“Wait for me,” I eventually cry out, as we start to head up a path beside a small burn that’s eaten away into the hillside.
The Professor turns and rests against the hiking stick he’s brought with him.
“Professor, is there any chance of you getting me access to any of that special Chymera treatment that you’ve been given?”
“Unlikely, my boy. Unlikely. And if you go back to your world, being younger than Sarah might not be the blessing you might initially expect it to be. Youth can sometimes be a double-edged sword.”
“So, I’m definitely still going back then?”
“I think it’s inevitable that you will. Like I said, we have to figure out why you’re here now, and not back in your world. But yes, the plan is still that this won’t be a permanent stay. Which is why I’m bringing you up here now. There’s something I want to show you. But first, catch up with me.”
He laughs, obviously enjoying the feeling it is to be young and fit again.
“James, you must admit that there can be no better place in the world to be locked-in and isolated than here! This is God’s country. The Garden of Eden itself!”
“But with midges!” I swear, swatting one of the infamous Scottish flies against my forehead, and uttering a few choice words in French when a small swarm of them descends upon me. “Surely this isn’t the time of year for midges yet? What’s going on?”
“Global warming. With the hotter climate, midges now have five breeding seasons in a single year. Once we’ve finished killing ourselves and the rest of the animals on the planet, the flies are going to inherit the earth. But since I’ve given up eating sugar, they don’t bite me anymore.”
“Talking about biting,” I say, finally managing to come up level with him. “I’m starving!”
“Good. I’ve brought a picnic with us,” he replies, nodding over his shoulder at his rucksack. But we’ve got a little further to go first.”
It’s another twenty minutes before we come to a spot where the path and the burn turn abruptly to the left. I follow the Professor down off the path, across the bracken and to the edge of the burn. The wee river is quite full, and the water rushes past, splashing and gurgling. The burn is about a metre wide at this point, the course of the water being split in two directions as it runs past a large granite boulder sitting in the middle of the stream.
The Professor takes a few quick steps towards the edge of the burn and then launches himself into the air, and hops onto a granite boulder in the middle of the wee river.
He turns back towards me and taps the stone with his walking stick.
“James my boy, I want you to remember this stone. There’s something very special about it that I think may change your life when you go back to your world.”
“Okay. You’ve got me. And what would that be? Why is it so magical?” I ask, unable to resist.
“Have you ever heard of the Arisaig Gold?” he asks.
I shake my head.
“Prince Charles? Who ran away on a boat…”
“Over the sea to Sky?” I finish his sentence.
“Yes, one and the same.”
“A woman called Flora MacDonald helped Price Charles escape from the English by rowing him dressed as a woman in a boat from the mainland to the island of Skye, from where he got a boat to France?” I repeat the story that every Scots youngster learns as a child, along with the haunting ‘Sky Boat Song.’
“Yes, that’s the romantic version of the story. Although I have it on good authority that it was not actually so much an escape, but that he was allowed to run away. The English authorities after the Battle of Culloden apparently knew where he was and what his plans were, and in their wisdom, decided it would be best to let him escape than try to capture him or kill him. At the time the last thing they wanted on their hands was a Jacobite martyr. So they let him slip away in the middle of the night, and he eventually managed to catch the ship, the Du Teillaya, from one of the other islands, to France. It makes a good story, even though the truth is not quite so romantic.”
“Okay, so what’s that got to do with the stone you’re standing on ?”
“Well, a few days after he left the mainland to escape to Skye, but just after he’d gone, two French ships arrived full of supplies for the now-dead Jacobite cause, along with seven barrels of gold coins. When they found out that they were too late and the Prince had gone, they unloaded the treasure and supplies, and went back to France. For hundreds of years there was intense speculation concerning what happened to all the gold. There were rumours that some had been found, but that most of it had been hidden, and there were several rumours about where exactly those hiding places were. But, in spite of quite a few people spending their lives searching for it, no one ever found it. Until two years ago. And guess where it was found?”
I’m about to make a not-so-wild-guess, when the Professor raises his stick and then quite forcibly taps the stone on which he’s standing.
“Here, my boy!” he shouts excitedly. “They found it here. Under this stone. Two big bags full of a total of fifteen thousand gold Louis d’ors. Altogether it was worth about fifteen million euros! After a court battle lasting two months, the coins were declared Treasure Trove, and the finder was given the full face value of the find.”
“Wow!” I whistle aloud. “But how did they know it was here and not any of the other places it was said to be hidden?”
“One of the bags had burst, and after some heavy rainfall a couple of the coins had washed out and were found glinting in the water by a hill-walker.”
“Incredible! I bet he couldn’t believe it!”
“He was a very lucky man. That’s for sure. Unfortunately, it seems he died a few months ago of the virus, and he never had the time to spend it all.”
“Ouch…” I shake my head. Sometimes fate seems more than a little cruel. “Okay, but why are you telling me this?”
“Good question. I just thought you might like to know. That it was this stone. Here!”
“Think my boy. Think! When you go back to your world, who’s to say whether or not that person or any other person has ever found that gold yet? Maybe, one day, you and Sarah will walk up here in your world, lift up the stone and be pleasantly surprised! Fifteen million euros worth of surprise!”
I laugh out aloud.
“Yes! I like your thinking!” I exclaim. “Thanks!... And I promise that if we find it, I’ll share it equally with you!”
“Ah…yes, that would be nice. If you find it. And if you are still friends with an old mad Professor when you do!”
The Professor skips back across from the rock towards me,
“So, young man, are you hungry? Let’s find a spot to sit down, and eat our picnic!”
--------------------
We sit on the side of the glen for a few hours, feasting on the Professor’s ‘small’ picnic, then lying back on the warm grass and having a snooze.
When I awake, we walk slowly back down to the cottage.
“I need to see my son, and Sarah.” I announce as we come to the spot where the burn from the mountain joins the large river at the bottom of the valley. We stand there for a few moments, looking out across the water as it rushes by, spotting some trout as they play in the dark pools by the edges of the banks.
My head is clear now, and as the reality of my position is beginning to sink home, I know that I have no other purpose here in this world than to find my family and be reunited with them.
“I know, she might not want to see me. She may hate me for what I’ve done, but I need to do everything I can to get her back. To be with her. And Kenneth.”
“We talked about this earlier. You can’t just turn up. You need to have a better plan.” The Professor states.
I’m silent for a moment.
“I don’t know. I’m an alien in this world. I don’t know how anything works here. Do you know where she lives?”
“Yes.”
“Then I have to
go back to London to see her.”
“I don’t think you should. Yet. However, I do think that maybe you should go back and see Jane. She was insistent, I promised I would ask you to, and my gut tells me there is something important that she has to tell you, my boy.” The Professor pauses. “Then, after you’ve seen her, then maybe you will be better armed to go and see Sarah.”
“Armed? It’s not a war! I don’t mean anyone harm. I just want to see my family!”
“You’ll go see her?” he asks.
“Perhaps.” I nod, but shrug my shoulders immediately afterwards. I don’t know. “Anyway, we - sorry, I - have another problem. I have nowhere to stay. All the hotels are closed.”
“Jane?”
I laugh. “Probably not your best suggestion.” I add. “I just managed to escape from there a few days ago…”
“Eight years ago.” The Professor interrupts.
“…and I don’t want to go back. Who knows when I will manage to escape again. Plus, Jane’s two kids will be teenagers now probably, and I could hardly cope with them when they were little. They’d make mincemeat of me now.”
“Don’t worry about the accommodation. There are special hotels for government ministers and other Blue Pass holders to stay in. We just have to find out where they are. You’ll be okay.”
I think about what he’s saying.
“Okay, possibly. I’ll go and see Jane. At least it’s something. I can’t stay here forever!”
“Actually, you could. If you need to. But I think you’d rather be getting back on your own two feet as soon as you can. You don’t need me.”
“No, Professor, I do. I hundred per cent do. You need to help me get back home!”
“And I will, young man. I will. But, it’s been eight years now. Before you go anywhere, you need to decide once again, where your home actually is!”
Chapter Nineteen
Meeting the Secretary of Homes
.
I spend the rest of the afternoon on the internet, browsing through news feeds, continuing the process of learning as much about my new world as possible.
Politics. Advances in technology. New discoveries about our history. Climate change. Medicine.
Incredibly, apparently, fully driverless cars will be on all the streets within a couple of years. Computers are now so good, they can replace human drivers? Although some cars with driverless technology exist already, they’re very rare. But it’s predicted that by 2030 most people will have stopped owning their own cars, and instead they will just rent a car whenever they need it. It will turn up outside their home at the appointed time, take them where they want to go, drop them off, and pick them up when they want to go home! It’s hard to imagine. But apparently it’s true!
It seems that the technology is already here. A company called ‘Suber’ has made most black taxis obsolete. When you want a cab, you just Suber it on an ‘LT’ on your smart phone, and it arrives in a few minutes. But with a human driver. And you can see its location all the time on your SP, tracking it by satellite.
In medicine, they’ve found a cure for the flu. Hardly anyone dies of influenza anymore. Apparently they were able to develop a new type of vaccine that was applicable to all forms of influenza, not just seasonal variations. It took a year to vaccinate the whole planet. And now it’s gone. Like Small Pox. Unfortunately, it seems, the new pandemic is caused by a virus which is much different from influenza. The irony of the situation is that they got rid of the flu, but immediately mother nature threw something else at mankind to replace it! Some people have claimed that the planet is a living thing, and that the virus is mother nature’s way of trying to get rid of humans and return the planet to the rightful ownership of the animals, birds, bees and fish.
Out of all the things I read though, there are two pieces of news about Egypt that I really love and find interesting. I’ve always been fascinated by Egyptian mythology, and one day, before I die, I want to spend a month or so travelling around all the main historical sites and seeing everything there is to possibly see.
The first piece of news which grabs my attention is that a team of scientists have now found two new massive chambers within the Great Pyramid of Giza. According to the article they used new scanning techniques which mapped out how high-energy particles arriving in the earth’s atmosphere from outer space pass through the stones of the pyramid. They discovered a large thirty metre chamber above the Grand Gallery of the pyramid, and also another 70 metre chamber buried deep under the group in the middle of the pyramid. Although they haven’t yet managed to find a way to get underneath the pyramid to the chamber hidden under the ground, they had managed to make a small tunnel into the chamber above the Grand Gallery and send a small automated vehicle and camera into the chamber. The resulting pictures were stunning! The chamber was full of treasure, with gold glistening everywhere. From what they could see it was just like finding the Tomb of Tutankhamun, but three or four times over! Unfortunately, no one had figured a way to get the treasure out, so it looked like it would be stuck there for centuries to come!
The other piece of news I thought amazing, was that scientists had found a way to explain the ancient Bible story about the plagues which devastated Egypt at the time of Moses, and which eventually led to all the Jews escaping into the wilderness across the Red Sea.
The explanation that was published in the newspapers seemed so simple and logical, and explained all the ten plagues. Apparently they were a sequence of events all caused when the volcano on the old island of what we now call Santorini erupted in one of the most violent explosions in history.
The ash from the eruption was blown across the sky to the higher reaches of the Nile where it landed in the water. The ash contained a toxic combination of chemicals including sulphates which dissolved in the water and poisoned it, causing it to turn red. (Plague 1: the water turned to blood!).
This caused lots of the fish and frogs to die, with even more frogs escaping from the water and covering the land, entering peoples’ gardens and houses and refusing to go back. (Plague number two!)
The dead fish and frogs rotted and maggots, insects and lice feasted on their decaying flesh. This was the third plague.
The abundance of decaying flesh provided the perfect breeding ground for flies, who quickly laid billions of eggs which soon turned into more flies, forming the fourth plague. The fifth plague was a combination of the cattle being poisoned by the water, infected by the flies and maggots or dying of thirst!
The people in Egypt who washed themselves in the water, or were exposed to it developed boils… which was caused by the water turning acidic, because of the sulphates in the ash, and burning their skin. (Number six!)
Next was a plague of hail… caused by climate conditions changing as a result of dark dense clouds blocking out sunlight, causing a drop in temperatures and a resulting mixture of atmospheric effects. The article pointed out that hail stones commonly occur hundreds of miles away from an erupting volcano, as is often seen today.
The next explanation was one of the best: at any point in time there are millions of locust eggs lying dormant in the soil in Africa. However, the hail which landed on the ground, which then melted, and which was also probably accompanied by some rain, resulted in perfect conditions for these millions of eggs to hatch, all at the same time, instead of being spread over many different days, weeks or months.
The result was a plague of locusts, plague number eight.
The next plague was probably the easiest to understand… as a result of the volcanic ash blown high into the sky, there was a mini-nuclear winter. The ash blotted out the sun, the temperatures dropped, and darkness covered the land! Plague number nine.
“Aha…” I couldn’t help but wonder, as I read the penultimate paragraph of the article. “How on earth could a volcano explain the deaths of the first born in the household of Egyptians?”
The answer was startlingly simple and plausible: Egyptian custom at the tim
e was to honour the first-born son of every household above all the others- after all, they were the future, and the next generation which would lead the country forward and look after the elders! So, they always received the first food, and preference in anything. In fact, when food was scarce, they were often the only people in a household to eat. The article then explained that the environmental and climatic conditions which the other plagues brought then caused a deadly fungus to grow within the corn. When the corn dried, the sheaves looked normal, but if they were eaten, they would be lethal. These crops were then used to make bread. Because food was short, the bread was only fed to the firstborn. Who got ill. And died. Perhaps, the article pointed out, there was a degree of storytelling and exaggeration involved, where in fact, not only the first born died, and where the deaths were spread out over a few days, and not all at once. But, in general, what people would remember for many years to come, was that the majority of the first-born sons died, in their tens of thousands, whilst those who did not eat the bread, did not.
As I read this, I find it fascinating. More than driverless cars, miracle flu cures, or anything else I read in the papers, this new knowledge captures my imagination and sets it on fire!
All my life I have wondered about Moses, and the old biblical stories, and now I understand them. In fact, if I ever make it back to my world, I may be the only person there to know this! In some strange way, I feel privileged to have found this knowledge.
The afternoon passes quickly, and about four o’clock the Professor walks into the room carrying a tray with tea and biscuits.
“I thought you might want a quick snack before the medical examination. They should be here any moment now.”
“What medical?” I reply, putting down the papers, and giving the Professor my full attention.
“Oh, perhaps I forgot to mention it? My apologies, my boy.” He puts the tray down on the table between us and takes a seat opposite me. “The doctor will be arriving shortly to take some measurements, as we discussed. Blood, weight, height. Another Sars-Covid test. A few neurological tests. An ultra-sound or two. Nothing major. We need to get them done as soon as possible before you’ve been here too long. I worried it may already be too late.”
Am I Dead? Page 12