Chronicles From The Future: The amazing story of Paul Amadeus Dienach

I was burning up with fever. My eyes hurt when I blinked. I knew I had a bowl of water beside me and a towel to dampen and put on my forehead if I needed to. But I was so fatigued that I couldn’t find the strength to get up, so I tried to cool my eyes and forehead on my cold pillows, changing positions all the time. Then, I remember the sensation of slowly falling asleep, and I thanked God for that sweet salvation even if it lasted only for a few hours. My last thought before I fell completely asleep was that the next day I would go sit under the two fir trees.

Waking up, however, was tremendously painful. I realised I had a very high fever. My mind went straight to the bowl of water and the towel. Without opening my eyes I tried to reach it, but I couldn’t even move. After a while I fainted from the fever.

These alternations between consciousness and unconsciousness lasted for several hours. And the moments of consciousness were excruciating for me. I felt like I was free-falling into an unfathomable abyss. The agony of the abyss never left me.

Amidst the dizziness of fever I remember seeing, as if in a dream, men and women standing over my head. I was aware of my situation, that is, I knew I was ill and I thought that they had moved me to a bigger city, to another hospital and that all these people were physicians and nurses. Nothing else was clear in my mind. Oh! And my mother! I felt that my mother was no longer by my side.

Then I thought I was having nightmares. “Why are they dressed like that?” I wondered. The setting around me looked completely different and unfamiliar compared to what I was used to. “No,” I thought to myself, “it can’t be a hospital.” I blinked and caught glimpses of the countryside, the sky, shades of blue and green blended together and a pink light reflecting on the crystal walls, so bright and so beautiful…

I also recall breathing the scented spring air and sometimes, a celestial melody wafting to my weary ears. It resembled a prayer sung by children’s voices. I could distinguish the sound of the harp. I had never heard anything more melodic and more extraordinary in my life and I wished it would never stop. And then I wondered, “Am I dead?” But if I was, why would I feel ill and feverish?

Another mad thought crossed my mind: when I was still at school, I had read that our beloved Earth might not be the only planet in the universe. But I ruled that possibility out after remembering the people I saw standing over my head. They were humans; they were our kind. And I had also caught a glimpse of the familiar light of our earthly sky.

All these tangled and scrambled thoughts dominated my tired mind every time I somehow opened my eyes in the midst of the feverish daze. And the truth is that they didn’t leave me with an unpleasant memory. But it’s impossible to describe the surprise that awaited me one morning when I had completely recovered and managed to get out of bed—I get shivers down my spine even writing about it. “My God! This body! This body isn’t mine!” A young man looked me in the eyes with a face distorted with terror. I thought I had lost my mind. I cried out for help. I sensed someone running towards me. I choked and fainted.

THE LANGUAGE: ENGLISH AND SCANDINAVIAN BLEND

When I came to, I saw two physicians standing next to me with a strange look on their faces, anxiously waiting for me to regain consciousness. It was if they were hanging on my every word. Everybody else had left the room. I was so nervous I could barely breathe.

“What happened?” I asked with a trembling voice, “Have I gone mad?” And I could hear my voice fading away, but I managed to utter, “Where am I?”

Then I remember crying out several times “Mother, Mother!” as though I was asking where she was.

And instead of answering my questions, these men of science just stood there, stunned and pale, as if my simple words had rendered them speechless. One of them was young, in his late twenties-early thirties. I reached out for his hand, I begged him in the name of God and his own mother, but he was shaking and obviously trying to avoid my touch.