For the first time in fourteen thousand years, geography has changed. Global warming is a reality and sea levels have risen to dangerous heights. A war in the middle-east broke out causing the world to mine and produce at a record high for the war. The war ends with the destruction of the planet’s ecosystem. Mumbai is reduced to seven little islands with no connectivity to the mainland. All commerce activity has ceased and the world is not fit to live anymore. Ozone layer has depleted in various regions around the world and where it is still intact, it’s so thin that standing too long will burn the skin away. Risk of cancer due to radiation is so high that venturing outside needs special suits in some places. Man cannot stand in sunlight for too long. As a result humans have become pale with big eyes and weak tolerance to light. People have to scavenge for packed food left out in the malls and super stores. Most of the influential humans have already left for colonies on Mars and on one side of the moon.
The UN has restricted the number of humans allowed on each colony lest the same fate as Earth befalls these last vestige of the race. Still, a huge population is left stranded to survive on their own. Some people try to harness the heat of the core for electricity through fusion but end up in a detonation that destabilizes the core (Prologue).
In a post-apocalyptic Mumbai destroyed by the rising seas, Madhav, a cold hearted man who despises humans for their excess, finds out about a cataclysmic nuclear detonation that destabilizes the earth’s core. Panic spreads out amongst the remainder of human survivors whom the UN restricted from colonizing Mars due to overpopulation, lest Mars suffers the same fate as Earth.
Earth has forty eight hours and a bomb is ticking. Madhav comes to know about the accident through armature radio still used to relay news via solar operated systems. He escapes the island with his neighboring kid he grows fond of and reaches the island of Sriharikota where some ex ISRO scientists and DRDO officials are preparing for a voyage to search for a habitable planet on a binary solar system. He volunteers as a strategist but is rejected due to the limitations of the craft and political mileage that some have. Then, one of the scientists in the crew recognizes him as a famous environmentalist. He is allowed to accompany as a survival strategist and extravehicular activity officer.
The spaceship evacuates the last of the humans, drops them off on Mars as refugees and sets out to explore the new planet T-786.
The crew has fifty volunteers who have agreed to help set-up base on the planet’s surface. They are a mix of professionals and convicts and lesser mortals who couldn’t appear on the UN list of approved interplanetary migration. Madhav meets the crew members. The commander of the ship, the lieutenant, Petty officers, Crewmen, apprentice and the head of departments. He finds the Petty Officer from Navigation, Shri, as beautiful and easy to talk to. They share moments together. The other people he meets are his fellow apprentice Ratan (Rat), a brown haired young and dynamic man with a lively persona, from Maintenance. Lieutenant Colonel Kapil Bhama, a disciplined, serious and a health freak from Engineering, Chief Petty Officer Reena Yadav, a flirtatious young lady from Medical and the Vice Admiral Yashwant Singh, a corrupt official whom Madhav hates from Supply.
They voyage through endless space encountering wonderful sights and block holes in the distance forging entire galaxies. They finally reach the planet. They orbit the planet before landing. Madhav and Shri from Navigation are sent out as scouts on a capsule with EVA pods to explore the planet. Amid fears of a gaseous planet or a sea of dust, they venture. But they find land.
They go out in pods and explore the surroundings. The planet is beautiful with high mountains and blue, orange and acid green foliage. The white dwarf sun is in sync with the planet and the day never ends. Every eight earth hours, a dense cloud passes over causing twilight. Small glass bulbs filled with methane fall from the sky. The diamonds burst into tiny blue flames and disappear. They name it the Passover. They compare the landscape with the Garden of Eden mentioned in the book of Genesis. They adapt to the alien atmosphere soon and discover many stunning and extraordinary creatures. For four days, the couple collect samples, prepare minerals and check for toxicity. On the fifth day, they decide on a spot for the mother ship to land. They send the signal. The mother-craft starts its descent and is on the way. Within forty eight hours the humans will be on the planet, setting up a colony outlined by Madhav and Shri.
Then they meet the aliens. The aliens look like humans except they have white skins, golden locks and electric blue eyes. They have medieval technologies but with electricity blasters and quick communicating caps. They abduct the two and torture them for answers. They extract Madhav’s thoughts and see his memories. They learn about the war, consumerism, corporate greed, relentless mining and the failed core experiment.
Madhav builds a little telepathy and starts to understand the alien tongue, like a needle on a magnet. He escapes and releases Shri with him. On their way back, they secretly attend the Alien Council and Madhav learns that. To send a warning signal to their mother-ship they need their communication equipment locked away with the Alien’s. With the clock ticking, they re enter the facility to infiltrate the fort but are caught and are displayed as trophies by a new Alien leader. This new alien leader has overthrown democracy by using humans as a tool for political gain. The new leader decides to wage war against the humans to save their planet. They somehow manage to find the equipment in a wild goose chase through the city. They are discovered and in hot pursuit, Madhav sacrifices himself to allow Shri to escape. The Aliens hit Madhav with a blast of lighting gun and he drowns into the river.
Shri escapes and hides in the forest. She spends the Passover under an enormous tree and thinks about her life. The risks she had taken to save herself. She misses her father whom she lost to the war. Her mother lost to hunger and her little brother who ran away after she bossed him around too much. She feels for Madhav and vows to not let his sacrifice go in vain.
The commander in chief intercepts the signal. With less than twenty four minutes to land and a blackout during descent, he strategizes prepares for an unknown enemy.
They land and war breaks out. They are no match for the aliens. They suffer heavy casualties and the aliens laugh at the feeble attempts to fight back. The humans are captured. Shri, the Admiral, commander and a handful of warriors escape and form a resistance. The human resistance try to survive the alien world with Shree’s leadership.
The commander feels all hope is lost. Madhav regains consciousness and walks under the lake as he cannot float over Methane. Survival instinct kicks in and he manages to escape the lake on the opposite end of the shore. In a dream-like state, Madhav perceives an unknown signal. The signal tunes and un-tunes and he walks towards the source. He thinks of the tunes coming from the top of a mountain before him.
He follows the sound of the buzz. At the top he finds a giant man almost eight feet tall, muscular with long matted hair and a blue neck. The man seems to be in deep meditation. Madhav hears him welcome Madhav yet he cannot make his lips move. Perplexed, he asks the man to reveal himself. The man turns out to be the first conscious being. How he was just born out of nothingness. He became aware and so did a few of his kind scattered around the mountain. They were known as the elders. He reveals how their civilization had traveled to earth sixteen thousand years ago and interacted with the man-apes.
They taught the man-apes to hunt and use tools, and taught them defense against wild beasts. The man-apes worshiped him. When he killed a leopard that attacked them, they called him Rudra – the angry one. When he taught them cattle grazing, they called him Pashupati - the God of animals. The Gods left and came checking on them a few centuries later. They taught them how to build pyramids and set up civilization. He tells him how he went to Earth in different periods of history to help humans whom he thinks are his marvelous creations, for it was he who taught them to live in a civilization and discard the rule of the jungle. He is the one who recites the Gita to the writer of Mahabharata. He also tells Madhav that he gave the message of love to the human race as Buddha and Jesus.
God is amazed at how humans have come so far in technology and sorrows at the predicament of their planet.
Madhav asks him a deep philosophical question. Meaning of life and being and why God abandoned humans in the last millennium. God reveals the secret to life. He tells Madhav, humans are the only creatures in the universe capable of love. The gods do not love. They do not feel anything. He also lets him in on his clan’s history. He tells him how the elders were sent into exile by the Alien leader. He shows him the method of defeating their clan leader Beealzebub. Beealzebub had ousted the elder Gods and set up his ministry by corrupting and threatening. Madhav learns how to defeat Beelzebub and starts forth to defeat the Alien king. He returns to find the humans defeated. Many dead and a few still fighting in hiding. He meets Shree and lets her in on the secret. He rallies the remaining humans and lays out a plan to infiltrate and kill the Alien king. In a psychedelic showdown Alien versus the Humans, Beelzebub is defeated. Madhav learns that any life, however corrupt, has the right to live. He reunites with the humans and frees the captured ones. They set up a new democratic council and set up a new world with no boundaries, one single nation called Canneti. A heaven for Aliens and Humans alike.
