request? They were going to have to think long and hard about this, he could tell.
He caught a flash of light to his right, at the horizon. He stopped, and looked towards it. Yes, there was definitely something there. He turned and began walking towards it. After a time, he could see that it was moving towards him too. As it got close enough for him to see it more clearly, though, its appearance seemed to get rather more mysterious: it appeared to be some sort of person, but glowing all over. It wore no clothes, and had a rather indistinct outline. And the glow was very bright: it shone brilliantly, indeed. He could make out a head part, a body, two legs and two arms, but the shapes were like a series of joined ovals rather than human-shaped proper.
He realised that the thing was running towards him. It was about 100 metres from him, and closing quickly. He stopped walking, worried. Was it hostile?
He received the answer to that question a few seconds later. It ran up to him, and punched him in the face, hard. He staggered backwards, reeling both from the blow, and the sheer surprise of it. The thing, perhaps 15cm shorter than Blaise, followed him, and tried to kick him in the leg. He managed to soften that blow by partially dodging it, but he was still busy collecting his wits together after the first attack. The creature, if that is the right term for it, punched at him a couple more times, but Blaise's reflexes were by now alert enough for him to block those blows with his arms. He half noticed that there was something vaguely electrical about the feel of the creature. The next time the creature approached him, he was ready and punched it back. The creature stepped back from him, hesitated for a moment, as if maybe it still wanted to attack him but couldn't see how to go about it and then without warning it turned and ran off.
Baffled, Blaise watched it run back the way it had come. Then he thought that it might go and bring back some friends, so he turned back in the direction of the Sun and began walking again, this time briskly. He didn't want to hang around here for too long.
After a few minutes of brisk walking in the heat, he was getting quite tired. It also occurred to him that the creature could follow his footsteps in the sand if it wanted to. He looked around behind himself, and saw his tracks disappearing off into the distance: no sign of the creature yet, anyway. He turned back towards the Sun and continued walking, this time not so briskly. What the heck, he thought, too tired to be bothered.
After a while, on the horizon ahead and a little to the left of him, he caught sight of what looked like some kind of structure: a building of some sort.
As he got closer to it, he could see that it was a large rectangular-shaped building, much like a giant brick, laying on one of its largest faces.
Eventually, as he approached it, he could see that it was the colour of the local sand, although its surface appeared to be rendered with some sort of sand-coloured plaster. The building was about four storeys high, and perhaps 200 metres long by 50 metres deep, with rectangular window-holes at what appeared to be the higher levels within the building. He could see some pictographic writing in the plaster, all over the outside of the building, but was at this point still too far away to make it out clearly.
Not being one to shrink from a curiosity, he walked right up to what he arbitrarily considered the 'front' of the building and looked at the writing. The symbols were all about 30cm high, and reminiscent of Egyptian hieroglyphics, but by no means the same. His childhood interests in things ancient were no help to him here: he had not seen this type of writing before. It seemed in good condition. He thought to himself that either it was well-maintained, or they didn't get many sandstorms around here.
Well, perhaps he could get inside and speak to whoever ran the place and perhaps find out just where he was.
About halfway along the front of the building was a vertical opening at ground level: a doorway. Blaise walked to it and found that there was no actual door: just an opening. He looked in, and saw that it was fairly dark in there. Squinting, he could see that it looked a bit like some kind of museum: he could see various objects on display on pedestals of various heights. Nobody seemed to be about.
Glancing around behind him, and seeing no glowing creatures about, he walked in. As his eyes adjusted to the relative darkness, he could see that he was in a largish room, with exits in the centre of each of the three other walls. Beyond the exits, he could see more rooms similarly arranged: it looked like many museums and galleries he had been in, in fact.
He looked at some of the nearest artefacts on display: pots. He had never understood why people would want to look at old pots in museums. Yes, they told us about how people lived, but that was the interesting bit: the pots themselves were just pots. It was the analysis that counted. He looked at the written description: more hieroglyphs. Interesting. Perhaps this was somewhere in the Sahara, after all.
He exited that gallery and entered the gallery to the right. More pots, this time glazed with unfamiliar designs in blue and green. How fascinating. He walked on to the next gallery. Pots and dishes in glass. He turned left this time. Hmm... stone tools. Much more interesting. He turned right. Spears and fishing implements. Good. He continued straight on. More stone tools, but more sophisticated-looking, but not really like those he was familiar with from his childhood interest in such things. Straight on. Metal weapons: clubs, maces, swords – all unlike any he had seen before, though. Something was very wrong here. Straight on: armour, again, unusual-looking: it was mostly a sort of a padded chain-mail, but made more of wood than of metal – it looked more Western rather than, say, Japanese in design, though, but still wrong.
He stopped and scratched his head. What exactly was wrong with all this stuff? He pondered. He groped with his feelings for an answer. It came: this stuff does not look like it was designed by humans, he thought. He had looked at enough artefacts from different cultures to be able to get a good feel for what people designed, and all of these items just didn't fit. The psychology was all wrong. In the way that crop circles were obviously Aztec/Art Deco-influenced and so must be made by people (he had reasoned when the craze began), these artefacts were obviously not so influenced. There was no recognisable human cultural input. He came to the uncomfortable feeling that he wasn't on Earth at all. He didn't like that idea, and, whilst not discarding it, shelved it for the moment to spare his frazzled nerves.
It's just some stupid hypnotic trance, he told himself. In fact, as his heart was pounding hard and fast at the barely recognised terror of the all-pervading unfamiliarity here, he realised that he had had quite enough of this experiment for the moment.
"Enough!" he exclaimed, expecting to wake up.
Nothing happened. Shit, he thought. "Enough!" again. Again, nothing.
Now he was really scared. He couldn't wake up! He took a few moments to gather his wits, control his breathing, collect his chi. In a firm voice, he said, "Enough!" but it was no use. Nothing happened once more. He stood there, feeling like a lemon, disconcerted and disorientated.
As a child, he had been able to wake himself from bad dreams by closing his eyes in the dream for a few seconds. He tried it. It didn't work. He already knew that pinching himself also wouldn't work: that glowing creature had whacked him quite hard enough already.
He spent a few more seconds reconciling himself to these facts, then resolutely headed into the next gallery along – but this time with more caution. If this place wasn't built by humans, then just maybe he didn't want to meet the museum's curator after all.
This gallery contained more weapons – but much more technologically advanced: cannons. Again, the specifics of the design were unfamiliar, and they were decorated with unfamiliar rectangular motifs, but the nature of the objects themselves was clear enough. Some of them were land cannons, and some, going by the painted pictures of wooden ships on plaques beside them, were naval cannons. He looked at these pictures with interest: they did not look like frigates or galleons, but, again, they were similar. Actually, they looked more like caravels: single large triangular sails on multiple
masts, rather than multiple rectangular sails on multiple masts. Blaise supposed that the ships would be inferior to a decent frigate, but he didn't know that, of course. Presumably they could do the job they were designed for. He noticed that they were all close to coastline; none were shown on the open ocean. He didn't know if that meant anything, but it struck him as worthy of note: shipping is normally shown in either type of location pretty indiscriminately, at least, in human art.
Some of the pictures were more artistic than merely representative: he spent some time looking especially closely at these, in the hope of seeing just what sort of creature was piloting the ships. His curiosity was soon rewarded, if it can be called a reward. He saw glowing creatures on the decks and in the rigging. He chewed his lower lip and wondered what it meant. Where could he be? And how would he get back home? Self-hypnosis? He doubted it, but filed it away as something to try as a last resort.
He heard a noise come from the gallery towards the centre of the building. Quickly, he ducked down behind the nearest cannon and looked carefully past it through the open doorway into that gallery. One of the glowing creatures was fiddling with a display.
What to do?