by Nick Thacker
Graham looked back at Rachel Rascher. She was nodding along, excitement growing on her face. “Yes, Graham,” she said. “That is exactly right.”
“So his documentation of Atlantis is just that — a documentation of its history, its existence, and its fall. Plato used its existence and subsequent destruction as a tool to explain the value in not becoming too prideful of a race. He used his dialogue to explain the truths he was wrestling with as a philosopher.
“But that doesn’t mean that Atlantis wasn’t real — it was absolutely a civilization of people, one that threatened and persecuted the ancient Athenians. Eventually they were destroyed by a cataclysmic event that swallowed them up ‘in a day and a night’ — a common phrase in Ancient Greek that meant ‘an unknown and inexact amount of time.’”
He paused to take a breath, and only then noticed that Sarah was sitting on the mattress on the floor of the room. Rachel was standing by the door. Both women’s faces were riveted on him, watching his every move.
“So the Atlanteans were absolutely real, Sarah,” he said. “They existed, just as Plato described. They may not have been the fanciful, fantastic race of flying-car Jetsons our own history has created out of the myth, but they were real. So Ockham’s Razor states that the simplest answer, after extracting the additional, hypothesized layers that have been mounded up on top of the original myth, is that Atlantis was, without a doubt, a real race of people.
“The Atlanteans were a race of people that existed long before history even allows them to exist. What we’ve considered possible for determining the age of ancient societies — Babylonians, Greeks, Egyptians, Mayans — it’s all based on a physical world that exists today. But if you ask any cosmologist, or anyone knowledgeable in Earth Sciences, they will tell you that the best we can determine of what our world looked like 10,000 years ago is an educated guess. We simply don’t know.
“So the ancient Atlanteans were ‘advanced,’ only in the regard that they were far more civilized than other peoples of that time — the nomadic hunter-gatherers that came to the Americas over the Bering Strait, the Pacific Islanders, the early African tribes. Those people coexisted — thought they may not have known it t the time — with the Atlanteans. And Atlantis, as a race, was the predecessor to the Babylonians, the Sumerians, the Minoans, the Greeks — all of them — they were able to sail, and navigate the oceans using celestial waypoints.
“They rose to power through their civilization efforts, teaching their neighbors, including the ancient Athenians and Egyptians, how to farm, cultivate crops, study the skies above them, and build monuments and structures to gods they believed in.
“They may have been ‘before their time’ in the sense that they had achieved what no other known races before them had achieved — true civilization, a balanced and meritocratic society — but they were certainly not the elevated, magical race of alien beings our stories have turned them into. They had no flying cars, no magical spells, and they were certainly not an race of alien beings.
“They were, for lack of a better word, normal. And if we had another original text besides Timaeus and Critias that referenced Atlantis, we might have more ‘simple answers.’”
He stopped at that, waiting to see the reactions on the womens’ faces.
64
Ben
BEN’S DRINK HAD LONG SINCE STOPPED sweating, the ice now completely melted and the drink quickly warming to room temperature, but he himself had started sweating.
They had landed in Cairo and were taxiing down the runway and over the wide expanse of morning sun-heated light-gray tarmac, the waves of heat distorting the air a the ground. Ben shook his head, waking up abruptly, and groaned.
It feels like the middle of the night, he thought. Why am I always more tired after I sleep on an airplane?
He shook his head again, blinked away the remnants of sleep, and sat up in his chair.
The sun smacked down on the airport and surrounding buildings with an intensity he hadn’t ever known. It was hard, abrasive, and dry. Even with the air conditioning inside the plane, the interior of the fuselage was dry and still somehow stuffy. He sniffed, feeling the inside of his nose go dry as his body tried to adjust with the sudden change in humidity.
“You awake?” Julie asked.
“I am now,” he said.
“Alex is telling us he can arrange a ride from here to the Giza Complex,” she said. “From there, it’s pretty much a tourist trip — and a tourist trap. It’s going to be slammed, since school’s out and the weather’s nice.”
“This is nice weather?” Ben asked, incredulously. He pulled himself up and stood in the center of the plane’s fuselage, the only place that offered enough headroom for him to stand fully without cocking his head to the side.
He saw Reggie and Alex at the back of the plane, still deep in conversation, and he turned to Julie to find her smiling. “Looks like they’re getting along,” he said.
Julie rolled her eyes. “They haven’t shut up, actually,” she said. “I couldn’t sleep back there. I moved up to the row right behind you.” She pointed with her thumb to the row across the aisle from Ben’s.
Ben raised his eyebrows. “You could have shared my row.” As if she didn’t know what he meant, he added, “if you know what I mean.”
She rolled her eyes again. “Right. That’s what I wanted. A little hanky-panky in an airplane, full of our friends.”
He shrugged. “Just sayin’.”
“Anyway,” Julie said, changing the subject, “Alex has an idea. He thinks there’s something about the Great Sphinx that’s worth examining.”
“The Sphinx?” Ben asked. “That’s that weird cat-thing?”
“It’s a lion with a Pharaoh’s head, Ben,” Julie said. “And yes. That’s the one. It sits right next to the Great Pyramid of Giza, facing due east, guarding anyone who might try to sneak into the compound.”
“Anyone sneaking in from the east, you mean,” Ben said, snickering.
She sighed. “Just… come hear what Alex has to say.”
The plane taxied to a stop at the small regional airport’s terminal and pulled in to the gate. The pilot announced over the intercom that they had arrived, and where they might find their bags inside.
Ben wasn’t sure if it was just the pilot’s habit to explain the baggage claim at this terminal or if he was making fun of them for having nothing to their names — no bags, no clothes, no cellphones.
He followed Julie back to where Alex and Reggie sat side-by-side, deep in conversation. Mrs. E was perched on the seat in the row in front of them, leaning over and listening. Alex was consumed with his own monologue.
“…and then decided that the Sphinx — and likely the rest of the pyramids in the complex — was far older than we initially thought. Or, at least, older than most contemporary Egyptologists think.”
“Is there data to back that up?” Reggie asked.
“It’s empirical, but sure,” Alex said. “There were a couple of researchers who were able to gain access to the Sphinx and run some tests and calculations. This was all, of course, expressly forbidden by the Egyptian government, and —”
“Wait,” Ben said, “your country’s government doesn’t want people studying its ancient structures?”
Alex shook his head. “For the most part, no. They’re scared, honestly. There are too many contradictory opinions about what the structures are, how they were created, and when they were built. Things that should be obvious, like the fact that most pyramids are tombs, are misleading. The Great Pyramid of Giza, for example, isn’t a tomb at all. There was never anyone buried inside — no mummies, no sarcophagi, nothing. It’s like it was built to be just a temple, but then it remained empty for eternity.”
“And these guys who studied the Sphinx found what, exactly?”
“They claimed there was water damage around the base of the Sphinx, in the pit in which it sits.”
“So,” Ben said. “It rained? What
does that prove?”
Alex smiled. “Everything, really. Ben, I’m not talking about a little bit of rain — the kind of water damage that’s clearly apparent on the base of the Sphinx implies that it was subject to a lot of rainfall. Hundreds of years of rainfall, no less.”
“So we’re talking monsoon-level torrential rain?” Reggie asked.
“Yes, exactly,” Alex said. “And that is simply impossible, given the Sphinx’s age. There hasn’t been a period of that much rainfall in the Nile River Valley since the Sphinx was built a few thousand years ago.”
“Unless…” Julie said, leaning forward.
“Unless the Sphinx wasn’t built a few thousand years ago,” Reggie finished. “Unless it was built far earlier.”
Alex’s smile grew. “Exactly. The last time there was significant rainfall that could have caused the scoring and horizontal erosion on the Sphinx’s foundation was somewhere between five- and seven-thousand years ago. A handful of Egyptologists have been considering this alternative for many years, myself included. We believe that the Egypt we know was not born out of nothing; we believe that Egypt was influenced — greatly, perhaps — by a far older, far more advanced civilization. This civilization was the group who built the pyramids and the Sphinx.”
“So your theory is that somehow this group that grabbed Sarah and her father are at the Sphinx?”
“Sort of,” he said. “I don’t think they’re interested in the Sphinx itself, necessarily, but rather what’s underneath it.”
“Underneath it? I thought it was a solid mass of rock?” Ben said.
“It is,” Alex said. “But there have been some theories and predictions that it’s sitting on top a massive subterranean complex — a sort of ‘secret tomb,’ if you will.”
“You believe these theories?”
Alex nodded. “There’s already proof that there are cavities beneath the structure. In fact, a tomb was found beneath it, accessible via a narrow, vertical shaft at the rear of the Sphinx. Inside there was a decaying wooden coffin and some hieroglyphics on the walls.”
“That’s amazing,” Julie said. “What happened to it?”
Alex laughed. “Tourism. In 1926, a Frenchman poured concrete down it, rendering the whole thing inaccessible, in order to ‘clean up’ for the upcoming tourism boom.”
“You — you’ve got to be kidding me,” Ben said. “That’s desecration.”
Alex shrugged. “Look, you don’t have to tell me. Egypt has long since been under scrutiny for the way it’s handled its ancient artifacts. And even if the government wasn’t constantly screwing things up, there have been countless lootings, raids, and desecrations of the monuments since they were built. The capstone on the Great Pyramid, for example, and the white casing stones that used to be on every side of it — both long gone. Who knows how many priceless artifacts have been lost to time?”
Ben nodded. “Makes sense. So you’re thinking that this tomb isn’t the only one? That there might be a larger one somewhere?”
“I know there’s one,” he said. “The government’s been hiding it, preventing anyone from accessing it. But believe me, it’s down there.”
“Have you seen it?” Mrs. E asked.
“No, unfortunately. They won’t let anyone get close. But there are hundreds of eyewitness accounts of a ‘large, tomb-like complex’ sprinkled throughout history, even though the government denies it. To make it worse, the most famous account, and one that gets the most play is from a psychic. Even though he obviously heard it or read it from somewhere before, he passed it off as his own ‘vision’ and that’s the account the Egyptian government references most often, because it’s the easiest to discount.”
“A psychic?”
“Yeah,” Alex said. “Edgar Cayce. He ‘predicted’ that beneath the Great Sphinx was the Hall of Records, a huge collection of knowledge and wisdom from an ancient race that predated the Egyptians by thousands of years.”
Ben flashed a glance at Julie. That’s too big a coincidence, he thought. That has to be what they’re after.
“Is there any reason to believe that the Hall of Records is the collected wisdom of the ancient Atlanteans?” Ben asked.
Alex looked up at him. “You know, it always sounded ridiculous. But I honestly believe there’s something down there. I’ve always believed it. I love Egypt, and its history, but civilizations don’t just ‘wake up’ one day and build giant pyramids using perfect mathematics. It’s clear to me that Egypt came from somewhere. After listening to you guys, it sounds like it has to be the Atlanteans. There’s just nothing else that makes sense.”
Ben nodded. “That’s what I’m thinking, too.”
“Off to the Sphinx, then?” Reggie asked.
“You got it,” Ben said. “Let’s go get Sarah back.”
65
Graham
“VERY GOOD, PROFESSOR,” RACHEL said. “Very good. You are exactly right. Plato wrote about a very real race of people, one that was able to exist in relative isolation for over a millennium, allowing them to develop what would have been, at that time, a highly advanced civilization. They were able to exact complete control over their environment, farming and domesticating animals, working the land, fishing the sea and rivers, and becoming what no other society at that time was able to become — an isolated, safe, and advanced race of people. The most pure form of humanity that has ever existed.”
Graham watched his daughter taking in all of the information. He hadn’t spoken to her in months, but the look on her face suggested that she was in total disbelief. She’s thought about this already, he thought. She received my gift, and she’s started thinking about it.
He wasn’t sure exactly what the artifact was that he’d found in Greenland — as an archeologist, he was usually wary of any objects that seemed too out-of-place in their environment, but at the same time it piqued his curiosity. Greenland was, for all intents and purposes, an archeological wasteland. Artifacts found there had often been left by passersby — no one in history had ever called the continent-sized island home for any significant length of time.
So finding something unique like that, something that was clearly an artifact from a time before history could remember, had an impact on Professor Lindgren.
And to find the piece in Greenland was simply fascinating.
He knew his daughter was trying to prove the theory that there had been visitors to the New World long before the nomadic tribes had traveled over the ice bridge of the frozen Bering Strait. He’d had similar suspicions during his career, but to date no hard evidence had turned up.
But when he’d found the artifact, he didn’t even bother having it tested in his lab for authenticity or submitting it to peer review. He’d sent it to Sarah immediately, only pausing to open the artifact and examine the interior — and the stone that had been sealed inside.
And, best of all, if Sarah’s research turned up anything of value, he had a strong feeling that it would coincide with his own research, the project he had been working on of late.
He knew his daughter was exceptionally intuitive, able to take seemingly unrelated pieces of a problem and put them together into a unified, understandable solution. He had given her the pieces — or at least one of the pieces — knowing that her own studies were slowly, eventually, leading her down the same path, and if he was right, he knew she would eventually understand what it was that he had been working on.
He hadn’t anticipated being kidnapped, of course, but he had known that his most recent paper had caused a bit of an uproar in his academic circle. Further, it had been completely wiped from his university’s servers, leaving no trace that it had ever been published.
When that had happened, Professor Graham Lindgren knew that he had stumbled upon something that someone, somewhere, wanted to keep hidden.
He had no idea it would lead to this, however.
“But that’s… that’s not enough,” Sarah said, finally. “It’s good — I believe yo
u. Both of you. But it’s not enough.”
“What do you mean?” Rachel asked, her head turned sideways a bit, inquisitively.
“I mean, I’ve been studying things like this my entire life — I’m an anthropologist, but my dad has been an archeologist all my life, and a great one at that. Trust me when I say I grew up around speculations like this, and even if he was crazy enough to believe this story — sorry, Dad — I can’t believe you would be.”
Rachel smiled. “I appreciate the vote of confidence.”
“Trust me, lady. It wasn’t meant as a compliment. I’m saying that you wouldn’t have wasted how many countless thousands of dollars of resources building — or excavating — this place if there wasn’t more to it.
“I can buy the idea that there was an ancient, advanced race of humans. The geography checks out — Santorini and the Cyclades Plateau are absolutely perfect for that — and the myths and legends all had to have come from somewhere. But even taking William of Ockham into account, extracting the layers of hyperbole and conjecture from the barebones analysis, Plato’s stories in Timaeus and Critias alone aren’t enough to corroborate an actual claim that this place —” she waved her hand around the shadowy, confined space — “was built by Atlanteans.”
Rachel’s smile grew, and Graham could see that she had not at all been fazed by Sarah’s insult. “Yes, Sarah.”
Sarah turned fully around, facing their captor head-on. His daughter wasn’t quite a head taller than the shorter woman, but he knew if it came to it, Sarah wouldn’t be at all troubled with taking Rachel down. He’d never seen his daughter fight, but he had a feeling there was a level of feistiness and dominance in his daughter he’d never been privy to. He had been married to her mother, after all.
