In the burning heat of summer, a man could be seen waiting on the bus stand. Well, it would be inappropriate to call him a man, as he was only seventeen. But, his stature and the contemplating look on his face gave him a mature presence. He was waiting for the 2 pm bus, as were 20 other people.

Some may find it crazy to be outside, when the temperature is near 60 Celsius but these people were used to it. Most of them were salarymen, with odd working hours. Once their shift was over, their offices required them to vacate their working spaces for those who had the next shift. But it was a common scene now a days. With bots taking over most of the manual labor and human population showing no signs of slowing down, these conditions could be considered quite luxurious. At least they had a job, unlike many others.

But our protagonist, Roon, wasn’t happy with this. He didn’t want to spend the rest of his life slaving for companies or doing measly jobs. Yes, these people were good, they had a job, putting them in the upper stratum of the society. Yet, this was not enough for him, he didn’t want to run around under the scorching sun when he was 45. So, he was enduring it now, at the age of 17, when most of the youths his age would loaf around in the government shelters, spend the stipends they get for useless shit with the mind set ‘It’s alright. We’ll think of work when we’re 30, now is the time to live life to its fullest’ then get kicked out of the shelter at 20, reproduce for 40 years and then return to the shelter at 60. While some of them might work like these salarymen here, but he thought otherwise. That was the reason he travelled in this dust filled oven, when he could be resting like the other’s his age. He had to attend classes that were annoyingly situated in different parts of the city, as he hoped to get a high position in the administrative sector of the society. But just because he thought differently didn’t mean that he was in a different condition than these people. He felt the heat just as much as them.

‘Ahmeda this time of the year, has been damned by god. Ugh, I’m sweating from my bums now.’

As they were sitting there, a kid was hawking newspapers for 10 uns per paper.

“Fresh, fresh, the world will end soon. Read, read, the real 2012 approaching. Fresh, fresh, the world will end soon.”

“Shut up. Shoo, you’re ruining the mood here. Your mother will end if you keep shouting.”

A bald uncle started shouting at the kid. The heat was already too much to handle, and here this kid was shouting shit, and making the already irritable atmosphere more uncomfortable.

“Yeah, my mom will end?? Surely your mom didn’t end it when I was with her, how do you think you were born? Thank me.”

The kid started doing obscene actions, which further aggravated the middle-aged man’s mood. But it brought a smile to the others on the stand. Even Roon was smiling, as he looked at the kid. He was certainly unregistered. His parents must have left him unregistered as they thought it to be too much of a hassle. So now he can’t even get into a shelter, and his parents were most certainly unemployed, the need to sell papers. In this matter Roon, thought himself to be quite lucky. As both his parents were working he could stay with them, and they were earning enough so he didn’t need to stay at the shelter, even though many of his friends did. But this kid was the unluckiest. He was about to be beat up by the middle-aged man, but as if an angel was looking over him, the bus arrived. Seeing the bus, the middle-aged man let go of him, and hurried to the bus in hopes of getting a window seat. As everyone was boarding the bus, Roon called over the kid and asked him for one, and paid him a 20 uns bill, letting him keep the change. The boy’s face lit up, and he bowed in a practice manner and like spokesperson giving his speech, said,

“Remember, the world is ending. The real 2012 is here. Our planet Terra, will no longer be the same.”

Roon too, played along with him, and with a mesmerized look on his face clapped like the charmed audience usually does. The boy seeing this gave a toothy smile and pointed to the bus, which had already started its engine. Seeing that the bus had already started Roon, ran and boarded just in time.

Inside the bus he saw that all the seats were full. Except for one, next to a girl. She had a good face, and a nice figure. But Roon wasn’t specially interested in that, what he was interested was in, was the seat that was empty. He looked around and saw that quite a few people were standing. Not sitting next to the girl, as the seats in this public transport were very congested. So, to not look like perverts who were taking a chance with this belle, they chose to keep standing. But of course, Roon wouldn’t think like that. What’s the point of looking good in front of people, you aren’t going to interact with for even an hour. Screw their opinions. With that line of thinking, he threw himself on the seat, without the slightest bearing of a gentleman. The girl next to him made a face but he still didn’t give squat.

‘Beauty, or Miss World, if I won’t be seeing you again, then fuck your opinion.’

Seeing an ugly faced bastard, taking the chance that they’d given up, and shamelessly sitting on the place they’d left empty on purpose, made a few men go green. Of course, neither was Roon ugly, nor a bastard, but that wouldn’t stop them from cursing him.

And the last straw was, when the belle didn’t ask him to get up, and went back to doing her own stuff.

After some period of oscillating, one man couldn’t take it anymore. He was a man in his 30s and he didn’t look like your regular salaryman. He was well dressed, cool jacket, stylish trimmed hair, expensive clean sneakers, really, not a speck of dust on him. One would wonder what he was doing outside, at this time of the day, in a public transport. And this rich, tall, playboy was standing in front of Roon.

“Hey, I got here before you mate.”

He said in a commanding tone.

“Oh, great. So?”

But Roon, looked on. Expression less. He even felt like saying, ‘Then you should’ve sat here when you had the chance’, but he didn’t. Getting into unnecessary conflict wouldn’t benefit anyone. So, he just kept staring at the guy, and the guy eventually backed off, not furthering the conversation. But he kept glaring time to time.

As the bus kept moving, Roon decided to involve himself in the paper he had bought today. They were becoming increasingly rare, even extinct in few parts of the globe, with the advent of digital media. And this one had an intriguing article. “The End of Earth” by Michael Freeman.

‘Hmm. Interesting, the author even has a second name. Freeman? Let’s see. “It is with deep regret that I write this piece to inform my fellow humans, that Earth maybe facing its greatest crisis yet. It is not intelligent robots or the TY3 virus as we’d predicted through our fictions and imaginations. This threat is very real, they are Aliens. I know it may sound fantastical, or the mumblings of a high dosed hippie at first. But I implore the reader to finish this article before forming any views about my claim. For the last year, we have been observing the occurrences of strange and unexplainable phenomenon, that have baffled the greatest minds of Earth till date. While I would like to discuss each one of them in detail, time is short, so I will present to you with only a timeline and the most important events. It started when the AutoSatV90, our greatest achievement situated in the asteroid belt, sent a photograph of monoliths, that looked as if designed by intelligent minds, crossing the asteroid belt. Soon after, we lost all contact with AutoSatV90. Then continually, we lost any form of contact with our satellites situated in our neighbor planets Mars, and Venus, within a period of 2 weeks. It was followed by strange phenomenon across the globe, which included, but were not limited to twisters and whirlpools in extremely unlikely points in our oceans, increased incidents of animal aggression, and the rapid growth of many forests in this year, which was lauded by many and accredited to the environmentalist groups of North Zihan. But I find this situation a bit worrying as the locations where these phenomena took place, had people claiming to have seen ‘Huge Black Monoliths’ flash in and out of existence right before these phenomena occurred. My friends, I won’t criticize the government for suppressing this matter as they were doing their best to avoid public unrest. But I had to get this out somewhere so that someone knows, that something is coming. To the reader I would like to say, there is not much you can do, except being careful. So be as careful as you can, for precaution may save your life, and many others.” Wow, that was creepy. So, conspiracy theorist huh? No wonder he had to publish a paper, no private domain would possibly publish this on their net portal.’

Just a he had finished reading the article, the bus bumped and the backpack he had kept on his side leaned a bit on the belle who was sitting beside him. She made a face as if she had eaten poop, when the bag met her skin. She started cleaning her arm where the bag had touched her. Sure, the bag had some dust on it due to constant and rough use, but it wasn’t infected or something, ‘Wear full sleeves if your skin is that delicate.’ was what Roon was thinking. As he was about to return to his own business, the woman with a slight smile, asked him in the gentlest tone possible.

“Do you mind? I’m getting really uncomfortable.”

Roon being the well-mannered citizen of the world, took his backpack and kept it in his lap, which surprisingly made it more comfortable, availing more space for him to spread.

But the woman kept staring at him, her smile had now turned to a forced one. Roon feeling that she wanted to say something, took the initiative,

“What is it?”

He asked.

“I’m really uncomfortable with this.”

“Yeah, that’s why I kept the bag in my lap.”

“No, I mean. I know what you’re thinking. Haven’t you had enough fun already, you know sitting next to the belle, even our shoulders touched sometimes, now if you’ve had enough could please just go. I’m really not comfortable with you sitting here.”

Roon gave an incredulous look to this woman. He wanted to lecture her about the delusional and self-centered bitch she was. But she was probably older than him, and if he caused a commotion then the idioms would probably take this case as some kid with hyper active hormones assaulting a beautiful young lady and stuff like that. So, he chose the most pragmatic response in this situation.

“Look lady. This seat was meant for two, and this is public transport. If you want to leave then no one’s stopping you, but I am not budging from this place till my stop comes.”

“You really won’t leave?”

The woman asked him again, and he just shook his head in response.

“Okay, you leave me with no choice then. PERVERT, PERVERT here. Somebody help.”

She started shouting like crazy. And before Roon could relax his raised eyebrow, a lot of people turned their attention towards them. First ones being, the chivalrous men who had given up the seat for the comfort of the lady. And the rich guy was even better, without trying to analyze the situation, he jumped at Roon.

“Whoa there mate. Easy with the lady alright. What do you think you’re doing?”

He started speaking in a loud voice, and attracted even more attention towards them. Now everybody was looking in Roons direction.

“I didn’t do squat.”

Roon replied with a calm tone. This was turning into quite a bit of hassle, which in turn was annoying him even more.

“Well, we all have an idea of what you were trying to do, don’t we? What do you have to say ma’am?”

‘Ma’am? For real. Did he just call her ‘ma’am’? ‘

“Yes. He’s a pervert. He was being very shifty right now. And when I asked him to move, he shamelessly refused.”

“See, there we have it. Don’t worry, I’ll take care of it in a jiffy. You, there. I politely ask you, please get up.”

Roon was still making the “The Fuck?” expression he was making in the start. This was too much for him to process. But the rich guy, took his silence for him accepting his guilt and being frozen up due to shame, and fear. He asked him again, this time confident of his achievement,

“So?”

“So what?”

“So, get up and get lost. Best if you get down at the next station. And have some respect for women. Next time I hope you don’t get so desperate as to try things in a bus.”

With that the group of men who were behind him, the “chivalrous” people burst out laughing. By this time, as Roon had finished processing what had happened, he let out a sigh, and fetched for something in his bag.

Then he took out Tic-tac’s from his bag, and started munching on them. The rich guy and company were left standing there as they were thoroughly ignored. After standing there for some time rage started bubbling in the rich guy. He asked with his voice trembling,

“Hey, why haven’t you left the seat?”

“Huh, don’t want to.”

To his rage filled question, Roon gave a dull reply. After seeing his reaction, the girl exclaimed,

“You really are shameless, aren’t you?”

“Haha, you got that right!”

To her exclamation, Roon gave a toothy smile and a cheesy reply.

The man had had enough. He stopped controlling himself and grabbed Roon by his collar, and forcefully lifted him up. As getting physical got Roon very uncomfortable, and he to in a fit of anger pushed the man. But it appears the man had some training in martial arts, as he stabilized himself and gave a quick jab to Roon’s stomach. Roon had the air drawn out of him as he struggled to breath. Seeing his condition, the man started smirking, but before he could completely enjoy his moment of victory, Roon unexpectedly punched him near the groin. But as Roon had no inkling of martial arts or any fight sense, he was off target and ended up hitting the man’s thigh, which did little damage, but angered him a lot. He again grabbed Roon by the collar and started thrashing him, on his face. While Roon started feeling dizzy, he didn’t let go of his consciousness, and with great timing spit in the man’s eyes. This action took the man by surprise, and gave Roon the window he was looking for as he kicked the guy in his tenders, and punched his face with all his might, which sent the man down, but even exhausted Roon as he was currently feeling, terrible pain in his fingers. Obviously, he’d punched wrongly, which in turn damaged his hand. But Roon was not one to stop here, he tried getting to the guy to thrash him again, but was tackled by other people as they broke the fight. As most of the public started crowding in the narrow section of the bus, to look at what had happened, the bus came to a sudden halt. Everyone was surprised as the break was too sudden and caused a lot of people to fall. They started questioning the driver, but most of them were still looking at the two bruised mails, one of which was requesting medical assistance. But their attention was shifted, when the driver announced,

“Oi everyone. I think we have a problem here. The bus has stopped working for some reason, I’m trying to access the bus’s digital interface but that to has stopped working. So, I’m gonna must ask you to arrange for some other means of transport, as I’ll have to call the company office now and they’ll send someone to check it out and it’s going to take some time.

“What! The hell man, I have to get to work, I’ll lose points if I’m late.”

“Yeah, and I just got off work. My wife’s waiting. Do something.”

And all the people started bantering like they usually do. The driver was in a tough spot, but there was nothing he could do. The smart ones started calling, but they couldn’t get any signal. The bigger problem was, they were stranded on a flyover, and there was no cab that would wait on a flyover at the wave of a hand. So, they were all in a tough spot. As people started getting off the bus, everyone seemed to have forgotten the brawl that had happened. Even the rich guy let it go. He only sent some sharp glares at Roon. Then, one of the passengers shouted from outside,

“Everyone, you have to see this.”

As all the public started gathering outside, Roon too, followed them, and what he saw left him flabbergasted. Outside he could on the flyover, cars were stranded, not just stopped, like a traffic jam, literally immobile. Not even one of them working, and all their drivers were outside trying to call or do anything, but they had no signal. Also, this wasn’t just the scene on the flyover he was on, from up there, everywhere he could see, all the places had the same thing repeating. All vehicles shut, and the people struggling with their phone. But this wasn’t enough to flabbergast him, what had him wide eyed and open assed, was what he saw in the air. A Big Black Monolith.

“You’re fucking with me, right?”