Tomy and the Planet of Lies by Erich von Däniken

expense of the Iranian Army. And how is he to get his money?”
    â€œWe’re going to bring it to him,” said Tomy. “I promised him. Let’s go!”
    Resistance was useless. We still had $3,400 in cash and a further $6,000 in traveler’s checks hidden in clothes, belts and mats: expeditions can be expensive. So we packed up our Bedouin tent and set off. It was 90 kilometers to Taftan. On the way, I kept thinking about what Tomy had told us. His very presence unsettled me. Many years ago, I had read a novel by my friend Walter Ernsting, who was well known by the pen name Clarc Dalton. In his story, a monk develops the ability to jump from one brain to another. Stories! Made-up fantasies! Now I was sitting in front of a being that really did have this ability. In the flesh and in my own—albeit thirty years younger—body! It was all so crazy! What sort of dream world was I living in? When Tomy spoke I heard my own voice, and that hadn’t changed much over the last three decades. Tomy had said he knew everything up to my 22nd birthday and a few months. Could he do everything that I could do? Did he love the way that I loved? Did he comb his hair the same way that I did and would he, over the coming years, develop the same tastes that I had developed? For instance, for Johnny Walker Black Label? For well-cooked chicken? Did he have the same dislikes that I did? Did he hate liver, too? Did he find caviar disgusting? Did beer make him sleepy and champagne make him perky? How would my wife react to him? To an Erich who was thirty years younger? Would she fall in love with the younger me?
    How could I explain Tomy to my relatives and friends? As my father’s long-lost illegitimate son? Why would this son suddenly appear now, when he was 22 years old? What sort of stories would I have to make up? My goodness, I had some big problems ahead of me!
    â€œTomy,” I said after an hour on the road, “can you drive?”
    â€œOf course. May I?”
    He took the wheel and drove exactly the same way that I did. There was nothing I could have criticized. Normally, I’m like a driving instructor when I’m placed next to young drivers. Now I was in the passenger seat—Marc was behind us, sitting on a box, which we had covered in a woolen blanket. I switched on the radio. Everything was in Arabic. Tomy could understand the voices and translated the Arabic news. I turned it off and looked at him.
    â€œWhat was all that about this morning with the exploding water bottles and everything?” I asked. “The way you turned up really had us in a panic.”
    â€œI’m sorry about that,” said Tomy apologetically, “but I really couldn’t do anything about it. I can still see you with the pistol in your hand. It wouldn’t have taken much and you would have shot me down.”
    â€œAnd then?”
    â€œThis body would have been dead; the process would have been interrupted.”
    I said nothing, because I didn’t really understand what he was talking about. Marc picked up the thread and repeated the question about the exploding water bottles and the water. Although Tomy had saved us from dying of thirst, Marc still didn’t trust him. Tomy’s tone was that of an older man talking to a child. He was trying to clarify certain things and sometimes he just didn’t have the words to explain things because—as he said—human tongues had no words for them. After the “original impulse”—whatever that was—had “ignited” his space, the “nucleus had rolled”. Energy was the same everywhere. A human body consists of oxygen, carbon, sodium, potassium, zinc, iron, bromine, manganese, copper, chromium, magnesium, molybdenum, titanium, iodine, strontium, rubidium, selenium, boron, nickel, sulfur, arsenic, cobalt, silicon, tin, barium, lithium…
    I had interrupted him there. Tomy held the steering wheel in