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 sakes.

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 freakiest 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 were 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,” Richard 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.

(This story is part of a collection published in the book "Eve and Other Sci-Fi Stories")

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