Now you might be wondering, a) who really was the antique seller, and b) how he came to be. And the answer to both those questions lies right here. The antique seller was a Martian named Mono. In many Earthly languages, the word 'mono' means 'monkey' but in native Martian tongues, it refers to one of their Gods. Mono had been pretending to be an antique seller, as you would know by now, of course.

This queer Martian had arrived in the first place for some research. As most humans know, we are conducting experiments on planet Mars to know more about the possible existence of Martians, but what most people don't know is that they are researching on us too! And so, you might have guessed what this critical research was. Well, not exactly.

A fact (quite a few, really) which the race sapiens of the genus homo on the planet Earth do NOT know is, who really are Martians? Do they really exist or are they only present in the world of comics? What are they like? What they don't realize, is that this longish sort of question is all they could know about them. But since you're reading this, I decided to tell YOU who they are. Just keep it a secret. It's only between Charles, Maria, you and me.

A Martian is a stout green-bodied fellow with the most hypnotizing yellow eyes. It has a twitchy nose, a big mouth, and very, very, slimy skin. It has a hand of just four fingers. That's how Martians look.

As far as you would like to know them well, with respect to behavior, it's rather hard to tell the good guys and bad guys apart... unless you're one of the Martians yourself! They say, "You look at the twitch of his nose and the yellow of his eyes and that itself tells you how he is"

...

The moment that boy took him home, Mono was aware he'd be able to reach home soon as well as safely. He could sense the feeling in that smile.

 That 11-year-old at the antique shop was a boy named Charles. He had gone to get a birthday gift for Maria, his best friend. But there are only a few special Earthlings who believed in Martians. And two of them had their dream had come true. They were the first ones to meet a Martian. Before NASA and such space research programs even started researching properly.

Charles was quite a lonely little boy living on Lily Street. His close family included people he really didn't like- Larry, his father, Juliet, his mother, and Clara, his sister. No one in his family really believed anything Charles ever said about space or his big dreams as his head was always buried in a comic. Well, which boy of 11 doesn't read comics!

Like any normal 6th grader, he didn't have a scooter or a motorcycle. As far as a bicycle was concerned, he didn't get one yet as his parents wanted to 'save up' to buy his sister roller skates for her next birthday!

Clara, as you might have guessed by now, was a very pampered little 9-year-old. She got all she wanted for being a 'good girl' with nothing in spare for Charles. It was quite unfair to him, really.

Charles' best friend Maria was quite underestimated, too. Her parents never saw eye to eye with her on any aspect and they especially wanted to end her friendship with Charles. They thought he was a bad influence on Maria and so wanted her to befriend Clara instead. Rubbish! she thought. Clara has nothing so interesting in her. Not exciting, not adventurous, keeps wanting to play dolls!

You must have gotten to know by now Maria's love for antiques. That's what really pushed her to explore everywhere she went. Till the extent of searching in Charles' attic. That's how she found Mono.

...

On reaching home with Mono that afternoon, Charles hid Mono in the attic so no one could see. Goodness knows how he thought of that rat-infested dumpster!

 When Charles hid Mono in the attic, Mr. Larry Brown arrived. The thing with this man was, his timings were weird. One day he'd come late at night; the other he'd be prim and proper by noon! Nobody knew what was up.

Now this man, as you can see, was very suspicious of what his son was doing. He knew Charles was up the attic, but was unaware of what exactly was happening. Sir Larry the Hated-By-His-Son called out, 'Charles! What's going on up there in the attic? I demand and answer to this NOW!'

The boy had to use some quick thinking. He answered, 'Why, do you need me now? I was on the terrace with Clara and we're coming down. It'll take us a few minutes, demand all you like then'. 'I doubt the two are connected... anyways... come on out quick' replied Mr. Brown.

Well, Charles was smart. He wasn't done so easy. He hid the attic keys between his socks which no one wore or even looked at. His job was done. He just had to go to Mono a few times daily, that's all.

Larry still had his doubts though.

...

That Sunday, Charles and Maria decided to have a small after-party for her birthday at Charles' house. Charles was dreading Maria would want to go to the attic, and that's exactly what happened. There was little scope of hiding Mono from her now.

 Up the spiralling staircases and dusty hay-lofts climbed the two together. Charles quietly, and gently, opened the lock of the attic with the key. The bolt unlocked and the door slowly swung open with a creak. Charles rushed inside and settled down in front of the haystack where Mono was seated, entirely covering the Martian with his tall self.

Maria exclaimed, 'This looks an interesting place. I therefore pronounce a complete investigation and excavation of this attic, starting NOW! Charles sighed. Mono, by all means, would now be found.

She peered at the chest full of old hats and remarked, 'Cool hats! Wish I could have your stack, they're good as antiques! No, don't bother'. Maria had examined about every nook and cranny, claiming that one even had microscopic rubies! She sure was one crazy girl!

When she reached the area where Charles was sitting, she said, 'Now now, Charles, there's no hiding anything here!'. He stammered, 'But... but...'. 'Oh it's nothing, just go on!' on went Maria. Charles arose.

'This is Mono the Martian; over to Maria here' he explained. 'What's so bad or secretive about this?' questioned Maria. 'He can't be exposed, can he?' Charles was soon telling her all that he knew about Mono till date. He went on and on and on about how he found Mono, told her somewhat about Martians, and animatedly imitated his dad on the part where he told her about his dad's reactions on going to the 'terrace'.

Maria sat thinking. 'What do we do to find out how he's to go home?' 'Hmm... let's think' she said to herself. Charles waited. Oh, how he hated it! But he knew that Maria was not just thoughtful but also smart, and that he should wait for her answer. After a few minutes passed, Maria leapt! 'Oh, I know, I know!' she screamed. 'Not too loud or they'll hear!' hissed Charles.

'We can meet at your house every Sunday to discuss plans! We'll check all his pockets, coats, gloves, anywhere, to check for things that might help. And soon we'll be sorted.' planned Maria. 'Great idea!' congratulated Charles. 'I'll keep the key safe and sound' said Charles.

'We'll meet again next Sunday, bye!' 'Bye!' And they bid farewell.

 Many Sundays passed. With the Mondays ahead of them. Time was running out. Final exams had come. The snow from January had melted. The sun was shining. Flowers were blooming. The school term ended. Now down came the rain with its parade of floods. Some time and the water had dried. Cool winds had come to reign. Leaves were orange and brown. They thought of falling too. But Mono hadn't reached home. There was no solution yet. Another two weeks and it would be his birthday. That meant that within these two weeks, he had to be sent home.

But no one, no one but us, really knows all that happened within these two weeks. A lot of things happened. Discoveries. Inventions. Disasters. That fortnight was one like none other.

Though as for the 'real' world is concerned, most know what happened. In what became retrospectively known as "The Mother of All Demos- the sequel", Douglas Engelbart the 1000th of Stanford Research Institute's Augmentation Research Centre 5 demonstrated for the first time the computer mouse come to life, video conference becoming a real meeting, teleconferencing every day, hypertext transportations, word processing automatically printed, advanced hypermedia, flawless object addressing, the dynamic linker with style and a collaborative real-time editor using just paper and a sensor.

But we haven't come to where you get to know what happened with Maria, Charles and Mono.

December 15th, that day, when Charles and Maria almost lost it all. But they didn't.

 December 15th, 9:45 AM. Charles got a call. 'Hi, Charles. I don't have very good news' said Maria at the other end. 'Oh, what went wrong NOW?' complained Charles. 'I won't be able to come to your house this evening! And it's the last week!' worried Maria. 'Gosh! I gotta do it alone this time, I guess. Hope it all goes well...' said Charles. 'Don't worry, you'll be fine!' said Maria. 'Ok...' And they hung up.

Charles climbed the staircase. He was lonely today. Something felt missing. Something was wrong. He opened the old sock-drawer which had the key to the attic. Alas! The key was missing. Oh no!

He ran up to the attic. While going up he heard a voice. 'To the terrace or to the attic?' inquired the voice. He got worried, but still continued. On reaching he found, standing in front, his mom, Mrs. Juliet Brown. No! This can't be happening! thought Charles. Mom! With the key? No no no no no no!

'I found these in the sock-drawer when I was looking for an old sock to give Clara for her puppetry contest. What were they doing THERE? I thought I hung them in the bedroom! Also, why do we have this weird green-body in our attic? Shouldn't we sell him to a museum for like some $1000? We'll be rich!' said she, holding up the attic keys.

'Mom, no! You can't do that to him! And I can only tell this to you if you really, REALLY promise not to tell anyone. And by anyone, I mean ANYONE. Don't go blurting it out to dad. Please.' 'Ok, ok, fine!' said Mrs. Brown. And Charles patiently narrated the long story of how he had met Mono, one more time. 'Now can I please go to him?' begged Charles. 'Ok, do as you like'. That's all his mom said before she left.

Charles went in. Mono exclaimed, 'Oh, finally! It's you! But who was that lady out there?'. 'Good to see you! Oh! She? She's my mom, who else?' replied Charles. 'Oh, ok. I never knew you kids still had your moms with you till late! Back there our parents leave us at the age of two!' said Mono.

'Let's just do some searching now!' demanded Charles. 'Ok, I'm waiting' said Mono, rolling his eyes with lack of much patience. Charles checked his socks. Nothing. He checked Mono's coat. Just another pair of stinky laundry socks. His nails had 20-year-old slime. Just then, Charles noticed a heavy blob in Mono's pocket. He felt it. It was hard, unlike slime or laundry. He pulled it out. It was a remote, about the size of a boy's finger. It was the shape of a pentagon and looked quite queer in its weird self.

  It was full of numerous tiny buttons which made loud beeping and whirring noises. 'What's this?' questioned Charles, taking care not to touch any of its buttons for the fear of messing something up. Mono replied, 'Oh, this is just one very useless remote which the mailman back there in Peladelphia gave me. It doesn't even do anything!' 'But then why do you have it here with you if it's like, trash? And I don't think it is' answered back Charles. 'My friends told me to take it along and always keep it with me, goodness knows why!' 'But it must be for a reason, right? They won't just tell you to take with you any useless object along! I am checking it' said Charles.

Sometime later. The hunt really started seeming useless. There was nothing even close to useful. Out of ten buttons, 5 did nothing. 3 did laundry but that too very badly, only wringing dry dirty clothes and washing clean wet clothes. 2 dumped leftover pizza on Charles' head. No, no, no. This was NOT what Charles had imagined. Nothing was worthwhile. Charles was on the very verge of dumping the entire quest. Thankfully, Maria came to the rescue.

...

That Wednesday, Maria called Charles. 'Hello Charles! I can come over today. Would you be free?' Charles went on and on about how nothing was of any use. Maria knew he was going out of his mind. 'Let me come over. We'll check it out together. There must be something, I tell you!' And so they hung up.

Five minutes (or so it seemed to Charles) later the doorbell rang. Maria had arrived. It would have been about impossible (to him, obviously) if she hadn't used a hi-tech transporting device. And those sorts of things, as you would have guessed, DIDN'T exist till then.

They ran up to the attic and so Mr. Brown pronounced, 'What is it with these kids? The terrace might just fall down on our heads someday to doom us! Shameful!' 'Let them be Larry, relax!' answered Mrs. Brown to the rhetorically asked question with a poker-face, as she knew what was up. Mr. Brown frowned.

...

'Give me the remote' said Maria. 'We don't have much time. There are just three days left now!' Mono handed her the remote. They could hear a clock ticking inside of it. They knew time was running out.

 Maria examined the remote. She exclaimed, 'But there is only one large button on this! You said there were ten, didn't you, Charles?' 'This is very weird. Tap the big button and let's see!' Maria slowly edged her finger towards it and pressed the button. The remote shook and vibrated, letting out the words, Gratter gogg seda. Jante augai toi ulcede.

Mono said, 'Wait. That means 'Wrong touch ID. Try again to unlock' I think it requires me to press my finger onto it!' And so Mono pushed the button with his index. The button split up into not ten, but eleven parts! It was unbelievable.

'Let's try the buttons now! There must be something special in them!' cried Charles. And they started touching all the buttons that were there the other day. They did all the same things they had done last time. 5 were useless, 3 were launders. Pizza on the head of Maria Saunders.

'Ugh, not again!' said Charles and Maria annoyedly. 'Stay calm! There is one button still left! The extra one?' confessed Mono.

'Oh yes, we forgot to try it!' shouted Maria. 'Shhhhhhhhh!' hissed Charles. 'Oh, sorry!' apologized Maria.

They were about to press the button when- 'Wait! There is something written on it! I can't read it because it is too small, but you should at least get a magnifying glass!' burst Mono unexpectedly. 'Oh yes! Let's check it out!' screamed Charles. 'Who's howling now, huh?' bossed Maria. 'Ugh, ok, OK!' sulked Charles.

He ran down to get a magnifying glass. He bumped into, out of all people, his dad! 'What's up? I know there's something fishy!' said dad. 'I don't think you know what's up! What's up is the fan and it's white-y!' retorted Charles. 'EH! You can't be cheeky with me! Shameful!' replied Larry. 'Everything about me is shameful, huh?' and so Charles ran away.

Charles trotted back up to the attic with a magnifying glass and a translator (a device in which you need to insert chips on which something is written, and the translation to it is printed out on another chip), just in case, he thought, they needed one.

 'What's that big bulky thing you got there?' asked Mono. 'That's a translator, what else?' asked Charles rhetorically, but he got an answer. 'Why not, it looks like a juicer to me!' "answered" Mono. 'You sure are funny!' said Maria.

'Let's check the writing now!' 'Yes' replied Maria. They held the magnifying glass above the button and hovered it around to check the edges. On it was engraved, domirquis dodle-doo.

'Wait! We don't need a translator for that! In Mono's native Martian tongue, it means Emergency! Calling Martians at spot! And I really think it will help me go back home! So, this remote hasn't proved useless! You were right!' explained Mono.

Charles and Maria gently pressed the button. They heard voices. One was of a female bot, saying the words, 'Detecting location... Search complete. Calling head office and emergency centre... communication complete. The second was of a man, most probably a Martian, which reassured, 'We're on our way in the supersonic jet. A little while more...'

And from thin air appeared a crowd of people; Martians, it could have been so big as to fill a parade ground. Some officers babbled in a Martian dialect which neither Charles nor Maria could make out. There were some kids who clung on to Mono. 'Sofi! Jojo! Clathe! I missed you! Come, my dears!' exclaimed Mono.

Charles and Maria were sad he had to leave, but they knew it was time for him to go. And so they bid farewell. The crowd left.

 After Mono left, life in the Brown household continued as normal. And Charles, being Charles, left no traces of Mono's visit or of Martians behind; but he sure did leave a tale to be told for generations on. And he chose to leave it with, out of all people- Clara.

He might have hated Clara, but that's normal. They were siblings, so there was nothing he could really do about it. But he was begged by her to tell the story behind it all. But this story, really, just made her a better person altogether. She never went complaining about Charles or Maria again; instead, started sharing interests with them!

...

When Charles came back down that day, Clara cornered him in his room. 'I knew where you kept going but I didn't say anything. What really was the hocus-pocus on in the attic?' 'Oh Clara, I have a life of my own, don't I? And I don't want to tell you! I know you will tell dad!' argued Charles.

'Please tell me. I promise I won't tell dad. I don't like him much either anyway. I'll give you all the candy I got from that teacher at school this week' begged Clara. 'I could do without your stock of candy. I don't like those coconut toffees. Anyway, let me tell you. Just don't tell it all to anyone else' promised Charles. 'Ok, sure' said Clara.

Charles narrated the entire story to her. She kept jumping the whole time. At the end of it all, she confessed, 'You know, Charles, I too always believed in Martians. Just like you and Maria did. And also, Maria's a good sort, I'm now realizing. I'll try befriending her someday. I really promise I won't ever rat you out again. And I just realised I don't like mom and dad's pampering' Charles replied, 'I knew it. You want to go to the park with me now? Come on, let's take a stroll' And so, they left the house, headed towards the park.

...

When she grew up, Clara decided to write a book narrating the entire story. At first, she was afraid she would break her brother's promise, but she then realised she had to write it. The book didn't sell a lot but Clara was content with it. And one thing- she didn't write as Clara. She hid her name; penned a name instead. This is the tale, the story, the book, she wrote.