ENIGMA

ENIGMA

“Grandpapa, why do you always go out on the porch when you hear that choo choo train?” Mirabella, my thigh-high Great-Granddaughter with curly black hair that bounced all over her head asked as she squiggled onto the couch closer to the heat of the stove, eyed me as I stood in the doorway. She had learned about trains now that one existed again. Fog was thick by the river, but above, the sky was stark and clear. Cold starlight sent a shiver of dark memory through me. Even after the crazy passage of time as was my odd fate, I had not yet been home from out there for long enough to forget…The archaic diesel train rumbled enigmatically through the misty river valley, its chordal whistle wailing in the twilight. My consciousness sought the receding sound as it dwindled into the distance, lonely and haunting—a relic from a previous century, just like the wood stove burning a cheery heat—just like me, Henry James Stanton, Ph.D., an eccentric history buff and once hugely celebrated voyager to the deepest reaches of our solar system. Smoke rushing airily up the flue joggled me back into the presence of the room, also an artifact of sorts, the entire house recreated for me in the style common over five hundred years ago—a small comfort.

“I just like to watch it, that’s all. You know that story I’ve told you over and over. It reminds me of it.” Mirabella giggled as I returned inside, sat in the comfy chair by the heat and closed my eyes. The mission to that object beyond Pluto had depleted more from me than I knew I had, even as it gave me so much immensity of experience unknown to other men. I moved slowly now, savoring little, seemingly unimportant smells and sounds. No such earthly reminders existed where we had gone.

“But didn’t you make it, Grandpapa?”

“Yes, darling, I did have it made. Do you like it?” No diesels had run in the past half millennium until this one had been painstakingly recreated by yours truly from drawings, and also at my insistence, run as a tourist curiosity several times per month.

“It was fun to ride, but it smells so bad. Did people really travel that way all the time? Did those rail tracks crisscross the entire country? That must have been a lot of steel.” I arose and stirred the fire, a heat source available only to places far from cities and pollution ordinances.

“I could do nothing about the smell, MiraB, I suppose someone could now, but I doubt if anyone would care about this antique.” The long vanished train really bothered me. I felt like an oddity—an antique. Warm, I paused, staring absently into the hall beyond the wood stove door before closing it. I recalled that the tracks had also been carefully recreated from cerabonium—the ceramic carbon/metal that had replaced steel in 2031. “Cargo and people move far more efficiently now in 2567 than ever before, although there is still plenty of steel in the world even now.” Half a millennium—it seemed so long since the world had changed.

“Why did you make the train, Grandpapa? Why was it so important to you? Could you please tell me a story?” Reclining again, I mulled over the train and my fascination with it as my gaze swept the room with its memorabilia. Ever since that benignly auspicious moment on the great voyage, the train-like phenomenon irked me, and all that had arisen from it. I especially liked the picture of me with Commander Sureling, flanked by Major Datlon and the rest of the crew several months after our return and after the Great Discovery with all of them holding the banner— STANTON—HERO OF THE AGES.

In a moment, I felt her squirmy little body plop down on my lap and I opened my eyes to her beckoning face, still smeared with a spot of chocolate on one cheek. I dabbed it off with the edge of my sleeve. She smelled of flowery soap and her breath was of chocolate milk.

“Tell me again Grandpapa. Please? Won’t you tell me again?” Here by the fire was simple and good. Trains and lonely journeys across cosmic gulfs all seemed ridiculous and far away, especially now. What ever my so-called heroism had accomplished had been acknowledged worldwide and completed long ago. I stood, shuddering, needing to clear my head from the smoky aura in the room, realizing why wood was so rarely used anymore for heat, even though it felt so good. I enjoyed the privilege of celebrity curmudgeon.

“Well now, MiraB, you know it reminds me of something I saw when I was away along time before you were born. I’ve told you that story since when you were little, don’t you remember, darlin?” I sat back down, knowing full well that I had to tell her all over again or I would never hear the end of it.

“But, I’m still little. Please tell me again, Grandpapa.” She tossed her curls with a carefree shake of her head and settled into the space beside my thigh and the arm of the chair. Her puppy-look was un-ignorable and I found myself helpless to deny her request. Since her mother would not return for a couple of hours, I leaned back and closed my eyes. The memory was yet so clear—as though it were right now and the recounting of it all came so easily…

“The arc of our flight path had taken us at fifty-seven degree angle out of the plane of the ecliptic. Thus, we had no opportune moments to study any planets. Our objective waited silently at the brink of beyond - a lure of unknown origin. Somehow, it had captured the collective imagination of all of humanity in order to pool resources for the massive effort to seek the unfathomable star.”

“Ecliptic? Tell me what that is again?” I glanced at her and swept a curl from her forehead as she looked up at me. I realized that, although she was brilliant in scientific notions at her young age, she was just a little girl.

“Remember, I showed you marbles on a platter? That’s like the planets in orbit around the sun, only we went way up high above that platter, like this.” I demonstrated once again for her inquisitive little mind, which was fast becoming a large brain, using one open hand as the plate and my other fist as our spaceship. “We were very far away, but it was so enormous, we saw it easily.”

I thought a moment. It had been such a long time ago and I had told the story so many times to her and innumerable others. “So, after our incredibly long journey, there had been the approach. Reflection upon a tiny portion of the motionless satellite eerily showed our lights. The planet Pluto was a small ball of ice behind us sunward, a bright crescent in the blackness.”

“Like the moon when it’s new?”

“Yes.” I smiled. “Like the New Moon.” I continued, feeling again the magnitude that had both dwarfed and scared the living heck out of us—the seekers of this cosmically proportioned anomaly. “The stillness and sense of isolation was absolute. Our tiny ship, Void Scratcher, seemed insignificant in the vastness as it parked in stationary orbit near the largest of immense spheres and cylinders each of which was larger than the moons of Mars which, linked, stretched for nearly a hundred thousand kilometers!”

“Like Mommy’s pearls, right?”

“Pearls the size of moons, MiraB, What woman would not want that but for the size of neck required!” At that, Mirabella unleashed a fit of giggles that I increased by tickling her before continuing. Finally, catching our breaths, I returned. “We found a gaping, 20 kilometer-wide opening on the twilight side of the first sphere. The sheer magnitude of both the hatchway beckoning entry and the alien-immensity were utterly stunning.”

“Grandpapa, isn’t it over 20 kilometers to the Travaport I have to use to get home to the city?”

“23 to be precise. Yes, that’s one big door we entered. We discovered an enormous tube at least a kilometer in diameter that was at the core and it was there that the crew embarked on exploration and my excursion with Technician Datlon had proceeded.”

“But weren’t you scared of going inside, Grandpapa? Wasn’t it so big you felt like a –like a germ. Isn’t that what you always say? A germ?”

“Yes, MiraB—a germ. We felt like the way a germ might feel on the surface of our ship Void Scratcher. Exactly like a tiny, insignificant germ.”

“Oohh, I hate germs!”

“So, the two of us set out, crewman and scientist, according to plan. Others went in opposite directions, although none found the same experience of the awesome—not even Ron Datlon, poor guy, even though he was the last one to go.” The memory of my old crewmember cast a pang of remorse that sped through me in a wave. “Ron, you see, had been the closest to it—the Globe--other than myself. He had lasted longer than the others, most of whom were now just vague memories unless I look at the pictures. Ron’s chiseled, hard-edged face with his crooked brows, and his deep furrows above them were unforgettable, as was the consternation marking his features when I emerged from the thing

that—“

Just then, I noticed that the slender form of Mirabella had gone very lax and her chest now rose and dipped in the steady rhythm of deep sleep.

I smiled as only a Grandfather can and gently carried her off to bed.

The next day was sunny. We went for a walk since her mother had been delayed. The scents of autumn were strong. It freshened me. Upon my return from that long and lonely void, I recalled that it had all seemed this dreamy and cozy when the newly recreated train first came in that strange day some years before. I glanced back at Mirabella and spied her bent upon examining something along the ground of the wide meadow. I walked a bit out onto the meadow and swayed as the memory came flooding back.

I had been standing in my yard, staring off into the western sky. It was most perplexing. The rumble of that train approaching was impossible, but so clear and there it was. I had then ran out across the bottom meadow toward the river, determined to see this newly made relic I’d commissioned into service, more closely.

The train had rushed fast in its approach. I had reached the fence by the shiny blue-black tracks, vaulted it and paused, breathless. I could not have done that now, but it was some years before. I had already seen so many years and my fitness had stayed about the same, as always, yet then, I was breathless. Perhaps it was from merely the phenomenon of the reality of the train. With sudden idea, I had climbed an oak with a spreading canopy above the remanufactured railroad.

Barely had I obtained a high, overhanging limb then the engine had roared beneath in tremendous rush of hurtling metal. Before I had realized what I was attempting, I was hanging from the great branch. Foolhardy as it was, my timed fall into one of several, gravel cars put me at the bottom of a load of bluish stones, against the pitted steel siding with no more than scraped arms and a racing pulse. The restoration had been complete to the last detail, even adding wear and tear to the surface of the steel. The clacking wheels were thunderous. I scuffled amidst dust and debris up the blue-gray mound to the forward lip of the flatcar and had balanced there, sharply aware of the blur of ground meters below. I was seven cars back from the engine.

I then had spanned as though in a nightmare, the space to the next car. And so the next and the next. Only three more. The diesel fumes were warm strands of acrid wind, made from fossil fuel—itself a long disused relic from before the New Era that I also had to have especially made. I went on.

The locomotive was then just two cars away. Smoke was thick. I could just see the top edge of the engine cabin door. All was mirage-like through the foul-smelling haze.

Finally, there was the ladder down. It had seemed solid. I had lowered myself easily, approaching the door with a prickle of unease. It had opened easily. I had entered. It was familiar--too familiar.

Arrays of gauges and dials adorned the spotless interior. Soft, fluorescent light and two-tone gray walls appeared official and bland. Forward was another door. A shadow was beyond the smoky glass port.

I then advanced further. The door was locked. I had pressed my face to the glass and the shadowy form within had seemed to notice. I had balked. Then, the nightmarish sensation again swept over me as I had placed my shoulder to the door and heaved…

“Grandpapa! Grandpapa! Wait for me. You know I can only keep up with you if you walk slowly.” I heard Mirabella’s frantic voice as though it was far away and had the vague sensation of falling. The memory had once again triggered an association in my mind with what had happened to me out there beyond the orbit of Pluto. I tried resisting but failed. I knew from somewhere in my consciousness that I was in its grip, and I was helpless to escape the memory. For all intensive purposes, it was exactly as real as though I was out there, facing the unexplainable. I vaguely saw the ground rush toward me and had the presence of mind to brace myself, even though I was on the soft grass of the meadow. I knew with certainty that it was happening again…

I was drawn into a vacuum. There was no train—no meadow, no Great Granddaughter—only the intense void of Space beyond a few meters of metal fabricated by who knows what or by simply an unknown Who. My mind veered in the disintegrating illusion. Then I remembered…

“Dr. Stanton! Dr. Stanton! Where are you? What the--? Dr. Stanton, get away from that before it—“ Major Datlon’s voice was frantic in his effort to warn me, but his cry had been snuffed the moment the stuff had grabbed me. How long had I been in my predicament? I had forced an entry in the oblong structure at the end of the core tunnel to open. I had tumbled and perhaps because it had happened so fast, I don't recall exactly all the details. There was a tremendous flash - like high voltage short-circuiting - and I had been sucked into the jelly sphere. Datlon had retreated noisily. I could see him plainly but was certain he could not see me. While groping within the clear substance enclosing me, I noticed a distorted specter fleeing by. It was too quick then, and I shrugged it off. I was in urgent anguish by this time to worry about what might be in the strange substance with me..

Was I to be entombed nineteen thousand million kilometers from the sun? The imagery and illusion - the train - it had seemed so real. What was this place? Where were my shipmates - was I to be left for dead?

With all my struggling and mental ravings I failed to notice the approach of that fleeting image I had previously ignored. It now hovered near and watched my flailing attempts at freedom.

Just as soon as I saw the alien form I became entranced - in a telepathic union of sorts. There was an audible snap. I felt wrenched apart. The jelly stuff I was contained within began to whorl about me. I was so shocked then I didn't know what to think.

Gleaming, intelligent eyes glared upon me. Now the alien appeared solid while all else wavered, unreal and ethereal. I was uncertain of my surroundings yet I felt infinitely aware. My perception seemed to have expanded exponentially.

I suddenly knew what this cosmic cargo train was and the purpose of it. I felt insecure in the presence of this creature even as it poured information into my mind and gave me soothing thoughts. I wondered why this was all happening to me - why had I left my comfortable research at the Institute for this ten-year trip into the depths of loneliness? I went through all the self-pity before I noticed that this being seemed to be laughing hysterically. The mental bond between us worked both ways!

At that realization, the alien began a bizarre session of knowledge transmitting that made me feel as capable of receiving it as the supercomputer back in my lab. It beckoned and gestured with its elf-like hands as I absorbed its outpouring.

Those unblinking eyes penetrated an absolutely alien knowledge into me. This being held the keys to the universe or so it seemed to me. Travel between points was like the blink of an eye. His race had learned to harness an energy that man has only tinkered with. I hoped I would indeed remember all of this and I thought again of my research lab computer - two buildings worth - and if I could only record this experience. It was so profound - could I dare to think I would retain any of it? Was it an actuality or was I merely a prisoner in some other illusion?

As these things were racing through my mind, the being sifted into the sphere that held me, which was beginning to glow intense blue. The blue burst into a brilliant flash of white. I felt a moment of non-existence - of sudden bottomless ness - and, to my shocked amazement, I was standing in my office!

Unbelieving, I reached out and touched my desk. It was solid. Everything was as I had left it. The staff had kept order for me. The clock showed it was after 11 P.M. All was quiet. I was really there after all. Completely and utterly astounded, it then dawned on me why I was there.

Hastily, I switched on the master console and set up for transcribe/record. The alien stood to one side, quiet and observant and then it touched the screen. Instantly, the screen became filled with code, diagrams, formulae, strange numerals and glyphs, and other symbols I never knew existed in the database. New elements, compounds, alloys—including the ceramic carbon—were transmitted as clearly and profoundly as possible.

The knowledge was real. It had been demonstrated rather fantastically to me. As explained by this alien person, the concept and energies that brought me here now seemed quite simple. Humanity had learned to send sound waves, and then digital signals through wires and then wireless. It was only a matter of time and the size of Mega Giant Gigabytes of storage that whole objects could be scanned, sent and recreated…

Equations and constants of this atomic micro level, light attraction/repulsion, matter transfer system went into the memory circuits of my computer. This being was making sure that I had everything.

It reminded me also, that I must return. I realized that it would be impossible to explain my presence or the recorded material.

To protect the material, I encoded a message lock, thereby sealing off all access to it. It was secure until my return from the voyage.

No sooner had this been completed than I grew faint. There was that confounded stuff around us again. Dimly, I saw our reflection in the glass window over the console. The lab beyond was dark; the blue glow soon obscured even our forms.

There was that feeling again and I was back in the chamber on the satellite. The feat astounded me. Inside, I felt full of proverbial butterflies. Still, the rubbery substance enclosed me. I again began struggling. The strange person was nowhere to be seen. Had I been in some other realistic illusion?

The being returned as a faint specter, luminescent and gesturing. I ceased my efforts. I started to think a question at the creature but the answer came as I thought it.

How ironic I thought. Because we had reached so far to have arrived here to this place, humanity was now ready for an awesome responsibility. I hoped that he was right. His race was no longer able to.

The aged custodian of a vanished empire gave me a sense of understanding, satisfaction and even that of welcome, and that his mission was then complete. His form dissipated. His eyes remained in my mind for sometime and then, I heard muffled voices. At that time, I had only a vague memory of penetrating eyes and of something of vast importance. I was still contained in the jelly substance. I was weak. I wondered how long I'd been there? The voices grew more distinct.

"Sir, let me go first - the glowing sphere sucked him inside as soon as the door opened. I have an idea to get him out."

I recognized my friend Datlon. They were coming to fetch me from this confounded jelly.

With my fishbowl perspective, I saw movement out beyond the door. There were questions and commands to stand clear. A space-suited figure was thrust into the room, surging toward me inside the bubble of jelly. At a point midway to me, the crewman disappeared in a flash of light. There was a shock.

I found myself floating above the softly iridescent, four meter globe. The crewman who'd valiantly tried to rescue me was now undulating in the sphere. I felt badly as a cord looped around me from the door and I was hauled out.

When my magnetic boots had contacted the metallic floor, the cord was released and my legs collapsed. Someone caught me just as Commander Sureling extended his weapon. Light seared into the globe, obliterating it in a blue-green explosion. I gasped in horror at the sacrifice. They had killed a man over me.

"Relax", Datlon assured me then, "It was only a stuffed suit in there. I saw how it grabbed you and figured it'd do it again!"

With that, they carried me back on board. I passed out immediately; unaware of what had been destroyed back there and not at all concerned that it didn't really matter anyway. For, at that time, I recalled nothing of what had occurred. The sphere to me had been a hostile entrapment, which had seemed to be devouring me and causing nightmarish experiences as a man might have when death is imminent.

Nor could I recall any of my experience during the five-year journey back. The strange vessel had been thoroughly explored and categorized as some kind of alien stellar cargo train of unknown origin. It did cause quite a stir on board and later, on Earth. Proof at last of at least another possibility of life elsewhere. Nothing much could be ascertained. It was a vast hulk, adrift since time began for what it mattered to us. Just empty space junk.

Another half year passed in recuperation as heroes from the successful mission. I enjoyed the much-needed rest. I was awarded several honorary doctorates and esteemed employments, but I preferred to return to my research at the Institute. Why, my friend Major Datlon had accepted an executive position in an ElectroTech Industries Affiliate. I was noticing Commander Sureling campaign posters around. He would make a fine Chief of Staff.

It had taken some time to readjust, but it was good to be back at work. The Institute showed their appreciation by naming, at my embarrassment, an entire new lab complex after me. Secretly, I enjoyed the fame. It helped in gaining the respect of a new generation of bright, young staff members and students. One such young lady gained an earnest respect. On a certain day, I was instructing this assistant, Catherine in the process of encoding message locks for classified information when memory exploded in my brain. It nearly floored me!

I quickly unlocked the impossible while hastily blabbering to my astounded assistant that I had put something there many years ago and had just remembered it.

I hoped desperately that it was real. All was now so vivid!

Before our eyes, the long hidden secret began displaying on the console video, waves of ironic consternation washed over me. After organizing the presentation and composing myself, I alerted other senior staff members. My unbelievable voyage through the fabric of space as easily as a thought had been real. Locked within buildings full of circuitry for over six years had been the incredibly stupendous knowledge capable of changing the entire world. It did…

“Grandpapa, wake up! Oh Grandpapa, please wake up!”

Cautiously, I felt sensation returning to my limbs and I became aware of the soft brush of grass against my cheek. Mirabella was pulling on the third and fourth fingers of my left hand. Behind her, I heard another voice. It was that of Anna Marie, Mirabella’s mom.

“Mirabella, be gentle. Your Great Grandpapa will be just fine. Perhaps if he gets enough mouthfuls of grass, he will cease his wandering away from the Hospi—home. At least, inside, his flashbacks are less detrimental to his half-millennium old body!” The multi-great granddaughter of Catherine, the assistant who had helped me decode the locked information from the stellar race from across the galaxy so long ago, then scooped up Mirabella and addressed some men with her. “Gentlemen, please give Henry James a hand, he’s always a little wobbly after these flashbacks.”

Well, now I am old. You can probably guess that I have survived because of some fluke. Well, I have always thought it was the jelly stuff. Major Datlon had got some of it on him as did several of the men, and they had all lived to be over two hundred fifty. I missed them all. You can also probably imagine the fuss and confusion that resulted at first, after we had revealed the hidden knowledge. The new science had tested to be accurate when we finally got it right. That jelly stuff had been the hardest to get right, and it still allows folks only a longer life of about two hundred years. We found the missing elements in seawater and mucous from common okra pods. The mucous had to be simulated on a grand scale, as you well know.

Funny thing is that little alien fellow had been dead right. This Instantaneous Transfer of Matter--I.T.M. as we call it now, had come at no better time. Humanity had been ready to change. Our mission had really united the nations in peace and that was a lot of it. Trade is cheap. Travel is almost mental. Cultural exchange has never been as widespread and easy. One can literally go anywhere.

Of course there is plenty of conventional travel. People will always love motion. Why, that was why I had that train recreated. But one thing still puzzles me.

With all that has occurred in the past five hundred years, the way I.T.M. came about will always mystify me.

Here we are in the second half of the millennium and I wonder if we too, will one day impart this knowledge to some young, maturing alien race. Will we abide the responsibility well into the future?

Something happened to me on that alien cargo train that I will never fully comprehend of its mystical proportions. I'll never be the same. The imagery forced upon me by it or my own mind when I was trapped still touches me profoundly in these flashbacks. It's good to be resting at home. But when I gaze off toward the tracks by the river, I feel a sense of foreboding -half expecting to wake again ensnared in illusion and helplessness.

I know it can't be and I laugh away the feeling and go for a walk. And to the final day of my retirement, the whistle of that diesel locomotive will humor and mystify me and people from all over who come to experience it for themselves. I will continue to enjoy it because due to my eccentricity, other than that one, there are absolutely no more diesel trains!