"The distinction between past, present and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion."

Albert Einstein.

The silence was absolute, preserving the focus, and Igor found himself perspiring slightly from the intensity of his exertion. Ailin, who already had many notions of all that, felt the energy of her partner flowing and her hands tingled a little as if she had the feeling that she could do the same, something that made her very curious. She intensified her focus on the surrounding flow to ensure no detail escaped her notice.

It didn't take long and, in front of them, a vertical line appeared, almost invisible and that was only noticeable because it was black on a very bright day. The wizard raised his arms and put the tips of his fingers on it, moving his hands away to force the opening of the portal more and they could see a world of the fourteenth plane appear in front of everyone. Father and daughter peeked through Igor's shoulders, curious, observing that planet with all their attention.

It had a very clear and yellowish light, where only a flowery field was seen and, not far away, a city with beautiful buildings, looking like they were made of crystal and reminiscent of the Citadel, although they didn't come close to its beauty.

Igor turned his face, winked and smiled.

"Don't forget; ten days." He gave a last kiss to his friend and advanced to the passage.

When he broke the energy film that separated the two worlds, a very gentle breeze crossed the planes and brought to those present a sweet smell of pollen, so strong and pleasant that it was intoxicating. Igor passed to the other side and closed the passage to avoid any possible problem.

The first thing he felt was that the temperature was a little higher than the Crystal World, maybe twenty-seven degrees. He looked around and all he saw were natural landscapes, flowery and long hills that mixed with plains, reminiscent of a summer afternoon in some natural park. To the left, there was a very large river and calm waters, with some trees on the banks. Behind him, a huge mountain range appeared with a dense vegetation, as dense as a jungle on Earth. Some of the mountains were so high that the peaks had snow, maybe even eternal. To the right, the field of flowers advanced far away. The only work of that planet that was not of nature was the city in front of him, not far and not very big. The landscape that presented itself, in no way differed from Earth.

Calm and unhurried, he began to move to the city, but prepared for any possible eventuality. He saw no one in that world until he reached the urban limits, when a strange vehicle flying at low altitude approached and landed next to him. From inside, a native inhabitant emerged, presenting a smile identical to the human standard.

He was too much like a human being, but he had three eyes and the wizard soon realized that he was facing the descendants of the beings of planet X in the fourth plane, seeing the mystery of their disappearance solved. The creature did not appear to be armed and seemed peaceful.

Smiling back, he approached slowly and stopped about two meters away. With slow gestures so as not to scare, he took the phone out of his pocket and showed the photograph of the statue of their original world. The being, who appeared to be a 'woman', understood immediately and sketched a new smile, signaling for him to follow her and enter the strange and silent vehicle that took off soon after towards the interior of the city.

― ☼ ―

Both remained silent and Igor took the opportunity to analyze the city. The first thing he noticed was that the buildings were not made of crystal, as it seemed at first, but of some kind of similar material, perhaps a variant of marble or granite.

The ride was short and the strange flying machine that did not need to be piloted landed in front of a pyramidal building, similar to its brother from another world, but larger, perhaps with about seventy meters of edge.

He began to wonder if that shape was related to knowledge or control, perhaps even administration, since it was the only building of that format. When he touched its wall, he calculated that the material it was made of must be a derivative of marble, opaque and dull. The strange woman stopped in front of the door, which opened by itself sliding up, and made a sign inviting Igor to enter. The reception room was very similar to that of the other planet, although it was smaller, and, like the other world, it was empty.

The screens, however, appeared illuminated with some images and texts together. The woman took Igor to a corridor and walked perhaps to the middle of the building, where they took another transverse access. She led the visitor to a place that looked like a cylinder of light and made him enter with her. Once stopped, she moved her hand up, seeming to signal to go up, and they both started to float. Curious, Igor realized that he was in a kind of elevator controlled by gravity. On the third floor, they left and the girl took him to a small room full of equipment of the most diverse types, equipment that he had no idea of the usefulness. In the center of the room there was a reclining armchair, similar to those of dentists and it seemed very comfortable. By gestures, she asked the young man to sit in the chair and Igor imagined that this would allow some kind of communication between them. Smiling, he obeyed. The stranger pulled a low stool and sat on it, placing some electrodes on the wizard's body. Igor felt nothing, but as soon as the woman turned on the device, a slight tingling and a lot of comfort occurred, which induced total relaxation.

He did not realize when he lost consciousness, but the fact is that it happened, since he woke up in a very comfortable bed. Not even ten seconds passed and the door opened, allowing the entrance of the stranger.

"Hello. How do you feel?" she asked him, smiling. "I'm sorry to make you go through this, but the indoctrinator was the fastest way to obtain a two-way communication."

"Indoctrinator?" Igor asked, astonished. He did not understand how she spoke such perfect Portuguese until he realized that he was the one who spoke her language, understanding the purpose of the equipment. "Oh, yes, I see. A machine to induce knowledge in our minds, I suppose. Very ingenious."

"You could say that," the girl replied. "But we also extracted the knowledge of four of your languages and soon we will be able to speak your main language.

"Very interesting," Igor said, impressed.

"My name is Mia," she continued, "what is your name?"

"Igor."

"Igor!" The woman smiled. "A beautiful name. Well, Igor, I see that you have been to the lower planes and I also see that, unless this very interesting device that you showed me allows interplanar passage, you used means unknown to our civilization to get here. According to the central database, your species is from a world two hundred light years from our planet of origin, but in the third plane, is that correct?"

"Yes, Mia, absolutely correct," Igor replied. "I can cross the planes with the simple will to do it and I do not depend on equipment to go anywhere."

"Your people were too primitive to have reached that level, Igor!" Mia exclaimed. "At the time of the last visit they were still learning the rudiments of speech and they could not have evolved so fast as to have machines like this that you showed me, let alone cross the planes without a spaceship, something that not even our people can do!"

"We are few with this gift," the wizard explained. "The vast majority of the beings of Earth do not even know that the planes exist. People like me, then, no way. In our antiquity, we were persecuted."

"But today, according to this little gadget that you have with you, you have a technology that will soon open the doors of space, if it hasn't already!"

"In our home world, this technology will only exist in almost two thousand cycles. I am in the past of my real time where electricity is not even mastered."

"Even this period would be too short to achieve such evolution, Igor, not to mention traveling in time. Are you an explorer or a scholar?"

"No," he replied, laconic. "I'm more of an exile and I need a lot of help to be able to return to my time or the Universe may be destroyed in a short time."

"Who exiled you?" Mia widened her eyes and it was funny to see. Igor would have laughed if it weren't for the seriousness of the situation, because, in his opinion, a person with three wide eyes was very bizarre.

"A being similar to the one your people met hundreds of thousands of years ago, the absolute evil that was released innocently under my authorization... by my fault. And, also by my fault, he killed all our brothers. This being absorbed dangerous knowledge that allows even interplanar displacement as I can do."

"You released the monster—" she widened her eyes even more, very scared and backing away two steps.

"No," Igor interrupted, "I allowed them to explore the lowest plane without knowing that there were those creatures there."

"I think," Mia said, calmer, "that you should explain everything that happened. These facilities contain the accumulated knowledge of my race over nine hundred millennia and maybe we can help.

"That was my hope, Mia." Igor told the whole story from the beginning and she listened in silence.

When he finished explaining, Mia remained silent. Ten minutes later, he became so impatient that he could not stand it anymore and asked:

"Aren't you going to comment anything?"

"I'm feeding the computers," the hostess explained, raising her hand to calm him down, "we do this with waves of thought. I will inform you when I finish."

― ☼ ―

More calm, Igor waited for her to finish. The room where he was looked like clean, spacious and had a large window. He approached and looked out, observing that people with attention. The city, despite not having close to the peculiar beauties of the Citadel, was very beautiful. In front of the building there was a expansive park, densely forested, could easily be mistaken for one of Porto Alegre's parks, if not for the unfamiliar species of trees that, while verdant, differed markedly from those commonly recognized. In fact, a normal citizen would not notice and, at most, would think that he was in another city that was not his, as long as he did not see closely some of the various beings that wandered there. Many people was engaged in activities beyond his comprehension, like moving in reverse en masse or contorting laterally. Igor imagined that it might be some kind of gymnastics. He also saw others who looked like normal citizens, such as some who walked with strange animals, which looked like a mixture of dog and monkey. They had four lower limbs and a body that resembled a dog, but the torso was similar to a monkey and had a pair of long arms. They walked hand in hand with the owners and talked, which led Igor to think that they were much more intelligent beings than the animals of Earth. Without realizing it, he smiled when he saw the little creatures, thinking of a simian version of the centaurs. He considered all that very naturally, since it was another civilization and, as far as everything indicated, quite superior to his.

The silence was so great that Igor was startled when Mia said:

"Now the computer analyzes the facts. The government also heard your report and may want to talk to you," the extraterrestrial woman started by saying. "Well, going back to you and that device that you showed us and that we identified as being a primitive computer as well as a communicator, we saw several images recorded on it and we would like to know what one of them is."

Mia stretched her wrist presenting something that looked like a very thin bracelet. She looked at him and a holographic image formed in the air, showing the Citadel from various angles.

"This is a city that we built many centuries ago, but it does not yet exist in this current period. It is where most people like me lived. Just as you emigrated to the fourteenth plane, we did the same on the thirteenth plane. We call this planet the Crystal World and the city of Citadel. By the way," he continued with a smile, "I would like to know your history."

"Our history is very simple, contrary to what you might think. About seven hundred thousand years of your time," she began to explain, speaking as if she were a history teacher, "our people discovered interstellar space travel, but, until we reached this evolution, we went through many things and one of them was that our world was exhausted and dying after two hundred millennia of abuse, which is the most remote time we have on record. A thousand years later, where we explored various planets of our plane, we discovered the interplanar energy field and started to explore other planes. We mapped thousands of worlds with intelligent beings in all thirteen planes until, as was your research, we found the clue to two different planes, the two extremes of the Universe, although we still did not know. First we came here and discovered that in this plane living beings have a reduced density, most of them are incorporeal or energetic. Today we know that they are the most evolved species of the Universe, although there are others very evolved in all planes, but the average context increases for the higher levels. When we opened the lower plane, the disaster happened because it was the opposite of ours and composed, in its essence, of a gigantic celestial body, which presents a normal gravitation and without any explanation, contradicting all physical laws. This plane has an intelligent species of class F that we, as well as you, cataloged as the absolute evil. Our intelligence classification goes from A to Z, where Z is devoid of intelligence and A is equal to or superior to us. To get an idea, at the time we discovered your world, you were cataloged as class H and it is very obvious that you need to be reclassified as soon as possible."

Igor listened with all his attention, although he already knew a good part of their history from having talked to the computer on planet X. However, he wanted to see if it was possible to add information. Curious, he asked:

"But did you manage to contact them, talk to them or negotiate?"

"One of them infiltrated the ship and came with the team. In a cold attitude, he killed one by one those who were not necessary to pilot, as if he had a great instinct," she told and Igor ended up remembering the similar movie. "They are smart and cruel, but they do not have scientific knowledge and have limited intelligence that increases over time. They kill the victim and suck their vital energy, absorbing their knowledge. It only took one to enter our world and, in two years, he decimated three hundred million living beings. Things got worse after a while, when he began to assume the physical form of one of us, whether man or woman. So, you can be sure that he took the first information from your dead friend still on his plane and his hatred against you must be because you attacked him, perhaps interrupting part of the suction of knowledge. He also touched you, so he extracted some information, but mostly superficial, I believe. It is also possible that you have a certain natural resistance against this type of attack and that may have irritated him even more, since he could not kill you and had the opportunity to do so."

She continued, after a short pause:

"The war against this being lasted fifty years and he killed seven billion people until we managed to contain him. It was very difficult, but we imprisoned him inside a containment field whose principles are similar to the interplanar ones, but bundled, and we created a gigantic construction around him to prevent escape."

"I saw the fortress," said Igor. "But, in your case, I would have sent the entity back to the lower plane."

"Our scientists claimed that the being is immortal and learned a lot about us, not to mention that they believe, although without having reached a consensus, that he is indestructible," explained Mia. "This generated a terrible fear in the rulers, who were terrified that he would come back for some reason. I, after studying our past a lot and now with what you said, I am inclined to think that yes, that they are indestructible."

"I understand." Igor became thoughtful. "But that was thousands of years ago and your world is now deserted of life except the wild. What did you do with the bodies of the victims?"

"A curious thing about the victims is that he kills them by sucking their essences. The bodies remain intact and do not deteriorate. We created a gigantic mausoleum in their honor, hidden inside one of the inner cities."

Igor imagined that the inner cities must be the ones that were inside the mountains.

"I have a rather simple theory and without any proof, being more of an instinct," he said, after evaluating the possible reactions of the scientist to what he would say. "I think the monster can be destroyed and, if that happens, this stolen essence returns in some way to the respective bodies and maybe they come back to life."

"Do you believe that this is possible?"

"I believe, but I'm not sure," he replied, shrugging his shoulders and forgetting that that gesture would mean nothing to Mia. "But what would you do with seven billion bodies that came back to life overnight?"

"There is a very interesting hypothesis that our people never imagined," exclaimed Mia, thoughtful. "It has been about six hundred millennia since the war ended and our population was so reduced that it fit entirely in a large city, approximately thirty million lives. We emigrated to another planet and, then, to this one. Our people changed a lot; evolved to the point of no longer needing the spoken word and many other details. Maybe it would be better for them to stay as they are, because we are no longer as we once were."

"Even if they are only imprisoned and suffering?"

"Thank goodness this is a discussion in the theoretical field and it would not be me to make the decisions." Mia seemed to hear something inside her and Igor imagined that she was receiving some information or order.

He thought it prudent not to let her know that he had the ability to read thoughts and kept a mental barrier, which might betray him. He watched the girl, whose shapes were very delicate, much more subtle than the being of the statue on the planet of origin and concluded that she was right in one detail: the individuals, if they were released, would no longer be compatible with that people, but it would be a great cruelty to leave them trapped. He was so absorbed in his thoughts that only realized that she was talking to him when Mia repeated the question for the second time:

"Igor, don't you want to eat something?" She smiled, kindly. "The nutrition machine has been adapted to your organism and the analysis of the central computer can take more than a day because there are too many variables."

"It would be good, especially since it seems that I haven't eaten for a long time."

"Five of your days," she said. "Come on, let's go to the next room."

"What!?" he asked, exalted. "Five days?"

"The service of the indoctrinator takes a while to be completed and requires you to be in total rest," explained the girl. "Don't worry that the machine kept part of your vital functions in a kind of hibernation, which prevented you from wearing out or weakening. After all, I think that made it a lot easier, don't you agree?"

"I have to agree," he said. However, Igor had the feeling that she was not very sincere.

"Come." She opened the door and took the wizard to another room where there was a table with dishes served. "I hope you like it."

Igor thanked and sat down, feeling hungry. The girl accompanied him but did not touch the food.

"You don't eat, Mia?" asked Igor. "Aren't you hungry?"

"We don't eat like that anymore," she explained, "our body uses very few nutrients and more light energy. It is very likely that, in a not too distant future, the mouth will become something atrophied until it disappears."

"It must be strange not to have a mouth," commented Igor, laughing. "That must shake our sense of aesthetics a lot."

"You're right, Igor." Mia also laughed. "It happens that these changes are so slow that we don't even notice."

― ☼ ―

Igor went back to sleep in the room where they left him. The next morning, he woke up in a good mood and refreshed. A few minutes later, Mia appeared.

"Good morning, Igor," she said. "Did you sleep well?"

"Hello," he replied, cheerful. "I slept very well, thank you."

"Do you want to eat?"

"Actually, what I wanted was some information." Igor sighed, worried. "I've been stuck in the past for too long."

"I have a partial answer to the question." She smiled. "But I'm afraid you're going to be disappointed."

"Can you tell me?"

Mia began to recite, as if she were reading something invisible:

"The entity zero did not develop the necessary knowledge to generate the temporal displacement that is too advanced even for our current technology. It absorbs the knowledge of those who withdrew vitality or obtained a more prolonged physical contact, even without killing. The visitor suffered an abduction attempt by the entity and, according to the report, he is the element with the most knowledge of the universe of people affected; therefore, the answer must be in him, probability of ninety percent, or in another victimized being, probability of seventy percent. The degree of reliability of the preliminary analyzes depends on the authenticity of the information sent, but the margin of error should not exceed five percent. More details on temporal displacement require more time demand, however, there is a possibility of return because, if it was possible to go to the past, it will be possible to go in the other direction, probability of one hundred percent without margin of error. Complementary processing in progress."

Igor remained silent, thoughtful.

"I imagined you would be like that," said the scientist. "After all, if you came to us for help, the most likely thing is that you have no idea about it, right?"

"At least that I remember," he confessed. "Did the machine specify the estimated time period?"

"No, but, from my experience of very complex problems, it takes between five and ten days, no more than that. Do you want to eat now?"

"Actually, I'm not hungry right now—" Igor stopped talking when he noticed that she, once again, received some communication.

"The government wants to see you," Mia said with a yellow smile on her face. "They are annoyed with me because I used my prerogatives as a scientist to contact you first. Do you mind going?"

"Of course I don't mind, Mia." Igor was already getting used to their appearance. "Whenever you want."

"Then follow me."

They walked through some corridors until they left the pyramidal building. At the door, a wheelless vehicle was waiting for them. They got in and the glider started to move fast and silent, without a pilot to drive it like the first one, although it was very different. Igor calculated that these differences should be like the cars on Earth, of different types, colors and models. The flight was very slow and at low altitude, which is why the young man took the opportunity to appreciate the city with more details than he did at first sight. After ten minutes, they landed in front of a circular building and got out.

― ☼ ―

The movie was 'Alien, the eighth passenger' A. N.