Captain Hunt lay there wounded, in a jungle in North Vietnam. Looking around desperately, he grabbed a small twig, dipped it into the blood spurting out of his stomach and scribbled a note on the back of a photograph he had of his wife and daughter. With his last few breaths, he blew the blood dry on the photograph.
“All of us will eventually die. If we act smart though, we can survive longer collectively”, he said calming everyone down. They were stuck on an island with no flora or fauna. He was the only logician amongst the 31. “We will have to kill one amongst ourselves and eat their meat. All of us have unique birth dates and cover every possible day from 1 to 31. To keep it unbiased, I have devised a simple formula. We’ll use this formula to pick up the nth man to be killed. We’ll add 3 to n, square it, subtract 9 from it, divide it by n, divide it by 31 and look at the remainder. The man with that birth day will sacrifice himself for the rest. The last man on island will survive for 499 days with this scheme”. They trusted him and his unbiased strategy. One by one they turned into food. On the 372nd day only the logician and a young man were alive. They dined and finished the last portion of meat together. “I knew from day one that I would be the last but one to be killed”, the young man said. “There is a dense jungle on the other side of the island and its rich in vegetation. There are plenty of sheep too. We can have a sumptuous meal all our lives”. The logician smiled. “I knew it too” he said and smashed his head.
— Contributed by Saurabh Khurana
He woke up. It was midnight. There was no sign of anyone around. He was being dragged into an abyss. He slept.
He woke up. Still no one. Was he dreaming? A gentle breeze blew across his face. He slept.
He woke up. The door was ajar. The keys had disappeared from his holster. The watchman didn’t sleep after that.
One Minute Fiction