Karmic Tithes

An attempt at science fiction...

The year : 2032
The place: Hellas Impact Basin, Mars.

As Arvindhakshan Venkatakrishnan Pandurangan, aka Vishy peered out through his stereoscopic visors, he wasnt able to supress a moan of disappointment that emanated from the deepest reaches of his constipated bowels.

In front of him lay sprawled Mars, in all the splendour that an ailing 4.5 billion year old planet could possibly muster, and it did a pretty commendable job at that. The steep walls of the impact basin towering 5 kms above the stereoscopic visors dominated the alien martian landscape. The walls gave an impression of having been thrust out upwards by some colossal force of nature in so short a time that it didnt have time to think of an ergonomical design that would have made this place the mecca for lifetime members of Ameteur Mountaineers of Central Kentucky... Anyway, thats a long time from now... Indeed, it was so...Vishy was standing at the bottom of the Hellenic impact crater, a 1600kms wide and 5kms deep crater formed by some freak meteor that just couldnt stick to its orbit.

The only thing unalien about the place was a transcendental feeling of insignificance that one experienced when faced with something as unsurmountable as the walls of the largest impact crater in the solar system, a feeling perhaps not very different from the marked sense of utter incomprehension that struck Vishy right on the face and other protruding parts of his anatomy the day he found a pair of triped Agnoiologists from the twin star planetary system of Zygota.

A martian sunset is a breathtaking spectacle, breathtaking enough to offset the queasiness that a claustrophobic environment like a spacesuit can bring upon a clogged oesophagus. The distant sun was gradually obscured by dust, creating a silver blue halo against the salmon pink martian sky. As the last fading rays of light fell on the iron-rich clay soil, the surface gave an impression of being caramel, burnt ember, ochre , butterscotch, tarnished silver, rust and a number of other subtle shades all at the same time. As these rays bounced off the thin layer of carbon dioxide ice that clung to the rocks, the result was that of an eerie phosphoroscence that gave an almost aetherial atmosphere to the whole place. Even the most morbid sentient entity from the remotest corners of Necros cluster would stop for a couple of minutes to admire the beauty, before returning to what is eulogised in their "Sacred Book of Necrophilia", that being sulking.

Vishy couldnt stand it any longer.

'Why... why me?' he muttered under his breath, and looked up at the sky in the general direction of earth, and let out a long deep sigh, unaware of the fact that his sigh missed the earth completely by approximately half the sky, and was wasted on Alpha Centuari. His gaze then shifted to the bright yellow spaceship that looked like a hundiyal in tirupathi devasthanam...its incongruity couldnt have been any starker. He thought of his crew mates back in the ship who were sweating it out on this uncompromising alien world. His whole frame suffused with a warm feeling of assurance brought about by the knowledge that Bob Marlin, Lisa Tyler and Anna Konstantinova were in the ship and carefully monitoring his every move, while simulataneously gathering mission-critical information to beam it back to earth as soon as the earth comes out from the other side of the sun.

He could almost picture Anna's delicate heinies rippling with excitement as she bent over to examine martian soil for possible signs of life, Bob poring over the communication charts and Lisa in the communication room, talking to him...

Something struck Vishy as being strange... If Lisa is in the communication room talking to him and guiding him, why hasnt he heard from her for the last half an hour... It was panic's turn to suffuse his entire frame... He could almost picture bug-eyed green men with immobilisers attached to their noses invading the spaceship... He was able to smell scorched russian flesh as wave after wave of neutron beams bombarded Anna's heines, instantly vapourising her.

'This is too good to be true' thought Vishy, refusing to indulge himself in such delusions of bliss...Thinking back, he couldnt remember the last conversation after the trio had literally pushed him out of the spaceship.

To be continued....