We followed in the traditional manner and entered the room itself. A huge optical telescope pointed, at an angle, into the heavens. Two aliens in coveralls were working at consoles to one side.
‘I thought you said there was no atmosphere. What are we breathing?’ asked Jennifer.
‘We have created a force field part way down the telescope, so this room is at normal temperature and pressure while the interior of the telescopic instrument is at external temperature and not affected by the atmosphere we breathe. It means we can make near perfect observations. Our world has almost no atmosphere remaining. Come with me.’
We followed Schletz over to a two-metre-wide television monitor, upon which we could see part of the overhead galaxy.
‘Do any of you have any astronomical knowledge?’
‘I’ve always been interested,’ I said, ‘but only as an amateur. I recognise this galaxy as being similar to the Andromeda galaxy, M31.’
‘Yes. It is that galaxy.’
‘It is closer to us here, so I guessed we are in part of the Milky Way on the other side from Earth,’ I said.
‘Hmm. Interesting deduction. Wrong, but I understand why you might think that.’
Odd. Surely we had to be on the other side of the galaxy to see it like this. No other possibility made sense.
‘What does that mean, Henry?’ asked Jennifer.
‘I don’t know. I can’t make sense of the answer.’
The room lights dimmed. Schletz pointed at a bright object in the sky over to our left.
‘You see that object?’
‘Yes.’
‘It is a planet.’
‘Yes, I guessed that,’ I said.
Schletz spoke to his colleagues in his own language and I saw the telescope swinging around on its mounting. In a minute or two it was looking roughly in the direction of the planet.
‘Look at the screen,’ he said.
We all watched the screen and saw the object come into the centre of the field of view. A small pale disc.
There were some more words in the alien language and we could see that the telescope was zooming in on the object. Two moons were orbiting it. As the image grew in size, I could see it was a gas giant.
Whether the others recognised it, I didn’t know, but as it grew in the monitor, it became obvious to me that this was a planet I knew very well indeed.
‘That is not possible!’ I said.
‘What? What is it?’ asked John.
‘Is that what I think it is?’ asked Jennifer.
Schletz said nothing but watched our faces.
‘Yes, Jennifer,’ I said. ‘It appears to be exactly what you think it is.’
19 Revelations
There was no mistaking Jupiter.
The red spot was missing and I presumed it must be on the other side, but the bands were very familiar indeed from many images I’d seen and television programmes about the solar system I’d watched. I didn’t understand how Jupiter could be in this solar system. Was it a duplicate or what? Could it be just a similar planet? I did know that most solar systems had gas giants.
‘Where are we then? None of it makes sense. Mars?’ I asked.
‘Ah, Mars,’ said Schletz and he looked around the heavens.
‘You see the pink object to the right of the planet you call Jupiter?’ he asked.
‘Yes. So it is Jupiter?’
‘Indeed, it is.’ His statement deepened the mystery.
There were some more directions in the alien language and the telescope moved slowly towards the pink object and Mars came onto the screen. It was clearly Mars and, although there was no polar ice cap, the huge northern hemisphere volcano and gash of its gigantic canyon were unmistakable.
‘This must be the solar system, then. Are we on Venus?’ I asked, but with little confidence. This planet had a moon and Venus didn’t, but I couldn’t think of any alternative. Perhaps Venus wasn’t the hothouse we’d always been told it was, but that couldn’t explain the spiral galaxy being so close. None of it seemed to make any sense.
‘You see our moon?’ Schletz asked, pointing in the opposite direction towards the diminutive pale disc about a fifth the diameter of our moon.
‘Yes, but Venus has no moon.’ I knew it couldn’t be Venus. I was totally flummoxed.
We all turned that way as our guide gave instructions to the telescope crew and the huge machine began to swing around to the segment of sky where the small, pale moon hung. I could see that it was almost three-quarters full today. I’d noticed its phases while we lived in the community dome, but phases, of course, were just a natural part of a moon being illuminated by the sun. All moons have phases when viewed from the surface of their planet.
It took almost three minutes for the giant telescope to traverse to point in the moon’s direction. It appeared on the monitor and zoomed in until it almost filled the screen. I gasped. There was no mistaking it. Although part of the far side was visible, the main features of the centre were instantly recognisable. There were the familiar dark maria. The Sea of Tranquillity, where Neil Armstrong first set foot in 1969 was clearly visible. This was no alien body. It was, without the slightest doubt, our moon.
‘How can this be?’ asked John, seemingly relieved he could finally recognise something.
I was struck dumb. This was certainly our moon, yet it was too far away. Why was part of the far side showing? The implications for where we were standing were beyond belief.
‘We’re on Earth,’ I said as realisation sank in. ‘We haven’t gone anywhere.’
‘An alternative universe?’ asked Jennifer.
‘No,’ said Schletz, ‘nothing quite so fantastic. Look at the spiral galaxy above us.’
‘It can’t be that close,’ I said.
‘But, Mr. Mackay, it is that close! Can you figure out why?’ The alien was toying with my slight astronomical knowledge. How could I know why?
There was a possible solution. A crazy solution. Possible but outwardly impossible. I had to believe the evidence of my own eyes and I searched my memory for Conan Doyle’s famous Sherlock Holmes quotation.
I spoke quietly, ‘When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.’
‘What do you mean?’ asked Jennifer.
‘The Andromeda galaxy is on a collision course with the Milky Way. It won’t happen for four or five billion years. The aliens said their world is nine billion years old. The Earth is almost five billion years old. They transported us four billion years into the future and we can see the galaxies about to collide,’ I said.
‘What? This is Earth?’ asked John.
We all looked at Schletz and I asked, ‘Well, is it?’
‘You are, indeed, on Earth,’ he confirmed. ‘Well deduced, Mr. Mackay.
‘Then you aren’t aliens?’ Jennifer asked.
‘No, we are human, although we have evolved somewhat since your time as you have, no doubt, realised.’
‘Yes,’ I said, ‘the obvious evolutionary changes of growing taller, hairless, no fingernails, two toes and so on.’
‘Correct, plus most of us have some mental powers and we live longer than you do,’ said Schletz.
‘So, the moon’s been moving away for billions of years and slowing Earth’s rotation in the process, hence the longer days.’
‘Quite right, Mr Mackay. Your astronomical knowledge is better than you claimed.’
‘And it explains why you stopped us obtaining telescopes.’
‘Correct. The moon would have been, how do you say, a “dead giveaway” if you had been able to see it sufficiently clearly.’
‘Wait a minute,’ said John, ‘we were told your world’s dying and you were hoping to stop our world suffering the same fate. Was that just a pack of lies?’
‘No, Mr. Straker. It is true, but I am afraid we did mislead you a little. If we save our world, we are saving your world. They are one and the same worlds.’
&nbs
p; ‘I think it’s time for more detailed explanations, Schletz,’ I said.
‘That is why we are here. Come with me,’ he said, and we followed him down the stairs, out of the observatory, and into one of the buildings in the main dome.
We were shown into a room about the size of a large domestic lounge with a number of easy chairs. There was buffet food laid out on a table along one wall and I realised I was very hungry indeed. We’d not eaten since the sandwiches we’d consumed on the transport vehicle. Each of us eagerly grabbed a plate and a selection of food and took seats.
Schletz sat opposite us and said, ‘Stop me if anything is unclear.’
He sat silently for a moment as if marshalling his thoughts then began, ‘Our world is, indeed, nine billion years old. You will have noticed that the sun now burns with a reddish light. Many millions of years ago it left the main sequence and began to expand, which is normal for this type of star, but the heat produced, the solar wind, and the gravitational effects caused our atmosphere to burn off.
‘We had prepared for it and our domes had been built to withstand the heat and the radiation, and control our atmosphere, but many millions died from the effects, including starvation as we failed to produce enough food within our protected areas. It was a dreadful time for us all.
‘The expansion could have destroyed us, but the loss of atmosphere caused extreme night-time cold and that saved us. The expansion eventually stopped and the sun returned to a smaller size, burning different fuel from its interior. Its radiant heat then began to reduce dramatically and our domes now had to protect us from gamma rays and continual severe cold. Much like Mars in your time.
‘A thousand years ago the sun began its final expansion. Within a few decades, its enlargement will escalate and swallow the Earth. Everything will die. We will all die. The project on the ancient Earth is our attempt to save the human race.’
‘Why didn’t you explain all this before?’ I asked.
‘Mr. Mackay, think about it. We are meddling with time. It must be done with great care if it is not to create a chaotic future.’
‘But, in that case, even your presence in the past and our removal will be affecting the future.’ I said.
‘It is Mr. Mackay, but only those of us returning from the past can see what has changed,’ I noticed a wave of sadness cross his face. He continued, ‘When I returned last time, my family no longer existed. They had gone, completely gone. My children, my parents, my sister, my grandparents, aunts and uncles were all gone. My wife was living with another man and they had two children,’ he said, his voice becoming increasingly sad, and I saw tears in his eyes.
‘So, why do you exist? If you have no parents.’
‘Because I was in the past when the change occurred. I can never return to the future in which I was born.’
‘Can’t you correct what happened in our time?’
‘No. I don’t know what happened. It could be anything. Someone’s life changed to the tiniest degree because of us being in your time. Maybe one of us delayed someone and they had a fatal accident or met someone different with whom to breed. It could be as insignificant as an insect being killed which might otherwise have stung someone, who, in turn, would have met someone in a pharmacy when buying antihistamine. Perhaps one of you ancients was an ancestor of mine and by bringing you here we ended the family tree which created me. We just do not know, and we dare not try to tinker with history to correct matters.’
‘I’m beginning to understand,’ said John.
‘The old convent and a few other secret locations were places we could live with minimum interaction with the ancient population, that’s why we hid our presence. Even so, everyone who returns from your time notices changes. All we can do is try to minimise them.’
‘So, that’s why we’re here? You’re afraid that if we expose you, the future will be changed?’ asked Jennifer.
‘Yes, but in your cases, we know the changes will be severe because there is no record of us visiting your time. It must remain like that.’
‘So, what are you trying to achieve in our time?’ I asked.
‘We want you to discover the type of vortex we use to move from place to place. We call it the matter-transfer vortex, the one which brought you to our observatory.’
‘But not the time vortex?’
‘No. The time vortex operates on completely different principles and no one we send back to your time has any knowledge of the mechanism. We have been very careful about the secrecy of the science behind it. Only a few scientists know how to create it and each use of it must be authorised by the ruling council.’
‘Why don’t you just tell us how to build the matter-transfer vortex?’
‘Because that would mean there would be a record of us helping you and that must not occur because it would drastically change the entire future from your time to ours. We dare not risk that. We must help you discover the matter-transfer vortex without letting you know we helped. Now you can see why we cannot allow you to return home.’
‘Ever?’ asked John.
‘We did warn you that if we told you what the project was, then you’d never be able to return.’
Up until that point, I hadn’t thought about the consequences. Now they struck home with the force of a lightning bolt. We were stuck here forever!
‘What happens to us if you’re successful in giving the vortex to scientists in our time?’ asked Jennifer.
‘We assume this will be a barren uninhabited world which we will have left eons ago.’
‘So, one way or another, we’re under sentence of death,’ I said.
‘It may be so, but we will not die, as such, we will just cease to have existed.’
‘Maybe you’ll cease to have existed, but we’ve got lives in the twenty-first century. You’ll have killed us,’ said John.
‘We have no choice. We did warn you.’
‘How does the matter-transfer vortex save the world? Explain that,’ I said.
‘That is a long story of our failure as a species, I am afraid,’ Schletz said, obviously with a heavy heart.
‘Explain,’ said John, anger seeming to hover just below his outward persona now. I wondered if he was going to react violently to the news at some point.
‘Yes. We must know it all now, Schletz. Come on, spill the beans,’ I said.
‘Spill the beans?’
‘An idiom, meaning tell us everything,’ said Jennifer.
‘Ha, I didn’t know that one. Well, humans have known the fate of Earth since your time, but no one bothered to take it seriously. No one in your time was bothered that the sun would one day expand and destroy the planet. Five billion years seems to be forever in the future. Why worry about it?
‘However, it was your time, in fact, a single period of eight hundred years, later known as “the epoch of waste” which was the indirect cause of our problems. Your governments used all the important resources of the world, but on frivolous pursuits like personal travel, plastics, and luxury goods.’
‘We’re at fault?’ I asked.
‘Well it began in the middle of the twentieth century, but it was your politicians who became fixated with an economic condition you called “growth” instead of looking at the planet holistically and the future of the human race as a whole.’
‘But growth creates the environment to improve people’s lives,’ said Jennifer.
‘But economic growth cannot continue forever as it consumes resources. It was increasingly seen as essential, especially by large businesses who answered to shareholders. The creation of wealth became the objective of those pushing for growth.’
‘Growth filters down to help all,’ said John.
‘Yes, it does, but the improvement in “all” is negligible. On a planetary scale it filters down to very few. Whole countries live in poverty while a handful own all the wealth of the world.’
‘Not sure about that,’ said John.
‘The problem was that grow
th was not used to benefit all. Leaders in your time allowed people to starve in one country while others lived in luxury. Large countries burned fossil fuels causing island countries to disappear under rising sea levels. Some people had to walk miles to collect clean water, while others burned oil to drive around for pleasure. While some worked all daylight hours with primitive tools to grow crops in poorly irrigated fields, others used their wealth to maintain their own opulent lifestyles.’
‘But we helped poorer countries to develop,’ said Jennifer.
‘What did you do to help poorer nations?’
‘I know we gave a percentage of everything to help develop poorer countries,’ she said.
‘Yes. You gave nought point five per cent of gross national product on average and some people begrudged even that. It was considered generous – by the nations giving it, but not by those receiving it who were still dying from disease, hunger, or even simple ignorance.’
‘But many of those nations were corrupt. Their leaders stole the aid,’ said John.
‘Excuses, excuses. You could have resolved that if you had the will to do so. May I borrow some words from your Bible – rich nations passed by on the other side of the international road. As a world population, you had the opportunity to resolve the situation and made little effort to do so.’
‘That’s unfair,’ said Jennifer.
‘Is it? Most nations still wanted to maintain their wealth and domination. Oil was the most precious of all materials on the planet, yet it was burned as fast as it could possibly be extracted from the ground. Very few voices shouted against the practice and your greedy, selfish societies would never have foregone their pleasures to think of the people of the distant future. That is proven by their ability to ignore the starvation and suffering of so many in their own time. Attempts to reduce energy consumption and pollution resulted, not in the whole world trying to balance its resources, but by the biggest polluters with the greatest energy consumption arguing with each other as to why they weren’t as bad as some other nation. It was insane when viewed from our perspective. You are too close to what was happening. Your desire to own cars, furnishings, and take holidays, was overwhelmingly more important to you than saving a starving baby for its mother in another country.’
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