Университет развивает все способности, в том числе — глупость.

(The University brings out all abilities, including incapability.)

- Anton Pavlovich Chekhov

Today's meeting took place inside the time machine. Mr Tuniak had originally planned to take me on a short journey again, but we had to postpone that to next week. The time machine had some kind of malfunction.

„No matter how far we progress, I doubt we will ever be able to invent something that is completely fool proof“, Mr Tuniak said cursed, as the time machine shuddered for a moment and then stopped again. She had transported us only about four hundred metres away from the cabin. We were now at the side of the little road that led to the cabin. Mr Tuniak had called his driver to tell him where we had gone to and that he should pick us up there.

„Well, well“, Mr Tuniak said. „That throws a wrench into my plans.“

„Do you want to cancel this week?“, I asked.

„Absolutely not“, Mr Tuniak said emphatically. „I won't skip any week, no. But if you happen to be ill or if you want to go on holiday during the summer, you can send someone instead.“

I thanked him for that. I had already begun to wonder what would happen during the summer if I should happen to leave the city for one or two weeks.

„I promised you last week that I would tell you what I did after moving to England“, Mr Tuniak said. „If I remember correctly, I already told you that I went to University there.“

„Yes, you did“, I said. „But you didn't say yet which lectures you attended.“

„At first, I didn't know what interested me the most“, Mr Tuniak remembered. „Sarina had chosen History and Archaeology, but that was out of the question for me. I didn't see the point, not when I had a time machine and could actually visit any era I wanted to. And I had a big problem with most of the other sciences. I had only what you would call school knowledge of most things, but school knowledge from two hundred years in the future, from the time of my mothers.“

„You could have disproven every theory back then“, I said.

„Not all of them, no“, Mr Tuniak corrected me. „In the end I thought it best to choose a language to study and I decided on Finnish.“

„Why Finnish?“

„Because it's part of the Uralic family of languages and I hadn't learned any of them yet“, Mr Tuniak explained. „I must admit that back then I was a... well, a little bit of a show-off. Especially because of my knowledge from the future. I thought that it could basically sleep-walk through my studies. I was of course wrong. Yes, I find it easy to learn languages, but not as easy as I had expected.“ He sighed. „The school on Leviathan was probably the best school I could have wished for, at least for me, but it did nothing to prepare me for life at a university. Compared to me, Sarina found it easier to adapt.“

The library of the villa consisted of two adjoining rooms, decorated and furnished in an Oriental style. Immediately after seeing it for the first time, it had been called the “Library of Alexandria” by Alexander and his friends, although Alexander complained that the real “Library of Alexandria” looked nothing like the two rooms. They used it for studying which meant that no one was allowed to shout or run in there – just like in real libraries.

Sarina was unable to concentrate on her books. She shared a table with Alexander who was constantly getting up, walkin along the book shelves and taking new books to his place. Over a dozen books had already accumulated there and there seemed no end to it.

“What are you doing?”, Sarina asked.

“I have to look something up”, Alexander answered.

“For your studies? I don't believe that.”

“Not directly”, Alexander admitted. “I was reading something about sound shifting in Finnish in the 19^th century and there was an excerpt from a text as an example there. I wanted to know the full text, so I got that. From there I got to the Kalevava and then... well, you know how it goes.”

“No wonder you're always having troubles with your tests. You can't concentrate on the topic at hand”, Sarina said.

“Yes. The professors are very narrow-minded. Doesn't that bother you?”

Sarina just shook her head. They had had similar discussions before and she didn't want to start another one.

“Sometimes I think it was a mistake to go to university”, Alexander continued. “What are you learning at the moment?”

“Excavations.” Sarina pointed to the books in front of her, where photos of excavation sites could be seen.

“Do you know which culture that was?”, Alexander asked interested.

“One of the Iron Age cultures, it's not important right now”, Sarina said. “We're learning about different methods of excavation, not the cultures. That comes later.”

“But aren't you curious?”

“Yes, but contrary to you, I can wait. We are going to learn that some other time, I'm sure.”

“Some other time”, Alexander repeated disdainfully. “They want to turn us into blinkered specialists.”

“You'd prefer to be the jack of all trades, instead of the ace of one, wouldn't you?”, Sarina said. “But when you go to a doctor, you are going to wish that he is an ace and not just a jack, right?”

“Which is why I don't want to be a doctor.”

„Back then, I couldn't understand her and we had several more discussions like that“, Mr Tuniak said. „It was only much later that I could see things from her point of view as well. But that's for another time.“

I told him that he wouldn't have to confirm to strict chronology, but he disagreed.

„I never finished my studies“, he said. „But for at least one thing I will always be thankful to the university. It got me my first job.“

„At the university?“

„Yes, in the archives. Sarina suggested the idea.“

„I haven't seen you at the university for quite some time“, Sarina said as she entered the garden, holding several papers in her hands.

„'Cause... I haven't... been... there“, Alexander said. He was playing badminton against Mowgli and had trouble returning the ball.

„If you have a moment, I want to show you something.“

At this moment Mowgli hit the ball so hard, that it flew high over Alexander and landed on the roof of the villa. „He's got time now“, Mowgli said with a grin. Then he dropped his racket, ran to the villa and started to climb the side of the building.

„Can you read this inscription?“, Sarina asked and gave Alexander one of the sheets she was holding.

„Old Greek.“ Alexander recognized the letters immediately and started to read them out loud. He hesitated a few times and in some places letters and whole words were missing, but he could usually guess the missing parts.

„They are looking for someone to transcribe and translate stuff like that“, Sarina told him, after he had finished. „They'd probably prefer someone who has already finished his studies or is at least close to that...“

„Thanks.“

„...but I' sure you are better at it than anyone else they can find.“

„There were of course some doubts about my abilities and qualifications, but in the end I got the job“, Mr Tuniak said. „At first, the professor even thought I was playing some kind of practical joke on him. He thought some of the things I did were impossible and I was cheating in some way.“ He laughed. „Actually, he was right sometimes.“

„You were cheating? How?“

„If I didn't understand a text – something that happened from time to time – I jumped into my time machine, travelled to the past and asked the writer personally what he meant.“

Alexander had his own desk in a room right in front of the professor's office. He shared the room with his secretary, who was out at the moment. He was working on a translation, when he heard loud curses coming out of the professor's room. He ignored them, because it was not the first time he had heard similar things. The professor, although in general a nice man, was prone to sudden outburst of anger.

But this time couldn't ignore it. The door to the professor's office burst open and the professor came out, carrying a box in his hands.

„What do you think of that?“, he asked, not really expecting an answer. „Just because we are the History-Wing, they think they can send us any old stuff they don't have a place for anywhere else.“

Alexander saw that the papers in the box were full of handwriting.

„They should have kept all that stuff in Paris“, the professor continued. „The handwriting is atrocious! Unreadable! What's that supposed to be, for instance?“ He had put down the box and held on of the sheets high. „A child's drawing?“

„Formulas“, Alexander said under his breath. He was captivated by that sheet. He was sure that he had seen handwriting like this before somewhere else, but he couldn't remember where or when. „I'll take care of it“, he said. He just wanted to get rid of the professor, so that he could take a look at all the papers. Fortunately, the professor agreed and disappeared again.

Alexander studied the sheets. Yes, the handwriting was very difficult to make out in some parts, but those were definitely equations, formulas and diagrams. And all of them seemed familiar...

And suddenly he remembered. When his mothers had given him his own time machine, they had also told him everything they knew about the French woman on whose work and theories the machine operated. They had even shown him copies of her work and the writing was practically identcal. By accident he had found what his mothers had been looking for a long time. He had to return to Leviathan.

„I took the box and showed it to my mothers“, Mr Tuniak said. „And together we decided to look for the French woman.“

PS: Only now, after having published this post, I've noticed that it's Saturday. The time machine must have worked better, than Mr Tuniak suspected and must have transported us back one day in the past (we should have noticed that it had taken the driver a long time to get to us). Which means now I have to quickly leave my apartment, before I come into contact with my past-self.

NEXT WEEK:

Machine. Unexpectedly, I’d invented a time

Nous arrivons tout nouveaux aux divers âges de la vie, et nous y manquons souvent d'expérience malgré le nombre des années.

(We arrive at each period in our lives as novices and we lack experience no matter the number of our years.) 

- François Duc de La Rochefoucauld

„Moving from Leviathan to the Villa Atterton took us several weeks“, Mr Tuniak told me. “There were times when we thought we had finally gotten everything we needed, only to discover on the next day that we were wrong. My mothers travelled from Leviathan and back a countless number of times. The time machine was the only way to get things from the island and to communicate with it.”

I nearly asked him why they didn't have a telephone, but stopped myself in time. I would have looked quite stupid since it was impossible to connect the moving island to a telephone network.

“Philip was a big help, again”, Mr Tuniak continued. “Really, I can't say it often enough that my life would have been far more complicated and difficult if I had never known him.”

It was a house built for children and teenagers. When they saw the villa for the first time, they (Sarina, Alice, Mowgli and Alexander) dropped their suitcases in the drive way and ran towards the main entrance. They spent the whole afternoon looking at all the rooms and at the garden, but when evening came they still hadn't seen everything. They'd found three secret rooms – one below a staircase, one behind a mirror (a one way mirror, one could look through it from the secret room) – and one behind a big painting. They were of course wondering if there were any more.

“Did you see the balcony on the second floor?”, Mowgli asked. “I couldn't find any door to get to it.”

“Didn't you read the history of this building?”, Sarina asked.

Mowgli shook his head, while Alice and Alexander suddenly had to concentrate very seriously at their meals. Except for Sarina, none of them had read the book which Philip had presented to them as a gift and which told the history of the villa and its most famous inhabitants.

“The balcony is only built for ghosts”, Sarina explained. “They can walk through walls. So they can get there, but no living humans can. By the way: I believe there is another secret room with no entrance behind the wall over there.”

Mowgli immediately jumped from his seat and ran to the wall to knock at it. It sounded hollow.

“Have you chosen your rooms yet?”, Philip asked. He and Miriam had decided to stay at the villa for the night.

“Yes. Mine is directly under the roof”, Alice said. “Have you seen it? It's got a huge window looking right over the forest.”

“Mine's...”, Mowgli began, returning to the table.

“...up the spiral staircase and then at the of the corridor to the right”, Alexander finished for him.

“Yes. How did you know?”, Mowgli asked in surprise.

“Because it looks like a cave”, Alexander answered, laughing. “It's the only one with stone walls. Except maybe the cellar. Has anyone been to the cellar?”

No one had been and like one person they all left the table and ran out of the room.

“Whoever finds the way down first, calls the others”, Mowgli shouted.

“We had a lot of fun at first”, Mr Tuniak said. “It took a few months, I think, before we could really say that we knew the house.”

“I can believe that”, I said. I thought back to last week and the little tour Mr Tuniak had given me of the villa. I had probably only seen a small percentage of the whole building.

“But then the problems of everyday life started”, Mr Tuniak said. “We thought we wouldn't have any problems, but we were wrong. Until then we had basically spent our whole lives on Leviathan and thought life close to London would be easy compared to that.”

“I guess it was quite a culture shock for you”, I said.

“You can say that”, Mr Tuniak agreed. “Philip lived with us for the first few weeks, but not any longer, because we wanted to prove that we could live on our own. Mowgli adapted the fastest. He made friends with a few neighbours and soon everyone thought that he was the son of an Indian noble man. Sarina and I were thought to be his siblings and Alice... They saw Alice very rarely, so I'm not even sure if they knew that she was living with us.”

As Mowgli was entering the garden behind the villa, one could see wrinkles on his brow. He was holding a letter in his hand which he had just read and which was obviously responsible for his current mood.

“What is it?”, Alexander asked. He and Alice were playing croquet, while Sarina was reading a book on the patio.

“I was invited to join a hunting party”, Mowgli said.

“Is that good?”, Alice asked.

“I don't know”, Mowgli admitted.

“What's the problem, you started hunting when you were still a child”, Alexander said.

“With your bare hand and teeth”, Sarina shouted.

“Yes, but sitting on a horse with a rifle... it seems unfair”, Mowgli said.

The hunt wasn't scheduled for another three days. Mowgli decided to go. He told the others that he would be back in the evening. Tough to everyone's surprise his car could be heard coming up the drive as the sun was just touching the horizon and the first stars were coming out.

Sarina and Alexander came to him, as he was getting out of his car. “How did it go?”, Alexander asked. But he recognized the face of his friend. Things hadn't gone as he had planned.

Without a word Mowgli opened the back door of his car. Sarina and Alexander saw a wounded fox lying at the back. The animal was bleeding from two wounds, one on his leg and one near his tail. Mowgli wrapped the fox in a sheet and carried it into the villa. It was the last time he would ever join a hunting party.

“Mowgli has a complicated relationship with animals”, Mr Tunia explained. “In general, he is not opposed to kill them, provided it was a fair battle. For instance: He would catch a rabbit with his hands, cook and eat it, but at the same time he would stop any other hunter who planned to do the same thing using a gun.

“Did the fox survive?”, I asked.

“Yes, he actually lived for several years with us”, Mr Tuniak said. “He didn't live in the villa, of course, but in the forest close by. He always came to us when he was hungry, especially during the winter time. Later, Mowgli bought a couple of dogs and they got along quite well with the fox.”

“What did the rest of you do?”, I asked.

“Sarina, Alice and I went to the university”, Mr Tuniak said. “Of course, that was only possible because my mothers supplied us with fake school reports. And it was a difficult adjustment for us. Lectures and the whole student life was very different from what we had known at Leviathan. Sarina also started to wear a bandanna. To hide her third eye. Many students thought she was a gypsy because of that and there was quite a bit of harassment because of that.”

“And Alice?”, I asked.

“She didn't stay long at the university”, Mr Tuniak said. “She tried to hide her hair as well as she could, but she didn't succeed. She said that she didn't want to hide who she was and spent most of her time at the villa. She had two friends who came to visit on a regular basis and she was the first one of us to get a job.”

“How?”

“I don't know exactly”, Mr Tuniak said. “But one day she came back to the villa and announced that she had got a job recording audio books. She had a good voice for that and a real talent. She is still recording the narration for TV documentaries from time to time.”

“And what did you do?”

“I'll tell you about that next time, but for now, there is another very important event that happened during that time and I want to tell you about that first. It was one of the most important things that happened in my life.”

Leaving the villa and entering the garden, Alexander was surprised to see the time machine of his mothers standing there. He hadn't expected them and was happy and curious about what had brought them here. He ran towards the time machine to greet them.

But Helen had apparently come alone.

“Hello, Alexander, do you have a moment?”, she asked with a smile. “Miriam and me, we've got something for you.”

She pointed with her hand. But Alexander could see nothing out of the ordinary. She was pointing at an empty piece of grass where...

A second time machine appeared. She was completely identical with the one Helen had arrived in. As the door opened on the side, Miriam exited.

“What...?”, Alexander started to ask, before comprehension dawned. His mothers had brought him his very own time machine. “When did you built that?”, he asked, after he had hugged both of them several times.

“When we were young”, Miriam said. “It's our time machine just... from a point in our future.”

“We won't be needing it forever after all”, Helen said. “And that's the good part about time travel: You don't have to wait so long for your inheritance.”

Alexander had often seen his mothers using their time machine, but for the next few days he spent a lot of time with them, learning how to control it perfectly. Then he invited Sarina, Alice and Mowgli to their first time travel alone with him. Their destination? The dinosaurs, of course.

NEXT WEEK:

Университет развивает все способности, в том числе — глупость.

Har du sett min villa, min Villa Villekullavilla? Vill å vill du veta, varför villan heter så?

(Did you see my villa, the Villa Villekulla? Do you want to know why it's called that?)

- „Här kommer Pippi Långstrump“ Astrid Lindgren

My mobile phone rang yesterday and I was surprise to find out that Mr Tuniak was calling. „Are you good at taking pictures?“, he asked me.

„Good enough“, I answered. I had taken a course about photography at my university as part of my studies, but that had been several years ago.

„That's great“, Mr Tuniak said, after I had told him that. „And don't bother about a camera, I'll take care of that.“

That was all he said. But as I went to his office today, I suspected that we were going on a little journey again. And I was right. Mr Tuniak and his driver were already waiting for me outside the building and in front of their car. As we drove out to the cabin, I noticed a small brown suitcase in the limousine and after asking Mr Tuniak about it, he confirmed that the camera was in there.

„Where are we going?“, I asked.

„To the place where I moved after I had left Leviathan“, Mr Tuniak explained. „It wasn't easy to find. At first, we weren't even sure in which country we wanted to go. We“ - meaning Alice, Sarina, Mowgli and himself - „had all different expectations and wishes. We had already settled on the United States, when Philip told us about the Villa Atterton in England. The villa was, sorry, is a bit outside of London and it stands on quite a big property. Even a forest is part of it. The perfect place for us, if you think about it. And thanks to some help from Sarina's parents we got legal papers and were able to purchase it and live there.“

„Papers?“, I asked. „Why didn't you have any?“

„Why should we?“, Mr Tuniak asked. „Sarina had hers, of course, but the rest of us had basically been living our whole lives on Leviathan which belongs to no country. So we didn't have any citizenship.“

„But then you became British citizens?“

„No, we got Indian citizenship“, Mr Tuniak corrected. „We claimed that we were Indians who wanted to live in the UK. A lot of people came from India during that time, so we didn't attract any attention. Philip bought the villa and then gave it to some trust or other... I never bothered to understand the legal proceedings behind it, but nowadays the villa belongs to the Leviathan school and a lot of the children, once they leave the island, spend their first few months there.“

The time machine arrived at its destination and we got out. The way it had landed meant that it was now actually between me and the villa and effectively hid it from my view. So the first thing I saw was the wall that surrounded the property and the big entrance gate made from a green metal. On top of it, where one could normally read the name of the family who owned the place, was written: “Here there be Munsters”.

“We did that”, Mr Tuniak said with a smile. “We were fans of the series and... Do you know The Munsters? A TV series in the 60ies? No? Well, we watched it a lot on Leviathan.”

We went around the time machine and I could finally see the villa. It was a huge building. There were dozens of windows, towers and roofs. There were more corners and oriels than I would have thought possible. There was a main entrance, but I could see at least two other doors, as well as a patio and two balconies.

“It was a lot smaller originally, but about a hundred years ago, Sir Atterton extended the building on all sides”, Mr Tuniak explained. As he pointed it out, I could see which parts of the villa were original and which parts were added later. The connections were nearly seamless, but not quite.

We went to the main entrance and rang. The door opened and I was taken aback. Mr Tuniak was standing right in front of us. About twenty or thirty years younger than the man beside me, but still definitely Mr Tuniak. It was as if I was seeing two identical twins that had aged at different speeds.

“Hello”, the younger Mr Tuniak said and shook hands with the older one. “Come in.” He didn't ask who I was, although I could see in his face that he hadn't expected anyone else. “Quite a few are still missing, but if you come into the main parlour, there are snacks and drinks there, everyone else is also there...”

We entered the parlour and I saw...

Strictly speaking, only four people were in the room. Miriam, Helen (Mr Tuniak introduced them to me, but again didn't mention my name or why I was here), Mr Tuniak and myself. But I was the only one who was only there once. Everyone else seemed to have several duplicates, the only difference being their ages.

“It's our little family get together”, Mr Tuniak said. “It's the only one we'll ever have.” But since they arrived from different points in their life, it must seem to everyone that there were actually several meetings.

The atmosphere was great and fun. As with every party, small groups of people got together, talked for a while and then members would change groups and talk with other people. They only talked about personal stuff, if the topic was introduced by the oldest member of a group. “That's to make sure no one gets to know anything about his or her personal future”, Mr Tuniak explained. “The older people are the only ones who know who knows what at the moment.”

But aside from personal stuff, every topic was fair game. I'm pretty sure I heard about things that aren't supposed to happen for another hundred years from my point of view.

I could have stayed hours in that room, standing in the corner and just watching these people talk and interact. What had stayed the same, what had changed...

Philip arrived at the building site with a horse drawn cab. He payed the driver and went across the garden. A part of the new building was already finished. No, Philip corrected himself, that was actually the old part, the one Sir Atterton had decided to leave standing.

He found the owner of the villa deep in discussion with two of his architects. They were looking at several plans and the architects were visibly trying to anticipate the wishes of Sir Atterton, but failing miserably at it. Only he knew what he really wanted. With a red pencil in his hand, he corrected their plans and added things without taking care of such basic things like structural integrity. That would be the thankless job of the architects.

“And I want a staircase here, that leads to this balcony”, Sir Atterton said, while he was drawing. “And one should only be able to open this door from the inside. Oh, and this door here has to go.”

“But that's the only way to get to this balcony”, one of the architects protested in vain.

Philip enjoyed the discussion and didn't interrupt it. He waited until the architects had gone, not envying them their difficult job.

“Philip!”, Sir Atterton greeted him. “I'm so glad you could come. What do you think of my house?”

“Well, I can honestly say that I have never seen anything like it in my whole life”, Philip answered. “But you never told me why you are building it the way you do.”

“No?” Sir Atterton was surprised. As he continued, he started to fill his pipe. “Have you heard about the Winchester-House in America?”

Philip shook his head.

“It is built to keep ghost out”, Sir Atterton said and lit his pipe. “But that is exactly the wrong way to go about things. We have to attract ghosts, not repel them. Imagine, what we could do if we can establish constant communication with the world of ghosts. Lost knowledge would be ours again!”

“Have you talked about it with Sir Arthur?”, Philip asked.

“Yes, and he is a big supporter of my idea”, Sir Atterton said. “I have also some thoughts about the interior of the house. The furniture and so. I want every room to represent a different culture. Cultures from different countries and times. Ghosts from all over the world should feel welcome here.”

“Is that why you invited me here?”, Philip asked.

“Precisely. You have been travelling a lot, I've heard, and I was hoping that you could help me recreating different cultures properly. This room here, for instance, is going to have an African theme. What kind of masks should I put on the walls?”

I had gone to a room right next to the main parlour. There were masks on the walls – I think they came from somewhere in south-east Asia – and white paintings in between them.

Mr Tuniak entered the room. I could tell from his clothes that it was the Mr Tuniak from my time period. None of the others had spoken with me.

“How are you?”, he asked.

“All right now, I think”, I said. “It's a bit overwhelming... a bit like the time when you took me back to see the dinosaurs.”

Mr Tuniak nodded sympathetically.

“The white paintings here, why are they here?”, I asked.

“A student from Leviathan did them a few years ago”, Mr Tuniak said. “Every student who comes to live in this house, changes something. Just a little thing, just a reminder that she or he has been here. It's not mandatory, but it's become a sort of tradition.”

“And he put up white paintings?”

“They are not white”, Mr Tuniak corrected me. “They were painted in reddish green and bluish yellow. They are called impossible colours, because our eyes can't see them. They are right there in the visible spectrum of light, but because of the way our colour reception works, we can only see them under certain conditions.”

“What did you change here?”

“That's why we are here today. Let's go into the garden.”

We went outside, into the garden behind the villa. All the Miriams, Helens and Mr Tuniaks had already gathered there. They had put the camera on a tripod and were now standing together for a group shot. The youngest ones were sitting on the grass in front, the oldest ones were right behind them on chairs. Everyone else was standing.

I was there to take the picture. Actually, I took several: first the whole group and then various members came to me to get photos with only two or three of the others.

Then one of the Mr Tuniaks – I estimated him to be about forty years old – took the film, went to his time machine (all the time machines were lined up in a row in the garden) and disappeared for one minute. When he returned, he had all the photos developed. One of them, it was a shot of the whole group and it was the biggest photo, had even been framed. This he gave to a Mr Tuniak who was around twenty years old.

“Put that up, once you've settled in here”, he said. And thus Mr Tuniak would also leave something behind.

NEXT WEEK:

Nous arrivons tout nouveaux aux divers âges de la vie, et nous y manquons souvent d'expérience malgré le nombre des années.

Omnia mutantur. Nihil interit.

(Everything changes. Nothing perishes.)

- Ovid

„The sailing trip was only the first step in our leaving Leviathan“, Mr Tuniak said. „But there was also another reason. We were, with one exception, the first children who wanted to leave the island. There were a few children older than us, but they liked the life on Leviathan so much, that they didn't want to leave. They didn't have anyone or anything they could go to.“ The “we” he mentioned included Sarina, Alice, Mowgli and himself. „But the event that really got us going was the death of Ricardo. In many ways it was the first time we had been confronted with death.“
„But you did visit at least one historical battle, didn't you?“, I asked.
„Yes, but I didn't know the people who died there“, Mr Tuniak explained. „It was less personal.“
„And your time travels?“, I continued. „Weren't you meeting people all the time, who, from your point of view, were already dead.“
„But for me, a time traveller, they were always alive“, he insisted. „Nobody could really die, because I could just travel to an earlier point in their lifes.“ He leaned back in his chair. „Ricardo had always been there for us, while we were growing up. We could always talk to him, even... or especially if we were angry at the grown-ups for one reason or another.“
„How did he come to the island?“

The path twisted and turned as it made its way down the mountain. It was difficult to even see it in some places. Ricardo took his donkeys by their reins and led them down. Normally, the animals would have an easier time with this terrain than him, but today they were carrying heavy loads. Hidden in big bales of grass, they were transporting blocks of ice. Yesterday the ice had still been near the top of the mountain, today, if everything went right, he would deliver it at the coast.
Ricardo was hoping that he wasn't walking into a trap. The man, who had ordered the ice, had not been from his country, which had made many of the other ice traders suspicious. Then, when he offered an unusually large sum of money for the ice, some more had withdrawn their offer. Something was not right, they had said, why would anyone pay more than he absolutely had to? But there had still been one other trader, besides Ricardo, willing to take the job and Ricardo had barely dared to hope that he would get it. But then the stranger had revealed the final part of the deal. He wanted the ice to be delivered to an uninhabited part of the coast. Suddenly only Ricardo was willing to deliver. All the other traders either suspected a bad joke by the stranger or, in the worst case, a trap by the guerilla warriors that were known to roam the forests.
But Ricardo didn't really have a choice. He was still very young and didn't get as many orders as the others. He had to take whatever was left. And until now, the journey had been uneventful. He knew the part of the coast the stranger had described very well. He knew that...
He stopped so suddenly that the donkeys nearly walked into him, before they could stop. The coast was right in front of him, as he had expected. But off the coast there was an island he had never seen before. And he was sure that the last time he visited this place – about a month or so ago – it hadn't been here. And islands didn't just appear from one day to the other, did they? Ricardo felt a cold shiver running down his back, but at the same time there was something else too: curiosity.

„Ricardo arrived at Leviathan around the same time I did, maybe a bit earlier“, Mr Tuniak said. „Estevan had ordered ice...“
„About that“, I interrupted him. „I take it, it was ice for a cooling room on the island?“
„No, to eat“, Mr Tuniak corrected. „In some parts of the Andes you can find ice that tastes surprisingly sweet. If you ever happen to go to South America, you should definitely try it. Estevan had bought it as a surprise for the children. Now I remember: It was their reward for being quiet and putting up with a little baby. Me. Estevan then invited Ricardo to stay over night. And in the short time he spent on Leviathan he came up with several ideas to improve the life on the island and make it saver. He found ways, for instance, to make the temple withstand tropic storms. Estevan was so impressed he asked him to stay.“
„Didn't he have any family?“, I asked.
„He had broken any contact with them several years before that“, Mr Tuniak said. „When he was ten, he ran away from home and since then he had taken of himself.“ He continued to explain that Ricardo was responsible for many changes on Leviathan. Contrary to Estevan, who had grown up in a city, Ricardo knew about life „under an open sky“ (as he called it). He had always lived in small villages and had often moved from one place to another, always looking for a job, a place to sleep or something to eat. He had picked up a lot of tricks and he adopted them for the island. Several things that had become common place on Leviathan, were first introduced by Ricardo. „But, sadly, he was very ill“, Mr Tuniak said. „And it took us a long time to figure that out.“

Estevan was waiting impatiently for the return of the time machine. The children were playing at the other side of the temple and knew nothing of his worries. They didn't even know that Miriam and Helen had taken Ricardo in their time machine for a trip to the future.
It had started several days ago, when Minh and Manh had noticed a bump on Ricardo's brow. He couldn't remember hitting his head or find any other explanation about how it got there. Two days later, when the bump still hadn't disappeared or even changed its size, Helen had taken him to a hospital. They had brought back bad news. A fungus was growing inside Ricardo. The doctors hadn't been able to explain how that was possible or how it got there and they couldn't do anything to remove it.
It had taken only a short discussion before it was decided that Miriam and Helen would take Ricardo to the future, hoping to find technology there that would be able to remove the fungus.
The time machine returned. As the door opened and the travellers came out, Estevan was able to tell from their faces that they hadn't been successful.
„What did they say?“, he asked, meaning, of course, the doctors.
„They couldn't do anything“, Miriam said. „The fungus is in his whole body. It has grown in and through most of his vital organs and replaced parts of them. It's not deadly, not at the moment, but they can't remove it. It's too connected with... everything.“
„Apparently I swallowed a spore when I was a child and it has grown in me ever since“, Ricardo added. „On the plus side: As far as I can remember I have never been ill and the doctor said that maybe my immune system was not weakened by this fungus but actually strengthened.“
Estevan didn't want to ask the next question he had on his mind.
„I will live for several years more“, Ricardo said, who had seen the question written on Estevan's face anyway. „Theoretically I should already be dead. So: Let's never talk about this again, ok?“
And until his death, they never talked about it again.

„He lived for another three years after his visit to the future“, Mr Tuniak said. „And apart from a new bump here and there, you couldn't tell what was growing inside him. We children joked about these bumps, we said that, like Minh and Manh he was trying to grow another head.“ He sighed. „His funeral took place on Leviathan. He didn't want to return to Peru and he didn't want to be buried at sea. So we buried him on Leviathan. Even now, he is the only person who has ever been buried there.“ He looked thoughtfully. „Thinking back, it probably wasn't the death itself that shocked us so much, but what it signified: Change. Until then Leviathan had seemed frozen in time. A place where, no matter what was happening in the rest of the world, tomorrow would basically be the same as today. But with Ricardo's death our belief in this had been destroyed. We realized we couldn't stay there forever, we couldn't stay children forever... If you want to be poetic: We had been kicked out of Neverland.“
„You grew up.“
„Yes, that we did.“

But nothing is truly lost.
Several months had passed since the funeral, when Minh and Manh, during their gardening work, came to the spot where Ricardo had been buried.
“What is that?”, Minh asked and pointed at something neither of the brothers had ever seen before. They went and showed it to Estevan who couldn't identify it either. The children were the first to recognize it for what it was.
“It's Ricardo”, Sarina said.
Helen, who had taken over the biology courses, had to agree with her to a certain degree. “It's definitely a fungus and very probably the one that was growing inside him.”

When I went to the island several weeks ago, Minh and Manh were showing me the fungus. It had grown to the size of a small bush and they took care of it and made sure that it would grow no larger.
“What is that?”, I had asked.
“Our very own nat spirit”, they had answered and only now I understand how true that was.

NEXT WEEK:
Har du sett min villa, min Villa Villekullavilla? Vill å vill du veta, varför villan heter så?

A ship in port is safe, but that is not what ships are built for.

- Grace Murray Hopper

„You've heard about the sailing boats of the Leviathan school“, Mr Tuniak said. „At first, there was only one and it was mostly used to ferry food and other things from close harbours to the island.“

“Couldn't your mothers do this with their time machine?”, I asked.

“They do, whenever they are on Leviathan”, Mr Tuniak said. “But they aren't there all the time. There is also a tradition connected with the boats. During the holidays all the children that can't leave Leviathan – because they don't have any other homes for example – take the boats and go on a sailing trip.”

“There was one when we went to the island, wasn't there?”, I remembered.

Mr Tuniak nodded in agreement. “I was part of the first sailing trip they ever did, but it very nearly was the last one as well. It was pretty much a complete catastrophe, starting with the planning... what little there was of it.”

“Then we'll sail to the south. I still can't see where the problem is”, said Estevan.

“The current. It's too strong for that”, Louis countered. “If you had real sailors for a crew, that wouldn't be a problem, I agree. But we two are the only ones who have any experience in sailing. And we both know that two people are not sufficient to sail the boat the way you want to.”

“What's going on?”, Miriam wanted to know. Passing in front of the office, she had heard part of the conversation and had become curious.

“Estevan promised the children to take them on a sailing trip”, Louis said. “Without thinking it through first.”

“They are children, we can't keep them on a small island forever”, Estevan said. “They want to see the world and they should.”

“Where's the problem?”, Miriam asked. “What's the problem with a little trip?”

“The Cold War”, Louis answered. “It's good to know that it will end peacefully, but in the grand scheme of things: What's one little sailing boat that gets torpedoed by accident? History wouldn't notice it. It's not safe.”

Miriam frowned. “That's true”, she agreed, deep in thought. But then a smile spread across her face. “Well... we can always go somewhen else, can't we?”

“I don't know why they decided to go to the past for the trip and not to the future”, Mr Tuniak said. “But in the end they went to the end of the nineteenth century.”

“Who went?”, I asked.

“Well, Louis and Estevan, as the grown-ups who were responsible for us teenagers, then Alice, Sarina, Mowgli, Farid and me”, Mr Tuniak recounted. “There were three other children as well, but I never really got to know them that well. They only stayed on Leviathan for a few months.”

The teenagers were sitting on deck and basked in the sun. The ocean was quiet and because there was no wind, they hadn't spread any sail.

“I've never had a sun burn”, Alice laughed as she watched the other teenagers putting on sun tan lotion.

“At least it doesn't take us an hour to get dry after swimming”, Mowgli returned. He hated the lotion and was convinced that his naturally dark skin would offer enough protection against the harmful rays from the sun. “What's for dinner tonight? Not fish again, I hope.”

“We are in the middle of the ocean, what do you expect?”, Alexander asked.

“I'm a wolf, not a bear”, Mowgli said.

“Uh, oh”, Sarina interrupted the banter and looked out to the horizon.

“What is it?”, Alice asked.

“I think the fish object to our eating them too”, she said. “Look over there!” She pointed with her hand out to the sea. The other teenagers went and stood next to her to see what she had discovered. It took them a few minutes, before they saw it: A dark mass, like a cloud, moving rapidly over the surface of the ocean. Getting closer and closer to the boat.

“What is that?”, Alexander asked.

“Flying Fish!”, Sarina cried. “Those are Flying Fish!” She was right, of course, but that didn't change the fact that the animals were still heading right towards the boat. “We should go down.”

Although not strictly necessary, they ran as fast as they could and closed all the hatches behind them. Before Estevan, Louis or any of the other teenagers could ask them what had happened, they heard the first fish hitting the deck with a loud thump.

“It's their revenge”, Mowgli said in a spooky voice, unable to hide a grin.

The rain of fish only lasted a short time. When it was over and everyone returned on deck, they saw dozens of fish lying around. The swarm had passed the boat without really noticing it and was continuing on its way.

Sarina took one of the dead fish and held it towards Mowgli. “I'm terribly sorry, but I'm afraid we are going to have fish tonight.”

“We were sailing for three weeks without any troubles”, Mr Tuniak said. “There were a few problems, of course, but that's only to be expected for a first trip. But then, when we were near the coast of France, we got hit by a storm.”

“Where's the sun?”, Alexander asked. Sarina was standing next to him and was holding a sun stone in her hand. Clouds covered the whole sky, but with the stone the teenagers were trying to find the position of the sun the same way Vikings had done it a long time ago. At the other end of the boat Alice and Mowgli were trying to achieve the exact same thing.

“Somewhere up there”, Sarina said.

“You are not concentrating.”

“No”, Sarina admitted. “But will you look at the clouds over there? You see, how big and dark they are? That's going to be a gigantic storm. I hope our boat can stand it.”

“Sarina had had one of her premonitions and it was one, where she got it absolutely right”, Mr Tuniak said. “We sailed directly into a thunder storm, the biggest thunder storm I had ever experienced. The boat got tossed around as if it was only a leaf and we all got bruises and cuts and other small injuries.” I noticed by the way his voice changed when he described it, that the events of that day had burned themselves inextinguishable into his memory. “It got so bad, that the mast threatened to break away... or something like that. Anyway, Estevan and Louis had to go outside and after a few minutes, Sarina, Mowgli and I went after them to help. We managed to save the boat, but even though we were secured with ropes, a huge wave flushed us three over board.” He breathed heavily, as if he was reliving that day again.

They swam. What else could they do? They knew that they would never make it back to the boat, which had become hidden in the rain. They couldn't see it any more. But they knew that they had tried to reach the coast before the storm broke and that they had gotten very close to it. Mowgli, whose sense of direction had been perfected in the jungles of India, took the lead and the other two followed him. Time and again waves pushed them under the surface and they had to hold their breaths and try not to lose one another. Their eyes and lungs burned, but they had to ignore all pain and concentrate on swimming. Only later would they realise how close they had come to drowning.

They managed to reach the beach and crawl to relative safety. They found a few trees which offered at least some protection against the storm and the rain. They were wet, hurt and miserable, but they had survived.

It was evening when the storm abated. They looked out to the sea, but they couldn't see the sailing boat and there was no way to make contact with it. They had to find other people first.

Fortunately, they saw a little village, not far from the beach. There were no lights in the windows of the houses, which themselves looked like a dark mass in the beginning night.

“A bit like a cemetery”, Alexander said. He was so cold, his whole body was shaking.

“I thought electricity had already been invented”, Mowgli said. He was difficult to understand, because his teeth were chattering.

They hesitated a moment, if they should really go to the village. What would the people there say if they saw Sarina and her three eyes? But they didn't really have much of a choice and they were hungry. They went to the village, Sarina a bit behind the other two, hiding behind them and pulling her hair over her face.

Mowgli and Alexander knocked on several doors, but nobody responded. They didn't even see or hear anyone in the buildings.

“Ok, that's enough”, Mowgli finally said and with brute force knocked a door open.

The three entered the house. The quiet, quiet house.

“Hello? Anybody there?”, Sarina called and Alexander repeated the question in his best French – which wasn't very good. No response.

They went to the kitchen and looked for food. They found dried meat and ate a bit, just enough to stop the worst of their hunger.

“We should find some dry clothes”, Sarina suggested. She had already taken a cap she had discovered in the kitchen and put it on, pulling it over her brow.

“Why do we need clothes?”, Mowgli asked.

“Because we are not in India and it's winter here”, Alexander said and went up to the first floor. He found the sleeping room there, but when he opened the door he stopped. On the bed, mostly hidden under several blankets and sheets, a family was lying. Two children and their two parents. Alexander could only see their motionless faces.

Sarina and Mowgli, who had followed him, stopped right behind him. “Are they dead?”, Mowgli asked. He couldn't see any respiratory movements but that could have been due to the thick blankets.

Together they went slowly and silently to the bed. Alexander bend forward, extended his hand to check for breath. He was shaking from the cold and from fear.

“Let them sleep”, a voice suddenly said. The three children turned around and saw Miriam standing in the door. “They are hibernating.” She gestured to them, that it was time to go.

“How could your mothers find you that quickly?”, I asked.

“They didn't. It took them several days”, Mr Tuniak explained. “But in the end they found the door Mowgli had knocked in and suspected that it had been one of us. So they went back to the past and arrived there just a few moments after we did. Still... all of us had a terrible cold after this adventure and we were very lucky that we didn't get pneumonia.”

“I'm honestly surprised that there any other sailing trips after this one”, I said.

“A few years passed before they tried it again”, Mr Tuniak said. “And then they prepared for it more carefully and thoroughly. They checked the weather in advance, for instance. And there were no more disasters, after that first one. But as dangerous as it was, the trip had changed something within us. We had left Leviathan and although it had nearly killed us, it hadn't. We were convinced that nothing could really hurt us. It was the first time any of us seriously considered leaving the island. You could say that in a way we had already taken the first step.”

NEXT WEEK:

Omnia mutantur. Nihil interit.