A Voyage in the Near Distance 1: From Here to Nearly There

by Alec Merta

  My smile broadened as I walked on. Ah, glorious solitude.

  For the next few hours, I paused periodically to collect data and make notes. I had covered most of my assigned ground during the previous few days, so really I was just dragging things out in order to have something of a miniature paid vacation. I will not say that I saved the EA-restricted area until last for this reason, but you can surmise what you wish.

  So it came then, that I stood alone in morning light on a mildly grand rise located deep within the Moors. For as much as I knew, I was the only person for several square miles; a not inconsiderable accomplishment in densely-populated England.

  Of course, I was not standing on that particular rise out of a sheer desire to soak up the scenery. I was there to do work, such as it was. Which is why I found it disconcerting to find myself engaged in something of a mystery.

  You see, reader, something was amiss. Before me lay a very large indentation in the earth. It was bowl-shaped and gave the impression of a moderately deep lake from which all the water had been sucked up with a giant drinking straw. In a sense, that was not far off from what had actually happened.

  The Hole of Hercum had once been a skinny valley of little topographical interest. In those days, it had flowed with melt water from a nearby glacier. Bear in mind, now, that I am talking about an era many thousands of years in the past. Since that time, a process called headward erosion had employed the flow of immeasurable amounts of water flowing across the valley to sculpt it into a pronounced hole nearly five hundred feet deep and close to a mile wide.

  I have to take a moment to point out that England is a land awash in names like ‘Hole of Hercum.’ That is interesting for two reasons. First, it is called a ‘hole.’ In other parts of the world, more splendiferous words like ‘canyon’ or ‘gorge’ would have been used. Even ‘pit’ has a slightly more sinister hint about it. In England, it is merely a hole.

  The second reason for comment is that the name ‘Hole of Hercum’ is unquestionably a little rude sounding. Bear in mind, however, that a surveyor in England is likely to come across far more rude-sounding names several times in a given week. For example (and I am not making any of these up), I have been to places with names like North Piddle, Pump Alley, and Turkey Cock Lane. As for which is my personal favorite, I have a hard time choosing between Sandy Balls and Scratchy Bottom. But then again, who doesn’t?

  Seriously, you can look all of this up.

  My, isn’t it fun to type the rude things your parents never let you say as a child? But, of course, I am digressing.

  The Hole was not exactly the feature I had become entranced by. Rather, it was one of the so-called cross dykes that lay within. A cross dyke is an impressive non-natural feature of the landscape. Imagine a long, man-made earthen mound that crosses a natural structure (like, say, the wall of a canyon or hole). They can be quite lengthy, with some extending well over a half a mile. Cross dykes vary in height, probably depending on the purpose for which they were built.

  Those purposes are the matter of some debate in various academic circles. While some cross dykes were inevitably created for defensive or military purposes, others may have been built as a sort of prehistoric highway system that allowed animals to be easily marched along (or in this case above) otherwise impassible terrain. Even the era of their construction is not without a little controversy. While many are certainly Bronze Age constructs, some are thought to have been built by Iron Age craftsmen.

  In any case, they are very impressive once you know they exist and understand how difficult they would have been to make. And to think, the people who built England’s dykes didn’t even get to wear high-visibility jackets like the one I had on. However had they done it?

  The problem I faced was with the second of two prominent cross dykes that lay in the Hole. According to my maps, it should have terminated at a point just fifty or so feet within the Hole. Its much larger cousin, which lay farther away, ended many hundreds of feet within. My map and the data I had access to on my smartphone told me this was as it should have been.

  So, you will understand my concern upon seeing that the second (and much smaller dyke) now stretched at least an additional three hundred feet into the Hole. Three hundred feet!

  I stood for some time considering the options. Obviously, the data was in error. Obviously. How else could maps and data be so patently incorrect? The problem was that the North York Moors are not exactly the Mariner Valley of Mars. The area has, to risk profound understatement, been explored. Even the Mariner Valley has been mapped, and I doubt NASA would make such an egregious error going by satellite data alone. For an error of this magnitude to occur in Yorkshire of all places was unthinkable.

  Yet, there it was. A dyke stretching out to where it should not have been. Worse, I began to notice certain signs about the ancient construct that appeared geologically out-of-place. For one, I could see limestone outcrops along it base, just at the dyke’s termination. Any such jutting stone should have been long eroded into smooth surfaces eons ago. They should now be covered in moss or other growth, utterly obscured. Yet, there was naked, jagged stone.

  I decided to take some photographs for later consideration. I removed the digital camera from my pack and, making sure that the memory card had ample space available, began to take a series of pictures.

  Finishing this, I reverted to something of an anachronistic habit of mine. I withdrew a cheap, leather-bound notebook and began to sketch what I saw. I did so in fairly exacting detail. From time to time, I turned to a small theodolite and gathered rough and crude figures. I say rough because using such an instrument without a partner is quite a chore, and any results obtained are necessarily unreliable. At best, they would provide a guide to assist me in further analysis. These were noted in the notebook along with figures extrapolated from the OS map.

  I worked for some time, engrossed in what I was doing. Soon, I began to sense that I was not alone. Periodically, I looked up and around to see if I was accompanied by anyone. I saw no one. I was surrounded by nothing more than nature’s green and blue. I did not even see a bird flying. Eventually, I wrote the feeling off and put it from my mind. I bent back over my work.

  You can imagine my surprise when I heard a voice speak up from behind me.

  “Lovely day,” it said. It was a male voice.

  Courageously, I flinched and turned around with a start. Before me was a tall, lean man dressed in hiking clothes. He was in late middle ages with an air of practiced composure. He struck me as being either an aristocrat or the sort of man who tried to come off as one. His clothes were plain and civilian with no insignia. There was a lot of tweed. I can report that no briar pipe was visible.

  In particular, I observed that he wore no high-visibility jacket. That meant he was almost certainly not an employee of the Environment Agency or any other aspect of officialdom. After taking him in for a few seconds, I remembered that he had spoken to me.

  “What?” I said. I have a way with words in situations like these.

  “I said, it’s a lovely day.” He paused as if waiting for a response. When I made none, he said, “For an amble. What?”

  “Yes,” I drew the word out. “You know this land is posted right? There are signs.”

  “Oh? I hadn’t seen them. Thought this was all public property.”

  “Uh, it is. But there’s a civil warning on. No one’s allowed in until it’s lifted.”

  “MoD going to start bombing or something?”

  “No, they do that in Lincolnshire. It’s an environmental matter. EA has the place sealed.”

  “Goodness,” he said, “Sounds like I could be in a lot of trouble. You won’t turn me in will you?”

  “Not really my area, mate.” I noticed that he was paying attention to my notebook.

  “You’re dressed rather officially for an artist. Some kind of health and safety rule?” he said while gesturing to my sketch. He smiled as he did so, and I observed that he had
very aristocratic teeth. By that I mean he had a lot of them. No, really, it is a genetic trait of male aristocrats in England to have more teeth than a hacksaw blade. Smiles like his are mildly off-putting in social settings. Under the present circumstances, it was just plain creepy.

  I instinctively withdrew the notebook closer to my body.

  “Ordinance Survey. Just making some notes. Look, you really better had leave. The path’s about a half mile back east and south.”

  He said nothing, but moved his gaze to meet mine.

  “Something interesting out there?” he asked.

  For some reason, my mouth went dry.

  “No. No, not anything. Just noting the erosion patterns. Making sure the top of the Hole doesn’t come down on anyone.” I lied for no reason that was apparent to me at the time. Call it instinct.

  “Oh, well, I’d best head back the way I came,” he said at last. Then, “Good day.”

  “Good day,” I replied.

  He sauntered off. I lost sight of him soon after he entered a stand of trees.

  I had my equipment packed in about three minutes. One minute later, I was beating a hasty retreat from the Moors.

  2

  Again, reader, I must apologize. I have a tendency to do that, but as you and I have only recently become acquainted, it may take you some time to adjust. For that, I am sorry.

  See?

  Anyway, I am compelled to apologize because I must now continue this story with something of a cliché. That is unavoidable, you see, because this tale, like so many tales of romance, adventure, and intrigue, includes a moment when an unassuming everyman meets a mysterious stranger in a cloudy bar. I am also sorry to report that the stranger even maintains the cliché by assuming the role of antagonist, at least in the strictly technical sense. I would much prefer to move on to an episode with more originality, but there you have it.

  After making it back to my car, I had loaded my kit inside and commenced a drive back to Albury. I was consumed in a cloud of unspecified bother. A week earlier, I had anticipated that my return trip would have consisted of my cruising along the British motorways in a light mood after having passed several days in fresh air. I had not expected to drive several hours in silence, wondering if I was going mad. What had happened up there? Moreover, was it worth being bothered by?

  About ten minutes into my drive, I began to seriously question whether I had really seen the seemingly impossible earthworks in the Hole. After all, the anomaly was just so damned anomalous that my brain had begun the steady process of rationalization. The error had to be mine. I must have been standing in just the right place and under just the right conditions to create an optical illusion of some sort. Maybe I had been looking at the wrong part of the map?

  That might have been, but the possibility offered me no comfort. And more, I was really quite certain that what I had seen was no illusion. Even if I had not been basing my observation on credible data from multiple sources, I had been to the Hole before. I had my own first-hand observations to go by. Observations made, mind you, of a portion of land that I knew fairly well. At least well enough to recognize that, seemingly without cause, three hundred feet of Bronze Age earthworks had sprung into existence with no explanation.

  A memory crept into my mind of a documentary that aired a few months before. It had been one of those grandiose programs that dealt with the latest trends in physics and cosmology. The name escapes me, but I seem to remember that God narrated it.

  Most of it went over my head, I am not too ashamed to say, but I distinctly recalled the presenter talking (atop the sound of music evidently co-written by Brian Eno and Hans Zimmer) about the subject of parallel worlds.

  Being, as I am sure you are, an erudite and sophisticated person, I have no doubt that you have encountered this topic before. If, however, you have found this book lying unattended on a bus or in the handbag of a recent robbery victim, then allow me to give you the zero point one percent explanation.

  Also, please check the front flap of the book at this time. If you see an email address written within, you now have ample leverage with which to blackmail a perfect stranger who has questionable taste in books. Entrepreneurship has found you at last.

  The gist, as it was, is simple. Given certain peculiarities of the laws of quantum physics and some properties of quite interesting topics like the inflation theory of creation (with a small ‘c’), the possibility exists that countless other worlds or even universes lay just beyond our reach (quantum physics) or separated from us by vast distances (inflation). In either case, should these other places exist in a truly countless denomination, then probability suggests, nay demands, that nearly exact copies of our own little Earth also exist, complete with cars and blue whales and politicians. God help us.

  Incidentally, for those of you who bothered to read the book jacket, now is a good time to begin speculating.

  Why bring all of this up? Well, as I said, the memory of this documentary flitted into my mind, bidden by the events in Yorkshire. And, as crazy as it was, I began to seriously consider whether some small fragment from a parallel world has intersected with the one I called home. Perhaps the lovely people in the universe across the road had once shared their landscape with builders just three hundred feet more industrious than those of our cozy little realm. And maybe, by some machination or miraculous trick of chance, a bit of their universe was poking through into our own.

  Crazy. Silly. And yet, somehow no more crazy than modern Britain overlooking an earthwork comfortably longer than a 747 or A380 jetliner.

  That is the mindset I found myself in for several hours of windshield time on that fateful day.

  Such was my distraction that I was periodically tempted to pull the car over and examine my notes and photos. Those would hold the answer to at least the question of my sanity, if not the sanctity of our universe. Each time I considered doing so, however, a quick glance in my rear-view mirror showed the gathering gloom of storm clouds. I decided to press on back to Albury. I would have plenty of time for reflection while in the pleasant company of beer.

  The trip back to my home village took a little over five hours. By the time I parked the car the sun was nearly set. The temperature had fallen, and the air had taken on a distinctly sharp but not altogether unpleasant chill. I transferred my laptop, notebook, and some other items from the rucksack into a small messenger bag and started to walk away. At the last minute, I remembered to go back and collect my digital camera. Well armed for a night’s reasoning, I marched off.

  I frequented, in those days, an excellent little bar located in the village. This was convenient to my office and my home, so on many days the place became a de facto base of operations while I poured over maps and figures. It was one of the many reasons that I loved little Albury.

  The salary of a government employee being what it was, I had moved to the village to take a room let to me by my aunt. She was quiet in that slightly out-to-lunch way of OAP’s, and she typically left me to my own devices. For one thing, she never cared when I returned to the house at odd hours after completing a long drive (like the one I had just driven) or after having consumed inadvisable amounts of beer. I liked to think I enlivened her golden years when, on the occasions of my intoxication, I spent several minutes clawing the front door lock with my key before finally flinging it open swiftly and loudly. Often, I would follow this by standing on the threshold, ruminating as to whether I had found the right house. The effect was decidedly burglar-ish, and I am sure she loved the show of it all. Sometimes I wore a balaclava and really gave her a start.

  The pub I have been referring to is called the Lion's Paw. It has been, at intervals, quiet and respectable, bawdy and smoky, corporate and dull, and most recently communal and full of vapor.

  It is the last quality that gives rise to this chapter being such a cliché. Prior to the advent of vaporizing machines that allow the harmless inhalation of nicotine, the bar had been legally required to provide its
patrons with only clear air. I am happy to report that, at last inspection, it was again full of a very English miasma of cloudy air and boisterous conversation.

  That said, it was in the Lion's Paw that I sat on that autumn evening after returning from the North. Before digging into my analysis of the Mysterious Dyke of Yorkshire (take some bonus points if the name Anne Lister just popped into your head), I had a bit of paperwork to complete. Thus it was that I ordered the first of the pints that would supply the fortitude necessary for me to complete both the monotonous and the engrossing tasks ahead.

  Turning first to the mundane, you should know that I actually enjoy that sort of thing. It’s not that I have a particular fondness for the tedium of paperwork, but I do take pleasure in deactivating the higher functions of my brain and concentrating on easy and repetitive tasks. I find this to be doubly so when beer is easily accessed, as it was then.

  Before you write a glowing letter to my Director General commending me for putting in such long hours, allow me a caveat. I might otherwise have written-off the evening for drinking and avoiding further work, but I knew I would not rest until I had at least started unraveling the mystery. That said, I also knew that I would not be able to concentrate on the conundrum until I had my real work done and out of the way.