The Adventures of Debacle Darwin

Read Chapter 1 here

Chapter 2: Wake up and smell the space junk

When Darwin was 2 years old, the world ended.

Nearly.

Earth, with its living billions visited the dark hole of oblivion, teetered on the edge, swayed back and forth, did a few takes and came back. While it was a turning point for earth itself, all it did was provide a few minutes of good drama for the rest of the universe. The solar system caught the action live. Mars would brag years later how he had the front row seating but would remain a little disappointed over sun charring his pop-corn. The rest of the universe caught the action ethereally, some several million light years before it even happened.

The event was the anticipated collision of a magnificent comet, perhaps lead astray by bad childhood, heading for a self-destructive kamikaze run towards earth. Kloe was a beautiful one, with flowing golden mane of dust and ice, long natural curves and a penchant for speed. But she had no qualms about dying, nor killing.

Earth trembled and stood petrified. The living billions on it panicked. Humans and their super-sized egos were left to invent what they were good at - something that would have a very large destructive power; something that would distract Kloe from french-kissing the Earth. They called it the super bomb and the best brains huddled together to create it, ably distracted and slowed down by bumbling bureaucrats, politicians, religious groups, comet-rights activists and news reporters.

The super bomb was built quickly; A sharp strobe of laser, that would smash the comet to smithereens. Earth waited with bated breath. The lions of savannah rose from their majestic sleep and wiped the stinking drool off their mouth; The Bengal tigers stopped running stood hand in hand with their poachers; The penguins in the arctic wished to climb onto a tall and majestic glacier to watch the spectacle but couldn't find one. It was the single largest spectacle the earth had witnessed and no one was going to miss it. It was so big that polar bears almost decided to come back from extinction just to watch it. What did they have to lose. It was massive for everyone. Well, almost everyone. The cockroaches didn't care much.They had seen it all when the dinosaurs had been annihilated

The whole world awaited while a bunch of mad scientists put together a contraption that hardly looked anything 'super'. Wires coming out here, large coils there, sparks flying around, it looked like something from the scrap yard. Global attention flustered the poor scientists. The lions began to shake their heads in disgust while the cockroaches sniggered silently. And just when it seemed like the humans would face the biggest embarrassment of their existence, the strobe lit up. A bright red beam shot up - there was some political wrangling over the color of the beam

but consensus was achieved in the end - hit the comet and blasted it to smithereens.

The earth breathed a sigh of relief but immediately choked in the dust and rock from the comet. As earth sputtered and coughed, the humans had a new task at hand - clean up all the comet junk floating around them.

And so, as Darwin grew up, the most popular job in town (earth, rather) was that of a garbage man - albeit in space.

(Next chapter Chapter 3 - May the space 'junkies' rest in peace)

The Adventures of Debacle Darwin

2070 AD

Sometime late in the year 2050 AD, human race entered its golden era. In 2070 AD, it was perhaps at its peak. Homo sapiens had reached a level of sentience that allowed them to flourish. The air was pure and the rivers clear. Food was plentiful. People didn’t wage wars. The gods and devils had gone to sleep and lived on in the pages of fantasy and Goth. The new symbols of worship were large and white; dome shaped monoliths that rose into the clear skies imposingly. Inside these modern mosques, atoms accelerated only to fatally end in a jihad in the heart of nuclei whose split gave birth to energy which in turn evolved and flowed like blood through the power veins of the sprawling metropolis. Sentient bots were faithful slaves who did everything from washing clothes to assembling machines, catering to driving, cleaning to teaching, banking to selling. They built more sentient bots.

Humans, then, were left pursuing art and pleasure. They pondered about science and cosmos. And from this great Darwinian mess, emerged some existential questions. Leave a man alone to his thoughts for some time, and a million questions would emerge. Many not worthy of a pursuit for an answer. But some were existential. Even less were profound. But questions all the same. And ever since the day man shed his simian ignominy and found new incredible uses for the opposable thumb, his questions needed answering - The law of human pursuit.

But man became lazy. Too lazy, to find his own answers. In every man’s laziness, though, lies an incredible business opportunity.

Chapter 1: “Answering questions since 2050”

Darwin was groggy and sleep deprived as he shuffled into the teleporter. His mood was nasty and his eyes bleary. He had spent the whole of last night tossing in his sleep pad, thinking about what he was going to say to the man he was meeting today. And by morning, he was nowhere close to a good speech than he was the night before. Muttering angrily under his breath, he started punching in the co-ordinates in his teleporter. The soft backlit keypad sang seductively under his touch.

"Please enter your charge code", a smooth digitized female voice insisted.

"fu**", Darwin muttered and quickly punched in the charge code that would capture the teleportation expense as the teleporter slowly vapourised….

**********

Darwin stood in line at Kuku's breakfast and cafe to get his morning fix of caffeine. The bot servicing his queue seemed to be especially slow in processing orders today.

"Common!", Darwin snarled,"get your fu**ing act together. Its just a fu**ing cup of coffee".

The other people around him shot him shocked and strange glances.

When his turn came, Darwin shot the bot an ugly snarl as he plucked his coffee from her hands and hurried back to the nearest teleporter. A portly woman beat him to it and tucked herself into it. Darwin stared, confused and angry. He wanted to strangle her.

"You should be taking a space ship, not a teleporter!", Darwin muttered under his breath as he found the next teleporter and clambered in and entered in his charge code.

He sighed deeply. The incredible smell of the coffee in his hand was slowly improving his mood already. Savoring the smell, he took a sip from his cup. Winced. Spit. He had forgotten sugar. As his face contorted into an ugly snarl the teleporter slowly vapourised…

*******

When he reached Frong Atomizers Inc., Darwin was pissed, nervous and sweating. He stood at the company's transfer portal holding his bitter coffee, waiting for his colleagues. At Frong, it was a busy day, as usual. All around him, bots dressed in smart business attire (a long white robe) walked from their teleporters to respective work stations. They made small whirring and clicking sounds as they walked. The sound grated on Darwin’s already frayed nerves and he grit his teeth to stop from strangling the nearest bot as she walked past him with a big smile on her face.

Incidentally, Frong Atomizers was the largest manufacturer of teleporters in the world and Darwin was a die hard Frong teleporter fan. Ever since he was a kid who played Need for Speed: Rapid Dematerialization in which he would always play with the Frong X Series, he was in love with those mean machines. The smooth curves, the shiny metallic colors. Even as he stood there, he couldn’t help but let some of his childhood nostalgia creep as he saw the teleporters materialize in rapid succession. It was like witnessing a rapid poof poof of a magician as the slick little machines appeared and disappeared in front of his eyes.

The mood seemed to be getting better as a new teleporter materialized close to where he was standing. It looked a little different. Although it was another Frong teleporter, it did not look like the other public teleporters. This one had a big bright logo saying NL on the top and Neo-Light Consulting written beneath it. And below that in slanted font were written “Answering questions since 2030”. Darwin’s furrowed brows relaxed just a wee bit as the doors parted and out emerged three people: a woman, a rather pretty one at that, and two men – one a young cheerful just-out-of-college kid and the other a fairly old grumpy looking man. The woman, although he knew her, always made Darwin’s heart race. The kid pissed him off. And the grumpy old man made him feel good about himself.

“Morning Darwin”, the woman smiled.

“Morning”, Darwin replied and quickly turned to the other two for a curt nod of the head

“Lets roll”

(Chapter 2: Wake up and smell the space junk ...to be continued...)