Space Odyssey: 2040

Walking with Akshay, back to the hostel post a good dinner which ended on the Vadilal offering 'Volcano', I was blessed with a brilliant star-lit night. Akshay, being ever so the bragger about knowledge (sorry for this Akhoy!), helped me see the constellation Ursa Major, better known as the Great Bear. Must have been some Indian thing I guess. Not the Indians that inhabit the eastern hemisphere of the earth, but those wild things in the Americas. The Great Bear. I'm hell sure they must have lent it the name.

I had a funny thought while looking up at the skies. And of course I let Akshay share it with me. I was wondering if The man upstairs, Our Dear Lord the God, with one sleight of the hand might make all the stars vanish from the skies and render total darkness to the horizon. Not even the electric purple that a cloudy night offers; only sheer darkness. Like its out of some horror movie you'd not see with your girl on a Saturday night. But we'd also need some incentive for God to do that. And here is what I think the incentive should be!

200 channels, Hi-definition, in natural chrome, virtual reality meets advanced 3-D projections leaving us with the most realistic theatre experience ever. Now when Gandalf rides the night sky to the Elf Lords, he'd be heard all the way from Mexico to Japan's eastern rim... and as an afterthought maybe even the satellite debris floating all over our solar system. The effect would be so real that you'd wonder if you haven't already been casted as one of the Orcs. I'll be a dwarf, no hassles! But you, yeah! You're gonna be an Orc of the lowest kind only. ;)

Smell as much as it does, of horseshit, I think its gonna be a future thought that would be taken upto its practical end by the screw-space department of NASA or maybe NTT DoCoMo would find that revenue break-even won't even be ten years on this kind of stuff.

There could be multiple stations that, using radio frequency, can project it into space or atleast the outermost layer of the atmosphere. Out there I presume the interference would be restricted to what damage UV might be able to do at best. News can be fed from all the goddam' locations on earth, real time. You'd be able to see the stuff right then and there, projected almost in reality in the skies. All you have to do is tune in your MegaHyperMetropic glasses (MHM for you), into the appropriate frequency and pronto! Ben Kingsley as Gandhi is doing the rounds where The Great Bear was to be hibernating. I'd expect this to help do away with all those televisions and save some extra space in your living room! Maybe that micro-sushi-bar you always wanted won't now be impossible. The TV is gone. All you'll have to do is carry these pair of goggles (Ray-Ban anybody!), sit down where ever you are by the time it is your favourite show on air and find the nearest box of popcorn to grind down.

Err........ my royalties!