Tellus30

It’s a dream come true. I always thought that we would achieve this feat, but, I didn’t expect that it would be a reality so early. I’m going to cherish this moment until I die. After 5 years of the voyage in space, we will be landing on Planet-X in T-100. I’m proud of being part of this crew and very curious to explore our space neighbours’ lifestyle, clothing and cultures if any.

“We’ll be landing in T-10”, our captain prompted. The ship landed on a huge rectangular deck with big flashlights on the setup at the four corners pointing to the centre of the deck. Like spotlights pointing the stage in an auditorium, these lights are unveiling our space ship landing. The door of the ship opened and four of us started getting out of the ship one by one. I’m the last one to step out. Three unfamiliar life forms are standing 10 feet away from the spaceship door, I’m not sure what they are. Probably, they are the ones who came to receive us on this new planet. Their technology seems very advanced than ours. They transferred us the keys and codecs to translate from our languages to theirs and vice versa.

One of the life forms started moving towards us. The way the creature is moving is weird. These creatures use fours legs to walk. Maybe they would have realised that evolving to a two-legged species is a bad idea and it would cause more destruction than evolution. As we already figured out the communication part, we were not sure what language these creatures use to communicate. I’m not even sure if they use spoken language or just sign language. We don’t need to worry about that, at least for the time being. Using the keys and codec they transferred us, whatever they wanted to communicate, we understood it and whatever we spoke, they understood it.

The creature stopped in front of our crew captain and said, “Welcome to Tellus30, humans! We are Amphidroids and we are the majority of the living species on this planet. We are very glad to meet our mates from the neighbouring planet.”.

The Amphidroid which was communicating with us, raised its head and looked at each one of us and continued to say, “You must be tired and might want to get some rest. My mates here will walk you guys to your resting pods. When you are ready and refreshed, I’ll see you outside your resting pods and take you on a tour and show you our planet.”

The other two Amphidroids standing a little farther started showing us the path to our resting pods. Each one of us is allocated with a separate pod. I entered my pod and rested for a long time. 

I was in a deep sleep and with the alarm sound, I woke up. I got refreshed and came out of my pod. I saw the other crew members are already waiting for me and having a chat about how fascinating the Tellus30 is. I joined them and started yarning along with them.

Within no time the Amphidroid we met earlier came to us and said, “Hope you had good rest, let us get into this flying cart. There are a lot of things we would like to show you.”

We entered the flying cart and two other Amphidroids joined us. They showed and explained to us various things. They explained their source of energy(food), how the education system works, how the work is divided and how the decisions are made within a community. They also showed their technology, their renewable and non-renewable energy sources and a lot of fascinating things. It was more than what we can chew and digest in one Tellus30 planet rotation. After the long trip, the Amphidroids accompanied us back to our resting pods.

As soon as the Amphiodroids left us at the resting pods, we, the crew members, didn’t even bother to talk to each other, just rushed to our resting pods. 

Once I entered my pod, I changed to sleeping pyjamas and crashed on my bed. Unknowingly, I started thinking about Amphidroids, their lifestyle and the way they operate. I can’t stop thinking of three things. One, Amphidroid’s constructions, all are built on the water. They like water so much. Schools, community buildings, town square, commercial spaces, everything is built on water. Maybe that’s why they are AMPHIdroids.

The second one is fascinating. Amphidroids don’t have gender bias or gender differentiation. By looking at an Amphidroid, one can’t tell whether the Amphidroid is masculine, feminine or non-binary. Everyone is equal and gender is a matter of privacy. Asking one’s gender in public is not considered offensive but punishable.

The last one and my personal favourite, creating equal opportunities. Every Amphidroid born gets an equal opportunity, it could be education, resources to excel in one’s domain of interest or the same platform to identify one’s talent. This is such a beautiful and powerful practice to have. Unlike we humans, Amphidroids won’t get a religious identity or hereditary assets from their parents. All they get are the same wings, the same strength to fly and explore their dreams. Neither they race to prove their talent nor quit doing what they are interested in. 

All these thoughts slowly started to pull me into sleep, my eyelids can’t stay open anymore. My brain is requesting me to get some rest. I fell asleep soon.

It was a very loud noise, I initially thought it was some warning alert like a fire alarm. No, it is not. It is my phone. I usually keep it beside my pillow when I sleep, it is ringing. The loud ringtone woke me up. I answered the call.

“Hey, I have good news, I got admission for Masters in renowned USA university”, this excited voice from the phone pulled me back into reality. I started losing traces of the dream I had. Within no time, however hard I try to recollect the dream, I can’t recollect anything. It’s archived so deep inside my mind, I can’t even access it anymore.

“Hello, can you hear me?”, the voice from the phone again pulled me to the surface from drowning in my thoughts about the dream.

“Awesome..great news and congratulations!”, I replied realising that I need to acknowledge the person on the phone that I’m not dreaming.

“Thank you! Let’s meet in the college, I have to get few documents from the college, see you soon..”, the voice from the phone ended with a phone beep.

As I’m completely awake now, I started looking at the email notifications. The subject of the first email notification shattered me on the ground, it read “Scholarship for your eighth semester is not allocated. Please meet the concerned official from the accounts & admin department.” An unknown voice in my head whispered “If your pet dog dies you mourn, if a street dog dies you may not even come to know about it. After all, both are dogs, but, just because of a different opportunity, one lived a life which most didn’t get to live.”