365 DAYS 365 TALES

The Sicons of Moon

Two Hundred Years back, Inside the Biome of the Moon:

Mayan was cursing and screaming in just about all the languages that he knew. That bitch...He thought angrily. He was going to kill her. He was really going to kill her. The scanners on the moon were searching for the woman. And it was not helped by the fact that the woman had switched off the radio. She had disobeyed a direct order and gone off outside the Biome, on her own.

He had let her work on the Moon Base as a favour to Siddarth Miran, the Chief of the Institute and he had been warned all about her. And he thought he had been careful. And yet she had done it.

Mayan fumed angrily.

He was going to kill Sidarth Miran too.

"Sir! Strange readings on the Scanners." one of the workers of the Nuclear Reactor on the Moon, Aarush Saxena, said.

"Have you found her?" Mayan snapped angrily.

"No sir! As we were tracking the path she could have taken, we have encountered something else." Aarush continued typing on the keyboard furiously.

"Put it on screen." Mayan fumed angrily. Dammit. He just wanted to run a nuclear reactor station. That was all. And he was good at that. Which was why he was given the job of running the most important nuclear reactor station. This particular one which was set up on the Moon was very powerful. And it was important, for the very simple reason that the nuclear reactor powered the entire shield of Earth. The shield without which life on Earth would cease to exist. Because ever since the disintegration of the ozone layer around the planet, ten years back, the transparent shield surrounding the planet was vital. And the nuclear reactor on the Moon powered this Shield.

The disintegration of the ozone layer was completely out of the blue and no one even expected it. Even now, ten years later, the scientists could not determine how it had happened. But it had happened and in order to save the lives of the people, the shield had been devised. A transparent shield which could keep out the harmful radiation. Without the shield, life on earth was not possible. The people on Earth, hailed the shield and welcomed it and the scientists went on to deal with the next problem – the very high tidal waves affecting the planet.....

Mayan was thinking all these things, as he stared at the screen in front of him and was wondering what it was that he was seeing and swore angrily again.

He had a runaway from his Biome and at this time, the scanners were acting up. Mayan swore again. If that woman was in anyway responsible for this, she was finished...Completely and totally finished. He was going to make sure of that.

Mayan's attention was however drawn to the image on the screen.

And that was when suddenly the dials in the system started cranking up. Mayan yelled as smoke suddenly came out from the machines.

"EMERGENCY SHUT DOWN!" Mayan yelled as he pulled the key from the chain slung on his neck and ran to the mainframe computer in the left of the lab. The mainframe there seemed to be working furiously...computing data at a furious pace..and Mayan inserted his key inside the machine and punched in his codes as the machines suddenly went offline. Right now, only the biological support systems and the core nuclear reactors were online.

Mayan was breathing heavily, sighing, as he realized that the others in the lab were already out of the lab. Following protocols.

Mayan was breathing in deeply trying to calm himself.

And in that silence and darkness of the space station that Mayan heard it.

Wild shrieking and howling, the likes of which he had never heard in his five years of working on the moon station.