Book 2 Part 2: From a different perspective

“Where are we?”

“Where are we not?” returned the Ambassador as he walked towards the tree on the hill.

Déjà vu is an odd feeling, in fact there is no other way to describe the way I felt after arriving other than with those two words. Every step, every turn of the head was as if I was ordained to do so, or I have already done so before. I felt a player whose role was written by some unknown author.

An evening-dew settled on the grass, yet, there was no indication of the impending night. The landscape was in perpetual twilight and this fact only became more apparent the longer I stayed. The landscape was rustic as though it had not been corrupted by human hands. No plow lines grazed the rolling hills nor did gravel roads separate the land. Unity is the word which keeps coming to my mind as I write these pages. Everything there was connected, except for me. I felt the imposter to my surroundings as though my presence warranted alert. I knew I did not belong.

It took me a while to catch up to the Ambassador who had made his way up the hill. By the time I reached him, his back was perched against the base of the tree. With a serene stare the Ambassador gazed towards the setting sun. Before I was able to say a word, he preempted my interjection with a motion of his finger, guiding my eyes to the valley below.

It was everything and it was nothing…no, that’s not it. Let me try again. Well… hmm… how about this: When dealing with the unexplainable, words are not ready-made. Words have power, yet they often are limited to the thing in which they are explaining. What I am trying to say is in order to aptly describe what I saw; a new dictionary with new words and new meanings would have to be created. But I will try to make do with what I have.

The visage molded together in a menagerie of forms both shapeless and rigid, yet ever-changing. Nothing was fluid. Everything appeared as a contradiction as though the laws of physics did not apply. I could see the formation of civilizations, from the progression of nomadic societies to the pre and post-industrial ages. At its zenith, skyscrapers hovered above the clouds and were complemented by space elevators which transported people away from the ruined planet. But nothing held permanence. Everything was either being built or destroyed. After a term of progress, the more malevolent form of the human condition would surface. War would arise causing famine and destruction, death and destitute. Every time a civilization would reach its zenith, the center would not hold and collapse was certain. But from the rubble, a new people would emerge and begin again in the former’s wake. This process was repeated ad nauseam.

“One last time,” I said to the Ambassador, “Where are we.”

“A place where you shouldn’t be.”

He rose from the base of the tree but kept his eyes transfixed on the sun’s twilight as it painted pastels in the sky.

“No matter how many times I return, this view affects me as it did the first time. I must have been here a million times…well you see for yourself,” after a pause, the Ambassador cleared his throat.

“But I’m evading your question. Okay, you will have an answer. Time is a gyre. It begins at the smallest point with a few people, but then it expands, grows and spins. After gaining momentum, societies improve and grow. But it can only take so much before the decadence rots out the center. Then, the fall… Oh how societies love to fall and rarely do with any semblance of grace or dignity. What you are seeing is the entire history of the human civilization repeated over and over again. But here on this hill is a space removed from time where people…like me are forced to be.”

“Forced?”

“Perhaps that is a conversation for another time.”

“Why have you brought me here?”

“You said when you spoke to Laura after your wreck she mentioned a name.”

“She started to, but I was revived before I could hear it.”

The Ambassador stroked his chin and then stared at me with intent, “This is the first I’ve have heard about this. This changes everything. This is why I risked bringing you here.”

Briskly he told me to follow. During our decent down the hill he continued, “I want to make this perfectly clear, only you are able to help Laura. I’m forbidden. Now, I can guide you and give you a helping hand, but I can only do so much. In fact, I think I may have overstepped my bounds by bringing you here. Nonetheless, you were chosen and it is your responsibility.”

“If I was chosen, then why did you give me the option to walk away from it all at the bar?”

“Would you have walked away?” he asked sarcastically, “I didn’t think so. That is why you were chosen. Don’t you get it? You are not as daft as you appear. Essentially, the potential energy was already there, all I did was spin the top so-to-say.”

“But how I am supposed to help her? I mean is she alive?”

“You know the answer to that.”

I followed the Ambassador to the base of a hill which led to a bank. A lake met the horizon and its liquid drained into the valley of revolving time. Upon approaching the water, I first noticed its tint was off, as though a thin layer of oil coated the surface. The closer I approached the lake, the lower the sun would sink into the horizon. But as I retreated, the sun would reverse direction towards twilight. The ground before the crest of the lake was devoid of soil and life, yet just a few feet preceding it retrained the same luster as the hill.

“This is where I will leave you for now. I can go no further.”

”And what exactly do you expect me to do?” I asked with irritation.

“It seems like a lovely evening for a swim.”

“Stop! Just stop with that cryptic nonsense and answer me straight! What happens if I go into the lake? Will I turn into an elephant? Or perhaps I will learn the answer to life the universe and everything and go mad. What fresh hell will be awaiting me? Because, given our past, there is no way that lake is really a lake in the literal sense of the word.”

“First, no you won’t turn into an elephant and second the answer is 42. But yes, you’re right, it is not a lake – it’s a gateway to time.

“Of course it is,” I muttered.

“You want to help Laura? The Ambassador retorted, “Then you are going to have to go into her timeline. Had she mentioned a person before, this whole series of events would have required more than your simple-minded angst. But, and for some reason I do not know, she only seems to want to talk with you.”

“Wait, I can save her?”

“Changing the past is just a novelistic invention. What’s done is done. Step on as many butterflies as you want; you won’t cause any tsunamis. In fact, you won’t even be there in the literal sense of the word, as you so poignantly put it. When go back, you will be a shade which people spy out of the corner of their eyes, but when they take a closer look nothing materializes. You can yell, scream and jump, but nothing you do will have an impact. For all intents and purposes, your role is that of the spectator.”

“More like a voyeur.”

“Call it what you want.”

“How do I come back?”

“When the timeline ends, so does your presence.”

The Ambassador gazes out once more to the city below and began to tap his feet to the current of an innate rhythm.

“Okay, jump on my mark. Any sooner you will be a week behind and any later, the timeline will have ended. Good luck.”

I had just heard the first syllable escape the Ambassador’s lips before I fell through the lake.