by M I A Harba
Maybe the table is conscious after all, but its consciousness is at a very much lower level than humans’ or animals’ consciousness. Indeed, it was a very interesting deduction, Sam thought. It gave him a starting point for differentiating between the atomic structures of living beings and the atomic structure of objects and things.
He spent the rest of the day busying himself in the campsite, tidying up things, and cleaning the store tent. One moment his brain was clear, the next it was back in confusion and uncertainty.
He didn’t go to bed early that evening, instead, he sat outside in total darkness, looking at the void. The moon, in its crescent phase, looked shy, thin but uncaring. It moved gradually towards the horizon, to hide underneath it. The night became total darkness after that, and the sky donned its gown of glittering stars and planets. He could identify a few of these shining objects, like the North Star, Mars, Saturn, and Jupiter. He could see the outline of the Milky Way; the galaxy people thought a 100 years ago to be the entire universe.
It is amazing how the earth is so small and insignificant in the wide expanse of the universe. Our sun is on the tail end of our spiral galaxy, the Milky Way, which is one of billions and billions of other galaxies in the universe. He imagined himself in a small room, and the room is full of these spiral little shapes, the galaxies. His galaxy is one of them, and his planet, Earth, is a very tiny speck, most likely invisible to the universe, circling the sun at the tail end of a spiral.
It is so arrogant of humans to think that earth was the centre of the universe. The earth is nothing compared to the wide expanse of the universe. Probably, it doesn't even count amongst the planets of the universe.
Only but a few years ago, astronomers started to detect the existence of other planets around remote stars. Before then, people thought that probably our solar system was the only system with sun and orbiting planets around it. Now, they observe many planets orbiting stars, far away in the universe.
These planets cannot be seen, but their presence is detected as they move around their suns. If one was on one of these planets, they might never know of the existence of Earth, like humans were not aware of the existence of these other planets. It just shows the arrogance of humans. They think they are the optimal invention of the universe, and the universe is there for their own services.
Something attracted his attention while he was looking at the sky. A group of stars were moving faster, much faster than the rest. They had organised themselves in a triangular shape. Was it a plane or a group of planes? Maybe it was a group of planes because the Iraqi Air Force often practised in the desert sky, as it was free of civilian aircraft traffic.
He was mesmerised by the beauty of the formation, moving forward in absolute uniformity. They moved silently, and he didn’t hear the distinctive sound of jets in the sky. Then came from the side, another speck of light, flying in a way completely abnormal. It moved forward then suddenly did a sharp turn and traversed backwards. It came very close to the formation and joined them.
That was completely abnormal. Planes can't change direction in this way. So, it couldn't possibly be planes. What were they, another UFO sighting? He knew there were thousands of such sightings everywhere, even in the city, but he was completely oblivious to their existence before because, in the city, such a show was not as clear as tonight.
If it was UFO’s, this would be his first time to see one, so clear in front of him. He followed with his eyes the formation until it went over the horizon and disappeared.
Many say they are visitors from alien worlds. But so far, scientists haven't been able to detect any aliens on the nearby planets. If they were aliens, they must have come from far. The nearest star is a few light-years away from us. If they travelled at the speed of light from this star, which is theoretically impossible, it will take them years to arrive here. Light from Earth will equally take years to reach them, too. Faster than the speed of light travel is impossible, at least theoretically.
No one could comprehend how these aliens have come from their remote stars. They could travel through wormholes, however, which provide faster travel from one place in space to another. Wormholes are like shortcuts in space that allow one to jump from one area to another. The concept of wormholes, however, is still within the realm of science fiction and theoretical science. Nothing has been discovered remotely resembling a wormhole.
Nobody has come up with an explanation for UFOs, which have been observed by humans over the centuries. Before the advent of aeroplanes and rockets, people saw them as ships or boats travelling in the sky in a rather unusual fashion. People's interpretation depends on the level of technology available at their time. Nowadays, with rockets and aeroplanes being common, people interpret these UFOs as spaceships from different worlds. They will continue to be seen for centuries to come, and, no doubt, people in the future will interpret them from within the realm of the technology at that time.
It seems, the only plausible explanation for UFOs is the Simulation Hypothesis. It gives a very simplistic and easily understood explanation for them. There are glitches in the simulation programme. But unfortunately, this has never been proven and, maybe, could never be.
UFOs and the paranormal remain one of the main challenges of all theories of reality. Current science tends to ignore them as imagination by the observer, not real objects out there. Sam thought this was a limitation of current science, not a proper interpretation of their existence. Millions of people have seen them, and millions will continue to see them. What he saw just then as a formation, must have been UFOs as observed and described by many people before.
Could these UFOs have always been at the location where he was building his house? He didn't bother to look at the sky with such scrutiny when the labourers were here. He was always busy discussing this and that with the rest and avoided sitting out by himself, looking at the sky in the presence of the labourers. It would make him look odd, weird, unusual, or probably outright mad. He would, however, have ample time to look at this UFO phenomenon when living by himself after the completion of his house.
The past, the Present and the Future
On Saturday afternoon, the labourers arrived on a small bus, in a convoy of lorries that brought food, drinks, and the construction materials needed to finish the house. Sam was very glad all were back but hid his enthusiasm because he didn't want them to suspect he was feeling lonely and scared during their absence. Early that morning, he moved his tent back to its normal place and rearranged the camp so that no one knew he made changes while they were away.
The labourers looked gloomy, not cherishing coming back to work after the holiday. Leaving their families and loved ones must have been difficult. Also, another four weeks of gruelling work awaited them.
He had prepared lunch for them, cooked to the best of his expertise; he wanted them to feel welcome with this simple gesture. As soon as they arrived, they washed and sat at the table while Zak served the lunch. Zak was surprised that the meal prepared was better than he thought Sam was capable of.
The foreman, Mo, sat next to Sam at the table and asked if all was okay during the week, or if he got homesick, etc. Sam said everything was different, but he enjoyed the solitude, as it gave him time to think and ponder on quite a few matters. He also mentioned the little adventures he made to the places where he found the clay fragments and the bead. He was careful not to mention what happened during that night with the pickup, neither anything about the weird guest who appeared out of nowhere and disappeared into nowhere.
Sam had prepared what he wanted to be bought in town. He asked the lorry driver to pass a letter to the electrical shop owner, for one portable GPS receiver. He asked the driver to check with him before bringing the next supplies. He had also prepared the package with the clay fragments and the bead, to send to his friend in Baghdad. He gave the package to the driver, with money to post from Rawa. He wanted to be well prepared next time he ventured out and not to regret not having essent
ial items.
Everyone went early to bed that night, including Sam. This time, Sam’s sleep was deep and uninterrupted. Those visions and anxiety did not materialise that night. His demons, his fear of ghosts and the paranormal, seemed to have disappeared altogether. It's amazing what happens to one’s mind when there are so many people around, unlike it when one is alone and worried about all kinds of imagined threats.
The next morning, on the 1st working day after the break, everyone was sluggish to leave their tent. Maybe because they got used to the comfort of the holiday and were not ready for the gruesome work that awaited them. The cook had woken up early as usual and prepared their breakfast. Sam prepared the coffee and tea and sat at the table waiting for the rest to wake up. Breakfast was silent, as most pondered over the coming four weeks of hard work.
The next couple of weeks saw the installation of the doors and windows, the levelling of the floors within the walls, and eventually the concreting of the roof. He hoped all would be finished within those four weeks; it was a small house.
The walls were built with hollow concrete bricks, cemented together. The ceiling was designed to be flat and built with reinforced concrete; it had to support the solar panels and anything he wanted storing on the roof. The living room’s walls included a slot for a small window-type air conditioning unit. This would be his source of cooling during the summer, and, hopefully, the solar panels could generate enough power to operate it. It gets particularly hot during the summer days here in the desert.
The next few weeks were uneventful, and work progressed well. The labourers put all possible effort in the hope of finishing the construction work within these four weeks. Plastering, internal decorations, and marble flooring were specialist work, and not all labourers were needed for this. The number of labourers could be halved, which would probably make matters easier.
They faced one problem in the construction activities; the concrete mixer broke down. They had to do the mixing manually, on a tarp sheet. Manual mixing meant more time wasted, which had to be compensated for.
The food supplies continued to come, and he received his GPS receiver in the next delivery. He sat to learn how to use it and charge it up. The package to his friend in Baghdad had already been posted, and Sam eagerly awaited a response.
For a postal address, he used a post office box in Rawa. All his letters would be delivered to this box. The letters needed to be collected by someone, however, so he gave the key to the supplies driver and asked him to check the box at each delivery trip, and to bring whatever letters there were.
It was a convenient arrangement, as it provided a postal address people could reach him at. He had to revert to this old-fashioned way of communicating with people because, obviously, there was no postal service in the middle of the desert. Further, where he was, there was no Internet, and thus no emails or WhatsApp messages. He could, of course, use his satellite phone for data, but he didn't want that for two reasons, 1) he didn't want to incur the data expenses – satellite phones are expensive -- and 2) he wanted to stay away from the habit of checking on his emails and messages or browsing the Internet. He wanted solitude and time to read and to think and didn't want to be bothered by unnecessary interruptions like these.
The walls were completed, and the house had taken shape. Its living room, bedroom, kitchen, bathroom, utility room, and storeroom were all identifiable within the walls that surrounded them. He wanted a patio built outside the house, by the front door leading to the living room. He could sit there to have his breakfast or stare at the void outside.
One day, the supplies driver came directly to him with a letter in hand. Sam expected this letter to be from his friend in Baghdad and was very happy at the sight of it.
Without wasting a moment, he opened the letter and started reading. He skipped the formalities at the beginning of the letter and went straight to the paragraph talking about the fragments. It said the clay fragments belonged to different dates. Most of them were recent, within the last 100 years or so, but one particular piece was much older, thousands of years old. He asked if they were all collected from the same site or different sites. As for the bead, he was still unable to date it. He thought, probably it is fairly recent, as the hole made in it seems to have been engraved with a fine tool, like a needle or something sharp. Thousands of years ago, they didn't have sharp needle-like instruments. He said, he would still try to date it and get the opinion of some of his colleagues, regardless.
Sam was very excited because he must have stumbled on a site thousands of years old. But now, he wasn't sure which site it was, because he forgot to mark these clay fragments with the location of the sites, another stupid amateurish mistake. He wasn't an archaeologist and wasn't particularly careful in how he collected items of such archaeological value.
The next day, he decided to visit that site where he thought he found the clay fragments. He knew roughly where it was, somewhere not very far from where the pickup got stuck. He didn't know the location exactly, but he could scout around for it. He knew where the sandy patch he got stuck in because he walked there to retrieve the pickup. He could retrace his steps towards the sand mount and carry on beyond it.
This exertion was also a good opportunity to try the new GPS receiver, to see how effective it was. After breakfast, he got his backpack ready with a bottle of water and some sandwiches and set off. He told the foreman where he was going and that he wouldn’t be back before evening. Everyone was surprised to see him go, but, since he was not needed in the construction works, they didn't really care.
He headed towards the sand mount walking briskly, as he felt more confident with his newly acquired GPS receiver. It took him about one hour to reach the mount. He went around it and headed roughly in the direction of where the pickup was stuck. It took another 2 hours to reach that area, but the wind had altered the features of the terrain. There was no way he could identify the place where the pickup was stuck.
He looked around for any sign that was left behind, but there was none. He switched on the GPS receiver and got a fix of the place and compared it to the fix of the building site. The device showed the distance was 6 to 7 kilometres as the crow flies, not dissimilar to what the pickup showed that night.
He looked around for patches darker than their surroundings. It was, he remembered, how he spotted that place before. There was one such place about 100 metres away, so he headed to it. When he got there, it was simply black rock fragments and pebble stones, nothing of interest. He spent half an hour searching and looking in between the stones, to see anything of interest, but there was none.
He moved on to another place, and then another and another. He continued his search for the next 2 hours, without any success. He sat on a small rock, retrieved his lunch, and started eating. The walk and the search had been gruesome.
While he was eating, his attention was attracted by a rather strange little piece of stone, about a metre away from him. He retrieved it and had a closer look. It wasn't anything in particular, except for something that was inserted in a hole at its base. He couldn't be sure what it was, so he put it in his backpack and labelled it with the GPS coordinates. It showed nothing of particular interest, but he hadn't been successful so far.
After lunch, he started walking not in any particular direction, searching for his elusive site. He visited many dark patches but still was unsuccessful. While there, he noticed again, over the horizon, the camel train out in the distance. It was like shadows against the bright light coming from that direction. He looked hard and wished he had his binoculars with him.
They were moving ever so slowly, but, as soon as he turned around and looked again, they had covered some distance. It must be a mirage, he thought, because that caravan was moving slowly. It couldn't travel so very quickly within the span of a few seconds.
He kept looking at the camel train, and, after a few moments, it disappeared from view without any reason. He thought it was his brain playing tricks on
him. There was nothing out there that could move so fast. It must be a mirage.
He continued with this search, but it was getting late in the afternoon, so he walked back to the building site, this time guided by his little GPS receiver. About 2 ½ hours later, he arrived, and it was already dark. Dinner was ready.
He put his backpack in his tent, washed, and joined the rest at the dining table. He was hungry, a little cold, and the steaming hot meal was exactly what he craved. It was delicious. When asked what he was doing out there, he was elusive in his answer. He said he was just surveying the land to have a good idea and to see if there was anything of interest. They all laughed. There was nothing over there, they said. It was all empty desert with nothing, no animals, no humans or anything for hundreds of kilometres. Then one of them asked him if he was having second thoughts now?
‘The building is already finished. Don't tell me you're having second thoughts now,’ he asked.
‘No, no, no, no second thoughts. I just wanted to know the neighbourhood, so to speak,’ answered Sam with a smile on his face.
Everybody laughed.
‘What neighbourhood are you talking about? Which hundreds of kilometres neighbourhood?’ asked another, sarcastically.
He didn’t answer, and the conversation shifted to other subjects. He thought he lost that site of the clay fragments forever because the desert was full of similar-looking sites. He kicked himself for not putting a marker or anything to lead him back. It could be an important find from the archaeological point of view. Archaeologists usually spend years searching for such a place, and he chanced to stumble upon one by accident. Now, he lost it.
A week later, the time had come to build the roof, as everything else in the building had been completed. It was a tiresome effort to install the rebars and the wooden cast to support the concrete mix. When concreting the roof was finished, it was a celebration for all, who stopped early that day. Usually, concreting the roof is an important milestone in buildings.