by Mark Tiro
“They attacked just before dawn. The native guides were already up, foraging off in the distance, which is probably the only reason they’re still with me.”
Well, this doesn’t sound promising, I thought, looking around and—of course—seeing no one with me but the small handful of native guides sitting off in the distance.
“Everyone else is gone,” the notebook continued. “The cartel kidnapped a few of them. A few of the logistics people who’d come down with us from the capital, and two of the younger graduate assistants—both women.” I put down the notebook a moment and considered that. I started to feel my anger begin to rise up, shuddering to think of their likely fate out here, in the hands of cartel men with little—or more likely, no—supervision. But I wasn’t in any position to do anything about that now, and I closed my eyes, trying to focus my mind. I needed to try to let go of my anger and this feeling of helplessness rattling around in head. We were in a precarious position, and my anger wouldn’t do much now except be one more weight to carry around. To take my mind off all these thoughts that were gnawing at me, I picked up the notebook and kept on reading.
“Once those of us who were left had fought the cartel bastards back, we took stock of where we were at, of who was left with us after the attack: five native guides, two of the workhands who’d been with us since we unloaded in port, and my assistant Sal. Everyone else is DDD—dead, deserted or disappeared.”
The journal entry stopped there. I flipped through, looking for the next entry. After looking through a few blank pages, I found it. And it was messy. I had to focus to read the handwriting, scrawled at an angle sideways, down the page:
“Sal’s dead. We tried to regroup and head on towards the target, but we were ambushed again. Sal took a bullet today, which probably had been meant for me, but he happened to stand up just when the sniper took the shot. We had talked before this about what we’d do if we came under attack again. We’d decided that we pretty much had no choice now but to fight. We had some fuel with us, and a small amount of explosives that we’d brought on the expedition in case we needed to clear any rock or debris once we got to the site. At this point though, it was obvious we weren’t going to make it to the site if we were attacked again. And so the workhands rigged up something that we could throw, a kind of improvised Molotov cocktail—but hopefully with a little more kick.”
Everything had gone to hell. Clearly. Well maybe not quite everything. There’s still time for that, though, I thought. Grimly.
I kept reading.
“After leaving us with the improvised Molotovs, both the workhands abandoned us too. One of the natives said the workhands had said something about their contracts being done, and they were going to try to make it back to a town that serves as something of a frontier capital here. It was a place we’d passed three days back, and stocked up on the last of our provisions. I’m relatively sure they didn’t make it because we heard what sounded like another attack later that night, after they’d left—in the direction they’d headed…. I suspect the native guides are planning to jump ship, too. I figure the only reason they’re still with us now is because we’re headed in the same general direction as their home village.”
As it turned out, I didn’t need to wait long at all for the native guides to abandon us.
I looked up from reading the logbook, to see the remaining native guides standing sheepishly in front of me. The oldest one walked over to me and, in his best English, apologized. “We go that way. Home,” he said.
And that was that.
I was alone.
It was still early enough in the day, and I could push myself faster now that I’d be going the rest of the way alone. With some luck, I might even be able to stay out of the sites of the cartel. And so I stuffed as much of our provisions as I could carry into my pack, strapped it onto my back, and headed off to find what it was I’d come here to find.
Mercifully, this didn’t take long either.
Not more than two more hours in, just before the jungle canopy gave way to the plains of the foothills, I came to it.
I’d only shared my true suspicions with Sal, and now that he was dead and I was here alone, I double-checked the GPS first to make sure this was the place. It was, and so I pulled out the modified ground penetrating radar. At this point if I found something under the ground, I wouldn’t be able to get at it. Sure, enough there was, but from the ground penetrating radar readings, it was… well—enormous.
There was still the other thing we’d seen from the satellite images that I could check out now, though. I walked over, but even before I got to it, and even though it was almost completely covered by the jungle—I could make out its contours. And it was in exactly the place I’d thought it’d be. The river had changed course over the many thousands of years, and the place I found it lay over a kilometer and a half from where the river now flowed.
This spot was just next to where it was. Then. Thousands of years ago. Despite the fact that my entire expedition was now hanging by a very thin thread (basically me at this point), I felt a shiver go up my spine. I was standing in the same place—the exact same place—as they had… all those millennia ago…
Also, there was the issue of the magnetometer.
I hadn’t expected it to register anything from the site, but Sal had insisted we bring it. “It’s just one more thing. And worth its weight in gold—or in lead—depending on what we find,” he’d said in arguing for it.
“Better be gold,” I’d said. Then I thought about it a bit, and added, “You can carry it, so I guess you’re right then—there really is no downside.”
Now that I’d finally made it to the site, I saw that the magnetometer was, well, basically—going crazy. I hadn’t really expected it to register much of anything. But it was now making it clear that there definitely was something here. And not what I’d expected.
I pulled out my machete and got to hacking away at the brush straightaway. There were still maybe two more hours until dark, but I was alone now. This was going to get done as a solo job, or not at all. I put my pack down and got busy clearing the jungle away as quickly as I could.
In the end, it didn’t take two hours. It didn’t even take 15 minutes—that is, once I’d finally hacked my way past the upper layer of brush.
And when I did—there it was. The thing my years of research had only just hypothesized was possible. There it was now, sitting right in front of me.
A computer.
A twelve thousand year-old computer.
Or at least that’s what my working theory had been: an ancient computer, left by whoever must have been here, before… long before…. Before the more famous—and more recent—Aztecs and Mayans and Incas and all the other famous peoples who lived in times past, these people (if they were mere people) were using technology that far surpassed any of the others who had come after. Or at least that had been my working theory.
But here, now, in front of me, was… this.
This… computer?
Whatever it was, it was apparently still drawing on some long-forgotten but still functional, ancient power source. I cleared some more of the brush away and then began to dig. It wasn’t long until I found the power source I was looking for. There, not more than a meter or so down, was a bank of crystals. And from what I’d managed to unearth so far, this was just the top of the power bank. The whole thing was larger than any I’d ever seen or even imagined possible. The crystals were interconnected by what looked like connectors that I could only describe as some sort of organic tissue in a crystalline lattice structure.
And they were all glowing.
I’d had some ideas about the advanced, ancient civilization it must have come from, though these were nothing more than ideas… mere hypotheses.
At some point after the civilization responsible for whatever these things were had disappeared, another group of people—an indigenous, native population—had moved into the place. Of course, they’d had no c
lue what the things were that had been left behind. But over time, they’d turned to revering the objects as if they were a sign of divine favor, left behind as a gift from the gods. And so they’d preserved the things. Which is how these things had survived, long after the people who built them had died out… or been conquered, or returned to the stars or whatever else had ultimately become of them.
The natives who had come after had built a shrine, revering the thing and protecting it simultaneously. The ruins of the shrine were what had first shown up in the satellite imagery. And they had done their job well, at first marking the spot for all to see, and then later, protecting and hiding it, as both had been covered over and reclaimed by the jungle around it.
And now… here—I’d found it.
The sun had gone down over the horizon and it was quickly starting to get dark. I pulled out my phone from my pack to take and upload the first pictures before I lost the light completely. I put my thumb to my phone, and… nothing.
I hit it again, trying to turn it on. Again… still—nothing.
I’d had it hooked into my pack which had a solar panel for charging and a battery pack inside to capture the charge, and charge any devices. It should have been fully charged, but here it was, obviously completely dead now.
I opened the pack, and pulled out the battery pack, only to find that it was completely dead now too.
Uh oh.
And also—that’s really weird, I thought. It must be the same electromagnetic interference I’d been picking up so strongly with the magnetometer.
I pulled out my tablet to use its camera. The photos wouldn’t be as good, but it would be quick. As soon as I got it out of my pack and went to turn it on, it was obvious it was just as dead as everything else.
Okay, so I’d just have to pull out the other camera, which I hadn’t wanted to do until I at least got some initial pictures uploaded first. The big camera was packed away, though, and was a royal pain to get at. I put everything else aside, though, and started digging for it.
Ten minutes later, I’d gotten the camera out. By now though, the sun had completely set and it was almost completely dark. I dug around and pulled out the flash too. Not ideal lighting, but—my God, this was an ancient computer, maybe even still functional, hooked up to some kind of power bank of crystals I’m guessing no one had seen in however many thousands of years.
I got the camera out, and then the flash, and…
Dead, too. Both of them.
Aaarrrgghhh!
So that was it, then? I rummaged around in the pack, found a chemical glow stick. I took it out and snapped it to light it up.
Then I sat down, took a deep breath and looked around. I leaned back, and when I did, the notebook caught me eye.
Pen and paper. Aaarrrgghhh. That’s it, I thought. Bitter.
Pen and paper. Every electronic device, the video, the camera—all of it was completely useless now to document this… this—this world-changing discovery. Years of research and planning, and now this—this—was the culmination: a sketch drawing on a piece of paper.
I leaned forward, took a deep breath and sighed. The only way to prove this discovery to the world was… to draw it? And with my drawing skills, it would almost certainly look, more or less, exactly like something you could see in just about any kindergarten classroom the world over.
Lovely.
That dejected thought only lasted a minute or so, because that’s when I heard it. That’s when I heard them. People. Coming towards me. Unmistakable now, they couldn’t be much past the outside of the ancient site.
Why had I lit the glow stick? I cursed at myself. Why? There wasn’t much I could do to cover my position though. They had obviously seen me and were just about here.
I could make out their faces now as they approached. They were natives, or mostly natives. Not the guides who had abandoned us earlier, but clearly based on their look and their dress, they were from the same tribe, or at least, from the same group of tribes.
At their head was a woman, in tribal dress, but somehow—elevated? Was she their leader? Something flashed through my mind, there was a hint of recognition, and for a second, I had the strangest feeling that… I knew this person.
But as they came closer, the feeling faded, and I decided it was just that. A weird feeling. They were closing in now, and as more of their faces came into view, I saw that they were heavily armed. Also—they did not look at all happy.
And then it came to me. A flash again. I reached into my pocket and found the pad of paper and pen. I hadn’t given this thing—this mysterious, magic list—a thought for days now, I’d been so wrapped up in everything that’d been going on. Now, with the sound of the natives closing in almost deafening, I held the list up to the faint light of the glow stick. It wasn’t much light, and I could just barely see it. Hopefully, though, it was enough.
The natives were almost through the clearing. I could hear the brush under their feet as each step brought them one step closer towards me.
Then I heard a voice. It was a lone voice, and it was coming from the woman at the head of their tribe.
“Maya?” the voice called out. “Maya? Is that you? It’s me, Angel. Why don’t you put that thing that you’re writing in down, and we can talk.”
But I didn’t put it down.
I didn’t put my list down. What I did do was to shout back at her. “I have no clue who you are. I don’t know anyone named Angel!” I said.
I didn’t look up. What must have been her native guards were running up to grab me, their machetes outstretched so that I wouldn’t try to escape.
Next to #5 on the pad, I only had time to write a single word now. I scrawled the world “Help.”
I pushed the pad shut and felt the now-familiar popping sound in my ears, and then—I was gone.
It was all gone.
11
Eleven
“Well, hi there.”
It took me a moment to remember where I was. I blinked a few times to clear my mind. When I opened my eyes, I saw David standing there in front of me. He was wearing a grin that was much too chipper and seemed nothing if not amused by my return.
“Could I get a little help here, please?” I entreated as I went to brush the dirt off my pants. That’s when I realized I didn’t really have any pants or, for that matter, any body, either.
It was kind of like we were having this conversation in some sort of netherworld. While I was still thrown off a bit and maybe even a little confused, about this whole ‘jump’ thing, David was obviously having a much better time than I was, dealing with my sudden appearances.
“Help?” He smiled back. He reached out a hand to steady me, or at least I got the sense that’s what he did, though, I don’t recall actually seeing any physical bodies, either his or mine. “Sure thing,” he went on. “Help is what I’m here for. I’d been trying to help you by explaining how it all works when you blinked out there….”
“Wait, what? I did what there? No, stop—please I have a headache, and I can’t handle any lectures now, okay?”
“Sure thing. Good to see you again. How can I be of… help?” he asked, grinning from ear to ear now. Or at least that’s the feeling I got, no actual ears necessary.
“Well, for one, you can explain why this… this… list keeps getting everything so… wrong!”
“Wrong?” he asked quietly. I think I might’ve heard just the smallest tinge of sadness in his voice. “Nothing’s wrong. It’s exactly what I told you. Write whatever you want on your list, and you’ll get it. Exactly as you want. It’s funny how many people don’t get the whole ‘magic list that will manifest whatever you want’ thing.”
“But I didn’t want that!” I blurted back, thinking back to that near-disaster I had in the jungle, and to whatever that thing was in ancient Egypt or wherever.
“I wanted to be with a prince. A prince! My prince—not my brother!”
“But Steve’s not your brother.”
<
br /> “Well in that… that—wish—he was!”
“Why’d you ask for him to be your prince, then? You do know how royalty works, don’t you? Throughout most of human history, and almost universally from one culture and society to the next… I mean, should I start with the almost universally-repeated pattern of those who acquire great power to keep it for themselves, almost always within their own close family? Or maybe I should start with the increased prevalence of genetic disorders when there’s a lack of genetic diversity through factors such as inbreeding and…”
“Stop! You know what I meant!” I shot back.
“Well, you should’ve been more clear.”
“Stop it, stop it, stop it, stop it, stop it!”
“So, you don’t want to hear my exposition on the historical lineages of royal hierarchy in pre-industrialized societies?”
“No.”
He laughed.
“Why are you laughing at me? You almost had me in bed with… my brother! Iiiccckkkk! And don’t tell me I need to be more…”
“Clear?”
“Uuugghh! Clearer!”
“About what you write down on your list? Okay, sure—I won’t tell you that again,” he said. “Lesson learned. I’ll try to be more clear next time. You asked for help though, so do you want—”
“Help? Yes, I do. Please. I don’t want to find myself in that situation again.” Then I thought back to the jungle, and added, “in either of those situations again.”
“Fair enough. And I won’t ask you to take notes this time,” he said, looking down at the pad I was holding and flashing me that mischievous grin again.
“You can have anything you want,” he started. “You just can’t want it.” He paused, I think waiting for me to protest that I didn’t understand what he was talking about, but I wasn’t falling for that one. I just sat there, listening patiently for him to make a point that actually made any sense. When he saw that I was listening, he went on, for real this time. I think.
