Location: "Vance Lighthouse," North Sea Coast, Scotland
Time: October, 2017
As the Scottish autumn wind battered the walls of the house, I felt as though a massive beast was breathing at the doorstep, clawing to get inside. The sound of waves crashing against the shore seemed to be whispering something in an ancient tongue. For a nine-year-old, I was unusually quiet. While other children played with toys, I would polish the lenses of my mother's telescope or pore over strange star charts found tucked between dusty books.
The silence in our home had deepened ever since my father, Arthur Vance, was declared "missing" four years ago. Uncle Elias—my mother's closest friend and our loyal guardian—used to say that my father perished in a sea storm. But I knew better. My father wasn't in the sea; he was lost somewhere among those strange, chaotic numbers my mother devoted all her time to.
That day, my mother was more tense and restless in the laboratory than ever.
"Lyra, did you drink your chocolate milk?" she asked without looking up. Her eyes were fixed on the blue glow of the computer screen, which was filled with peculiar wave patterns. She was trying to complete the work my father had started—the "Quantum Leak" theory.
"Not yet, Mom. Look, why is this number flashing red?" I pointed to the monitor at the corner of the desk. The number 1.618 was shimmering there.
My mother paused. Taking a deep breath, she turned toward me. She was exhausted, with dark circles under her eyes, but when she looked at me, she always radiated that strange, warm light.
"That is the signature of the universe, my little star," she said, her voice barely a whisper. "They call it the Golden Ratio. Your father used to say this number is the key to a lock. From the petals of a flower to the massive galaxies in the cosmos, everything is sealed with this signature. It's as if someone wrote everything using the same code. Your father found that code, Lyra. But he got lost inside it."
"So, are we made of code too? And Dad?" I asked curiously, placing my old astronaut toy on the desk. When my father gave it to me, he told me that sometimes the farthest stars are actually inside our hearts.
My mother smiled, but there was a profound sadness in it. "Yes. But sometimes there are glitches in the codes, Lyra. Or some codes are so complex that you have to travel to another world just to read them. Your father crossed over into that world... and I have to bring him back."
The Silence Before the Storm
As night fell, the storm intensified. The massive lantern at the top of the lighthouse pierced the darkness of the sea, but the inside of our house was plunged into a strange stillness. Elias sat in the living room, anxiously thumbing through an old document.
Elias knew my mother better than anyone. They had met years ago at the Edinburgh University Observatory. Back then, Elias was one of the brightest students in the astrophysics department, but the day my mother walked into the room, all the stars dimmed for him. His silent, secret love for her had remained unchanged through the years. He had watched from the sidelines through Arthur's arrival, their marriage, and my birth. After my father vanished, he became our protector. He was the only one who accepted my mother's "madness" and her eccentricities. Now, he sat there, terrified that she would throw herself into the same abyss my father had fallen into.
It was then that my mother handed me the red diary she always carried.
"Take this," she said, her hands trembling. "This diary will be your most important guide. If one day I am not by your side..."
"Where are you going? To Dad?" I interrupted, my heart racing. "Are you going to another conference? Take me with you, I promise I won't get in the way!"
My mother knelt and hugged me tightly. Her hair always smelled of old paper. "I don't want to go anywhere, my little star. But sometimes the universe calls out to you. It's like a radio wave finds you, and you can't run or hide from it. If I... if I have to go far away, Elias will take you. He will take you to Iceland, to that safe place hidden by ice and volcanoes. Watch movies there, Lyra. Okay? Especially those sci-fi films we love. There are hidden messages in them. Your father sends me messages through those movies. Only you and I can understand them."
"But movies are make-believe, Mom. Uncle Elias says they're just fairy tales," I sniffled, looking at her with pleading eyes.
"Elias is a good man, but he only believes in what he can see," my mother said with a hint of bitterness. "You must believe in what you feel. You must learn to listen to your soul. What we call reality is but a veil, Lyra. Your father tore that veil, and now it is my turn."
The Point Where Physics Departs
At exactly 00:00, the house shook. It wasn't an earthquake. It felt as if the house itself had come to life, struggling to breathe. I ran to the basement. Elias stood frozen at the door; his eyes held both terror and the magnificent loyalty he had felt for my mother for years. My mother stood before that great machine—the radio telescope. The antennas were glowing with an eerie violet and greenish light.
"Mom! I'm scared!" I screamed.
When she turned toward me, I was terrified. In her eyes, there was no longer the reflection of the lighthouse lamp, but the reflection of a thousand stars.
"Lyra, listen!" her voice echoed through the room. "Follow the numbers! Chapter 9 hasn't been written yet! I'm going to find your father, Lyra! We will be waiting for you on the other side. The movies... the movies are documentaries, never forget that!"
Suddenly, a hole opened in the middle of the room. No, it wasn't a hole; it was as if the air itself had been torn. From that tear came the scent of another world—a sharp smell of alien flowers and cold metal. My mother's body flickered like digital interference.
"No! Mom!" I lunged forward, trying to grab her hand. But my hands grasped only empty air. Within a second, my mother's body dissolved into thousands of tiny particles of light and vanished into that violet-green void.
Elias picked me up and carried me upstairs. Everything stopped. The sound died. The lights went out. Only the sound of the wall clock near the lighthouse remained: Tick-tock... tick-tock... And when the clock struck 00:01, I was completely alone. After my father, my mother too had vanished into the depths of the universe.
9 Years Later: Awakening Under the Ice
Now, in the frozen Reykjavik of 2026, I look out the window. I am eighteen. I've grown to my mother's height; my hair is the same jet black, and my face has her round structure and pale complexion. But inside, I am still that nine-year-old child.
When Elias smuggled me out of Scotland and brought me here, he tried hard to "heal" me. He burned our past, hid my mother's documents. He did everything to protect her memory, perhaps still paying off that old debt he owed her. He took me to psychologists. But he could never understand; Iceland was not silence. Iceland was a massive code being read through the vibrations of the magma beneath the earth.
Last night, I watched Interstellar for the tenth time. Each viewing awakened feelings and thoughts I couldn't quite describe. At the end of the film, during the scene where Cooper sends a message to his daughter through the bookshelf, I felt a sudden jolt. From my own bookshelf, the red diary my mother gave me suddenly fell to the floor.
I picked it up. On a page that had been blank nine years ago, at the very bottom, I saw a tiny inscription. It was my mother's handwriting, but the ink looked so fresh, as if it had just been written:
"Frequency: 432 Hz. Riddle: House 11. Wake up, Lyra. Your father is calling you."
I ran my fingers over the writing. That old ache in my heart woke up once more. Elias is in the living room, tidying his old books, telling me to "return to reality," but he doesn't know that my reality has only just begun.
"So, I wasn't wrong," I whispered. My voice was no longer that of a helpless little girl. It was the voice of an explorer. "You are there. And I will find you."
I began packing my bag. Through the wall, I could hear my neighbor Solveig humming as she shuffled her cards. She practiced numerology and always said that some people aren't born into this world—they "leak" into it.
I was a leak in the universe. And the nine-year silence was over...