The Forsaken Wilderness


 The Forsaken Wilderness
 The Forsaken Wilderness
 
 VIVAAN SHAH
 
 To Shiv Subrahmanyam
 PROLOGUE
 Uncharted Territory
 Uncharted territory; a term often loosely applied to those realms of the earth our species has not been successful in encroaching upon. Since the advent of measurement, man has strived tirelessly to configure and justify the prominence of such territories—or the lack thereof—on the globe as we know it. The Russian landmass alone has baffled explorers from the dawn of transport, its northward expanse and Siberian recesses—the vast tundra stretching on into a near-lunar landscape of glacial desolation as far as the eye can see; capability quails at the mere approach to those ancient ramparts that wall in the Antarctic interior from curiosity within an infinity of ice; little is known even of the arid grasslands of the Eurasian Steppe upon whose back the westbound caravans marched, or of the great deserts from whose bosom Babylon was said to have sprung.
 Human limbs have as yet failed to reach the full extent of the Arctic, to ply the breadth of the oceans that swell across the equator, and comprehend certain blotches of islands and archipelagoes scattered like constellations across a galaxy of blue, cast far adrift from continental formations and areas of settlement—occupying the remotest outposts of human will. Regions whose temperatures would not allow life to thrive let alone visit. Places unfit even for animal habitation. Furnaces and foaming depths!—whirlpools and aerial swoons, mountainous monstrosities and the blasted wastelands intended for no living creature to tenant, and no sentient life to furnish…
 The earth in its divine fancy moulds alien landscapes, fashions forms unthinkable, and lays into view vistas of such wild geological anomaly that might startle even the jaded glance of the airplane pilot—composed of phenomena not nearly as unaccountable as its abnormal arrangement might suggest; harbouring serial formations of objects that present no apparent reason for thus existing.
 A thousand frightening instances leap to mind. One is brought at once to consider the symmetrically proportioned slabs of the Giant’s Causeway in Northern Ireland; the bulging rock formations of Goblin Valley, Utah; the floating Tianzi mountains in China, the Cotton Palace of Turkey, the fluorescent travertine terraces in Iran, or the Whale Bone Alley of Siberia. The mind marvels at the technicoloured mountains of Peru, reels at the blood falls of the Antarctic, halts at the Silfra tectonic rift in Iceland, and whirls into the crooked forests of Transylvania, right into the Richat eye of the Sahara; petrified by the properties of Lake Nitron, perplexed by the swollen Dragon trees of Socotra, the gargantuan Al Naslaa rock formation of Saudi Arabia, the Monolith of Uluru in Australia, the seven stone giants of the Ural mountains. Even the Rorschach splattering of acid pools in Ethiopia, and the mineralised mosaics across parts of Northern British Columbia.
 Through the ages, cartographers mapping expeditions and topographical surveys have laboured to fill in the blanks in the chart, replacing hypothetical landforms with concrete relief features, often journeying to the ends of the earth to corroborate their scenic speculations. Our forebears had not half our means at their disposal when contemplating the earth and its mystery, yet they envisaged order, exercised a will upon their external world, contrived battlements, lead one kingdom to another for the melding of all the material world and its contents in favour of arranging dominion over the unconquerable infinite; shook their fists at the almighty when chance partook of their voyages and lead us to the flowering of another age when their accomplishments would hold fruit. It took only an endeavour as brazen as satellite mapping to render clear and detectable every conceivable aspect and visible feature of physical reality. One could now accurately determine and account for the entirety of the earth’s surface area, its most far-flung corners and its blankest oceans, and with the aid of an all-seeing eye, even observe those fragments of our planet hitherto untraversed.
 Hence, for those with the benefit of a satellite view, the term ‘uncharted’ pertains principally to that which lies beyond the bounds of chartable space, both aerial and terrestrial; beyond the spectrum of the five senses and certainly beyond any means of measurement or recording as yet devised. Even in an age of mechanical ingenuity, there are terrains over which no aerial survey can fly, be it the attempted gridding of the ocean floor (constituting a good seventy per cent of the chart), or even the ineffectual excavation of immense caverns untraceable, and multitudinous in depth and direction. And so, just as the human brain harnesses but a minute fraction of its capable apparatus, our own worldly habitat is said to present an infinitude of such scenes of aberration that suggest the occupation of a good one-third of the planet’s surface and more than half its atmosphere.
 Following the physical law, that which cannot be sought by the naked eye proceeds inwards into the depths of the dungeon, fleeing the light, and retreating to some collective centre of darkness; the very primordial ooze of civilization, the all-encompassing nothing which begat all! Down among the gnats and beetles, the scorpions and vipers shielding it from our grasp. The circle of time ever rotating, ever cushioning up against a barrier of uninterruptable black mass, never ceases to precipitate an epoch that might illuminate some of these enigmas, blinding us eventually by its incalculable origin and ultimate objective. Did time ever begin? Would it then dare to end us nearer its own horizon, propelling us inexorably towards eventual oblivion?
 It was then perhaps solely that and that alone which consigned Professor Chaturvedi to a dismal fate, to his unforeseen doom—time!—and time, alone! The enchanting prospect of probing beyond the known frontiers of human exploration; to reason beyond the tangent of discovery yet foreseen. To enter the inferno unchallenged, and venture unbidden towards that hidden half, that nether lair…so as to glimpse the percentage of the earth that evades our eyes and finds subterfuge in the