Prisoner of the mind.
He gave in. Succumbed, against his own will. The last nail in the coffin was the smell. A drink passed under his nose. You could cut the things out you don’t want to hear. You can turn a blind eye to the things you don’t wish to see. But with the nose, no such fancy option available.
He picked the drink and gulped it. Done. No more of ‘should-I-should-i-not’. When you are in two minds about something, always go for the one that is extreme. It makes you feel better. Once a famous SMS read, ‘toss a coin when you are unsure about something. The coin won’t make the decision for you when it will land, but you will know what you want while the coin is up in the air.’ The glass tempted him again. But before it could seduce him enough, he was on the road.
Jake was a scientist. He was on his way to the lab. The clock on the wall of the lab told people it was time to go off to sleep and told the scientists that their day had just started.
The lab doors opened with a low hiss as Jake walked through them. His ID dangling on his pocket, pronouncing him as a chief scientist on a project called ‘blacklight’. He entered his cabin and picked the receiver, but then decided against it. Andrew walked in with some papers. He was up to something. His face showed it. ‘Jake, you have to see this.’ A little under the influence, he nodded slowly.
‘I found something in an old work of Mr. Jennings. He couldn’t complete it. And I realized we are stuck where he began from.’ Jake could feel the alcohol receding. Mr. Jennings was not a very renowned name. Edison invented the bulb, but he wasn’t alone that night. A very close friend was with him that night when he completed his final diagram. His name was Mr. Jennings.
The sheaf of papers wasn’t thick. But it did take some time for Jake to go through it carefully. When he was finished, he stared at the papers for a long while. Andrew was pacing the room up and down, expecting more than the heavy silence.
“So? What do you think? Edison may not know about it, but does help us nonetheless.”
“I think you are right. How come we missed this all the while?”
“That is partly because of this” Andrew said, handing out another stapled sheet of papers.
Jake glanced through them swiftly and stared up in disbelief.
“But how?” he stopped short and looked aghast.
Rome, 1927.
Earl Hemingway looked up at the tower far away. With his little Bible in the breast pocket, he knew nothing could happen to him. But he had heard stories of priests themselves being murdered ruthlessly when he was a kid. And he was no priest himself, not even close.
He looked around, smoke billowing his nose and mouth as he exhaled. The gloves on his hands were doing little to keep him away from the cold. He couldn’t get rid of them before he was done with his job. And once he was done with it, he would never wear them again. A car passed him with a small man staring at him through the glass. He had the pirate-eye patch. On receiving his signal straight, Earl started his way towards the tower. ‘Finally out of the cold’ he thought to himself.
In fact the man with the eye-patch he was waiting for, never actually arrived. He had seen a man who actually needed one. The man he was waiting for was lying in a morgue.
Inside the tower, the warmth welcomed him. He looked around. The description of the man given to him, wasn’t around yet. But he will, nonetheless. It was a crowded place and he knew what would be the best way to aim. The angle wasn’t much of a problem. It was the distraction. It would be an affair not even crossing a minute. Fast, quick and in a blink. He took one of the dark, over-shadowed corners of the Rome-Frascati terminal and waited.
As a train came to a halt with a hiss, amongst the crowd, Earl saw that face walking towards him which he was asked to make sure, the world would see for the last time,. He slowly got up, mixing in the crowd. His eyes stuck on the face approaching him. He drew the gun out very slowly.
Mrs. Edi was the happiest lady as she had finally got down from the train. At age 67, this was her seventh trip to her son’s home. As she removed her little purse from her bag, suddenly everyone around her went helter-skelter. Some slept on the floor. Some ducked behind anything they could find. She too was scared, but due to the loss of hearing in both her ears, she was merely looking for a place to hide. She looked around to see a wooden seat vacant. But that’s not all she saw. She also saw a man holding a gun before an old man who was clutching his chest. Did she see blood on the collapsing old man? Now she was truly making a run for the seat. Prayers started escaping her old, quivering lips.
Earl fired the second shot when he saw old man, now slowly collapsing on the ground, pulling out something. A gun? Money? As he stooped over him to see, he realized, it was a bunch of papers. Papers? Why would an old dying man hand over papers to his assassin? He had to act fast. Either he took this paper and fled or without it, wouldn’t matter. The old man wouldn’t live long, that’s for sure.
Naturally his hands went for the paper and fled. Papers? What kind of papers were these.
They were the same papers, Andrew had just handed out to Jake. Earl Hemingway had just assassinated the man who had helped Thomas Edison with the invention of the light bulb.
Age of Decadence!
There was a slow, steady wind blowing through the planet. A rough, dusty road that lead to nowhere in particular was the only thing that gave this otherwise deserted land, a recognition. There wasn't any sound, except for the low howling of the wind. And then there was a loud impact. Like that of a hard metal ball colliding with earth. The reverberating echo of the piece of metal would ring in anyone's head for a long time. And the dust rose some 20 feet high in the air. After about ten minutes the dust settled. And a huge metal sphere gleamed in the scorching sun. They landed.