The playa

THE PLAYA

As God is my witness, I’ll never be able to give a proper explanation for those few minutes; not if I live to be a hundred years old. I’ll tell you what happened, and you’ll see what I mean. I’ll leave the story with you, and let you make up you own mind about it. That’s the best I can do.
I was walking—of all places!—down The Strand in London. It was a bright summer day in the middle of June, and the temperature was somewhere in the 20’s. The traffic, both on legs and wheels, was trundling and rumbling along as usual, and everything was normal insofar as the word ‘normal’ applies to London. I was carrying a copy of War and Peace under my arm. It was my cousin’s birthday, and she was an avid reader. I could think of no present more appropriate than a vast, intricate Russian novel with—as usual—almost as many characters as pages.
As I said, I was walking along The Strand with a forest of people on all sides—then, so suddenly that for a moment I didn’t notice the transition—I was not. I mean, I was still walking; but not on The Strand. Not anywhere I recognised, actually. I had taken a few more steps while engaged in my private thoughts, then I realised suddenly that there was no longer a concrete footpath under my feet. In fact, there was not even any soil under my feet. For some reason, I was walking on a hardpan of sunbaked salt. I looked up and saw I was alone.
Everything had vanished; people, vehicles, roads, buildings, everything. I mean it was just…gone. London, The Strand, no longer existed. For a very long moment I stood stock-still, rooted to the ground with sheer open-mouthed astonishment. When my shock-frozen brain thawed sufficiently to start working again, I looked about me. The landscape consisted of an absolutely bare, stark salt desert. I was standing on the edge of a salt lake—what the Spanish call a playa—and there was not a shred of vegetation, not so much as a blade of grass, anywhere in sight. The temperature had climbed to the high 30’s. I had no idea what had happened.
I was soon disillusioned of the notion that I couldn’t be any more shocked than I was presently. A ship of some sort was approaching where I stood. It was about twenty metres long and shaped like a cigar, with tapered, rounded ends and a double row of circular windows along each side. From these windows, people were staring out at me. At least, I assumed they were people at the time. The ship stopped, hovering in the air above the shimmering hard-pan. A door opened, and one of the inhabitants stepped out onto the hard salt crust. He (I assume) was about two metres tall, with a slender build. His head was round and bald, with wide cheek-bones, large eyes, a small mouth and a pointed chin. He made signs with his hands indicating (again I assume) that he meant me no harm. In one hand he held what looked like a book.
The alien came within arm’s reach of me as I stood there in the hot, dry desert sunlight. He held out the hand with the book, and without thinking I handed him my copy of War and Peace. Having exchanged gifts, I left my hand extended. The alien stared at my hand for a moment, then reached hesitantly for it. We touched fingers, then clasped hands. How utterly human, I thought later, to shake hands. I couldn’t imagine what the alien was thinking as he stood there. I suppose, now I come to think of it, I don’t suppose he could imagine what I was thinking either. Be that so, he didn’t pull away from my grip. All that time I had no consciousness of fear or panic. It was not until later that the idea of some form of mind-control occurred to me.
One of the other aliens came to the door and called my guest—strange to think of yourself as the host when you’re alone in the middle of a vast desert. Especially when he was the ‘host’ in this landscape, which was so totally remote from my experience. He let go my hand and turned back to the ship. He looked back at me as he re-entered the craft, and I waved to him. He hesitated again, trying to interpret the motion, then waved to me in return. The hatchway closed, and the ship sped off into the distance.
A moment later I found myself standing again on the busy thoroughfare of The Strand, with rivers of people streaming by me on all sides I was standing next to a lamp-post. I looked at the buildings, the traffic, the people, at the clothes and hairstyles, and satisfied myself that I was back in the present. I briefly entertained the idea that I had been subjected to a fantastic delusion, but then looking down at my hands, I saw that the book I had bought for my cousin was now missing. Furthermore, upon flipping through the book that I did have, I saw that it was in a script which I had never seen before in my life. Moreover, I noticed a rime of salt forming on my shoes as they dried in the sun. Faced as I was with two kinds of physical proof, I could no longer deny to myself that I had been taken elsewhere. On the other hand, I was back on The Strand in London, from where I had left—but had I left the area, or been transported elsewhen rather than elsewhere? If elsewhen, how far? Was it to the past or the future? To these questions I have no answer and still have none. Nor I daresay, will I ever have one. I’ll leave it with you to make up your mind; I can do no more than that.