Gabriel's Bike
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Gabriel's Bike is a short story written by off-beat Pakistani journalist and writer, Nadeem F. Paracha.
It appeared in January 2005 on famous South Asian website, www.chowk.com. It is part of a series of science fiction short stories written by Paracha for chowk.com. Starting with his novelette Acidity (Novelette) these stories which also include God Pulp, Graffiti Christ and The Aftergod, were all written for chowk.com and are part of his on-going series of social science fiction satirizing organized religion, dogma and capitalism, especially the sort plaguing the modern politics and societies of India and Pakistan.
[edit] Plot summary
Based on concepts such as Ancient astronauts, Time Travel and the grandfather paradox, the story takes place hundreds of years in the future in a highly advanced society run by staunchly secular philosopher kings. The protagonist, Mukhtar, is a disenchanted young man looking for answers in the repressed history of the planet's ancient religions (especially Islam, Christianity and Hinduism). He is hurled back in time by one of his mentors. There he ends up playing Gabriel in a cave where Muhammad is about to have a vision, suggesting that Gabriel was actually a time traveling human being from an advanced future. The whole story is a straight faced parody satirizing the concept of belief in the supernatural and how religious beliefs are quite the same as belief in fantastical theories about UFOs and aliens.