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2099: Awakening, Chapter 5
The cafeteria was empty, except for one lonely soul. One by one everyone left, but Deepti sat in silence, staring at her cup of coffee that was still full. The hot coffee was cold by then, just like her soul. A few strands of her dry hair waved along with the air that flowed through the empty cafeteria. Her brown pupils didn’t produce even the tiniest motion. To her, the coffee no longer looked like brown milk in a cup. It had turned black, with thousands of galaxies and millions of stars. She was peeping into the universe through her coffee.
We are just like a speck of dust in this vastness, She thought. Among the mammoth heavenly bodies, do we really matter?
“Ma’am, we’re about to close”, a person from the cleaning staff said.
Deepti nodded. Her lips couldn’t move to produce a sound. They were cold and dry, with no energy left. In three hours, over 54,000 new humans arrived on earth. About 20,000 humans left earth. And 7.9 billion humans continued to live as usual, each living in their own little world that they have created for themselves and their loved ones. Some dream of having a more beautiful world to live in. But in the same three hours, there were four innocent people whose dream worlds were shattered into pieces. And one among them remains, looking into her new world through her coffee.
She saw the spaceship flying away from the earth through her cup. It soared through planets, asteroids, and comets. It had become a part of outer space—another star in the sky.
How will I justify it? She thought. How will I leave billions on earth and escape to a safer place? How will I hide the truth from them? How can these people be so heartless? They are using that young boy by giving him false hopes for survival. She was thinking about Ansh.
The coffee produced concentric waves as if someone threw a pebble into a pond. Seeing the waves, Deepti imagined the supermassive black hole producing explosions of radiation that were headed to earth. Then there was another set of waves in her coffee. She felt like the black hole got stronger, then there was another. Deepti got back to her senses. Tiny concentric waves kept appearing in her coffee but she...
We are just like a speck of dust in this vastness, She thought. Among the mammoth heavenly bodies, do we really matter?
“Ma’am, we’re about to close”, a person from the cleaning staff said.
Deepti nodded. Her lips couldn’t move to produce a sound. They were cold and dry, with no energy left. In three hours, over 54,000 new humans arrived on earth. About 20,000 humans left earth. And 7.9 billion humans continued to live as usual, each living in their own little world that they have created for themselves and their loved ones. Some dream of having a more beautiful world to live in. But in the same three hours, there were four innocent people whose dream worlds were shattered into pieces. And one among them remains, looking into her new world through her coffee.
She saw the spaceship flying away from the earth through her cup. It soared through planets, asteroids, and comets. It had become a part of outer space—another star in the sky.
How will I justify it? She thought. How will I leave billions on earth and escape to a safer place? How will I hide the truth from them? How can these people be so heartless? They are using that young boy by giving him false hopes for survival. She was thinking about Ansh.
The coffee produced concentric waves as if someone threw a pebble into a pond. Seeing the waves, Deepti imagined the supermassive black hole producing explosions of radiation that were headed to earth. Then there was another set of waves in her coffee. She felt like the black hole got stronger, then there was another. Deepti got back to her senses. Tiny concentric waves kept appearing in her coffee but she...
