Pourquoi pleurez-vous? M'avez-vous cru immortel?

(Why do you cry? Did you think I was immortal?)

- Louis XIV

Now I understand what Mr Tuniak was trying to do, when he warned me about today. I didn't see him, not really, because...

But – as usual – I should start at the beginning.

When I went to the building, where Mr Tuniak's office was located, his driver was already waiting for me at the main entrance.

“Come with me”, he said and together we went to the limousine.

We drove out to the cabin, where the time machine was usually hidden, but today the cabin was completely empty. We had to wait.

“She will come in a minute”, the driver said. “We are a bit early.”

“I never asked you about your name, did I?”, I said.

“Erik”, he introduced himself and we shook hands, as if this was the first time we had seen each other.

Then the time machine appeared.

It didn't appear inside the cabin, but in front of it. And when the door at its side opened, it wasn't Mr Tuniak standing there, but Juliette. She had arrived alone. She didn't seem to be much older than me, so I guessed that not much time had passed for her either, since we had last met last week.

“About half a year”, she said, as I asked her about the last time we had met from her point of view.

“And I see that you decided to keep the time machine”, I said.

“I have seen the future”, she replied. “And there... no one there would want the time line to be changed, they want it to stay the way it is. I... I think that is my mission.”

Erik had also entered the time machine and Juliette activated the computer. Once we had arrived and the door had opened again, she pointed to us and gestured that we should stay inside. She exited and returned after a few moments. She was accompanied by an old man, who had four arms. Farid. We had to be in the future, because I knew that Farid had been born around 1960 and now he had to be at least eighty years old. But before I was able to peek outside and take a look at our surroundings, the door had closed and we were on our way again.

Farid nodded as a greeting in my direction and then he and Erik talked to each other, using sign language. Next, we picked up another old man who introduced himself as Sean – he was the man who had first welcomed Mr Tuniak to the Gemini Foundation. Then – after another jump through time – an old woman entered. I saw how Sean started to weep, as he looked at her. He hugged and embraced her for as long as he could. Erik explained to me that the woman was Dilara, his wife. But it was obvious that they hadn't seen each other for quite some time.

“All right, we are here everyone”, Juliette declared at our next stop.

We all left the time machine. We had landed close to a cemetery, which was surrounded by a low stone wall. Behind us where the ruins of a village. It looked as if it had been a very long time indeed since someone had lived in this place. I don't know where on the planet this ghost town was located, but the air was agreeable warm, despite of the clouds blocking most of the sky. The abandoned village was in the middle of a green and level country, but close to the horizon I could see the first peaks of a mountain range. I did not try to find any further clues as to where I was, because I realised that I didn't even know if we had travelled into the future or the past during our last trip. So, trying to figure out where we were, was just a pointless exercise.

There was already quite a crowd gathered inside the cemetery. The time machine, with which we had arrived, disappeared again. But only for a very short time. When it reappeared, four people exited it. Then an old man was helping an old woman in a wheelchair to get out. As I followed those two, they were walking towards the cemetery, I realised that the woman had to be Cailinn and the man therefore probably was Hugo. The time machine went on another trip and brought another bunch of people to this place in the middle of nowhere. Apart from Erik and me, I estimated everyone present there to be at least seventy years old, many of them even older.

Inside the cemetery, I saw Philip who was standing together with four other people, who were – at least I am fairly certain of it – like him immortals. Another man, Yuuto, walked up to them and they started talking to each other. All over the cemetery people had formed similar small groups and where laughing and talking with each other. Some of them cried and embraced others. Another thirty minutes passed, before everyone, who was expected to arrive, had arrived.

Then, as if a silent signal had been given, everyone started to move to one side of the cemetery. We all went to a grave close to the outer stone wall. I could tell from the loose and dark earth that it had only recently been dug and filled up again. There was a head stone at its top, but there was only one name engraved in it: Alexander. While all the guest formed a semi-circle around the grave, I looked at the head stones of the surrounding graves. Everywhere I looked, only the first name of the person buried there had been written on them. Some I seemed familiar to me, most of them not and many very pretty much unreadable. They had been standing here for too long.

Suddenly, I could hear music. Two men and a woman had brought instruments with them. I hadn't recognized them as such, because at first I had thought the instruments were simply their walking sticks. But the sticks of the woman and one of the man had strings attached to its side and the stick of the other man turned out to be a flute. I did not recognize the piece they played, but it seemed to be happy and sad at the same time, wistful and a bit mourning.

Once they had finished, a man stepped in front of the grave. It took me a moment, but then I recognized him. It was Mowgli. His hair had turned white as ash and he was stood there, his back bent, his eyes fixed on the ground. He started to tell a story, an “adventure” he had experienced together with Mr Tuniak. He told about the time Mr Tuniak and he went to climb in a mountain range where the mountains were as sharp as knifes. I smiled as I heard that. Mr Tuniak had told me of this some time ago and I noticed a few subtle differences in the way both men talked about their shared experience.

Then Mowgli stepped back into the semi-circle and the musicians began to play anew. This time it sounded like some old Indian song; maybe it was a tribute to Mowgli.

Next, Alice stepped in front of the grave. She told a tale of curiosity, when she, Sarina and Mr Tuniak travelled back into Ancient Times to observe Alexander the Great and how he used his diving bell to see the bottom of the sea. Her story was again followed by a music piece, but this time, again, I couldn't tell where or when it had been written.

Cailinn followed her. She talked about the theft of a telautograph – it's something like a primitive version of a fax machine – and how Mr Tuniak helped her and Hugo to find the thief and get it back. After her a man I did not know talked in a language I did not understand. I don't think I was the only one who did not know what he was saying, but somehow that did not matter. Sooner or later, everyone stepped in front of the grave and told a story. Most of the time I did understand, what they were saying, but not always. The people gathered seemed to come from every corner of the world and from as many different time periods. They all talked about a moment of their live, an incident, they experienced together with Mr Tuniak.

It was night already, when the last person – he was talking in Latin and I think he was an actor from Ancient Rome – finished his story. A final music pieced was performed, after which we all started to move away from the grave, mostly in small groups. Most people talked about how they had known Mr Tuniak, stuff they had done with him or simply other incidents from their lives. I saw two people “talking” to each other, who could not understand what the other was saying: they needed two other people to act as translators. There was a surprising amount of laughter, when people retold – at that moment – embarrassing incidents, which, looking back, were quite funny. But there were also tears, especially once the time machine started to appear again and took people back to the time and place where they had come from.

“You did well”, someone said to me.

I turned around and saw that Alice was standing behind me. “What do you mean?”, I wanted to know.

“Writing his biography”, she replied. “You know, at first I was disappointed, when Alexander told me that he didn't want me to write it. But I think I now know, why he didn't. I would have told a different story.”

“A different story?”, I repeated. “Didn't he tell me the truth?”

“Of course he did”, she said. “But it was his version of the truth, his view on how things have happened. I would have written something slightly different, I would have written my version of his life.”

Erik and me were the last people that Juliette took back. As I entered the time machine, I saw an old woman standing in the shadows of the cemetery's wall. Juliette saw her as well and gave her a nearly imperceptible nod. I think it was Juliette – an older Juliette – who had been standing there.

“Everyone present... everyone except Erik and me... they were all quite old”, I said.

“Yes”, Juliette replied. “I picked them all up at the end of their lives.”

As she said that, I suddenly realised that this funeral had not been for Mr Tuniak alone.

“But I didn't see his mothers”, I said.

“Did you expect them to attend?”, Juliette asked. “Which parent would like to see their child buried? But they are themselves buried at that cemetery.”

One last note:

When we were back in the limousine and driving home, I asked Erik why he had attened the funeral and not an “older version” of himself.

“Ah”, he shrugged. “You have forgotten that I am already dead.”

Yes, I had. How could I?

NEXT WEEK

Spoilers!