The Exoplanet

Submitted into Contest #134 in response to: Set your story beyond our own world.... view prompt

3 comments

Science Fiction

THE EXOPLANET

In the observatory, named after Veer Savarkar, all the scientists were eagerly waiting to receive confirmatory signals. And they did. The existence of the exoplanet was affirmed.

The team of Dr.Eric, Dr. Neah, Dr. Chris, Dr.Vanshika, and Dr. Mitchell were extremely elated that their suspected exoplanet was a reality. Also, it appeared that it was inhabited by an intelligent species. The joy in the laboratory had no bounds.

The plans to visit the planet, which was in the neighboring STAR SYSTEM PROXIMA CENTAURI some six light-months away, started moving rapidly. Activities such as contacting the inter-SOLAR SYSTEMS tour arranger, making arrangements of the funds, and choosing the right candidate to carry out the mission successfully, were in pipeline.

The exoplanet was named PROXIMA CENTAURI-K . After studying the atmosphere, which resembled Earth’s, the team decided to send a female on the ship with all the sophisticated instruments.  

After six months of preparation, the space mission VISIT PC-K was launched with Miss Keyuri on board. Keyuri was an intelligent, physically fit girl just twenty years of age.

When the spaceship entered the atmosphere of the planet in the STAR SYSTEM PC-K, after six months on earth but only four months on the spaceship, Keyuri could see the sun there, PROXIMA CENTAURI. The illumination looked like our setting sun, the twilight. After locating a somewhat plane surface, the shuttle landed on PC-K.

Keyuri got down from the shuttle and looked around. It appeared just like earth. The inclined sun rays were soft and making the barren land shine. Keyuri noticed the mountains at distance were conical like Egyptian pyramids. There was no sign of life. And suddenly some conical vehicle appeared approaching. Keyuri got an alert. The vehicle stopped at a distance. A conical figure came out of the vehicle. It was dressed in synthetic material.  It started walking towards Keyuri. She noticed the figure had a head, two hands, two legs, and a body. But everything was conical. Conical head, conical hands, legs, and even the body were conical, triangular in shape. Keyuri could see the creature in front of her had two eyes but they were also conical. As we on earth, find most of the things oblong/cylindrical, here everything was conical, triangular.

The conical creature came closer to her further with cautious walking.

Keyuri waved out at it. Gave a smile. After a lapse of a few seconds, the creature too opened its conical mouth. Keyuri saw its conical teeth. The conical hand also was moving.

“How are you?” Keyuri said.

After a gap of a few seconds, the creature also spoke “How are you?”

Keyuri realized the creature was learning from her gestures, speech and repeating them in response.

"I am fine," Keyuri said.

“I am fine.” The response came in.

 “My name is Keyuri” Keyuri said,

“My name is Keyuri” the creature responded.

Keyuri found the response funny. She laughed out loudly.

The creature too laughed.

It came very close. Looked at Keyuri from top to bottom. Keyuri extended her hand. The creature also extended its hand. Keyuri held the conical hand. To that, the creature responded with a smile. The feeling of the agreement was learned by the creature. It pointed its hand to the vehicle waiting at some distance. It started walking to the vehicle dragging Keyuri along. Keyuri ensured that the micro-remote controls of emergency weapons and the control of the spaceship were secured on her body.

They reached the vehicle. There was space for only two persons. First, the creature stepped in and then gave hand to Keyuri to get into the vehicle. The vehicle started. Very swiftly it took off and after a very short time landed at a place that appeared to be a quarantine center.

“No other person to be seen?” Keyuri murmured to herself. The creature understood it.

"Other people have left this planet and shifted to another planet in our Milkyway."

“Why?” Keyuri.

"We are worried about the behavior of people from your planet. "

“What do you know about our people? “

"A few centuries ago our forefathers had visited your earth. We tried to communicate with people around us. But they did not understand. To protect us from scorching sunrays, we created a few conical structures what you call PYRAMIDS OF EGYPT. The people there, misunderstood us and started attacking. Some of us got scared and took off with the help of our spaceship. But there were many trapped inside the pyramids. They died of starvation. The people who returned from the earth had picked up the language of the people from the earth as we had developed machines that could understand the thought process of the person in the vicinity. Now we could track your movements.

Slowly from our planet, we could monitor your developments. For material progress, you completely ignored the impact of new development, on nature. We could realize the deteriorating environmental condition there. We were getting worried. Meanwhile, we noticed some people creating very powerful hydrogen bombs, to get supremacy over the entire planet. But since many parties were trying for the supreme power, they were threatening each other with very high-powered hydrogen bombs which would create a deep impact on the very existence of the earth. So there is a constant danger of the earth getting exploded in the conflict of attaining supremacy. If the earth loses its gravitational balance, it might be attracted towards your sun and the entire solar system will be disturbed and a big upset in this part of your solar system. As the aftermath, this section of cosmos, which includes the adjacent area of your solar system, will see a lot of turbulence threatening the very existence of our sun and our solar system.

So our people took proactive steps and we shifted to another planet of our Milkyway, far away from your earth. Our entire habitat is now having another address. A few of us sometimes visit this place. During one of the visits, we identified your signals and responded to you. We realized you would visit this place. So only a few of us waited for you and wanted to establish our contact with you.

We do not have anything against you. But we would like to warn you about the dangers lurking ahead on the path that your people have chosen. Please do not have weapons of mass destruction. They will not only harm humans but will also upset the entire Milkyway.

We do not waste our energy in developing weapons of mass destruction. We use all our resources for development which would help our species to survive the adverse situations as well as understand our cosmos more. We have developed easy intergalactic movements. We have started using the energy store of black holes and are furthering the use of the energy available from the white holes. We have already acquired techniques of moving our members using QUANTUM ENTANGLEMENT TELEPORTATION phenomenon and they can move from planet to planet without any vehicle at the speeds more than light. We have developed system of curing any disease without any surgical operation. We simply change the molecules of the DNA chain and within a few minutes the patient gets cured.

All this advancement was possible because we did not waste our resources on developing weapons of mass destruction. If you need any help or if you want to learn from our techniques, we are always ready to share our knowledge.

The entire life, maybe our species or you humans, or any other sort of life, we value and we want every living thing in this multiverse to survive. LIVE AND LET LIVE is our main teaching.

Please change your way of thinking. Let every living thing live its life. Then we all can handle the entropy of the cosmos. “

Keyuri liked the thinking of the creature.

He then took her around the deserted dwellings. The houses were big. But every house had a conical shape. They were well-furnished. Refrigerating equipment was in every house. The person opened one refrigerator in one of the houses. Took out some odd-looking fruits. He told Keyuri to taste them and eat if she liked them. Keyuri had a bite from one of the fruit. It tasted like never before, she liked it though. Keyuri filled her stomach with those fruits.

After some exploration, Keyuri was tired. The creature realized it. He offered her a bed to lie down on. She had a quick nap. She was freshened up. She saw that the creature was staring at her. Keyuri had a strange feeling in her about the creature. He could understand that she was in love with him. His extra-power of knowing the other person’s feelings was revealing to him her emotions. He reciprocated.

In a happy mood, Keyuri took out her tripod to support the whiteboard and started drawing the picture of the vehicle which was used to transport her for a short time. The creature waited and after some time started sketching on the flat surface of the equipment. The creature learned to print out whatever was drawn by Keyuri. But the drawing was not coming out anywhere close to Keyuri's picture. The creature could copy the picture of the vehicle but failed miserably whenever Keyuri drew some picture out of her imagination, even it failed to copy hers. Keyuri started painting some abstract figures. But the creature could not paint what Keyuri was painting. Keyuri realized the creature was unable to follow Keyuri's imagination. It could pick up whatever Keyuri was doing with whatever logic.

Keyuri thought, even if it had developed quick learning of language, emotional matters, it failed miserably in an imaginative situation.     

Keyuri took out Santoor. Started playing Raag Kerwani first and then raag Bageshri. But that did not attract the Creature. Finally, she took out the flute and played Raag Bhairavi. Creature realized that they had advanced technologically but were very much behind the human in the department of imagination. It could feel how Keyuri enjoyed sketching, painting, and playing music. This part of the interaction, the creature was embarrassed about. It was upset. It came close to her and bent down and touched Keyuri's feet. It had picked up from humans this style of expression. But...

Keyuri understood his inability to imagine the way we humans could imagine. Keyuri explained to him what an imaginative world was. She said, “It is the tension between stillness on surface waters and the deep currents underneath. The imagination opens us to deep wisdom. When we walk through into the imaginative space, we start to experience concepts such as eternity. It is beside us, within us, outside of us, it is perception. It is prophecy and timeless travel and empathy and nothingness all at once.

 Keyuri saw the creature was impressed. He admired this quality of humans. He felt, so much advancement of their species, but they were nowhere nearby the humans in this trait. He realized for many generations, they were concentrating on technological developments. This aspect of personality development was completely ignored by their species. The ill effect of this negligence for many generations was apparent then.

Humans had maintained and developed this wonderful aspect of the advanced species.

Now Keyuri expressed her desire to start her homeward journey. The creatures’ eyes were filled with tears. It took out a couple of chips – integrated circuits. Put them in Keyuri’s hands. “This is a small gift from this part of the world. This will enable you to understand the language of communication of any species around you. You can also know its emotional state. We progressed so much. But we are completely ignorant of IMAGINATION. We can not imagine anything. Hats off to you humans, to have so much developed this aspect of life. You appear to be very much advanced in this department and you picture humanity as complete in all respects of life."

Keyuri was moved. She took out a gadget that could play different types of music with the help of various musical instruments and also teach how various ragas can be played using various instruments. She also took out a box containing Santoor, Flute, Shehnai, Clarinet, Piano, Violin with bow and handed it over to the creature. Keyuri said, " This will take you into an imaginary world and will give you immense pleasure. Next time we meet you should be able to play some of these musical instruments and wander in the imaginary world.

I have also noted your suggestion to avoid a major upset in our cosmos. I am extending an invitation to you to visit our planet. We will be more than happy to receive you there. You will learn many more things from us. You have picked up our identification as humans. What should we call you?"

“PROXIMAN”

Keyuri wound up her things. Took carefully the chips given by Proximan. Got into the vehicle along with the proximan and came back to her spaceship. Got out of the vehicle and rapidly walked towards her spaceship. Jumped into it. Waved at the Proximan with a heavy heart. And took off for her journey homeward.

February 18, 2022 22:54

You must sign up or log in to submit a comment.

3 comments

Ekta Garg
23:11 Mar 03, 2022

It’s always exciting to think about space and read stories about traveling there and meeting other beings. The little bit you’ve shared about your story world makes me want to know more about it. The fact that Keyuri meets an alien being is exciting! The story is told through an omniscient point of view, but I think using third person limited would have been better. Third person limited point of view would allow us to get inside Keyuri’s mind and heart and really hear her inner thoughts. It means a writer has to write what the character hea...

Reply

Vijay Likhite
12:27 Mar 22, 2022

Ekta ji, Thank you very much for analysing the story so very well. You must be aware of the current trends in cosmology. Many ideas are unanswered but still they are accepted e. g. Dark Matter Or Dark Energy. Don't you think my story follows the same path? 😊😊 Thanks again for your kind words.

Reply

Show 0 replies
Show 1 reply
Vanshika Datta
02:06 Feb 22, 2022

I do beleive that aliens exist. Also, we, as humans, must focus on development rather than destruction and become multiplanetary soon due to the reasons which Elon suggest.

Reply

Show 0 replies
Reedsy | Default — Editors with Marker | 2024-05

Bring your publishing dreams to life

The world's best editors, designers, and marketers are on Reedsy. Come meet them.