Writer’s comments:
Pls read this before Chapters 16-18
The Adventures of O (Chapters 1-3) (Chapters 4-6) (Chapters 7-9) (Chapters 10-12)(Chapters 13-15)
http://surysingh.wordpress.com/2010/05/16/the-adventures-of-o-chapters-1-3/
http://surysingh.wordpress.com/2010/05/16/the-adventures-of-o-chapters-4-6/
http://surysingh.wordpress.com/2010/05/16/the-adventures-of-o-chapters-7-9/
http://surysingh.wordpress.com/2010/05/16/the-adventures-of-o-chapters-10-12/
Chapter 15
P
“How’s N’s experiments with Zombies to free them working out?” I asked S.
“Not much luck. He’s been frying the brains in the lab, O, nobody can work anymore over there”
“Why not?”
“I think if we have the gas bombs which smell like fried brains we’d win the war! The Queen would surrender immediately!”
“That bad, huh?”
“Yes”
“What else? Did you get what M was asking for?”
“The lightning gun? Are you kidding? Is there such a weapon?”
“I mean we see them in video games all the time! They must be real!”
“They’re not, OK. If M is so smart, why can’t he make that Lightning gun, to kill the Queen, himself, huh?”
“He can’t”
“Oh he can’t huh? We are running out of options here, O, at least we have got to release S233 to the people” S was getting desperate.
“I told you S, we can’t do that. M says that if a space tourist or hitchhiker chances upon S233, there’s going to be chaos here and the Queenians would undoubtedly wipe us out!”
“What are we going to do, O? Each day we are risking getting discovered. And if the Queenians find what’s going on here, we …”
“I know, S, I know!”
“I think I can help you out!” said a beautiful, probably 15-16 year old girl.
She was wearing the dreaded Queenian uniform which we saw in Rock’s memories.
“You’re a Queenian!” I gasped. My heart forgot how to beat for a few seconds. I couldn’t breathe and I couldn’t get over the fact about how weird her eyes were, and yet somehow captivating.
“I’m amazed at how much you know! I have been observing you for the past two three days, and you have really impressed me!”
I had to step up my game. Lives depended on what I’d do in the next few minutes.
“Shall we go somewhere more secluded? This lab is a bit over crowded” she said.
“Yes. Where?”
“Your bedroom.”
“OK”. I was sweating.
I drove her to my house. She just kept looking at one thing while I drove- me. We went into my bedroom; I didn’t know what to say, so I remained silent.
“Have you seen a parrot made of red crystal?”
“No…”
“You know who I am?”
“You’re a Queenian”
“Why do you think that I’m a Queenian?”
“Your uniform.”
“What else?”
“I tried to punch you, I couldn’t”
“So you wanted to hit me?”
“No, no. I wanted to confirm if you were a Queenian.”
“What if I wasn’t and you actually hit me?”
“I’d have stopped just before I would actually make contact.”
“You’re confident about that?”
“Yes”
“Why does that girl E find you attractive?”
“Huh?”
“I mean, before she loved you, she must have found you attractive in some way. What did she like about you?”
“I, umm, I don’t know…”
“You wouldn’t tell me even if the fate of this world depended on it?”
“I know. I know why she liked me…”
“Then please, tell me”
“She said I acted like an idiot the first few seconds I saw her, then after a while…”
“Yes, after a while?”
“After a while, she noticed my eyes…”
“You know that she’s right? You are not attractive at all, but your eyes, they are such a mystery… they seem to have some romance, a burning passion, I don’t know what it is, but it is there… what else did she say about your eyes?”
“Huh, umm, my eyes… when I was blowing a big balloon and when she could only see my eyes at one point, she said, I looked like her prince charming of her dreams…”
“Ouch, that was a bad thing to say about your boy friend, and to his face, no less! That was harsh…”
“She can be brutally honest sometimes…” I was sweating like I was in some oven.
“Is she honest all the time with you?”
“I don’t know, I think so…”
“Does she love you?”
“Yes”
“And you?”
“Ya, I love me too” I smiled.
She started laughing like, like I used to laugh as a kid, free and wild and innocent I never heard laughter like that.
“You are funny, I had totally forgotten about that. I’ve been watching you, and you are funny. Why did you take this much time to be funny with me?”
“I mean, I was scared…”
“You are scared of a girl who’s in your bedroom?”
“A beautiful girl…” I corrected her.
“You think I’m pretty?”
“Even though you are a Queenian I haven’t been able to ignore the fact that you are really pretty…”
“And you wanted to punch me?”
“But I’d have stopped”
“You’re free to punch me now…”
“What?”
“I said you’re free to punch me now…”
“You didn’t deactivate any beam; you didn’t send any command…”
“Don’t you believe me? Punch me and prove that you could stop, just before contact…”
“OK.” I lifted my arm. I sensed no blocking if I lifted my arm towards her. She had deactivated the command. I could do anything now, I could punch her, I mean, real hard, knock her out, I could even kill her now. And nobody would know… if there’s no Queenian to go back to the Queen and quack, the queen would never know… And Earth won’t be in any danger, at least for some more time.
But her eyes. They were so freaky, so weird. But there was something magical about them… Her lips seemed so soft… I wanted to kiss her…
I bent my head towards her, poised to kiss.
“You bad boy!” she pushed me.
“I stopped at the last minute…” I found myself smiling naughtily.
“You were not! You were going to kiss me!”
“No, no. I said I’d stop and I stopped, I mean, did the kiss take place?”
“It didn’t happen because I pushed you”
“Well I have news for you, I was about to stop…”
“Oh really? You liar!”
I was laughing. She was laughing too. And I realized I loved flirting with her!
“Do you want to do something crazy?” she asked.
“Yes” I couldn’t say no to her!
“Hey what’s your name?” I asked.
“Umm, you have S, M, N, you’re O, then you can call me, umm, P”
“P!”
“I’m glad you tried to kiss me…” she said while leading me out of my house.
“I’m glad too…”
Chapter 17
Ha-P Days
“Where are we going?” I asked her. Space ship had been flying for a few minutes now.
“I don’t know”
“How far can you go on this thing?”
“You’ll be surprised!”
“Can you go far from everything? From reality?”
“I like that thought! I think we can go far from everything!” she was giggling again.
“O, what do you want to do?”
“I want to look in your weird eyes! You know you’ve got some really weird eyes?”
“Well that’s a romantic thing to say to a girl!” she was laughing again.
“Romantic? You want me to be romantic?”
“Yes, don’t you?”
“I want to be sexy!”
She laughed again. I was getting addicted to her laughter. I mean, what was with her laugh? I just went back to being a kid… when I was happy. When Priya was normal, when dad was not shining and mom was alive… I remember laughing like that… this girl was laughing like I used to, I wanted to hear that laughter again and again… I wanted to make her laugh again and again. It was as if my entire soul was laughing, not that I believe in soul…
“You are sexy” she said.
“I am? You said I was not attractive at all, except for my eyes!”
“Yes your eyes are very sexy!”
“We’re not under the influence of some drugs right? I mean I feel a little, whoo-ho-hooo”
“No, it’s all our eyes. Your eyes are sexy and my eyes are weird…”
“Your eyes are magical, they’re weird, but they’re more magical, I just want to keep looking at them…”
“Then look at them…”
“I am! Have you read Kalidasa?”
“No, is he a poet?”
“Yes”
“Are you going to tell me a poem?”
“No!”
“Meany…”
“You know what he said about Shakunthala?”
“No”
“Her eyes were so pretty, so alive, like a flower, that a bee, you know what a bee is right? That a bee mistakes her eyes to be beautiful flowers…”
“Ew! I hate bees”
“What? It was so beautiful, what he said, was so beautiful…”
“What is beautiful really?”
“You”
“I’m beginning to agree that you are on drugs!” she started laughing again.
“Don’t stop. Keep laughing…”
“What?”
“Your laughter is so, so calming. It makes me happy…”
“Does it now?”
“Yes, your laughter is… it is…”
“It is what?”
“I don’t know, I’m not good with words. It makes me forget everything; makes everything else unreal, boring, It makes me happy, just to be with you, P”
“Whenever you want to hear my laughter, just think of me, and my laughter you will hear, I’ve made it so…”
“Also make me remember your face, your eyes…”
“Alright, you junkie…Now close your eyes… what are you thinking about?”
“You”
“Good! Can you hear my laughter and see me laughing?”
With my mind’s eyes I could see and hear her so clearly, it was magic or something…
“Yes, hey can I still punch you?”
“You want to punch me?”
“Yes”
“Then you can punch me, it should be a really wet punch OK?”
I kissed her. I caught her lips while she was saying “OK”
I don’t remember how long we kissed or how often I kissed her, but E, if you are reading this, I’m sorry. I loved you with all my heart, but with P, it’s different, I’m different. I just can’t say it in words, I just can’t. It’s not only you that I have cheated; I had made a promise to the world that I’ll do my best to protect it. But I was not thinking about that promise then, if I was, I would have killed P when I got the first chance. But I didn’t. I was a slave to this Queenian. I don’t know what KO commands she had used on me… I’m sorry, E and I’m sorry world… Please find it in your hearts to forgive my selfishness because the days that I spent on her space ship were one of my happiest…
“Do you want to dance?” she asked.
“Yes!”
“Dance of lights?”
“I don’t know that one…”
“It’s easy. Switch off all lights, all machines, all computers of the ship, take out something that glows in the dark and dance!”
“It sounds romantic… did you make this up?”
“Totally! Just now, in fact!” she giggled as she switched off everything and took out something, that glowed in a million colors like a butterfly. Each time the wings of the butterfly flapped, the size of the butterfly would change. I could see in the light, her eyes… And they looked so divine, so full of life. Her slow rhythmic steps and slowly her eyes started dancing too… it was the most beautiful thing I had seen in my life.
I took out my mobile and made it glow and slowly tried to copy her moves.
“You’re really good at the Dance of Lights!”
“Oh I learnt from the girl who invented that dance!”
She laughed again. And I closed my eyes and remembered her, I could see her laughing face, but it was nearly not good enough, it was an entirely divine feeling- to see her in person, alive, right next to me, smelling her hair and breathing the same air, so close, so close while our bodies danced to the rhythm of love, I craved for her kiss- she was teasing me- denying the kiss. The game went on till I couldn’t take it anymore and held her shoulders so firmly and kissed her so violently, that I was hurting her, I was getting hurt, and she was hurting me and as if in all this pain laid our salvation… We were free, really free…
“Warning, warning, intruder program detected!!!” the spaceship’s computer shouted.
“VIRUS!” I said.
“Do you know anything about this?”
“I’ll take care of it…”
Chapter 18
The Queen
“VIRUS, P is a friend! Why did you try to hack into her Space Ship?” I asked VIRUS.
“O, this is an alien Space ship, I couldn’t resist it, and I had to know everything about it! Look at all this hardware!”
“That’s OK, O. SO this is your software?” asked P.
“Yes. This basically is malicious software intended to do maximum damage and collect maximum data from the hostiles”
“But why did it get caught? This ship is a basic Queeninan LifePod177. This doesn’t boast of advanced protection… Your software really sucks if it can get caught by this ship. You have the source code for VIRUS?”
“Yes. VIRUS load it onto screen”
We could see the code on the screen. It was a messy code, written over 3 years by S and me. There were no comments, the logic was not straightforward. It was a programmer’s nightmare, basically.
“I see the problem. You are not registering or certifying at the hardware level. You see, in our ships, most of the OS routines are done at the hardware level itself, so even if switch-off, it only means the ship has gone in power-save mode, and the OS and all security and health monitoring mechanisms are still active. Wait I’ll change the coding here… like this…”
She started typing rapidly. I tried to follow her logic, the algorithm she was using to hack into her own ship. I followed for a while and then it became Greek to me. Maybe when I’m back in home with S, I’ll understand a bit better…
“Done!” she said.
“You know that I could potentially use VIRUS against the Queenians?”
“I want you to! It’s been boring, no worthy opponent. It’s no fun at all being the most powerful and don’t get to use your power at all…”
“Oh… Right. I can’t believe that you are a programmer too!”
“I am! There are a lot of other common things between us, O”
“Like what?”
“Well, you are a dictator…”
“No way, you are a dictator too?”
“Yes”
“Which planet?”
“It’s not a planet…”
“A satellite?”
“No. not that either…”
“A galaxy!?”
“No…”
I looked at her for the longest time. She couldn’t be, she really couldn’t be her…
“Uni… Universe?”
She nodded her head.
“You’re the Queen?”
“Don’t I look like a Queen?”
“You look like a Princess!”
“That’s why I told you that I was P”
“But you are Q”
“Yes I am…Are you mad at me for hiding my identity?”
“No, no. if you had told me I wouldn’t have, I wouldn’t have… kissed you…”
“Really?”
“I don’t know… Perhaps I would have, I’m so madly in love with you”
“You love me?”
“I don’t know, I’m confused… Oh God what’s going on!”
“Confused? Why? You were the one who tried to kiss me first! And now you are confused? Is the cause for your confusion E?”
“No, no. Oh my God, I totally forgot about her!”
“That’s good. Good answer O.” she was giggling again.
“I have been kissing the Queen… You are supposed to be the villain…”
“Villain?”
“Yes. If you found out that I used your KO commands to rule the world, you are supposed to annihilate us!”
“You forgot to mention about S233”
“You know about that too?”
“I know everything about you… about what all you have done and frankly speaking I’m really excited!”
“Excited? Aren’t you worried about S233?”
“Worried? No! Let me show you, eat one S233…”
The bottle I always carried, she probably knew about that too. I ate one S233.
“Three minutes.” I said
“I know…now beg me to make E really fat, I mean really fat…”
“Please Queen, I beg you to make E very fat!” I said it, even though I didn’t want to say it!
“Done, she’s fat now!”
“No, revert it back! Revert it back!”
“Why do you care? You love me remember, and love is an exclusive activity remember?”
“She’s my friend! I don’t want her to be fat!”
“You mean to say you don’t like people who are fat?”
“I didn’t mean that. She’s very figure conscience, she’ll come crying to me when I get home and I still have to break up with her, because of you know… she’ll think that I’m breaking up with her because she became fat…”
“You know you are very interesting… After you break up with her, what will you do?”
“Umm, ask you out on a date… ” I was blushing. God knows why I was blushing, I had already kissed her, several times!
“What will you do if I refuse?”
“I’ll make a Victory symbol, V, with my fingers, point that V to your eyes and then make your eyes look at mine… I know you’ll say yes to my eyes…”
“Let’s say, I somehow resist that great temptation, and say, no, again?”
“Well somebody’s playing hard ball! Well, I’ll charm you with my romantic ways…”
“Like you did with E?”
“What?”
“Relax! I’m just messing with you…” she was giggling callously.
“You are an evil Queen!”
“Seriously, I would still say no to you…”
“Why?”
“Because I’m millions of years old and you are just 18… ”
“You look 16!”
“Do I now? How sweet of you!”
“I said, you really look 16!”
“I know that! I like this look, that’s why I look like this”
“You can choose how you look?”
“Isn’t that convenient for a girl aged several million years?”
“Yes, it is. E’s grandma will be thrilled to hear about this… But age is just a number for love…”
“Love? You might be in love with me… and I, on the other hand, don’t really know what love means…”
“What?”
“I have to consider my career as a Queen”
“But you are the Queen of the whole Universe! You can do anything!”
“Yes, I was just messing with you with the career thing”
“Tell me the truth, P”
“OK, OK. Considering all the horrible things I’m about to do to you, the least I can do is being honest with you… You are not macho enough; I need a man who can take care of me… I need security”
“P! You are the Queen of the whole Universe, for God sake. You are the most powerful person in this Universe…”
“Not powerful enough to cross the barrier…”
“What?”
“You know the barrier? In Rock’s memories? The King and Deltamite were talking about it?”
“How do you know about Rock?”
“I saw all your memories when you were sleeping…”
“You looked into my memories?”
“Yes, I probably know you better than you know yourself…So I’m going to do what’s best for me, for you and the whole world…”
“You will do what’s best for everybody?”
“Yes, I will give you elixir, you have to drink it, so that you’ll survive long enough to date me for a while…”
“Oh, that sounds interesting….”
“I’ll make you powerful enough to go through the barrier…”
“Less interesting…”
“You will go there, and find out what I want you to find out”
“What is this Barrier?”
“It’s something my dad, the former King, who you saw in Rock’s memories, was obsessed with, and crossed over it.”
“Former King?”
“Well we haven’t heard from him in a long time…”
“He crossed the Barrier and no one has heard from him?”
“No.”
“And he was powerful like you?”
“No. He was a brave Queenian, but he wasn’t as powerful as me…”
“Was there anybody in past or anybody in the present as powerful as you?”
“No”
“Are you God?”
“I told you, I have a dad!”
“Oh”
“If you can cross the barrier, find my dad and bring him back to me, I’ll definitely consider dating you.”
“If I do all that, you’ll just consider dating me?”
“I mean, when a man goes through difficult times he changes right? If you can remain the way you are now, I’ll date you, I promise”
“You know I don’t trust that promise. You are a fellow dictator after all!”
“So are you going across the barrier?”
“Will you be controlling me if I go across the barrier?”
“Controlling across barrier is slow because the data rate of KO commands is very less across the barrier. You’ll have to fend for yourself…”
“And why would I agree to do something that even your dad couldn’t do?”
“To date me”
“Oh… which you will consider later…”
“You’re finally getting the big picture… So you want the elixir?”
“Yes, I guess…”
“Oh, but you have to make the ultimate sacrifice to get this elixir…”
“Is the elixir in this ship?”
“Yes”
“You can just give me the bottle?”
“Yes”
“Then why the hell should I sacrifice?!”
“I mean, they’re the rules!”
“You’re making this sacrifice thing up to get something from me?”
“Maybe”
“What should I sacrifice? Do I love the thing I have to sacrifice?”
“I guess that is why they call it sacrifice”
“What is it?”
“You have to let go of Earth”
“What? Like leave it?”
“Not exactly. I’m going to kill, like everybody, on the planet mercilessly, and you have to let go of your love of your planet and its people, you know. I mean it’s no use feeling miserable and getting depressed about some dead people right? I mean, when compared to being strong enough to cross the barrier, bring my dad back and date me!”
“You’re joking right?”
“No, I’m not joking”
“Have you gone mad?”
“No, I have not. And I don’t think I like your tone!”
“You are going to kill all humans and I should just watch my tone? To make it more likeable? To you?!”
“As usual you are over-reacting…”
“Boy have I heard that line before. Look P, I am not over-reacting! It’s you who are over-reacting? I mean why to kill everybody on Earth? For what reason?”
“For your sacrifice. For elixir. Remember?”
“You said you were making the sacrifice thing up!”
“Did I now? So you want the truth?”
“I want to know why, now!”
“For some paper work, some beaurocratic reasons”
“What?”
“Listen O, you guys are not the first species to find a drug similar to S233, OK? Even though a drug like S233 is no hindrance for me, but it’s a hindrance to normal Queenians who rely on machines to send KO commands and get responses. So to discourage any further research in the direction of S233 by the same species or other species we just wipe out the whole species who had committed the crime to eat S233 or research it further… The wiping out of the species also serves as a warning to other species who might consider researching on the lines of S233… You get it?”
“But we did not know! If I had known this before, I wouldn’t have started research on this at all! It’s my fault, I am the one who misused these commands, and I was the one who ordered the projects which resulted in S233, I should be punished, not Earth!”
“Your planet’s growth was irregular compared to other planets. You did not find out about aliens, who frequently visited, in fact, or about the United Space Committee (USC), but you found out that somebody is controlling you and you guys took action to free yourselves. The discovery of the KO commands by you guys maybe unfortunate, but rules are rules… Humans have to die… But you are special, O! You may not be special for Universe or USC, but you are special to me and I’m going to keep you alive. Sure, you’ll be mad at me for killing your loved ones, but you’ll come around in a few hundred years when you get lonely…”
“My foolish mistake has caused everybody on Earth their lives, I have single handedly killed my species, I mean, who could have predicted that this is how all humans would go…”
I couldn’t even cry, like I normally did.
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