Seine Briefe sind das schönste Andenken, das ich von ihm besitze...

(His letters are the most beautiful mementoes I own of him...)

- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

„After what I told you last week, I'm sure you can guess that the time when my legs had healed again couldn't come too soon for me“, Mr Tuniak said. “And once I was able to walk again, I actually started several projects, more or less at the same time.”

“You wanted to make up for the time you had lost lying in your bed?”, I asked.

“You can put it that way”, Mr Tuniak agreed. “The first thing I decided upon was to return to Leviathan more often and on a regular basis, so that I could teach the new children there.”

“You mentioned that last week”, I remembered. “You also mentioned one of the children in particular... Ethan.”

“Yes, I know”, Mr Tuniak said. “About Ethan... well, maybe we will get to him later today. The other thing I wanted to do was work some more with Gemini. Shortly after my accident, my mothers joined that organisation and to my surprise they told them right from the start that they were time travellers. As for me... Even if I could walk again, I had to take care for the first few weeks, so any exhausting expeditions were out of the question. So, Gemini had to wait for the moment. This, of course, doesn't mean that I didn't travel a lot.”

“With the children from Leviathan?”, I asked.

“Exactly”, Mr Tuniak said. “When I was a child my mothers took my friends and me around the world and through time to anyplace and anywhere that might be interesting and now it was my turn. We travelled a lot and sometimes one of the other teachers came with us. Alice, for instance, joined us quite often.”

“Alice had returned to Leviathan as well?”, I asked.

“Yes, she had quit her job as a narrator for audio books and started writing herself”, Mr Tuniak told me. “Both fiction, like historical novels and non-fiction, like travel guides. Quite unusual guides too, they don't list facts, but tell stories and legends... Anyway, her new work had the advantage that she could write wherever she wanted and didn't have to live at one particular place.”

As I had entered the office today, I had immediately seen that Mr Tuniak had put a box on his desk. It wasn't big or in any way impressive looking, but once I had seen it, I had wanted to know what was inside that box. Now, just as my curiosity threatened to get the better of me and moments before I could ask, Mr Tuniak opened the box. It contained several letters.

“We didn't travel around the world just for fun, of course, the children were supposed to learn something with every trip”, Mr Tuniak explained. “After we returned, we always asked them to write down what they had seen and experienced. But Carla did something else as well: Your remember Carla?”

“The daughter of Cate, right?”, I said. “We met her on Leviathan and she took us in that little submarine down to the Gemini station in the ocean.”

“Yes, that's her. She had the idea of writing letters about our trips”, Mr Tuniak said.

“To whom?”, I wanted to know. “Her parents?”

“No, her parents were visiting often and well informed about what she did”, Mr Tuniak said. “No, she was sending letters to randomly chosen people. She looked up names and addresses on the internet and wrote the people she found, people she didn't know and had never met in her life, her letters.” He put some of those letters on the table between us. “When I thought about it, I asked her to copy those letters. I thought they would be a nice reminder of all the things we did. Normally, they are kept on Leviathan.” He pushed the letters over to my side of the table. “I went there yesterday and brought some back. Do you want to read them?”

Of course I wanted to. Here are three excerpts:

We were visiting your city yesterday. Are the thunderstorms there always so loud? I reminded me of the time we were in Catacumbo. Have you heard of it? It's in Venezuela. In South America. There is a thunderstorm that has existed for several centuries. The only time that it stopped was about a hundred years ago and even then only for about three weeks. And then it started again and hasn't stopped yet.

Yesterday, I felt as if I was back there.

We came to your city and went to the place where all the old factories are. At school we learned how animals and plants adapt to fit their environment. Last week we saw a moth that had changed the colour of its wings to resemble ash instead of the bark of trees. That way it's more difficult for birds to see them in polluted areas.

Today we saw that plants can take waste products and make something useful out of them. We went to a metal factory that for a long time didn't properly clean its waste water. Because of that, metals contaminated the ground. A lot of people had to leave their homes. But you probably know that.

Most plants, because they could not leave, died, but there are a few trees that survived. We drove to those trees during the thunderstorm. We wanted to observe them. Of course, we stayed in the car, it would have been too dangerous outside. We watched as lightning hit the trees several times. By the way, did you know that most lightning stays in the clouds and only a small part of it hits the ground?

The lightning strikes hit the trees, but the trees did not splinter, burst apart or start to burn. We waited until the thunderstorm was over and then went over to the trees. The bark of those trees is not brown, but there are very thin silver and grey lines running from top to bottom. They are metal lines, made using the metal in the ground. The trees took that metal and used it to make lightning rods along their trunks. If lightning strikes them they can harmlessly channel the whole energy into the ground. The trees only get a little bit singed.

You definitely have to take a look at those trees as well.

Have you ever worn protective clothing?

We had to do that today during our field trip. The things we wore were big and looked a bit like the suits astronauts wear. We had to walk very carefully and very slowly, because they were heavy and they were also covering our heads. We only had a small window to look through.

We needed those suits because we very going to a very dangerous lake. The lake is called Laguna Caliente. There's no normal water there, the water is like acid! There are no fish or other animals that can live in that lake. And it's right on top of a volcano. Sometimes the lake is spitting its water into the air where it becomes a dangerous fog. The lake is in the middle of a rain forest, but all around it there is only stone. That's because the acid fog has killed all the plant life. If you stay there for only a very short time, you don't need protective clothing. But we had wanted to stay there for several hours.

We were told about the lake by a man who lives in a city near by. I can't remember his name, because when he introduced himself, I was distracted by his finger nails. No two of them were the same length. I asked our teacher to ask the man why. The man said that his fingers were tools and if his nails were all the same length, then he would have ten identical tools. And he didn't need ten of one kind, so he cuts them different lengths.

The man also told us that the lake can change its colour. That's why we stayed there for so long. We wanted to see if that was really true. When we first saw it, the lake was green and blue. Like a normal lake. We waited. We waited several hours, before we saw that the water was slowly changing its colour. It got more and more grey. It even started to bubble.

When our teacher saw that, he said that we had to go. The bubbling meant that the lake would shortly be spitting its water into the air again. And it can spit very high, nearly a kilometre. We didn't want to stay for that.

I want to tell you something that may sound like a joke:

In Australia there is a boat race that takes place in a river. It's a big event and lots of tourist come to see it every year. But one year, the race had to be called off. “Why is there no race this year?”, a tourist asked the mayor. The mayor replied: “Because there is water in the river.”

That's not a joke. That really happened about ten years ago in Alice Springs. That's in Australia. One of my fellow pupils suggested that we visit the race this year.

It takes place in the dried up river channel of the Todd River. And it is important that there is no water in the river. At the “banks” signs are put up. They say “Don't Angle Here” and similar things. There are lifeguards and live buoys. It's like a real boat race, just without the water.

Everyone can join in the race, if he has a boat. You can built the boat whichever way you like to. It should be light enough, so that you can carry it through the river channel. All the boats are carried. That's why none of them have any bottom. But some people don't come with boats. I have seen a man who joined in the race with his modified bath tub.

During the race, you can attack your competitors. You mustn't hit them with your fist or and hard object, but you can use water pistols and water balloons. Some of the boat crews are very good at it and they call themselves “Vikings” and “Pirates”. But some are not so good and miss their targets. We were standing right at the “banks” to get a good view at the race. We were hit by two water balloons there. But fortunately, it was very hot and our clothes got dry very quickly again, although mine took the longest.

“I wish our school had done field trips like that”, I said and gave Mr Tuniak back the letters. “You must have been a very popular teacher, I'm sure.”

“Most of the time”, Mr Tuniak said.

“The pupil who wanted to visit this race... was it Ethan?”, I asked.

“Yes. He was born in Alice Springs and therefore knew the race very well. Although I should have noticed that during all our travels, he never seemed to pay that much attention to the places we visited, but a lot more to the time machine itself. But such things really only ever become clear in hindsight.”

NEXT WEEK

There must have been a moment, at the beginning, were we could have said -- no. But somehow we missed it.