Foreword

Some of us are of the opinion that science is the bete noire of religion and vice versa. This story is a deviation from that commonly held belief. The reader will discover that the two are indeed collinear as the story eventually unfolds.

It takes the ingenuity of an entity, possessing artificial intelligence and located some 170 light years away from the Earth to tell the modern man that he should do something immediately to protect his environment from the burgeoning accumulation of greenhouse gases.

What begins, as an innocuous short family trip to a place of pilgrimage in the weekend, turns adventurous for the thirteen-year-old talented child. Three generations of a family, in course of their journey by train to a place of pilgrimage, are caught in the web of events.

The oldest one depicted by the aged grandfather represents the past generation. He is carefree and happy; whatever comes your way type. The next generation, the present one, represented by the child's father is the modern man with a comfortable means of livelihood. He is driven by a sense of remorse for an accident that was, strictly speaking, not of his making. Both the generations are not concerned much about their atmospheric environment.

The mother of the child is concerned only with her family and nothing else. She is happy in a way and leaves everything else to God.  The intelligent child, the representative of the future of the human race, is however, much concerned to observe the continuous degradation of the environment. He evokes hope for the future.

Although it is true that the present day scientific community and intelligentsia have seized on the problem of greenhouse gases and global warming, they are yet to come up with a tangible solution.

On the contrary, the proponents of doomsday have already declared that the problem of global warming has turned irreversible.

Far away, in another world, some super-intelligent being detects the trouble brewing in this world. It is aware of the fallout of such trouble in the not too distant future being disastrous for the inhabitants of the Earth. That entity is much concerned and tries to help mankind protect his environment.

The main culprit among greenhouse gases is Carbon dioxide, which constitutes 57% of all such gases. If its level can be reduced, there may be an escape. This is too simplistic a solution to be believed. But it has been observed time and again that solutions of complex problems are always simple. Someone has to cut the Gordian knot.

The Trans-world entity thinks of an ingenuous method to communicate a proper solution to the inhabitants of the Green Earth. It selects a thirteen-year-old child from among the myriad of living beings on Earth.