Wednesday, July 21, 2010

The Thing

The Thing

It was all joy, the ten year old had just won an art competition, in which he had drawn a tree which gave universes instead of fruits. He was wondering how he got the inspiration to make the art and was kicking stones as he walked along. He was now thinking about making a more detailed version of the art. The tree was not so big, just the size of an average banyan tree and when the tree gave fruits, they were all galaxies. He imagined the galaxy to be just the size of a mango and it had all the solar systems, the sun, the moon, the stars, the black holes, comets, meteorites, planets and the constellations. He was smiling along, he remembered the words of praises he received when he won the competition, that how amazing he was to be such brilliant at such a small age. Then he stumbled into something. He looked ahead, but his vision was blocked. At first he thought he saw a big giant seven feet potato blocking his way. The sun shone on the top of the potato figure and he had that awe moment. Then he got his steps back and again saw it carefully, it was a giant brown stone. The stone was strange, it had a beautiful glow around it, and had reflective surface. He could see his awestruck face as he got nearer to it. He felt as if it was alive when he went nearer. He gained some courage and then tried to touch the thing, but he saw a man running away from just behind the stone, and was yelling not to touch the stone. So he backed away. The stone was on the side of the road, just blocking the path for pedestrians. He just kept on staring at the stone, for he had never seen anything like it and as he saw its fractals, he remembered the universes he madeThere was a life like , and thought that the stone is a meteorite that came from outer-space and has brought all the universes with it. He quickly ran towards his house to get his camera. But by the time he came back, there was a different story there.
A big crowd had gathered around the stone, and children were shouting to touch their Barba Papa. It was chaos there. He quickly started to search a place for a good photographic angle for his meteorite. When he finally found a place, there was another photographer already there. He said smiling, “This is a symbol of peace.” There was so much noise and rush there, it was amazing to see that this guy found peace in that stone. He heard some excited voices coming from behind him. They seemed to be a group of teachers and students. They were discussing that the phenomenon had happened from another dimension. That piece of unknown particle was the key to understanding the universe, they said that it knew that it was being observed and that they might or might not be destroying the wave-function, as it changed the color of its surface as they took its photograph and the photograph showed the conscious state of the photographer. They even game a name, “Eurekatron”. They were trying to approach the stone, to take a sample to the lab, but a large crowd of people chanting prayers came and surrounded the now, Eurekatron. They declared that it was now a property of a religious organization, as it has some divine powers which were foretold. They said that by touching the divine stone, one of the persons got healed of cancer. Now, the environment went crazy, now everyone wanted a chunk of it. Everyone was running like crazy. And finally cops arrived and started throwing water to the crowd to settle them. Finally there was no one around the thing.
The stone remained there alone and silent. It was shining with a beautiful glow after it was soaked with water that was thrown to settle the mob. The policemen were awestruck to see the thing glow with unparalleled brilliance. They called for a crane to take the thing away to the National Geological Laboratory. The crane tried to lift the thing, but it just could not lift it. They tried hard, they brought another crane, but they just could not lift it. Then finally after many trials, it made some movement. But it was all it did, and again no one was able to move it. They tried to dig around it but the area around it had become like concrete. Everyone had given up, but slowly the crane was able to lift it up very easily. A man patted the head of police from behind and said, “It can read your mind, just think that you can lift it up.” The guy with white fuzzy hair was a renowned psychologist whom the policeman quickly recognized.
The thing was now shown live on every TV station, but every station described and showed the thing differently. The same thing, on different channels, were different in shape, size and colour. The whole world was glued to the TV screen. The thing suddenly was an international celebrity. Finally it reached the facility. The geological department called for expertise from every field for an emergency meeting. It was decided that the thing would be kept there in the laboratory and would not be examined for some time. Everyone was skeptical about it as no one knew what it was. As it was now a global citizen, they did not want to rush and do something foolish, after all it was Eurekatron, but again they had to answer the impatient world. It was impossible not to observe the thing, no one saw it physically, but their thoughts were always observing it. After three days, when they opened the door to see it, it had become smaller. Now they urged the world to think good about the thing and save it from vanishing. But again it became smaller. Now the experts had to make a choice, do they start dissecting it or just see it getting vanished. So they decided to get samples from the thing and see what it really was. When they approached the thing, it had now grown bigger. They took the samples and divided it to the experts of every field. No one had the slightest clue of what it was? There was nothing inside it, it was just space. It was as if it was a big ball of energy with no mass. Chemists confirmed that it was an element which was never been discovered before, the head chemist named it Michaelogen. Doctors said that it had neuron like structures but it was far beyond their comprehension. Geologists believed that it was a rock from outer space. Their samples kept on vanishing as they did tests on it, but the thing kept on getting bigger and bigger. So after months of vigorous testing, no one could find out anything. No one had the simplest clue, now even theories were stopping, as it failed the next second. It was declared impossible to know it.
In those few months, the world had settled down, there were no wars around, there was no poverty, there were no people with big thick solitary angry heads, there were no diseases, there was just beautiful calmness around the whole world. People knew who they were, they knew their destiny, they knew themselves. The world was totally chaos free. There was no rush, it was just smooth. People knew what to do, and it was done, they did not want anything, if they wanted it was fulfilled, and they knew what they were supposed to want and they enjoyed it. And all this time the thing was glowing and growing and a scientist now, yes the same artist, was busy testing it, he looked deeper and deeper into it, it was the thousandth time he was doing the same task, he kept on getting deeper and deeper, finally the instrument reached its threshold. He just hoped it went just more deeper and suddenly it went deeper, he was awestruck, now he believed that it worked, he kept on examining deeper, and finally he saw something, it was the sample of the thing, he examined deeper, again the same sample, he kept on doing the same for very long and finally he saw something which made his eyes wide open with immense revelation, he saw himself examining the sample.