WILDFIRE

Sai Srikar Valmiki picked up his pen and put it to his forehead.

“Think! Think!” He thought to himself. It is always hard to come up with ideas when the deadline is the next day! Srikar had promised to submit a story to the local-magazine.

The lack of ideas irritated him. He couldn’t even settle on the genre he would write on. He did have some plots in mind, but none of them seemed complete and would have probably required detailed research. 

Probably going to the library would serve him as an inspiration, he thought. He still had 7 hours till sun-down. 

Reading was Srikar’s favorite pastime. He used books as a tool to escape from the ever-bustling world.

He went to the library. He wanted to write fiction and thus looked through the many racks of books under best science fiction. Science Fiction stories, he thought, required the least research; you make-up laws just to support your story. 

He picked up a book and started reading. As he flipped through the pages, his eyes drooped.

He looked around to see that everything around him was ablaze. The fire was not something that he had seen. It looked hypnotic. It emitted blue and radiant fumes. It was as if the fire was singing to him. The closer he went the more beautiful it looked.

Suddenly someone grabbed his hand and pulled him back.

“Are you MAD?” Shouted the person. “You would have died!”

Srikar just looked on; he couldn’t get his eyes off the fire. The person slapped Srikar.

Srikar came to his senses and realized that he was no longer in the library.

“Where am I?” he asked. 

“Are you for real?” 

“Where am I?” Srikar repeated.

“OK! I’ll play along. You are in Karandhar!”

“What? Where?”

“One of the only Safe-hubs left on earth? Does that ring any bell?”

It suddenly dawned on Srikar; he was in the future!

“What year is it?” Srikar asked.

“OK! It is 2025! Now don’t tell me that you are from the future!” The man said. Annoyance was clearly visible on his face.

“Oh no! I am not from the future; I am from the past!” Srikar said. 

“Oh no!” Srikar woke up. He took a long breath and smiled. The dream really scared him. But it gave him a plot and a good one too. He went home and worked on the draft. He was really happy with the output. 

He is satisfied about the productive day, huddled in his blanket and started sleeping.

“Don’t worry! This fire is safe!” said the man who saved him from the ‘cannibal fires’ as they called it. “Unlike the fire that came from space, this is man-made and not some alien tech.”

That man, Kiran, really believed that Srikar was from the past. Kiran said it is not so common for him to see time-travelers from the past. As he heard that none of those travelers went back to their own time, as that kind of tech was not yet invented.

“I am still not convinced. I mean how did some alien fire enter earth and is now close to destroying humanity?” Srikar asked.

“Well, this fire first was spotted in Australia and then it spread. This fire however was much different than the others, it traveled across waters and couldn’t be extinguished by anything. Scientist first thought that it was some warfare technology used by terrorists. The Governments of different countries started blaming it on each other while people out there were burning!

“Before the world realized that the fire was extraterrestrial, it was too late. And the only lab which was this close to finding an extinguisher was, ironically, burned-down by the same fire!”

“Well, that is sad!” said Srikar. 

Srikar heard his phone ring. “Hello? Who is this?” Srikar asked as he picked up his phone. “Sai! Thank God you picked up! Now are you giving me the article or not?” screamed the Editor of the local-magazine.

“Yes sir! I am on my way,” Srikar said.

“Stupid me! It was just a dream!” Srikar thought.

He hurriedly got ready and rushed to the office and handed over his story to the editor. The editor liked the story and published it as the cover of the magazine.

That night, he had the same dream again.

“Is there any way that I can go back to the past? Maybe I can warn the people then and stop this apocalypse? Srikar said.

“NO! There isn’t one!” Kiran shouted. Both men were visibly tense. 

As Srikar looked around, he saw the same fire inching closer and closer towards them. They pressed against the wall trying to breathe. The magical fumes filled the room obscuring vision.

Srikar gasped for breath as he got up. It was very weird. The same dream thrice in a row. Though he did not take it seriously, it did bother him a little.

“I did die in the dream so maybe I won’t have it again”, he thought. 

As he was scrolling through the internet, he saw a video.

It was posted by an Australian resident. The video was titled ‘Weird fire’.

After he saw the video, he dropped his phone in horror.

The video showed the same hypnotic flames emitting the radiant blue fumes!

Srikar passed out.

As he looked around, he noticed that he was not in a familiar setting. He was in cell. The cell was packed with people. 

“Where is this?” He asked a person standing near-by.

“Are you kidding? Were you not picked by those alien things?” the person answered.

“When were you picked up?” Srikar asked, suspecting that he may have time-travelled again.

“2-days ago, I think. October 7^th,” The man was extremely cool. It seemed as if he adjusted to his surroundings and his fate. Though other people were frightened, some people even cried.

“I mean which year?” Srikar asked.

“2020!”

As Srikar looked on, he noticed a few weird looking creatures pacing around the room outside the cell. One of them pressed the launch-button on a world-map with a red-dot blinking on Australia.

This information was enough for Srikar. 

Srikar woke-up.

As the day progressed, more and more videos were posted on social media featuring the fire.

That night, he tried to sleep, time-travel, to find an extinguisher. But due to the tension he couldn’t sleep. 

But after counting close to a million sheep, he finally slept.

He was holding a gun in his hand, shouting at those hypnotic fires, and surprisingly destroying them.

Kiran was standing near him doing the same. 

“What does this gun shoot?” Srikar asked.

“Kerosene is stored in plastic bullets! You forgot or what? You kicked the bucket of kerosene onto the fire when it was about to kill us. Or oh you are from another time-line?” Kiran shouted on the top of his lungs, clearly enjoying the violence that was ensuing.

“Yep!” Exclaimed Srikar. 

But suddenly the fires started to grow bigger and bigger engulfing Kiran. “NO!” Srikar shouted, trying to destroy as much fire as he could. But alas, Srikar too perished in the fires!

“AHH!” Srikar shouted as he jumped from the bed. 

After calming himself down, Srikar jot-down everything he knew. The flames were some-kind of anti-fire, fueled on water or other extinguishers, which the aliens launched onto earth on October 9^th, 2020 in Australia (somewhere near Melbourne coast-line, as shown in the map). Thus, Srikar just had to sleep and travel to the exact time and kill the fire with kerosene before it could burn the earth.

Srikar once again went to bed.

This time, Srikar was just a little late. He saw a small rock fall into the ocean and erupt into flames. The flames attracted Srikar into it, killing him.

The next time he tried, he landed in Australia a week earlier. Though he was ready at the coast with kerosene in his hand. But this time, aliens abducted him and enslaved him, like many others, in their spaceship.

The third time, however, he succeeded. He landed in Melbourne just a day before, and prepared himself for everything. He was ready with 6-liters of kerosene. 

The rock fell into the ocean, but before it could erupt into flames, Srikar poured a whole liter of kerosene onto it. The reaction emitted the same radiant blue fumes. But this time it slowly disappeared.

Srikar woke-up and checked his internet feed and found that all those videos of the magical fires disappeared. But did he actually save the world or was it all a dream. He may never know. But Srikar was satisfied with the fact that there was some chance that he saved the world!

THE END