FAULT LINE: Fault Line

by Pranav Joshi

Welcome to the world! It is 2121 AC, and the world is a different place but is sadly too predictable, given the horrors we‟ve cast upon it. Human body has grown weaker, the average atmospheric temperature has been raised by 5°C, humans have started living on mars nearly 100 years ago, but human colonies on mars and moon too face different problems now, concerning natural resources. As its inhabitants, we have degraded our ecosystem throughout, and our home stares at an impending doom. Humans are getting lazy day by day and machines have aided them unknowingly in their pursuit of laziness. Most of the mines are dead and oil wells have dried, what remains are dug ditches and exhausted hillocks. Outer space treaty of 1967 has been modified and mining on moon and other planets has been legalized. Petroleum wells in the Middle East, USA and Russian Federation are mostly empty. All the metals were oxidized during the 3rd world war, which happened 50 years ago, leaving all of them useless. Now we have anti gravity systems, black bomb, and transporter portal (which plays a vital role in story later), we are still working on wormhole. Time machine project has been banned by the government due to the obvious effect that can bring. In 2080‟s, India‟s initiative for a concept of „A world with no boundaries‟ turned into reality and now, a common governing body called World Governing Organization (WGO) governs the world. Each of the member nations selects their president to represent them at WGO. World population has crossed 11 billion in 2100 and continues to increase. One day, Dr. Vyas, an Indian scientist has a nightmare about human extinction. He comes to know that the nightmare is actually the output of his subconscious thinking, which after study and hard work concludes to be true. Now he is the only human to know about the timeline of the event of human extinction. His assistant, Max, a robot and centralized system to his home, and Neel whom he parented like his own son, help him to save the world. They present a study in WGO meeting and inform every country‟s representative so as to get help from everyone. They request everybody to maintain secrecy, citing concerns over the human tendency to save oneself and one‟s own family before saving others, which may jeopardize the master plan to save human race. WGO later accepts Dr. Vyas‟s view stating „survival of the fittest‟ in accordance with Darwin‟s theory. The idea of “fittest” is relative and Dr. Vyas elaborates to WGO members that „those who would remain unharmed on earth even after the occurrence of an apocalyptic event would be the fittest to survive and will lead human race‟. Dr. Vyas further proposes to emigrate selected people to moon, thus it is implied that only a fraction of total population would be helped to survive. Dr. Vyas estimates that the event will occur after 10 years (The reason behind the event is heart of this story). No one ever imagined the reason behind the event and no human brain ever explored the one probability. Meanwhile, in the Arabian Peninsula, an Afghan family dream of a better life, but still has a long way to gain financial stability. Nevertheless, Murtaza is happy one day, because his father Munawar has promised him that they along with his wife Pakiza would go to a park to enjoy. Pakiza still tries to convince Munawar to go back to their old life, while he tells her about his new job. She‟s worried as his new low profile job is in a destruction company, but the job pays well. Their life takes a sharp turn in 2122, when Murtaza comes home with a sheet of paper conforming his seat to moon for a program of 10 years by WGO. No one in Munawar‟s family was ever enrolled in such programs and Munawar mulls over the decision of enrollment, but later reluctantly agrees to send his son to moon next year.

132 pages, Kindle Edition

Published May 16, 2017

About the author

Started my reading journey with evergreen classics Enid Blyton and Sidney Sheldon around 7th/8th grade.
Post that came the fantasy/mythology Rick Riordan/Ashwin Sanghi phase in 10th.
Then got very deeply into Dan Brown's works around my 11th/12th.
In my B.Com degree, read a whole lot of non fiction, which taught me how to think and function better.
Today, as a full time employee of a global bank, I consciously carve out time to read fiction to relax and read people's stories, and sometimes non-fiction to keep myself upgraded.

Reading: https://www.goodreads.com/pranav_joshi
Writing: https://pranavjoshi.scrollstack.com / https://www.quora.com/profile/Pranav-...
Twitter: https://twitter.com/pranavjoshilive
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/pranavjos...

Reviews

[Pranav Joshi · Rating 5 out of 5]

The book is very nice I know,
My old friend translated it.
But please correct the author's profile there.

I am the author rather the the person you guys have shown and and please correct the profile links provided as well