Tomy and the Planet of Lies (17 page)

We looked at each other for a second or two. And then he said: “There is no such ability. But if I really could do it, I don't know what I'd answer.”

“Exactly! That's something like the way I feel. What happened in my consciousness while Tomy took me over is just as inexplicable.”

“Couldn't you try to explain it with images?” Marc insisted. “You must have seen something, even if it was just fragments of colors…”

“OK, Marc,” I said to him, resigned to the fact that he wasn't going to give up until I at least made the attempt, “I'll try to illustrate how the whole thing went. But it'll only be a vague approximation. I didn't really ‘see' anything—that's not really the right word for it. I didn't see anything with my eyes, because I had no eyes.

“Anyway, here goes. After Tomy had gone off to his room to lie down, I laid my arms on the broad armrests of the armchair, leant my head back and stared up at the ceiling light. I lifted my feet up to rest them on a low table in front of the chair and, in the process, knocked over a bottle of mineral water, which had been stood on the table. I went to bend down and catch it before the carpet got wet, but I never got that far. Suddenly I was light as a feather: I took off and flew up through the ceiling, through the concrete walls of the hotel. And at the same time, waves of contentment were flowing through me. A feeling that mere human emotions cannot describe. Not just exhilaration, more like a hurricane of elation. I raced through the universe and can actually remember calling out for Tomy, although I couldn't call anything as I had no body…”

“And?” interrupted Marc, “Did he answer?”

“Yes! He said to my spirit, or consciousness, or my energy form, or whatever it was, that I should just let go. And he laughed. I laughed, too. Just imagine, Marc, I laughed loudly and without a care in the world, and all this without any vocal chords, air, lungs or any of the things that we humans need to laugh. I was intoxicated and unbelievably happy, riding a rollercoaster that wasn't even there. My thoughts—if they were thoughts—told me that every earthly 3-D theater that I had ever visited and gazed in wonderment at, was ridiculously simple in comparison with this. I raced on—you'll hardly believe this, Marc—through suns without noticing the slightest hint of heat.

I burst through thunderous clouds of indescribable coldness, through oceans, and through the glutinous mouths of volcanoes. I saw beings that are beyond my power to explain; they looked back at me as I passed and I smelled smells that I shouldn't have even been able to smell without a nose. I shot through spaceships that were larger than cities, crafts that made those in Hollywood science fiction films look like children's toys. I experienced color combinations that couldn't exist. I saw myself as a hologram reproduced hundreds and thousands of times everywhere and at different ages—from a baby to an old man. I saw life forms and knew that they were me, although I couldn't understand how that could be—but somehow I
could
understand, nevertheless. Just imagine an arachnoid being that stares at you with huge eyes and you suddenly sense a tremendous wave of wellbeing, and then you realize that you are looking at yourself.

“Then everything was quiet and all movement stopped. I could sense the ticking of a clock and found myself standing in the biggest library you could ever imagine. Books as far as the eye could see, in every direction: above me, below me, to my left and right. I turned my nonexistent head and understood that I knew everything that was in all these books. And I knew, too,
how
I knew everything: it was because all of these works were written by universal beings and that I myself was one of these beings and everything is linked and interwoven in a wondrous way.

“I dived into subatomic space: neutrons, protons and electrons whizzed and whirred around me. And then a kind of ripple ran through this miniature solar system and the particles shifted their position, the atom changing into a completely new one. All of this took place at an unimaginable pace and yet at the same time in slow motion. The electrons sprang so quickly from one atom to another that a kind of universe of oscillations or vibrations came into being where the electrons spread their eternal message. I felt the need to understand it, and I did understand it for a second as I was sucked into an electron, like falling into a black hole. Inside, I found myself suddenly back in the library with the billions of books. Marc, I thought I could hear organ music, then jazz, Bach, Gregorian chants,
All You Need Is Love
by the Beatles, the long-dead drummer Gene Krupa, Louis Armstrong, Mozart, Frédéric Chopin's Piano Concerto No.1, the
Bolero
by Ravel … the list goes on and on… and then I was spat back out of the electron into a new universe with new atomic nuclei and electrons in other solar systems, which I quietly understood, astonished and deeply moved at the same time, were—because of the multitudes of suns, planets, and colors—different to the other atomic models.

Then whole star systems started moving towards a pitch-black abyss, what we would call a black hole, with me in the middle of it all. Time stood still. Everything, every speck of material in the star system, including me, solidified as if it had crystallized until a mighty current spewed everything out the other side. What had been solar systems were now microscopic beads that began to glow whiter than white, then expanded, and finally exploded. I understood that all the solar systems that were consumed by black holes were spat out at another place and time in a kind of new big bang. Marc, there isn't just one ‘Big Bang' that led to the creation of the universe, like we learn in school, but millions of the things that are going off constantly somewhere in the space-time continuum. Galaxies come and go like CO
₂
bubbles in a bath full of mineral water.

“During this crazy train ride I started feeling a kind of not unpleasant pressure, and I wanted to return to Earth, to my body. I felt a strong breeze, although I was hanging in empty space and, what's more, had no body to feel it with. Galaxies and star systems flew by me, stretching into blazing lines of light. They swelled into bright points of luminosity, fused together, flew apart, crashed into each other, and shot off in different directions. I dived into this iridescent lightshow of vibrations, the oscillations between atomic nuclei and electrons. Suddenly, I recognized our solar system, with ringed Saturn and mighty Jupiter. I flew straight through the glowing ball of our sun and off towards Earth, towards Ankara, back through the concrete walls of the hotel and then I opened my eyes. My pulse was normal; my feet were still propped on the small table; I heard the whirr of the air-conditioning and noticed the bottle of mineral water on the floor.

Taken aback, I realized that only a few drops of water were gone: the water was still flowing out of the bottle. I picked it up and stared up at the ceiling. A warm feeling of immense gratitude spread through me. I understood that I had experienced the universe and at the same time I realized how insignificantly microscopic I was. Never before in my life—and never since—have I felt so powerful and yet, at the same time, so small.”

Marc had lit a cigarette and stared at me in silence. After a while he spoke:

“And now you're back?”

“Of course! Just as you know and love me!” I said with a wink. “I suppose you think I'm crazy.”

“Not at all, not at all. A fraction of what you described happened to me, too, when Tomy took me over. And afterwards? What happened then?”

“I had placed the bottle of mineral water back on the table and wanted to sit back and contemplate the grandiose vision I had just had when Tomy appeared and plunked himself down in the armchair next to me. He was wearing his Mona Lisa smile again. He nodded his head and stretched out his right hand toward me. Then he enquired good-naturedly if I was feeling all right. I nodded and stammered something like: ‘Yes, little, big brother' and ‘Thank you! Thank you!' I was overloaded and overwhelmed. I stared at Tomy's face for several minutes. It was still a great effort for me to understand that behind this youthful face, this young human body, the fragile piece of flesh and bone, these dark eyes and enigmatic smile was a being of universal energy. At some stage I asked him how long the whole thing had lasted. He pointed at the bottle of mineral water and said: “Time enough for three gulps of water to flow out.”

“I know it's all true,” said Marc quietly, “but no one's ever gonna buy that story.”

“It doesn't matter,” I told him. “I know what I know and the privilege of having seen this wondrous vision is enough for me. I asked Tomy if experiencing this universal show would have any lasting effect on me and he revealed to me that in the future I would be able to write my books with far greater ease than ever before. I would just have to concentrate inwardly and the sources and quotes would just come to me, as if whispered into my ear by ghostly voices. And he told me something else that confused me more than it made anything clearer. He explained that all the people about whom I had really strong feelings, such as love, but also those who I really hated, had been with me in earlier lives. Every life form possesses its own distinctive nucleus that moves on from one life to the next. I should nurture the love and try and eradicate the hate. I should pray for all those people who have done me harm and ask the great spirit of the universe to forgive them for their deeds. Even after their deaths.”

“And that's going to help them?” asked Marc.

“Apparently not just them, but us, too, in the next round. And because I believe everything that Tomy told me, that must mean that you and I, Marc, must have known each other in an earlier existence. And Elisabeth and I, too. And all the others, who I love or hate. Tomy also explained that I should try to see the universe as a kind of convoluted hologram. Everything is connected to everything else, and time only exists for the material objects and the vibrations that arise from them.”

* * *

Our farewell dinner in St. Moritz was supposed to have been a sober affair, but I was so churned up inside that my body was yearning for a good red wine. The wine waiter brought us a bottle of
Château Mouton Rothschild
. He handed me the cork to sniff and decanted the heavy wine in the flickering candlelight. While I watched the burgundy-colored liquid slowly pouring into the fat-bellied decanter, it seemed to me as if a Milky Way of millions of tiny glittering stars were flowing through the air. We toasted each other, smiling. Marc asked me if Tomy had ventured any opinion regarding my theories about extraterrestrials.

“Not that evening in Ankara. We didn't get round to discussing the subject. But we did later.”

“And?”

“Tomy went much further than I ever have. As I told you on the trip to Ankara in the car, I'm convinced that the Earth was visited at least twice in ancient times by extraterrestrials. But Tomy spoke of 16 visits over the last 500,000 years. The other 14 visits are way too far back in time. But—and this'll blow your mind, Marc—Tomy told me that the definitive proof for the alien visits lies in our genes!”

Marc pulled a face and tilted his head a little to one side: “What's that supposed to mean?”

“If you had read my books, you'd know that I have always maintained that mankind is not solely a product of evolution. We have evolved, yes, but at some stage in our development a specific, artificial genetic mutation was introduced—and that was provided by the extraterrestrials that manipulated the primitive hominids that were our forefathers. Our mythology is full of reports about this intervention—it's all in my books. Even the Bible reports that God made man in his own image. So far, so good. Tomy went on to say that we would be able to identify this intervention in our genes: our genes also contain a message from the extraterrestrials that is clear as day and cannot be refuted. We only have to find the message.”

“Great! Can we do that?”

“At the moment, our geneticists are not advanced enough, but in around 25 years—so Tomy reckons—the message should be revealed.”

“That would be around 2012. Are you still going to be around for that?”

“I hope so! And then we can start with the next big debate, because the proof of alien intervention will throw a whole new light on our religions.
Capito
?”

Marc nodded quietly. He didn't really understand much about evolution or genetics. He was far more interested in what Tomy had said. I interrupted his thoughts with a completely unrelated question.

“You spent two nights with Chantal in Ankara,” I said. “Then you turned up, sour-faced, dragging your stuff into our suite. What happened?”

Marc seemed to find the subject embarrassing. He gulped down his wine quickly, choking in the process. Then he admitted that he had wanted to tell me the story for some time, but had not been able to get me alone. Chantal, so he explained, was very experienced—sexually. She did things with him that he had never dreamed of. The next day she had been collected by a limousine from the French embassy—along with her metal-cornered briefcase. She had stayed there the whole afternoon and she didn't return until early evening. That night she had driven him once more to the pinnacles of lust and then during the post-coital cigarette started saying outrageous things about Tomy: he was a monster, didn't belong on Earth; he was dangerous and would bring down our entire society. She said that Tomy's body wasn't a real body, not born but constructed artificially, a dung pile of chemicals. This object needed to be got rid of, before something awful happened. Marc, too, had a responsibility towards humanity: killing Tomy wouldn't be murder because Tomy wasn't human. He would be doing his duty to mankind.

Marc looked over to me with a sad expression on his face. “Do you understand? I couldn't listen to her talk anymore. After the sex, it was like she was a different person. She was like a whore and I was the dumb fool she was using to get her way. Maybe they'd spent the whole afternoon in the embassy turning her inside out; I don't know what got into her. I was so furious, I almost hit her. So I just grabbed my bag, threw my washing things into it and came and knocked on your door. You know the rest.”