The following are excerpts of my grandfather’s diary. Or at least what I could recover.
“12.05.95. Been invited by Dr.T. to partake in an expedition to an old Paleo Eskimo settlement in Greenland. Possibly as old as 3000 years! Exciting! The older it is the more I like it!”
“[No date] Greenland Expedition. Got more details today. It’s about the discovery of an ancient tunnel system??? Very strange. Met team today as well.”
“23.08.95. If Dr. T. is right about these tunnels, which he seems to be convinced by, it would change quite a lot about what we know of ancient Greenland, however the Saqqaq peoples were hunter gatherers. What use would they have for such a tunnel system? Our expert on inuit history agrees with me. It simply makes no sense.”
“25.08.95. Arrived in Greenland today. Very exhausted! I am grateful for the warm welcome by the locals!”
“26.08.95. To my, and everyone else’s surprise, even Dr.T. a little, the tunnels are in fact REAL! This has profound implications! No matter how old these tunnels are, we know of no architecture like this, either from native greenlandic cultures or norse culture.”
“We felt like we were walking through a giant ant hill. So many different corners and corridors and they all lead to nowhere. And it was always the same stone brick walls. Maddening! We must have been walking for about half an hour and we couldn’t make sense of any of it. What was this thing? What’s it’s purpose? I did get a little creeped out at this point. I knew something was off.”
“Why were there stairs? Who the hell builds a deep staircase there? Why? It was gigantic! Dr.T. didn’t have an answer. He had given up, trying to pretend to be smart! Stupid Fuck! All his fault! … Or was it? I mean I agreed to it. Not like he wanted us to get lost down there.Yes I need to calm myself. Calm…calm…soon I will be home…soon I will see [grandmother’s name] and the kids. Then everything will be fine!Ok then we went down the stairs. Right. WHY DID WE DO THAT!!!!! What is wrong with us?”
“Everything was so beautiful down there. Those crystals. Glowing little crystals in the black stone. Just like the night sky. This was it. We could have turned back at this moment. But no. Like the idiots we were, we ignored all the signs that something was wrong. We just looked at those pretty little lights in the ceiling. Like babies. Haha!Well anyway. There we were. In a cave. Over a hundred metres under the surface. Under a system of tunnels no one knew existed until a few months back.There was a wall on one side of the cave. Perfectly flat and pitch black. Unusual, but not too strange, so we didn’t think much of it.We went up to it to check it out. And I touched it.I don’t want to think about what happened after that. But I have to. Once I have written it all down. Then I can forget it. Then it will allow me to forget it. Ok… yes. Ok.”
“Next thing I know, I was falling through time. Erfvjni. I felt it. It’s age. So many aeons! And I saw all of them. Or well, I saw all this static flickering of black and white spots. Like a TV that had lost its signal. But I knew what it was. It was everything. Universes being born. Stars forming. Life evolving, civilisations. And then everything dying. Being consumed by entropy. Only to be reborn again and again. All in the same eyeblink.It whispered its secrets to me, but I also felt it. The unimaginable time that no human mind can comprehend. It happened all so fast that things repeated in seconds. I don’t know how many Earths, just like ours I rushed by. Right after the unimaginable amounts of Universes that looked nothing like anyone could think of. How deep did I fall? How old was this thing? A trillion years is far too short. Maybe 10\^ Trillion? But even that seems infinitesimal. More like if you said Trillion to the power of a Trillion, a Trillion times. No. Far, FAR, FAR older.”
“I embraced it. There was nothing else I could do in the face of this horror. It was the only thing keeping me comfort. The only thing by my side as my sanity was slowly being torn apart. Maybe the only reason I am alive.”
“The tunnels are gone. Dr. T. is still missing. I’m the only one who knows. Who knows what is there. And I cannot tell anyone.”
“They all think I have lost it. I get it. I think that too. The visions. They are getting worse. I keep losing myself and I can’t remember much. My body is fine, but my mind? I experienced so much time in that cave. Those long aeons. My mind, my soul is dying… I will be dead long before my body is.”