Das Schönste, was wir erleben können, ist das Geheimnisvolle.

(The most beautiful thing we can experience, is the mysterious.)

- Albert Einstein

„The simplest way to find out what my friends were doing, was by going back to Leviathan“, Mr Tuniak explained. „Practically everyone who ever went to school there stayed in contact with it for the rest of his or her life.”

“Was Alice accompanying you?”, I asked.

Mr Tuniak was hesitating for a moment before he answered: “Yes, we went to Leviathan together. But there, our ways... separated. She stayed at Leviathan for several years and became a teacher there.”

Juan and Alexander were walking along the beach of the island together. On the horizon they could see huge cloud towers building up. A thunder storm was coming this evening.

“You have grown old, what did you do all these years?”, Juan wanted to know.

Alexander was looking at him in surprise. “You mean my mothers didn't tell you? Or Sarina?”

“No, should they have?”, Juan asked.

Alexander shook his head. For a few short moments he was contemplating if he should lie to Juan and make up some kind of story about what Alice and he had been doing with the time machine. But at the same time he knew that Juan would never judge him and therefore he decided to tell him everything. The only thing he did not mention was that Alice was with him the whole time and had helped him change the course of history. If she wanted to she would tell Juan herself, but he had no right to take that decision from her. Especially, since he had been offered the same choice.

“And what now?”, Juan inquired after Alexander had finished.

“I don't know”, Alexander admitted. “I thought I'd visit... my old classmates. Do you know where they are right now?”

“Ali is still here, you have already seen him, of course. Bill is coming back tomorrow, he went on a little shopping trip for me”, Juan began. “Mowgli has bought quite a big piece of real estate in India. He has opened something like a zoo there. Sarina is in London at her university... no, wait! Right now, she is at this one excavation site... in Crete, if I'm not mistaken.”

“And Cate?”

“She is at the South Pole.”

“Really? What's she doing there?”

“She is working for the Gemini Foundation and is helping with an expedition that started seven months ago. They are going across the whole of Antarctica. She is not travelling herself, but she is taking care of the base camps.”

Alexander was impressed that Juan knew what everyone of his former pupils was doing right now, where he was doing it and what he was planning to do in the future. It was one of the reasons why Leviathan would always feel like home.

“There is one thing I probably should have mentioned last time, but I can do it now too. I went to meet Sarina after our meeting in the desert.

“You met her, when you went back to the villa?”, I asked.

“No, later”, he corrected me. “After I had left Alice in New York, but before I went to the temple. Sarina was working at the university. She had just become... I think it was assistance professor. Something like that.”

Alexander wasn't sure when Sarina had found out that he was travelling through time and changing things. Because of this he didn't know when she had gone to his mothers and informed them about her suspicions either. But as he walking up the stairs to the third floor of the university, looking for her office, he estimated that about two years had passed from her point of view since their last meeting.

He knocked at her office's door. “A moment, please”, she answered from the other side.

“It's me, Alexander”, he said. “You don't need to put on your head scarf.”

The door was unlocked and opened by Sarina. “Come in”, she said and locked the door after him again. She didn't have to explain why she did this. It was clear that she didn't want her students to see her without her headscarf, but with her third eye. Her office was small, but offered enough space for a desk, two shelves, three chairs and one window.

“How are you?”, Alexander asked after they had both sat down.

Sarina pointed to all the papers that were lying on the desk. “I have to correct all these tests. Unfortunately, that's nearly all of what I do nowadays. Do you know, when they offered me this job they said that I would have enough time to continue my studies on Linear A?” Linear A was an old script, mainly found on the island of Crete. Sarina had written her thesis on it and the ongoing – and still unsuccessful – attempts to decode and translate it. No one could read it any more. “But once I got the job, they swamped me with all this administrative stuff. Honestly, I would like the university a lot more if there weren't any students here.”

“It's not so long ago that you yourself were one of them”, Alexander said.

“That's two years in the past”, Sarina said.

“I could help you”, Alexander offered. “Deciphering Linear A. I could go into the past and find out what some of the words mean for you.”

“No!”, Sarina said immediately.

“Why not?”, Alexander asked surprised. “I wouldn't tell anyone.”

“Besides other things, I don't want to get the laurels for something I did not do”, Sarina said. “I want to be responsible for my achievements, thank you. There is also another reason, but I'm not sure if you would understand it.” She hesitated a few seconds, before adding: “Besides: Wouldn't that be changing history again?”

“I don't know, but I'm pretty sure Juliette is watching everything I do right now very closely. She would intervene immediately”, Alexander said. “We should find out.”

Sarina was shaking her head. “I wouldn't risk to cross her if I was you”, she said. “Do you know what she wanted to do, when she found out about your changes? She didn't just want to reverse them, she wanted to change your past too.”

“She wanted to stop me from ever affecting any change in the first place?”

“Yes, but your mothers were against it”, Sarina said. “They argued that if mankind is allowed to make mistakes and learn from them, then surely the same must be true for a single man as well. Juliette agreed, but I wouldn't annoy her anyway.”

“I don't really plan to.”

For some minutes they were sitting quietly together.

“Why are you here?”, Sarina finally asked.

“I... I wanted to say good-bye”, Alexander said. “I'll be going to be away for some time... about ten years.”

“You want us all to be the same age again?” Sarina smiled. “So, you are not the first one who has to wear glasses? Right?” She pushed some papers aside that had hidden her reading glasses until now. “Well, I have you already beaten in that regard.”

“After returning to Leviathan, the first one I wanted to visit was Sarina”, Mr Tuniak explained. “She had become a full professor by that time and was working at an excavation site in Crete.”

“Crete? Had she managed to decode this old script?”, I asked.

“No, no one has, not even now”, Mr Tuniak said. “Although there are several promising projects going at the moment. They have managed to find out the meaning of a few words.”

“Can you read it?”

“No. The language was spoken over three thousand years ago on Crete. I've never visited it during that time.”

Sarina was no longer an assistant, she was employing one now. Her name was Filipa and like he, she had also lived on Leviathan for several years and left it recently. Together they were sitting in a tent and studying old pot fragments. Filipa was reading the letters out loud and Sarina was writing them down. The work on the site had ended for the day and the other workers had returned to their homes or to their tents, which is why the women were surprised when someone suddenly entered the tent.

“Alexander!”, Sarina recognized the newcomer immediately.

Alexander came in and the two hugged each other. Sarina then took a step back and looked Alexander up and down critically. “No”, she said. “You are still looking older than me. May I introduce Filipa?”

Alexander offered the young woman his hand as a greeting, but Sarina was shaking her head. “Come, let's go for a walk outside”, she said and took her headscarf that had been lying on the back of her chair. “Filipa, take a break until I return.”

After they had left the tent and walked quietly for a bit, Alexander wanted to know if Filipa had also come from Leviathan. “I ask, because you were not wearing your headscarf inside.”

“Yes, she does”, Sarina said.

“And why wasn't I allowed to shake her hand?”

“She cannot see movement”, Sarina explained. Looking at Alexander's face, it was clear that he didn't understand what that meant, so she added: “Imagine you see the world not as a film, but as a series of photos. Every time you blink, you get a new picture. That's why things like shaking hands are very difficult for Filipa. When she sees a hand, it has already moved. Writing is equally difficult for her, but we are making progress on that front.”

“And how are you?”, Alexander asked and pointed to her forehead. “Do you still pretend that you can see the future?”

“No, now I see into the past”, Sarina answered.

“And are you still trying to decipher Linear A?”

“Yes, and I think I'm getting somewhere with it. What did you do in the last ten years?”

Alexander told her about the year he had spent in the temple with Philip. Then they returned to the tent, but no one was thinking about doing any more work. They were talking about and remembering their time on Leviathan. Filipa also joined in and they exchanged memories about the things they had done on the island, Juan, the teachers they had had and what had changed and stayed the same. It became a long night.

“You didn't offer to translate the old script again”, I said. “Why?”

“Because by then I had realised that the script was not important in itself”, Mr Tuniak said. “I don't know if I can explain it properly, but... Sarina looked at research, any kind of research, not only as a way to invent or discover new things, but also as a way to train the brain. She is convinced that the human brain is only capable of all its fantastic feats, because it has been constantly challenged throughout human history. If you go back to the first humans and give them an air plane and show them how to fly it, they would have never developed into modern humans. We need riddles and mysteries, otherwise we are standing still.”

“And taking away this... mystery, would not have been a favour, but actually... what? Been a detriment? Am I getting this right?” I was a bit confused. “But you also said that she still hasn't managed to translate Linear A. So, what about unsolvable problems?”

“Those are the ones where the brain can really thrive.”

NEXT WEEK

There's more to this world than just people, you know.