Amelie

A face so beautiful that only time could defeat it. I saw her for the last time falling in the horizon. The clock ticked slowly. I wish I could turn back the clock and bring the wheels of time to stop.

Dreams. They are seas of creativity. Dive deeper. Daytime preoccupations disappear, thoughts change. Jump away from chaos into stillness. A realm where the air of skepticism is undermined by the mélange of Earth and Water. Dive deeper, dive into the world of tranquility and mysticism. I woke up looking at the Sun through the window. ” Do we chase ourselves in time?”, I asked her. She glided towards me and stroked my hair. “You are too melancholic when you wake up! Just look at the magnificent sun and stop worrying about chasing time.” I kept looking at this spectacular source of light and held her soft hands.

I picked up my toothbrush and went to clean myself. I could hear Mikhail exercising. “Morning, slow head! You missed the big thing yesterday. I got to tell you it got quite dark and gloomy out here.” Yawning, I asked, ” So did you have your lens ready for the eclipse?” Mikhail was always the one ready with his camera for these celestial events. I was having a headache which was becoming a regularity these days. I looked at the hygiene kit and wondered about this caboodle. This strange camaraderie amongst eccentricity. I was waiting tables in Mussoorie a long time back. The smell of soap, the smell of water and the laxity of foam. The discord among the dishes, the clatter of spoons and forks and the intermediate censure from the superiors. Trapped in that soap bubble of the kitchen opera, I could hear it ticking. Reticence. 

I checked into the logs and kept saying “Loud and clear.” This was my daily ritual. It would get very prosaic and calm sometimes. All I could hear would be the air locks operating, the occasional beeps on the control panel and mechanical noise of the pumps and fans. To break this tedium, I would perform my daily ritual. I called out, “Amelie! Mikhail! Erik! I think we might have miscalculated our course. Erik, the cleverest amongst us came first towards me. “What happened?”, he shouted.

‘We were supposed to reach Saturn after 15 days, not after 3 bloody days. This isn’t right. We shouldn’t reach this early.’ He started checking his calculations hastily while the others examined the shuttle systems. Amelie seemed the least worried and she was the first one to corroborate that our calculations were correct and this had to be some sort an anomaly. She was looking out from the window nervously, looking at the beautiful Saturn rings. She was twitching. Saturn rings, onion rings. Red layers, pink layers, white layers. D rings, C rings, B rings, A rings. The smell of onions. Racing through the icy topography, I found the shuttle. Maneuvering through the distinct odours of spices, somersaulting through layers of cheese and gravies, I found myself banging against metallic plates of dish cover. Suffocated and muted. 
‘We are so far away from home and all we stumble across is an anomaly. I see you are quite tensed with this situation. But don’t worry, Amelie. This is the final frontier.’ My words seemed to have little effect on her as she was lost in admiring Saturn and its rings. The people on the shuttle were left with a choice to make as the people on Earth had left it upon us. None of us wanted to go back after coming this far and certainly not waste time discussing about it. Impulsive, imperative and naive. So, we decided to traverse through this bridge connecting two different universes. I never really thought travel through these bridges would be possible and there I was standing at the doors of cosmic transcendence. I asked worryingly, ‘Is this travel safe? Wouldn’t we be crushed by gravity?’ Everyone looked at me disgruntled. Mikhail, looking to share his quantum knowledge with everyone at the first opportunity, jumped in quickly, ‘It is traversable if it’s throat is held open by some exotic matter.’ That answer raised more questions than it answered.
Wormhole, bridge, Einstein-Rosen Bridges. What were they? For me they weren’t some deep paradoxes, they were just outlands to me. I strapped myself tightly to the seat as the shuttle accelerated towards the wormhole. The lack of gravity and the shifting fluids made me nauseous so I had a piece of chocolate. Erik closed his eyes and prayed to God. The whole shuttle started vibrating as it neared the bridge. I clutched at my straps and saw outside. I could see blue strips of light. Small particles flying across the window. Small galaxies, spiral, elliptical, irregular. Constellations of stars were painted across my window. It seemed like the whole universe was just a canvas. Chaotic, uncharacteristic and yet precise in laws. Matter, small chunks of matter, large chunks of matter splashed on this page by the laws of nature.

Points in time. The dots of consequence connected by streaks of light. The source burns itself to emit light, to emit knowledge. The hot wax slowly rising through wick, drop by drop emanating exuberance. The light was blinding me and the hot wax charring me. I could see a young couple on the dinner table enjoying their candle light dinner. Asphyxiated, I cried out for help through the glass.

Was it different? Probably not, but certainly yes. I could see distant stars using up their hydrogen fuel and giving off light. Were these the stars that I had counted when I was small? Were these the stars whose light shined through my telescope and kindled my passion for cosmos? I unstrapped myself and tried freeing myself into the new gravitational world. Everyone was busy checking their data for any anomalies, Erik and Mikhail were checking the shuttle for any damage while Amelia was busy computing data for her experiment. Space travel surrounds you like a cocoon with its seclusion and withdrawal. I called out to my people, yes indeed they were my people despite our regional differences. Probably none of them heard my call. I was looking out for a Sun. I could see so many stars but none I could call as my Sun. So, I went to the chamber which held life. It had samples of a diverse range of plants and their seeds. I opened the chamber containing saplings. Green, brown and full of life. Maybe this new world of artificial air, vacuum packed food and Velcro straps was my sojourn now. Just as I was deeply contemplating, Amelia and Mikhail came towards me. Mikhail said, ‘Karan, we have a problem. Not a big one, but a problem indeed.’ I put the sapling inside and closed the chamber hastily. Amelia said with a lot of concern, ‘ The turbulence has caused our guidance systems to go haywire. We need to manoeuvre the shuttle manually and fix the solar panels too.’ I wouldn’t allow Amelie to go out on maintenance mission in a strange universe with no exposure the surroundings yet.

‘You should stay inside. I would go with Mikhail and fix those solar panels. It’s too dangerous out there yet and we don’t what’s coming our way. You are the life sciences expert, not a mechanic.’ She wasn’t happy with my angered words and I could feel a sense of discord. Mikhail and I started preparing for the space walk. She was my world and I couldn’t see her sad in any universe. I tried talking to her but she had locked herself in life sciences compartment. ‘ Amelie! I can’t let anything happen to you. You need to understand me.’ I saw him and I could feel so warm around him. He was playing a piano for the people at the dinner. It was his last day at work. I called him but he didn’t seem to hear me. Black and white. Hard and soft. He was playing his own composition. I went to the piano and put my hand on it. He didn’t budge. He closed his eyes and went on with his symphony. Was I a ghost? Or was chained by some invisible force? I could make minor alterations in the sound of the keys. The restaurant. It was the only place I could call home in this unfamiliar, irregular and threatening world. 

While I and Mikhail were fixing the solar panels, we heard the airlock getting opened. I was tethered to the shuttle while Mikhail was welding the broken panel. Amelie was in her spacesuit and she had the pressurized sapling canister with her. I chided, ‘Why are you out Amelie? And why are you carrying the canister?’ I couldn’t understand how did Erik all her to leave the shuttle. Erik wasn’t answering on my wavelength. I cried out, ‘Erik, Erik, Amelie! Stop! What are you doing?’ I tried untethering myself but couldn’t unlock it. I couldn’t apply more force to open myself up.

I was found in a basket flowing down Tons river in Mussoorie. We are fugitives of time. Trapped by its perpetual forward motion, shackled by its romance. I was without a name, without a lineage and without time. I never felt the clock ticking. Never felt the rush to race against time. I was a home and more importantly an identity by him. Mr. Enrico Durand, the only person in the world to give me a sense of time. He used to play piano in a restaurant, my small universe among chefs, waiters, customers and a bouquet of aroma and spices. Here I am, trapped in a world with dimensions out of my cognizance. I feel the walls closing on me. I can feel the gravity pulling strings over time. I can only see the restaurant. I tried to escape from this universe and somehow, I end up back in my restaurant. I can’t interact with them yet. Sometimes, it’s the sink, sometimes its cake, sometimes it’s the candle, sometimes it’s with Mr. Durand but always in the restaurant. It’s a small world seeing through the holes of sink, peeping through the bubbles of water and foam. The canister I am trapped in, is a different world with different laws of physics, different ways of attraction, different apprehensions of time and different obstacles. I am just lying awake and dreaming of making my escape. 

 

She left us and I couldn’t do anything. The universe took her away from me. I always felt sick going to space but now I am home. This rocky barren planet, XR-156, that is my adopted home. When you return home, your inner ear, which keeps you balanced on Earth and which was essentially switched turned off during the voyage, feels that sudden jolt of gravity and becomes unbelieving sensitive. I started learning how to move in a gravity field. I would fall when I turned my head. I miss you Amelie. My muscles may be weakened, my impulses might have gotten slower and my bones thinner but not my spirit.

We all are fugitives of time. I see you and think of cosmic dust. You are the feeling which pulls me away from falling into time. You are slight perturbation that a heart requires. You are the entropy that my time needs. You are the sensation that a heart feels. I know I am approaching the greatest of beauties.