cowlark.com

My Diary, 2002-11-12

They're big stars, fat and vibrant in the warm night air. From here, half-way up the hill, I can see them reflected in the ocean. The wind died when the suns set. The sea is as flat as a lake, disturbed only by ripples. There's a gentle rustling of the trees and the occasional cry of some night creature; and, very faintly, now and again, there's the snap and buzz of the van der Graaf generator, over the other side of the hill.

It's a very peaceful sight. I can use all the peace I can get, now.

Earlier today I sat down by the landing field. I pressed the transmit button on the dictaphone. I closed my eyes. I tried to relax.

In fact, I went to sleep. I woke up an hour later (oh, the joys of digital watches with five year batteries). I felt much calmer. Unfortunately, the dictaphone hadn't finished transmitting; the little light was still on, and it wouldn't respond to anything I said to it.

Back on the ship, it would take about ten minutes to send the usual day's ramblings. Why was it taking so long here? Bad signal? It had to relay through the ship, long gone? Jamming? Whatever it was, it was worrying. I didn't want to be cut off from even the illusory companionship of whoever might be listening. I decided to stay put until it finished. I was all right for food ---- there wasn't much to do on the ship other than eat, even if it was paste ---- and I wanted to give whoever might still be here time to come and see what the ship was doing.

It took eight hours for it to finish sending.

The island is a place of miracles and wonders.

It's a park and an art gallery, filled with sculptures and elegant buildings. Some of the buildings are sculptures. Some of the sculptures are buildings. There are no roads or paths anywhere, just that thick, dense, ordinary-looking turf.

I wandered around the shore, heading towards where the buildings were densest. The grass absorbed my footsteps silently. The only sound was the noise of the waves, the wind and the birds. (I assumed they were birds. They were wary and I only saw them from a distance.) The suns were warm, but the wind took the heat away; I took off my sweater, which I had been wearing in the ship. Crisp white clouds moved across the sky. It was a perfect day.

I reached a building. I was dreading another white box like the ones around the landing field, all too easily picturing myself spending the rest of my life wandering ignorantly around the island, eternally frustrated by the blank white walls. This one had structure, and doors, and windows. It looked like a mathematical formula made solid; a twisted pyramid, the spiral edges running upwards to a rounded point some thirty metres above the ground. It was made of the same shiny white material that I was already becoming familiarwith, and the surface was etched with fine lines into a hexagonal honeycomb. Some of the panels were glassy black and recessed, and I was sure they were windows. At ground level was a much larger recessed panel, divided into triangles around the centre; a door. I couldn't make it open.

I moved on. There was another building. This was a short tower made up of twelve crystal rings, each one about five metres across. Each ring was tilted forty-five degrees to the horizontal, alternately in opposite directions, so that each one touched the one above at a single point. I couldn't see how it stayed up, but it caught the light beautifully and shed pink and white highlights all around.

Oh, yes: the suns. They say red giants are dim. They lie. This one shone a brilliant, vivid pink, close to white. It was dimmer than the other sun, which was near enough to Sol as to make no difference; if I put my hand up to block out the small sun, I could look at the red giant with minimal discomfort. Much like a bright light bulb. It was about five times the size of the bright sun, and was a surprisingly large distance away. I don't know what the bright sun's orbital period is, but I'd be surprised if eclipses happen very often.

I encountered many more buildings. They were all different; there were hollow tubes, and crystal walls, and cones, and prisms. There were beautiful swept curves that caught the eye. There was one building, which had to be a sculpture, that appeared at first sight to be a tangled mass of girders. It was only when I walked round it that I saw patterns appear and disappear deep within it. There were some buildings that wouldn't have been out of place in London, and some buildings that would be out of place anywhere. After a while they all started to run together in my mind.

They all had these things in common: they seemed to be deserted; they were made out of crystal, the white material, or the black glassy material; they all rose individually out of the featureless grass; and none of them had doors that would open. Some of them had windows I could see through faintly, but the chambers inside were always featureless and empty.

Eventually I found myself around the other side of the hills and approaching the van der Graaf generator. Indeed, once I could see it, I had to go and visit it. It drew me on.

I suppose that architecturally it's one of the more orthodox structures here. The tower is a conventional triangular girder tower, if rather large; I'd say about a hundred metres tall. Put a mobile phone antenna on top of it and it would fit right in on Earth. The ball at the top is a triangular faceted geodesic sphere, made of the ubiquitous white stuff, about twenty metres wide. However, I wasn't looking at the sphere.

Brilliant violet electric discharges were crawling over the surface like tame lightning. There were blue coronas around every corner of the geodesic sphere, visible even in the daylight. It buzzed like a hive full of angry, electrical bees, in a sound that filled the sky. And every so often, with a crackle that makes the ground shake, a brilliant bolt of forked violet lightning would stab out and dissipate itself in the air.

I stood there and watched it for about half an hour. Eventually I noticed a few things: firstly, given the amount of static electricity around, I should have been feeling it. Secondly, the bolts were coming nowhere near the ground. Thirdly, if they had been headed towards the ground, then my two-metre height would have made an excellent grounding rod and I would have been fried long since, so I concluded that whoever built the thing had it well under control.

Alas, I couldn't spend all day being an art critic and tourist. I had to find somewhere to sleep, and some food and water, and the red sun was already touching the horizon. I remembered seeing water in the hills when the ship was approaching, so I headed up.

At the edge of the woods I found a stream, which I gingerly tasted. It was water. It seemed to taste alright and didn't immediately kill me, so I drank a couple of handfuls. Likewise I found a bush with berries. Now, I'm not normally so stupid as to eat strange berries, but this bush appeared to have been cultivated. I tasted one gingerly; it was sweet and slightly tart, with a good flavour, so I ate it.

If I'm still alive tomorrow I'll try some more. I can't live on berries forever, but they'll tide me over until I can find something better.

Near the stream was a small clearing like a picnic area. It was sheltered and the grass was thick and comfortable. I sat down, watched the suns go down, and eventually noticed that the dictaphone had finally finished transmitting. And now you are up to date.

I'm pretty sure I should be dead by now. I've been transplanted to another planet with a different ecology and different air. The air should have killed me, and I should have caught some hideous disease, and I should have been attacked by any number of indigenous creatures, and I should have been electrocuted by some abandoned machine, and I should have touched the wrong plant and been fatally poisoned... drop me somewhere at random on Earth and I wouldn't fare much better.

And yet this place feels so benign. I get the oddest feeling that there's nothing here that will hurt me. I mean, I'm planning to sleep on the ground. This is stupid. Anything could come along in the night, and apart from anything else I'll probably get ants in my hair, but... I just don't feel the urge to do anything about it.

I wonder if there was something in that berry.

Well, I'll send this off. With luck it'll have finished transmitting by tomorrow. If I'm still alive, I'll talk to you then.

[transmit]