The streets weren’t safe after dawn!
The Siren began five minutes before sunrise. Not loud, slow notes drifting patiently over the people hurrying towards their shelters.
Maya started running. It’s better to be early than to get locked out. The digital clock blinked above the market square … 5:59 …
She cut through the alley; her shelter was at the end of the block. Her lungs burned as she increased her speed. Something on the road caught her eye … a toy horse! A child at the entrance trying to break from his mother’s grip as she yanked him in.
The metal gates had already started rolling as Maya bent to pick up the toy. She sprinted towards the gate realising that she would not make it. she managed to fling the toy in. “Take cover under the stone bridge…” she heard the words, before the gates shut with an ominous thud.
She turned and sped down towards the river. She dived into the shadows under the bridge just as the golden rays spilled onto the grassy stretch.
“Don’t look into the light.” her father had warned her.
She shut her eyes tightly trying to calm her thudding heart.
Very soon she heard them … the slow shuffle … almost as if dragging. And the smell … sweet … sickly, cloying sweet scent … that almost gagged her.
And then she heard him … the same voice … an inflection of laughter …
“Bubba … Come … Come into the sunlight … Come to your Pappa …”
Maya stifled her sob and rocked on her knees.
Her Pappa … her universe … lost to the sunlight … gone forever…!
He was a scientist working in the government underground lab. They were on a mission to restore the sunlight back to the humans. But a daylight experiment gone wrong took him away forever.
And now here he was … it was wonderful to hear his voice … so near … she could reach him by just stretching her hand.
“Yes … I am here Bubba … catch my hand …”
Maya covered her ears.
The words weren’t entering through sound.
They bloomed inside her thoughts.
She backed deeper beneath the bridge. Silent sobs racked her slight frame as she remembered another memory …
“Catch my hand … don’t run Bubba … you will fall.”
A smaller version of her running forward through the garden pathway. Her father catching hold of her hand. Both of them laughing in pure joy, their faces glinting in the morning sunlight, sounds of birds and bees in the air. The breeze slightly fragrant with the scent of the colourful flowers lining the pathway.
She could almost smell the fragrant breeze. As she sniffed, she realised that the sickly scent had disappeared and so also the shuffling.
She leaned back against the cool stone and sighed.
***
A bell rang somewhere.
Maya rubbed her eyes and looked around.
Outside it was dark.
Lights were flickering on at the far edge.
She stretched herself and slowly eased out from under the bridge.
She shivered slightly as she made her way up.
She remembered her father explaining:
Some years back, we discovered an unusual burst of radiation from the Sun. Initially, we thought it was an ordinary solar flare. But it opened microscopic tears in the spacetime. The aliens did not arrive on spaceships – they exist in a neighbouring dimension. Their bodies are made of electromagnetic plasma, and sunlight acts as a bridge to help them manifest.
When people started reporting, hearing dead relatives calling from the streets, government dismissed it as mass hysteria. Only when people began walking willingly into the daylight and disappearing did government take steps.
She was in deep thought as she slowly made her way to the shelter.
The aliens read memories to lure people into the sunlight.
But then what did she do different? Was it because she stopped remembering?
Suddenly someone caught her hand. She looked down. It was the child whose toy she had saved yesterday.
“Thank you for getting my ‘Sparkle’.
He gave her a toothy smile his eyes filled with gratitude.
The gatekeeper who had directed her the previous day was standing at the entrance.
“You made it.”
She nodded weakly.
He invited her for tea, in his room.
How did you know of the stone bridge?” She asked him.
“I had hidden there once.”
“How did you survive? Did you stop remembering?”
“No … I didn’t stop remembering, I remembered something stronger.”
The gatekeeper handed her a cup of steaming tea.
“I remembered hope.”
Maya looked at him thoughtfully. Then she exclaimed,
“The aliens don’t read memories … they lock on to our emotional frequencies.
Grief …
Regret …
Loneliness …
Guilt …
These emotions shine like beacons!
So, when I deliberately chose to think about happy moments, I changed the neural patterns in my brain, and the alien lost the emotional signal.”
The old man’s eyes brightened.
“We could teach people to consciously redirect memories.”
As she got up to leave, her eyes fell on a faded photo pinned to the wall.
Children playing in the park beneath a bright afternoon sun.
The old man sighed, “The children of the present have never seen sunlight.”
Maya replied quietly, “Then we will give it to them!”
Dawn of Hope
