Barry swung the pickaxe again, sweat dripping down his brow.
He’d been at it for five hours now and had fallen into a rhythm. Heft, swing,
wipe, heft, swing, wipe. He wiped the sweat from his brow and, hefting the
pickaxe for another go, swung again. He anticipated the impact, the jarring of
his muscles that invariably occurred as he broke another small piece of rock,
but there was really no way to acclimate to the harsh stop, the painful ringing
of metal on granite.
Heft, swing, wipe, heft, swing, wipe…. Barry was thankful
for the exercise he was getting. As an archeology doctoral student he found
himself spending far too long in dusty, moldy libraries, and so when the
opportunity to assist with the dig came up he jumped at it. Three days of
sunburn and omnipresent granite dust later, he was starting to regret his
decision.
Heft, swing, wipe, heft, swing, crunch. The difference in
the sound is what caught Barry at first. He looked down at his pickaxe, now
buried to the shaft in the granite. I
must have found a hole! Barry thought excitedly. Holes meant pits, and pits
meant artifacts. Sometimes it was just a clay storage pot, other times it was
the lid to an ancient, decrepit wooden chest. Barry was still pondering his
good fortune when he heard a loud crack, feeling the ground shift
beneath him. Profanity formed on his tongue, but the ground gave way before he
could shout. Barry bounced back and forth among falling chunks of rock, feeling
the air rush around him before suddenly landing hard on his back. Just as he
prepared to get himself to his feet, a large chunk of rock collided with his
skull and turned the world black.
Barry awoke a moment later, the sun still streaming in from
the hole he had made. He saw a few faces gaping in at him, but didn’t spare them
a second thought as his eyes caught the gilded edge of the surface he had
crashed through. In what little light was available he could see glittering
specs spaced oddly along the ceiling, in shapes that felt somehow familiar. He
reached for his Maglite and shined it at the ceiling around him. That’s the big dipper! And Orion! This is a
star map! It must be thousands of years old…
Looking back at the hole, he saw the gaping faces of his
colleagues, expressions unchanged. Annoyed that they hadn’t yet offered to
help, Barry shouted at them. “Don’t worry guys, I’m all right, really. Just
took a nasty bump to the head. Might have a concussion, lingering brain damage.
Thanks for asking!” He looked back at the ceiling, marveling at the detail
before continuing. “Guys, you aren’t going to believe what I’ve found. It’s
like they’ve mapped out the sky in diamonds!” He looked back up at his
colleagues, heads framed by the Saharan sunlight. “Jerry? Matt? What’s with you
guys? Isn’t this amazing?”
One of the two jumped, shaking his head. “It is! It’s very
amazing! It’s just that…”
Barry caught the trailing end “…. Just that what, Jerry?”
Jerry cleared his throat. “Well, it must be a couple
thousand years old, at least.”
Barry scoffed. “Well yeah, we weren’t exactly headed to IKEA
on this dig.”
Jerry nodded. “Yeah, I know. But you are standing in North America.”
“North America?!” Barry finally cast his flashlight at the
floor. Underneath the rubble from his fall, he could clearly make out the
Appalachians, in stunning relief against the eastern coastline. The features
rose majestically out of the floor, as if he could reach down and pluck up a
single mountain. Behind him rose the Rockies, framing the Great Plains. There
were even depressions for the great lakes! All around him, everywhere Barry
shone his light, he revealed more and more of a world map with stunning detail
– a world map that shouldn’t have existed, and certainly not in northern
Africa. A world map of astounding accuracy, nearly two thousand years before
Columbus decided to try his luck.
Barry’s mouth hung open in silence as he tried to take it
all in.
No comments:
Post a Comment