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Short Fiction Story: If I Am Able To Create A Life All Alone, I Will Survive

By Jaideep Khanduja @PebbleInWaters
I was all alone left on the Earth. I didn't want to believe this. Neither did I have any evidence to prove it either way. Only difference from yesterday and today is that I just landed from planet Jupiter to my home planet Earth and found myself on barren planet. Nobody. Not a single living being except me. Shocking. I left Earth in the year 2020 on a personal mission of finding life on Jupiter in my personal spacecraft alone. For the last 20 years I was doing this research in my personal lab on Earth about existence of life on other planets and trying to discover about any other galaxies besides ours. While leaving Earth in 2020, Jan 1, I never had imagined that with a mission of finding life on Jupiter, when I will land back after 10 years, in 2030, it will be an extremely opposite situation.
I had found life there on Jupiter. The population was small there, just a million and were into existence for last 50 decades. They were called Jupan Beings there, like us being known as Human Beings. When I had landed there, I was welcomed by the leader of those 1 million Jupans. He was taller than all other Jupans by a feet and by 5 feet from my height. I am 6 feet tall and all Jupans were not less than 10 feet. The leader was 11 feet in height. All Jupans had 4 eyes, 4 feet, 4 arms and one head. They had no back, just 2 fronts of each Jupan. The leader was known as Super Jupan. All others were known as just Jupans. No name for each Jupan. They had an ability to differentiate from each other and recognize each other by smell. So for 1 million and 1 Jupans, they had just equal number of smells. The Super Jupan had a smell of rose. But they didn't know what rose is. They used to call that smell as Jupose.
After living with them for 10 years, making them understand about civilizations and various cultures of Earth, I was reciprocated in understanding their civilization and culture. After 10 years when I was leaving Jupiter, I had added one word in their dictionary - Emotion - which probably they had never encountered earlier. And that is why there were tears in their eyes when I was leaving their planet.
And then this shock of finding myself all alone in the World. What do I do now? How will I survive, all alone? I didn't have any idea. I found a newspaper on my table after reaching home and it was dated December 31, 2022. The headlines were extra bold and alarming - "This is the last paper being printed as only 2 persons are left on this Earth. Everyone else has vanished all of a sudden and tonight it is our turn. Goodbye!". That means there was nobody here on Earth for last 8 years. Which further meant that the crops, vegetation, everything has eloped from existence. Now what? Suddenly I remembered that Super Jupan had given me a box of small pills - around 10 in count. He had told me that 1 pill is capable of keeping you fit and 1 day, without any other need of water or food. Fine, now I can survive for 10 days more but what after that? I had to think of building, creating some resources to enable myself for survival after these 10 days.
I took out the wireless device from my pocket that could connect me to Super Jupan. I dialed his jobile number and told him my problem. He was silent for a minute and then he expressed his helplessness. He told me to use my own powers within to get myself enabled to survive. I went to my lab, uncovered my instruments and tried to find out the beaker in which I had left some honey in a small bottle. Honey, I knew, can survive for years. It was all intact. Then I remembered I had one bottle of beer. I had to do something to create some life, if possible, if I had to keep surviving. I poured some beer on a small quantity of honey and created some optimum environmental conditions to get those germs in the beer to mix with honey and create some energy in the mixture so as to enhance life in germs.
The germs found appropriate amount of environment to grow with the help of honey. In these growing germs I added some cells from my body with the help of a small knife and spatula and placed those cells on the mix of germs and honey. The cells crossed with germs and gradually a rounded layer of plasma got developed around that. I had consumed 8 pills by now, and had been working for last 8 days - day and night, without any rest. I was totally exhausted by now and needed a sleep. But before that I had to ensure that some life formation has started inside that plasma ball. Inside the plasma ball I saw a small life formation developing and growing with a substantial speed visibly increasing every hour. The growth had reached to a comfortable level in next couple of hours to make me relaxed that something is happening.
With hardly two days left for my survival, I decided to take a chance by taking one pill myself and pushing one pill inside that plasma ball where some small structure with little movement had started forming. After pushing the pill inside that plasma ball and gulping the last one, I finally thought of going for a sleep and let my fate decide - what will happen after I wake up. It would be either some life formation completion or there will be nothing. If it will be nothing - I was sure that it will be an end to my survival.
After one full day of sleep, I found some voices and noise coming around, that brought my out of the deep sleep. I felt as it a small Jupan had evolved out of that plasma ball, walking towards me and shaking me, and shouting in Jopan's language - telling me to wake up. Though still tired - but with all these pushes and shake ups, I just murmured - Hey, little Jupan, please let me sleep a little more..." But all in vain.
Finally I had to open my eyes - and was all prepared to see a little Jupan standing on the side, I found my daughter and wife standing, instead, both laughing, and my wife telling her - "See, didn't I tell you, he is a born dreamer...".
"Ya", my daughter said. I woke up... from a long, strange and weird dream... looking around for that little Jupan.

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