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With a deep sigh and trembling fingers, Hazel, a budding filmmaker, stood still in wait for the flying taxi to land. As teleportation was forbidden in the prison valley of the city, she had to take the trouble of taking a flying taxi ride. After a moment or so when the wind rushed in with its landing, she took a deep breath as if trying to hide the nervousness in the core of her body. It wasn’t just because she was going to share some words with some of the most atrocious prisoners of the world, but also because a documentary on the life of prisoners always brought with itself some raging controversies. With 3017 already witnessing tensions between different communities over water rights, bringing the criminals of water into the limelight would only worsen the situation. But she still went with the idea, in her view, the depth of their stories would only deepen the sentiments of people over saving water.
With all this contemplation about her upcoming documentary, the flying taxi landed swiftly the next second, in front of what looked like a metallic wall. As her eyes caught the view of the wall, its tallness, the rigidity and the silver surface blazing under the raging sun, it all made it just so clear that it wasn’t just a wall but the barrier that was separating the common folk from some of the wildest criminals of all time. The sun was scorching enough to make her perspire heavily, so she pressed a button on her shirt and a translucent suit covered her clothes and skin to soak in and absorb the sweat drops from her body. Then a robotic voice came from a speaker instructing her to give the secret code so she pressed the several numbered buttons on the walls. On pressing the enter button, the wall split wide open into halves, forming a passage and she proceeded forward through it when a string of red light scanned and examined her body for security purposes. “You may now proceed to the main compartment” instructed that robotic voice and Hazel quickly went to the main compartment of the prison where she met the guide who would take her to the different cells.
They trudged through a long dark hall and were finally at the spot where the prisoners stayed. The first one to start with cell no. 200, that had inside it a secret agent of ‘the land of the moon'. Out of almost 120000 humans who could survive in the year 3017, almost a quarter of them fled to the moon with the belief that the earth would die anytime soon and the moon would be the only way out. However, they had a dark layer to themselves, the community were flourishing by themselves by stealing and robbing water from the earth and speculating to perform secret experiments and research for turning humans into extremophiles even if it was strictly banned by the ministry. Of course, extremophiles would mean humans to be invincible, to live without what’s required, the heat, explosion and even the water, but a single fault in the experiment would destroy the whole of mankind. Hazel did share some words with that prisoner who seemed quite honest with his story, the childhood, the upbringing, the crime and just having breathed within the prison walls for almost 4 years now. After recording his say, it was the turn of the next prisoner, alleged for illegal trade of water. He had a grumpiness to himself, Hazel had a hard time convincing him to be in the documentary and he did calm down a bit but his story that he said seemed false, incomplete and broken. Then they paced into the adjacent cell where the middle lady was held, accused of hiding some water sources from the ministry and secretly helping the community of ‘the land of the moon'. It was a bit bustling and restless meeting the next series of criminals until she opened the door of room no. 209.
Room no. 209 was rumored to have the most mysterious and dreadful criminal of all time. But what makes it even more strange is that no one knows the crime he had committed nor does he know himself. The salt pepper hair, wrinkled skin and a slightly bulging figure suggested he was somewhere in his fifties. With no delay, Hazel began a conversation with him, but after some time, it was clear to her that the man had no memory. It was all lost, no childhood, no youth and not even any fragment of life before jail. All of his words were placid, but something suggested a kind of frustration as if the man was battling with a question of his existence, just how and why he has to breathe the prison air when he doesn’t even know the smell or sign of the crime he had committed. There was a glimmer of interest in the eyes of Hazel as she saw a glimmer in the eyes of that prisoner, the depth of mystery that had truly occupied her mind.
After returning home, she took a quick sonic shower bath. As every dirt and grime vibrated off her skin through the ultrasonic vibration produced in her bathroom, that rush and restlessness of the day faded away. 3000s never saw water drops washing away something, they were just pearls quenching thirsty throats, to give life to humans and the earth. But now its purpose wasn’t just to save others' lives but also, its own. In 3017, a single wasted drop meant like a thousand stabs on the earth. With all these, Hazel was engrossed by the strangeness of room no. 209 prisoner who was rumored to be one of the worst water criminals of all time. After freshening up when she was rewatching the snippets of what she had recorded, she found herself preoccupied by the mystery of room no. 209 prisoners. To unravel the truths of his existence she decided to visit the prisoner a few times and try interrogating the criminal. But all efforts went in vain as every time their conversation went too far, she was summoned by the prison warden to stop filming him, also because of his lost memories there was no clarity, just assumptions. It was just one sentence of him that gave her the slightest sign of his intentions. “ I.. I. I just don’t know who I am or why I stay here.. behind the bars, all I remember is that field, in the east of street no. 8 and a red button somewhere on the soil” he had said in a stuttering tone.
The next time, Hazel went to the prison with a foolproof plan. She had brought with her an invisible drink. She consumed a few drops until she was transparent and then was on her toes to sneak into the office of the prison warden when it was his lunchtime. Her fingers went to swift motions of pressing and clicking a keyboard and her eyes fixed on the screen in search for some document of, room no. 209 prisoners. She clicked, breathed and looked around to see if someone was coming. This pattern of action went on for a while until she finally found that document. But the moment her eyes caught the words in the document, she was left aghast and shocked to her soul. She read the document over and over again but it was all the same. It said, his name was Philip and he wasn’t just a criminal but a criminal who had come from heaven. Heaven was the term that the common folk used to describe the world that lived almost a thousand years ago when water didn’t have a price and flowed in rivers and cascades, the earth was blue and green and most notably what’s countable, the number of humans alive were uncountable back then. However, the people who lived back then, the ancestors, were considered criminals and sinners, just because they had lost their kindness for the environment, leaving water lifeless and mere when it gave life to them. And so was this man, a scientist from 2017 who broke into the year 3017 through his newly invented time machine but was eventually caught by the men of ministry. As he was a criminal from ‘heaven', the rage of the ministry left no limits as he believed even he would give a hand in depleting water. According to the document, the charge for which he was jailed was kept a secret to avoid the public upsurge but Hazel believed it was due to some chaos in politics.
A week passed for Hazel as she was trying to digest the sudden revelation of a well-kept secret and in the dilemma of whether she should keep quiet or take some steps or forget it and move the documentary forward. But just then the news blew up that the prisoner of room no.209 fled the prison some minutes ago and that the guards were relentlessly searching for him. But in the mind of Hazel, she exactly knew where he would have gone. In a second, she teleported to the street no. 7 and looked for the field he had once talked about. As she hastened near and on the street, she finally caught his silhouette, kneeling in that field as if finding something. Hazel quickly removed the bottle of invisibility drink from her pocket and took a few drops of it. When she became invisible, she went closer and noticed that he was trying to press a red button. On a single press, a massive machine was divulged from the ground. Both she and the prisoner were bewildered. He pushed the door open and invisible Hazel followed him inside. In a moment everything just blurred out and faded, almost like skipping a part of time.
As both their eyes opened, they found themselves rolling on the ground. They were stunned and muddled at the same time as their eyes saw some strange, almost like a different world. There were humans in weird-looking clothes walking down the streets, cars that were moving on the ground and not flying, blossoms, bushes and trees almost everywhere. And the moment they knew they were in heaven was when they saw water in a real river. They were mesmerised by watching the river flow, children diving into it, water drops sliding on their skin and feeling the wetness of sprinkles as they went closer. It was said that barely anyone shreds tears in the world of 3017, because tears would only mean wasting those drops of water from the body, but at that moment both of them were filled with tears for witnessing the heavenly beauty of ‘heaven’. The prisoner kneeled as he slowly got his memory back and he broke down as he suffered a sudden epiphany, the contrast flashed in his mind between the world he belongs to and the world of 3017. The effect of the invisibility drink was now over and Hazel was fully in sight, she didn’t realize it and nor did the prisoner know when she tried to calm him down. But then explained everything to him and with teardrops falling on his clothes, he said ‘You know I had sometimes been dying to quench my thirst in the jail, I knew I was some water criminal but didn’t know what I did, now I know this is me; I belong to this world, I now know that all our lives are in the soul of water and how I and all the humans of this year were injuring the soul of water, never knowing it would only kill us one day. In jail, everyone said the past is heaven but now I know I belong to this heaven where water flows and trees smile. From then on, Philip, the scientist became a passionate environmentalist and worked on a water conservation project and Hazel went back to 3017 without the ministry's notice and planned for a film titled ‘The Past is Heaven'. They kept it all a secret as they lived thousands of years away from each other, but it’s no longer a secret that water keeps a life in itself and that life is of ours, every tree, every animal and just of the whole world. Any crime against water would make us a victim one day.