We were back in the normal routines not being much wiser than previously. Now we had objective evidence from my portable recorder that had actually been in the snow reality before entering the village, and that some intelligent or at least purposeful object was collecting Floating Rocks. But we did not know what to do with that information, and we had no idea about where to search for Svetlana, so we went on with the planned experiments and tasks.
From the videos, we tried to analyse the direction and possible destination of the Dark Probe (that's how we called the object we saw collecting the rock), but all we could say that it headed north until the hills, but its speed implied that it did not stop when it disappeared into a valley beside the two largest hills. On the other hand, the fact that is was flying low meant that it could stop soon. We had a discussion and decided not to go after it unless we got a clearer estimate about its destiny. Instead, we installed two cameras near the Rocks, each with movement sensors so that they would record if something came from north or near the Rocks. The downside was that we had to go to the Rocks every day to replace fresh batteries.
Well, we thought we were back to our routines. On Saturday morning everything changed.
Ismen is the early bird of us, and he had put some breakfast for us on the table, but he was probably outside as I did not see him. I sat on a chair and poured some tea. I still missed my morning news, although for almost a year I had had to accept that Amirhan was a black spot for any wireless or wired communication. We had to go to Ashakati and use snailmail for any communication with the outside world. It was unbelievable in our tech-oriented world, and we still could not have figured out why it did not work.
The annoying beep from the microwave oven interrupted my thoughts. I opened the door and a heavenly smell of fresh bread came out. Happily I took the bread, sliced it and put a lot of butter on one slice. We rarely baked bread, because with a microwave, the probability of getting bread that is not flat, raw or burned from one corner is very low, and then it is simply worse than our standard chow. Svetlana was the only one who actually was able to do it properly, although we all new the recipe, in theory.
Ismen came back in. He took some coffee, sat beside me, and, humming, buttered a slice of warm bread.
- Mmm, it's great to have fresh bread for a while, he said. He stuffed bread into his mouth and exhaled through his nose to maximise the olfactory sensation.
- Yeah, I agreed. -We had bread rolls at Khorixas', but other than that, I haven't had fresh bread for ages.
Ismen ate his slice in silence. It was so delightful to see him enjoy such a simple thing of life. A good thing for everyone to remember. After he had eaten, he took another slice and grabbed the butter knife.
- Thank you, Ndali. This saves the day, he said and looked me into the eye. He started to butter the other slice.
- Er, you are welcome. But for what?
- For the bread, of course, he said and bit a chunk.
- But I just took it from the microwave. You should thank yourself.
Ismen's face froze. He sat for a while without saying anything. Then, hesitantly, he gulped.
- I did not bake it. Didn't you?
- No, the microwave beeped while you were out and the bread was there.
Ismen stood up and rushed to the dormitory, reappearing after a few seconds with groaning Enembe, who was trying to get his eyes open. Enembe was not a usual suspect when it comes to baking, and this bread was clearly not his achievement.
- OK, none of us baked it, and there is no one else here. So where did the bread come from?, I asked.
It took Enembe a minute to figure what was going on and why we were so upset about it. Then he said.
- If this was not Amirhan, I would say that the only possible explanations are that some of us is lying or someone sneaked in and made a strange practical joke without us noticing. But because this is Amirhan, my guesses are that the bread actually does not exist and we should store a sample for further examination, or that it came from the alternative reality through a wormhole or something.
We looked at each other. Enembe's idea did have the weird Amirhan logic.
- So you are saying that the bread actually came from the snow-world and it was Svetlana who made it?
Enembe grabbed a slice and took a bite.
- It tastes like Svetlana's bread, none of us ever succeeds this well. But the other alternative is that the bread does not exist.
- Do you think it works the other way round? Could we send something there through the microwave, asked Ismen.
- That is just crazy nonsense, of course it does not work that way, I said. - So, let's try.
We took one slice and put it into a small plastic container with desiccator, and the container was placed on a shelf in the storage room, with proper sample documentation. This made it possible to verify the situation after we had stopped hallucinating, if that was what was going on.
Then we started to bake. We tried to follow the recipe precisely so that the bread would be at least somewhat eatable. Enembe wrote a note on a piece of paper telling what our situation was and what we had observed and what we thought of the origin of the first bread and that we were sorry that our bread possibly couldn't be as good. Then he folded it and put it into our smallest plastic bag for samples. The plastic bag was mixed into the dough, which was poured into a silicon casserole and placed into the microwave. Ismen programmed the four-phase power+duration cycle and turned it on.
We tried to do something useful during the twenty-minute program, but we ended up hypnotically staring at the casserole turning slowly around in the microwave. The dough slowly raised above the edges of the casserole, when it absorbed energy from the penetrating microwaves. It was almost like breating in and out, when the oven turned the power on and off in a few second cycles.
I was startled when the oven suddenly beeped and the light went out. Enembe opened the door. The oven was empty.
__________________________
The topic for tomorrow is Mission.
No comments:
Post a Comment