The Dark Arrow of Time

by Massimo Villata

  He asked himself why he should get involved in this business. That he still knew little or nothing about. But his affection for Kathia left no room for doubt. She had asked him to take action. And he would do it. Because he trusted her. Because he wanted so much to see her again. And that was the only possible route.

  He had to look for something. Who knows for what purpose. He had to look for it ‘between the strips of light’. No, ‘between the strips of light’ he would have known what to look for.

  He didn’t have to try to understand rationally. He had to let his intuition work freely. Intuition that shows you the answers when you’re not thinking. Or at least when you’re not aware that you’re thinking. When you’ve removed all of the unwieldy obstacles that normally clutter the mind. When there is no longer anything to prevent the current from flowing along the thin wire linking the question and the answer. When the space between them is reduced to nothing. And there’s no longer any difference. The question evaporates. And there is no more doubt.

  Helias gently closed his eyes. Flash! It was easy.

  He went to get his camera and connected it to his portable.

  “Two days ago.” He said. “Castle in the evening. North side.” He added, since that’s how he had coded the images. “Screen.”

  The screen appeared. And the images.

  “Mono. Stereo. Holo. Mono.”

  He chose ‘mono’ so that he could increase the resolution.

  The shot of the castle with the lighted window, strips of light in Venetian blind mode.

  “Zoom right.”

  He switched to manual control, more practical to use. Zoom on the window: strips of light. You could make out Kathia taking off her clothes, but the image was overexposed, because of the dusk outside.

  “Adapt. Recover.”

  He played around with the contrast. Nothing, too overexposed. He went ahead, slowly.

  Next, the video showed Kathia in the shower, rinsing off. He would have liked to watch for a while. But this wasn’t the moment. Now the exposure was adapted to the interior light and the strips’ edges were blurred, almost touching each other, since there was less depth of field and the Venetian blind effect was no longer in focus. There was even less depth of field when he had zoomed in, and the result was a bright blur, where the dark strips disappeared and were replaced by soft bands of light. The ‘stereo’ didn’t help, since the strips were almost horizontal.

  When he had zoomed in as far as he could go, almost the entire frame was occupied by Kathia. When he had pulled back, he could see the whole shower stall and part of the wall behind it, a piece of the washbasin, with shelf and mirror, and a section of the partition wall that, out of focus, blocked the right hand side of the bathroom from view.

  Gentle water rinse. Massage shower. Et cetera. No clue. At least apparently. Replay. Nothing, during the rinse. Then the base of the stall begins to rotate and the hot air jet starts, blowing the long hair around. Kathia’s body rotated uniformly, legs slightly apart and moving her arms, to dry everywhere. Not the face. It turned along with the body when she had her back turned to the camera, or it turned to the left or the front. Then she turned her face first, before the rest of her body, as if to look at something to her left, at the right of the frame, where the washbasin was. She was looking fixedly at something. And she continued to focus on for nearly half a turn, until she had her back to him again, with the washbasin on her right. Maybe it was just a way of drying her hair better, or of getting it out of her eyes, since the main jet came from that direction. Or maybe not.

  Helias looked for a frame with a wider field, one where you could see the washbasin, half concealed by the partition wall. Zoom in. Maximum resolution. Contrast. There’s something on the shelf. Red. About an inch wide. Maybe a bit less. Freeze frame. No, worse, too much noise, the object is in the blurry area of the Venetian blind effect. Stack images, to suppress noise. It’s flat, possibly round. It could be a computer diskette, in a round red case. But it could also be something else.

  Forward. The sequence ends with the base coming to a halt and the hot air jet going off. New sequence. Kathia is out of the bathroom now and goes to sit on the edge of the bed. She seems pensive. Check the visible surroundings. Nothing in particular. She plucks at her lip with one hand. But the other hand is moving too. The forearm resting on the thigh oscillates slowly up and down, as if to avoid the bands of shadow. And there, in Kathia’s fingers, the red diskette reappears, oscillating between the strips of light.

  “Between the strips of light you will know what you seek….”

  In the last frames, Kathia stretches out on the bed, putting the diskette under the pillow. Then darkness. And Helias switched off the computer.

  It was past three thirty. The rain had thinned now, and the sky was lighter. Helias went out on the balcony and looked northward, at the lake’s rocky shore, trying to remember. He closed his eyes for a few moments. He reopened them and remained motionless for almost a full minute.

  He left his room. He went down to the little kitchen where people could fix themselves light meals and snacks when the restaurant was closed. Then he left the building and headed north, this time wearing proper shoes and a hooded rain jacket.

  He crossed the stream, without slipping, and arrived within sight of the rock that jutted out over the lake.

  “Where what sees is transformed….”

  He turned and looked around, to make sure he wasn’t followed or watched.

  The rain was tapering off, but more black, threatening clouds were massing behind the mountain. With unexpected speed, they started dropping toward the lake, and by the time Helias was a few steps from the rock he was shrouded in thick dark fog that obscured everything over a few meters away.

  Perfect. Nobody could see him. He sat on the damp rock, more or less where Kathia had been seated, and where, turning away, she had rummaged in her pockets and taken off her contacts. He tried to sit exactly where she had been. He extended his arms, feeling the surface around him in a semicircle. There was a crack in the rock, half a centimeter wide or a little more. A portion of the crack, near him, was filled with damp soil.

  He, too, rummaged in his pockets and pulled out the spoon he had taken in the kitchen.

  “Where what sees is transformed you will find it. With that you would not want to use.”

  Because he had said “I don’t want to have to scrape you up with a spoon….”.

  He dug gently in the crack with the spoon, until he had removed all of the soil. There appeared to be nothing in the dark crack.

  He slowly inserted the handle in the crack, gently working it back and forth. Nothing seemed to interfere with the movement.

  At a certain point he heard a click, and felt the spoon rebound slightly in his fingers. Slowly, he pulled it out.

  The little red case was magnetic, and clung to the shiny handle.

  Helias was concentrating so much on what he was doing that he didn’t notice that the fog had grown even darker and denser, almost as if night had fallen.

  Now the fog was blowing down in gusts, and Helias took advantage of the rare moments when it thinned to mark out the way back. The fog rose and fell, but always in a crepuscular light: the layer of cloud overhead must have been very thick. The stream had swollen to a torrent and he was forced to find a place further up where he could cross, though not without difficulty.

  The fog was mixed with rain now, as Helias clambered down toward the path. In the patter of the drops, he thought he heard a noise, a stone dislodged. A bit ahead of him, in the fog-bound darkness.

  He froze, steadying himself with one hand on a rock, and listened hard. Nothing, only the noise of the rain. No, a rustle, like the sleeve of a wet jacket. Then a rattle of hasty steps across the slick scree, hurrying in the direction of the castle.

  Helias reached the path. He looked around, or at least as far as the fog allowed.

  An orange laser beam cut through the murk ahead of him, illum
inating a package on the path, a few paces away. The light went out.

  Helias picked up the waterproof package. He opened it. He found a semitransparent plastic tube, sealed with a soft stopper. There was a strip inside, the size of a small bandaid, made of a strange pliable material. There was also something written on a card, which he could barely read in that light. He put everything in his pocket and made his way to the castle.

  In his room, Helias took the strip and placed it below his ear, behind the angle of his jaw, as the instructions said. He went to the mirror. It adhered perfectly and his hair made it almost invisible. He was supposed to say his name backwards, in an undertone, to activate the communication.

  “Saileh.”

  He heard a buzz.

  “Yes?”

  “I’m waiting for instructions.”

  “We are communicating on a frequency that cannot be intercepted. In addition, the signal is coded and only our two devices can decode it. So you can relax, but speak softly.”

  It didn’t seem to be Mattheus’s voice.

  “Who are you?”

  “I am the professor.”

  “I don’t know you.”

  “You will know me soon. Do not be mistrustful. Are the names of Mattheus and Kathia enough for you?”

  “I don’t know them.”

  “And the word, ‘Thaýma’, what does it mean to you?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Okay. I will call you back in a moment.”

  The buzz again. Helias turned the device off by placing a finger on it.

  The professor. And who might he be? Why didn’t he say his name? What was his relationship with Kathia and Mattheus? If he was a friend, why did he answer and not they? If the professor was an enemy, then he himself had been found out. They had seen him on the north shore. And they were setting a trap for him. But then why hadn’t they gotten him immediately down on the shore, where they could have easily taken what he had found, if they knew about it and if that was what they were after. No, he was letting his imagination get ahead of him. He just had to wait.

  He was undecided whether to hide the diskette immediately, or have a look at it first. It wasn’t compatible with his portable. Maybe there was a message he should read right away. He locked the door. He logged off from the network and loaded the diskette in the computer.

  It was almost entirely filled with a password-protected compressed file. And then there was a message.

  “Password for the message: ‘The name of the brunette you liked, more than just a little, at college.’”

  Well, she’s the only one who could know that, since she had been ‘stalking’ him then. Was she jealous? The thought made Helias smile.

  He typed in the password. The message appeared.

  “If this diskette is in your possession, it is because you have to take over from me. It is no longer safer in my hands. Do not worry about what it contains, which would be incomprehensible for you in any case. Guard it well, however, it is extremely precious. Hide it in a safe place, where only you can find it. Never think about where you hid it, especially when other people are present. Neither I nor anyone else must know. Not even the professor, who will contact you to give you explanations. In case I have not been able to give them to you in time. Yours.”

  “Saileh.”

  “Yes?”

  “It’s me. Sorry to have been suspicious.”

  “No, not at all. You were right to be. I appreciated it.”

  “You need to talk to me?”

  “Yes. We need to brief you on the entire business. You’re not obliged, but it is advisable.”

  “I ask for nothing better.”

  “Good. Are you with us, then?”

  Helias remained silent for a moment.

  “I’ll wait to hear what you have to say.”

  “Fine.”

  “How is Kathia?”

  “Fine. Well enough. But you cannot see her. For the moment.”

  “Why?”

  “Come to me and you will know.”

  “We have to meet in person?”

  “Yes, it’s better.”

  “But isn’t it risky?”

  “Not particularly.”

  “Okay, then. Tell me what I have to do.”

  “My office is on the west side, third floor, almost diametrically opposite your room. Look for me on the map, Professor Borodine. Don’t cross the courtyard, but reach my office through the internal corridors. Don’t rush. Take all the time you need to make sure you’re not watched, especially as you enter my office. Change route several times, if necessary, or go somewhere else if you suspect you’re being watched. Leave the device on, but speak only if necessary and where no one can see you or hear you. The device also contains a signaling unit and I can track your movements on the map of the building. Is everything clear?”

  “Yes. When?”

  “Immediately, if you like.”

  “Let’s say in ten minutes or so. I’ll call again before starting out.”

  “Good, see you soon.”

  “See you soon.”

  The professor passed his finger behind his ear.

  “Are we going to tell him everything?”

  “Well, not exactly everything. Obviously.” answered Mattheus from his position at the window, as he gazed at the reflection of the yellow and orange lamps on the rain-roiled surface of a puddle in the courtyard.

  © Springer International Publishing AG 2017

  Massimo VillataThe Dark Arrow of TimeScience and Fictionhttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-67486-5_6

  6. Seated Behind His Enormous Desk

  Massimo Villata1

  (1)Osservatorio Astrofisico di Torino, INAF, Pino Torinese (TO), Italy

  Massimo Villata

  Email: villata@oato.inaf.it

  Seated behind his enormous desk, the professor had a face he didn’t like. He especially didn’t like those two flaps of skin that hung down from his cheeks and below his chin. They made him look like a bulldog every time he moved his head, jowls flaccidly jiggling.

  He wasn’t actually all that ugly, really. If it weren’t for the bags under his eyes and those dog-like dewlaps, he wouldn’t have looked too bad.

  Maybe he drank. Who knows if the Thaymites drank? He certainly didn’t belong to a ‘genetically enhanced’ breed. Assuming that they used biogenetics for that on Thaýma. After hearing Kathia, one would have said they didn’t. Though one look at her would lead to a different conclusion. Eh, who knows?

  “No problem in coming here, young man?”

  Aargh. The situation was getting worse. He hated being called ‘young man’. He was twenty-seven years old, almost twenty-eight. He tried to take it as a compliment. Not very successfully.

  “I noticed there was just one small detour, and pause, along the way….”

  Worse and worse! He seemed to be doing everything he could to make himself unpleasant.

  “Nothing in particular. You know how it is…. Maybe the wet weather….”

  The professor didn’t seem to understand.

  “You know…. The rain…. Probably, certainly, in fact, tension too…. Emotional….”

  The professor studied him closely, tugging at his chin with thumb and forefinger, squinting. Then he said “Ah!”.

  But what did he care about his bladder? Helias was verging on furious. What was this? He was supposed to report on every time he went to the toilet? Did they want the details too? A video to see whether it was light or dark? Straight or helical? He already wasn’t any too pleased about that whole business of Kathia’s ‘surveillance’ of him just about everywhere. But with Kathia it was different. He didn’t mind not having secrets from her. But this, this…with those wattles of his…how dare he?

  “Let’s get back to us, young man.”

  Grrr.

  “Just a moment. First tell me about Kathia.”

  “As I’ve already told you, she’s fine. But you cannot see her. Above all, because she could i
nvoluntarily ‘read’ your secret. You know what I’m talking about, don’t you? You found the object and you hid it?”

  “I’d rather change subject.”

  “Ah, I understand. No, you don’t need to be afraid of me. I’m not like the people you know from my planet. I don’t read other people’s minds. I have enough trouble with my own….”

  And he laughed. And when he laughed his jowls bounced horribly up and down.

  “Go ahead and relax. There’s no danger….”

  “How do I know I can trust you?”

  “All right. Let’s go over there. First, though, please turn with your back to the bookcase for a moment.”

  The professor’s office was almost entirely furnished and fitted out in dark wood. Most of the left wall was occupied by an enormous bookcase that went from floor to ceiling. It appeared to contain any and all kinds of document, the widest range of forms and supports, analog and digital, disks, diskettes and cards, hard and soft, cassette tapes, large and small, printed books in many languages. And all from every age and place.

  “Admiring my collection? One of these days I’ll show you the rarest pieces. The tapes, obviously, are unusable. I keep them for the covers….”

  Okay, okay. Let’s just cut to the chase. Helias turned his back. He heard the professor fussing around the bookcase. When he was allowed to turn around, one bay of the bookcase had been transformed into a door opening onto a dark room.

  “Come. Light. Screen. Door.”

  The light and the screen went on, the ‘door’ closed behind him.

  “Mattheus?”

  After a few seconds, the image of Mattheus’s face appeared.

  “Yes?”

  “Mattheus, could you please confirm to this young man that I don’t ‘feel’?”

  “Hello, Helias. Yes, that’s right. You can trust him, in all senses.”

  “Where’s Kathia? Is she there with you?”

  “No, she’s not here. As soon as I see her, I’ll give her your regards. Goodbye.”

  “Wait….”

  But the communication had already been broken off.