<------ The symbol Of Zurvan, the persian god of time and space
This pic in some weird way inspired me to write the following short story titled "The guardian's call"....progress at your own discretion!! It has lots of sci-fi stereotypes and weird notions...I hope its a rewarding experience for you as a reader
Of course, I hadn’t always been like this. I was once a scientist, one of the guardians of all scientific knowledge at the National Research Foundation. It was an organization so secret that very few individuals at the top echelons of the Council knew about us. I was a senior member of a project team. Our project was code-named Mission “Zurvan”. Zurvan was the ancient god of one of the civilizations near the now-dry river Euphrates. Now that I think of it, it was called Persia. Zurvan was considered the god of infinite time, space and fate. The name was suggested by one of my colleagues- Dr. Zafar who had descended from Iranian grandparents and had an avid interest in the dusty volumes of the Historypedia House down on Arwit Street.
My apologies for straying from the topic I started off with, namely, me! My name is Dr. Marvin, or in old protocol, Alfred P Marvin. I was a part of the team that was developing the theoretical model for a time travel module. We tried to develop a machine that would be able to propagate at speeds faster than light so that a human being can travel in time. Of course, this depended on the authenticity of the postulate that a vehicle traveling faster than light would actually be faster than time itself since time is measured as an electro-magnetic wave too. We developed a model and it, slowly, took the shape of a working prototype. The whole setup gave the look of one those old motion-presentations from Hollywood. I remember my grandfather showing me one of the oldest of these. It was called “Back to the Future”. It was a fascinating fairy tale in a cozy town like one of those old ‘photographs’. I have never seen houses that small ever. I wish I could see such towns. Here, in the NRF headquarters, the team wished to conduct the preliminary test of the vehicle. We took one of the lab ratizards (a clone created back somewhere around 2034 from rats and lizards which allowed scientists to test for both reptile and mammalian properties). It realized that this was the day is for fulfilling its small period of existence. It looked at all of us with its golden eyes and a look which could be simply read as ‘farewell’. We placed it on the seat of the vehicle and then started the vehicle remotely. It whirred, lifted itself from the ground and was illuminated by a golden light being emitted by the layer covering it. Zafar whispered to me, “Something is not right…I have a foreboding of approaching doom for the pitiable creature”. The chief pushed the button for the FTL boosters attached to the body and the vehicle shot down the launch tunnel. It soon became just a glimmer of light and disappeared.
“Watch out!!” Zafar shouted. I looked around just in time to get out of the way. The vehicle’s body appeared, all of a sudden, around the place where I stood just seconds ago. It looked fine except a few burnt belts around the overhead canopy. We opened the cover to find the remains of the poor animal strewn all around the ‘cockpit’. “We sentenced it to death!” I sputtered. The weight of its death lay heavy on me.
The chief was not happy with the initial tests. Two more ratizards were sacrificed for Science. The chief made the whole team work around the clock to fine-tune the design to a point that the machine could be made fully functional. The name ‘killer truck’ did its rounds in the lab. The junior assistants used it for the vehicle. But it didn’t sound funny to all of us. We tried to check the drive crystals for an faultlines in their structure but to no avail. Zafar started getting superstitious, “We are crossing our limits. The lord Zurvan holds the keys to time. He would never allow us to go through the gates of time! He guards that door.” I tried to reason with him but he shut himself up in his cabin. But, to his credit, he came up with the alterations that were needed for the machine to work. The chief was happy for once and the tests were arranged. This time, the Ratizard was absolutely fine when the vehicle reappeared. The creature was then tested with the heart and brain scanners down in the Bio-Lab. It appeared to be fully fit and normal. The chief devised a schedule for the testing phase. We would start with higher mammals and then a human test in two months’ time. We prepared an advert for the news-scan.
The Chief was briefing all of us,”...so as all of you would understand, the Council cannot allow us to test the vehicle on any civilians because of the corresponding human-rights and legal issues. I would like one of you to volunteer for the test. After all, the last chimp was found to have had no side-effects, whatsoever, caused by the journey. I need the volunteer’s letter of Acceptance on my desk by 1200 Hrs tomorrow”. I couldn’t stop thinking about the opportunity while I traveled back to my flat by the night-craft. The whirring of the nuclear thrusters was silenced by the noise of my thoughts “Why not? Haven’t you always dreamt of going through time? Wasn’t your Grand-pa proud of you when you received your Doctorate in Tachyonic Physics from e-Stanford? You don’t have any family left…no friends whatsoever…just jump in!!” The chief got my letter as soon as he reached his desk.
The suit was stifling. It was hot in there. I looked at Zafar’s face. He smiled and nodded at me. The chief was saying, “…the pride of our organization. Dr. Marvin is going to be the first human being to travel through the time fiber…He would be pioneering the greatest breakthrough Science has ever made.” He went on; it was tough to hear him through all the layers of the thermal suit. I looked in direction of the ‘killer truck’. Maybe Zurvan wasn’t that angry at us. I crossed my fingers inside the thick fiber. I slowly walked towards glory. Eternal or not, it was glorious, in my eyes, to walk into that cramped space. Zafar buckled me into the seat, “My best wishes, my friend…Allah-Khair!”
It didn’t feel fast when the craft started moving. I saw a plethora of colors; there were streaks of pink and gold crossing across the glass of the overhead canopy and some dots of red and blue in between. If this is time-travel, then this is surely going to be popular back in the world. Hmm…that’s funny! “Back” in the world! “Back” to the future. The vehicle was programmed to travel a 100 years back in time and then come back to the ‘now’ when I pushed the big red button. It was, currently, going at the velocity of light back in the time axis.
It came to a sudden stop. It was dark outside. I opened the canopy to find myself in a stretch that looked strangely familiar. I took off the helmet to let some air hit my face. The atmosphere looked as dead as the sky and the stars. There were no stars at all in the sky. This was strange, considering that there was no light anywhere around me. I lighted my Cesium rod and looked around. I got out and looked around the vehicle for any damage. There were pieces of crystal below it. I took a few pieces and was horrified to find that these were the pieces of the fuel rods that had been shattered somehow on my way here. Now, there was no way of getting back unless……unless I find the NRF Centre head quarters. After all, fuel rods had been around for more than a hundred years and of course, the NRF had been established 203 years ago by the then council chief, Gillo Le Guin. I looked around. There was no shape whatsoever. I realized that this could as well be a place indoor as I had no signs of a sky above me. I shouted, “Hello”. My voice sounded dead-pan to my ears. My senses signaled erratically. I felt that there was no one, nothing around me.
I started walking. I walked in a straight line but it could as well have been a circle. I was left as blind as a bat. There was no light, no sound, no air. My watch had stopped functioning when I took off. But I felt I had been walking for days, maybe even months. A realization dawned upon me. I was nowhere. An infinite plain stretched before me. Maybe this was the guardian’s revenge for daring to cross paths with him. Strangely I had lost all sensation of existence, the pain, hunger, thirst, sadness had left me. All that I was left with was Logic. I sat down. I started considering the chain of events that landed me here. I tried to reason it out.
It has been long since that ‘day’. I cannot tell you anything in terms of time because I had jumped out of its loop that day. It would have been years on Earth to the day I ‘disappeared’. From what I gather of it, I traveled with a velocity equal to that of light but so did the world with respect to my frame. So, in a sense, the world traveled ahead in time. It traveled ahead of me. Now I am out of Time’s domain. I do not age, I do not feel, I exist. I am eternity itself on this dark plain left by the Universe’s shift. I am Zurvan because I have won over Time and Space. But, where art thy Keys, O time?
Ishan
