The last but one straw

The screen animated and displayed the logo, flashy sign, which had held Sethu’s stare for the last 5 years. The logo turned and twisted as it registered in the mind of the viewer. The Om corporation had spent close to a billion dollars creating this logo and had done a huge promotion drive when the company changed from its older plainer logo. Sethu had stood at the end of the crowd and watched as the CEO made a speech about the future of the company and its employees.

Sethu sighed and moved his hand over the touch screen keyboard in front of him on his desk. The logo instantly disappeared and his work screen appeared, cluttered with tiny icons of various projects that he had been working on. Sethu moved the cursor around unsure about where to start. Recently moved to the department of archives, Sethu had almost wished he had died instead. Department of Archives, a digital black hole where once an employee enters, there is hardly any way that he would come out for a better role.

He looked around and watched the senile left overs of the Om corporation move about, refilling their coffee mugs, smug faced and hoping for a nirvana. The bile churned his stomach as he imagined his future. He would have to get out of here alive.

Sethu looked back at his screen and located the icon for his next project. An icon made up of books arranged in order with one of them falling over. An appropriate sign, Sethu clicked it open and browsed the sections. He dived into the world of the past and the unknown.

The Sun setting outside revealed the landscape on which this whole corporation stood, a massive spaceship floating across space hovering around the solar body Titan.

The blinking cursor on his screen made enough noise in the silent archive department that the entire floor could hear it, but Sethu slept like a baby on his desk, his saliva oozing out from the corner of his wide-open mouth. The air conditioner above blew another chunk of cold air and Sethu inhaled the fresh air as his cheek rubbed against the desk lubricated with his own saliva. The screen brightened up and a sound of an incoming mail sounded the war horn. He woke up embarrassed, cleaning up his mouth and his desk. The workforce around him had dwindled and the left overs of the left overs ignored the whole drama.

Sethu moved his cursor over the new mail and clicked it open. He had missed many new ones during his slumber. He clicked open and moved on as he discarded them. He stopped on one of them as a particular word caught his attention.

Kepler-438b

An Earth like habitable planet orbiting a red dwarf in the constellation Lyra. Sethu remembered the whole project on this planet, the setup, the launch, the eventual failure, and the massive bailout of Om Corporation. It had been a disaster for the company as it reeled from its investors backing out and the public lashing back. Nobody had talked about it since then. This much was enough for Sethu not to discard this mail. He opened it in full screen.

The mail went something like…

At the behest of our recent endeavor to restructure our company and provide a path to it, our leaders have decided on certain moves. Some of these have been tough to implement considering our employees involved have spent a lifetime working on projects that would be scrapped and some that would be re-routed to others.

At this turning point in our company’s history, I am sad but forced to make such decisions and hope for a brighter future for our company.

Below is a list of projects that would be scrapped or re-routed.

Sethu scanned the list and reached the section with the word Kepler-438b.

Kepler-438b – To be scrapped

Sethu shifted his window to show the console to the archives. He moved his cursor to the search field and typed the word Kepler-438b. He moved again, selected a few more check boxes narrowing down the search, and then hit the button “Search”.

The page returned with a series of links and Sethu chose the very first one, the one with the highest index number. The link opened another window with the full text of the project. Sethu scanned for the details and stopped at a particular section.

With the introduction of human embryo at the initial stage of fertilization, the cell is cryo-frozen for the mission period. This is then unfrozen for development at the destination.

Sethu moved to another link…

           The project human migration 2.0 has left the Solar Space Station at 0600 and headed to our nearest habitable planet, Kepler-438b. The mission itself will take 5 years considering we have the latest nuclear powered propulsion system. Om Corporation, the leaders in genetic diversity population have invested a lot in this project.

Then another one…

         The tragedy that fell on Intergenome has clouded the earthlings with sadness. What was seen as our hope for a better future has been destroyed by an unlikely event in the far reaches of space. The deep space control had lost contact with the ship around 1300 yesterday and the remote controlled navigation system had stopped responding in the next 45 minutes.

And finally…

            Latest data from the search for Intergenome has given some weak response from the dark corners of the constellation Lyra. The closest patrol ship around 70 light years away has been given orders to stand by.

Sethu looked for another link that could close the story but all he found were links to the same ones from before. He leaned back in his chair and wondered how this could all stop suddenly. He looked around his office and saw the morose faces.

He remembered the day they left Earth, a week before the impact. The chaos that prevailed still played in his mind as the human population dwindled not because of an external force but by its mere desire to survive. As the world collapsed in itself, the leaders and the visionary saw their plan crumble like a brick wall. People thought twice before killing other people and as they habituated the effort they thought lesser.

Within 24 hours the world was brought down to an uncivilized war zone with governments raising their hands and religion going into hiding.

            Where did those white robed, orange clothed middlemen go? Didn’t they promise salvation?

Then the technology that had been handed over to the wrong hands showed up. As the missiles flew across the continents clouding the Earth even from the Sun, the children hoped, the mothers cried and the fathers fought. Since the humans had made sure that they could kill each other with not a push of a button but by the cowardice of heart, there was hardly any resistance.

The impact was still 3 days away when we had done most of the damage to ourselves. There was hardly anything left for the natural bomb to destroy. The animals were long gone when we had figured out a way to consume those centuries ago. Those that survived the massacres hid from the sight of the parasite that plagued the Earth.

But there were a few that persisted, a few good people who clambered on to whatever sliver of hope they could find. They reached the far corners of the world to create a vehicle that would take them away from this destruction. His father was one of them who took to the stars when the ground beneath him shook. But they made a mistake that would prove costly; they left behind a majority of the good genes that would be needed for the continuation of the species. What they took with them was the lab experiments with a plan to recreate life, somewhere else. With the human population on this vehicle of hope aging and the Intergenome project coming to an end, the last straw had been loaded.

Sethu looked up from his screen and noticed the desperation in the ship. Is this what the precursors of our humans had imagined? When they had survived the ice age, barbarism, war and conquest, we could not survive an impact. He went back to the screen and opened up another icon that asked for credentials. He typed in and executed it, a tunnel into the world of unknown. This would take him deeper into the archive, much deeper that it was intended.

As the articles spewed up in front of him, the words caught his eyes. Only words of misery surfed across. Failures after failures. Sethu had expected more from his brethren. He moved his hand to close the junk when one of them caught his eyes. An article again on the lost planet. He sighed and clicked it open. It was dated today and was still doing the rounds among the top executives of the corporation. A secret letter from one of the deep space scanning department to the head of the corporation.

Dear Om,

There is still hope. We have detected a faint signal that we have been tracking for the last 8 months. A recent patrol of the sector 778c brought us in close proximity to turn on our infra-red scanner. We were able to detect our ship on the planet and also pin point the exact location. But there is more, there is faint signal that has been moving from the point of origin to the nearby source of water. This is what we hope is life, a human life. If we move into the center of the sector we could place the scanner better.

We are awaiting your approval.

Thanks

Sethu still held his finger on the track pad and also his breath. He looked up and saw an old employee collapse and then a group of others rush to help him but he didn’t bother. He looked back at his screen and sighed. Humans probably would survive to plague the universe.