Astronauts of Agādha

Time swiping

Laura watched his steps until he disappeared from view. She then checked the GPS. Dr. Donne was already driving down the National Highway 30 and would be upon her soon. Once he arrived, she would be too busy to finish what she had come all this way to do.

Putting the camera aside again, she rested the palm of her hands against one of the walls and welcomed the coolness of the bare rock.

It was easy to understand what drove the humans of the Upper Paleolithic to seek shelter in such sites. Beyond the obvious advantage against the cold nights and the wild animals that roamed the land, all caves had a mystic quality to them, a hint of the unknown. They all felt like open invitations.

She accepted this particular invitation and tuned her senses to the place, probing every inch of it for visions of a remote past, focusing at first on the odors around her. The shelter exhaled petrichor; the fresh, earthy scent of rain penetrating dry soil. 

Darkness engulfed her. 

It was night-time and the river was everywhere. The subtle scent of petrichor replaced by a suffocating smell of humidity and mold. The cave was flooded, and it was raining outside. Pouring, actually.  

She peeked at the stone walls. The drawings were there.  

Then the scene shifted. It was the daytime again. She found herself witnessing a group of villagers quarreling in the same spot where Elias saw the astronauts for the first time. She could not make out what they were arguing about, but suddenly there was an outbreak of violence. One of the men attacked the others with a small dagger he had hidden up his sleeve. He caused some damage in the man to his right, who was taken aback by the blow. But the group soon reassembled, pinning the attacker to the ground, using his own weapon against him.

Then it all turned white, and when her eyes focused again, the world outside had metamorphosed into a frozen savanna. There was no river, only a snow-covered plain that stretched for miles with almost no vegetation. Inside, the stones seemed larger and darker, more menacing. It felt as if she were inside of a church, a sullen, unfriendly Stone Age church. Quite distinct from the place she had been photographing minutes before, with Elias by her side. 

Thinking about her nephew almost nudged her back to the present, but she managed to hold on to the scenes that were transitioning more rapidly now.  

She swiped time further back the same way you would swipe your finger across the touchscreen of your smartphone. Only she didn't need to use her finger.

When she thought she had gone far enough, she stopped and blinked, and when her eyes focused there was someone in the rock shelter with her. A man. His statuesque, dark-skinned presence registered in her peripheral vision. He was standing still, staring motionless at the cloud-covered greyish sky outside. 

The paintings weren't there anymore. Weren't there yet, she corrected herself.

There was no way of telling what point in the past she had swept herself off to; it could be anywhere in the Pleistocene. And yet, the anonymous figure by her side was not in harmony with her reading. He looked much more like a modern-day Dinka cattle herder than with a pre-historic hominid.

The Dinka man turned around and stepped forward, facing one of the walls, right in the spot where some villagers, probably drunk, would fight to death someday. Then he leaned his head on the rock and started chanting. One or two tears dropped from his eyes and landed on the humid floor with a silent thud. 

A profound sadness for the stranger washed over her, and she felt the urge to cry as the wordless hymn coming out of his lips picked up a faster pace.  

Unthinkingly, she walked up to him. He was breathing more raggedly now. 

She raised her hand and touched his right shoulder.

He turned to her instantly, responding to a stimulus she knew he should not have felt. She was not real to his present time, just a projection. And yet, there he was, watching wide-eyed her image disappear in a haze of white noise.

"Laura?" a croaky voice called her name. She recognized Dr. Donne.

"Where are we?" 

"You tell me. You've been here all day. I've just arrived."

"The man..." she let her voice die before completing the sentence, not knowing how to convey what she had just witnessed. 

"What man?"

A puzzled look altered her normally relaxed expression as she fought to regain her grasp of reality.  

"Laura, you came here to investigate the petroglyphs, remember?"

"Yes..." she whispered as if short of breath. 

"Are you all right? What happened?"

Instead of answering, she held the nape of her neck with both hands, massaging it with gentle pressure and kneading movements. Her voluminous dark brown hair was held into a bun, with a few disobeying strands glued to her skin by the sweat. Her petite, slender figure at odds with the plus-sized, masculine clothing she favored.

"Where is El?" she inquired as soon as she snapped her mind back into the present.

"With you, I suppose."

"He was here. But I told him to go find more of these," she pointed to the wall with the humanoid astronauts, mirroring her nephew's gesture from earlier.

"This is astounding," he said, having a closer look. "Did you have a chance to study it? Is it genuine... do you think?"

"I've gotta find El."

"I'll be here if you need me..." he said, cleaning the lens of his glasses with an old handkerchief embroidered with his initials.