Toutes les activités humaines ... sont vouées par principe à l'échec.

(All human actions ... are on principle doomed to failure.)

- Jean-Paul Sartre

„The changes Alice and I affected in history were...“, Mr Tuniak started today, but stopped when he saw that I had raised my hand. I had a question that had bothered me for several days.

„The history I learned at school, that was already the changed one, right?“, I asked. „The one that happened, after you affected your changes.“

„Yes“, Mr Tuniak said after a moment's hesitation. „Apart of course from things scientist in your time haven't discovered yet or have misinterpreted.“

„Of course“, I agreed. „But thanks to Madame Debarou you still have notes about the original history, haven't you?“

Again he hesitated before answering. „Those notes have been destroyed, unfortunately. Are you asking because you want to know how the course of history originally looked?“

„Among other things, yes.“

„It was pretty much the same as you now know it“, Mr Tuniak said. „As I told, it is very difficult to change history. To change it and have that change stick. That's why Alice and I often had to return to the points we changes to make sure, these changes wouldn't simply be glossed over or, in some cases, be reversed.“

Alexander was once again waiting at an oasis in the desert, not far from Baghdad. But when he saw a beggar coming his way, dressed in old rags and walking slowly and bend forward, he immediately recognized Alice. His suspicion was confirmed, when the beggar suddenly stood upright and started to walk quicker. As she came closer, Alexander could see in Alice's face that something had not gone according to their plans.

„What went wrong?“, he asked.

„He wrote a book”, Alice said. “About the history of science.

„That cannot be all of it“, Alexander said. „He's got the potential for so much more, he... he could be al-Jazari before al-Jazari himself.” He shook his head. „Feodor's formula doesn't seem to work particularly well here either, I'd say.“

„No, it doesn't“, Alice agreed. „I'd say it's because the society is too different. We got the best results in so-called Western Societies between the end of the Second World War.“

Alexander had to agree with her. And even then: Only seventy years after the Second World War, the internet had come along and completely changed the lives people again. A change, the formula was apparently unable to cope with. Which made it all the more frustrating that it was the only tool they had got. A scary thought.

„We could once again try to introduce batteries in Old Babylon and hope they spread this time...“, Alexander mused. „Or we bring glass to the Chinese.“

Alice looked at him in surprise. Compared to the Asian empires, the earlier development of glass had given the European states a clear advantage for a long time. Because of this, one of Alexander's first idea had been to bring glass to the Asian continent, but they had eventually decided against it. The consequences would have been too big and too unpredictable to risk it. Alexander going back to this idea, only showed how desperate he slowly became, when – one after another – his plans didn't work out. He sometimes had the feeling as if he was playing a game against an invisible opponent who was able to block his every move.

„Let's try to lead the Vikings to America first, okay“, Alice said.

„Did you have an... invisible opponent?“, I asked.

„Except time? No“, Mr Tuniak answered.

„You say that as if time had a consciousness“, I said. It was supposed to be a joke, but the way Mr Tuniak looked at me made clear that he took this matter seriously.

„You know, I'm not so sure about that“, he said after a while. „And back then, I was close to believing anything really.“

Ota Benga was sitting on a bench in front of the monkey's enclosure. The animals had just been fed with fresh fruits and were immensely active and jumping around because of that. They captured Benga's complete attention, which is why for once he didn't notice all the visitors to New York's Zoo. He hadn't even insulted a single one today.

„Do you believe in destiny?“, a man, who looked to be about thirty-five, asked. He had sat down next to Benga, without the latter noticing it. Although the stranger was looking straight ahead, Benga was sure that he wasn't looking at the monkeys.

„What?“, Benga said.

„If you could change history, would you do it?“, the stranger asked. „If you had the ability to travel to the past and...“ Before Benga could answer – and he was thinking of a cutting and maybe insulting reply – the stranger continued. „But what if every change you make gets reversed immediately? You give a man five dollar and tell him to invest it. Five minutes later a pick-pocket steals the five dollars off the man. It's as if you have done nothing in the end. What does that mean?“

„What?“, Benga asked, honestly curious. It had been a long time since someone had talked to him as if he were a human being and not just another exhibit.

„Does it mean that there is no free will, because everything has to happen a certain way? And because I am from the future, the past has already happened for me. Must it therefore remain completely unchanged?“

„Is this your religion you are talking about?“, Benga asked. „If so, I have no interest in joining it.“

„It's got nothing to do with religion“, the stranger said. „My mothers once told me that time is like gravity. You do know gravity, don't you?“

„Of course“, said Benga, slightly insulted. Just because he was the same size as a child, people often thought he only knew as much as a child as well.

„Gravity keeps us on this earth. Because of it we cannot fly“, the stranger continued. „But no one would claim that gravity was impeding on someone's free will because of that. And it is exactly the same with time.“ The stranger hid his face in his hands. „But sometimes it is difficult to believe that.“ He looked back at Benga. „I envy you.“

„You really don't“, Benga said.

Suddenly the mood of the stranger changed. He stood up and seemed happy and cheerful. His doubts and his desperation was gone. Benga immediately saw the reason why. A woman was coming towards them and the stranger obviously didn't want her to see what he was really feeling. The woman didn't seem happy either.

“And? What did they find?”, the stranger asked.

“Nothing, they were wrong”, the woman said. “Tesla's notes are definitely gone.”

Benga saw how the stranger clenched his fists. Then he and the woman started talking very quickly with each other, quickly and quietly. Benga couldn't understand them any more. He continued watching them and wondered about the unusual clothing they were wearing. Finally they appeared to have reached a decision and the woman left again.

“I'm sorry if I bothered you”, the stranger said to Benga. “You know how you sometimes just have to say things out loud? And I couldn't tell her... I don't know how she would react.” He said good-bye and started to leave.

“But why me?”, Benga asked. “The stuff you told me... Wouldn't a professor of physics or philosophy or... whatever have suited you better?”

The stranger shrugged. “They would have told other people”, he said.

“And why do you think I wouldn't tell others?”, Benga asked, although he had to intention of actually doing that.

The stranger spread his arms. “I'm sorry to say this, but no one is going to believe you. You are living in a zoo!”

Benga had to laugh. He didn't know why. The stranger had only said the truth, the terrible, depressing truth. But still he had to laugh. After a few moments, the stranger joined in.

“Did you try to bring glass to China eventually?”, I asked.

“Nearly”, Mr Tuniak said. “There were a few times, where we nearly did it.”

“What's so important about glass?”

“You can make windows out of it”, Mr Tuniak said. “And if you have windows made out of glass instead of thin paper sheets or animal skins, you have more and longer light which means you can work longer. And of course you can make glasses out of it. Suddenly, people who couldn't work before can read again. They are no longer at a disadvantage.”

“And why didn't you do it?”

“Because I had forgotten something”, Mr Tuniak said. “I had forgotten something at the Villa Atterton.”

“Has anyone of you seen Alice or Alex?”, Sarina asked. She was standing on a veranda and had shouted into the garden, where Petula, Lan, Bill, Mowgli and Ali (who had come for a visit) were repairing their bicycles.

“Not in the last few days”, Petula said.

“Maybe they are on their honeymoon”, Mowgli joked.

Sarina rolled her eyes. “Alex has borrowed a book from me and I need it back.”

“Then just go to his room and take it”, Mowgli said. “I'm sure he won't object to it.”

Reluctantly, Sarina agreed with him. Not entering the room of someone else without being invited, was the strictest of the unwritten rules on Leviathan. Because there was very little space on the island, the little privacy that was possible was especially valued.

Sarina had a strange feeling therefore as she entered Alexander's room. It was very tidy, as if its occupant had expected not to return for a long time. She immediately saw the book she was looking for – a book about early cultures in Polynesia – lying on the desk. She took it and wanted to leave the room quickly again, when she saw that one of the desk's drawers was partly open. She saw a book lying in the drawer, a book that seemed to be very familiar. Eerily familiar.

She opened the drawer. Her suspicion was right. It was another book about early cultures in Polynesia. She put the two books side by side on the desk. They looked completely identical. But why should Alexander buy the same book a second time? And if he had bought a copy for himself, why hadn't he returned her book?

Another suspicion raised its head. Sarina opened both books. She couldn't find any differences on the first page between them. She turned the page. And another one. And another one. She turned them quicker and quicker and wanted to stop, as she came to page thirty-four.

She drew in a sharp breath. She had found a difference. And with it came a terrible suspicion. She noticed how she began to shake slightly. She couldn't hold her hands steady. It was only with some difficulty that she could close the books. Then she ran out of the room, pressing the books against her body. She had to find Miriam and Helen as quickly as possible.

NEXT WEEK

Irrtümer entspringen nicht allein daher, weil man gewisse Dinge nicht weiß, sondern weil man sich zu urteilen unternimmt, obgleich man doch nicht alles weiß, was dazu erfordert wird.

Die Menschen sind nicht immer, was sie scheinen, aber selten etwas besseres.

(People are not always what they appear, but rarely are they better.)

- Gotthold Ephraim Lessing

Travelling in the time machine, I have gone to the bottom of the ocean, visited the dinosaurs and met a man who is immortal. And that's not even the full list. I thought small things would no longer surprise me. I was of course wrong. I should get used to that.

As I entered Mr Tuniak's office today, the big surprise was the simple fact that he was not alone there. As usual he was sitting behind his desk, facing the door, but at the sofa, where I was often sitting, there was a woman. She was about forty years old, wore her dark, shoulder length hair open and had clothing that looked as if they came from the 50ies. She also came from that time, as Mr Tuniak explained.

“May I introduce Elisa Debarou”, he said.

“Nice to meet you.” I saw that there were several papers lying on the table in front of her. They were print-outs of my previous blog entries, as I could recognise very quickly when I saw the headings.

“You have heard the story of my life from only one point of view, so far”, Mr Tuniak said. “I thought it would be a good idea to get... a second opinion, so to speak. Especially now, as we are talking about the time when... when I was trying to change history. I don't mean to say that I have withheld facts from you or tried to paint myself in a better light, but... It is a fact that we... we humans cannot trust our brains one hundred percent. We change our memories, unconsciously most of the time, but we change them none the less. Especially about things we don't want to remember any way.”

“M. Tuniak is worried that his dark side is not getting it's due”, Madame Debarou said with a small smile. She pointed at the papers on the table. “And I am here today to bring out his dark deeds.” She was still smiling, as if the idea that Mr Tuniak could even have a dark side amused her.

“Where and when did you first meet Mr Tuniak?”, I asked.

“In Belgium, about two years after the First World War”, she answered.

“I should maybe explain one thing first”, Mr Tuniak interjected. “When Alice and I first started changing history, we made sure to have precise records of all the places we visited, how history went down originally, what we changed and what the results were. Very quickly we got quite a huge amount of data that way. We worked with the computer of the time machine, but it still got very confusing very quickly. We needed someone who could sort through all the data, bring it in some kind of order... Maybe look things up for us from time to time.”

“That became my job”, Mme Debarou said. “In a way, I was their accountant.”

Mr Tuniak stood up from his place and went to the door. “You know the basics”, he said to me. “She will now tell you the rest.”

After Mr Tuniak had left the office and closed the door behind himself, Mme Debarou turned to me, still with a smile. “Now about the shadow side of his life”, she said. “I've read everything you have written about Alexander until now. And I can tell you that you two were very thorough. He didn't leave out anything of importance. I'm pretty sure that he thinks of his... younger self much worse than he actually was. But you are presenting him quite well... maybe a bit more reserved and milder than he really was. But I can understand that. You didn't know him back then and you are projecting his present self back on his younger self.”

She is most probably right. Mr Tuniak has mentioned from time to time that his younger self thought he was cleverer than he actually was and didn't often take the opinion of others into account. And because he was a time traveller he often did have access to information no none else had which gave him more knowledge and made it hard for him to admit it when he did not have all the answers.

“Tell me about your first meeting with Mr Tuniak”, I said. “What was your first impression?”

“The first time I met him was, as I said, in Belgium. I was working at the Mundaneum then”, Mme Debarou answered.

“What was that?”

“The Mundaneum? You call it the father of the modern internet search engines”, she explained. “It was founded by Paul Otlet and Henri La Fontaine. They wanted to collect the whole of human knowledge, index it and make it accessible for everyone who wanted it. People from all over the world could send in questions and we would look up the answers.”

“That was shortly after the First World War?”, I asked. “How was that possible?”

“With telegrams and letters, of course”, Mme Debarou said, obviously amused by my incredulity. “You should have seen Otlet's future plans for the Mundaneum. He practically predicted your modern internet lexika.”

“And what exactly was your job there?”

“I searched for the answers. Imagine a huge archive where all the information is written on small, little index cards. My job was to find the right card that had the required answer written on it.”

The day's shift was over. Elisa Debarou switched off the light on her desk and started to leave. As usual, she was the last one in the building. But contrary to her colleagues, she had no real home she would return to in the evening. The other women would go to their families or husbands, but Elisa lived alone in a small one room apartment. Alone with her nightmares.

Elisa was born with a perfect memory. She remember details even years after events had happened. It was very useful for her job, of course. Several times M. Otlet had praised her work and she was quicker in finding information than all of her colleagues. But for the same reason, her memory was also a curse. It would not let her forget the horrors she had seen during the Great War.

“Mademoiselle Debarou, would you please come up for a moment!”, M. Otlet shouted.

When Elisa was entering his office, she saw that M. Otlet was not alone. Another man, younger than him, was sitting in a chair. She was sure that she had never seen him before.

“Mademoiselle Debarou, this is Monsieur Tuniak”, M. Otlet introduced the man, who greeted her politely. Elisa saw immediately the contrast in body language between the two men. M. Otlet was obviously not glad to see his visitor. He only looked at the young man for short moments and acted as if he would be happier if the newcomer would disappear into thin air. M. Tuniak on the other hand, looked as if he owned not only this office, but the whole building. No, not only the building, the whole world.

“M. Tuniak wants you to quit your job here and work for him”, M. Otlet explained.

“I want you to come and work for my archive”, Moniseur Tuniak said. “But it's better if we discuss this somewhere else, not here. I know that you have no plans for this evening, so I'd like to invite you to a little dinner with... my partner and me.”

“I... I don't know...”, Elisa stammered, overwhelmed by the unexpected offer.

“M. Otlet won't object”, M. Tuniak assured her. “You will of course be missed here, a lot, but if you weren't the best, I wouldn't offer you this position. Come!”

“Right now?”

“No time like the present.” He turned to M. Otlet. “I will make sure that the donation will be on your desk tomorrow morning.”

“So, Mr Tuniak donated money to the Mundaneum so that M. Otlet would be willing to let you go?”, I asked.

“Yes”, Mme Debarou said. “And M. Otlet didn't really have a choice in the matter. He had to take the money, because that was the one thing the Mundaneum was always short of.”

“Do you know what the driving force is behind all sciences?”, M. Tuniak asked. “Communication. The better the communication works between scientist, the better the result will be. Communication without limits and unlimited access to knowledge are the most important pillars of science. Or should be. That's why we inspired Otlet and La Fontaine to their little collection. Do you believe me, when I say that we were responsible for them getting the idea?”

Elisa nodded. She had just seen dinosaurs. She was now sitting on the roof of a building in Madrid in the year 1999. No matter what he told her, she would believe it now.

“You have seen our...archive and the state it is in”, the woman with a bear, who had introduced herself as “Alice”, continued. “Your first priority would be to bring order into that chaos. To find some kind of system to file all the data. Then, to find the information we need. You would be working alone there. Can you imagine yourself doing this?”

“Of course she can”, M. Tuniak answered in her stead. “She can skip a... dark part of history and live in the future.” He didn't seem to have any doubts that she would accept their offer. His thoughts had already jumped to another topic. “What's your secret?”

“I'm sorry?”, Elisa said confused.

“Well, the way Paul described how you work, it can't be explained simply by you having a better memory than basically anybody else”, M. Tuniak said. “So, how do you do it?”

Elisa had the feeling that he was already suspecting the answer. But she had never told anyone about her secret and she wouldn't start now with someone she had barely known for more than a day.

“It's not important”, Mme Alice said. “We were just curious, but you don't have to tell us.”

M. Tuniak didn't seem happy about it, but one look from Alice and he dropped the topic.

“I've got grapheme-colour synesthesia”, Mme Debarou explained.

“I have never heard of that”, I said. “What is it?”

Instead of answering directly, she asked me to take a sheet of paper and write the letter E on it, as often as I could. While I was doing that, she stood up and went to the window, with her back turned to me. Without turning around, she then asked me to hide as many F as I wanted between the Es. When I had finished doing that as well, she came back. She took one look at the paper, no more than a second I'd say, and then she said: “There are seven F.”

“How did you know that that quickly?”

“When I read or see a letter, I not only see what you can see, but every letter also has its own colour”, Mme Debarou explained. “F, for instance, is green, whereas E is blue. So when I look at this sheet, I see seven green dots in front of a background of blue.”

“But then you can't see colours the same way I do, can you?”

“No, I see them as well”, she said. “It's as if I can see two colours in the same space at the same time. And I always know which of these two colours everyone else is seeing, and which only I am seeing. And the same is true for numbers as well. Numbers also have their own colours.”

She didn't have to explain why this ability of hers was of great use to someone working in an archive. But I didn't understand why she had kept it a secret for so long.

“I thought that if I told other people about it, they would think me crazy”, she said. “I wouldn't have told it Alexander either, but one day, while we were talking about something completely different, he suddenly asked me if R was red or blue. I answered 'red' immediately and only after I'd said it did I realise why he had asked the question. Back then, he couldn't stand a secret. He had to know everything. That, and his inability to accept defeat, lead to what he calls his great failure.”

NEXT WEEK:

Toutes les activités humaines ... sont vouées par principe à l'échec.

The computer is incredibly fast, accurate, and stupid. Man is unbelievably slow, inaccurate, and brilliant. The marriage of the two is a force beyond calculation.

- Leo Cherne

Today our journey in the time machine took us from one cabin to another. The only difference I noticed at first was that, wherever we had landed, it was a lot colder there. Fortunately, Mr Tuniak had informed me in advance that that would be the case and so I had prepared and put on warmer clothes.

As we left the cabin, I saw that it was located right at the edge of a forest, pretty much on top of a mountain. Below us was a long valley. A river was running right through it and dividing it into two parts. In the middle of the valley was a city, one of the most unusual cities I have ever seen. It was as if someone had cut out the centre of a big metropolis and relocated it exactly as it was right in the middle of the wilderness. I couldn't really put my finger on it, but it seemed immediately clear to me that this city hadn't grown naturally, but had been planned. There were no suburbs, where the houses would stand farther and farther apart from each other and slowly disappear completely. It looked like the city planners had drawn an imaginary line in the valley and declared that this was exactly the point where the city would stop.

“Where are we?”, I asked.

“Alaska, your present”, Mr Tuniak said. “Our car is parked over there.”

Right next to the cabin was a small parking area and a road that led down to the city. A car was standing on one of the parking spots, not much bigger than a Smart, but from no company I recognized. There was a little sticker on the passenger side door, which informed me that the vehicle belonged to Raben Consulting. We got into the car and I expected Mr Tuniak to drive us. But there was no steering wheel. Instead a computer screen was right in front of what in other cars would be the driver's seat. On the screen Mr Tuniak entered our destination, “Center”. And then the car started and drove on its own.

It was extremely uncomfortable sitting in a car, knowing that even in an emergency there was no way to interfere with the steering (later, I was informed that this was not true; a joystick – which I had mistaken for gear shifting lever – could be used as a manual override). As long as we hadn't actually entered the city, it was bearable, but once inside... A countless number of other cars was travelling along the streets and all of them were apparently driven by an on-board computer. And in addition to that there were of course also pedestrians and bikers, people on roller-skates and Wheelies and every other means of transportation imaginable. I even saw a rickshaw being pulled by a robot. And not one single accident!

Once I had gotten slightly used to all of this, I was able to concentrate a bit more on my surroundings and the buildings we passed. Although we were somewhere in Alaska very few of the streets signs were actually written in English. Even on the big posters which could be seen on some walls or the signs in the front windows of shops used hardly any English. Instead Russian was used (the vast majority of signs), but also some kind of Arabian and Chinese. And the people who lived here seemed to come from every corner of the world.

In the centre of the city there was a big fountain. There was a metal plaque at its side, describing and explaining in Russian the figures visible on it.

“There should be glasses in the glove compartment in front of you”, Mr Tuniak said. “Take them with you.”

I took the dark blue spectacle case and we left the car. Mr Tuniak went to the metal plaque and pointed at it. “Put on the glasses”, he said.

I took the glasses from the case. They were heavier than I had expected, with dark and thick temples and frame. After I put them on, I noticed that my sight hadn't noticeably improved or worsened, so I guessed that they glasses were just that: made of simple glass.

“On the right temple you'll find a small indentation”, Mr Tuniak explained. “If you press with a finger on it, you will activate the glasses.”

I did as I was told. And the glasses really came alive! When I looked at the plaque now, a new text was seemingly floating in front of it: a green font, the translation of the Russian text. I turned around and looked at a poster with Chinese writing on it. And again the glasses super-imposed the translation.

“That's fantastic”, I said. “What is this city?”

“Fifty years ago, when it was founded, it didn't have a name”, Mr Tuniak said. We were walking towards one of the taller buildings with a glass front. “It was built and maintained by the secret services of several western nations during the hight of the Cold War. The plan was to recreate a Russian city here, so that spies could get used to living in one.”

“Spies who would then be sent to the Soviet Union?”, I asked.

“Yes”, Mr Tuniak answered. “The Soviet Union by the way had similar cities hidden somewhere in Russia. Of course, those were built to look like American cities. But at the beginning of the 80ies the project was ended and for over a decade the city wasn't used for anything. Until Feodor told Alice and me about it.”

“This city is one of the... companies you founded to research old knowledge and put it to new uses?”

“We came here in the early 90ies. That's when the city got its name, Lagua's Dwelling”, Mr Tuniak told me. “It was taken over by several of our companies, who had fused together and are now controlled by Raben Consulting. They were looking for a quiet place to... well, you could say to go into hiding.”

We stopped in front of the main entrance. “One more thing before we enter.” Mr Tuniak turned to me and started to whisper. “The people here know me as Alexander Mueller, member of the board of executives of Raben Consulting. Only a few know my true history and who I really am, so if you talk to someone it's best to suppose he doesn't.”

I said that I understood and that I would be careful and then we entered.

“This is basically the centre of the whole city”, Mr Tuniak explained, now again talking in his normal voice.

“You still haven't told me what it is people here actually do”, I said.

“Everything you can imagine”, a woman with blond hair and a cap answered. She was sitting in an electric wheelchair and driving by she must have heard my question. “We develop, invent and test everything we can think of.” She pointed to the glasses I was still wearing. “Why do you think you can find signs in every language outside?”

“Just to test the glasses?”, I asked.

“Not only the glasses, but yes”, she said. Her mobile phone was ringing and she excused herself. I watched her drive off and it took me a few moments before I realised that the wheelchair had started moving on its own. She had pressed no button and given no other visible or audible kind of command, but it still seemed to know where she wanted to go. When I asked Mr Tuniak about it, he answered: “The cap she is wearing is measuring her brain activities and is connected with the computer of the wheelchair. She is basically controlling it with her thoughts.“

The receptionist, who gave us our visitor passes for the building, was an android. The liftboy, who took us to the fifth floor, was a hologram. The people we passed were wearing t-shirts which changed colour. On some you could even watch whole films.

“Is that how cities in the future will look like?”, I asked.

Mr Tuniak was thinking for a bit, before he answered: “I don't think I'm telling you too much, when I say that the future will be quite different from what you can see here. Everything here will be used in one form or another, but not really in the same way the people here use it.” He smiled. “From my point of view, Lagua's Dwelling is a city where children have been given the technology of the future to play with. Take a look at this for instance.” We were passing an open door and Mr Tuniak gestured to me that I should take a look inside, without attracting attention. I saw several women and men sitting in front of computer screens and apparently playing some kind of game. They seemed to be controlling some robots through dark corridors or caves.

“Do you see the biscuits on the table?”, Mr Tuniak asked quietly. “In some of them, they have hidden nano-bots, miniature robots that are smaller than a human cell. They ate a few biscuits and are now trying to figure out, which of them ate the biscuit with the nano-bots.”

“Isn't that dangerous?”, I asked alarmed.

“No, not at all”, Mr Tuniak replied. “But that's what I meant when I said that they are like children playing with toys they don't understand. They developed nano-bots which in the future will be a very important medical tool. Operations won't be necessary any more, because instead of cutting people up, they will just be injected with those nano-bots who can repair practically any damage from the inside. But right now they are... used for these stupid games.”

At the end of the corridor we entered a small office. A blind secretary was sitting in front of a computer and greeted us. The screen of his computer was part of the surface of his desk and the man had laid both his hands on top of it. It was explained to me, that the screen consisted of a material that could be shaped with great precision. Parts of it would raise and lower themselves and thus create something very similar to Braille. The secretary could “see” the images on the screen with his hands. But, he admitted, the system wasn't perfect yet and there were still a few bugs to take care of.

“Is Doctor Cumshewa here?”, Mr Tuniak asked.

“She is down at the AI laboratories”, the secretary said. “They had some problem there this morning. I'm afraid she won't have time for you.”

We thanked him for the information and returned to the lift. Mr Tuniak decided we would try our luck and so we went down to the third floor where the laboratories for artificial intelligence were located. As we got there, we found chaos. People were running up and down, shouting things to each other, gesticulating and in general creating the feeling that the end of the world was near. Mr Tuniak talked to an elderly woman – I guess it was Doctor Cumshewa – but she seemed to completely ignore him. There were several computer terminals in front of us, a technician or software engineer working at each of them and the woman was going from one to the other, issuing orders or giving advice. She returned to Mr Tuniak once more and quickly said: “Sorry, Alexander, but I'm quite busy, a you can see. An artificial intelligence has escaped into the internet this morning.” Mr Tuniak nodded only in response, but I think I heard him mumble: “And so it begins.” But maybe that was only my imagination at work.

We left the AI laboratory, because we were only standing in the way.

“I guess, we won't get a guided tour through the city today”, Mr Tuniak apologised, as we left the building. “But I think you have got quite a good idea now of what hidden ancient knowledge is capable of creating.”

Oh yes, I did have an idea now. But looking back, I don't think I even understood half of what I have seen today. I can't possibly imagine how the future will look like...

NEXT WEEK

Die Menschen sind nicht immer, was sie scheinen, aber selten etwas besseres.

星星之火可以燎原

(A spark can start a fire that burns the entire prairie.)

- Chinese Proverb

„How do you change the world?“ It was a rhetorical question by Mr Tuniak, but even though I did not respond, I was still thinking about it. “Have you ever heard of Sulla?” Now this question was directed at me.

“No, I don't think so”, I said.

“Sulla was a Roman statesman”, Mr Tuniak said. “He was also a very good general and fighter, which is why he was able to declare himself... dictator. Nowadays, you would call it a dictatorship. But with all the power he amassed, he mainly did one thing: Passing laws that would make it difficult, if not impossible, that anyone else could ever repeat what he did. He wanted to make sure that no one could declare himself dictator ever again. And once he had achieved that, he retired. He gave back all his power.”

“When did he live?”

“About forty years before Julius Caesar came to power”, Mr Tuniak said. “I'm telling you this to make one thing clear. No one can force change. And if you do, it won't last long.”

“Did you know that back then? When you set out to change history?”, I asked.

“Not as well as I do now”, Mr Tuniak answered. “Alice and I both knew the general principle. We knew that if we wanted to succeed, we would have to make a lot of small, seemingly insignificant changes. We couldn't just travel to the past and give the scientist there the plans for a computer.”

“They wouldn't have known what to do with it.”

“No, no, that wasn't the problem at all. What I'm trying to tell you is that we couldn't just travel to the past and teach the people there everything we knew. They had to discover the knowledge themselves. They had to understand the very basics.” He stood up and slowly started to walk up and down in front of his window. “I can travel to the Stone Age, built a water mill there and show someone from that time how to use it. And he will be able to use it quite well. You mustn't underestimate people just because they lived in the past. But what will our Stone Age man do, when a part of the mill breaks down? If he hasn't built it himself, he won't know how to repair it.” He stopped. “This is all rather simplified, of course.”

“Of course.”

“Are you just going to let the time machine stay out here in the open?”, Alice asked. She had just exited the machine and had gone a few steps, before turning around and looking back. The big grey cuboid that was the time machine had landed close to the border of a forest, right next to a moor. She was sure that it was visible even from quite far away.

“Yes”, Alexander answered. “Watch.”

He was holding a small remote control in his hand and pressing a button on it. The door of the time machine was closing and for a few moments nothing further happened. Then the time machine seemed to disappear directly in front of Alice's eye. But it was still standing there. It was as if it had suddenly turned into glass and one could look right through it and out the other side. If one was standing right in front of it or knew where to look, it was possible to see its outline. But from a bit farther away, it had turned virtually invisible.

“Wow, how does it do that?”, Alice asked.

“Have I never shown you that before?”, Alexander asked in surprise. “The whole outside of the machine is... like a big screen. When I activate it, it shows whatever's behind it.”

“Cool”, Alice said.

“It works better with a static background, not like the forest here”, Alexander continued. “When things move, like the leaves on the trees, it looks a bit dodgy at the edges.”

“I hope we will be able to find it again”, Alice joked.

“Don't worry.” Alexander showed her a little screen that was on the remote control. “With this, I can also locate the machine.”

“Can you also control it and order it to travel through time?”

“Unfortunately not”, Alexander said. “But I'm working on it.” He looked around, but didn't find any landmark he could use for orientation. “Now, which way lies Hackney?”

“How did you choose the points you wanted to change?”, I asked.

“With Feodor's formula and chance”, Mr Tuniak admitted. “We looked for times and locations where the formula failed to produce good results.”

“Where you couldn't predict the future?”, I asked. “Why?”

“Because we had the idea that these points would be easiest to change”, Mr Tuniak explained. “The formula is only predicting trends. If we get a certain result then that means that several factors are pointing in one direction. To change that direction, one would have to change most of these factors. A time consuming, difficult and sometimes even impossible task. But when the formula failed to produce any trend, it meant that things were in flux. That several outcomes were possible, every one of them as likely as the others. It meant that history could develop in many different directions. At least, that's how we interpreted it.”

“And afterwards you again used the formula to predict the effect your changes would have? Isn't that... a bit contradictory?”

“It wasn't an exact science and we knew it”, Mr Tuniak said. “There were even several instances where we didn't even know what to put into the formula to make it work, so we just travelled a bit into the future, to observe the effects.”

I felt how goose bumps started to form on my arms, when I thought about how casually Mr Tuniak had changed history back then.

The sand storm had abated, but was still strong enough to reduce visibility to about five metres at most. Alexander was waiting, leaning on a stone well and waiting for Alice to return. From time to time he looked at his watch. It was to be expected that she would be late due to the sand storm, but he still felt restless and uneasy.

A dark shape was coming closer. She was dressed completely in black and walked bent and using a wooden staff for support and only managing small steps. An old beggar, Alexander thought, and didn't pay any further attention to it.

“What are you standing around like that, young man?”, the dark shape said in a deep voice.

Alexander wanted to respond, but stopped. The old beggar had spoken English, modern English, which would not come about for another few centuries.

“Alice?”, Alexander asked, not quite believing it.

Alice took off the clothes with which she had protected her face from the sand and grinned. “No, just an old man, wandering around and telling stories”, she said, her voice still unbelievably deep.

“Since when are you able to imitate voices that well?”, Alexander asked.

“Have you never listened to any of the recordings I've made?”, she asked.

“I have, but... that was all your voice? I had thought that someone had manipulated it afterwards to change it.” He made a small bow. “I'm impressed. You should have become an actress.”

“Yes, I'm quite good at impersonating an old man by now”, Alice said. “By the way, I've noticed that if I don't shave, people mistake my hair for a beard. Why didn't we think of that?”

“How was Jazirat?”

“Quite nice. Taken all together I'm sure that over a hundred children have listened to my stories”, Alice answered as they walked back to the time machine. “You're still not convinced that this will achieve anything?”

“Let's say that I'm still sceptical”, Alexander said. “I think we should act in a more direct manner.”

“You are underestimating the power of stories”, Alice said. “Believe me. If you want people to invent ships, you don't show them that wood swims. You tell them of an island where all their wishes are granted.”

“Alice suggested that we should not just influence or inspire adults, but children too”, Mr Tuniak recounted. “We invented several stories for that purpose. Stories, which we then translated into the native languages and told to children.”

“Wasn't it very difficult to learn all the different languages and dialects?”, I asked.

“Oh, we were never perfect. It was easier for me, I was usually able to make small talk and so, but Alice learned most things just by ear. When she told the stories, she had learnt the words just by listening and repeating the sounds. She was able to say her stuff and she knew what the words meant she was saying, but nothing beyond that.”

“Didn't people notice?”

“They would have, but that's why we invented her disguise as an old man.” Mr Tuniak was smiling. “She became an old man who had trouble hearing, but children liked to listen to him. And if someone was asking her something she didn't understand, she pretend to be nearly deaf. Sometimes she went alone, sometimes we travelled together. When we were together, she often pretended to be my grand-father and I was her grandchild. I have to admit we also had a lot of fun with that. But that was only phase one of our plan.”

“We spent a few years changing small things throughout history”, Mr Tuniak continued. “But we never changed anything big, nothing that would radically alter history. History had to stay roughly the same at least up to the point where my mothers first entered the time machine.”

“Because otherwise there would be the risk of history altering so much that your mothers would never invent the time machine and you would never be born”, I said. “Wouldn't that lead to some kind of paradox? You know... if you change history, so that you don't exist anymore, then who was it that changed history, so that you couldn't exist.”

“Juliette has got a theory regarding that particular kind of paradox, but we never tested it”, Mr Tuniak said. “We considered it too risky.”

“What did she say?”

“She thinks that as soon as such a paradox happens, history changes completely and in a way that makes that paradox impossible.”

“I'm not sure I understand that.”

“Neither am I.” He was silent for a few moments, maybe because he was trying to solve that paradox right now. But then he said: “So, Alice and I had made all the changes to history that we had wanted to make. That is only one sentence, but, as I said, it actually took as several years to accomplish that.”

“Did you return form time to time to the villa or to Leviathan?”

“No”, Mr Tuniak said. “The others would have notice that we were aging a lot faster than them and started asking questions. We wanted to avoid that.”

“And what did your changes accomplish?”

“Well, taken for themselves little to nothing. Historians would probably say that the knowledge we brought or inspired got lost again We looked at it differently.” He paused for a moment. “It's probably best, if you imagine it this way: We took care that knowledge was gathered, collected and hidden. It wasn't hidden on purpose, of course, but was simply forgotten if you didn't know where to look for it. But that was something we knew and because of this we... we were like squirrels who had hidden their nuts so that we could later dig them out again. At the end of the nineteenth century we founded a few companies whose purpose it was to do exactly that. Find the knowledge and put it to use.”

“That sounds... unnecessary complicated”, I said. “Is that kind of knowledge, old knowledge, even relevant after a few years?”

“More than you can imagine”, Mr Tuniak said. “But fortunately, you don't have to imagine it. I will show it to you.”

NEXT WEEK:

The computer is incredibly fast, accurate, and stupid. Man is unbelievably slow, inaccurate, and brilliant. The marriage of the two is a force beyond calculation.