(The University brings out all abilities, including incapability.)
- Anton Pavlovich Chekhov
Today's meeting took place inside the time machine. Mr Tuniak had originally planned to take me on a short journey again, but we had to postpone that to next week. The time machine had some kind of malfunction.
„No matter how far we progress, I doubt we will ever be able to invent something that is completely fool proof“, Mr Tuniak said cursed, as the time machine shuddered for a moment and then stopped again. She had transported us only about four hundred metres away from the cabin. We were now at the side of the little road that led to the cabin. Mr Tuniak had called his driver to tell him where we had gone to and that he should pick us up there.
„Well, well“, Mr Tuniak said. „That throws a wrench into my plans.“
„Do you want to cancel this week?“, I asked.
„Absolutely not“, Mr Tuniak said emphatically. „I won't skip any week, no. But if you happen to be ill or if you want to go on holiday during the summer, you can send someone instead.“
I thanked him for that. I had already begun to wonder what would happen during the summer if I should happen to leave the city for one or two weeks.
„I promised you last week that I would tell you what I did after moving to England“, Mr Tuniak said. „If I remember correctly, I already told you that I went to University there.“
„Yes, you did“, I said. „But you didn't say yet which lectures you attended.“
„At first, I didn't know what interested me the most“, Mr Tuniak remembered. „Sarina had chosen History and Archaeology, but that was out of the question for me. I didn't see the point, not when I had a time machine and could actually visit any era I wanted to. And I had a big problem with most of the other sciences. I had only what you would call school knowledge of most things, but school knowledge from two hundred years in the future, from the time of my mothers.“
„You could have disproven every theory back then“, I said.
„Not all of them, no“, Mr Tuniak corrected me. „In the end I thought it best to choose a language to study and I decided on Finnish.“
„Why Finnish?“
„Because it's part of the Uralic family of languages and I hadn't learned any of them yet“, Mr Tuniak explained. „I must admit that back then I was a... well, a little bit of a show-off. Especially because of my knowledge from the future. I thought that it could basically sleep-walk through my studies. I was of course wrong. Yes, I find it easy to learn languages, but not as easy as I had expected.“ He sighed. „The school on Leviathan was probably the best school I could have wished for, at least for me, but it did nothing to prepare me for life at a university. Compared to me, Sarina found it easier to adapt.“
The library of the villa consisted of two adjoining rooms, decorated and furnished in an Oriental style. Immediately after seeing it for the first time, it had been called the “Library of Alexandria” by Alexander and his friends, although Alexander complained that the real “Library of Alexandria” looked nothing like the two rooms. They used it for studying which meant that no one was allowed to shout or run in there – just like in real libraries.
Sarina was unable to concentrate on her books. She shared a table with Alexander who was constantly getting up, walkin along the book shelves and taking new books to his place. Over a dozen books had already accumulated there and there seemed no end to it.
“What are you doing?”, Sarina asked.
“I have to look something up”, Alexander answered.
“For your studies? I don't believe that.”
“Not directly”, Alexander admitted. “I was reading something about sound shifting in Finnish in the 19th century and there was an excerpt from a text as an example there. I wanted to know the full text, so I got that. From there I got to the Kalevava and then... well, you know how it goes.”
“No wonder you're always having troubles with your tests. You can't concentrate on the topic at hand”, Sarina said.
“Yes. The professors are very narrow-minded. Doesn't that bother you?”
Sarina just shook her head. They had had similar discussions before and she didn't want to start another one.
“Sometimes I think it was a mistake to go to university”, Alexander continued. “What are you learning at the moment?”
“Excavations.” Sarina pointed to the books in front of her, where photos of excavation sites could be seen.
“Do you know which culture that was?”, Alexander asked interested.
“One of the Iron Age cultures, it's not important right now”, Sarina said. “We're learning about different methods of excavation, not the cultures. That comes later.”
“But aren't you curious?”
“Yes, but contrary to you, I can wait. We are going to learn that some other time, I'm sure.”
“Some other time”, Alexander repeated disdainfully. “They want to turn us into blinkered specialists.”
“You'd prefer to be the jack of all trades, instead of the ace of one, wouldn't you?”, Sarina said. “But when you go to a doctor, you are going to wish that he is an ace and not just a jack, right?”
“Which is why I don't want to be a doctor.”
„Back then, I couldn't understand her and we had several more discussions like that“, Mr Tuniak said. „It was only much later that I could see things from her point of view as well. But that's for another time.“
I told him that he wouldn't have to confirm to strict chronology, but he disagreed.
„I never finished my studies“, he said. „But for at least one thing I will always be thankful to the university. It got me my first job.“
„At the university?“
„Yes, in the archives. Sarina suggested the idea.“
„I haven't seen you at the university for quite some time“, Sarina said as she entered the garden, holding several papers in her hands.
„'Cause... I haven't... been... there“, Alexander said. He was playing badminton against Mowgli and had trouble returning the ball.
„If you have a moment, I want to show you something.“
At this moment Mowgli hit the ball so hard, that it flew high over Alexander and landed on the roof of the villa. „He's got time now“, Mowgli said with a grin. Then he dropped his racket, ran to the villa and started to climb the side of the building.
„Can you read this inscription?“, Sarina asked and gave Alexander one of the sheets she was holding.
„Old Greek.“ Alexander recognized the letters immediately and started to read them out loud. He hesitated a few times and in some places letters and whole words were missing, but he could usually guess the missing parts.
„They are looking for someone to transcribe and translate stuff like that“, Sarina told him, after he had finished. „They'd probably prefer someone who has already finished his studies or is at least close to that...“
„Thanks.“
„...but I' sure you are better at it than anyone else they can find.“
„There were of course some doubts about my abilities and qualifications, but in the end I got the job“, Mr Tuniak said. „At first, the professor even thought I was playing some kind of practical joke on him. He thought some of the things I did were impossible and I was cheating in some way.“ He laughed. „Actually, he was right sometimes.“
„You were cheating? How?“
„If I didn't understand a text – something that happened from time to time – I jumped into my time machine, travelled to the past and asked the writer personally what he meant.“
Alexander had his own desk in a room right in front of the professor's office. He shared the room with his secretary, who was out at the moment. He was working on a translation, when he heard loud curses coming out of the professor's room. He ignored them, because it was not the first time he had heard similar things. The professor, although in general a nice man, was prone to sudden outburst of anger.
But this time couldn't ignore it. The door to the professor's office burst open and the professor came out, carrying a box in his hands.
„What do you think of that?“, he asked, not really expecting an answer. „Just because we are the History-Wing, they think they can send us any old stuff they don't have a place for anywhere else.“
Alexander saw that the papers in the box were full of handwriting.
„They should have kept all that stuff in Paris“, the professor continued. „The handwriting is atrocious! Unreadable! What's that supposed to be, for instance?“ He had put down the box and held on of the sheets high. „A child's drawing?“
„Formulas“, Alexander said under his breath. He was captivated by that sheet. He was sure that he had seen handwriting like this before somewhere else, but he couldn't remember where or when. „I'll take care of it“, he said. He just wanted to get rid of the professor, so that he could take a look at all the papers. Fortunately, the professor agreed and disappeared again.
Alexander studied the sheets. Yes, the handwriting was very difficult to make out in some parts, but those were definitely equations, formulas and diagrams. And all of them seemed familiar...
And suddenly he remembered. When his mothers had given him his own time machine, they had also told him everything they knew about the French woman on whose work and theories the machine operated. They had even shown him copies of her work and the writing was practically identcal. By accident he had found what his mothers had been looking for a long time. He had to return to Leviathan.
„I took the box and showed it to my mothers“, Mr Tuniak said. „And together we decided to look for the French woman.“
PS: Only now, after having published this post, I've noticed that it's Saturday. The time machine must have worked better, than Mr Tuniak suspected and must have transported us back one day in the past (we should have noticed that it had taken the driver a long time to get to us). Which means now I have to quickly leave my apartment, before I come into contact with my past-self.
NEXT WEEK:
Machine. Unexpectedly, I’d invented a time
Keine Kommentare:
Kommentar veröffentlichen