The Inheritors of Earth

by Jerry Ahern

  Dodd’s arm had been cleaned and sutured; now wearing an orange jump suit he sat quietly through the interrogation. The interrogation team consisted of Rourke, two military senior investigators and a doctor of psychology, who asked “Why are you here?”

  “Why, we are studying you, of course.”

  Rourke interrupted, “Why did you stage the underwater attack on me?”

  “It was not I, it was my predecessor.”

  “Why did he attack me?”

  “My Creator learned about the ongoing recovery of certain ancient documents that might have information my Creator deemed... important. My predecessor was sent to obtain that information.”

  “Who is your creator?” the psychologist asked.

  “Why, he is the Creator.”

  Rourke asked, “And this information your predecessor tried to kill me for?” “The Creator was unsure. He believed it contained information about The Others, the time of their return is approaching.”

  “Who are The Others and where are they returning from?” Rourke asked.

  “The Others are... The Others. It is nearing time for them to return from their journey.”

  “Where are they returning to?” The psychologist quarried.

  “Why, here of course. This is their home world.” There was a burning sensation high on his chest, Dodd rubbed it, looked quizzical for a moment and slumped over; his head striking the table, dead.

  Rourke leaped across the table, laid Dodd on the floor and jerked open the jump suit, checked for a pulse and finding none began compressions. Rourke roared, “Get a crash cart in here, stat.” It was useless however, Dodd never regained consciousness, even when the crash cart arrived and the Medics tried three times with the defibrillator. It was obvious; Dodd was dead.

  Rourke stepped back to allow the Medics access, he stood back against the far wall of the room pondering what had just happened and the pitifully small amount of information they had extracted from Captain Dodd. As they rolled Dodd’s body away to the morgue, Rourke asked one of the investigators to accompany him to Linguistics Section.

  Once there, Jose Zima, the senior research analyst, approached. Late thirties, Zima was under six feet in height and stocky. His dark eyes seemed to be charged energy, his complexion was dark and his jet black hair was cut short. Zima shook his head, “Still nothing to report, we have scanned all of the symbols from the titanium sheets and are about to load them into the computer’s matrix. It will then sort the symbols and attempt to postulate letters and words but it will be a slow process. It would help if we had a specific word combination we were looking for; the matrix program is fairly intuitive and can make postulations based on common linguistic traits all languages share.”

  Rourke thought for a moment before saying, “Try ‘The Others’ capital T and capital O and try ‘journey and return’ no caps.” Zima nodded. Once the loading process was complete, Zima typed the words Rourke had specified, hit enter, leaned back in his chair and said, “Now, we wait.”

  Rourke, with a crooked smile said, “Mr. Zima, I hope it doesn’t take very long. I don’t know how much time we have.”

  Zima smiled, “I don’t think it will take very long Dr. Rourke. These computers contain all of Earth’s known written languages to include alphabets and pictographs. Languages all follow predictable paths, for example, family structure, agriculture, worship and life are all shared concepts the human mind operates in. Additionally, within the family we also must have ‘I,’ ‘me,’ ‘mother,’ ‘father,’ ‘children’ and ‘others.’ Agriculture contains growth, crops, food, hunger and seasonal cycles. Worship contains God, gods, creation, sacrifice, redemption, etc. Life contains death and birth, you get the idea. To perform functionally each language will have simple or complex predicates and verb serialization, noun incorporation, possessive classifiers, diphthongs, accent patterns, and directional terms. We are simply trying to reconstruct a language none of us know anymore but once was a functional language with the ability to communicate complex information from one person to another. It had its own lexicography”

  “For example, the loss of the French quantificational determiners, which agglutinated to nouns, resulted in the occurrence of bare nouns in argument positions. This triggered a shift in noun denotation, from predicative in French to argumental, and accounts for the very different determiner systems of the Creole and its lexifier. The analysis provides evidence for the universality of semantic features like Definiteness and Specificity, and the mapping of their form and function.”

  “If you say so Mr. Zima, if you say so.” Rourke smiled, not having a clue about what Zima just said.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  In the two days since the fight in the forest, Rourke had gotten little sleep or rest. Paul Rubenstein was released, a bit battered and bent but not seriously injured. He was still nursing the effects of a concussion, a cracked rib and a host of scrapes and minor lacerations. Annie was in full “nurse mode” and Paul was in slightly better spirits. Michael and Natalia were staying at the Rubenstein home; John, Emma, Timothy and Paula had dropped in. Michael had grilled some steaks for the “patient,” who was milking the attention for everything he could get from his guests. Finally, Michael had told him to get his own beer. Paul picked up a little silver bell and rang it. Annie appeared almost immediately with a cold one.

  Michael was stunned, “How did you do that?”

  Paul grinned and said, “Training my boy. Doesn’t Natalia wait on you like that?”

  Emma brought John a refill and Michael sat with a look of dejection on his face. “Here I sit with my old man, my injured uncle and everybody has a cold beer but me. And I’m a Presidential candidate.”

  Timothy Rourke and John Michael, Paul’s son, arrived with a beer for Michael. John Michael said, “Aunt Natalia asked us to bring this to you.”

  Michael took a swig from the bottle, grinned and said, “Finally some respect around here.” After the meal, Rourke and Emma said their goodbyes and left. “I am exhausted,” Rourke said.

  Emma patted his shoulder and said, “You must be. When we get home, let’s hit the hot tub and put you to bed.”

  Rourke asked, “Should you, I mean with the baby?”

  Emma smiled, “You are still a fine doctor, Dr. Rourke but you are definitely out of practice in being an expectant father. It will be fine; I just need a few minutes to unwind myself.”

  Rourke’s phone startled him from a fitful sleep, “Yeah, hello... this is Rourke.”

  “Dr. Rourke, Jose Zima. I think it would be a good idea if you came down to the Linguistics Center.”

  “Mr. Zima,” he said looking at his Rolex on the night stand, “its 4 o’clock in the morning, what’s going on?”

  “We are getting the results of the transcription from the metal sheet. You were correct, the phrases you supplied were the key to our success; they were a place to start and it worked. Right now, my team is collating the information and we’re running cross checks in several areas. I contacted a couple of my colleagues and they are going over the data as we speak. Dr. Rourke, I think you need to get here. I don’t want to say anything else over the phone.”

  “Alright, let me shower, I’ll be there within the hour.”

  “Thank you Dr. Rourke. I’m sure when you see the data you’ll agree this is important.”

  “All I have to say is you better have the coffee on.”

  “I’ll put on a fresh pot and have you a cup when you walk in. Take anything in it?”

  “Just hot and black.” Rourke broke the connection, staggered to the bathroom and turned the shower on. While the water was warming, he sat on the toilet, peed and rubbed his face. Flushing the toilet he stepped in the shower and speed shaved while he bathed. He put on his street clothes, kissed Emma who was still asleep and left. Forty-eight minutes later he walked into the Linguistics Center and Zima handed him a steaming cup.

  “As promised Sir.” Zima smiled.

  “Thanks
Jose, this will help. Bad night for sleeping.”

  “Follow me, Dr. Rourke.” Zima led the way to the private conference room, two other rumpled individuals sat at the table ruffling through two stacks of computer printouts. They apparently did not have the benefit of a full night’s sleep either. Zima made the introductions, “Dr. Rourke this is Dr. William A. Sloan, his specialty is Geologic Anthropology. This is Dr. Daniel Gregg, Astrophysics.” Sloan was older, probably in his late fifties, early sixties with grey hair that had not seen a comb in ten years. Gregg was mid-forties, fit and well maintained in his appearance.

  “Gentlemen,” Rourke said shaking hands. “I take it Mr. Zima interrupted your rest also?”

  “And rightly so, Dr. Rourke,” Gregg said. “And rightly so, this information is incredible. Jose, do you realize what you have found?”

  “Zima, has this information been verified?” Sloan asked.

  “No, Dr. Sloan, not completely, I suspect it will take another couple of days for the programming to be completed. You’re getting this information as fast as the servers make the connections, correlations and extrapolations; it is ‘rare’ right now, but it is not raw. The other problem is I don’t know what sources we have available to verify it. This is new and uncharted ‘stuff.’ This is a prime example of finding something unlike anything we have ever discovered, and not being real sure what exactly it is.”

  Somewhat gruffly, Sloan asked, “Can you testify to the authenticity of the metal sheets? This has all the earmarks of a hoax.”

  Rourke spoke up, “I can. I was there when several of the metal sheets were retrieved from a heretofore undiscovered shipwreck off the northern coast of Africa. The ship appears to be from the time of the burning of the Library at Alexandria. The amphorae have been authenticated as from the same time period. That wreck has lain undisturbed until its discovery; I saw the wreck myself, the artifacts are genuine. No offense, but I don’t understand why you two are involved. I thought this was a Linguistics issue, trying to decipher a dead language. Why are a Geological Anthropologist and an Astrophysicist involved?”

  Zima said, “I called them in when I saw the direction this investigation was going in. We have been able to decipher much of the information from the first five sheets of titanium but it can only be verified with these gentlemen’s help. I know what the sheets say but won’t know what they mean or if they are in fact real without the help of these other specialties. John, not only have we started to resurrect a dead language, the stories the sheets tell will potentially re-write human history. This information is giving us a snap shot of a world, this world that we never knew existed. If these two can verify some of the markers, almost everything we think we know about our own history is about to be turned on its ear.”

  “Jose,” Rourke said. “What are these sheets telling you?”

  “John, as I told you earlier communication between humans is both an art and a science. Certain constants must be met, that’s the science. How those constants are met, well, that’s the art part. Human communication begins dealing with the tangible; food, water, life, death, trade and record keeping. Then, if time allows, the intrinsic is tackled; love, hate, religion, etc. What we have on the titanium sheets is not the scribbling of a hunter-gather or a known civilization from the late bronze age or early common era as I would have anticipated from the ages of the amphorae and wreck. These are much, much earlier. Contained on the sheets, in addition to a proto-language we’ve never seen, are star charts with stars in positions they are not in today and maps that show continental shapes and features different from our world today. There are depictions of animals and flora not seen since the last ice age. This stuff is incredible.”

  “So, what does it all mean?” Rourke asked.

  “Well, I’ll tell you one thing,” Gregg the astrophysicist said. “A current star chart of today’s southern hemisphere constellations will show 25 constellations that appear at different times through the spring, summer, fall and the winter. The southern circumpolar constellations are Carina, Centaurus and of course, the Southern Cross. This star chart we have translated shows positions that used to be accurate but no longer are. This star chart shows us how things looked approximately 40,000 years ago. If this is a hoax, it is one hell of an elaborate one.”

  “I have to agree,” Dr. Sloan said taking off his glasses and rubbing his eyes. “Someone get me another cup of coffee. Jose, if your translations are accurate, this civilization was the prime moving force on the Earth when most of our ancestors were primitive hunter-gathers; before permanent villages even existed. As you know, many species simply vanished during the last great Ice Age, but here we have anatomical correct drawings of several including our proto-type human ancestors and that seems to be a clincher.”

  “You know that Cro-Magnon man was an early Homo sapiens; the same species to which modern humans belong and that lived about 40,000 years ago. There was an over-lap with another early ancestor, Neanderthal man, who disappeared into the fossil record about 10,000 years after the appearance of other upper Paleolithic populations. This was probably a result of competition with Cro-Magnon or related populations. The youngest Neanderthal finds include the Hyena Den, considered older than 30,000 years ago. Because of these and other finds, Neanderthals have been re-dated to between 33,000 and 32,000 years ago. No definite specimens younger than 30,000 years ago have been found. And here, we have anatomically correct depictions of both species, apparently created by another, more advanced species that met them both.”

  “Okay, guys,” Rourke said his head swimming with new data but no clear picture of what it all meant. “I only got about two hours of sleep, break it all down for me. Where are we at?”

  “Here’s the bottom line John,” Zima took over. “Using your initial search suggestions of ‘The Others’ capital T and capital O and ‘journey and return’ with no capital letters; we were able to establish connection with several other lost or dead languages throughout the world and a couple that are still in use. We have discovered several phrasemes or phraseological units or similarities, contextual similarities and so on. We have learned that several of these unknown language’s symbols, part of its alphabet if you will, are still in use years later in the primitive Hebrew and Greek languages. Some were even in use in Asia Minor and the Americas. My distant ancestors were Mayan and I found some of the symbols in the few remaining codicils of Mayan legends and history.”

  “For example, and this may be coincidence but the Hebrew letter ‘Bet, Beth, Beh, or Vet’ is the second letter of many Semitic alphabets, including Arabic, Aramaic and Phoenician. It is represented as ב. When ‘Beth’ is turned in this direction, see how close it is to π, the sign for the mathematical standard pi? Anyway, here’s the bottom line, with the help of computer programs and the data matrix we constructed, we have been able to decipher much of the infor-mati on.”

  “This ancient but advanced culture called itself the KI (pronounced kē). They traveled extensively in their time. They were aware of the other, more primitive humans that were developing and the ongoing geological and climate patterns the planet was experiencing. The majority of the KI culture prepared for an extended journey that would take the main population away and out of danger. Some of the KI determined not to go, from what I can see right now, those individuals literally became the ‘stuff legends were made of.’ Throughout the remainder of their lifetimes on Earth, they nurtured and guided fledgling humans in areas of social and limited technological development. By virtue of the length of their life span and the comparable shortness of the lives of our primitive ancestors, their influence spanned several generations. I surmise they became the seeds for our human legends of gods, the Titans and most specifically the main lost continents of Atlantis, Mu and Lemuria and the lesser-known ones such as Thule, Hyperborea and Rutas.”

  “Now here are the kickers,” Zima said. “Dr. Gregg, based on what you have seen, where did the KI go?”

  “That’s simple,
based on the evidence it is obvious they went into space. Don’t ask me how yet, but they did. Furthermore, and this is a very rough hypothesis—we need a lot more data—but I think it is entirely feasible that we may be on the verge of an historic event. If my gut is accurate, I believe it is probable that as we are speaking... the KI are on their way home; home to Earth.”

  Sloan spoke up again, “Here is what I think, it is a theory I have personally subscribed to for some time, and I’ve done quite a bit of research on my own. The resurgence of interest and speculation about the possibility of a once advanced civilization in Antarctica really began again after WWII when scientists started to pay close attention to the issue. That hypothesis seemed to be confirmed by some medieval maps and research of paleogeologists and glaciologists. Russia had been on the case since Lieutenant of Russian Empire Fleet Mikhail Lazarev, in January of 1820, ‘discovered’ a new continent. Everybody else gives credit to Captain James Cook for discovering Antarctica for the first time, according to our records, in 1773-1774; but could Atlantis have been found or has its existence been acknowledged long before that?”

  “Plato says that Atlantis was the size of Libya and Asia together. It is now thought that in those times, Libya meant North Africa, while Asia was the Middle East. If one adds up the sizes of the two regions, one obtains the size of Antarctica without its ice cap. However, according to Plato, Atlantis sank beneath the waves.”

  “In the beginning of the 20th century, the director of the Istanbul National Museum, Khalil Edkhem, was sorting out a library of the Byzantine emperors in an old palace when he found an ancient map made on gazelle skin. It showed the shores of western and southern Africa, as well as the northern shores of Antarctica. It also showed the shores of what is now known as Queen Mod Land, to the south of the 70th parallel, was free of ice. This ancient cartographer marked a mountain chain there; name of the cartographer was Admiral of the Ottoman Empire fleet, Piri Reis, he had lived in the first half of 16th century.”