Trapped In Time - Chapter 105

Within 20 minutes they reached the landing pad at the arrival tunnel of Town K. The cars stopped at their respective slots and the doors opened. Everyone was surrounded by the Orbs emitting white light. They got out of the cars and started to follow Mono. This time the journey had had a lot of twists and turns during the tunnel ride. It could be that they were circumnavigating some serious issues or the tunnels were cut into the mountain.

Like before, they saw three hazy statues in various stages of doing something.

Zia Ma’am wanted to ask Mono about the significance of each town so that she could remember for later reference.

Mono was carrying a map of all the Towns and now he was looking at the map of Town K. They followed him as he followed the path indicated by the map. They walked through the tunnel for about 10 minutes. It seemed that all the tunnels from the exit-entry points took 10 minutes to walk to the central cave where the Time Machine experiment was situated.

Here also the tunnel was well lit as the light from outside was filtering through the shafts and vents as was in the tunnel in Town M, Town I and Town J. There was a fragrance of damp earth coming from outside. It must have rained outside this was definite. Everyone took deep breaths to inhale the fresh air.

Shena wanted to know why damp soil had such an enchanting fragrance. Luke gave a romantic type of reply that it was one of the most magical gifts of nature and loved by mankind. Everyone loved the first rain after a long dry summer. The falling raindrops, after a long summer, were truly beautiful, and even more beautiful was the ‘smell’ of those first drops when they hit the ground or the raindrops striking fresh soil. The rain has been used in songs all over the world. Many movies had romantic songs centering on falling rain as well as dance sequences in the rain. There is an old song, ‘Raindrops keep falling on my head’ which they had grown up with.

Shana was not happy with the reply as it did not give information about how the scent of the damp earth came about.

Mono explained that water does not have any smell and did anyone know the secret behind this beautiful smell? It was because of something in the soil, this earthly scent which is is produced when rain falls on dry soil is called ‘petrichor’. He then gave a huge lecture on what exactly happens. (The details about ‘Petrichor’ are in the earlier chapter that describes their entry into the Tunnel leading to the Time Machine Experiment at Town K).

After walking for about 10 minutes they came to a similar inner cave that had about 4 scientists sitting in front of machines as statues in various stages of doing work. Another scientist was standing like a statue near the huge pulsating brain probably he had been measuring the pulsations as he was jotting something in a notebook. The huge pulsating brain was hanging at the other end of the wall of the cave. On the wall was written, ‘Time Machine Experiment, Town K’.

The two telephone booths with glass windows were also seen in the T.V. serial called ‘Dr. Who’. These telephone booths were connected with wires to the computers and the computers, in turn, were connected with wires to the huge pulsating brain.

The group of trekkers again had that déjà vu feeling. This was because the entire cave seemed to be a replica of that at Town M, Town I and Town J. Mono carried out the same steps as in the previous Time Machine Experiments, a lot of sparks were seen coming out of the machines and the huge brain. The machines were destroyed and the huge brain shriveled up thereafter a cracking sound was heard and 25 blobs of light were released by it.

15 Orbs, 5 from Town M, 5 from Town I and 5 Town J moved to the shriveled brain to receive the 25 Orbs that came out. These 15 Orbs communicated with the Orbs that had come out for about 10 minutes and these 25 Orbs joined the 125 Orbs. Now there were a total of 150 Orbs in total now comprising 75 from Town M, 25 from Town I, 25 from Town J and the most recent 25 from Town K. Those were definitely a lot of Orbs. This meant that there would be approximately 25 more orbs from the abandoned Town L which they were yet to visit.

These 150 Orbs were dancing around as if they were happy to meet the old friends and relatives who had been trapped in the huge brain here. There was a strange humming type of sound emitting from the excited Orbs which were jumping about.

This time Mono did not have to tell the Orbs to ensure everything was destroyed including the dead brain contained the first brain around which the Time machine experiment had been built. The Orbs seem to know by instinct what they were expected to do. Maybe they were communicating among themselves and had conveyed the required information.

They moved around with lightning speed throughout the entire cave raising electric current and sparks of electricity to hit at all the computer terminals. Soon the computer terminals were burnt beyond recognition. The shriveled brain was also injected with a dose of electric current by a few of these Orbs in a combined exercise. As a result, the shriveled brain was burnt up beyond recognition.

Mono asked Juan, his grandfather, and Echo, his father to ascertain from the 25 Orbs of Town K to ensure that no blueprint or designs of the Time Machine remained anywhere in the vicinity.

The two Orbs asked those 25 Orbs telepathically and they got a response that all the terminals were destroyed. Some old computers were kept in the storeroom. They would light up a controlled electric shoot there too. The group saw the Orbs leaving for a similar area where there was a similar door of a storeroom. Again it was a déjà vu thing.

Soon there was a lot of hissing noises as the Orbs aimed electric current at all the dumped terminals in the storeroom. In front of their eyes everything was destroyed, actually charred beyond recognition. Now, everything about the Time Machine experiment was completely destroyed at Town I, Town J and Town K.