Kilimambogo Mystery

It was six
in the evening. The minute clock seemed to be moving very slowly for Richard. He
had a date with his girlfriend, Sally, at seven o’clock. Their destination was
a forty minute ride, yet she hadn’t arrived at his place.

“What’s the
meaning of this?!” he wondered, as he bit his nails.

 He tried five times to reach her on her
cellphone, but to no avail. The thought of all the time he would kiss Sally and
give her an engagement ring, seemed that it would all go to waste. A sharp,
black Italian suit he wore felt like some kind of a joke.

As he
lamented on his romantic woes, the solution soon arrived. Sound of a door-bell was
the only thing he was waiting for. Excitement glowed on his face as raced down
the stairs to open the door. He almost tripped as he ran.

 A feminine shadow appeared behind the door.
The hourglass shape and models’ height seemed too familiar. It was Sally.

“What took
you so long…your hair this time?” he asked her.

The tone of
his voice sounded calm, but Sally could tell he was angry. She read him like a
book. They had been together for two years. The only thing that kept on
separating them was education. Sally had evening classes for Bachelors program
in Anthropology, which ended at six in the evening, while Richard worked at a
Pharmacy in the day.

“Don’t worry
dear. A date is a date, even though it’s past seven, right?” she consoled him.

“Okay,” he
said. Sally could tell his reply was half-hearted.

Richard
picked his scarf, closed the door, and left together with Sally. The nearest
bus station was only ten minutes walks away. Stories about a meteorite that
fell three days earlier on Mount Kilimambogo, dominated most people’s conversations
they eavesdropped. Some people even thought the meteorite was an omen for the
end of days.

It did not
take long for them to arrive at the bus station. It was already seven in the
evening, yet a crowd of people waiting for buses made it feel like seven in the
morning on a working day. It was a Friday night. Everyone wanted to have fun.

Richard and
Sally spent their waiting time analyzing the rest of the people’s dressing
styles, and personalities. They categorized them into urban dwellers,
countryside dwellers, students, and working class.

Sally
noticed one man who didn’t seem to fit any of the categories. He had a dark
shades, a hat, a sixties’ suit, and a briefcase.  His skin was abnormally pale, yet he looked
composed and stable. Richard was busy looking at other men’s wristwatches and
cellphones.

Soon their
bus arrived; they got in, and hit the road at sixty miles per hour. Casablanca
Restaurant was their destination. Richard was worried that they would arrive at
past eight, because there were two military checks ahead.

Since the
fall of a meteorite in Mount Kilimambogo, a massive military buildup had been
witnessed by Kilimambogo residents. Tankers and tracks full of soldiers with
masks could be seen moving to and fro. It looked as though there was a war.

 Yellow tapes had also been put two kilometers
around the meteorite’s impact point. It was all in the news. No one knew what
secret the army was hiding from the public. It was just a stone from space for
God’s sake.

The only
thing that worried Richard most in the midst of the meteorite’s conspiracy was
failure to propose to Sally that evening. She was becoming more beautiful and
bolder each day. He was afraid of losing her to another man.

The man
dressed in sixties suit didn’t seem to be a threat to him, or anyone who had a
girlfriend. He looked boring, strange and very formal. He was seated three
seats back from where Sally and Richard were seated. Sally had a hunch that
there was something the man was hiding, with the way he held his briefcase on
his laps so protectively.

Richard’s
worries deepened when a man in a hood and large, dark shades drew his gun from
his jacket, forcing everyone to sit still in their seats. At least two people
were shot when they became too hysterical. The gunshots were loud enough to
make the driver to stop the bus in the middle of nowhere. Luckily for Richard,
Sally wasn’t one of them. However, a dark reality dawned on them, that their
bus had been hijacked.

Some
passengers trembled and wept as the man moved to and fro, robbing anyone who
had jewelry or money. He did not seem to be in a hurry. The soldiers were far
away from where the bus stopped.

“Give me the
briefcase!” he yelled at the pale skinned man.

There was
silence in the bus for a while. The robber, the pale-skinned man, and the gun
were all silent. Only the moths made sounds with their wings as they danced
around the bulbs on the bus’ ceiling.

“One last
time….give me the damn briefcase!” the robber yelled.

The
pale-skinned man surprisingly still looked composed. He stared at the gun
indifferently, and then he gently began to open his briefcase.

As the
robber was about to press the trigger, the bulbs went off. Richard could sense
the robber’s fear, as he tried to exit the bus. One could tell with the
desperate sounds of struggle to open the bus’ passenger door.

“Don’t kill
me!” the robber yelled.

Screams
filled the bus once more. After a few minutes, the lights came back. The robber
and the pale skinned man had disappeared into thin air. It was the jitteriest
experience that everyone in the bus had ever had.

The only
thing the bus driver had in mind was to step on the gas, and race at a speed limit
of eighty miles per hour. His destination was anywhere far away from where the
bus had stopped previously; a place where there was life and city lights all
around. A police station wouldn’t miss in such a place.

Who would
believe them, if they said they were car-jacked? If they said a pale-skinned
man had scared the crap out of the robber, and somehow disappeared with him? Maybe
the military would understand.

That event
reminded Richard of an article he read about a scientist who claimed to have
been visited by pale-skinned men in sixties’ suits, hats and briefcases. The
briefcases were said to hide mobile devices for facilitating time travelling.

Their
mission was to recover a rare stone, which was a thousand times more powerful
than a nuclear bomb. A glimpse into the future gave them scenes of a stone
trapped in a meteorite, hurling towards Earth. The meteorite would have found
its way towards Earth through a wormhole.

 Those stones, they said, were mined in the
Nebula constellation. Their purpose was to generate energy for the frozen
worlds which were far away from their suns. Earthlings were not yet ready to
use such kind of power, as far as morals and accountability was concerned.

 As an astrophysicist, the scientist claimed to
have been given a mission to help them recover the stone, the moment it
impacted Earth. He had been credited with recovery of many meteorites around
the world, either ancient or recent.

Since the
fall of the meteorite, no one close to him or the media heard anything from him
since. He seemed to have mysteriously vanished the moment the military took
over the mission to recover the rare stone.

Three weeks
back, the article would sound crazy. It read like an excerpt from a science
fiction novel. Aliens were not part of Richard’s perception of reality.

“It seems
the robber was caught in the middle of something cosmic,” Robert thought.

He held Sally’s
hands closely and warmly, as they came closer to a town filled with lights from
cars, buildings and street lights. A sense of relief overwhelmed them as the
bus later stopped. Getting out of the bus was all they wanted to do.