Nur wer die Vergangenheit kennt, hat eine Zukunft.

(Only those who know their past, have a future.)

- Wilhelm von Humboldt

Mr Tuniak and I were meeting at the parking space behind the office building today. As he had promised last week, he was going to show me today, what he had shown Cailinn a long time ago.

“Do you know what a beyul is?”, Mr Tuniak asked, when we were in the car.

“That's what they are calling swamps in the south of the United States, isn't it?”, I asked.

“No, you are thinking of bayous”, Mr Tuniak corrected me. “Beyul comes from Buddhistic believes. It is the name for hidden valleys, where wise men could find refuge and where all of their knowledge was stored. You can think of it as a version of Noah's ark. While outside the valley the world could go to hell, inside everything survives and can therefore lead to a new beginning, a new world.”

“And we are going to such a valley?”, I asked.

“Not quite. But I wanted to tell you this, so that you know why we called the place that.”

He continued his description of a beyul as a prospering and green valley, full of life and plants and...

...and pretty much the exact opposite of the place where we landed.

When the time machine had come to a stop, I was expecting to find myself surrounded by mountains, maybe even seeing the Himalayas. But instead dry and hot air was blowing in through the open door. We exited the time machine and I saw that we had landed in the desert.

“When you were talking about this valley, I was expecting something quite different”, I said.

“Well, there has been quite a jungle here in the past”, Mr Tuniak said. “But there are several reasons, why we decided to built the beyul here.”

“Because of the cheap energy?”

The time machine had landed close to a huge warehouse, huge like a aeroplane hangar. All around us were rows upon rows of of solar panels, which were connected through cables with this hangar.

“Yes, that is one of the reasons”, Mr Tuniak said. “We are producing enough energy here to supply a big city. The second reason is that this land here didn't cost us anything.”

“It was free?”, I wondered. “Did a state give it to you?”

“No, we are outside any state. We are between Egypt and Sudan. Egypt is north of here, that way, Sudan south.”

“How can we be between these two countries?”, I asked. “If I'm remembering correctly, they share a border.”

“Don't ask me”, Mr Tuniak said. “For some reason neither of these two states wants to own this land... this piece of desert. That's why Gemini started building the beyul here and since we started no one has come and complained.”

We were walking towards the warehouse. Its walls were painted with images of a green valley. Someone obviously had a sense of humour.

“One other thing I should mention”, Mr Tuniak continued before we entered. “From your point of view, we have travelled several years into the future. In your time this whole complex is still under construction and far from being finished... in a way it still isn't. And don't be surprised, if we don't meet any people inside. Today is a holiday.”

The warehouse, despite its size, was only the tip of the proverbial iceberg. The real complex was underground. The warehouse was just like a hat that protected the head from the storm and the weather. It was a reception area from which countless stairs, ramps and lifts led downwards. We took one of the lifts. At the back of it a touchscreen was showing the plans for the whole beyul and I tried to get a general impression of it. But it was too big to really grasp in that short amount of time. When we got out of the lift, the only thing I knew for sure was that we were somewhere deep underground.

“Once the construction is completely and definitely finished, the lifts will be turned off and their shafts will be blocked and sealed”, Mr Tuniak said. “The only way to get down will be the ramps then.”

“Why?”

“So that we can... control who gets down and how far”, Mr Tuniak explained. “You will understand it, when I show it to you.”

Getting out of the lift, I had the feeling of entering a workshop of the ancient world. It was like a gigantic museum, although the exhibits were not protected by glass. You could touch and use everything. Next to every single one the those primitive machines – and even next to some tools – were paintings explaining their use in simple terms. There was also a protected area, where scrolls (not made out of paper or papyrus, but some kind of new material, that hasn't been invented yet) were stored.

“You have probably read The Odyssey, haven't you?”, Mr Tuniak asked, as we were standing in front of all these scrolls.

“Yes, and also an account of the siege of Troy”, I answered. “And I think we read one or two other ancient plays as well at school.”

“But only a very small percentage of all the works written back then survived until your time”, Mr Tuniak said. “Here, we have really collected everything. I brought students into the past to watch these plays and write them down afterwards. Over there you can see some paintings we made of those old productions.”

I could have spent days in those rooms, looking at everything I could and still would not have seen everything. But we had to continue. There were even more things to see.

Mr Tuniak guided me to a hidden ramp that led further into the deep. As we were walking on it, he pionted out the steel doors in the walls which would someday block this way.

“Once we are finished, there will be no short cut down from the top to the bottom”, Mr Tuniak said. “You will have to pass through all storeys and the connecting corridors, like this ramp here, will be hidden and blocked. There will be riddles at each level and to pass on to the next, you will have to solve these riddles first.”

“Like in a computer game?”, I asked.

“If you want to put it like that, but there is a reason for this”, Mr Tuniak said. “Imagine that in the far future, mankind, for whatever reason, will fall back into the Stone Age. All our knowledge will be lost.”

“Is that going to happen?”, I wanted to know.

“Not as far as I know”, Mr Tuniak replied. “But the future is vast and I don't know what will happen in a million years. So imagine these new Stone Age humans discover our beyul here. Suddenly they would have access to all these modern technologies.”

“It would be as if you were travelling into the past and giving the people then modern technology”, I said. “You would influence the course of history.”

“And we would hand these discoverers a great deal of power”, Mr Tuniak said. “We don't want to do that. That's why every level is... guarded by a riddle. To solve these riddles, you will need a certain technical knowledge. It means that you can only access an area, once you have already discovered the hidden knowledge on your own. We don't want to influence the future here, we just want to make sure that the past is not forgotten.”

We passed quickly through the next level – I guess that the technology on display would fit at the beginning of the middle ages – and entered another lift. When we got out again, we were sometime in the nineteenth century. If we had walked all the way, it would have taken us several hours and I didn't even want to imagine how many metres (probably even kilometres) and tons of rock were above our heads.

“This is one of my favourite treasures”, Mr Tuniak said. He led me to several shelves were disc records were stored. Record players were standing in front of it.

“What kind of music are you collecting here?”, I wanted to know.

“Everything and anything we can find”, Mr Tuniak said.

“And why aren't you using CDs or store them on computer files?”

“Because they work better for our purposes”, Mr Tuniak explained. “If you store something on a computer file, you also have to provide a computer. They wouldn't fit into the time frame here and they would be just another thing that could get damaged. And speaking of digital storage in general: There's always the risk that they won't be able to read those files in the future.”

“I see you have other disks over there”, I said. “Why are they separate?”

“Because they are not songs, but languages”, Mr Tuniak said. “We have got dictionaries and sound samples over there.”

“And why have these shelves the image of a parrot carved into them?”

“Oh, that's an old story”, Mr Tuniak said. “When Alexander von Humbold came to South America, he discovered a parrot who was speaking an extinct language. Every human, who had spoken that languages, had already died, but the parrot still remembered it.”

“Speaking of languages... I see that all the inscriptions here are written in English”, I said. “Will they be able to understand that in the far future?”

“There is an explanation and dictionary several levels above us”, Mr Tuniak said. “But you are right that without those, people in the future would have a very difficult time understanding anything we have written here.”

Even further down...

I can't recount here everything Mr Tuniak showed me. When I came home afterwards, I felt as if I had spent several days walking through those corridors (and since the time machine returned us five minutes after we had departed, theoretically it would have been possible).

We came to a database, where the genetic codes of all animals and plants that ever lived were stored. There was also a big safe, which was connected to a cooling unit.

“What have you stored in there?”, I asked. “Cells?”

“We have thought about that and maybe we are still going to do it one day, but that's not in there”, Mr Tuniak said. “In there is primordial slime.” When he saw that I didn't get the significance of what he had said, he added: “It's the stuff that life originated in.”

“Do you mean... Is it possible to create new life with it?”, I asked.

“Maybe”, Mr Tuniak said. “It wasn't my idea and I am not convinced that it would actually work but... yeah.”

In some strange kind of way I felt reassured. No matter what would happen on the surface of the planet, down here the possibility of new life would exist. This beyul was the world – and its history – in miniaturised form. This here was the legacy of Mr Tuniak and his mothers: A memory of a world.

NEXT WEEK

And now I think I am quite ready to go on another journey.