Page 186 - Musings 2020

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Arthur, from 2059

Surya Lehar Yechuri 2016A2PS0782P

“Close the door!”, shouted Vanessa. “It’s too hot and there’s no power. At least, we’ll have a
bit of air flowing into the house”, responded Martin. Vanessa sighed, got up from the couch,
and went to close the door. After closing it, she said, “there are too many bugs outside. The
air that flows into the house is hot anyway.” Martin made a dissatisfied expression with his
face but didn’t say anything because he was tired. Martin had just come back home from his
office. His office usually gets over in the evening but he had to come back early because
there was a city-wide blackout. Vanessa was a stay-at-home wife and mother. A huge chunk
of her day was dedicated to watching TV. Due to the blackout, Vanessa couldn’t watch her
daily shows and she wasn’t happy. Martin’s work was also being hindered by the blackout.
What they didn’t know was that the blackout was caused by their own daughter, Sherry.

Sherry was a high school girl with a great love for Physics and Robotics. She was always
fascinated by the fact that alternate dimensions (or parallel worlds) and time travel could
exist. Sherry’s friend, Nick, also shared similar interests. Every day, after school, both Nick
and Sherry went to the rooftop and tried to create a portal to another world. Their efforts were
always in vain. But today, they finally succeeded. As soon as the portal was opened, both
Nick and Sherry were sucked in. “Nick! Wake up! Are you okay!?” asked a concerned
Sherry. Nick slowly woke up and nodded. “Did it work?”, he asked. “I don’t know but it
looks like we’re not on the rooftop anymore”, she said. They looked around but they couldn’t
see anything familiar. “This isn’t our town”, said Sherry. “Look! There’s the river that flows
on the edge of our town”, said Nick pointing at the river. The river was definitely the one on
the edge of their town, but their town was nowhere to be seen!

“Where do you think we are?”, asked Nick. “I think that we’ve traveled back in time!”,
exclaimed Sherry with a huge smile on her face. They both realized that their experiment was
a success. They were in an alternate dimension with a different timeline. “We should go and
look around to see which era we are in”, said Sherry. Nick nodded. After looking around
quite a bit, they found a small shop in a familiar part of town. In their world, it was the area
where Sherry resided. In the shop, they saw a newspaper with the date: “17.02.1959”. Sherry
said, “look, we’ve traveled 60 years back in time!”. Nick seemed a bit scared. “Why don’t
you look happy?”, she asked. “We’ve traveled to a time with no proper technology and I
didn’t see our portal anywhere. How will we go back?”, he responded. Sherry’s smile
disappeared. The excitement that was caused due to the success of their experiment vanished
because she was scared now.

“I didn’t even think about that”, said a petrified Sherry. “Our best chance of going back is
finding our portal!”, said Nick. Sherry nodded. The sun had already set and it was getting a
bit dark. “It’d be hard to search during the night”, said Sherry. Let’s start searching for the
first thing after sunrise. Nick said, “Okay. But I feel hungry now”. They both requested the
shopkeeper for a bit of food after a bit of explanation. The shopkeeper generously offered
them dinner and bed at his home because they were children with nowhere to go. “We’ll be
eternally grateful”, said Sherry. They all went to his home, ate dinner, and slept. As soon as

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