He set out on a journey full of danger, but ended up chatting with two Germans and three Poles almost as old as he was, and with more or less the same desires and doubts as he did.
“I never got to feel the spiritual power of India that everyone talks about. And now I’m walking alone in the middle of nowhere.”
David wanted to stop and make camp, even though he had only walked a few miles after saying goodbye to Tobias’ group. He chose a comfortable spot with a view of Kanchenjunga, got his things and a kettle. He warmed water for tea, pocketed some breadcrumbs, and lay down in his tent, opening it so that he could see the mountain. David tucked his backpack under his head and felt, to his surprise, as if all the energy had gone out of his body. He felt unimaginably sad and lonely. He felt his throat tighten and a river rise to the bridge of his nose. He jumped out of the tent and looked around. There was no one around.
Fear drove through him. Tears welled up from his eyes, and he collapsed to his knees. Then he crawled into the tent and in a few seconds fell asleep from exhaustion. Only in the evening, he awoke to the sound of the wind. In front of his temporary abode the mountain ranges stretched on all sides, and in the midst of them rose a mountain illuminated by the setting sun.
“Kan-chen-jun-ga,” David whispered, and sighed deeply as he covered himself with his sleeping bag.
Yulia rubbed her temples in a circular motion, sitting next to Dr Capri. They couldn’t figure out what was going on, so they dropped their heads.
“Well,” the doctor raised his head, “we know for a fact that this is a Voyager recording. We heard some Senegalese and Japanese music. And greetings in different languages of the world.”
“Yes,” Yulia confirmed desperately and added again, “but I don’t understand why we caught this recording on the wave of space transmissions. I tell you, when NASA launched the Voyagers in ’77 to explore the solar system, they did have gold-plated records with music and pictures of the Earth on them, but they don’t play it. Voyagers don’t fly around in space with speakers and perform concerts for the stars. It’s just a piece of hardware.”
“Okay, Yulia. The message is indeed the same, the frequency corresponds to the transmission frequencies in space…”