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Science Fiction and Fantasy
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| A Translation (draft) | |
| By IPFaulkner | ||||||
| 21 May 2006 | ||||||
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Don't feel comfortable with Sci-fi but this was an idea I had. I showed it to a friend who said it was ok. The thing is - there is supposed to be a "twist" at the end and he didn't see it. Which makes me think it is a particularly unremarkable piece of writing. However, I suppose its as good up here as anywhere else. I plan to go back to it and look at it again. IP A TRANSLATION I am lost and completely alone. I process everything I say, do, see and hear through a cultural filter for which I am the only user. A human pocket translator that no-one else will ever use. Our time travel experiments had proven successful. I and a few others travelled – for just a few minutes at a time – back in time. We saw the Pyramids unfinished, the beginnings of our great religions; Stonehenge in all its glory. We gathered information and returned home with it. The pivots and weights of history were re-examined. Influences we had never thought before possible became central to our understanding of the past. Once famous figures in history were exposed as charlatans with a good publicist. And now, it all refers to nothing. Incredible acts of genius, love, hate, horror and brilliance will die with me. Someone decided to touch when they should have looked. One person became an actor, carrying themselves from the audience to centre stage. And I returned here instead of home; the same physical space and time but a different historical road travelled to reach it. I earn a living writing alternative histories – banalities of my own time accepted as great works of imagination - and spend my time searching the backroads of history that formed the grand boulevards of my culture. I see sign-posts to a different world but find the bridge across collapsed or the road too potholed to travel. I spend each day looking, researching and analysing. This work, in such an alien place, overwhelms me and leaves me exhausted. I doubt I will ever find the source of change. Our cultural routes are the same. We share ancient history – China, Egypt and Greece. However, what were obscure details at home are re-interpreted as the pivotal events here. The same picture taken through a fish-eyed lens, producing a bizarre and unfocused snap. Rome and its empire also exist. Here, however, my truth slowly vanishes and merges into another reality a small shade of colour and light at a time. Our roads diverge and disappear in differing directions. Slowly, the hand of fate is replaced by the voice of guidance. There are no single set-piece incidents. No sudden new emperors or leaders. However, I sense the voices whispering between the lines of history. Nudging and subtly changing outcomes to create an entirely new and manipulated history. Rome simply wins more and wins quicker here. It spreads further but too far, too fast. Its hand is felt further afield but lacks cultural depth. Its fall is also different. Quicker – the whole empire arriving and disappearing in the time it takes to spread through the Mediterranean back home. A flash flood rather than a glacier disfiguring the landscape. I only see these historical incidents however, not their creator. Someone I must have known guiding and manouvering like a Greek God toying with mortal lives. I have been forced to learn new languages and traditions. The language and law is less Latin based - the culture I know to have been destroyed by Rome continuing to live and thrive in the cross-pollination of the two cultures. It confuses me and, sometimes, disgusts me – it seems chaotic and barbaric. All is different – the colour spectrum is separated differently, everyday food that I thought would always be universally the same taste odd. Even roses look new and unusual. I sometimes wonder if I even recognise the sky due to the effect of pollutants tarring it a different shade. So, I spend time alone. I spend time in libraries, trying to trace the road home. I try to integrate myself and understand what I experience so as to follow those maps that might lead to an understanding of what happened. All is hollow and fictional, however hard I try to grasp its meaning. Towns and villages with similar names in not quite the same locations disorientate me, festival days with no meaning – even the years are tallied differently. I have arrived in a place called London. A country called Great Britain. A culture that worships Jesus Christ and is dominated by European’s living across the sea. The centre of gravity of the whole planet has moved. I still fail to understand the historic context I live in because I do not understand its purpose or acknowledge its right to exist. I live in a translated world. I have no history, culture or past – the only future I have is my search for the point at which my history was replaced by this fiction. I return home late. I cannot sleep so I turn on the computer and write several pages of my latest story. It tells tale of a great Queen from my world who conquered Eastern Europe and as far as Western Germany in my 1600’s. Third rate claptrap. My stories are a cycle of alternative histories. They travel an alternative time line and have a cult following due to their convincing scenarios and eye for detail apparently. I have an e-mail. I presume it comes from my publisher. The editor of my stories is one of a very small number of people to have a contact for me at all. I refuse telephones and prefer all my communication in writing – be it electronic or hand written. I find it impossible to speak down those damn things and see no reason why I should. I open the mail and am requested to download a page from another site. My hand moves to the delete button but is arrested on its path to the requests oblivion. Something catches my eye. The name of my home town. A place that does not exist here. I punch the buttons with shaking hands and my face begins to flush with heat. I watch the information metaphorically arrive through the graphics on my screen and think of nothing. My heart beats faster and I watch. The page downloaded is site for a bookseller in the town which I would describe as an approximation of home. The place has a name that means nothing to me and its geography reminds of nowhere. The streets do not recall anything. It’s not even quite in the right place – its centre being a mile or so from that of mine. However, it clearly has its origins in mine and as a consequence I own a house as near to the place I was born as I can work it out to be. I visit several times a year and walk down non-existent streets and through passageways which should open to squares to find derelict buildings or dead ends. The e-mail says nothing more. The bookshop site tells me nothing. I plan a visit for the weekend.
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