Unforgettable journey to other planets

Spencer tried to explain to his son about the dangers of travel and Indian transport, but when he saw that the ticket had been bought, he simply took out his backpack, which was already covered with dust, and began to dump all the necessary things into it. Joan made a list of things to buy, and Spencer took the day off work to go shopping together. The list was huge, but Spencer circled a few things, emphasizing their importance. Thermal underwear, tent, sleeping bag, water filter…

“Promise me you won’t climb the mountain itself,” Spencer said desperately, right in the middle of the store the day before David left.

“Dad, I just want to see that mountain,” David replied calmly.

Joan stroked Spencer on the back and kept saying “Like father, like son”.

It seemed to David that from that conversation at dinner with his father, to this moment, as he sat here in the plane that would take him to Bagdogra, only a second had passed. And that whole second, from the beginning to this very moment, he was smiling. Smiling at himself and everything that was going on around him.

A voice on the speakerphone said “Dear ladies and gentlemen, please fasten your seat belts…” David closed his eyes and drifted off to sleep.

“Step first, then destination,” Joan’s advice rolled around in his head.

Part 1 – Chapter 7

Jean-Pierre woke up at 4 a.m. There was no need to get up, but he could not bring himself to sleep any further. He got up, took a shower, and went for a run around the 20th arrondissement. He walked out of the house where he and his wife had rented an apartment and felt the cold air begin to tingle his face. He thought of Audrey. She, like Jean-Pierre, was from Rouen, but they had moved to Paris for work. She did not like Paris, but she liked how happy her husband was when he left for work in the morning and how tiredly satisfied he was in the evening. Audrey felt impenetrable protection and confidence around Jean-Pierre, and she didn’t care what city they lived in.

Jean-Pierre looked at the entrance to the Porte de Bagnolet subway, straightened his back, and ran in the direction of Édouard Vaillant Square. It had been a long time since he had run in the morning and he felt annoyed about it. Although Audrey never joined him on the run, it was as if Jean-Pierre had been with her that time. He liked to dream of them going to the south or just having a free night and he would take her to a restaurant. But right now Jean-Pierre couldn’t let go of thoughts of work.

“What was the meeting that made the patron cancel his visit to Tokyo? So, I know he got a message from the European Space Agency, about an urgent meeting. He called right after it. How did he sound? Calm, as always. But he apologized for keeping me busy. That doesn’t sound like him. He was always very kind to me, but he never apologized. How strange. Does apologizing mean he thinks he’s to blame?”

Jean-Pierre ran into the park and felt the smell change. The air was cooler and more humid. There were no people, only the occasional car tangentially hitting the park grounds. The pleasant noise of the sneakers’ soles against the embankment on the pathway sounded like a most inspiring soundtrack. Jean-Pierre continued to ponder:

“I see three possibilities. One, the patron just decided to take a break from the crazy pace; he recently turned 58. He’s much more tired than I am. That’s a good option, but it’s not about him at all. The second option, he knows something about this conference that I don’t. Either it’s not important at all, or it’s just idle talk. But we’ve been preparing so much, haven’t we? Maybe he wants to test me. My knowledge and confidence. Maybe I’m up for a promotion. Stop.”

Jean-Pierre turned quickly onto a side track to change course of thought.

“This is all nonsense. There was a meeting at the ESA where the Minister of Security was. It was called without warning. Why the space agency? I don’t remember any urgent or important space projects.”

The coolness of the morning and the silence penetrated between the wet strands of Jean-Pierre’s hair. He could feel the sweat droplets running between the hair on his temples. With each step, with each touch of his sneakers on the ground, fatigue and heaviness fell from Jean-Pierre’s shoulders. He felt his muscles rejoice and it communicated to his thoughts. He suddenly felt that he really wanted to do something nice for Audrey, for the boss, for his mother, and for all people in the world.

“Gotta do the order in the best way,” Jean-Pierre thought, speeding up.

Part 1 – Chapter 8

Dr Capri shouted something to the worker in Nepali. Yulia watched carefully. The worker turned the antenna a millimeter to the left and looked at the doctor.

“No,” Yulia shook her hands, “let him check the wire to the antenna, there is no signal from it, and turn the repeater to the left, it is crookedly attached.”

“Okay, Yulia,” said the doctor calmly, “I think that after this antenna we should take a break. Maybe you should see Kathmandu.”

“Dr Capri, the system doesn’t work, and I have tickets to Moscow the day after tomorrow,” said Yulia tiredly and frustrated.

“It seems to me, Yulia, that you and I should go…” Dr Capri turned his eyes to the screen and forgot what he wanted to say next.

The indicators began to change on the laptop screen. The graph of the received signal twitched upward. The program showed that the observatory was receiving all kinds of signals – electromagnetic, audio. Yulia turned quickly to the display.

“What a nonsense is that?” Yulia said incredulously.

She looked outside and saw that the worker was smiling at her with a wide smile. He shouted something from the stepladder, but she didn’t understand.

“He says the wire from the antenna was not fully inserted,” Dr Capri explained. “Did it work?”

“I don’t know,” Yulia said embarrassedly, turning to her laptop, “that’s not the signal we’re supposed to get.”

“And what is it?” the doctor was surprised, sitting down on the chair next to Yulia.

“We should get the usual background space noise, equalize its density and set zero coordinates, so that the system understands where the reference point is. The system checks the field for anomalies and if such anomalies are detected, points the telescope there and takes a picture of that area,” Yulia said, typing something on the keyboard.

“So,” forcing her to continue, Dr Capri stretched out.

“The antennas and repeaters are working. That’s the fact. But they’re finding a recurring anomaly, the telescope can’t get a focus there,” Yulia pointed to the recurring ‘impossible coordinates’ message.

“What kind of anomaly do the system see? Perhaps they caught some radio wave or TV signal?” the doctor suggested.

“Looks like it,” said Yulia, trying to control the program.

Dr Capri stood up and stretched, dispersing tiredness and sleepiness. He realized that if they had received a signal, even though it was wrong, then the technique was working and now they just needed to adjust it. He wanted to suggest that Yulia go downstairs for half an hour for some tea and then take care of the technical issues afterwards.

“Yulia,” he turned to her, but met her concerned look. “What’s wrong?” with a sharp change in tone, the doctor asked.

“It’s a cosmic signal and strong electromagnetic radiation,” Yulia looked into the space in front of her, “I’m a hundred percent sure of it. But the signal is too distinct. There’s sound and everything else,” she turned to the computer again and started typing something.

“Wait a minute, Yulia,” Dr Capri said, hoping she was just tired, “how can we tell what kind of signal we’re picking up?”

“Now I’m going to try to get that signal and convert it to audio. Damn it!” she yelled.

“What?” the doctor tensed up.

“The program is looking for the signal over and over again, trying to point the telescope there. It’s recording in half-second bursts. I could…” she hesitated, biting her lower lip, “tell the program that the telescope is pointed at the object. Please, disconnect the telescope wire from the control box,” she tossed to the doctor.

Dr Capri, justifying the meaning of his name, which can be translated as ‘mighty man’, immediately ripped one of the wire from the box. Yulia began typing the coordinates into the command line. She copied the data from another window and let the program know that the telescope was already manually pointed to the correct coordinates. The error message stopped appearing on the display. Everything looked calm. Yulia began to receive a steady and clear signal. All devices showed bursts of energy. The electromagnetic spectra were off the charts. She tried to extract the audio signal from the pile of data the system was showing and picking up.

“It seems to be working. The signal is strong, it’s at 8450 MHz. It’s the frequency used to transmit data from spacecraft to Earth. But if the signal is from…” Yulia shook her head to get the interfering thought out of her head. “The telescope can’t aim at the object because the object is on Earth.”

“Can we locate the source of the signal?” Dr Capri asked.

“Yes,” she pointed to the display. “Okay, let’s put this as the zero point. Here,” Yulia pointed at the numbers.

Dr Capri wrote down the coordinates ‘27°41'53.0"N 88°08'15.4"E’ with a pencil on a sheet in his notebook and went to the computer at the other end of the room. He quickly entered the data into the search query and saw the name of one of the largest mountains in the world, Kanchenjunga.

“Yulia, I checked the coordinates,” the doctor began to speak loudly from his desk, “it is the northeastern border of Nepal, the Kanchenjunga mountain.”

Yulia was sitting at the table, her left ear placed over the small speaker of her laptop, she held her right hand outstretched upward, letting the doctor know to stop shouting. Dr Capri ran up to Yulia and lowered his head closer to the laptop, too. They tried to breathe quietly, but the sound was almost inaudible. Yulia tried to turn up the volume. It was the maximum, but apart from the hissing, only isolated almost elusive sounds came through.

Dr Capri ran to the second computer and unplugged the small speakers from it. Ten seconds later, Yulia hooked them up to the laptop and turned the volume to maximum.

The noise increased. Then the sound became some kind of gurgling and finally the room was filled with some rustling and thumping.

“Is that thunder?” Yulia whispered.

The sound began to change again. It was the sound of water. Dr Capri checked the speaker wire, hoping the hissing and rustling would disappear. But then they heard birds singing. Dr Capri sat down in the chair next to Yulia and listened to the sound of birds trilling first, then the growling of wild animals, and then the screams of chimpanzees coming from the speakers.

Yulia and Dr Capri’s faces frowned. The tension was going away and was replaced by frustration and even some embarrassment. Yulia lowered her eyes to the floor and thought to herself, “I caught the educational channel on several million worth of equipment.”

Sounds kept pouring out of the speakers: a phone call, a steamer horn, the sound of a train and some kind of tractor.

Yulia was afraid to raise her eyes to Dr Capri because she couldn’t explain why two days of tuning space gear had resulted in them simply catching a television or radio signal from some station.

At that moment, the cry of a newborn baby was heard. Dr Capri touched Yulia’s hand.

“It’s very strange sounds,” he said, as the crunch of snow beneath feet sounded in the background.

Classical music began to play. Something snapped in Yulia and Tulu-Manchi’s chest. Yulia’s breath hitched and she tried to catch her breath, but Dr Capri beat her to it.

“A golden record?!” he said to the accompaniment of Johann Sebastian Bach.

Part 1 – Chapter 9

Debby was very tired, waiting for her flight from New York to Paris. She arrived early, afraid she would be late. She was worried about leaving in the middle of the school year, about flying halfway around the world, about money and gifts, about her pupils. All at once about a lot of things. To fly spontaneously to Sango in Tokyo like that was not like Deborah Glandfield. Of course, it was fine for Sango to arrange a wedding so unexpectedly, but Debby didn’t like surprises.

Debby wasn’t a nerd, but she certainly wasn’t the kind of person who could decide to fly to the other side of the world in a week. She was a teacher, after all. Honestly, Debby was very fond of Sango and wanted to see her. She didn’t think about the fact that she’d spent half her savings on this trip. And that right now she just wanted to go to a normal bed and rest. She has the one closest friend she has, and she only lives on the other side of the world.

A flight to Paris was announced. Debby wandered tiredly toward the gate. In Paris, she would catch a connecting flight to Tokyo. She was only glad that there she could spend the day in the beautiful city she knew so much about, but had never been to. She loved French movies, music, and culture, though she had never met a native French person in her entire life.

“Plaid?” the stewardess offered, looking into Debby’s tired eyes with her tired eyes.

“Yes, thank you.”

She covered her head and fell asleep as the plane rolled in for takeoff.

It hadn’t been an easy flight. But Debby woke up rested and happy. She ate a bar of white chocolate she bought at the airport and asked her seatmate when the plane would be landing.

“Oh, yeah. About fifteen minutes ago they said we’d be arriving,” her companion said with obvious inspiration.

“Great,” Debby said at the same time as she flashed the signal to buckle her seat belts.

“Hmm. I’ve got a whole day ahead of me…the Louvre and a real French café. I think I’ve had enough of that. Let’s save the Eiffel Tower for the next visit,” anticipating the adventure, Debby thought.

Stepping off the plane at Charles de Gaulle airport, she dropped off her luggage in the luggage room and went straight to the RER-train going to the city center. Debby listened to French trills all around her the entire ride from the airport to the Châtelet le Alle station. There she found Café Grizzly and ate a variety of sweets until she felt dizzy. Afterwards, she walked to the Louvre. She looked at the tourists walking in the same direction and felt joy and unity with them. There were many people around: couples and families, companies and singles, all striving for the goal. Some of them were going there, driven by the irresistible fascination of the Mona Lisa, some wanted to feel the spirit of antiquity or walk through time, from the era of Ramses II to the modern glass and metal pyramids. Debby, on the other hand, didn’t want to look at anything in specific, but rather wanted to get a grip on the principle. It always amazed her that history, which is so uninteresting to most people as a science, is simultaneously so attractive in the world’s museums. People stand in lines and walk for hours at a time in various Louvre halls to immerse themselves in the past. Debby wanted all the kids she teaches history to be as interested in it as visitors of the Louvre. For her, history and art merged. Art drowned in history, and history manifested itself in art.

Debby walked through the first floor of the Louvre completely astounded by the number of people and the fact that everyone had multiple emotions and thoughts on their faces: some thoughtfully gazing into the paintings, some expressing excitement about an ancient vase.

As she walked up the stairs to the second floor, she was suddenly stunned. A marvelous sculpture appeared before her eyes – a woman’s headless body with wings behind her back. The marble tunic seemed to let the light shine through.

“Excuse me, could you…” came a man’s voice from behind.

The man tried to squeeze his way to the front, but was prevented by Debby, who had stopped in the middle of the staircase. She half turned toward him, awestruck by the magnificence. At that moment, the young man saw what had stopped Debby a moment before.

“Oh, my gosh,” he exclaimed, in typical American manner, and froze. “Who is she?”

“It’s the goddess of fortune, Nika,” Miss Glandfield answered with pleasure.

The young man shifted his gaze to his new teacher and smiled at her. He understood why this woman was standing in the middle of the stairs and not moving. Things got a little freer around him and the man spoke to Debby.

“You are American! That’s great. I’m Hank. I’m from Louisville.”

“Hi, there. I’m Debby. I’m from Stamford,” she held out her little hand to Hank.

He shook it and turned to the statue again.

“Nika of Sa-mo-thrace,” Hank read from a distance. “How beautiful she is. Do you know anything about her?”

“All I know is that Nika is the goddess of luck and victory in Ancient Greece.”

Hank nodded and said:

“So we’re in luck. Don’t you want to start anything, hmm?” thoughtfully asked Hank.

“Yes,” Debby answered, also thoughtfully, looking at the bare wall behind the statue.

“Debby,” Hank called out to her,” lucky to have met you,” he laughed, walking away up the stairs.

Debby smiled at him goodbye and moved closer to the statue. Her head involuntarily craned upward. She suddenly felt that she knew very little about who the goddess Nika was, and also how to live on this strange planet among all these people. An organized group was passing nearby. Debby heard the tour guide’s voice, who spoke in English:

“…You can see that it is in motion. It’s not an illusion. That’s what the sculptor wanted to show. Look at her leg, it’s like she’s striving forward…” the guide’s voice faded.

Part 1 – Chapter 10

David stepped over rocks and rhododendron bushes. He looked around and breathed in the clean, cool air of the Tibetan foothills. He thought of the adventures that had happened to him in the last few days.

He remembered sitting in the car with the group of alpinists who had dropped him off at the Mountain. David had met them in Kalimpong at Zengdogpalri Phodong Monastery. He wanted to see the ancient manuscripts brought here by the Dalai Lama. This ancient text is called the Ganjur and is considered an important Tibetan canon for Buddhists. David was curious to see the ancient manuscript, which was salvaged when Tibet was attacked by China. He really wanted to touch such a relic and feel the depth of these places.

A group of climbers were already at the monastery when David walked in. They told David that they would not be able to see Ganjur and suggested we go together for lunch. David happily agreed, because he had no idea what to do next to get closer to Kanchenjunga. Young boys from Germany and Poland told him they were also going to Kanchenjunga and wanted to conquer it. After talking for a while, they offered to help David.

“I don’t want to climb that mountain,” David finished his tea, “I just want to see it up close.”

“What a funny Englishman you are. You won’t even be able to see it on the horizon with your gear.”

“You’ll come with us,” decided the young German senior, named Tobias, “otherwise it will take you another six months to make the journey.”

“Yes,” his friends confirmed, “we have room in the cars.”

“Thank you, but I’d like to do it myself.”

“Look, David,” Tobi put his hand on his shoulder, “we’ll take you to the park, tell that you’re a member of our team, and then you can walk around the mountains all you want.”

“I think that’s good,” David agreed under Tobias’ pressure.

They took him with them and drove first to Yuxom, and then together they passed the cordon at the entrance to Kanchenjunga Park. Together they passed through several villages on their way to the Mountain. But David ended up saying goodbye to Tobi’s group when, after several cloudy days, he suddenly saw a huge thing in the distance, Mount Kanchenjunga itself.

“Tobi, guys, thank you very much,” David said goodbye to them.

“Hey, Englishman,” Jakob, Tobias’ friend, said in a chorus, “don’t turn into a bear or a monk here. And whatever you do, mark your position on the map, keep track of where you are and where the nearest villages are. Be careful!”

They gave him a map of the park and some hiking trivia.

“David, please be very careful,” said Tobi, raising his hand high in farewell.

So David said goodbye to civilization and went on his way. He looked at the mountain in the distance, which seemed to reach the very sky, and walked slowly among the amazingly beautiful bushes. The birds were singing at will in a variety of styles. David walked, circling the mountain, and tried to listen to himself. His mind flashed back to thoughts of his father and Joan, to anxiety about his future, to despair and doom at the thought that everything, absolutely everything that was or would be in his life, would one day be gone. He remembered the villagers of this harsh and beautiful land. They lived here as if centuries behind the rest of the world, but they were peaceful and relaxed. They were just as smiling here as they were in London, and probably unhappy about the same thing. David wondered if it was even possible to live happily in this time and on this Earth. What was it all for?

He set out on a journey full of danger, but ended up chatting with two Germans and three Poles almost as old as he was, and with more or less the same desires and doubts as he did.

“I never got to feel the spiritual power of India that everyone talks about. And now I’m walking alone in the middle of nowhere.”

David wanted to stop and make camp, even though he had only walked a few miles after saying goodbye to Tobias’ group. He chose a comfortable spot with a view of Kanchenjunga, got his things and a kettle. He warmed water for tea, pocketed some breadcrumbs, and lay down in his tent, opening it so that he could see the mountain. David tucked his backpack under his head and felt, to his surprise, as if all the energy had gone out of his body. He felt unimaginably sad and lonely. He felt his throat tighten and a river rise to the bridge of his nose. He jumped out of the tent and looked around. There was no one around.

Fear drove through him. Tears welled up from his eyes, and he collapsed to his knees. Then he crawled into the tent and in a few seconds fell asleep from exhaustion. Only in the evening, he awoke to the sound of the wind. In front of his temporary abode the mountain ranges stretched on all sides, and in the midst of them rose a mountain illuminated by the setting sun.

“Kan-chen-jun-ga,” David whispered, and sighed deeply as he covered himself with his sleeping bag.

Part 1 – Chapter 11

Yulia rubbed her temples in a circular motion, sitting next to Dr Capri. They couldn’t figure out what was going on, so they dropped their heads.

“Well,” the doctor raised his head, “we know for a fact that this is a Voyager recording. We heard some Senegalese and Japanese music. And greetings in different languages of the world.”

“Yes,” Yulia confirmed desperately and added again, “but I don’t understand why we caught this recording on the wave of space transmissions. I tell you, when NASA launched the Voyagers in ’77 to explore the solar system, they did have gold-plated records with music and pictures of the Earth on them, but they don’t play it. Voyagers don’t fly around in space with speakers and perform concerts for the stars. It’s just a piece of hardware.”

“Okay, Yulia. The message is indeed the same, the frequency corresponds to the transmission frequencies in space…”

“From the spacecraft to Earth,” Yulia added.

“Yes,” the doctor confirmed Yulia’s remark, “but we caught this message. The source is near Kanchenjunga. Maybe there was a mistake in the coordinates?”

Yulia rolled her eyes.

“There could be a mistake in the coordinates, or in the decoding, or even in the signals I’m receiving now. It could be a repeater error, or just a set of radio data, electromagnetic activity, etc. But that’s too much error for a system that just needs to be hung on the ceiling. And that!” she pointed to the old speakers, which were playing another batch of international hits.

Dr Capri stood up and stretched his shoulders. He looked at Yulia’s computer monitor, then out the window, then at the wires going into the control box. He yawned with fatigue and covered his mouth with his hand.