An Encounter with Aliens

Chapter 1: The missing element

It had been a hectic day for Sai Srikar Valmiki. He had to cover the news of the unfortunate demise of the acting legend Devendra Patil. The work had to be done and handed to Mr. K. S. Murthy by morning. It was already 5:00 pm, but Sai was not worried, as he had already written a lot of it. And he had just collected more information about the article and was going home.

As he reached home, he realized that it was night. He finished his dinner and sat down to write what he had collected. After finishing he went through the plot once again and felt something was missing. It felt like a curry without salt, a toast without butter and an omelet without egg. 

He did not understand what was missing, he tried for 1 hour to find what it was, he went through the story again and again. But all this was in vain. 

After about half an hour he gave up, and thought about sleeping. But the missing element of the article would not let him sleep (probably because he needed everything to be perfect). He got frustrated. 

He took a break for an hour. After that he read the article once again.

He was so furious and felt really stupid when he found that the thing that was missing in his article was the heading. He gave an appropriate heading, read the article once again, sent it to his boss and went to sleep forcefully, and this time a lot satisfied. 

He woke up with a severe headache. He tied a cloth around his head but it was of no help. He groaned in agony. He searched all his house for almotriptan, a headache tablet which is very effective. He found it in a secluded corner of the house. He gulped it with a glass of water and waited for the tablet to do its magic, but the drug was useless too. 

Suddenly, he remembered the dream that disturbed his sleep last night and thought it could be the reason for his headache. The more he tried to remember his dream, the more the pain grew. But Srikar was a very stubborn fellow. He stopped at nothing and pushed his ability to remember to its limits. 

Finally, his efforts paid off. He remembered his dream (and magically his headache started reducing). It was like a story in some science fiction novel. Though Srikar was not sure if his sci fi novel-like dream was true, because for him, it felt so real. 

Chapter 2: The Dream

Srikar’s cosy sleep was disturbed by something that fell on his head. He opened his eyes to see what had hit him, but for his amazement, instead of seeing his dark room, he saw a beaming light. He tried to block the light with his hand, but he couldn’t. He closed his eyes and slowly opened them again. This time everything made itself clear. He was in some kind of a laboratory. He was not the only one present in that room, he could see 4 more people. All of them were lying on beds which were leaned up against the metallic-wall, their hands and legs tied with thick iron strips. They were all struggling. Srikar looked down at his own posture. He was also in the same position. He tried to move, but it was of no use, the iron stripes were tightly placed. 

Suddenly Srikar heard the sound of a moving metal, and in the farther corner of the room a door opened. A dark figure walked in, obstructing the light.  When moved a little sideward the light brightened the room once again and it came to colour. To everyone’s horror, it was not terrestrial, it was extra-terrestrial. It was fat, tall and slimy. It had all the features of a human, but it was the colour of crimson. It had a pointy nose, ears like a cat and eyes like a reptile. 

It took an instrument from a table near the door, and walked towards the nearest restrained human. The victim was a Brazilian. The alien held the instrument high, near his eyes and said in a low, dusty voice, “I am doing a research report on humans. So sorry that I locked all of you here, but you will be released in some time. Sorry for the inconvenience. And oh, my name is Kroto-roto-Dafisho”

“You…s…speak Portuguese?” The girl asked. She was clearly afraid. Srikar was confused, he clearly heard the alien and the girl speak English.

“Of course not. This ship has an inbuilt auto-translator, it can translate any language in the universe,``explained the alien.

Sai Srikar Valmiki felt him to be a friendly one. He did look harmful but his words felt genuine.

“Oh…okay but leave me! I want to go home, mama help me! Ok all this is a bad dream; I will close my eyes and it will end…” The girl said this and closed her eyes. She did not open them again.

Everyone, including Sai, freaked out. 

“WHAT DID YOU DO TO HER?” shouted an American man.

“IS SHE DEAD?” Cried a Russian damsel.

“YOU MURDERER!” Bellowed Srikar.

“Shut up men, and women! Humans are noisy! I did nothing to her! She fainted out of fear! Dumbasses,” The alien calmed everyone down.

He moved forward to the fainted Brazilian. He took the instrument and poked the girl in the head and the machine started revealing information, “Humans are destructive…but are harmless without technology.”

The alien conducted this procedure with every human present in the room and, these results showed-up:

“Prone to diseases!”

“Fear death!”

“Are dumb, selfish and egoistic!”

“They try to repair damages but rarely try to prevent them!”

The alien recorded all this in a weird notebook and stored it in a box on the table.

“Thank you for your time, people. I hope you are scared, but do not worry you will remember all this to be a dream when you wake up. If you have any doubts you may ask me,” he whispered in a sweet tone.

“You won’t know about humans just by recording 5 statements. You could write many books about our kind.” Said the American. Everyone agreed.

“You are the 1.3 billionth batch I’ve surveyed, that makes 6.5 billion people and 6.5 billion statements, which should make ten full length books at least. I agree that I have to learn a lot more, but yeah, I think this is enough for my survey.”

“But what will you do with all the information?” asked a Chinese man.

“Duh! I will submit it to my school!”

“Who are you aliens, anyway?” asked Srikar.

“Ah I was waiting for that question! I am a ‘Homo Felis Reptilia’- “Sai knew that this was a word that the translator created, for it made no sense. “-from planet ‘Khostalita’, which is far from earth. We have been watching you humans for years now.”

“Why? Are you going to invade us?” asked the Russian, who was now a little terrified.

“No, if we wanted to invade you, we would’ve done that years ago, you are weaker than us- “The Russian groaned at the last words of the alien. “-you are living on our old planet for thousands of years now and we just wanted to check what you were doing on Earth.”

“What do you mean?” asked the Chinese.

“We were the first residents of earth, but we damaged it so badly that we had to leave and find a new home for ourselves. And we did so successfully, but we miss Earth terribly. One of our capable space-roamers discovered years ago that life has started back on earth. From then on, we are observing you closely.”

“Oh…kay,” Everyone sighed.

“But why didn't I hear any sightings of aliens if you say that you surveyed 6.5 billion people?” Srikar asked. Everyone sounded an approval.

“I already told you that all this will seem to you as if this is a dream when you wake up…” the alien explained, a little exhausted now. “Okay, enough of the questions, now it is time for you to go back to earth!”

After saying this, the alien pressed a button on the table and a sharp needle pricked Srikar on his neck. Before he could react, he fell asleep and that was his last memory of the dream.

After waking up, you all know what Sai did. Sai could have gone mad on the finding facts of the alien episode, but he chooses to accept it to be a dream, so did not bother.

He was late to the office that day, his boss appreciated him for the article he wrote. 

After a few weeks, Srikar wrote his dream and got it published in a national magazine. It got praise from critics and audiences alike. Many people could actually relate to it closely, thus the story earned him "The best science fiction novel 2019" award. He earned fame and name because of the story and is now writing its sequel.

THE END