h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I could see lights in the distance, higher than my viewpoint, as if they belonged to a building on a hill. It was false dawn - that interminable period of lightening prior to dawn proper. The sky was deep indigo for the larger part, turning to royal blue towards what I assumed to be East and, hopefully, where the sun would shortly be making an appearance. I was beginning to be able to discern the land around me. It was, as I had guessed, a desert. The sand had been an obvious clue, but in my defence I could have been on a large beach. I had, after all, arrived in the middle of the night. Or so I assume. I have been doing a lot of assuming recently. With so little to go on, it’s become a rather understandable habit.
One of the reasons that caused me to think I was in a desert was the lack of tidal sound. No waves, no beach. There was running water somewhere around here though. I could hear a faint white noise, as of water coming to a slight fall. This was good news. Although I wasn’t yet thirsty, I at least knew where there was a ready supply to be had.
When the sun finally breaches the horizon I’ll have a scout about and see what’s what. I haven’t moved much yet – not advisable in a strange desert at night. I have a thick coat to protect me from the cold, and a skyfull of stars to keep me entertained. Not the usual Northern hemisphere stars though, and also much clearer than I am used to. The lights of the supposed building intrigued me, but were for the present unreachable. There may be a flat expanse of perfectly solid ground between us, but on the other hand, there may not. I am not overly fond of my body, but the thought of crashing down into a ravine and breaking parts of it filled my caution. On a whim I checked the pockets of the protective coat and found them disappointingly empty of clues.
I could have assumed (again) that I was dreaming. The past was chiefly blank, other than a few collages which failed to make any sense. I was filled with a wonderful sense of ‘nowness’. I inhabited the present. There were sounds drifting my way from the river. Unfamiliar sounds which suggested the waking calls of animals. A dawn chorus sung by organisms fooled by the false dawn. Is that likely though? They must witness the false dawn every day. In which case they must have been making an early start.
As the light grew into dawn proper, the landscape was revealed to me. I was indeed in a desert, a vast red desert. The colour, I knew, was caused by haematite – iron oxide. That is, iron particles rusting on exposure to air. It is a deep red, like terracotta, or baked earth. It screamed ‘Triassic’. It didn’t scream at all, actually. The realisation was more like a large marine creature moving below while you’re out for a swim. Terrifying, on the whole, and, in the seas in which I’m used to swimming, quite unlikely. Still, it looked like the Triassic. Or at least the re-constructions of the Triassic I’d seen. You see, there is no longer a Triassic, except in books, and on the net, and in our minds. Parts of it are preserved here and there, certainly. But as an age it has long passed. About 200 million years ago, to be precise.
So I’m in a place where the most striking characteristic of Triassic deserts still exists. The Arabian peninsular perhaps? But that’s not haematitic. Australia then. But the stars aren’t right. The lights in the building went out. There were more clues that way. Once I’d found out where I was, I could at least make some guesses about why I was where I was.
Now the sun had made an appearance, I could see that there was little barrier to walking in a straight line to the front gate set in the midlle of the garden wall. It was the wall that threw me. The house and the wall looked unfamiliar together. I held my hand up to block out the wall. Of course. I recognised it now. The problem had been that of context. You see, the last time I had seen that house was about thirty years ago, when I was a boy growing up in Sussex, England.
I trudged on, removing my coat in the heat, which was now fair beating down. The ground was flat, and the sand was only lightly covering a compacted, walkable surface underneath. The was a gentle rise, followed by a steeper run up to the wall surrounding the house. At the bottom of the gentle rise I decided to have a good, three-hundred and sixty degree look at the lie of the land. I was on the slopes of a wide valley which, unless I was mistaken, had been carved out by the substantial river that ran below me. There were mountains all around, the tops of which danced and dissolved in the heat haze. The red conflicted wildly with the greens of the plant life growing around the river. The vibrant green band stretched as far along the valley as I could see in either direction. The species were hard to make out but, with a laugh of recognition, I could see some cycads that had grown up like palms. The green extended away from the palms, forming a plain covered in ferns with smaller, more compact cycads obtruding here and there. Large, dun, quadroped animals were moving out from the riverside, presumably in search of breakfast. A couple of skinny, long tailed bipeds flitted amonst the taller growth. Something unseen let out a loud grunt which caused them to run, and run fast. There were small flying hunters at work above the water.
Moving closer to the house, I could see that the wall was composed of flint. Which was wrong. Flint nodules grow in chalk, and there shouldn’t be any of that until the Cretaceous period. It was right, though, in the context of Sussex houses. Chalk is, or was, used extensively for building material. The gate was green, but a darker green than the foliage. I gave the garden on the other side of the wall a cursory glance and decided that even though the wall was only waist high, it would none-the-less afford me some protection against whatever marauding beasties may be around. Clicking the latch (a surprisingly noisy action in this environment) I walked through. Someone had been busy gardening. There was a lawn round the back, which is as it should be for the house, but not for the period. Grasses don’t appear for a long time yet. I can see the sidereal side of things is going to get confusing. There are apple trees, and apples on the ground underneath them. I needed something to drink.
The front door was the rough, grey sunstained wood I remembered it to be. There were also a couple of details of texture I’d forgotten. I was fairly convinced I was dreaming at this stage, as this was a house my dreams often turned to.