Pilgrims
Earth & Magnet

Sanities. Sanity. When everything we know before becomes irrelevant, 28 years of life are not taken into account, what can be taken into account?

Cain once said, "Our mind is both a weapon and a shield. Filter all information using common sense and reason."

***

The man in front of me admitted to knowing me.

"Now we are not friends, someday in the future you will understand what I mean. For now, you can call me Sin. Next question," he said.

WHAT'S?? That doesn't answer anything. Okay, I'm not gonna push him further on this question.

"This where? Why am I here? Are there aliens?" I'm just impatient.

He looked amused, then said, "You're a little different from what I know. Okay, I'll try to answer first. We call this planet a magnet. The planet is about 150,000 light-years from Earth. Because of the long intergalactic journey, the first humans to form colonies here do not remember what year, in the earth's timeframe, they reached this planet. Now the population here reaches nearly 1 billion people."

I have to interrupt him here, "Wait. That's a fascinating story. If what you're saying is to be believed, it means that this is thousands of years from my perspective?"

"Well, time becomes relative when we talk about two distant objects. Because among them there can be several black holes that make 1 hour on a planet feel 1 decade on another planet. I can't tell you what the difference is between your departure from Earth and your arrival here. We don't know how you got here either."

"Jack, Anna, and I just accidentally got here, which means you guys don't know how to get us back?" tanyaku sharp.

"Hm. Actually, I can make sure you're going back to earth" he said mysteriously. He continued, "Because we met there after this."

"I don't understand what that means. But how can people move between planets?" I'm not satisfied.

I know this guy has a veiled agenda. Common sense No. 1 that Cain taught was : Lying, deflecting reality, or telling the truth is not intact will be done either intentionally or not by humans when talking to other humans to achieve certain agendas such as wanting to be liked, wanting to look smart, wanting to look cool, wanting to look cool, fear of being caught doing something, and so on.

Sin seemed too careful to choose what information he shared with me. I can't guess what the agenda is, but the words it says are hard to confirm now.

"Oh yeah, why don't I feel hungry?" manya curious.

"This is why we do not need to eat, because the air we breathe is enough to meet the nutritional and metabolic needs. And because gravity and air pressure are different than on Earth, our stomach and intestines move more slowly and our metabolism and excretory systems like urination are less frequent."

I don't really understand. But yeah, that's it.

"There's one important thing I need to tell you. When you return to earth, train your body. It will ease your path forward. I'm sorry all this happened to you and the others. We can't prevent it, but we can try to reduce the pain." He paused and continued, standing up to walk out of the room, "Oh, and about the alien question, we've never met an alien on this planet. See you soon."

Sin is out. I was trying to digest and analyze his words when suddenly the room shook violently.

***

With my mind still full of tangled threads, now I don't know where. Without any delay, I opened my eyes immediately.

It's here at night. I look at sky. There is no big moon. The arrangement of these stars is familiar.

"Earth," my mind is relieved.

I walked to a more crowded place. Let me tell you what I saw. I was in a very colonial-style place. If you look at the writings listed on posters or advertisements along the road that I went, it looks like I am in a country that uses Spanish.

It seems like it's late at night. There weren't many people I saw, and the air was also pretty cold. Fortunately, I was wearing pretty thick clothes. And even more fortunate, I keep my wallet in my pocket in my work coat. Maybe for a while, I can hang in here with that money.

I checked my pocket. There's mail. And a wad of money!!!

I read the letter with my heart racing.

Bahia, March 10, 2005

Maya,

What I give is not much, but hopefully useful. Please don't be so prejudiced. I hope you are happy in Brazil.

Your friend, your friend,

Sin

Okay, this means in Brazil, which means the language used here is Portuguese.

The money Sin prepared was partly in US dollars partly in Brazilian real.

I read this letter over and over again, hoping for more information I could get from that short piece of writing.

They know about the weirdness that happened to me, they know better than I do. They even prepared things that might be useful to me. All I could deduce was how they thought about this so neatly. But I feel a little upset. Upset because they know me, but I don't know them.

"Hm. Sin? Who's that?" I heard a very familiar voice behind my head.

"Ohh, Cain. Where have you been???" I was almost hysterical.

"I'm not going anywhere, anyway. But how are we here?" tanyanya.

"You missed a lot, Cain. You are wrong about aliens. I didn't see any aliens."

***

His latest problem is that I know very little about Brazil. I never learned Portuguese either. All I know about Brazil is the Amazon and Anaconda rivers. I've seen his movie. Remembering it makes me grateful to be moved to the middle of the city like this, instead of in the face of that terrible big snake.

Another problem is that the letter I read indicated I was in 2005. I go back 15 years to a time when the internet, social media, and smartphones have not become human everyday.

I walked back and looked at the city. I was going to find a motel to stay at, but I didn't because I had to show my identity card. The identity card I have is just a KTP whose creation date is 2018.

I walked for a while without a destination, until I found a small coffee shop that was open 24 hours. I went in there and luckily, the owner of this little shop spoke English.

From our conversation, I got a lot of information. That the city called Salvador da Bahia (or can be shortened Bahia) is one of the very popular tourist cities in Brazil. The city is interesting because many colonial-era European-style buildings are still preserved.

There are many Brazilians of African descent in this city. This happened because the Portuguese brought many African slaves to this city to be employed. Ugh. Slavery and colonization. The highest level of Human Rights Violations.

I also get information about the location of the homestay that is cheap from him. He befriended one of the homeowners who rented out a room in his house. His name was Diego. He gave me his address. The store owner said Diego's house wasn't too far away, it was still within walking distance.

***