Book 5 of The Windows of Heaven
A novel series by K.G. Powderly Jr.
Copyright © 2013, by K.G. Powderly Jr. All Rights Reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage or retrieval system, without the permission in writing from the publisher.
Published by Createspace
Cover Art Copyright © 2013 James Cline, Kanion Rhodes Studio
Printed in the United States of America
Dedication
For Pastor Robert Hall, thank you for modeling what you teach.
For Katarina, thank you for your prayers, your helping me sanity check myself, and for your friendship.
For Popi’s little grand-Nipper, Laurelin Mae—grow into the faith and grow strong in your laughter.
For all the folks at CSFNM, thank you for your encouragement and friendship.
In loving memory of Brian Wiegel. I miss your wit and energy.
Special thanks to Rob Mullin and James Cline, for all your work and encouragement.
Thanks also to Mark DeSpain, for some really great concepts.
For the Promised Seed—the suffering servant, wonderful counselor, mighty God, and the once and future King who waits to welcome us at Time’s End.
Acknowledgements
Chapter epigraphs appear from the following books with thanks and respect:
All Bible quotations not from the King James Version (KJV) or Revised Standard Version (RSV) come from any of the following versions and will be identified accordingly:
Holman Christian Standard Bible (HCSB) ©2003
New American Standard Bible (NASB) ©1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975 and 1977 by The Lockman Foundation, La Habra, Ca.
New King James Version (NKJV) © 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc.
Brenton English Translation of the Septuagint
Apostolic Bible (A 21st century English rendering of the Greek Septuagint translation)
www.janesoceania.com and janeresture.com, (citations used with permission)
The History Files: The Sumerian King List, Peter Kessler, www.historyfiles.co.uk/FeaturesMiddEast/ MesopotamiaSumerList01.htm
Bill Cooper, After the Flood
Mythology Dictionary, www.mythologydictionary.com
World History International, History of the Sumerian Language, History-World.org
Encyclopaedia Britannica Online
King Catfish, also Called Narmer, Marie Parsons, Tour Egypt
The Abydos Triad—Osirus, Isis, and Horus—and Seth, Andre Dollinger, http://www.reshafim.org
New World Encyclopedia
The most ancient languages for which we have written texts—Sanskrit for example—are often far more intricate and complicated in their grammatical forms than many other contemporary languages.
—Suzette Elgin
What is Linguistics?
I applied my mind to know wisdom and knowledge, madness and folly; I learned that this too is a pursuit of the wind. For with much wisdom is much sorrow; as knowledge increases, grief increases.
—Ecclesiastes 1:17-18 (HCSB)
Table of Contents
Part 1: Palqui—Prologue 1
Chapter 1:Eridu 15
Chapter 2: Foundations 27
Chapter 3: M’Es-Ki-aj-Kush-Saar 35
Chapter 4: Arrata 47
Chapter 5: Treasure Cave 63
Chapter 6: Inana 73
Chapter 7: Imdugud 85
Part 2: Ninurta—First Interlude 100
Chapter 8: Metropolis 107
Chapter 9: Phobos 119
Chapter 10: Pandemonium 130
Chapter 11: Dreamtime 139
Chapter 12: Hospice 151
Chapter 13: En-Ki 163
Chapter 14: Huwawah 179
Part 3: M’El-Ki—Second Interlude 194
Chapter 15: Uannu 203
Chapter 16: Ruin 217
Chapter 17: Encounters 229
Chapter 18: Partitions 243
Chapter 19: Uruk and Kish 261
Chapter 20: Etana 273
Chapter 21: Dilmun 295
Part 4: The Falcon—Third Interlude 308
Chapter 22: Gilgamesh 317
Chapter 23: Redeployment 337
Chapter 24: White Rock 257
Chapter 25: Isis 377
Chapter 26: Scorpion 395
Chapter 27: Uniter 415
Chapter 28: Great House 435
Chapter 29: Cuttings 459
Chapter 30: Testament 479
Epilogue 503
Appendix 1: Sumero-Akkadian Mythology as a Revisionist Sacred History of Whatever Came Over on the Boat 507
Appendix 2: The Table of Nations… 511
Appendix 3: Implications of Genetic Entropy 513
Appendix 4: Chronology 515
Appendix 5: Creation, Divine Judgment, and the Ethical Principle of “Double Effect” 521
PART 1
PALQUI
And unto Eber were born two sons: the name of one was Peleg; for in his days was the earth divided; and his brother’s name was Joktan.
—Genesis 10:25 (KJV)
Prologue
Everything I thought I knew about the real world changed forever at a cell phone riff from Chutes Too Narrow, by the Shins. I had been sliding down them all my life, it seemed.
The programmed ring tone identified a caller I had hoped never to hear from, much less at two in the morning. Within the hour, a black Kevlar-armored, U.S. Government, hybrid SUV whisked me away from my condo outside of DC, and took me to a Gulf Stream jet at Andrews Air Force Base that flew me to the other side of the world. It landed me next to a nuclear bomb ready to go off in more ways than one.
I never expected my doctoral dissertation on the signatures of parallel mythologies in ancient language roots to place me in the middle of a war zone near the borders of Iran, Turkey, and Armenia. The situation since Egypt fell apart, and Iran went nuclear had spiraled downhill almost too quickly to follow.
A man who introduced himself as CIA met me at the medium-sized airport of the Eastern Turkish provincial capital city of Van, on barren Lake Van. His ice-blue eyes were as cold as the wind off the vast super-salty water.
“Dr. Ben Isaiah?” CIA did not need to ask; he already knew.
“Yes. Are you going to tell me why my emergency activation was ordered?” I had done some consulting analysis for the CIA before. They had me on retainer because of my expertise in Arabic, Farsi, and other Near Eastern languages. They had assured me that they would not activate me unless something like another 9-11 was imminent.
No, really.
“Come with me, please.”
I followed CIA out of the terminal into the back of a Humvee bristling with antennae. He spoke only after we were inside, with the doors closed, and the driver had pulled out into the traffic.
“Dr. Isaiah, we found something while digging out the foundation for a bunkered intelligence station not far from here—you know; the kind used to coordinate drone ops. The place is kind of an archaeological site now…”
“Doesn’t the Turkish government have archaeologists?”
“They don’t know about it yet. Our archaeological consultant, Dr. Hobbes, wants to bring them in, but that’s problematic. With their government growing more hard-line, we may not have much time.”
We started driving north along the salt lake’s east shore.
“I’m not an archaeologist—unless you count the new field of linguistic archaeology. I do Information Theory
and languages.”
“I know. Please forgive my abrupt introduction at the airport. My name is Elias Stavenger, and I am, among other things, the Assistant Director of Central Intelligence over what might be termed ‘the analysis of anomalous technology, information, and phenomena.’”
I laughed. “The X-Files? You’ve got to be kidding!”
“No, Dr. Isaiah, that’s FBI.”
I tried to read his deadpan face for some sign of humor. If Stavenger intended any, it had to be dry enough to mummify everyone inside the Humvee’s rolling sarcophagus.
“I’m afraid your vacation trip out here costs too much for this to be a joke. Accurately interpreting vast quantities of information isn’t nearly as simple as the media makes it out to be. Everything has implications, and interacts in unpredictable ways with everything else.”
“Implications? I thought you had an incident on your hands!”
“We do—every bit as potentially explosive as the Iranian situation—just not so obvious, and not quite in the same way.”
“It’s not Iran?”
Stavenger tilted his head. “No. We’ve found an artifact that has writing on it that nobody has ever seen before. There’s also reason to believe that this artifact does not come from any ancient civilization on Earth.”
I wanted to laugh at him again, but my interest was piqued. One of my youthful post-doctoral embarrassments involved doing some consulting work for the old SETI Project. I had published on what a genuine alien language might look, sound, or even smell like—speculative stuff mostly, from a time when I needed the money. I still wanted to cover myself, though. “Could it be a hoax? I mean, isn’t this ‘Noah’s Ark country’ or something? Any oddly shaped rock becomes the bow of a ship…”
Stavenger spoke over me; “This isn’t a weird rock, or anything to do with the Bible. Perhaps it is best that you see the device for yourself before we speak much more.”
“Device?”
Stavenger watched the road ahead. “Are you familiar with the Antikythera Mechanism?”
“Differential-geared analog computing device found on an ancient Greek shipwreck from circa 80 or 90 BCE—probably used for astronomic navigation calculations or horoscopes. Why?”
“This Device is far older, and far more sophisticated. We found a chamber filled with mummified human bodies during the excavation. Some had odd wounds. When our archaeologists brought in ground-penetrating radar, they discovered another room, carefully sealed off from the one with the mummies. The diggers thought it was a tomb at first, but when they opened it up they found an ancient stone sarcophagus with the Device inside.”
“What does it do?”
Stavenger leaned back. “Some of the components are biological—an unknown species of mollusk shell with semi-conducting properties, and objects that appear to have been living calcium-eating bacteria colonies inside some form of natural polymer casing that could easily be removed and replaced. Overall, the device seems to be an advanced data storage unit.”
“Living? Electronic?”
“Piezo-electric cells with tiny gold leads that could have been etched for a circuit board—except the Device also contains a series of silicon disks that seem to have been grown inside high temperature furnaces, with metal alloy layers added by some kind of annealing process. That’s not all. It has a large glass spheroid that looks like it could have once been a holographic display of some sort. Except for the sphere, the device wouldn’t need vacuum tubes—our tech guy has determined that the crystal and polymer studs on the lowest silicon disk are functional diodes and transistors. It’s solid state.”
I could feel my heart rate increase despite myself. “Does it work?”
Stavenger lit a cigarette. “Not by itself. The glass is cracked and the biological components are too desiccated. Our computer geek has been working on the data storage crystals—what he thinks is the closest analog to a computer hard drive, or maybe a more compressed CD.”
“How could such a bizarre thing work?”
“We suspect the bacterial colony components—there were four types—were part of an input read-write device. Each produced a different enzyme, when electrically stimulated, which left four unique imprints on the data crystals. The four patterns grow in microscopic layers only nanometers thick, according the crystal’s sequenced rapid exposure to each of the four bacterial enzyme nodes. The effect forms a dense electronic code.”
I tried to crack the window, “Does any part of it still work?”
Stavenger smiled—a thin slit in his face like a bloodless razor cut. “The writer mechanism is un-usable, though the recording crystals are amazingly well-preserved. We’ve had better luck on the reader part. They’ve constructed a partially functional output interface.”
“What?”
The CIA man’s cool eyes warmed only in his cigarette’s glow. “It took some time to decipher the code. Four enzyme-induced crystalline growth imprints—four digits. It’s quadratic rather than binary—magnitudes more sophisticated than our software, even if their hardware seems a lot more primitive than ours—except for the bio-components. It’s a record of moving images—a DVD, if you will—five million or more years old.”
“Or more?”
“That’s the devil of it. It’s rather difficult to date. Artifacts and bones in the outer chamber carbon date from the earliest Copper-Age Sumerian era—maybe just a little before—roughly 3500 to 5000 BCE. The sealed chamber, where we found the device, has been undisturbed for considerably longer, but the device’s biological components carbon date to a few hundred years later than the bones in the outer chamber.”
“How is that possible?”
Stavenger shrugged. “We don’t know. We’d hoped to find clues from the unique construction methods used to make the chambers. The vaults connect, as if built at the same time. The inner room containing the device was sealed; with great pains taken to camouflage its presence—as if an early Sumerian outpost had found it, and then hidden it again. Except…”
“Except what?”
“The craftsmanship used to disguise the presence of the device chamber is considerably more sophisticated than the Sumerians could have pulled off—at least according to Dr. Hobbes.”
“Why do you think the chamber is truly pre-Sumerian then?”
Stavenger mashed out his cigarette in the door-handle ashtray. “The chambers were found beneath two and a half meters of solid late Miocene lava stretching miles in any direction—that’s just before the Ice Ages.”
“I know what Miocene means. There must be some mistake. The dates just don’t add up. They must be wrong.”
“According to our geologists there’s no mistake. They say we’d all be surprised how often huge dating anomalies pop up—though not usually in such a spectacular way. The lava flow covered both chambers after the bodies fell there. They died violently, and not from the lava, which didn’t penetrate the chambers when it flowed over them. The rooms were already inside a carefully sealed cave before the eruption. The mummies have blade marks and odd looking punctures, as if they had fought for their lives and lost. It seems that Sumer is a much older civilization than we thought.”
“It can’t be that much older…”
Stavenger lit another cigarette. “It’s as much as five million years older—according to the fission track date of that lava flow.”
After an almost two-hour drive to a desolate place past a town called Dogubayazit, the Humvee pulled into a barbed-wire compound filled with mobile buildings, and parked next to an aluminum warehouse. The sun set over the metal building, and I could hear the wind from the hilly grasslands ripple over its corrugated siding. Stavenger led me to a door and held it open.
Inside, clear plastic walls like balls of enormous bubble wrap enclosed a raised grate floor. Giant fans drove air through the HEPA-filtered ceiling of a makeshift cleanroom. The CIA man pointed me toward some stairs that led into a small changing room and air shower. Technicians handed
plastic-packaged white bunny-suits to us at the door.
I took up our conversation again as we donned the particle-containment suits. “Could the lava be from a more recent eruption—didn’t Big Ararat blow in the nineteenth century? How many samples were tested?”
“Plenty. No lava this far out is from any volcanic event in historic times, Dr. Isaiah. The puzzle and the artifacts are for real.”
I just could not wrap my head around it. “Late Miocene,” I muttered under my breath as I donned my hood.
Inside the first bubble chamber, the device itself sat mounted on a technician’s workbench. A spindly man with enormous white eyebrows jutting out past his tight hood examined one of the disks under the broken glass globe. He scowled like some decrepit abominable snowman too old to frighten anybody. I paid more attention to the mechanism, which somehow seemed more ordinary than I had imagined.
I guess I had expected it to glow like some kind of Holy Grail. It did not look modern or even especially high-tech at first glance, although the longer I stared at it the more I saw how remarkable it was. The ideographic writing on the broken spheroid’s polished base seemed vaguely familiar, yet strange, as if partial symbols from widely divergent ancient writing forms came together on the unifying template of something alien. It seemed to play tricks on my eyes, blurring back to obscurity whenever I thought I saw some recognizable trait.
Some of the figures resembled patterns found in early Sumerian and Akkadian pictographs, but without the ovoid or wedge-shaped stylistic elements caused by the reed stylus pressed into wet clay. Others bore a complex ideography suggestive of something like a more sophisticated form of Mayan logogram. Still others had commonalties to early Egyptian hieroglyphs—though none followed the syntax arrangement of any of these languages. The more I tried to isolate the familiar from the unfamiliar in the glyphs, the more disoriented I became, as if the Device itself threw up a shroud over my mind.
Gate of the Gods: Book 5 of The Windows of Heaven Page 1