End in Sight

It’s the battle that is supposed to end the war. The battle between the Seeds and the Humans. The final battle.

 

It had been 16 years since the Seeds took over the planet and decided that the human race, their creators, would do more harm than good to the planet and hence should not be allowed to govern it anymore. We were chased to habitats created for us, colonies where we were breeded. More than half the population was terminated to make place for new Seeds. The remaining half was needed for them to grow.

 

The Seeds were made of flesh and blood too, but genetically enhanced using cloning techniques to be superior in all aspects to humans. We were trying to create the v2.0 of human race, better and stronger than we currently are. They were immune to diseases. Their immune system were built from the ground up such that they were capable of resisting any type of bacterial attack. Their sustenance levels were far more than regular human beings, so they could go weeks on a single meal unlike us. And to top it all we decided to give them the one thing that we had been warned not to share with other living things on Earth to maintain our edge, our brain.

 

They still needed the human population because we were their raw material to create more Seeds. The whole idea behind creating a genetically modified race by artificial breeding was that quality degraded at least by a small amount through natural fertilization, but instead if a genetically modified embryo was planted in the female womb artificially in controlled conditions, we could create a superior race, the Seeds. So now they used us as breeding farms. The females were used as Seed breeding farms. The males were used to do manual labor and taking care of the pregnant females.

 

Col. Rajvir, had to retire from the army due to a near fatal injury in during a war against a neighbouring country at the age of 30. That was about when the Seeds rebelled too. When a bigger enemy arises, all enmity between countries vanished and they started plotting against this bigger enemy.  Now he was 46 years old and led a group of about 100 soldiers against the Seeds in India. The team used to be bigger, about 250 soldiers were under him earlier, but it got reduced mainly due to the physical edge they possessed over them. But this time they had a weapon which they previously did not possess. This time they had an edge.

 

A few days ago they extracted Dr.Bhalla from a laboratory where the Seeds held him. He was one of the original developers of the Seeds, and probably the only remaining, so they held him to extract every single info they could about themselves, before he was put down too.

 

The operation to extract Dr.Bhalla cost the rebels a lot of men. Rajvir lost about 40 men that day. He needed Bhalla to have something useful to him, or all of his men would have given their lives in vain.

 

“You better prove useful, I lost a lot of brothers back there to get you”, said Ajay to Dr.Bhalla

 

“So tell me doc, is there a way to end this menace?”, asked Rajvir

 

“I believe so”

 

Rajvir’s eyes widened. All they wanted was one weakness to harness. This will give them that one chance they needed.

 

“When we created the Seeds, I was a bit hesitant to create supreme beings with no weaknesses. This was the exact situation I feared at that time, so unknown to the other scientists, I altered the DNA so that it makes them vulnerable to a rare kind of virus strain”

 

“Wait, but how did this go unnoticed? Weren’t they tested against all known human infecting pathogens?”

 

“Yes, but those that affected humans, but this pathogen I am talking about has no harmful effects on humans, so they never thought of testing this on them”

 

“Brilliant, so can we make this a weapon and use it on the battle field?”

 

“That’s the tricky bit here, this virus strain does not have long term effects on them, when it is used on them, it will disable them temporarily, throwing them into a dizzy state for a while.”

 

“So it cannot cause any permanent injury to them then?”

 

“No”

 

“Well, atleast it gives us some time to take them by surprise and maybe with a co-ordinated effort we can get that much needed win”

 

“I will start synthesizing deployable bombs which will fill the air around them with these viruses then”

 

“Yes doc, we will arrange for all the raw material you will need for them. Suraj, Ajay we need to send a message to all our allies around the world to let them know of this development and also give them the recipe to create this bomb from the doc. If we do a co-ordinated attack all over the world at once, we can take them by surprise and maybe win this war. This is our last chance”

“Yes sir”, replied Ajay and Suraj and saluting Col.Rajvir they left the room with Dr.Bhalla.

 

And two months after this, here we are at the battleground of the final war, being fought all over the world at the same time. Due to the limited supply of the virus and the raw materials required for the bio-bomb, they had only a few available to use, but this provided them with the one advantage they needed in this war. Even Col. Rajvir was in the field this time.

 

The commander for the Seeds, Ronnie was, surprised that the humans found a defect in them that could be used against them in the battle. But they still had ten times the size of the human army, but he bioweapon they were using against them was rendering them useless for while this giving the humans enough time to slaughter through them, so Ronnie ordered the soldiers to form a circular formation and move ahead on the battlefield, such that if the front few are affected by the bio bomb, the next few can come forward and cover them, such that the initial wall is always intact protecting the inner layer of people while they fight.

 

Rajvir soon noticed the strategy of the Seeds.

 

“Lt. Ajay”

“Yes sir”

“We need to break their formation from the inside to be able to break them, give me four more soldiers and we should break through their layers all the way to the centre so that we can break their cycle”

 

Soon joined by five soldiers including Ajay, Rajvir entered the enemy formation, slicing through all the Seed soldiers trying to reach the centre of the formation. Ronnie spotted them and sent a group of soldiers to stop them.

 

Three of the six soldiers were dead. Rajvir saw their plan falling apart. They took cover temporarily behind a rock in the field until they could find a solution to this onslaught.

 

“I see an end in sight Ajay, I will reach there while you’ll cover me and once I reach the center, I will deploy a bomb and it should give you’ll enough time to go to the front stopping this formation.”

 

“But sir, that is suicide, you will not have enough time to go in and come back from there sir”

 

“Who said anything about coming back? Ajay I want you to take command as soon as I go down, now fall back and give me my cover”

 

“I am proud to be fighting beside you sir”, said Ajay saluting Rajvir.

 

“And me beside you lieutenant”, said Rajvir and charged towards the enemies.

 

Soon he reached the center from where Ronnie was issuing commands controlling the Seed formation. Before Ronnie could shoot, he deployed the bomb, the bomb did go of, but he was rendered with hundreds of enemy bullets from all the soldiers around him.

 

Two months later:

The Seeds were defeated in a surprising number of countries and gave us sufficient resources to win the war. Soon we came to an agreement that humans will no longer be used to breed anymore seeds, and they have now been incorporated into our normal society along with the humans now. They now procreate with the humans like normal humans do, thus diminishing the effects of the enhanced DNA with each generation.

People of earth never forgot the person who was responsible for all this: Col. Rajvir.

 

The Last Day on Earth

There was a loud knock on the door.
“Go away!! I am sleeping”
“But its the most beautiful day ever, why on earth would you want to spend today sleeping?”
I always wanted to die in sleep, but Manny was different. He was one of the people who would go screaming and dancing towards death if it stood in front of him.
Well now there is no point in sleeping anyways, I can always come back and swallow a few sleeping pills and go back to sleep in time.
I woke up and let Manny in. He came in beaming as if he just won a million dollars in a lottery.
“Whats going on Manny?”
“Well you tell me. This might be the last chance we get to hangout together, so let’s go outside and have some fun!!”
“Well i just want to stay inside!!”
"Alright!! I will come out for an hour and then come back to my place to end it in sleep!!"
"Fair enough!"
"Let me get ready."
"What for? If you want to roam out in your lingerie, and not be ashamed of it, today is the day"
"Well I want to dress properly even on the day I die"
"Ok, hurry up"
After about 10 mins Tara came out in a long red gown, as if they were going for a fancy restaurant date.
"Looking good madame", exclaimed Manny, taking her hand in his and giving it a peck.
They then set out to explore what was the last day on earth.
Tara always expected people to scream and create a ruckus, destroy things and so on on if they knew the world was going to end, but everyone was surprisingly calm. Even enemies hugged it out and forgave past differences.
Most shops kept a sign outside the door reading "Come in and Take whatever you want, no need to pay".
Some restaurants who were good at what they did, created a huge table of food and laid it out on the street on big tables for people to eat.
You can never find a dearth of good food in New York. Manny lifted a croissant from outside a French restuarant and started eating it.
Tara picked up an apple from the same table.
"So how fast do you think it is going to happen?",asked Tara.
"What?"
"The end, what else?"
"I don't know, but hopefully very fast"
"What if we don't die and just lose a leg or become incapacitated?"
"Well you live at least"
"I don't want to live like that!"
"Well then let's have backups, let's go to the chemist and get some cyanide or something just in case we want to die if we don't"
They stopped by the chemist and surprisingly they ran out of cyanide. Apparently it was the most preferred method of dying for most people who did not want to live it out till the last moment.
"I have some rat poison if you want", said the chemist.
"Nah that thing does not kill instantly, I don't want to die howling in pain for an hour"
They continued on to the riverside and sat on a pier.
"So how well have you lived your life then ?Would you call it a success ?",asked Manny
“How do you measure if it was a successful life? Well let’s see I broke up a week ago, lost my job right after that, and pretty much spent the last one week on my couch eating ice cream, hot pockets and dozing away most of the time. And three days ago just like that out of no where a meteor decided to crash the planet I am living on. So yeah what do you make of it?”
“Let’s see, does not matter now, does not matter now, awesome wish I could have done that too and not in your hands. You see you are looking at all of these events the wrong way!! How many people you know have to got to spend the last one week of their life, not having to worry about others, or their jobs and instead eating ice cream and hot pockets? See it’s not so bad now is it?”
“You always look at a glass half full don’t you?”
“Well I don’t care about the glass at all, because I probably am never going to drink from it anyways. Now here we are at the end of the world as we know it!! Do you think there will be a new species of living beings on earth like us after the dinosaurs? We totally are the new dinosaurs aren’t we?”
“Maybe”
“So what should we do now?”
“Can we go back home?”
“Tara, be a pal, help a lonely man feel not lonely in his last moments”
“Eww that sounds cheesy”
“Haha, come on now, you gotta have one wish that you haven’t gotten to fulfill et that you wanted to do in NY city”
“Well yeah, I always wanted to stand on the other side of the railing on the empire state building and look down, not like a prisoner through the bars, but like a free willed person from the other side”
“Well, there you go, we have our next mission then”
“It’s silly, and the empire state building is probably crowded as hell right now”
“We cannot give up even without trying, come on now, let’s see. It’s just a few blocks down here, and I will get to fulfill my wish too”
“What’s that?”
“Break the glass of a car and steal it!!”
They found a bugatti veyron parked a block away from them. manny ran up to it, and took off his shirt, then he wound it around his hand like a boxing glove and hit hard on the glass. His hand recoiled back and he howled in pain.
“Here take it”
He turned around and saw the owner of the car come out of the building nearby.
“It brought me to my destination, maybe it will take you to yours”, he said and tossed Manny the keys.
“Thanks boss!!”, shouted back Manny and got into the car.
“Hell yeah!! I am gonna drive a Bugatti Veyron in the New York streets. Here comes the Knight Rider!!”
“Easy there boy, we are only driving a few blocks remember?”
"Well then let's make the most of it!!"
Manny revved up the engine and blasted through the road. He was having fun driving it around and Tara felt it was unfair for the person who was trying to fulfill her wish to be living his wish so short.
"Well you can drive around the block to reach there, have some more fun with your car"
"That's all I had to hear!"
Manny raced back to the riverside and went at 100 mph on a New York road. Mainly because there was no one there on the streets any more. Every one wanted to spend their last day with their loved ones. Except these two stupid souls who were having fun on the streets, like many others like them.
ON their way they saw a small incline on the road, and Manny's eyes sparkled. He stopped a few hundred yards from it and began revving up.
When Tara saw the incline, she knew what was on Manny's mind.
"Manny no!! We might turn over and ..."
"And what? Die? Isn't that gonna happen anyways, and trust me, we will be fine"
"Ahhh, I feel I am gonna repent this decision. Fine! Go ahead and kill us before we die!!"
Manny pushed on the gas and zoomed towards the incline. And as soon as the car went onto the incline it flew into the air.
Tara and Manny felt weightless for a moment as the car was preparing for a loud landing. Both of them had held their breaths out of fear. The car landed with a huge thud and the air bags burst open onto their faces. But htey were both safe. They started laughing loudly.
Soon they pushed down the air bags and drove to the Empire State Center building.

As they had expected it was crowded with a huge line trying to get to the top. Manny and Tara got out and stared at the crowd.

"Now what?", asked Tara in disbelief that she came all the way for this.
"Well now, we go up"
"There isn't enough time for that. Don't you see the line?"
"Well all of to go to the top and see from the inside, but our goal is to see from the outside, so let's find a way to that place then"
They went around the building and at one corner, they found a platform tied to a harness going all the way to the spire on top of the building. It was the type of platform used for cleaning the windows on the building.
"Well ain't this our lucky day!!",exclaimed Manny.
They got onto the platform and started heaving themselves up. There were ropes on both sides which they had to pull in tandem in order to go evenly on both sides.
For some distance they went fine, once they reached the 60th floor, Tara glanced down for a second and seeing the height they were at, she forgot to pull on her end of the rope for a second and suddenly the platform tilted to her side, she got jolted out of her seat and hung onto the roper harness.
"Tara, hold on, I will pull you back up"
"Hurry up, I am afraid of heights!!"
"What, you are afraid of heights and your last wish was to see from atop the empire state building?"
"Well is this the time to lawyer me?"
"Ohh yeah sorry, here grab my hand, I will pull you back"
Tara grabbed onto Manny's extended arm, and he heaved her back onto the platform, and she pulled onto the rope to even out the platform again.
They finally reached the top level of the building, and from there Manny led Tara onto a small ladder in the interior of the top spire. They finally reached the top most point of the Empire State Building. They were both short on oxygen, and it was pretty cold up there, with a cold wind blowing onto their faces.
They immediately shielded their faces for a while, and after a while when they got used to it, they were able to peer down.
"Well so what do you think? How is it to live your dream?"
"Well I never thought I would be able to do this ever, thanks for forcing me to do this!"
"That's what friends are for. To make you do things that you are scared to do "
"Well still I am glad you are here with me today"
"Me too"
Tara rested her head on Manny's shoulder as they sat on a thhin grill like platform on the top.
Suddenly the sky went ablaze with the meteor's fire.
"Here it comes", exclaimed Manny putting his hands around Tara looking into her eyes with a smile on his face.