by Vu, Frank
He arrived at the observatory after twenty minutes of alternating bouts of upchucking, panicked sprinting, and stopping to more completely empty his stomach. Each time he was sure that this was definitely the last time and that he had spent all available stomach contents—and each time he was wrong. As he hung his forehead in the crook of his arm against the observatory wall, a group of his coworkers spotted him. Ugh, one of them he knew quite well. Mithun. This was going to be . . . awkward, but time was of the essence.
“Janqui! Are you well? Maybe you should return home?”
“No, no, Mithun, I’ve discovered something terrible! I need you to check my work to make sure I’m not wrong. Come with me!”
They ran past Dhruva, who sat cross-legged with his eyes closed and a small satchel in his lap. He was by a tree, just far enough away from the observatory to not be noticed by anyone in their frantic state.
Kairav, the observatory administrator, was just starting his morning. He was walking with bleary eyes when he noticed the Adept sitting outside the observatory. He had tried to talk to Adepts in the past, but they refused to communicate most of the time, even with hand gestures. They usually just sat around various places, calmly smiling at people, but he never saw more than one or two of them in the same place. Kairav had heard that they communicated with their minds, but that didn’t really seem possible. That had to just be a story to make them seem more spiritual or powerful. People were always crediting them with every good thing that happened, but he had his doubts. They were basically savages, meandering around the rainforest with minimum clothing. What could they possibly be doing to help anyone? He guessed that maybe they just grunted at each other when they needed to communicate.
That they were called “Adepts” seemed strange to Kairav. It also confused him greatly that people in positions of power always seemed to have one hanging around, like a personal spirit animal. He really needed to look into that more at some point.
Kairav noticed that the bag the Adept was carrying was very impressively crafted from some sort of animal skin, with intricate lettering and symbols he had never seen before, which set him wondering. That seemed to be the only material possession they ever had. What were the contents of that bag, twigs and bugs? He waved to the Adept as he walked past, and the Adept actually stood up and followed him, making Kairav’s eyes widen. Was that all it took? Wow, maybe people would think he was in a position of power if he had his own Adept following him around!
Deciding to allow this, Kairav busied his mind with what he had just witnessed: a group of observatory employees frantically yelling at each other and running inside. Nothing very exciting usually happened, so he decided that he and his new spirit animal were going to see what was going on. He could show him off a little and see what all the fuss was about.
Kairav and his new friend Dhruva walked into the looking room. They saw Janqui sitting at a large desk attached to the wall with papers strewn about. Another man sat in the corner, making his own scribbles. Kairav and Dhruva stood quietly for a moment, waiting for either man to notice them. Janqui stood, peered through the distance glass for a few moments, then consulted a few charts around his desk. He furiously scrawled some calculations, comparing them to another set he had nearby. Then Janqui leaned back in his chair and looked at the ceiling, sighing.
“All my calculations say the same thing. I don’t see any way around this, or any mistake I could have made. Do you?”
As the other man shook his head, Kairav saw his chance to interrupt.
“Janqui, what are you two so worked up about?”
They both turned around, startled. Janqui rose and walked towards the pair, while the other man turned back and continued his frantic calculations.
“I saw an incoming space rock headed towards us. It is far, far bigger than any other we’ve ever seen . . . I believe it will destroy us all!”
Janqui noticed the Adept standing with the administrator, and, despite the urgency of the situation, he paused, impressed. He didn’t usually see Adepts around anyone but the leaders of their society.
Kairav thought for a moment, frowning.
“That is a big claim,” he said. “What evidence do you have? When do you think this will happen?”
“We’ve been going over the calculations just now and we have both arrived at the same result. We think it will arrive in less than one moon.”
“What? What can we do?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know!”
They both looked at each other, silent for a moment. Their eyes turned to the man in the corner as he took the papers and threw them off the table. Mithun put his head down and quietly sobbed into his arms.
Nobody noticed Dhruva close his eyes just before the administrator spoke.
“Look, if this is true, we need to get underground and try to save as much information and as many resources as we can. And we need to figure out who actually gets to go underground since we can’t fit everyone. I need to start letting people know. Janqui, come with us so you can explain all the details. Bring your papers and let’s go!”
* * *
As it turned out, the asteroid arrived a bit sooner than everyone expected. Luckily, a certain Adept with a small bagful of mushrooms happened to be underground with some of the Verdant engineers and technologists at the time. As the asteroid rained down fire and death, Dhruva couldn’t help but hum the tune to “It’s the End of The World as We Know It.” And he felt fine.
When the meteor hit the atmosphere at over one hundred thousand miles per hour, it broke apart into dozens of fragments and released electromagnetic radiation, including both light and very low-frequency radio waves. Those fragments pummeled the polar ice caps and much of North and South America, wiping out entire species and changing climates for thousands of years. Many years later, scientists would demonstrate that these waves, which travel just as fast as light, could cause objects to vibrate in a way that produced sound. But the people on the ground then only heard ethereal crackling and popping sounds all around them before the impacts that sealed them underground for years.
Dhruva and his people would be responsible for Gobekli Tepe and many more advanced stone monuments that would seem just a bit too clever to future civilizations. The hunter-gatherers that lived in that area would suddenly develop new cutting-edge agriculture, allowing the number of humans alive on the planet to grow. Plato would later mention that the lost city of Atlantis started in a distant point across the Atlantic Ocean and that it possessed advanced agriculture and architecture. Plato would theorize that, without this culture, mankind would have remained in its infancy.
Dhruva’s descendants would also travel the Earth, helping other civilizations erect impressive monuments that would be hard to ignore. In Mexico and Guatemala, people would build temples to mushroom gods and carve “mushroom stones.” In China’s Chin Dynasty, Chang Hua would describe the mushrooms in his aptly named “Record of the Investigation of Things.” In the 13th century, the Vienna Codex would depict eight of the Mixtec gods ritually using mushrooms. In the 16th century, the Aztecs would build a statue depicting the Prince of Flowers decorated with psychedelic mushrooms. In 1914, Science magazine would publish a first-hand report of an intentional ingestion of mushrooms containing psilocybin. In July of 2006, researchers would make the incredible new discovery that psilocybin could induce mystical experiences.
And, as Dhruva and his descendants traveled, one of them would take a lonely walk with a little bag. Later, strange-looking mushrooms would grow in that area. Those mushrooms would end up forming the basis for many religious and political systems that further spurred humanity’s evolution forward. And, one day, a man named Frank would ingest some of that same mental flora that Dhruva saved from extinction, allowing the two of them to communicate.
ESCAPE
“Some cause happiness wherever they go; others whenever they go.”—Oscar Wilde
2065 AD
Roberto leaned back in his c
hair and looked up at the ceiling, his plump body straining the government purchased chair to the limits of its budget constrained design.
“Yes, Mr. President. I understand. If I may though—I see. Very well.”
Roberto tapped his wrist to end the conversation in his ear implants, looked at his display screen and sighed, his face a mask of dejection. Deciding there was nothing he could do, he tapped his authorization code on his wrist and derisively mumbled, “Accept.” He stood as the document on the screen was overlaid with his signature and then flew towards the corner of the display. Walking towards his window and looking down on the common area, he ruminated over how unusual this situation was.
He had been managing the prison for over thirty years. He had become accustomed to the police, feds, governments, and other characters trying to spring people that were important, but this one was quite different. Usually, if someone was going to get released, the governor would call. Today he had talked with the president of the United States and had been sent an impressive amount of authorizations and releases, along with a presidential pardon, which was a first for him. This whack job he was about to release was a damn serial killer, for Christ’s sake! Why the hell did they even bother transporting him from Japan to the US if they were just going to let him go? Somehow this murderous bastard was important to the country and was going to do great things, or so they said. For all Roberto knew, they were going to set this guy loose in some other terrorist-filled country so he could do his killing elsewhere. Roberto looked down at Sanaka sitting on his own in the courtyard. Even the other inmates stayed away from him.
* * *
As Sanaka sat looking around the courtyard, he fumed over actually being in prison. It was still hard to believe that they had caught him and seemed to know so much about what he was doing. He had been careful, very careful, so he didn’t see how it was possible. He had killed dozens of people over decades, so how they had caught up with him now, he had no idea. At least the other inmates left him alone. They had all heard stories about what he had done and were in awe of the etherbots he used, seeing them as some form of black magic. These inmates were all terrified that he could somehow employ them here when he wanted to, the superstitious fools. Most of the inmates were genetically modified due to the recent development of quantum medicines that could drastically change the way people looked. Quantum computers could process an almost infinite amount of gene combinations and come up with drugs that had never been conceived of before. These drugs accurately targeted the precise genes they needed to. Most of the prisoners here hardly looked like humans because they had so much muscle mass on them. Sanaka knew that one day they would discover he had no power in this place, and they would start using that muscle against him, so he kept to himself and talked to nobody, scheming and planning so that he could eventually escape this boring hellscape of fear and tedium. The prison had deactivated his wrist interface upon arrest, of course. If he could somehow reactivate it, he could probably find a way to walk right out of the prison among all these technologically illiterate simpletons. But the prison guards were not in the habit of leaving the proper tools lying around.
Sanaka figured he had years of waiting and listlessness ahead of him, followed by a very boring death viewed by dreary administrative types who pretended not to enjoy the murder process. He could show them a few things that would spice up the process, not that they would appreciate it. As he sighed again and looked up, he noticed a prison guard walking towards him, a look of fear crinkled in the space between his eyes. Another superstitious fool. Did anyone actually understand how technology worked these days?
The guard stopped a few feet away from him and said, “Boss wants to see you. Follow me.”
The guard waited for him to get up. Sanaka slowly rose and stretched, locking eye contact with the guard just to watch him squirm. The guard avoided his gaze and turned to walk away. Sanaka followed and could see everyone in the courtyard pretending not to look at him. He made a thrusting motion with his hips as he followed the guard and saw a few prisoners trying to hide their laughter. Good. Keep them laughing at everyone but me.
The guard led him through multiple turns and locked gates to an area Sanaka had never been before. Were they going to accelerate his trial or just kill him and get it over with? The guard turned into what looked like a meeting room. Tapping a pattern on his wrist, the guard opened a small refrigerator that Sanaka hadn’t noticed was there. Interesting.
“Would you like something to drink?” the guard inquired.
“What?”
“Drink. Would you like something to drink?”
Sanaka didn’t know what game they were playing, but he didn’t want to play by their rules.
“No, thank you,” he replied. And then, just for fun, he added, “You may go.”
The guard turned around sheepishly and walked out. Bizarre. Was he dreaming? He didn’t think so. Roberto, the warden, stood outside the door and nodded to the guard as he passed. The warden then entered the room to sit across from Sanaka.
“Well, I don’t know why, but you’re being released.”
Sanaka’s head swirled with emotion, but he didn’t show any of it.
“Of course,” Sanaka intoned.
“You have been granted a conditional pardon and will leave on a work release program for the government. If you perform your duties in good faith, you will be released.” Roberto continued. He raised his eyebrows hopefully. “Any idea what type of work you will be doing?”
Sanaka had to assume he wasn’t going to be breaking rocks since his life’s work was well known, especially to the government.
“Sorry, that’s classified.”
Sanaka wasn’t sure, but he had a vague suspicion his little projects were about to become government sponsored. Life was about to get very interesting.
VUCIANISM
“Life is a tragedy when seen in close-up, but a comedy in long-shot.”—Charlie Chaplin
After Roberto left Sanaka, another guard entered the room and sat away from Sanaka, ignoring him. Sanaka was lost in his own thoughts until he heard an unexpected female voice from that corner of the room.
“I’m coming to you live from Central Park where a large demonstration is taking place.”
Sanaka shot an annoyed glance at the guard to his right, who was playing a citizen reporter’s live take on current events out loud instead of in his ear implants. A nanocam swarm around the reporter transmitted the image, which displayed the reporter in a small 3D bubble in front of the guard.
“Many people are unhappy with the UN’s handling of the asteroid issue, and some of them are demonstrating here today. Violent and petty crime is up in almost all areas. Law and order are starting to break down. Many families no longer feel safe in their homes and are demanding action. Now a new religion has formed around a work of fiction written more than fifty years ago. People are calling this new religion Vucianism.”
Sanaka couldn’t care less about this report or the protest; these whining simpletons were not going to affect the situation at all—never had, never would. Although, if the UN was wise enough to get him involved, he was quite sure he could turn things around. They had better do it quickly, though. Marriages were very unlikely to last these days—people did whatever they wanted whenever they wanted, and roving gangs of hoodlums were being hunted by UN drones. The world was starting to be a very chaotic place indeed.
“Adherents of Vucianism apparently believe that a man named Frank Vu, the original discoverer of the asteroid, will save them. At this point, it is unclear if they believe that literally or figuratively.”
Vu. That name certainly rang a bell. Sanaka walked over to the guard and looked over his shoulder, suddenly interested in the report. The guard nodded to Sanaka and kept the report playing.
“Frank Vu released a science fiction novel about the apocalypse shortly after discovering the asteroid and disappearing from modern society. At the time, many scientists expressed do
ubts about the asteroid’s potential for impact with the Earth, saying it wasn’t possible, but, as the years passed, some predicted that it would eventually impact the Earth many years in the future. And now that future is in just a few months. Some reports indicate that, shortly after the story was published, Frank Vu traveled to Tibet and has been a Buddhist monk for decades, while other reports indicate he has been traveling the world. This same Frank Vu is now believed to be in the United States in the custody of UN authorities. Thus far the UN has denied this, saying that they don’t get involved in religious matters.”
Sanaka’s mind churned with the possibilities. Was the old monk Vu the same as Frank Vu? Sanaka assumed Vu had always been a Tibetan monk, but apparently he was an American. He was in bad shape when Sanaka met him fifty years after the discovery of the asteroid, so Vu must have been more than thirty or forty years old back when the asteroid was discovered. Vu had so much sun exposure and was so wrinkled that Sanaka had just assumed he was from Tibet. If this guy was in UN custody, and they now were releasing Sanaka, then perhaps their paths would cross again. The work would continue!
“The story was not popular in its day, as most people expected to see a nonfiction account of how the asteroid was discovered. Instead, the story mostly appeared to be science fiction, since it describes past and future civilizations communicating through time. Parts of it are now seen as being accurate portrayals of what the world is currently going through. One particular character in the story, a man named Sanaka Ahsan, was recently found to be kidnapping and experimenting on multiple victims, including Frank Vu himself, who is now in his nineties. UN authorities rescued Vu and arrested Sanaka, which is why it is believed that the UN knows more than they are letting on. The novel is now the number one download in the world, having been read by billions.”
