“Unfortunately, Mirth is completely barren of any resources to help us get past this pandemic. As I have been told, Mirth has never made an attempt to make contact with Earth. So considering that we are now, I hope you realise how dreadful things are on our end. Most importantly, I hope to hear back from you.” // HEADER PHOTO: Unknown cover artist, বিজ্ঞান ও মানুষ by Abdullah Al-Muti © Anupam Prokashoni, 1975

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fiction, feb 25

Chapter 01 – The End

Earth,

I have so many questions for you. If I start, I fear that I might never stop but I have more pressing matters at hand.

It’s the year 0202 in Mirth and currently, we are suffering from a 91 divoc pandemic. However, we like to call it the Devoid as this disease has only spread darkness and death since its arrival. It seems like once someone is consumed by it, there’s no coming back—hence its name the Devoid.

Unfortunately, Mirth is completely barren of any resources to help us get past this pandemic. As I have been told, Mirth has never made an attempt to make contact with Earth. So considering that we are now, I hope you realise how dreadful things are on our end. Most importantly, I hope to hear back from you.

With its heart still beating,
Mirth

Chapter 02 – A Cry for Help

“We need to get in touch with Earth,” someone raised their voice among the unrest of the civilians.

“Getting in touch with Earth is the best you can come up with?” says an incredulous voice.

“They are the only option we are left with,” the first voice says with a defeated sigh. “We can fax written letters to them, it’s the only thing they will accept from us.”

“And who among us would write said letter?” hollered another voice with disgust. “Care to enlighten us?”

The mention of writing immediately perked me up. But Ejkei knew me better than I knew the back of my own hand. With his tightening grip on my arm, his sharp eyes silently warned me, “Don’t you dare speak a word.”

And I didn’t dare to speak a word.

Perhaps that is why today I am here, writing something that is long overdue, trying to salvage what is left of Mirth.

So, Earth, if you are reading this, do not stop.

This is a cry for help.

Chapter 03 – Take Your Sweet Time but Don’t Take Too Long

Earth,

It has been a whole year and I haven’t heard back from you. The elders have told me that one year in Mirth time is two on Earth. But don’t worry, I haven’t lost hope—I never will, I’m stubborn like that.

I’ve read the first letter I sent to you over and over, and I realized I might have come off as too distant. So, here goes nothing:

I am Effie Myth. I belong to no one. I’ve been told that your people have a mother and a father on Earth. But on Mirth everyone belongs to no one. I’ve also been told that your people have sisters and brothers. I have someone like that but we call them others. My other’s name is Ejkei Myth. Ejkei is someone that I cannot decode but he seems to know me very well. Perhaps it’s because he came a Mirthian way before I did. I cannot tell you for certain. But what I can tell you is that he only wants good for me. He does everything in his life with me as his priority and it shows.

That being said, it upsets Ejkei that I volunteered to write to you. He is afraid of the unknown. But we all are, so I’m determined. You are our only shot at survival and I am our only shot at reaching out to you. So of course, I volunteered.

But I am too late. Mirth lost one lung by the time I decided to get my head in the game.

Please write back. I hope for nothing but to hear back from you.

With its heart still beating,
Mirth

Chapter 04 – I Dream About You

Earth,

I am scared they made you up. It’s been five years in Mirth, ten in yours, and I’m terrified. I am still determined to grab hold of you, but nonetheless, terrified.

I dream about you almost every day now. It angers Ejkei that I haven’t given up hope. But there is no way that I can. Not when I feel so close to finding the key to our survival, even after all these years.

Sometimes I wonder if you are reading these letters and having a bit of a laugh among yourself.

But keep in mind, Mirth is dying.

Sometimes I wonder if you have received my letters at all. I wonder if they have made you up to plant seeds of fickle hope amongst the desperate. I wonder if the only allowed form of contact between Mirth and Earth is truly through letters.

It feels like everything around and inside me is collapsing. And when everything finally crumbles, I hope you will bear witness to all that.

With its heart still beating,
Mirth

Chapter 05 – Mirth

Earth,

I have always despised living here. Living here means being surrounded by unanswered questions and vague answers. And misery. So, so much misery.

No one is, or ever was, happy in Mirth. There was always a shortage of supplies from water to food to clothes. We never stood a chance for a fair shot at happiness.

Do you know what it’s like to be so hungry that you look at corpses and want to take a dig at them with a knife and spoon?

I’m sure you don’t.

Before the Devoid came and killed all of the elders, they would tell us stories about you. The extent of truth behind those stories was always a point of hot debate for us enthusiastic listeners. Most of us were skeptical, but all of us held onto those stories very close to our hearts because they offered hope for a better life.

One of those stories was that Earth and Mirth are connected to each other through the fax machine stand. Our elders would assure us that you could feel the reverberation of our misery and have something big in store for us. I always took it with a pinch of salt; however, I could not help but feel hope blossoming all over my chest that you know about us.

But you don’t seem to know anything at all.

With its heart still beating,
Mirth

Chapter 06 – I Linger Inside the Fax Machine Stand to Hear From You

“You have another letter today,” says Ejkei, disapproval dripping from his voice. “There is no one to save anymore, you do see that, don’t you? The letters have no purpose.”

Feeling anger bubbling up my throat, I reply, “It’s none of your business.”

Ejkei is right, there is no one to fight for. The Devoid came and killed everyone it could. Those that survived, started worshipping death as a way to be freed from the misery that is Mirth now.

But there is still Ejkei. “I will go and drop it off,” I say to him.

“Why are you still doing this,” he asks as he gets to his feet and closes the distance between us. “It’s been ten years for us. Twenty for them. Do you know how long of a time that is? Why still write to them?”

“Did you stop to think,” he pauses. “Did you stop to think that if twenty years of receiving your call for help letters didn’t sway them, it never will?”

I close both of my eyes and let silence do all the talking.

“Fine. Go,” he says with a defeated sigh.

And I bolt.

The fax machine stand is quite the walk from where Ejkei and I live. I wrap a thick, cotton scarf around my face to muffle the stench of rotting flesh and blood, and head out.

Mirth was never a pretty place to live in. The sky was always yellow as if a sulfuric bomb went off in the sky and never cleared. The footpaths were always scorching hot. So much so that you needed to spit on your feet to juxtapose the concrete burn. The houses we lived in were in no better condition. Water damage and mold were spreading its veins all over the walls and ceilings.

Everything on Mirth was rotting and rotted.

I walk to the fax machine stand as Ejkei’s words bounce off the walls of my mind. What’s the purpose of it all?

I turn the doorknob of the fax machine stand and step inside, my blistered feet sighing in relief. Stepping inside the fax stand has always felt like stepping into a whole different world. There was a rush of cold air coming from the walls. The stand always smelled like roses—something that you can’t find outside. And the fax machine itself was magic.

When I came here to drop my first letter ten years back, the contrast between the stand and the outside world filled me with hope. “This may work after all,” I thought to myself.

Ten years later, the stand remained the same but I am not the optimistic person I was the first, second, or third time. The shine wore off.

I grip the letter in my hand with a force strong enough to crinkle the paper and leave traces of my fingerprint. Feeding the fax machine my letter, I linger inside the stand, naively hoping for a reply.

It never comes.

Chapter 07 – What Will It Take?

Earth,

Throughout the years I have sent you many letters.

Do you know I sent them all with blind trust?

You are the only life we know outside our planet. But why can we only reach out to you through letters? What is a fax machine? How can Mirth have such advanced technology? Where did it come from? Who put it or brought it here?

These are the questions I had simmering inside my belly that I ignored each time I wrote to you. And why did I write to you?

Because Mirth was dying.

It is dead now.

Ejkei caught the Devoid sometime after I sent you my last letter. I write to you now as his body is rotting next to me. I can’t help but think that Ejkei was right, that I should have listened to him. I should have been preoccupied with spending the little time we had together talking with one another instead of burying myself in this doomed one-sided penpalship.

Do you know Ejkei was all I had? He was so wonderful and ever so caring. He would be up in my business all the time. I would roll my eyes at him, but deep inside, I knew I was lucky to have someone like Ejkei. He was the type of person who could look at a speck of dust and start an elaborate conversation about absolutely nothing at all.

He is gone, and I have no one to save anymore.

In other words, this is my last letter to you.

I hope you know there is blood—buckets of blood—coating your hands. I hope you are never able to wash it off.

Signing off,
Mirth

Chapter 08 – Ejkei

The earliest memory I have is of staring at the yellow and cloudy sky. There was a very sharp and high-pitched wailing sound across the thin air. “The Devoid took another one of its victims,” I remember thinking to myself. There was a firm grip around my hand. It was Ejkei; if he could, he would stitch our hands together so I would never leave his sight.

In this memory, I trace the lines and curves of his face with my eyes. Nothing makes you realize the significance of being alive until you are in the presence of death. I study his face and I am grateful that we are alive next to each other.

In this memory, Ejkei tells me about all the books he has read.

In this memory, I sit and talk to him for hours and never leave to draft another letter.

Chapter 09 – The Beginning

My dearest Effie,

I couldn’t muster up the courage to talk to you in health, so I thought talking to you in death would be a perfect coward’s way out.

I don’t know where to start so I will just talk about where it all began—Earth.

We had it all wrong. Earth never had a chance to save us, because we are Earth. All the stories about Earth and Mirth, their connection, and their history, have been completely made up. You were always skeptical about the stories and that made me so proud of you. I raised you to always take what you hear with a pinch of salt, and that you always did.

I was there when Earth fell and Mirth rose. I was there when the stories of Earth being a completely different planetary body were being whispered into people’s ears—I was the one who proposed the idea.

I am throwing a lot of curveballs at you and I am sure you feel betrayed by me. But all of this scheming was done for the greater good.

Earth had it all. Before Mirth came to be, I never realized how many things I had at my disposal that I took for granted. Earth had big stadium-like houses where there were endless supplies of food, water, you name it. It had something very magical called electricity—knowing your curious self, you would have loved electricity. There were also huge storehouses full of books. I wish I had saved more books for you.

However, all was well until it was not. The pandemic wreaked havoc. There was looting, strikes, and protests everywhere. People were killing each other for money, food, and other goods. Because of the unrest, a secret community was created, founded under the slogan, “Make New Earth.” 

The panel was made up of people from different parts of Earth. We kept track of the world’s population and their condition. We were waiting for the right time, for the population to hit the right number to turn our slogan into reality.

It did not take long. Our community charged into effect.

We set up a government, we re-envisioned culture, kinship, religion, gender, and the family unit. With enough manpower, dedication, and time, we washed off every sign of Earth. Thus began the journey of Mirth. Right then, to mark the start of a new beginning, I was given you.

We had three main priorities: food, clean water, and accommodation. However, things started to fall apart when the demand exceeded our supply more than we could have comprehended.

Things got worse when another pandemic hit, the Devoid. We just did not have the necessary equipment to stabilize the situation. The people were losing faith. During such spiraling times, the high council of Mirth decided to plant seeds about something known as Earth, a twin planet out there that can save us.

The plan was not perfect in the least, but it was still something to calm down the unrest. One of us had kept a fax machine as a souvenir and proposed the idea of setting up a fax machine stand somewhere far and deserted. Then we told people the only way of reaching out to Earth was through letters which should be put into this obsolete machine.

The catch here was that no one amongst the populace was literate. Thus, writing a letter was far from possible.

However, you, my brainiac, decided to volunteer to write the letters despite my strong disapproval.

I could not hold off from teaching you how to read and write. I could not be around you without seeing your potential. I could not let it go to waste.

But, oh, how so much was wasted.

I am not sorry for deceiving you about Earth.

I am sorry for not making Mirth a better place.


You are my heart,
Ejkei

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