What If the Earth was the other way...?

A Golden Opportunity

Tony

A blast happens. Smoke fumes erupt in the sly from the direction of Lake Frens. The creature sprints away from us as Trevor and I gwake at the brilliant orange and grey mixture.

"Let's hurry back." Trevor says as he grabs my hand and starts running towards the air locked door.

I was not used to running. Especially not with all the samples I collected and the oxygen bag attached to my back. It was comical. What took us half an hour, took us fifteen minutes now. He pushed me through the door and I fell face first on the levi-tile. 

Some soldiers were standing at the explosion site. Trevor seals the door and rushes towards me.

"I am sorry. Are you hurt?" 

"No." I say as I dust myself up. 

He looks at me from head to toe. Then he walked around me and at last nodded at me. He then removes his gear and helps me out of mine. 

I walk into the small room and change into my clothes. 

Trevor meets me and says, "We have some work to do in the banks of Frens. I hope you have whatever you wanted from the crater."

I nod.

We part ways. I reach the research centre and give my team of chemists the sample and ask them to collect information from them.

It was really an exhausting day for me. I excuse myself and get back to my stay room to get an early nap.

Five days later, I am sipping tea and having delicious chunk balls on the couch, when I get a call from Professor Sundae.

I keep those pasty balls down and touch my wristband and Professor's voice pops out.

"Good day Tony. I have something important to tell you. Meet me at my office immediately."

"Sir." 

The wristband stops glowing. 

The wristband was a cutting edge technology created by a group of young techs from Frenchi. It has been a smashing success and nothing has ever substituted that for the past two decades.

The band is customised in such a way that it suits you. Mine glows a blue shade and it is plane platinum coated. It was cheaper when there are no hige designs on them.

The wristband is actually called the Poignoit. It can help in communication with anyone wearing the band, but it only works inter-continent. It uses the same mechanism as what the brain does but in the form of radio waves.

I finish my breakfast, freshen up and by the 7th hour, I reach the research center.

Engame International Research Centre (ERIC), is a two storey building. It is the only building which has two stories in Engame. It is a thousand acres wide and it has five basement floors.The inside is equipped with state of the art tech and a lot of departments. The rooftop is glass plated and is an in-build planetarium.

I have my personal office on the second floor, since I am the Assistant director of the building. 

I spend most of my time in the planetarium. It consists of interferometry telescopes which use sound frequencies to get images and also refracting telescopes.

The meteor shower that resulted in the 'Hawkian cluster', took months of observing but since this place makes me comfortable, it wasn't a burden.

I walk towards the Professor's office and see him staring at the computers at his desk.

The Professor's office consists of a desk and a lot of cups of coffee near the waste bin, six computers beeping and flickering and the Professor sitting in a rolling chair, calculating something.

His blackboard was unusually clean and the tablet that he was holding was about to slip out of his hands. The walls of his office is white in colour with turquoise yellow stripes going in all directions. There was this time window behind the computers which gave the view of Lake Frens flowing peacefully.

"Glad you could make it on time." Professor said, setting his tablet on the table.

I nod.

"There was a crash five days ago and Trevor found a sort of ship submerged in the water." I take a seat as the Professor continues.

" I went to investigate with a small team and we brought the ship in. After a few hours of working on opening it, we found a species in it. I reckon it  is a female. She is not conscious though. I want your thoughts about her."

I take a deep breath. A ship? A female? 

"I would love to." I say and like that I walk towards the observation room. 

The conservation room consists of a small emergency hospital supplies and tech that could figure out or observe things we need to observe. It is said that the ERIC observation room is a small replica of the Latinia Nomenclature wing. It is brightly lit and consists of various monitors and recording devices. There are four gurneys and life supporting systems in the vast white tiled room. The tiles are also made of foot plates.

The foot plates are the reason why there is abundant energy at our disposal. The kinetic energy we produce while walking is stored as potential energy and is sent to a generator which maximises the input, using a transformer, which in turn is converted to electrical energy.

The whole of Kliptora runs on the foot plates and levi-tiles. It just makes conservation of energy to a better use.

As I walk into the observation room, I see her, lying on a gurney, her limbs restrained and glucose being administered to her.

She looked beautiful. Her brownish dry skin, complimenting the smooth, straight black hair, tired with a band of some sort of material. Her calm expression, taking small breaths. She is not our species. She must be from the same genus though.I touch her hand and check her pulse rate. It is normal. Maybe she got shocked by the blast. 

Her dress was odd too. She wore a shirt that was made of something soft and orange and pants, which was closely fit, rough and blue. She also wore a pair of shoes, but the material was different from any shoes I have seen.

She was young.

"So, what do you observe?" Professor asked, walking towards me.

"She is definitely not our species. Her heart rate is normal. Maybe she passed out due to the blast." I speculate.

"Anything else?" 

"No." I say.

The Professor looks at me and then at her. I can feel him gauging something important from my expression.

"Why don't I show you the ship?" He suggests.

I nod.

We both walk towards the elevator and it takes us to the first basement level, where submarines and other aquatic tech are stored, for easy access to the sea level.

There at the far right corner of the vast basement, lay a huge ship. 

The ship was streamlined, white and polished well. On one  side of the ship something was written in red.

W RO H   TRA  P RTER 2.C

The backside was charred black, probably from the explosion. There was a sort of hatch at the bottom of the charred side and it was opened. I crawled through it and inside were beautifully built cushioned chairs looking directly at a glass windowpane. The controls looked nothing like I have seen before, or have I seen this before? 

There were two seats and five meters of storage space. There were cylindrical tanks safely secured on the left side of the space, a bag which I took with me, some cellophane covers and a cardboard box full of empty bottles of some sort. There was a trace of oil spilled. 

The whole spaceship was something so familiar but I couldn't put a finger on it. I got down through the hatch and walked towards the Professor.

"What do you observe?" He asked.

I told him my observation and he nodded.

"Anything else?" 

"No."

"We have checked with the soldiers and we have a permit to fix the ship and put it on the archives."

"Aren't we supposed to report to Switch?" I ask.

"Yes. You are taking the species to Edbranch." He said.

My heart skipped a beat. A rare opportunity to go to Edbranch and I am the lucky one to go!

"Yes sir." I suppress a smile.

"Go and prepare then. You leave in 30 minutes." The professor clasps his hand on my shoulder, gesture to acknowledge my presence and I clasp his. 

 I left the laboratory to my stay home, immersed in my thoughts regarding the girl. How had she gotten here? Why does the vehicle look familiar? Was she the answer to all my questions? I didn’t know. 

Professor used to recount a story where a boy of a different species crashed here and how he loved this new planet. Well, I have never personally met the boy, but maybe this girl would bring me to the boy.

That is when I found out why the ship looked familiar! I have seen the boy's ship in our archives at ERIC. I have investigated it once and I have often wondered about that boy.

  Regardless, a trip to Edbranch would be exciting as well as daunting - an opportunity only granted for educated soldiers and elites in our society. You must master all seven languages of Kliptora to get there, and as an Engamish, I speak only gamea. 

  At around the 8th hour, I reached Port E54 and waited for my wagon to appear, and after a few moments, the Professor brought her in the capsule.   

A capsule is a long tube aerated with oxygen and it is easy to move from place to place, especially on a wagon which takes us to different countries. We boarded for the five-hour journey ahead of us. 

The wagon was a hollow round tube with seating padded on both the walls and a long, wide pathway in between the two parallel seats. I sat on one end and let the capsule rest in the passage near my feet. There were a few people going to Edbranch, so I wasn't the only one inside the wagon. 

I took out my tablet and started reading.Time went faster than I thought, and we reached Port B54 at about the 13th hour. 

The Port was just like the port in Engame. It had a small box-like structure, called a counter, where we paid for the ride. I was greeted by two soldiers, who took us inside a mobile.

One of them was a woman. She looked older than me. She had olive skin, a beautiful red, cropped hair and dazzling blue eyes. She wore the same Khaki uniform. The man had pale skin, black hair, cropped like hers and brown eyes. They didn't say anything, just nodded at me to follow them.

  We were taken to the headquarters of Switch, the chancellor of Kliptora. A high male of about 25 years of experience, he was handsome, diligent, extremely keen, and observant.  He has been a profound leader for the past two years of his service as the leader of all Kliptorans.

His headquarters was a one storey building, which had three rooms. One dining hall and the other an office. The dining room had a small counter that acted as the kitchen. I guess, the people working here pack their lunch or dinner(depending on their shift) and eat it here. 

The office had five desks. Each desk had a computer and a cubicle to store important files and evidence perhaps. The walls were white and bare. There was a huge window, almost covering the entire wall, that showed the beautiful scenery of Meandrea grasslands.

There was a small room at the far side of the office. It was the office of Switch. I was ushered in and the capsule was dragged into the room.

Switch looked the same age as the Professor. He had dark skin, his head was bald and I could not find a strand of hair on any part of his face. He had a beautiful smile plastered on his face. His eyes were dark brown, almost like the iris was not visible, if you don't look closely. He wore a Viliverin suit. He looked majestic.

He clasped my shoulder, acknowledging my presence and I returned the gesture.

  “So, this is the new species Professor Sundae has found?” he asks as he comes near the capsule and looks at it.

  “Yes, sir.” 

  “And what do you observe?" He asks, narrowing his eyes as if gauging all my reactions.

  “It’s a female, with a supposed twenty years of experience. She must be closely related to our species as we share the same complexion, features and body structure.” I remark.

  “Hmm . . . very well, we will be sending her to Latinia with you, where they will research her.” 

  “But sir-“ 

  “I know you don’t speak Lat. That’s why I’m sending Tina with you.” He nodded towards the  female soldier that escorted me. “Tina, this is Tony and his new species.” 

  “Sir.” Tina looked at the specimen and turned to me. “So, Tony, where did you find her?” 

  “On the banks of Frens,”  I reply.

  “Hmm.” She whistled, and after a pause, said, “Let’s go.” 

  We reached Port B55, and this time, it was a three-hour journey. On reaching the Classification and Nomenclature Wing in Latinia, Tina contacted the authorities and enquired all the formalities. 

The Classification and Nomenclature wing, resembled a lot like EIRC in structure but the inside looked like a bigger version of the observation room of EIRC. There were all sorts of chemicals stored on the shelves and diagrams caricatured on the walls of each and every species, with its name and special feature. It was really stunning. 

The scientist in there took the capsule and opened it and laid her on a gurney in a small room. Since it was early in the night in Latinia but morning in Engame, I felt a strong urge to sleep. 

Tina and I left her in the small room and walked towards an accommodation the scientists arranged for us. 

The stay room looked plane and comforting. There were two beds, a desk and a chair. I freshened up first and then Tina and we both retired to sleep.