john braid and the bean

nothing has ever scared me before in my life. my name is John Braid and i am 6 feet tall and weigh about 190 pounds on a bad day.

it was the 4th of may, when the strangeness in my life started. with an innocuous packet which was left at my door step. I opened the simple looking packet. if i had know what i know about it now, i would have run miles away. i enjoy running, i run to live and lived to run.

let me tell you about this packet, it was wrapped up in a plain brown paper, no tape, just tied with a plain thin string.

i opened the packet, i found a can, on which was written a simple note.

"please open the top and pour a little bit of water and do this for the next 5 days"

so me being a curious kind of chap, did as was asked of me. even then i had a feeling in my stomach, a sixth sense, which said run away. and me being a little hard headed, ignored all the signs.

the first few days nothing much happened, on the fifth day, the surface of the mud in the can broke a little. the next day i could see a little bit of green, popping out.

over the next four days the plant kept growing at a furious pace. it looked like a normal bean plant.

the eleventh day was when things started getting really hairy, and i mean literally hairy, green and hairy. that morning when i walked into the room where the plant was growing, i did a double take. the room was mostly covered in some long hairy green strands. it was growing in different part of the room, and mostly on things made of wood or cloth.

there was a movement in the room, when I quickly turned towards the movement, I saw the plant swaying towards me. and the movement had some amount of feeling, and i perceived it as being a little violent. I drew back a little and reassessed the room, and i was wondering if the movement was a trick my mind was playing with me.

everything looked normal, except for the green growth. i went out and got a cleaner and cleaned up the place. made a mental note to get some gardening tools which i could use to trim the plant. i moved out.

the next day, the door to the room seemed jammed, as if something soft was wedged against the door from the other side, as i was running late for work, with just a perplexed look at the door i moved out of the house.

that evening the air in the house was smelling a little musty, and at the same time had a kind of greenish smell, like stale cut grass. after a few minutes of sniffing this air, i started feeling very satisfied as if i had all my needs taken care of. kind of like a breast fed baby, i went to sleep, thinking to my self that this sure was the most wonderful birthday i have had.

i wake up in a white padded room, as i looked around i was amazed to see that i was wearing a nice and clean straight-jacket. sitting and observing me across the room was a nice looking doctor. she gave me a disinterested look and looked back at the notebook in which she was writing something.

when i spoke, she was startled, almost dropping the stuff she was holding.

she stuttered, and finally gets a grip of her emotions, she started talking to me and questioning me. at the end of the discussion i figured that i had lost about 3 months of my life, i had no clue as to what i had been doing during those 3 month.

the doctor let me know that, i was one of the most wanted man in america, and about to be executed for a few terrible murders and other disgusting activities performed on the victims. she was studying me for about 3 days,as i seemed to have been in a fix!

i had been captured 3 days ago and brought to this asylum. i had been in a deep sleep for the last three days.she gave me a long list of things done to me , during these 3 days, and i looked down.

i started laughing , and have never stopped laughing since.

sometimes , amidst my laughter, i wonder if i had paid attention to my sixth sense,kicked the can and run like hell,if i would have been in this hell.

you see, all she kept asking me and wanted to know was how and why my hair, my skin and in fact every part of my body was green, except my legs which were brown and deeply rooted in the floor of the asylum and growing deeper every day.

The Deep Pit

For a quite few million years, it had lived a lethargic existence, vaguely aware of its dark surroundings, but not very concerned or worried, but just a dull awareness that it seemed to the most intelligent organism in its environment.

It was not threaten, by what it could sense outside it immediate environment. All it could sense was lot of turmoil, lot of heat and tremendous amounts of violence. Its slumber was deep, and often, a nap would be about a million year, a deep sleep would be 10’s of million years.

Once in a while, It would try and remember, remember its past, the reason for Its existence. But it was not very bothered, beyond the fact that it was not of this planet, and it had travelled for millions of year though the cold and silence of the space encased as part of an asteroid. The asteroid had crashed on to a hot planet. Over a period of time the crater caused by the asteroid was partly filled up, filled up initially with the molten material, and latter on with organic material.

It feed on all the material filling up the crater while it was sleeping, slowing absorbing the matter through its multipurpose exoskeleton, and growing in size from a relatively small creature to a huge animal. The eons were moving on the surface of the planet, the planet was evolving and from tiny one celled organism to huge dinosaurs , the ecology of the planet was experimenting, creature were being brought into existence and getting taken out of existence. None of these intermediate creatures disturbed It.

Then about 2000 year ago, a tiny slice of time for It, It became aware of a species evolving and who seems to be progressing on a path which It defined as a potential treat for It’s existence in the future. For the first time It started to move its huge body in the crater and like a large slug, wriggled to the surface of the crater so far above it, it took the creature a long time to reach the top, as it had to push through all the matter which has filled up in the crater.

It looked around, and was not very impressed with what it saw on the surface of the planet. After laying on the surface for some time and sending out energy from its feelers on the surface of its skin, It was able to sense that though this species was intelligent, it was far from being a treat to it. It goes back into its crater, and this time It ensures that the path to the surface is kept clean.

But the rains and the melting snows of the surrounding mountains soon filled up the crater, but this did not reduce the efficiency of its senses, as it was in tune with the energy of the water.

For a further short period of time there was nothing which excited the thoughts of It.

It felt the electromagnetic waves for the first time and It was really startled by this sudden spurt of energy, from an unknown source, and was immensely excited and at the same time it triggered of a wave of anxiety, an emotion it was feeling for the first time, and It translated it into something which it could understand, fear, which in turn was converted to anger.

It came out of the pit once more. When it start sensing the surroundings, It was shocked when it compared the current readings to that of the last visit, the entire topography was different, one species seems to have become a dominant species and they were dominating the environment in a very suppressive and destructive way. It sent its sensors further out and it could sense that out there it was even more of the same, but a surprising fact it had observed was that the development was not even all over, there were a few patches of planet which seem to be more evolved than the other, and the species seems to feel that it was the only intelligent species in this universe. It made a specific note of this disparity as a possible strategy to overcome the species and return to being the true lord of this planet.

It was really angry now.

It went on a rampage, in its immediate vicinity. Miles of forest around its habitat was vaporized, vaporized totally, as if they had never been in existence.

This event triggered off alarm bells at the various governments and military headquarters, as their different satellite captured this release of enormous electromagnetic radiation, with no accompanying recording of terrestrial tremors, in any of the recording stations at different parts of the world. The geniuses of each country were salivating with the thoughts of a new weapon system which they could build if they got their hand on this technology, and the governments of every country was worried that the country in which this event had taken place was testing out a new weapon, and felt threatened.

All of them focused their satellites on the spot where the event had taken place. All they could see at the epicenter was a deep crater; the devices measured the depth of this crater to about half a mile. The government of the effected country asked the United Nations for help, and a task force of scientist was assembled from all over the world. They reached the place late in the evening, with the best and the latest measuring instruments and probes-electronic and otherwise.

First night all their instruments recorded was an initially vague movement, which all the wisest men on earth could not be sure if it was a movement at all. And then a burst of static on all the recording equipment in the entire spectrum of the electromagnetic waves, and this was discerned only from the remote sensors recording units, the equipment on site was totally melted and fused, nothing could be salvaged from them.

After a hiatus of about two weeks when the brains had sat down to figure out the way forward, they came up with a slightly different plan to monitor the crater. The word was put out to the powers that be that they needed a launch freighter space craft, while this was being organized the scientists had in the meantime started work on a satellite version of the monitoring equipment and were programming the software to control all the measuring instruments.

This was launched into orbit without much fanfare or noise, and the equipment was positioned in space above the crater, in the movement of crisis the brains had come up with a system of camouflaging the electronic waves used to monitor, as normal cosmic waves.

Over a period of time they found out amazing amount of information about It, without It being aware of it. The humans called it the E.S, a play on E.T. and E.S stood for Enormous Slug. Guess the brains are entitled to be childish. The information on the E.S was slowly building. The brains, they had initially guessed that this could be a non terrestrial being, were thrilled when this was confirmed and supported by the bio-geneticist.

What now? Was the question flowing through the minds.

Then suddenly for a period of about three years there was absolutely no activity observed at the crater, it was as if nothing had ever happened.

It was tapping into the electronic networks of the planet, and imbibing a vast amount of data about the planet, info about evolution of science, philosophy, generally about everything. No security device detected the intrusion by It.

With a total awareness of what the dominant organism of this planet was capable of and with the knowledge of what minerals and technology the planet possessed.

It could project into the future to see what that organism was capable of and It saw that there was a medium probability that the planet would be wiped out of existence.

It made a plan.

It thought through what it wanted to do. Then it made its intentions know to the dominant species, by modifying and rebroadcasting all the television and satellite transmission to the entire world from the pit. It gave the world 24 hours to vacate a large area around Its pit.

The people were not ready. It made its move.

Its craft took off from earth in a huge blast.

Many years have passed since, the few of us who survive, still remember the noise which reverberated around the world that day.

That was the day Yellowstone Park got vaporized and turned into a huge sheet of glass, and that was the day earth tilted off its axis by about 4 degrees.

(The True Lord of Earth)