Memory of Water. Emmi Itaranta

‘I knew it must have been for listening to something, because it had loudspeakers, just like a message-pod – completely different size and much older, of course, but the basic principle is the same. As I was fashioning a new lid for that rectangular dent in the front, I noticed that there were two spindles inside it, and one of them turned. Those plastic blocks,’ she pointed at the larger rectangle, ‘were lying about next to it, and as I kept looking at them, it occurred to me that it was as if the dent was made for such a piece, with the spindles fitting in the cogged wheels in the middle. Even the shape was right … but the size wasn’t.’ She tapped with her finger the plastic block that bore the letters ‘VHS’. ‘It’s as if these were made for a similar but far bigger machine. Bloody bad luck: the right machine and the right changeable part, but wrong scale. But then I remembered you tend to keep all sorts of peculiar things, and I realised you had the TDKs!’

      I began to understand what she was getting at. She smoothed one creased TDK tape as much as she could, knotted the shredded ends together and rolled the tape back inside the plastic shell until it no longer hung loose.

      Then she tried the TDK in the dent of the loudspeaker machine.

      ‘It doesn’t fit,’ I said, disappointed, but Sanja turned the TDK upside down and it clicked into place.

      ‘Ha!’ she said, and I, too, felt a smile growing on my face.

      Sanja closed the lid and turned the switch on the solar generator. A small, yellow-green light that made me think of glow-worms was lit on the top panel of the machine, next to the numerical combinations.

      ‘Now we just need to figure out what to do with all these switches,’ she said and pressed a button with a square on it. The lid on the front panel opened. Nothing else happened. Sanja closed the lid again and tried a button with two arrowheads on it. The machine began to rustle. Sanja brought her face close to the rectangular dent and her eyes narrowed as she stared at it, alert.

      ‘It’s rolling!’ she said. ‘Look!’

      I peeked and saw that she was right: the machine was spinning the tape inside the plastic TDK so fast it was difficult to tell its direction. After a while it clicked and churned in place for a moment before clicking again and turning mute.

      ‘Did it break?’ I enquired cautiously. Sanja creased her brow.

      ‘I don’t think so,’ she said. ‘Maybe there’s just no more tape left.’ She pressed another button with only one arrowhead on it. The machine began to buzz faintly. Then the loudspeakers crackled. Sanja jumped and turned to look at me.

      ‘Listen!’ she said.

      The speakers rustled and hummed and then continued to hum.

      And hummed some more.

      The smile peeled off Sanja’s face like paint chipping in the sun while time stretched on between us, and the humming reached further, into another age and world whose secrets it wasn’t ready to reveal. Eventually Sanja pressed the square button again and the tape stopped. She opened the lid, took the TDK out and replaced it with another one after tying the broken ends of the tape together.

      There was still nothing but warbled whirring from the loudspeakers.

      She tried all three TDKs several times, spinning the tapes back and forth and turning the TDKs from one side to the other, but all we heard were ghosts of sounds sunken in time and distance, a near-silence that was more frustrating than complete soundlessness. If the tapes had once held something comprehensible, earth, air, rain and sun had worn the past-world echoes thin a long time ago.

      Sanja stared at the machine and turned one of the TDKs in her hands.

      ‘I’m sure I’m right,’ she said. ‘These parts fit in the machine, and it translates sounds from them into the loudspeakers. The device and the TDKs must have been used exactly like this. If only we could find a TDK that still had sound left on it …’

      Sanja’s fingers were tapping the plastic surface of the TDK. I heard Minja’s shrieks from inside the house, and Kira’s faint voice soothing Minja. I followed with my gaze a small black spider that was spinning a web in the corner above the solar generator.

      ‘Perhaps … perhaps there are more somewhere in the plastic grave?’ I offered. ‘Or maybe they weren’t meant to last in the first place. Past-world technology was fragile.’

      Sanja’s expression changed, as if the outline of her face had become more focused. She lifted the square lid on the top panel of the machine and felt the round indentation under it with her fingers. Then she looked at my wooden storage box that was open on the worktop. Her eyes were fixed on the silver-coloured disc with a hole in the middle. The disc looked exactly the right size for the round indentation of the listening-device. Sanja looked at me and I saw my own thoughts on her face.

      ‘May I?’ she asked.

      I nodded.

      Sanja took the disc from the wooden box and fitted it into the indentation. It seemed made for the machine. The round knob in the middle of the indentation fit right into the hole in the middle of the disc. Sanja pressed the disc into it, and it clicked lightly into place. She closed the lid and pressed the arrow button. Through the plastic window I saw the disc starting to turn.

      We waited.

      There was no sound from the loudspeakers.

      I saw Sanja’s expression and felt disappointed myself. Then she reached out her hand to fiddle with the switches on the top panel. The first one she touched caused the glow-worm light to go off and the rotation of the disc to slow down, so she switched it back to the original position. Another one did nothing at all. When she moved the third switch, the loudspeakers gave such a loud crackle we both jumped. It was followed by a short stretch of silence, and then a male voice which said clearly in our language:

      ‘This is the log of the Jansson expedition, day four. Southern Trøndelag, near the area previously known as the city of Trondheim.’

      While the voice went on to record the day, month and year, Sanja cheered and I laughed. The voice continued:

      ‘We started the day by measuring the microbe levels of the Dovrefjell waters. The results are not complete yet, but it seems that there is no discrepancy with the Jotunheimen results. If this turns out to be the case, our estimations about the spontaneous biological recovery and reconstruction process taking place in the area have been far more modest than the reality. Tomorrow we are going to plant purifying bacteria in the waters and then we’ll continue towards Northern Trøndelag …’

      The day outside grew into a thick, burning shell that surrounded the workshop, and horseflies climbed on the insect web walls, and we listened to the voice of the past-world. At times it would wither almost entirely, jump a little, or get stuck, until the sound found its flow again. Sanja didn’t stop it, and didn’t try to skip the boring bits. It had waited on the disc through generations. It was a part of a story that had nearly been lost in the plastic grave. We didn’t speak, and I don’t know what Sanja was thinking; but I thought of silence and years and water that ran ceaselessly, wearing everything away. I thought of the inexplicable chain of events that had brought this voice from a strange landscape and a lost world into this dry morning, into our ears that understood its words, yet comprehended little.

      The voice spoke of exploration of waters, microbe measurements, bacterial growth, landforms. There was an occasional lengthy break in the speech, and we began to discern separate sections. At the beginning of each one the voice announced a new date: the recording moved from day four to day five and so on. After day nine the voice stopped altogether. We waited for a continuation, but it didn’t come. Minutes passed. We looked at each other.

      ‘Too bad there wasn’t more,’ Sanja said. ‘And too bad it wasn’t more exciting.’

      ‘I’m sure my mum would disagree,’ I said. ‘She’s crazy about all sorts of scientific—’

      The speakers made a loud noise. We stiffened, listening. A female voice spoke now.

      ‘The