Pursuit

Part 4 - Evolution

We compromised on the safety of the Trapitides again. Yes, we were doing a favor letting them live on Earth. But we needed to provide them some amount of safety. You don't tell your guests to live on the north pole and let them die. Humans have been at war against each other since our evolution and this is a different species we're talking about.

We had taken the decision to let the Trapitides live on Earth, but some groups weren't happy with them. There were ones who believed they were a threat to humanity's future. There were ones who believed God created this planet for Humans, and outsiders polluted the soil of our home. There were ones who predicted that over time, with the increase in the population of both species and with a lack of resources on Earth to survive, the Trapitides might try to kill humans. And, of course, there were terrorists who wanted to spread fear. We never found out who was behind the bombing. Col was dead, and so were sixteen other young Trapitides. We knew this was not intentional, at least not from the governments. We tried to explain it to Gil, but he wouldn't understand. Perhaps he was scared. It was expected. He demanded that there should be no physical contact between the two species unless communicated in advance and agreed upon by both parties. After some discussion, we agreed to allot one high inclination geosynchronous satellite for communication.

Gil also demanded surveillance over the airspace of the Arctic. Firstly, it is not easy to get twenty-four-hour surveillance over the poles. There cannot be a geostationary satellite in the polar regions. Even if there could be, geostationary orbits are too far from the Earth's surface, about thirty-six thousand kilometers, for clear imagery. Secondly, no government would want to spend their space mission budgets on a dedicated satellite for the Trapitides. We offered them to use the footage from the satellite we were using to monitor their activity. It was a polar satellite on a highly elliptical orbit, with its perigee (closest point to Earth) on the Arctic. This satellite could monitor the arctic for about 400 minutes in its 1100-minute orbital period. In fact, the terrorist who attacked Col used this 700-minute window between surveillance periods to stay hidden from NASA. It was a compromise, but Gil accepted it. And that was the biggest mistake we made.

For the next thirty-seven years, things were surprisingly normal. There was minimal communication between the two species and very little physical interaction. Gil only traveled to America twice and barely interacted. NASA had sent teams for inspection of the colony six times, once every five years. They grew rapidly. Population wise as well as in science. There were hundreads of Trapitides. The Colony became advanced. They started building machines to do work that the Trapitides did manually earlier. Machines that could build houses, vehicles, and even other machines. They built machines that could produce bricks from ice and build structures. Their houses were basically igloos but on a whole new level. They could control the temperature of each part of the house so that the igloo would never deform due to temperature fluctuations. They built bigger and heavier vehicles. Vehicles that could carry tens of Trapitides in one go. Vehicles that could carry other vehicles.

Communication systems within the colony had become stronger too. The problem with not being able to have geostationary satellites on the poles is that it is not possible to have satellite communication within the poles. The Trapitides developed their own communication systems. The poles were mostly water with ice floating over parts of it. They used this to their advantage. They used the conductivity of water to transmit signals. They would insert large "reverse antennas" into the water and pass digital signals through them. Anyone who needed to receive the signals would just need to insert another reverse antenna into the water and they could read the signals. The problem with this method is that you can't use radio waves because they don't propagate in water. They used pulsed electric signals that were encrypted by the transmitter. Only a secret key in the receiver could decode the information. 

The Trapitides had extremely good vision. They could see things clearly even in very dimly lit conditions. They didn't have bright lights in their streets or houses at night. Most streets had very dim lights spaced far apart. Houses didn't even have lights. The small amount of light that entered the house from the streetlights was enough for them to do their work. Trapitide colony had evolved.

In winter that year, in India, there had been multiple bombing threats. They randomly appeared on media and nobody could trace the source. In November of 2077, the streets of Mumbai were crowded as usual. Tourists struggled to move through the tightly packed streets, especially in the tourist attractions. In one such place, the Haji Ali Dargah was my friend Abhimanyu. He had been there with his family during his vacation. I was invited too, but could not make time due to a planned visit to JAXA. I was in my hotel when I got a call from Haruki Nakamoto, who was the mission manager of the project I had been there for.

"Aarav, did you hear the news from India?", he spoke breathlessly.

"What news?", I asked

The thing is, I always stayed buried in my work and didn't have a lot of friends back home, nor did I have a family. I was married to my work you could say. So there were very few people who would give me any news from India. Abhimanyu hadn't told me anything when he messaged me the previous day.

"There was a bombing", Nakamoto's voice trembled.

"What?! Where?"

"Mumbai. It's a place called Haj... Haji Ali I think"

I stood there without speaking a word. My hands were cold. If it was the phone I was talking through and not my smartwatch, I would have dropped it.

"Aarav?"

I didn't speak a word. I instantly checked the news on the tablet. He was right. It was in the Haji Ali Dargah. A huge explosion. I hung up and called Abhimanyu. It said he had his phone switched off. I called again, and again. Switched off. Switched off? That's the last thing I wanted to hear. Because network operators were dumb. If the SIM card didn't respond, they would just announce that it was switched off. So if a smartphone was destroyed, that's what you would hear.

I tried to watch some live news on the tablet but no channels showed any footage. The bombing had just happened. Then suddenly a few video clips and pictures started appearing on media. I remained stunned as I looked at them. Instantly my watch started getting bombarded with hundreds of calls and messages. They were mostly from people at NASA, ISRO, and other space agencies. I didn't respond for a while. The images kept me motionless. They showed the place where the bombing happened. Hundreds of bodies lay dead, all burnt and parts of their bodies missing. But that was not the most disturbing part. The images had all dead bodies except one. A Trapitide standing in between all the people he had just killed.