In search of the Purple light

MAdbRAin
MAdbRAin
Jul 22, 2017 · 10 min read

The wind was caressing my face. The loud voices of strangers were brushing past my ear. I woke up from a short and much needed nap to the wailing of a kid in the front seat. The mother, visibly irritated, was trying her best to calm him down. The sound of cards being shuffled from the next compartment found its way to my ears surmounting all the commotion. Amidst all these, without a care for the world inside, our noisy train kept itself busy with its own job and was rolling its wheels, racing the moon outside. The clouds were my constant companion since I had left my office at 5.30 PM. It had been a lousy day, where everything went against me at office. The only thing that kept me going was the relieving thought of reuniting with my family after a month long of routine life at my workplace. Somehow, I managed to wrap up my work before the train time and reached the station just before the scheduled time, partially drenched.

Currently, I stood up from my seat and moved towards the train door. My head was aching like it could burst at any moment. Since I had no medicine to take, and lately I had realized that a gush of cool air does the trick, I found myself standing at the train door, facing the never ending meadows. My parents’ constant advise of not to stand near the door made me promise myself, “Just for 5 minutes”.

Another train traversed past our train. I extended my hand outside to feel the rain, but it had stopped. 15 minutes passed and my “Just for 5 minutes” promise lost in the oblivion. The train was shuddered for the next stoppage. I tried to see the name of the station habitually and something caught my attention nonchalantly; A bright purple light, glowing emphatically in a side by house. I have no words to describe how it was different from normal sources of light, but somehow it was. I tried to get a better look at it when the train stopped. I got on the platform and gazed in its direction. It could have been anything yet it didn’t look like anything that I know of. Suddenly I came to my sense and realized the train had stopped for a couple of minutes only. I turned back towards the train. But as soon I had realized about my current situation, even before I turned towards the train, I knew something was different.

I couldn’t hear the hawkers, I couldn’t feel the presence of the train and my headache was gone. Also, the train was nowhere in sight. The platform was deserted. I pinched myself. What has just happened? I looked at my watch. It was 12.15 AM. I had boarded the train at 7PM and I must have got down at the station around 8 pm. I looked at the station clock; it showed 0015; same as my watch. Had I been standing here, gazing at the light for 4 hours? I turned back towards the light, voila!!! It was gone. Not a trace of it. I was at my wit’s end. Is it for real? Somehow I managed to keep my sense and realized my parents must be going crazy since I must have reached home 2 hours earlier. I brought out the cellular phone out of my pocket and unlocked it. At that precise moment, I heard a shrieking high pitched sound from behind. I turned my face to the fact that the weirdness had just began. The train was there along with all its accompanying noise. My phone, now unlocked, displayed the time 08:10 PM.

I must admit I was a bit relived amidst all these madness. The light was still there when I looked at it and I must have been dreaming standing there. I looked at the light again. It must have been a result of all the tiredness of brain and the effect of a terrible day. All I needed was to reach home soon, enjoy my mom’s culinary skill and get a good night’s sleep .I couldn’t risk standing at the platform anymore. It’s amazing how you can rationalize anything inside your brain once you start believing in it. So I brought my gaze back from the ominous strange light and turned towards the train in a hurry to get back to my seat.

A feeling of déjà vu swept over me. The train was not there. Mechanically my eyes turned to the station clock which flashed 1915 adamantly. Well, after two times you juggled along the time line, you start doubting yourself. This time I was sure, somehow, something’s in play. It felt like a scene from a science fiction movie. One thing I was sure whatever it was, it happened due to the purple light which was glazing brightly now. I decided in a split second, gathered all my courage, and walked towards it.

*******************************************

With my eyes fixed at the source of light, in fear of it might disappear, my legs took me towards the source. It must have been 20 minutes when I finally felt my destination is near. The night was calm with a crescent moon shining with all the light it can pass from the sun. Finally passing through a long lonely road, bordered with trees, I was standing beneath a weather battered yet large house. The light seemed to come from the second floor of the house. I went ahead to press the bell in front of the house. Right before I pressed the bell, my mind asked me once again to go back. When my heart didn’t acknowledge its request, my brain asked a simple question. “What are you going to ask when someone opens the door?” I was on a train, I saw a light, and then felt like I was looking at the light for 4 hours without knowing and then I travelled back in time? Before the thought was nearing its end, I realized how stupid that sounds. May be my exhausted mind was playing a trick. Not may be, it must be. For the last time I put a glance to the house and turned my back. I started walking towards the station to catch my train. It’s all work pressure, I needn’t be Sherlock Holmes to realize it.

“Who were you searching for?” along came a shrill voice, just audible enough.

Did I really hear something or it’s just the rustling leaves playing trick? My head turned back doubtfully, only to see the door of the house open. Outside, on the porch, stood a woman, in her 50’s.Her hair curled and she was wearing a nightwear. An inquisitive face serenely beautified by a tender smile.

“Me??” I confirmed the question was directed towards me. My mouth opened before my brain had any chance to ponder upon what to say. “No one. I was just passing by.”

“Alright. Have a good night dear.” Her voice was modulated and soothing, still having the mysterious smile on her wrinkled face.

I turned around and started walking away from the house. To be honest, I had no idea why I didn’t ask her about the light when it was the reason, I came so far. My mind was still arguing on the fact about should I turn around and ask her when the voice caught me from behind,

“Are you sure young man, It’s not about the purple light?”

She was brewing coffee in the kitchen while I waited for her in her study. My eyes passed through her bookshelves. Neatly arranged books by great scientists have aligned themselves as if eager to be used. By the quality of them, I guess each of them gets their turn quite a lot.

“He never thought time as the fourth dimension. According to him Space is not 3D + Time, space is 4D.” I saw the lady came with a tray with two cups of coffee. I looked at the cover of the book to decipher the “He”, ‘Out of my later years’ by Albert Einstein. I thanked her for the tea and nodded.

We sat on an old rusty Sofa, my hands holding the cup of tea carefully. “So you live alone?” I inquired.

“Yes, after the research started, I couldn’t spend enough time with my husband. So we agreed to get separated. He has remarried since. They have an adorable kid.” He pointed at a photo frame with the photo of a 15 year old girl with pimples covering her face. After a small silence, she continued, “I needed complete isolation for the project. So I chose this place, my father’s home, away from the crowd. Of course, being a woman helps.” She smiled to herself.

“How is that?” I asked.

“You see, even after 60 years of independence, people still find it difficult to believe a woman can dedicate her whole life to science, leaving her family behind. If I would have been a man, this place would have swarmed with co researchers, journalists. The crude sexism still exists.”She continued after a bit of contemplation, “But I have no complaints. I wanted that.” She had an authority when she spoke. She would have made a brilliant teacher or may be a politician.

“Tell me about the light more. This is something you have discovered but can’t go to public with it. Is it so?”I took another sip, outside a cricket chirped.

“You know about time as fourth dimension, right? I won’t bore you with technicalities.”

I nodded. “I know what I have read in sci-fi stories. It is just another dimension like length, breadth and width. When you understand it fully, you can travel through time. That’s all I know”

“That’s all you need to know.” She smiled a bit and continued, “It started when I was 26, working at a chemical firm, which used to research on fuel for spacecrafts. One usual evening, I was working late. It was 19… “She tried to remember the exact year. “1988. Or may be 1987.My project manager had tasked me with the documentation part after we had successfully economized a very important composition of the propellant. I was all alone in the lab. And then it happened; an explosion. Someone had missed something that day. A bottle of acid was kept open or someone had forgotten to turn off a burner. But boom, an explosion rocked the lab.” Her voice was only thing that broke the monotonous silence of the night inside the house. The fan overhead relentlessly tried to palliate the heat, to a limited success.

“When I woke up the room was filled with fire fighters and I was being carried away on a stretcher. I tried to look at the lab, still processing not sure about what has happened and then, I saw something glowing brightly.”

“That light?”

“Yes, it was. I asked one of the paramedics about it, they thought I was seeing things. They couldn’t see any light. It was perfectly plausible, I was in a trauma. I was the perfect candidate to see things.”She grinned remembering that time, “I wasn’t much injured and I needn’t go to the hospital. I was treated in the office dispensary where my husband was waiting my arrival.”

“It was nearly 2 hours when I insisted on returning to the ruined laboratory and rummaged through the things for the brightly lit object. I discovered it under a pile of debris. I asked my husband to bring it to me to be replied with a quizzical look. I realized after a bit of “you really can’t see it?” and “What are you talking about.” for some reason, no one can actually see it except me and then the strangest thing happened. I felt like I was standing in the lab sans the destruction, just like before the explosion. I looked at my surrounding with disbelief and the next second, I was back.” She sipped her tea.

“At first, I dismissed it as my brain playing trick as a result of the concussion, the obvious explanation. I picked the stone and asked my husband to go and bring our car around and then, it happened again. I was standing at a much sophisticated laboratory, my project manager talking to me about something. As far I remember, I talked with my manager for an hour or so and at some point, I heard a shrieking noise and by the time, it stopped, my husband was calling me to get outside at the same destroyed laboratory.”

“Wow.” I was transfixed there and something in that lady’s voice made me believe it. Also, you tend to believe strange explanations, when you have already been a part of it.

“By the time I reached home, I had realized it was something but in the next 2 months I realized what it can do. It can push you forward and backward in time axis. And it’s an oscillation. Once you go back, you will go forward once.”

“Like an under damped oscillation but with one period”

“Exactly. And since only a very few can see it, I needed to research on it to prove it to the world else they will dismiss me as a lunatic trying to prove something which isn’t even real”

“Wait a second. So I was not the first one to come to your door like this.”

“No young man. I am sorry but you are not. The look in your eyes outside the door was enough for me to realize why you were here. I have seen it before.” She looked at the clock ticking 12PM. “So moving forward in the story, I left my job, my husband, my life and relocated at this place to find out the secret hidden in this stone. It has been 25 years, and still it’s a mystery to me. One thing I am sure about is that we, who can see it, see it because it is visible to an abnormal wavelength, outside visible spectra. And due to some anomaly in our brain we can see at that wavelength.”

We talked a bit more till it was three in the morning, when I felt a jolt. It took me back to the station with the train standing there and the clock digits roaming near 8PM. I realized I was due to be back in the current timeline.

Not to add any further adventures in what already was a night, which my future self would argue hadn’t ever happened, I climbed the train stairs and found my way to my seat as the train gave its final horn to leave the station.

MadBrain is a amateur human being still trying to find the reason behind his existence. Follow him on twitter @pranay_suman.

MAdbRAin

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MAdbRAin

Narcissist..Hedonistic..Sarcastic..PotterHead..Holmian..Bohemian.. eccentric.. Romatically_Challenged

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