Credo, quia impossibile est.

(I believe it, because it is impossible.)

- misquote attributed to Tertullian

Before I started writing this post, I read the one from last week again. Knowing what I know now, there are parts that are quite embarrassing. I was wrong. Completely wrong.

Take a deep breath. Start at the beginning.

This is what happened today:

I went to Mr Tuniak's office, just as we agreed upon last week. Thus far, everything went according to plan. Then he started talking about his mothers (yes, plural). Where they came from, what they were doing... “background stuff” he called it. I was taking notes and trying my best to act as if I was believing everything he told me.

It was not easy.

I failed.

We had been sitting in the office for about half an hour, when he suddenly stopped.

“You do not believe me”, he said.

I didn't know how to respond and kept quiet.

“I've read the first post on your blog”, he continued. “I should have foreseen that something like that would happen.” He opened the briefcase that was standing right next to his chair and took out a mobile phone. He called a number on speed dial and told the person at the other end of the line: “Could you come to the main entrance, please? Right now. Thank you.”

Then he stood up and went for the door. “Come!”, he told me. “We are going for a short trip.”

I quickly gathered all my stuff and followed him.

In front of the main entrance a limousine was waiting for us. As we got in, I could read the plate number and learned that the car, like the building we had just left, belonged to Raben Consulting.

The passenger part of the limousine was completely separate from the driver's part. Mr Tuniak had to use a small phone to tell the driver where he wanted to go. “To the cabin”, he told him and off we drove.

It was quite a pleasant journey. I usually don't like driving in a car, but until today I hadn't travelled in a limousine yet. The seats were like long, soft benches and since we were sitting on opposite sides, each of us had his own “bench”. There was a mini-bar and a television (neither of which we used) and through the windows (you could only see through them from the inside) I could see where we were going.

We left the city. Very little time passed, before I saw trees instead of houses along the street. There were more and more trees, until it was clear that we had entered a forest. The road got smaller all the time as well.

Mr Tuniak opened the mini-bar, but instead of a bottle he took out a photo album. At least that's what I thought it was at first.

“What do you think of these?”, he asked and handed me the book.

I opened it. Instead of photos there were dozens of feathers collected inside. They were too big to be normal bird feathers. Maybe ostrich's feathers...

“What kind of bird has such feathers?”, I asked as the car stopped.

“They are from no bird”, answered Mr Tuniak, putting the book back. “They are from dinosaurs.”

And he left the car.

I was surprised by his answer and it took me a moment before I followed him outside. When I did, I saw that we had stopped at a clearing in the middle of the forest. A wood cabin was standing close by; a cabin without any windows and with only one door. Mr Tuniak was opening several safety locks and apparently constantly using the wrong keys – at least, that's what it looked like.

I saw that the driver had gotten out of the limousine as well and was leaning on the car.

“You have an... unusual boss”, I said to him, trying to start a friendly conversation.

“Oh, yes”, the driver agreed.

“Has he always been like this?”, I asked. “Since when are you working for him?”

“Since I died.”

I only nodded in response. It was the first time on this day that I knew how Alice must have felt after she had entered Wonderland.

In the mean time Mr Tuniak had managed to open the door.

“Does your driver truly believe that he is dead?”, I asked him as we entered the cabin.

“Yes”, answered Mr Tuniak. “It's called the Cotard-delusion. It's gotten better in the last few years.”

“And you let him drive?” I was alarmed about this, because that car and that driver were basically my only way back to the city. “Isn't that dangerous?”

“Why, no!”, said Mr Tuniak emphatically. “He doesn't believe that I am dead. Or you.” He switched on the light.

I don't know what I had expected to find, but it was definitely not what was in front of me. A long grey cuboid (seriously, there is no better description than that). That was it. The cuboid was three metres high, about the same in width and nearly ten metres long. If you looked closely you could see that it seemed to have a skin of glass.

“What is that?”, I asked.

“My time machine”, Mr Tuniak answered.

“Were all the DeLoreans sold out?” The sentence was out of my mouth before I had time to think, which always means that the words tried to get out before your brain realised what had happened. I hated myself for saying it out loud, but Mr Tuniak just laughed. Then he took a small remote control from his pocket and pressed a button. A door opened at the side of the cuboid (as long as it had been closed, there had been no trace of the door).

“Come in”, Mr Tuniak said.

“You could have at least painted it”, I thought as I entered. But this time I didn't say it out loud. I learn from my mistakes.

The inside was similar to the inside of a mobile home. There was a kitchen, a bed, a washing room and a table. Flat screens on the wall acted as windows. And the front, where the driver would be sitting in a mobile home, looked like someone had removed an air plane cockpit and put it there.

“Where do you want to go?”, Mr Tuniak asked, after he had closed the door and taken a seat in the cockpit.

If you had a working time machine, what would be the first place you would want to visit?

I decided to play along, although I did not believe for a second that the time machine would actually work. I tried to remember famous historical events that would be worth a visit or interesting people with whom it would be nice to share a cup of tea, when I realised that there could only be one possible answer.

“To the time of the dinosaurs”, I said.

“Correct”, Mr Tuniak agreed. I could not see what he was doing in the cockpit, but for a moment the whole “time machine” trembled. “Did you know that everyone chooses the dinosaurs for the first trip?”

He pressed a button and the door opened again.

That was the moment when I stopped feeling sure of myself. I had been convinced that Mr Tuniak would come up with an excuse why the time machine was not working right now (probably because some parts would only be delivered next Tuesday). But warm air came in through the open door, a lot warmer than it had been in the forest. There was a smell in the air I could not identify.

I got out of the cuboid and...

The prehistoric Earth was right in front of me.

I guess there were bushes and trees and grass, but I ignored all of that. We were atop a small hill and two hundred metres away from us a group of dinosaurs was marching. They were big, at least three times the size of a grown human, walked on their hind legs, had “arms” that ended in improbably long claws, a long neck and a small head. Their backs, legs and tails were covered in feathers. They looked like therizinosaurs, at least that was the closest image I could find, when I searched on the internet for their names. But the most fascinating fact about these creatures was the effect they were having on me. I was not afraid. Yes, they had claws and yes, they were big, but I never felt threatened. I guess I was just too overwhelmed to feel anything else. I only noticed that my knees felt weak and I had to sit down.

I don't know how long I had been sitting there, just staring. Mr Tuniak sat next to me and was quiet for a long time as well.

“Fascinating creatures, aren't they?”, he eventually said. “No matter how often I come here, it always feels like the first time.”

My mouth felt dry, so I couldn't answer. He gave me a pair of binoculars and pointed to a spot somewhere behind the dinosaurs.

I looked through and quickly found what he wanted to show me. Two women, both dressed in grey overalls. They had just arrived here as well, that much was obvious from the look on their faces (which must have mirrored the one on my own).

“The first voyage through time of my mothers”, Mr Tuniak said.

They never saw us.

We stayed until sun down. The dinosaurs came closer and closer and then – it seemed quite suddenly to me – we were surrounded by them. But I still wasn't afraid. A simple miss step, a quick unfortunate movement of the tail could have seriously injured us, but I didn't think about such things. Quite the opposite in fact: I stretched out my hand and touched one of them.

“Dinosaur” means “terrible lizard” if you translate the name from old Greek. Sir Richard Owen never knew what a terrible mistake he made by giving them that name.

Back in the present, during our drive home, I tried to put my experience into words. But I couldn't. The quote “should have sent a poet” went through my head. But in this case I was the poet and I was at a loss for words. Even now, reading the lines I just wrote, I realise that they fail to capture more than a shadow of what I felt.

“Don't know what to write?”, Mr Tuniak asked, when he noticed that my notepad was still empty.

“Yes”, I admitted. “Breathtaking, astonishing, wonderful, unbelievable... I don't know which word fits best. Do you know one that means all of that?”

“Yes”, Mr Tuniak said after thinking about it for a moment. “Nature.”

NEXT WEEK

Il y a une femme à l'origine de toutes les grandes choses.