Another world, another time (Part 4)
Dhruva couldn't believe what he saw.
He had landed on a beach on some kind of...tropical island? There were a bunch of broken bricks or rocks behind him...no, these were stones from the temple that he had just passed through, all shattered and burnt and many turning a strange red in the light of the setting sun...or was it rising?
Either dawn was breaking, or dusk was setting in, because the sun hovered at the horizon and the sky was tinged with red. Wherever he was, it couldn't have been the Earth, because one fixture in the sky held his attention.
It was a ring of sorts, almost certainly artificial, high up above the sky and gleaming in reflected light, so bright that it could actually cast shadows. The sheer brightness of the ring had actually made dawn appear to arrive early. Looking down, he saw a number of spokes branching off the ring and connecting it to the planet below. One of the "spokes" was attached to what looked like an island on the horizon, the texture of the gray metal giving the impression of a massive tree, rising up to the heavens.
Dhruva's numbed mind fumbled for the word.
Space Elevator.
It was a for-real Space Elevator.
And that ring in the sky was some sort of space construct. Even as he watched, a small starlike point of light drifted away from a bulged point of the ring.
A starship? Had he seen a starship?
Impossible! Impossible! Impossible!!!
Ten minutes ago, he had been safely in college with the girl he loved.
Then came attack helicopters that fired rockets and commandos intent on killing him.
And now...where in the galaxy was he????
He might almost have believed it if the temple had turned out to be magical and that he landed up somewhere in the depths of Indian myth- either in the Ramayana or the Mahabharata, or in one of millions of tales created over thousands of years. Perhaps then, he would have had a reason to believe in the myths, and know they were real.
The Space Elevator and Space Ring threw out all pretense of mythology. The Temple- if it even was a temple, had sent him all the way to another planet.
Like a voice from the distant end of a tunnel, the late Arthur C. Clarke's Third Law came to mind: Sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
And now, by the technological magic of whoever or whatever had built that structure in the jungle, he was on an utterly alien world- perhaps the Earth of the future, but nevertheless so different that he couldn't recognize it.
Was it the Earth? Perhaps the Temple had sent him far, far away into the future...
No, your imagination is going into overdrive. Stay calm, Dhruva, stay focused....
Stars, stars, stars, stars...
Astronomy!
Dhruva knew that a hundred thousand years from now, the sky would be indistinguishable due to stellar drift- the stars revolved around the center of the galaxy in the same manner that the earth revolved around the sun. The great astronomer Carl Sagan had once said that the constellation Leo, the Lion, would be called the "Radio Telescope" constellation a hundred thousand years from now, because the known motion of stars would change the vaguely lion-like pattern into one resembling a huge satellite dish.
However, if he was only a few hundred or few thousand years into the future, the constellations might still be recognizable. The constellations had all been drawn in their recognizable form over two thousand years ago, and the alignment of the pyramids at Giza was supposedly identical to the constellation Orion as it had been in the present, his present...
It was not the Earth.
Growing fainter in the brightening rays of the alien sun, Dhruva glimpsed what looked like two moons- one a dirty brown and another a blood red, a pair of crescents in the sky just slightly above and to the side of the great space ring.
Dhruva walked around the beach, his slowly shattering mind taking notice of the palm and cocunut trees...palm and coconut trees on an alien island...
He saw the rising sun, a tinge more orange than he remembered sun back on Earth, with the dark shadow of the ring cutting across the edge like a scar, black against brilliant yellow-orange.
Dhruva fell to his knees, and amidst a bunch of dried out coconut leaves and fallen coconuts, screamed his fear, his shock and his anger to the high stars.
"WHY AM I HERE???!!!!!!!"
He didn't know how long he screamed, and he didn't care how long he screamed.
No one was there to listen, or to answer.
He had landed on a beach on some kind of...tropical island? There were a bunch of broken bricks or rocks behind him...no, these were stones from the temple that he had just passed through, all shattered and burnt and many turning a strange red in the light of the setting sun...or was it rising?
Either dawn was breaking, or dusk was setting in, because the sun hovered at the horizon and the sky was tinged with red. Wherever he was, it couldn't have been the Earth, because one fixture in the sky held his attention.
It was a ring of sorts, almost certainly artificial, high up above the sky and gleaming in reflected light, so bright that it could actually cast shadows. The sheer brightness of the ring had actually made dawn appear to arrive early. Looking down, he saw a number of spokes branching off the ring and connecting it to the planet below. One of the "spokes" was attached to what looked like an island on the horizon, the texture of the gray metal giving the impression of a massive tree, rising up to the heavens.
Dhruva's numbed mind fumbled for the word.
Space Elevator.
It was a for-real Space Elevator.
And that ring in the sky was some sort of space construct. Even as he watched, a small starlike point of light drifted away from a bulged point of the ring.
A starship? Had he seen a starship?
Impossible! Impossible! Impossible!!!
Ten minutes ago, he had been safely in college with the girl he loved.
Then came attack helicopters that fired rockets and commandos intent on killing him.
And now...where in the galaxy was he????
He might almost have believed it if the temple had turned out to be magical and that he landed up somewhere in the depths of Indian myth- either in the Ramayana or the Mahabharata, or in one of millions of tales created over thousands of years. Perhaps then, he would have had a reason to believe in the myths, and know they were real.
The Space Elevator and Space Ring threw out all pretense of mythology. The Temple- if it even was a temple, had sent him all the way to another planet.
Like a voice from the distant end of a tunnel, the late Arthur C. Clarke's Third Law came to mind: Sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
And now, by the technological magic of whoever or whatever had built that structure in the jungle, he was on an utterly alien world- perhaps the Earth of the future, but nevertheless so different that he couldn't recognize it.
Was it the Earth? Perhaps the Temple had sent him far, far away into the future...
No, your imagination is going into overdrive. Stay calm, Dhruva, stay focused....
Stars, stars, stars, stars...
Astronomy!
Dhruva knew that a hundred thousand years from now, the sky would be indistinguishable due to stellar drift- the stars revolved around the center of the galaxy in the same manner that the earth revolved around the sun. The great astronomer Carl Sagan had once said that the constellation Leo, the Lion, would be called the "Radio Telescope" constellation a hundred thousand years from now, because the known motion of stars would change the vaguely lion-like pattern into one resembling a huge satellite dish.
However, if he was only a few hundred or few thousand years into the future, the constellations might still be recognizable. The constellations had all been drawn in their recognizable form over two thousand years ago, and the alignment of the pyramids at Giza was supposedly identical to the constellation Orion as it had been in the present, his present...
It was not the Earth.
Growing fainter in the brightening rays of the alien sun, Dhruva glimpsed what looked like two moons- one a dirty brown and another a blood red, a pair of crescents in the sky just slightly above and to the side of the great space ring.
Dhruva walked around the beach, his slowly shattering mind taking notice of the palm and cocunut trees...palm and coconut trees on an alien island...
He saw the rising sun, a tinge more orange than he remembered sun back on Earth, with the dark shadow of the ring cutting across the edge like a scar, black against brilliant yellow-orange.
Dhruva fell to his knees, and amidst a bunch of dried out coconut leaves and fallen coconuts, screamed his fear, his shock and his anger to the high stars.
"WHY AM I HERE???!!!!!!!"
He didn't know how long he screamed, and he didn't care how long he screamed.
No one was there to listen, or to answer.
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