11,624 Years Before the Present, Somewhere Near Papua New Guinea, Sahul

The night had been a deep shade of dark, and the sun's night companion was nowhere to be seen. High up in the highlands, the villagers had spent the day slashing and burning, so to make way for taro and yam crops. Although hunter-gatherers feeding on an abundance of natural resources, they were also early agriculturists planting mainly root crops. The last of the fires was slowly dying down, and its bright orange embers stood starkly against the dark night, in what was a reassurance to most, as they huddled together, kin next to kin, rubbing each other to keep the cold away. High up, mist was a constant presence, and they quickly made their way to a cavern overlooking their fields and started a fire around which they congregated, gesturing and talking about the long day's work and those ahead of them. On the walls, pictographs of kangaroos and emus and red ochre handprints told the story of their shared life. It was not long before the eldest made his way to the back wall and started telling his stories, with the fire projecting shadows upon the pictures behind him, making them come alive and with every lick of the flame they appeared to be moving as the shadows and the firelight reflected on them. The acoustics of the cavern had been specifically chosen by the elders and his voice reverberated as did the children's gasps on its walls, making what can only be called an early human theatre stage. They would stay there until the story was done, cooking and sharing food as some listened intently while others gazed out at the stars or at the fields below.

Fissu was alone, as customary, chosen again to keep guard against any approaching enemies, human or not. Unfortunately for Fissu, his imagination was boundless and in the deep dark night he often saw things that were not there, his mind imprinting images and sounds on the blank canvas that was the night. It was again his turn, as always, and Fissu wasn't very pleased that he would miss out on the comfort of his tribe and its stories and only get cold leftovers when it was time to head to dreams. Not making things easy for himself, as kin always remarked to him, he felt unjustly picked again and again for what he thought should be a shared burden. But having lost his left forearm in a hunting accident when he was young, he could not participate as much as the others did in their daily tasks and as such he was mostly the only chosen one to keep watch, as he only needed his five senses to keep the village safe.

At first, Fissu thought he was imagining things, as was usual, but things went from imagination to reality in the blink of an eye. A streak of light tore across the sky, so fast and silent that at first, it seemed like one of the stars had decided to leave its heavenly perch. Fissu's breath caught in his throat. His eyes, wide in disbelief, followed the fiery trail as it arced high above the horizon. He thought he would cry but no sound came from his wide-open mouth. The streak of light, a brilliant white tinged with green and orange, burned impossibly bright against the impenetrable darkness of the sky. It was as if the heavens themselves had cracked open, allowing the celestial fire the elders talked about to pour through. The light grew, intensifying as it plummeted towards him and the village. Unlike the gentle flicker of a distant star or the slow glide of the sun's companion, this light was alive, fierce and wild. Its tail shimmered and crackled, a trail of glowing sparks fanning out behind it, lighting up the entire mountainside in flashes of blue and orange. The distant mist seemed to glow in response, as if the world itself was holding its breath. When usually every sort of noise would be heard coming from the jungle, now only a hollowed-out silence was gaining on him. He could only hear the gasps of those close to the caves who were now seeing what Fissu was seeing with his own eyes. Fissu's heart pounded in his chest as he watched, frozen to the spot, his lone arm clutching his chest. The fiery mass hissed through the clouds with a sound like distant thunder. In its wake, the elder stars above seemed to blur and shimmer, retreating from the heat of the foreign intruder as though even his ancestors were mute to what was taking place below them. Fissu fell to his knees, his only arm falling beside him limp and helpless. Suddenly, the ground beneath him trembled as if the earth itself was startled awake. The bright blazing orb now grew so large and bright that Fissu's mind could not comprehend its size or its speed. For a brief moment, it lit the night as bright as the day. Shadows of trees and rocks, sharp and menacing, danced wildly in every direction, as if the falling star had a story of its own to tell. For a moment he longed for the cavern and its knowable fire. But there was no comfort here. Fissu ducked instinctively, shielding his face from the unbearable heat as the great fireball streaked lower and lower until, with an ear-splitting roar, it vanished behind the distant hills. The ground shook violently beneath his feet as a distant bang rent the air, the sound rolling across the valleys like an angry god's cry. The village above now stirred with cries of alarm. The elders stopped their storytelling, their words replaced by the whispers of the wind and the rumble of distant thunder. The people, huddled together, turned toward the sky, their faces lit in awe and fear by the last glow of the dying fireball. Fissu stood alone, his chest rising and falling rapidly as the night returned to its eerie stillness. The stars, once again motionless, blinked quietly overhead, as if nothing had happened. But Fissu knew better. Whatever had fallen from the sky was no mere star, and the earth and his world would never be the same. He glanced at the distant horizon where the ball of fire had disappeared. This was no ordinary night. The gods had spoken, and Fissu, the lone watcher, had heard their message.

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Papua New Guinea Present Day

Jain had just finished school, but he did not want to go home. His grandfather would be there, and it would mean more work, helping his family prepare whatever it is they thought he needed to prepare. Although Jain had vehemently told his parents and grandfather that in today's world people used stoves and microwaves, back home things were very different than in school or on his battered smartphone. Starting up the hill to his village, he knew better and stooped low to the ground. He brushed aside some low-lying plants looking for a precise rock under which, each and every day he put his phone in a plastic bag and hid it well from any prying eyes at home or anywhere else. If any of his family members discovered he had a phone he would never stop hearing about it. His grandfather especially would have gone berserk for sure, invoking their ancestors and lamenting that the youth had definitely lost their way. But to Jain, of course, this was not the case. Bright-eyed, he wanted not to just see the world out there, but to live and experience it. He wanted to look forward and not backward.

"And where do you know where you'll be going?" asked his grandfather "If you don't know where you come from?" and bla bla bla he thought, waving a hand to himself. He wasn't the Lion King, he once told his grandfather, and immediately regretted it as did his little bum. It still stung from the memory. Why did they hate the outside world so much? Jain suspected that he was playing a game played so many times, by so many different generations, that it could possibly be encoded in every human in their very own DNA. If trauma was passed on from one generation to another, surely, he thought to himself, this very human conflict was too. The eternal fight between what was and what will be. And yet the present was never a tight, neat combination of both the past and the future, like you would find in the movies or books he read and watched when he was far from home. No, it was rather a jumble of things stitched together, ripping at the seams.

"I think the word for this is culture." his teacher had told him with a slight smile. "If we did not have conflict between the two, what would we have?"

In a sense, he felt deep inside that she must be right. It was his teacher who had told him about those researchers in that faraway country with an unpronounceable name, from the CERN, that did just that. And she had brought her hands together in a strong clap.

"To discover what is essential you need to bring, and yes sometimes, smash things very hard together. And the harder the better." Although to Jain, this seemed unfair and unjust as he was not just a particle or a wave, as he had mentioned, but also a living and breathing conscious person.

His teacher had smiled with pride, and told him ruffling his craggy hair. "One day, you will also be smashing things in your own way."

Lost in his thoughts, he hadn't put his phone away yet, when he thought he saw something or someone move. He froze, and as he looked down, and even though it had been deep dark a moment before suddenly the shade of the trees started appearing on the ground in front of his eyes, and for a moment he was as confused as a particle spinning helplessly inside the CERN's metallic tubes, unaware of where he was or where he was going, and as he wondered what time it was, he lifted his head and gawked. Above him the sky had split open, or at least it seemed that way to Jain. A bright light, streaking faster than anything he'd ever seen, carved through the clouds above. His heart thumped wildly in his chest as the bright white line of fire tore across the sky, igniting the sky around it in a cascade of shimmering sparks. It was as if a star had fallen, leaving behind a burning bright scar in the heavens. For a moment, Jain could hardly breathe. The light grew brighter, illuminating the trees and the path before him as though it were daylight. His mouth fell open in awe and terror, the world around him suddenly standing still. Time itself seemed to pause, giving him a brief moment to fully take in the celestial spectacle that blazed across the horizon. The fiery streak had hints of green and gold, like molten metal falling from a blacksmith's forge. The tail behind it shimmered like a ribbon of glowing embers, and with each second it drew nearer, Jain could feel the heat, distant but unmistakable, brushing his face like a breath from another world. The noise that followed was like a distant drumroll, growing louder and more intense with each heartbeat. Jain's thoughts raced. He had heard stories about the ancestors who claimed to have seen the gods send fire from the sky, marking important events and signs of change, warnings from above. His grandfather had often spoken about how the world was shaped by things beyond their understanding, things too vast to be explained by phones or televisions. In those moments, Jain always ignored it as superstition and unbased fear, but now, as the sky itself seemed to rage with fire, he wondered if his grandfather had been right all along. The ground beneath his feet shuddered lightly, a subtle vibration that climbed through his legs and into his chest. He stumbled backward, almost falling, as the fiery object hurtled beyond him, disappearing behind the mountains in the distance. A soft rumble followed, and then came the sound, a loud booming crack like thunder, but deeper, rawer. It reverberated through the valley, shaking the trees, sending birds into frenzied flight, and leaving Jain standing there, his eyes wide, his pulse racing. He felt something deep inside of him shift, a strange mixture of fear, awe, and excitement. For all his yearning to look beyond his small world, this was the moment when the universe had answered back. The streak of fire was not something from his phone, not something from books, but a real, raw force of nature, something that connected both the ancient stories of his people and the future he longed for. Jain stood there, frozen in place, his head tilted to the sky, realizing that whatever had just happened was beyond anything he could have ever imagined.