“Houston, initiate return procedure”.
“I repeat; Houston, initiate return procedure”.
There was no answer.
He called into his radio again and again for next one hour, but there was no answer.
Housed alone in his space-ship a billion miles away from earth, the astronaut decided to take things in hand. Upon getting no response from Houston, he handed over the command of his spaceship to the master computer, which initiated automatic return procedures and put the spaceship into trajectory back to earth. In a few days, he will be back to earth. Hope he establishes contact with Houston once he is near.
Little did he know about what had happened on earth when he was away. Travelling in deep space, his ship had got caught into a worm-hole and landed into a space where time and space merge into one another. Inside the wormhole, the time loses its meaning and the space dominates. Finally, when his ship came out of the wormhole, he had landed into a point of time trillions of years ahead in future. Now the earth was trillions of years older than when he had left it. But he himself was his old usual self, a twenty-eight year old man.
A wormhole in space
But meanwhile, something cruel had happened to earth. During the first million years after he had left, the earth was struck by a big comet wiping-off all forms of life on it. Every living being, including humans, vegetation, and even microbes, had perished in the impact and the radiation storm that followed. The only things left were just the elements of nature like water, air and matter.
Due to the effect of impact, the earth now spinned faster on its axis, one rotation in one minute. And that too in reverse direction. So now the Sun rose from west and the day and night were was just a minute long. The earth also revolved around the Sun much faster, one revolution in 100 hours instead of one year. So now, an year on earth, comprising of all seasons-summer, autumn, and winter, got completed in a span of just 100 hours.
By sheer luck, the astronaut had survived the extinction. Just because he was away from earth, and because he, due to some error in his space-travel, had traveled into future trillions of years away.
The earth was visible now. The astronaut again tried to contact Houston. Still, no answer.
Finally, his well programmed computers landed the spaceship on a clear patch of land on earth.
The doors opened and he came out. The world before him had changed; or there wasn’t any world at all. No signs of civilization, no trees, no people, just vast expanses of land and water, and that too looking different.
He rushed back to his spaceship. He glanced on the computer screen. The computer had rightly captured the time on earth………. year 2000000014. His worst nightmares had come true. He had got caught in some wormhole and traveled a trillion years into future. And by the time he returned, the world had died.
He had no incentive to live. The universe had played a cruel joke on him; it had let him survive, while the world died.
“No point in living alone,” he thought. With no one to talk to, no one to love and no one to live for. An overdose of painkiller morphine injection available in his ship will solve the problem.
Another alternative would be to flee. His spaceship and supercomputer installed in it were capable of launching him back into space, where he would wander through galaxies, hoping to find a planet where life exists, and hope that he can live again in the company of life.
But he said to himself, “No! This earth has been my home. I can not desert it. I will live here and die here”.
The powdered form of high energy food available in the spaceship contained billions of giga-calories of energy, enough for him to survive another hundred years.
Then a thought occurred to him. “The powers of universe have gifted me life. Now I must do the same to the earth. I must gift life to earth. I must restart life on earth,” he said to himself.
But he was only one of his species. He could not reproduce without a female of his species. He was alive, but his body was useless. Without a female, his body was useless for reproducing. Then how could he sow the seeds of life on earth again?
Then an idea flashed into his mind. His body is not useless. His body contains microbes and bacteria everywhere inside, in his blood-stream, in his intestines, in his stomach, and even in his saliva.
Microbes inside human body
These microbes, who had survived extinction along with him, held the key to starting life on earth again.
He was excited. His spaceship had an advance laboratory where he could collect the microbes taken out from his body and nourish them in test-tubes, before releasing them into the natural habitat of earth. The microbes will multiply, reproduce, and finally undergo evolution. Over time, these microbes will evolve into multicellular organisms, then into simple species like worms, into complex species like fish, birds, dinosaurs, and may be one day into human beings.
“That’s how life had started on earth, and that’s how it will start again’” he resolved.
Working enthusiastically over the next few days, he collected samples from his body fluids like saliva, bloodstream and urine containing different types of microbes, and preserved in test-tubes. He put the microbes in fluids rich in nourishment, rich in carbon, hydrogen and amino acids. Then he spread the nourished microbes in as many places as he could, in water in the lake, in soil, in the sea.
A few months passed. He was standing by the side of a lake where he had infused a dose of microbes. Suddenly he noticed something. There was something greenish floating on the surface.
“Algae,” he shouted in surprise and joy. The microbes had evolved into algae, a superior form of life. Life was back on earth.
Algae
He was surprised how the evolution had taken place so fast? Within a few months. Then he realized that the changes in earth’s speed of rotation had changed the rules of evolution, making it much faster than it used to be. Now the evolution of species would be much faster, may be a million times faster than earlier.
Soon the algae would evolve into more complex species. Soon grass will grow, tress will cover the earth, birds will fly, primates will walk on their legs, and soon he may see images of himself walking on earth, hunting, eating, reproducing, venturing into and spreading over newer and newer continents.
Evolution of species
And with the extra-ordinary pace of evolution that was expected, he might be able see a lot of this happening over his own lifetime, another 50 or 60 years.
He threw away the morphine injections. He now had a purpose for his life. He wanted to live. To see life, whose seeds he had sown, grow on earth again.
He had played Adam even without an eve. Life was back on earth.
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Another post on the same prompt is 'The Doomsday!'
Another post on the same prompt is 'The Doomsday!'
