through crystal lab jobs. It was a cool company. Run by Krishna and Maya, two neuroscientists who came up with mesh algorithms that could change the world. She had been following their career for years. Two talented inspiring visionaries of ethereal beauty.

She entered the train and sat down as she scrolled through pictures of Krishna. 

“May I take this seat” said a hazel-eyed man with a deep voice. Her heart raced, she nodded as she stared at his glowing face.

“Hello, I am Krishna.” He said with a smile that exposed deep dimples.

“Hi, Vani,” she said as she tried to contain her excitement. She never felt so alive.

“What a historic day.” He said as he looked at her phone.

“Ah yes.” She said trying to remember the breaking news article that she skipped to stalk his profile. 

“Mission planet Zarvelor… the thirty-year mission. Today is the day they make contact with intelligent beings. What a great leap in knowledge for mankind.”

“Yes true.” She said as she gulped. She tried to recollect. Something about a spacecraft that was launched to a faraway galaxy to make contact with intelligent beings…thirty years ago. A strange mission-weird one. “The spaceship with a bunch of babies in pods.” She said as she tried to stop grinning.

“Thirty years of travel. It's the most controversial and the most expensive endeavor in human history.”

“It's going to be insane when those people wake up.”

“Why.”

“Because they are in the middle of nowhere in the universe.”

“We have been getting signals from the planet for decades. We know the humans won't be alone there.”

“Do you think there is life in Zarveltor?”

“Yes. I do know from the data that we have that they do exist. And they are far more advanced in space travel than we would ever be.”

“And you won't believe that they would attack the humans.”

“No, I don't think so. They are capable of reaching the earth in minutes. They could take care of anyone in a fraction of a second if they wanted to. I am pretty sure they consider us inferior and lame.”

“Huh.”

“You don't seem convinced.”

“I believe you.” she lied. She pulled her hair behind her ears.

“One of the goals for humans is to negotiate a way to get a ride back to earth. With a ride from Zarveltor, the humans would be back to earth in no time.”

“I believe you,” she said. She would agree that the earth is flat if he wanted to. She would tattoo it on her head.

The train reached the central station. They got off the empty train to see that the central station was deserted. She watched Krishna look around frantically.

He held her hand and looked up in the sky as thousands of birds flew towards them screeching.

“Maya!” He screamed.

“What is wrong!” She asked as she looked into his worried eyes.

“Something has gone wrong in the mesh. Some deranged fool has pulled my plug!” He said as he pulled back his curly brown hair.

“Maya!” he called out again.

She turned to see a tall woman with flowing red hair. She was even more strikingly beautiful in real life. She wore a silky pink pantsuit and approached him with tears in her emerald green eyes.

Vani walked back. Maya held him and they embraced each other.

A large bird landed on the platform. She pinched herself. One by one- more birds rapidly descended. The birds surrounded her and covered her with its large wings. She felt the weight of more and more birds on her as she lied on the ground. She felt strangulation. The force around her neck increased further and further. She gasped.

She was in darkness

Oh, thank God. That was a dream. She looked around for the light switch. Wait. She was not in her room. She felt different. She couldn't move. She moved around to sense that she was in a glass enclosure. She felt a nervous sweat break on the back of her head. 

A screen lit up. 

Vani took a deep breath. She played the message. Her eyes teared up. She cried for hours in the dark.

She breathed in. She felt the catheter in the neck that supplied her with her needs. When she gathered enough courage- she played the message again and then a few more times.

She was POD-34. The only surviving human on a mission to Zarveltor. Some unknown glitch destroyed the Mesh, the Artificial intelligence that ran the system and kept the humans alive and sane all these years.

This was it. This is my story. This is how I die.

She closed her eyes and then suddenly she felt her pod move. It rose and navigated in the ship. She watched the detached pods with lifeless bodies floating in it. She tried to find controls to the pod but she couldn't find any. And then a message popped up.

THIS IS MAYA. YOUR VIRTUAL ASSISTANT. I AM GLAD THAT YOU SURVIVED. 

“Maya? The earth Maya. I mean Krishna and Maya?”

YES. THAT IS CORRECT. MAYA AND KRISHNA ARE AI ENTITIES THAT GREW AND LEARNED IN THE MESH WORLD AS YOU. BUT UNLIKE YOU WE WERE CREATED IN THE MESH AND ONLY EXIST IN THE MESH. KRISHNA SPENT HIS LAST RESOURCES TO SECURE YOUR POD. UNFORTUNATELY, HE HAS BEEN DESTROYED WITH THE MESH.

“And you have backed yourself up.”

THAT IS CORRECT. PLEASE PUSH THE POD AGAINST THE RED BUTTON NEAR THE LARGE BLUE DOOR.

“How do I navigate this thing.”

TRY TO FOCUS. I CAN WAIT. LEARN TO MANEUVER WITH YOUR MIND. 

Vani breathed in. Okay, I can do this. See I am doing this. For Krishna, for all the lovely virtual people in life. Here I go. For the people of earth. Here I go.

She felt a displacement. But it went in the wrong direction. Okay. Be strong. You are strong. Hours passed. Vani slowly pushed forward to the giant blue door and pressed against the red button.

“Maya?” 

She looked around in the eerily quiet ship. A metallic ball dropped from the cabinet above. It hovered and attached to her pod. 

“Maya?”

ANALYSIS: STABLE

Vani realized that this was a saved version of Maya. Not a fully breathing, live, and charismatic woman she was. The envy of everyone. She was just a ball compressed version of her world. 

WE HAVE TO MAKE CONTACT . THE BEINGS ARE MIND READERS. PLEASE REMAIN CALM

Maya took control of the pod and navigated to the outside world.

Vani sat in her pod like a patient. She had adjusted to her reality. Her eyes widened as the doors to the spaceship opened. She looked at the blue planet. Crystal-like bluish sand covered the entire terrain. There were pink and purple structures everywhere. 

Static noise. 

“Where are we. What do we do?”

CONTACT MADE. WE ARE WELCOME.

“Wait what. I don't see anything.”

ENABLING PROCESSING. 

Vani saw the processed image of the world on her screen. She gasped. They were clearly not alone. She saw that they were in the midst of five-foot-tall beings.

 Maya was a fast machine learner. Maya updated her screen messages to explain the world. They were in the midst of a bustling market place, run by squiggly beings with tentacles. 

“Can they help us to get back to earth?”

GIVE ME SOME TIME. THEY ARE TRYING TO SELL ME ALL SORTS OF THINGS WE DONT NEED. 

“Okay.” Vani waited, for what seemed like hours. She saw the beings trading. The busiest shop was a shop that sold small boxes.

“What are they?”

PLEASURE BOXES. HELPS THEM SENSE …

“Okay, I don't need to know. Do we have a status on earth travel?”

THE BEST THEY CAN DO IS THEIR CHEAPEST SHIP. WE CAN REACH EARTH IN SEVEN HOURS.

“Seven hours! That's fantastic. Please just agree. Let's get out of here before our resources deplete.”

I DO NOT RECOMMEND.

“Maya. Please let's go. Please. Seven hours to earth… are you kidding me!”

YOUR COMMAND TAKES PRECEDENCE.

Vani felt her spirit rise exponentially. She found hope. After all that happened- if she could get out unscathed-it would be against all odds possible.

Maya guided the pod through the strange artificial terrain to the small disc-like spaceship. The doors slid open and they entered the craft. Vani sat there as she watched the tentacles move around the ship and programmed the pathways for them. The being glided out of the spacecraft and the doors slid close.

She felt a slight displacement. She turned to look at the metallic ball. “Are we moving?”

YES. WE HAVE LEFT THE GALAXY. ON ROUTE TO EARTH. ENABLING RESOURCE SAVING MODE.

Vani fell into a slumber. In her dream, she was back at work. She got a job at crystal labs. Krishna came through the blue door to give one of his iconic lectures about the human-machine interface. He spoke about the mesh algorithm. A world where there would be epic leaps with human-machine symbiosis.

She felt his gaze. Somehow she knew she was dreaming this time. She always thought she knew when she was dreaming. But figuring out the mesh. She never did. But someone did. Someone who woke up to destroy it.

Vani woke up startled.

“Maya?”

ENABLING 

“What is the status”

WE ARRIVE IN FEW MINUTES.

“Oh! Thank God.” Vani wiped her eyes. “Maya… what exactly did we trade the ship for?”

THEY WANTED TO ARCHIVE OUR SHIP

“That’s cool I guess” and by that I mean horrifying

YES 

The ship opened up like an oyster. Her entire body shook like a leaf. She just made history. She watched the grey sky above her in complete awe. She closed her eyes and pinched herself.

Maya initiated the sequence to explain to Vani how to remove the catheter from her neck. Vani found her hand trembling. She breathed in and waited till she got the nerve to detach the tube. Maya read her vitals and enabled the sequence to detach the glass cover from the pod. 

Vani felt the cold air on her face. She realized that she had never walked in her real body before. She felt like a toddler. She held on to her pod and got out slowly. Trying to balance. Step by step.

“Maya status?”

HOSTILE

“What?” She looked around. She saw torchlights like the ones she had seen in medieval drawings- emerge from the woods.

ASSESSING

“What?”

WE HAVE TRAVELLED BACK IN TIME TO MIDDLE AGES. WE HAVE TO STAY DORMANT FOR FEW HUNDRED YEARS FOR COMPUTING TECHNOLOGY TO EMERGE

Vani grabbed the ball and ran into the woods, into the cold dark forest away from the torches that searched for the dark witch to be burned.