Version 3
The waves came crashing in. She watched from her window as she sipped her cup of tea. Her eyes never left the horizon. Flashes of lightning hit the angry sea and furious but small water tornadoes formed and dissipated with each blink of her eyes.
She waited for the flashes of lightning to start hitting the shores and put her cup of tea down. It was time. She slipped off her robe and walked out into the raging storm. Raindrops lashed into her skin leaving imprints, like her tears on her face.
She had been on the island for 96 years now, exiled after she had found the glitch in time space continuum to exist in parallel times but her discovery had led to an indestructible race of man. History was not to be failed. Napolean, Hitler and Mugabe were not mere individual appearances but testaments to what mankind was really made of.
Her time to return to the plane she left, where nothing but death would embrace her was to come soon. She had no fears. Living alone for almost a century had taught her bravery beyond measure. She yearned to be not alone again.
The end of her exile was to be preceded with a storm. With every storm she braved her way to the shore to wait for the culmination of the play of lightning to bring her back to 2009.
She continued to wait.
Version 2
He heard the scurrying. The sensors on his helmet had picked up movement an hour earlier and he had thus far been unsuccessful in locating the perpetrator.
He looked up at the sign on the wall. Macrobrachium carcinus. Freshwater shrimps of Valpraiso. The sign on the wall detailed Darwin’s discovery of the species on the east coast of the Americas. How innocent it had all seemed.
It was the only sign still intact in the Museum of Natural History. He looked at all the other rotting signages hanging in a rather forlorn manner having been slowly consumed.
The scurrying continued and he chased the movement as his sensors guided him towards the remains of a Shetland pony on display. He saw it then. The crustacean was consuming the pony hurriedly, obviously aware of his presence.
He aimed his laser pointer at the creature and beamed it. His aim accurate, the shrimp was pulverized. He walked closer towards the display and examined the remnants of the shrimp on the ground. He kicked at the white powder to make sure there was no sign of life.
The giant freshwater shrimps had become a menace in the last twenty years. It had all actually started right here, in Oxford, autumn of 2089.
A visitor to the musuem had noticed creatures in the display box multiplying and alerted the staff. Mayhem soon ensued with people rushing to watch the display and thereafter scrambling for safety when they realized the shrimps were eating their way out.
It was almost ten years before the method to destroy them was discovered, rather accidentally. A simple beam from a laser pointer sufficed. But in the course of the years, all musuems housing samples of M. carcinus had seen the creatures awake from their dormant state, multiply and eat their way through millions of dollars worth of antiquities.
He adjusted his helmet and touched the feed command. He felt instantaneously satiated. He looked at the floor and wondered what the feeling of eating must be like. Looked tiring from the process the shrimps had gone through.
Version 1
He heard the scurrying. Scanning operative negative. He looked up at the sign on the wall. Freshwater shrimps of Valpraiso, Chile. Scanning operative positive. He moved to close in on the sign but stopped.
A warning light blinked on his helmet instructing him to reconnect his shoulder. His shoulders had been acting up lately causing the synaptic links to the electro scanner attached to his head to malfunction periodically.
He realized he should have never lifted the antique television from his grandfather’s collection to the Museum of Natural History. He amused himself with the knowledge that his grandfather had also apparently hurt his shoulder lifting the same television.
Scanning operative warning. His helmet glowed red. He saw what had caused the scurrying.
