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STORY TIME: Sweet dreams
I had been day dreaming for two hours now. I had been to the moon, taken a photograph of the Earth from there, shook hands with the aliens, and was in the spaceship headed towards Mars. Darn. I was bored. I had been to Mars only yesterday! But then, there was no other place to go!
I had started day dreaming ever since my teacher told us that everyone has the potential to think like Einstein. ‘It’s just how we mould ourselves,’ he said, ‘and how we allow our imagination to be restricted’. Maybe he was wrong but I wanted to waste no time, and started exploiting my potential to think. Maybe the world remembers me a hundred years or so from now as we remember Einstein today! Hence, I let my thoughts on the loose!
So, I was heading towards Mars, where I had already been the day before. It isn’t a big thing now that space exploration has gifted us new places where we could go to spend our vacations. There is population on Mars too since the Earth has become so crowded and polluted. The richer lot has made luxury homes there, while the poor (not as poor as the ones that live on Earth) live in modest buildings, with homes one atop the other (quite like the apartments on congested Earth).
The good thing about Mars is that you could even live in tents. The sun was not as harsh as on Earth, and rains came, but they were always welcome! In fact, I wanted a tent first, but my father bought us a place in one of the buildings I just mentioned. It had only been ten years since people started moving to Mars, yet, most people maintained two homes — one on Earth, the other on Mars. Since there were no schools, universities and offices on Mars, people just went there during the vacations.
The permanent dwellers of Mars were the old people who wanted to get out of the crowded, noisy world that drove them crazy; the philosophers, who wanted silence to contemplate; the poets who were mesmerized by the beauty of the Red planet, and that’s how it gradually became populated. There were scientists too, of course, but they worked on their science stuff that nobody living on Mars understood. There was no one to make them understand as well — and hence everybody minded their own business. In fact, this was what they were there for!
The devastations caused by irresponsible people back on Earth have made it a very hostile place for life. The biological and nuclear warfare in different areas have made those places unapproachable and dangerous. People could go to those places and even live there, though. Scientists have developed stuff that protects human beings from radiation and microbes. Yet, one needs to be extremely well informed about the use of these items. They have designed a certificate course for the use — and only those who have the certificate can enter these zones. Since Earth is so congested, people are compelled to live in these vast pieces of land that were once flowering with trade and development.
My father says he had seen happier days in his childhood before the wars resulted in the destruction of these lands. He says he had even been to those lands more than once, since his grandparents lived there. But now, things have changed. We are planning to move to Mars as soon as my education is over. I am planning to work via the good ol’ Internet which has proved to be the only reliable source of communication with Earth now — and the fastest too! It is so difficult to live on Earth now — but Mars is so boring!
Yawn!
I opened my eyes to the music of my hourly alarm. Hmm’ three hours now to my day dreaming! So, I can think for long hours too! Having proved my potentials, I got up and opened my book. Space exploration was the topic I had to study. ‘There is evidence of life on Mars, the Red planet, as the scientists have found water gullies and fossilized bacteria,’ it said.
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