The street light was the only source of light between Rohan and the ball. He was on his 11th. Without letting the football drop to the ground, he thought he had broken the school record. But, it was his bad luck that he had no witness and it was almost dinner time.

Apart from thinking about how he was going to convince George, and his other friends at school the next morning, all he could think of was his mom getting angry at him because he had missed Hindi tuition and went to play ball, again. Plus he was hungry. Just when he thought he would stop, the lamp flickered and brought a nightly chill to the poor boy. All of 9 years old, Rohan was just a few hundred metres from his home.

The serene village on the Allapuzza backwaters had sporadically spread street lights on its streets. This was the last one before Rohan reached home and he wanted to see if he can complete the ‘all-time great’ 15 uppies before his mother would start screaming his name from inside the home as it was half past eight already.

Just when he counted 12, the rusty-old street lamp flickered and Rohan felt the football go up in the air and not come down for the 13th count. He also felt he couldn’t bring his right leg down to the ground. While he felt strange about this, it seemed to him that he was only able to move his eyeball. He couldn’t, as hard as he could try, move his hands or legs. He was stuck in time with his right leg halfway up with the oncoming football hanging in the air.

If only he could turn to the wall next to him and see what was happening. Unearthly creatures were repairing their time capsule. They tapped their tools onto the hard material of the capsule. Just hearing this was scaring young Rohan. Rohan, unwillingly, was in another timeline. Between the 12th and 13th football juggle, Rohan had travelled far away to another star cluster. The creatures froze the minute they realised that the time continuum was broken. Not because they didn’t recognise the earthly human creature. But because this effect had not happened in a very long time.

There were mythical stories on their planet, about being discovered by humans in 3507 AD. This type of an event had happened before on that planet and could happen again. But no one knew exactly why or how. All the non-human-looking creatures could do was put down their tools and move away from the capsule. They moved swiftly so that the boy does not understand what he saw or heard. They did not know the intelligence of humans in the early 1990s. The humans were not to see them until another two milleniums.

The street lamp flickered again and the football came back down from the air. 13, 14, 15. The little boy was never more joyous!