(There is a woman at the beginning of all great things.)
- Alphonse de Lamartine
„What did I tell you about my mothers?“, Mr Tuniak asked. I was sitting on the couch and had just taken out my note pad.
„You said Miriam was a physicist, she travelled a lot... read lectures at four universities.“ I consulted my notes from last week. „And Helen... an archivist... responsible for the digitalisation of private writings... old diaries and stuff like that... travelled a lot as well...“
„I did not mention that those are not their real names?“
“No”, I said.
“Well, maybe they are nowadays, but they are not the names they were given at birth”, Mr Tuniak explained. “They chose new ones when they started travelling through time.”
“They picked old names, so that they could use the same ones wherever they went?”, I asked.
Mr Tuniak nodded in response and closed his eyes. It seemed to help him concentrate and remember. I wondered, if more than a week had past from his point of view since our last meeting. „I should have started differently“, he said and opened his eyes again. „I should have told you a bit more about the future itself.“
„Even right now“ - and as he said that, he quickly glanced at the calendar as if he had to check which year it was - „people are calling this the information age. But it is only its beginning. In the future it will be pretty much impossible to find a place on Earth where you wouldn't have access to... the internet.“ I noticed that he had hesitated before saying the word “internet”. I can only guess that he actually meant to say something else – probably whatever the next step in computer evolution will bring. A new version of the internet, if you will, but he didn't explain any further.
“If you can get everything you need from every point on the globe, there are two ways to live”, he continued and then looked expectantly at me. He obviously wanted me to name the two ways of life and after thinking about it for a moment I answered: “You either stay at home and never leave it, because you can access everything you need anyway. Or you travel around, go any place you like... for exactly the same reason.”
“Precisely”, he said, looking pleased. Of course, I only guessed the answer, because I knew that his mothers liked to travel.
“Miriam read lectures about Theoretical Physics at several universities. Her lectures were broadcast on the... internet. So, as you correctly said, it didn't matter where she actually was and she used her spare time to see the world. Helen had to travel for business reasons. She was cataloguing old documents and writings and therefore had to go wherever these documents were kept. And it was on one of her assignments that she met Miriam.”
The first time they met, they were in the entrance hall of a hotel. Miriam was just checking in, when Helen came out of the dining room. She recognized her instantly. Until then they had only communicated over the internet. And still, they recognized each other.
In a time, when all business transactions and contacts were done over the internet, people had become used to the idea that nothing they saw on the net was actually real. They automatically assumed that every picture, every video was manipulated. And with good reason. Everyone could choose how he or she wanted to appear on the net. You didn't have to get cosmetic surgery any more; with just a few commands your avatar – the face, you showed the world – could take any form you wanted.
But Miriam and Helen had chosen not to the change their photos. They were not perfect. Helen's nose was slightly bent, a remainder of an accident she had had as a teen. Miriam's dark skin had several patches of lighter areas, the result of her mixed genetic heritage. It would have been easy to correct the nose on every photo. It would have been easy to paint over the lighter skin. But they hadn't done it. And because of this they knew, the moment they saw each other, that they had something in common.
“Helen was asked by a family to scan all the writings of their grand-grand-grand-grandmother – or something like that. That long dead woman had been a student of physics in Paris in the 1960ies and not much else was known about her. To make sure that all the writings were correctly indexed and referenced, Helen put out a call for a physicist to help her. Miriam happened to be close by and answered her request. That's how they met each other.”
Mr Tuniak took a sheet of paper and gave it to me. Whoever had written it, had terrible hand writing, because I could only make out every second or third word. But it was enough to make it clear that it was some kind of formula. “That's a copy of one of the texts”, Mr Tuniak explained.
Even though I couldn't read much of it, I was able to guess what it was about. “The formula for time travel?”, I asked.
“Not quite”, Mr Tuniak answered. “It's the beginning for a theory of everything. A final theory. A theory that could explain the whole universe. But only the beginning and it was never finished. My mothers couldn't finish it either, but they discovered that a part of it seemed to make time travels possible.”
“And they build a time machine. Did they tell anyone else about it?”
“No.”
“If we publish that, hundreds, no, thousands of people will build their own time machines”, Helen said.
She was sitting in the bar of the hotel, Miriam next to her. They were talking very quietly, nearly whispering and from time to time they looked over their shoulders to make sure that no one was listening. But of course, no one was. None of the other guests knew of their discovery and therefore didn't pay them any attention whatsoever.
“Maybe I'm wrong”, Miriam said. “Maybe it doesn't work. Because if time travels are possible, where are all the time travellers? We should have countless visitors from the future.”
“Well, there is only one way to test the theory, isn't there?”, Helen asked and both women began to laugh loudly. Now they other guests looked at them, but now they didn't care about it.
“Where are all the time travellers?”, I interrupted Mr Tuniak's account. “Time travels are possible, so...?”
“All in good time”, he said. “There is a reason, a good reason, but I will come to it later. Don't you want to hear where my mothers went to first?”
“To the dinosaurs.”
“Yes. And it was also the destination of their second and third trip...”
“I forgot my camera”, Helen said as she saw the herd of edmontosaurs passing by. “Again.”
“No one would have believed you anyway”, Miriam replied. “Do you want to see something else that's unbelievable?” She gestured Helen to follow her and together they went to what at first seemed like a hole in the ground. The ash in it made it clear that someone had dug it to light a hidden fire.
“What's that?” Helen asked and knelt down. “A fireplace?”
“At least I think so”, Miriam said. “And do you see the small stones? That sometimes happens when you hit two stones together to...”
“...make fire”, Helen finished the sentence. “Dinosaurs knew how to make fire. When will the meteorite hit?”
“In a few thousand years”, Miriam answered. “They were too late.”
“I believe it was the discovery of that fireplace that led to the continuing travels of my mothers”, Mr Tuniak explained. “It was probably not the only reason, but the most important one.”
“Why is that?”
“The fireplace showed them that the past still held surprises, that there were still mysteries no one even knew about”, he said. “That's what fascinated Helen. And Miriam just wanted to keep moving. She never liked standing still, at least that's what she told me once.”
“After that, they never went back to their time?”
“Only once. And then not for long.”
“Is your father from the future as well?”
“You mean my biological father?”
“Yes”, I said confused. “Is there any other kind?”
“Oh, there are dozens of possibilities”, Mr Tuniak said. “But I don't have a biological father. And before you say that that is impossible, before you recite whatever you've learned about x- and y-chromosomes, let me remind you that it is the future we are talking about. Families like me and my mothers are not the exception.”
I didn't know what he meant when he talked about chromosomes, so I ignored that part and asked instead: “What would an exceptional family of the future look like?”
He thought about that and then smiled. “Honestly, I have no idea”, he said. “There are families, where the members know each other only on the internet, families, where some members only exist in virtual space or all of them are clones, then there is...”
I interrupted him and said laughingly: “Let me ask another question: Whom would you consider to be part of your family?”
“My mothers, of course”, Mr Tuniak answered. “And everyone at Una-school.”
“And, your mothers excepted, there is no one else you are genetically related to?”
“No one”, he said. “But family has nothing to do with genes. Your parents aren't genetically related, are they? And still no one would hesitate to call them one family.”
“What is your definition of family?”
“I use the same one they used back in the Stone Age”, Mr Tuniak explained. “Although their term would probably be translated as clan or... pack right now. Which just goes to show that you shouldn't concentrate on names and definitions, but on the thing itself. Like the Bard said: 'What's in a name? That which we call a rose, by any other name would smell as sweet'.”
“You sure like to jump through time”, I joked.
“Oh, that's one of the advantages of being a time traveller”, he replied. “I can pick the best of every era and ignore the rest. Where do you think I got my education from? No, don't answer! That's our topic for next week.”
NEXT WEEK
Saps què ets? Ets una meravella. Ets únic. Mai abans no hi havia hagut cap altre infant com tu.
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