Revenge of a school teacher

The spaceship seemed to be chill enough for us to survive. I was afraid though. I had warned all the others that it was a bad idea. No one would listen to me. But, we still had time to opt out of it. I made my final attempt telling, "Are you guys sure that you want to do this?". I was hushed immediately. How come no one figured out the trap we were caught in?

I realized that if I were to escape, the only way was to leave the others behind, which I never wanted to do.

I looked around once more. The sphere shaped glass ceiling of the spaceship (like we see in cartoons, Taara-Zameen-Par) seemed cool but that was no consolation. My mind was yelling softly, "Guys! Can't believe you got me into so much trouble."

Suddenly there was silence. For a moment, it looked as if we were ready to take off and the next moment, ya we did take off and were launched into space. "Doom day started", cried my mind.

I closed my eyes for what seemed like a fraction of second and when I opened it, I could see the sky. It was pitch dark, and all the stars were seen, just as one could see the sky lying on the ground from the earth. However, we were at a long distance from there.

A voice spoke. "Welcome!"

My mind reverted immediately, "Its easy for you to say, whoever the dumb-ass you may be". However, I wanted to listen to whatever he was saying.

"This is the sky you all daily see", he started. For sometime he was talking about the different constellations and how they were named. I am able to recollect Hercules, Plough, Leo, some goddess of virginity or something and how they were named. He thanked Modern astronomic techniques to have contributed to discovering more of the constellations. "Bloody Hell you will!", cried my mind.

It was pitch dark inside and on top of it, there was dense silence except for the voice that was educating us. I could not check what the other guys were up to.

The next thing I could see was traces of Pluto (how come we got here so soon, I did not understand). From there we started traversing the entire solar system.

Wherever we went the voice kept telling us what we were seeing. The unacceptable part was the explanation he was giving for every thing we saw.

It struck me finally. I kinda figured whom the voice belonged to. It was my science teacher from school. I never used to pay attention to science classes, back then. It was just learning for the sake of exams. For the science knowledge I have, a second standard (or even younger) kid could beat me without any preparation. I never imagined that my school teacher would pick 15 years later to come and avenge me for having day-dreamed during his sessions.

The explanation given by the voice seemed simple. I was able to understand everything. Moreover, pictorial learning helped. The bad/uncomfortable feeling started to go away. I started listening intently.

The voice spoke about climate/weather changes, tropic of Cancer & Capricorn, how days & nights concepts work and so on. After some more education, the voice finally came to a halt with eclipse.

The darkness came to an end. There was some light, good enough to check out what the guys were up to. I turned to my left (where two of them were seated). Both of them were sleeping happily. Bewildered, I turned right (where three of them were seated). One was just getting up from sleep, the other two were sleeping again (one with a big fat smile on his face).

So, I confirmed that it was in fact my science teacher from school who spoke to me.

I woke all of them up, we got up from the seats and left the Planetorium.