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“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 cafе. 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 Ch?telet le Alle station. There she found Cafе 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.
“If we’re at a blind alley, I have to tell Dr Lamichen,” Tulu-Manchi said.
“Maybe I should call my boss first?” doubtfully, Yulia said.
“Yes, you can call him. On that computer,” Dr Capri pointed to the old white computer in the corner, “there is the Internet. Meanwhile, I’ll go downstairs.”
Yulia was left alone and felt despair creep in. “What the hell is going on here?” she thought. She copied the data onto a flash drive. Mozart’s “Magic Flute. Aria of the Queen of the Night” played on the speakers. Yulia didn’t like the pressure of this music. She turned down the volume and went to the computer on the opposite wall. There Yulia launched Skype and typed in her boss’s username.
“Hello,” said Yulia’s boss, “how’s work going?”
“Mikhail Nikolaevich, we installed the system, but we are getting strange data. Can I send you the information, so you can check?”
“Tell me in words what happened,” Mikhail asked doubtfully.
“Well, to make a long story short, after the installation the system went crazy. It found an anomaly, not a space anomaly, but here, on the ground. The source is somewhere in the mountains. The system shows a large emission of energy and electromagnetic radiation.”
“So…”
“I decoded the signal. It was an audio signal on a long-range frequency. The signal…” Yulia turned to her laptop and heard faint sounds of music, “the signal is a ‘golden record’ from Voyager. Remember, music, greetings, sounds of Earth?” she became confused.
Mikhail Nikolayevich’s face changed. It was apparent, even with the poor Internet bandwidth and the low quality of the picture, that he did not know how to respond. He was still waiting for Yulia to continue.
“It’s kind of weird,” Mikhail said, singing the words a little bit.
“I checked everything, the system works properly. It’s not the settings. The system must have reacted to the frequency of the signal.”
She knew that none of the Roscosmos executives don’t like it when employees can’t make assumptions on their own to solve a problem. And emergency situations were not something Mikhail Nikolayevich liked.
“All right, Yulia, send us all the data, we’ll check it now.”
“I already did.”
Mikhail Nikolaevich checked the mail, saw the letter from Yulia, clicked the ‘forward’ icon, typed a few words and sent the letter.
“Stay by the computer, I’ll call you back,” said the boss goodbye.
Yulia, disconnected. She sat by the computer, trying to figure out how disappointed the boss was, until scraps of the sounds of the ill-fated recording reached her. “It’s a bug, and I can’t explain it,” Yulia thought.
Dr Capri and Dr Lamichen came up to the room. Tulu-Manchi was explaining the situation to him in Nepali. Giyanu Lamichen quietly listened to his colleague’s story and nodded approvingly. Nothing seemed to bother him. Yulia could only understand words like ‘Voyager’ and ‘Bach’ in the doctor’s words.
“Right,” Dr Lamichen said in English. “Yulia, you need to look into the causes of this mistake. It is very important for us. Please start over. I’ll call the workers, and you can reinstall the whole system.”
“But…” Yulia began, “it’s not about the installation. It’s about the signal. Either it’s some kind of experiment by the Chinese, or it’s a reflection of the satellite signal,” she couldn’t believe what she was saying, but she continued on. “I informed my supervisor, and he is checking the signal now. He’ll check with the Chinese if he needs to.”
“Then continue,” Dr Lamichen said in English, looking at Tulu-Manchi.
Dr Capri nodded back at him, and Dr Lamichen left the room.
“What does your boss say?” Tulu-Manchi asked Yulia.
“He said he would call back when he checked the signal.”
“Yulia, what else do we know about this signal?” taking a seat next to him, Dr Capri asked.
“Well, let’s start from the beginning,” Yulia sighed heavily. “First of all, it’s on the frequency we use to transmit the signal from spacecraft to Earth. Second, along with the information signal, a powerful magnetic pulse emanates from the same place. The signal is very clear and stable. This does not happen when we are talking about a signal from space.”
“Okay,” assessing Yulia’s words, the doctor said. “What do we know about the information in this signal?” he asked the question and started answering it himself. “This is the recording that was on Voyager. We were able to get the audio signal, but you say that there are pictures and something else.”
“Yes,” Yulia confirmed, “I think in an hour we’ll be able to find out all the exact information when my boss checks the signal through the Roscosmos channels.”
“Let’s check the exact coordinates for now and try to find the nearest village or town on the map,” suggested Dr Capri.
Together they went to the old stationary computer. Yulia saw that there was a Skype message from her boss, “Call you back in a minute.”
She sat down beside the computer. Dr Capri looked at her carefully and asked:
“Bad news?”
“No,” Yulia shook her head, “he said he would call back in a minute. But for some reason, I am not happy.”
A message popped up on the screen indicating an incoming call. Yulia answered and moved closer to the monitor.
“Yulia,” Mikhail said sharply, barely appearing on the screen.
