Immortality is a long shot, I admit. But somebody has to be first.

- Bill Cosby

Mr Tuniak sent me an SMS yesterday. It said: “I hope you don't have any objections against a quick trip tomorrow.”

Of course not!

I sent him an answer and today we were meeting not at his office, but at the parking lot of the building. And – as I had expected – we were going to the little cabin in the woods again.

“I've mentioned Philip a few times already, haven't I?”, Mr Tuniak said during the drive. “I guess you have questions about him...”

“Is he a time traveller like you?”

“No”, Mr Tuniak denied. “He's just been living for a very long time. Oh, and when you meet him, just call him Philip. He changes his last name every fifty years or so. I don't know what he's calling himself at the moment.”

We arrived at the cabin.

This time we did not travel through time. I was disappointed at first, but by now I should have learned to wait before judging. If you want to know why it is possible to use a time machine to travel to every point in the world, take a look at the note at the end of this post. It's not important right now.

Mr Tuniak did not tell me where we were going. He only said that we would stay in the present. Therefore, I was waiting excitedly for the moment the door would open.

Again the incoming air was the first sign that we had changed our position. But this time it was not warm, but cold, ice cold. I closed my jacket, but that only helped a little. Mr Tuniak opened a cupboard and took out two greatcoats.

“Put it on, we have a few metres to walk”, he said.

We were at the foot of a long row of mountains. The wind was blowing snow down at us, the sky was clouded and behind the time machine I could see lights in the distance. Probably a city. We walked towards a stone house, a lot smaller than the cabin in which the time machine had been hidden. The front door was more like a gate made out of dark wood. The name “Shangri-La” was cut into it. But when you got closer, you could see that the letters were actually men and women, wearing clothes from different time periods. They were surrounded by various symbols, which, although familiar, I couldn't really identify.

“What is that?”, I asked.

“A club house”, Mr Tuniak answered with a smile.

He opened the door and we entered a big anteroom. It acted like an air lock between the cold outside world and the warm inside. Here we left our coats and put on warm slippers. Another door was opened, one that led further inside. A small man with dark hair and a full beard greeted us.

“Hi, Lex!”, he said and they shook hands. Then he turned to me. “Hello! I'm Philip.”

He led us into the next... well I guess I have to call it a room, although it was bigger than any other room I've ever been in. It was definitely too big to fit into the building we just entered, which at first puzzled me. But then I remembered that the back side of the house had connected with the rock face right behind it. We were actually standing inside a cave now, although it never felt like one.

There was light everywhere and no two lamps or chandeliers looked the same. There were no walls. Instead shelves parted the room into several areas. I don't know how many areas, but in a way it felt as if I had just entered an infinite labyrinth.

But the shelves were not the only thing substituting for walls. There were several fish tanks as well – some of them in place of walls, but some also as part of the floor or the ceiling. The floor tanks were filled with warm water, so they doubled as floor heating as well.

“The big advantage of Iceland”, Philip explained, when I asked him where he got the necessary energy from. “Hot springs.” He led us to a seating area that was framed on two sides by fish tanks and by a shelf on the third. He asked, if we wanted tea or coffee and then disappeared.

I couldn't sit still while waiting for his return, so I got up and went closer to the shelf. It looked like it came out of a museum. A messy museum. There were coins from Victorian England, fire stones from the Stone Ages, then a paper back from the 1950ies next to a figurine from China... and so on. There were things from seemingly every country and every century.

“Was is that?”, I asked.

“Souvenirs”, Mr Tuniak answered. “They have been to a lot of places.” Earlier he had described this place as a “club house” so “they” must be the other people besides Philip who came to this place.

I went to the fish tank. The only animals inside were very small jelly fish, no more than a centimetre in diameter.

“Turritopsis nutricula, the Immortal Jellyfish”, someone said. I turned around and saw that a woman had joined us. Similarly to Philip, I couldn't guess her age, but she didn't seem to be over forty. “They develop from a polyp and they can turn back into one. An endless circle. Immortality. The perfect symbol for our little club here. I'm Eshe.” She sat down next to Mr Tuniak. “Hello, Lex!”

Philip returned, carrying coffee, tea and biscuits on a tablet. Then we started to talk about the real reason for our visit here.

“Lex told me that you were writing his biography”, Philip said. “I guess you want me to tell you about the first time I met his mothers, right?”

“The pyramids really should be finished by now”, Miriam complained. “They've been working for how long? Eighteen years? Nineteen?”

She and Helen were sitting on folding chairs on top of a dune. They were too far away from the construction site to be seen from there, but they had brought binoculars. This way they could watch the workers without fear of being spotted themselves.

“They look a bit like ants from here”, Helen said, ignoring the complaint. They had spent the last few days watching the construction of the pyramids. Thanks to their time machine they could watch the workers for a while and then jump several years ahead to see how far they had come. It was a bit like a time lapse effect.

“One last time to see them being finished and then you can choose our next destination, ok?”, Helen said.

But when they returned to their time machine they found an unexpected surprise. A man was standing right in front of it. “What is that thing?”, he asked, unable to hide his astonishment.

“I had been watching them for some time”, Philip explained. “I saw them appear every few years without changing. They always looked the same. At first I thought that I had found someone like me.”

“Someone like you?”, I asked. The answer I suspected was so incredible that I didn't want to say it out loud.

“You didn't tell him...?”, Philip asked Mr Tuniak.

“No”, Mr Tuniak answered. “Just hinted at it.”

Philip laughed cheerfully for a moment. “You really should have gone to the theatre”, he said before turning back to me. “I'm immortal. My earliest memories are... well, me doing a cave painting.”

I looked from him to Mr Tuniak, who nodded in confirmation. Then I looked at Eshe. “The earliest thing I remember is running after a mammoth”, she said.

“How is that possible?”, I asked. I never doubted the truth of their statements, not for a moment.

Philip answered: “I'm not sure myself, but I have a theory.”

“What do you think?”, Philip asked.

Doctor Blackburn took another look at the test results. “They are most probably a child's cells”, she said. “You see that here? Those are telomeres. Each time a cell divides a small part of it gets cut off.”

“So... the older someone is, the shorter their tele... telomeres are?”, Philip asked. “And when they're gone, the cell can't divide any more?”

“Yes.” The way Doctor Blackburn answered made it clear, that it was a very simplified answer, but that it would suffice for now. The longer explanation would have to wait for another time. “They are the reason why we age. Theoretically, if you found a way to renew them, you could live forever.”

“And because these telomeres here still have their original length, they must come from a child. Thank you, doctor.” Philip never told her that the cells she had been examining, had been his own.

“At first I thought I was the only one”, Philip said. “But then I met Esh'. And later others as well.”

“And all the stuff collected here... it all belonged to you?”, I asked.

“Yes”, Eshe said. “This house here is our refuge. We come here to find a little peace. To rest. To prepare for our next identity.”

“Your next identity?”

“You have to change who you are from time to time if you live as long as we do”, Philip explained. “That was easier in the past. You just had to walk to the next village, claim you came from somewhere far away and start a new life. Today you need passports and papers and stuff like that. It gets quite annoying sometimes.”

“Don't act as if you don't like it”, Mr Tuniak said. “You like to disguise yourself. You should have gone to the theatre.”

“I did that in Ancient Rome for a while”, Philip admitted.

“He's great in changing his appearance”, Mr Tuniak continued. “A new hair cut, walking slightly differently, maybe starting a new diet... Sometimes even I don't recognize him.”

“Well, I've had a lot of time to practice.”

On our way home Mr Tuniak explained the importance of Philip in his and his mother's lives. “He helped us a lot. You could say that he was the only constant we had. No matter where we went, he was there.”

“But how do you find him?”, I asked.

“In about fifty years he will meet my mothers and give them a list with all the places he has been to and when he went there.”

“How many immortals are there?”

“I don't know”, Mr Tuniak admitted. “Philip shares the house with eight others. You are still shivering. Are you cold?”

“Yes, a bit.”

“Don't worry. Next week we will go to the tropics”, he promised.

Why can one use a time machine to travel around the globe? It is actually very important that a time machine does not only travel through time, but also through space. Imagine that you want to travel twenty-four hours into the past. If your time machine couldn't travel through space, you would land in... well, space. Because twenty-four hours ago the Earth was somewhere else. And it's not only the Earth that travels. The solar system does as well and the Milky Way and everything else. So a little trip from one point of the Earth to another is actually quite simple for a time machine.

Mr Tuniak explained that you also had to take care of angular velocity, impulse and other things, but that's what the computer of the time machine was for.

NEXT WEEK

Per aiutare un bambino, dobbiamo fornirgli un ambiente che gli consenta di svilupparsi liberamente.

Saps què ets? Ets una meravella. Ets únic. Mai abans no hi havia hagut cap altre infant com tu.

(And do you know? You are a miracle. You are unique. Never before has there been a child like you.) 

-  Pau Casals i Defilló

Today Mr Tuniak started our meeting by showing me an old photo album with pictures from his childhood.

„These were all taken at the beginning of the 1960ies“, he explained, while quickly flipping through the pages. „All within three or four years.“

Within these three or four years Mr Tuniak turned from a baby to a teenager. On some photos I could also see other children, all of them about ten years old.

“Didn't you say that you were born in 1996?”, I asked, once we had come to the last page of the album.

“Oh, yes”, Mr Tuniak confirmed. “Which leads to which question?”

“Why did your mothers travel to the past after your birth?”

“No.” Mr Tuniak closed the book. “Why was I born in 1996? Why not 1997 or even 2064?”

“Why?”, I asked because I couldn't think of an answer.

“Because my mothers went to the cinema in 1996”, Mr Tuniak explained. “When Miriam got pregnant, they stopped their travelling and did things that were less exhausting. They went to see the plays of Shakespeare, attended Dickens' readings and saw films of...”

“Less exhausting than what?”, I interrupted him.

“I'll tell you another time”, Mr Tuniak promised. “Now, regarding my birth... I think they were watching 12 Monkey when the labours started.” He laughed for a moment. “I should have been born in 1997 or 1998. My mothers loved the film Titanic and went there several times to watch it. They are probably responsible for half of all the tickets it sold...”

There had been no complications during the birth. When Helen was finally allowed to enter Miriam's room, the baby was lying in its own little bed right next to her.

“Where have you been?”, Miriam asked exhausted.

“At the Uno-School”, Helen explained. “Everything is ready there.”

“When can I leave?”, Miriam asked. “You know I can't stand being in the same place for a long time.”

“You can stand it for another two or three days”, Helen assured her. “It's better for both of you.”

“Three days?”

“Maybe less. It depends on when the hospital figures out that we don't have any money.”

“Your mothers didn't have any money?” I was surprised.

“No, not really”, Mr Tuniak said. “I don't have much either. You know, if you're constantly travelling through time, you always need different currencies and so... In the end it's just easier not to have any, so you can't get confused.”

“What about all of this?” I indicated with my hands that I was referring the office in which we were sitting.

“That belongs to a friend”, Mr Tuniak says. “After the hospital my mothers went to the Uno-School in 1963. That's where they stayed for the next several months. It was basically our home, the place where I learned to walk and also to talk a little. Later, I went to school there. But my mothers wanted me to learn as many languages as possible and went looking for the best teachers.”

The painters were working as quickly as they could to finish the temple. Everyone in the city was eagerly anticipating the day when it would be dedicated to Pallas Athene.

“Hey, which one of you is Philip?”, someone asked.

The painters turned in surprise and saw a woman coming towards them.

“What...?”, one of the painters started, but got interrupted by another: “Helen! Over here!”

Helen looked to a man who was standing next to a column, partly obscured by it. There were several colour stains on his clothes and even in his hair. Helen went to him and said in a low voice, so that no one else but him could hear her: “You've changed again.”

“About ten years ago”, Philip answered. “You know you should not just walk in public that, don't you? Anyway: How can I help you?”

“Well, first: If you really want to complete the temple quickly, just forget about all the paint. In about a thousand years everyone will think that you left every building completely white anyway”, she said and pointed to the column.

“That may be so, but I'm not painting for people in a thousand years, but for people right now”, Philip answered.

Helen shrugged and then continued: “You know about our son, right? Good. I'm looking for someone who can teach him Greek.”

“Me?”, Philip asked in surprise. “I don't think I'd be a good teacher.”

“No, but you could recommend me someone”, Helen said. “You knew a great guy in Ancient Rome, Alex really likes him and I was hoping that... what?”

Philip was looking at her confused. “Ancient Rome? I've heard about Rome, but...”

“That's four hundred years into your future”, Helen explained. “Forget I ever mentioned it. But about a Greek teacher: Do you know someone?”

“You learned Greek and Latin in the Ancient World?”, I asked.

“Where else?”, Mr Tuniak said. “Back then they were still being spoken. My mothers wanted me to learn them so that later it would be easier for me to learn all the modern languages that evolved from them.”

“Which languages do you speak?”

“Quite a lot”, Mr Tuniak said. “But only very few of them well. Mostly, it's just sufficient so that people can understand what I'm trying to say.”

“Arabic?”

“Several dialects, yes.”

“Chinese?”

“No.” Mr Tuniak was shaking his head. “The same is true for Japanese. I know a few words in both languages, but that's about it.”

“Why not?” For some reason I was more curious about something he didn't know than for something he did.

“Because of the way I look”, he said. “It's only in the last two centuries that I could go to these countries without attracting attention. And nowadays I get by with speaking English.”

“And you went to several schools in the past?”

“No. At first I had a few private tutors, but once I got the basics of a language...”

Gaius Gracchus was no private tutor. He didn't teach grammar or tested your vocabulary. He was an orator, one of the best. When he was talking at the forum in Rome, he could be sure that a lot of people would come to listen tom him.

“Up! Up!”, Alexander begged. “I don't hear.” He was four years old and this was not the first oration that he attended together with his mothers.

Miriam sat him on her shoulders and whispered: “Only speak Greek or Latin here, otherwise you attract too much attention.”

Gracchus had just started. He didn't use any notes. He spoke only from memory and without any hesitation. He didn't make any mistakes and was completely sure about what he said. His gestures and his facial expressions were perfectly coordinated with his words. He captured his audience solely with his voice and when he was talking there was no one who could resist him.

The young Alexander didn't understand everything that was being said. Gracchus was talking too fast for that. But when he ended, the young boy knew that he had just watched a master of his profession at work.

“Are you tired or do you want to go to another speech?”, Miriam asked, as she put him down.

“Another”, Alexander said in Latin. “When...?” He couldn't finish the sentence, because he didn't know the words.

“The next one is tomorrow”, Miriam said.

“Or in five minutes”, Helen said and they went back to their time machine.

“You learned languages back when they were actually spoken”, I said. “But what about sciences like physics or biology or...”

“That comes later”, Mr Tuniak said. “That only started when I went to the Uno-School. The only thing I learned before was mathematics. For that my mothers took me to some of the best in that field.”

“Pythagoras?”, I asked. “Archimedes?”

“No, no”, Mr Tuniak said. “They were good for the times they lived in and for where they lived. But they were still missing fundamental things. The zero, for instance. No, I learned mathematics in India and the Middle East some centuries later, basic survival skills in the Stone Ages and other things like pottery I was taught by inclusi... monks and nuns in the Middle Ages.”

“With basic survival skills, I guess you mean making fire and stuff like that?”, I asked. “What for?”

“In case the time machine ever broke down and left me stranded somewhere.”

“And Pottery?”

“Because I liked it. As a child I liked it a lot, although I'm not sure I could still make anything nowadays.”

“Did you do anything else besides learning?”, I asked. “Did you have any friends?”

“My friends were the other children of the Uno-School”, Mr Tuniak said. “At first they were still a few years older than me, but that changed within a few months.” He smiled. “In the beginning they didn't know about our time machine, so they thought I was ageing rapidly.”

“Any hobbies?”

“I don't remember anything in particular”, he said. “I know that I liked to go to fortune tellers... or augurs, as they were called back then and to tell them what would happen in the next few days. But my mothers put a stop to that very quickly.” He stopped and his face took on a far away expression. As if he was remembering something and seeing it in a completely new light for the first time. But then he continued: “I guess it sounds as if I was only learning and had no spare time.” I nodded my assent. “But you have to understand: It didn't feel like learning. I didn't sit for hours in a room and studied vocabulary or anything like that. It was as if I was going on an excursion every day. A trip to a new world. That's the special gift of children: They learn automatically. Every moment. You just have to provide them with the right environment, sit back and be patient.”

“That doesn't work for everything”, I said.

“Maybe not”, he said. “And, in fairness, I should say that I learned to speak quite late, compared to other children. But at the same time, I was never under any pressure either. For me, learning was never connected to stress. And whatever I was lacking in actual knowledge, I more than made up for in curiosity.” He nodded again as if he was answering an unspoken question. “Yes... if there is one thing I've kept from my childhood it's my curiosity.”

NEXT WEEK

Immortality is a long shot, I admit. But somebody has to be first.

Il y a une femme à l'origine de toutes les grandes choses.

(There is a woman at the beginning of all great things.)

- Alphonse de Lamartine

„What did I tell you about my mothers?“, Mr Tuniak asked. I was sitting on the couch and had just taken out my note pad.

„You said Miriam was a physicist, she travelled a lot... read lectures at four universities.“ I consulted my notes from last week. „And Helen... an archivist... responsible for the digitalisation of private writings... old diaries and stuff like that... travelled a lot as well...“

„I did not mention that those are not their real names?“

“No”, I said.

“Well, maybe they are nowadays, but they are not the names they were given at birth”, Mr Tuniak explained. “They chose new ones when they started travelling through time.”

“They picked old names, so that they could use the same ones wherever they went?”, I asked.

Mr Tuniak nodded in response and closed his eyes. It seemed to help him concentrate and remember. I wondered, if more than a week had past from his point of view since our last meeting. „I should have started differently“, he said and opened his eyes again. „I should have told you a bit more about the future itself.“

„Even right now“ - and as he said that, he quickly glanced at the calendar as if he had to check which year it was - „people are calling this the information age. But it is only its beginning. In the future it will be pretty much impossible to find a place on Earth where you wouldn't have access to... the internet.“ I noticed that he had hesitated before saying the word “internet”. I can only guess that he actually meant to say something else – probably whatever the next step in computer evolution will bring. A new version of the internet, if you will, but he didn't explain any further.

“If you can get everything you need from every point on the globe, there are two ways to live”, he continued and then looked expectantly at me. He obviously wanted me to name the two ways of life and after thinking about it for a moment I answered: “You either stay at home and never leave it, because you can access everything you need anyway. Or you travel around, go any place you like... for exactly the same reason.”

“Precisely”, he said, looking pleased. Of course, I only guessed the answer, because I knew that his mothers liked to travel.

“Miriam read lectures about Theoretical Physics at several universities. Her lectures were broadcast on the... internet. So, as you correctly said, it didn't matter where she actually was and she used her spare time to see the world. Helen had to travel for business reasons. She was cataloguing old documents and writings and therefore had to go wherever these documents were kept. And it was on one of her assignments that she met Miriam.”

The first time they met, they were in the entrance hall of a hotel. Miriam was just checking in, when Helen came out of the dining room. She recognized her instantly. Until then they had only communicated over the internet. And still, they recognized each other.

In a time, when all business transactions and contacts were done over the internet, people had become used to the idea that nothing they saw on the net was actually real. They automatically assumed that every picture, every video was manipulated. And with good reason. Everyone could choose how he or she wanted to appear on the net. You didn't have to get cosmetic surgery any more; with just a few commands your avatar – the face, you showed the world – could take any form you wanted.

But Miriam and Helen had chosen not to the change their photos. They were not perfect. Helen's nose was slightly bent, a remainder of an accident she had had as a teen. Miriam's dark skin had several patches of lighter areas, the result of her mixed genetic heritage. It would have been easy to correct the nose on every photo. It would have been easy to paint over the lighter skin. But they hadn't done it. And because of this they knew, the moment they saw each other, that they had something in common.

“Helen was asked by a family to scan all the writings of their grand-grand-grand-grandmother – or something like that. That long dead woman had been a student of physics in Paris in the 1960ies and not much else was known about her. To make sure that all the writings were correctly indexed and referenced, Helen put out a call for a physicist to help her. Miriam happened to be close by and answered her request. That's how they met each other.”

Mr Tuniak took a sheet of paper and gave it to me. Whoever had written it, had terrible hand writing, because I could only make out every second or third word. But it was enough to make it clear that it was some kind of formula. “That's a copy of one of the texts”, Mr Tuniak explained.

Even though I couldn't read much of it, I was able to guess what it was about. “The formula for time travel?”, I asked.

“Not quite”, Mr Tuniak answered. “It's the beginning for a theory of everything. A final theory. A theory that could explain the whole universe. But only the beginning and it was never finished. My mothers couldn't finish it either, but they discovered that a part of it seemed to make time travels possible.”

“And they build a time machine. Did they tell anyone else about it?”

“No.”

“If we publish that, hundreds, no, thousands of people will build their own time machines”, Helen said.

She was sitting in the bar of the hotel, Miriam next to her. They were talking very quietly, nearly whispering and from time to time they looked over their shoulders to make sure that no one was listening. But of course, no one was. None of the other guests knew of their discovery and therefore didn't pay them any attention whatsoever.

“Maybe I'm wrong”, Miriam said. “Maybe it doesn't work. Because if time travels are possible, where are all the time travellers? We should have countless visitors from the future.”

“Well, there is only one way to test the theory, isn't there?”, Helen asked and both women began to laugh loudly. Now they other guests looked at them, but now they didn't care about it.

“Where are all the time travellers?”, I interrupted Mr Tuniak's account. “Time travels are possible, so...?”

“All in good time”, he said. “There is a reason, a good reason, but I will come to it later. Don't you want to hear where my mothers went to first?”

“To the dinosaurs.”

“Yes. And it was also the destination of their second and third trip...”

“I forgot my camera”, Helen said as she saw the herd of edmontosaurs passing by. “Again.”

“No one would have believed you anyway”, Miriam replied. “Do you want to see something else that's unbelievable?” She gestured Helen to follow her and together they went to what at first seemed like a hole in the ground. The ash in it made it clear that someone had dug it to light a hidden fire.

“What's that?” Helen asked and knelt down. “A fireplace?”

“At least I think so”, Miriam said. “And do you see the small stones? That sometimes happens when you hit two stones together to...”

“...make fire”, Helen finished the sentence. “Dinosaurs knew how to make fire. When will the meteorite hit?”

“In a few thousand years”, Miriam answered. “They were too late.”

“I believe it was the discovery of that fireplace that led to the continuing travels of my mothers”, Mr Tuniak explained. “It was probably not the only reason, but the most important one.”

“Why is that?”

“The fireplace showed them that the past still held surprises, that there were still mysteries no one even knew about”, he said. “That's what fascinated Helen. And Miriam just wanted to keep moving. She never liked standing still, at least that's what she told me once.”

“After that, they never went back to their time?”

“Only once. And then not for long.”

“Is your father from the future as well?”

“You mean my biological father?”

“Yes”, I said confused. “Is there any other kind?”

“Oh, there are dozens of possibilities”, Mr Tuniak said. “But I don't have a biological father. And before you say that that is impossible, before you recite whatever you've learned about x- and y-chromosomes, let me remind you that it is the future we are talking about. Families like me and my mothers are not the exception.”

I didn't know what he meant when he talked about chromosomes, so I ignored that part and asked instead: “What would an exceptional family of the future look like?”

He thought about that and then smiled. “Honestly, I have no idea”, he said. “There are families, where the members know each other only on the internet, families, where some members only exist in virtual space or all of them are clones, then there is...”

I interrupted him and said laughingly: “Let me ask another question: Whom would you consider to be part of your family?”

“My mothers, of course”, Mr Tuniak answered. “And everyone at Una-school.”

“And, your mothers excepted, there is no one else you are genetically related to?”

“No one”, he said. “But family has nothing to do with genes. Your parents aren't genetically related, are they? And still no one would hesitate to call them one family.”

“What is your definition of family?”

“I use the same one they used back in the Stone Age”, Mr Tuniak explained. “Although their term would probably be translated as clan or... pack right now. Which just goes to show that you shouldn't concentrate on names and definitions, but on the thing itself. Like the Bard said: 'What's in a name? That which we call a rose, by any other name would smell as sweet'.”

“You sure like to jump through time”, I joked.

“Oh, that's one of the advantages of being a time traveller”, he replied. “I can pick the best of every era and ignore the rest. Where do you think I got my education from? No, don't answer! That's our topic for next week.”

NEXT WEEK

Saps què ets? Ets una meravella. Ets únic. Mai abans no hi havia hagut cap altre infant com tu.

Credo, quia impossibile est.

(I believe it, because it is impossible.)

- misquote attributed to Tertullian

Before I started writing this post, I read the one from last week again. Knowing what I know now, there are parts that are quite embarrassing. I was wrong. Completely wrong.

Take a deep breath. Start at the beginning.

This is what happened today:

I went to Mr Tuniak's office, just as we agreed upon last week. Thus far, everything went according to plan. Then he started talking about his mothers (yes, plural). Where they came from, what they were doing... “background stuff” he called it. I was taking notes and trying my best to act as if I was believing everything he told me.

It was not easy.

I failed.

We had been sitting in the office for about half an hour, when he suddenly stopped.

“You do not believe me”, he said.

I didn't know how to respond and kept quiet.

“I've read the first post on your blog”, he continued. “I should have foreseen that something like that would happen.” He opened the briefcase that was standing right next to his chair and took out a mobile phone. He called a number on speed dial and told the person at the other end of the line: “Could you come to the main entrance, please? Right now. Thank you.”

Then he stood up and went for the door. “Come!”, he told me. “We are going for a short trip.”

I quickly gathered all my stuff and followed him.

In front of the main entrance a limousine was waiting for us. As we got in, I could read the plate number and learned that the car, like the building we had just left, belonged to Raben Consulting.

The passenger part of the limousine was completely separate from the driver's part. Mr Tuniak had to use a small phone to tell the driver where he wanted to go. “To the cabin”, he told him and off we drove.

It was quite a pleasant journey. I usually don't like driving in a car, but until today I hadn't travelled in a limousine yet. The seats were like long, soft benches and since we were sitting on opposite sides, each of us had his own “bench”. There was a mini-bar and a television (neither of which we used) and through the windows (you could only see through them from the inside) I could see where we were going.

We left the city. Very little time passed, before I saw trees instead of houses along the street. There were more and more trees, until it was clear that we had entered a forest. The road got smaller all the time as well.

Mr Tuniak opened the mini-bar, but instead of a bottle he took out a photo album. At least that's what I thought it was at first.

“What do you think of these?”, he asked and handed me the book.

I opened it. Instead of photos there were dozens of feathers collected inside. They were too big to be normal bird feathers. Maybe ostrich's feathers...

“What kind of bird has such feathers?”, I asked as the car stopped.

“They are from no bird”, answered Mr Tuniak, putting the book back. “They are from dinosaurs.”

And he left the car.

I was surprised by his answer and it took me a moment before I followed him outside. When I did, I saw that we had stopped at a clearing in the middle of the forest. A wood cabin was standing close by; a cabin without any windows and with only one door. Mr Tuniak was opening several safety locks and apparently constantly using the wrong keys – at least, that's what it looked like.

I saw that the driver had gotten out of the limousine as well and was leaning on the car.

“You have an... unusual boss”, I said to him, trying to start a friendly conversation.

“Oh, yes”, the driver agreed.

“Has he always been like this?”, I asked. “Since when are you working for him?”

“Since I died.”

I only nodded in response. It was the first time on this day that I knew how Alice must have felt after she had entered Wonderland.

In the mean time Mr Tuniak had managed to open the door.

“Does your driver truly believe that he is dead?”, I asked him as we entered the cabin.

“Yes”, answered Mr Tuniak. “It's called the Cotard-delusion. It's gotten better in the last few years.”

“And you let him drive?” I was alarmed about this, because that car and that driver were basically my only way back to the city. “Isn't that dangerous?”

“Why, no!”, said Mr Tuniak emphatically. “He doesn't believe that I am dead. Or you.” He switched on the light.

I don't know what I had expected to find, but it was definitely not what was in front of me. A long grey cuboid (seriously, there is no better description than that). That was it. The cuboid was three metres high, about the same in width and nearly ten metres long. If you looked closely you could see that it seemed to have a skin of glass.

“What is that?”, I asked.

“My time machine”, Mr Tuniak answered.

“Were all the DeLoreans sold out?” The sentence was out of my mouth before I had time to think, which always means that the words tried to get out before your brain realised what had happened. I hated myself for saying it out loud, but Mr Tuniak just laughed. Then he took a small remote control from his pocket and pressed a button. A door opened at the side of the cuboid (as long as it had been closed, there had been no trace of the door).

“Come in”, Mr Tuniak said.

“You could have at least painted it”, I thought as I entered. But this time I didn't say it out loud. I learn from my mistakes.

The inside was similar to the inside of a mobile home. There was a kitchen, a bed, a washing room and a table. Flat screens on the wall acted as windows. And the front, where the driver would be sitting in a mobile home, looked like someone had removed an air plane cockpit and put it there.

“Where do you want to go?”, Mr Tuniak asked, after he had closed the door and taken a seat in the cockpit.

If you had a working time machine, what would be the first place you would want to visit?

I decided to play along, although I did not believe for a second that the time machine would actually work. I tried to remember famous historical events that would be worth a visit or interesting people with whom it would be nice to share a cup of tea, when I realised that there could only be one possible answer.

“To the time of the dinosaurs”, I said.

“Correct”, Mr Tuniak agreed. I could not see what he was doing in the cockpit, but for a moment the whole “time machine” trembled. “Did you know that everyone chooses the dinosaurs for the first trip?”

He pressed a button and the door opened again.

That was the moment when I stopped feeling sure of myself. I had been convinced that Mr Tuniak would come up with an excuse why the time machine was not working right now (probably because some parts would only be delivered next Tuesday). But warm air came in through the open door, a lot warmer than it had been in the forest. There was a smell in the air I could not identify.

I got out of the cuboid and...

The prehistoric Earth was right in front of me.

I guess there were bushes and trees and grass, but I ignored all of that. We were atop a small hill and two hundred metres away from us a group of dinosaurs was marching. They were big, at least three times the size of a grown human, walked on their hind legs, had “arms” that ended in improbably long claws, a long neck and a small head. Their backs, legs and tails were covered in feathers. They looked like therizinosaurs, at least that was the closest image I could find, when I searched on the internet for their names. But the most fascinating fact about these creatures was the effect they were having on me. I was not afraid. Yes, they had claws and yes, they were big, but I never felt threatened. I guess I was just too overwhelmed to feel anything else. I only noticed that my knees felt weak and I had to sit down.

I don't know how long I had been sitting there, just staring. Mr Tuniak sat next to me and was quiet for a long time as well.

“Fascinating creatures, aren't they?”, he eventually said. “No matter how often I come here, it always feels like the first time.”

My mouth felt dry, so I couldn't answer. He gave me a pair of binoculars and pointed to a spot somewhere behind the dinosaurs.

I looked through and quickly found what he wanted to show me. Two women, both dressed in grey overalls. They had just arrived here as well, that much was obvious from the look on their faces (which must have mirrored the one on my own).

“The first voyage through time of my mothers”, Mr Tuniak said.

They never saw us.

We stayed until sun down. The dinosaurs came closer and closer and then – it seemed quite suddenly to me – we were surrounded by them. But I still wasn't afraid. A simple miss step, a quick unfortunate movement of the tail could have seriously injured us, but I didn't think about such things. Quite the opposite in fact: I stretched out my hand and touched one of them.

“Dinosaur” means “terrible lizard” if you translate the name from old Greek. Sir Richard Owen never knew what a terrible mistake he made by giving them that name.

Back in the present, during our drive home, I tried to put my experience into words. But I couldn't. The quote “should have sent a poet” went through my head. But in this case I was the poet and I was at a loss for words. Even now, reading the lines I just wrote, I realise that they fail to capture more than a shadow of what I felt.

“Don't know what to write?”, Mr Tuniak asked, when he noticed that my notepad was still empty.

“Yes”, I admitted. “Breathtaking, astonishing, wonderful, unbelievable... I don't know which word fits best. Do you know one that means all of that?”

“Yes”, Mr Tuniak said after thinking about it for a moment. “Nature.”

NEXT WEEK

Il y a une femme à l'origine de toutes les grandes choses.

My mother won't be born for another 102 years.

- Alexander Tuniak

Sorry, what?

„Beginnings are always the hardest“, he continued. „I've thought long and hard about what makes a good beginning and this sentence fits all conditions perfectly.“

What conditions?

„The sentence is unusual. A beginning should create curiosity.. It should contain one or two pieces of important information, which it does. And, most important of it all, it should be true.“

So I put that sentence at the beginning. But Alexander Tuniak doesn't want to write his biography himself, so I can take a few liberties. Not about the content, but about the presentation (of course, I don't have complete control, I get paid by him after all).

But I think I will begin (or continue to begin) at the same place where it all started for me. Last week.

I'm a student. What I study is of no importance, this is not about me. But it is important that I am a student. Because like any other student I was looking for a job. Nothing big. I didn't want to get rich. I just wanted to gain some work experience, which looks good on any c.v. I didn't want to spend a lot of time working either. I can do 16-hour-shifts as a cab driver once I've finished my studies.

At the university there's a black board, where basically everyone can put up a post-it note. You can look for stuff (like apartments), you can offer stuff (like old scripts). Sometimes you'll find a job offer. That's how I found Mr. Tuniak's note.

This is what it said:

“Wanted! Someone to write my biography – meetings once a week – limited creative freedom – for more information, please call...”

I thought “Why not?” and called the number. I was invited to an interview, which took place in an office on the last floor of a building of the Raben Consulting company. The same place where most of the other meetings will take place in, as Mr. Tuniak promised. The office is nothing special. There is a desk (of course there is), but surprisingly without a computer. Thinking back, I can't recall if there was a telephone there or not, but I think there wasn't. Book shelves were standing in front of three of the four walls. I couldn't make out what kind of books they were, maybe next time. The fourth wall – the one behind the desk – was a big glass window, which offered a great view of the city (and also a new meaning to the rule of “not breaking the fourth wall”). There was also a smaller desk, with a couch, a few plants (ferns, I think), lamps of course... But it didn't seem like a place where a lot of work was done. Or any work. It seemed more like a theatre or film set than an actual office. As if the whole room was only prepared so that we'd have a place for the interview.

The interview itself was the easiest one I've ever had.

This is how it went:

I enter the room.

Mr. Tuniak: “You've got the job.”

That's it. He didn't ask any more questions. He didn't want to know if I had ever done anything similar. He didn't want to know if I had any skills that would make me especially suited for the job. He didn't ask if he owned any of my relatives a favour. There were no discussions about my payment or about the times when we would meet. I had the job.

So what is my job?

Every Sunday I will go to Mr. Tuniak's office and he will talk about his life. I will take notes and try to bring all his thoughts into a presentable form. And all of this will be published – piece by piece, one every week – on the internet.

Why?

“I'll explain later.”

Oh, and one more thing: It will only be for one year. He will talk once a week for exactly one year and not a day longer.

“If you start a narrative, any kind of narrative, it's important to know when and where it will end”, he explained. “Otherwise you are in danger of getting lost in the small stuff, of loosing the main thread of what you wanted to tell. Of course, that can turn out interesting in its own way, but that's not what I want. One year gives me enough time to mention everything of importance. And we will start next week.”

But he didn't want to let me go just like that. That's why he told me the sentence you read at the beginning.

“For the way home”, he said.

I wrote down “102 years”, trying not to laugh. “And when were you born?”, I asked.

“1996”, he answered. He noticed that I didn't write this down immediately. “I don't look that young, do I?”, he asked with a smile.

No, he doesn't. This is what Mr. Tuniak looks like: He is tall, nearly two metres. His hair is white but if you look closely you can see that it must have been black in his youth. His name sounds Greek, but with his appearance he would also fit in every country in the Middle East. It's actually very difficult to guess his nationality. I asked him about that. “None”, he answered. “Or Terra, if you prefer.”

Terra. Earth. Ok. And how old is he?

“I'm honestly not sure. But I must be about a hundred years old.” I have to say, he looks very good for someone of that age. He doesn't look a day over seventy.

I changed his year of birth to 1896 in my notes. I was convinced that I had simply misunderstood him at first. But he noticed that and I had to change it back again.

“I was born in 1996, I know that”, he said. “I'm also over a hundred years old. And by the way: I never experienced 1998. I think I missed 2003 as well, but I'm not sure.”

He's the boss. I don't have to make sense of what he says, I just have to report it as truthfully as I can.

I asked him, carefully, how all of that was possible.

“Well, that's quite elementary”, he said. “But if you can't figure it out yourself, then, like Mr Gently, you will have to ask a child.

“One more thing before you leave”, he continued. “I want to read you a legend. It may explain why I'm doing all of this.” He took a sheet of paper from the desk. “There are people who think that the end of the legend is missing. But I think it stops at precisely the right point.”

This is the legend:

A long time ago there was a man who had three sons. The old man died, as we all must some day. He was buried and his sons put a big tombstone on his grave. The name of the man was written there, in big letters, so that everyone who passed it by would read it and the man would never be forgotten.

Years passed. A day came when the three sons decided to return to their father's grave, but once they arrived they saw that the name on the tombstone was nearly impossible to read. Rains and storms had nearly erased it. The sons immediately decided to put up a new tombstone, but they also knew that the same thing would happen to it. So they were standing at their father's grave and they were thinking not only about him, but also about themselves. What would happen once they died? Would they be forgotten? Would their sons take care of their graves? Would they make sure that their names would always be visible on their tombstones?

And the first son said: “I do not want to be forgotten. I will have children, many children, and they will have children and so on and on. My descendants will be the biggest family that ever lived. They will create a dynasty and I will never be forgotten. For whenever anyone wants to find out how this family started they will find my name. And every family tree will start with me.”

The second son answered: “I don't want to be forgotten either. I will create a work of art. A palace, so big and strong, that even time won't be able to destroy it. Kings and queens will live in this palace and it will become the most famous building in the world. And every time someone asks who build it, they will hear my name.”

And the third son said: “To be forgotten, no, I don't want that to happen to me either. That's why I will tell everyone I meet my story. I will tell everyone who I am, what I have seen and what I have done. Most of it will be true, some of it won't. But that's not important. Because the people who listen to me, will repeat my story and they will leave out things I said or add others I didn't say. They will change my story, but they will never forget me.”

Mr Tuniak gave me copy of that legend. “I read this story once to a few friends of mine”, he told me. “Do you want to know what they said? They said that the only way to make sure that you are never forgotten is to live forever. And they laughed. Of course, the irony is that no one knows their names.”

And then he smiled and said good-bye.

NEXT WEEK:

Credo, quia impossibile est.