by Talbot, Luke
George helped her through the gaps in the rubble that led to the surface. Hands reached down towards her from above and pulled her up into the mid-morning light.
Sunshine, she thought as she squinted, her hand raised to shield her eyes.
“We thought you’d be here,” Ben said, in a mildly accusing tone. “What have you been up to?”
George made a sign for him to be quiet as he emerged from the rubble.
Zahra walked up behind Gail and touched her shoulder.
“Are you alright, Gail?” she asked softly.
Gail nodded her head and smiled weakly. She turned to the horizon in silence.
The sky was a deep grey with streaks of black and red. She knew there was something wrong with that but the others didn’t seem to notice the sky. Her mind flittered between different realities, straying from Xynutian time capsules to Egyptian prophecies, to the mad Seth Mallus hell-bent on the destruction of the world. Now, she was back at the Xynutians. They had known, all those hundreds of thousands, no, millions of years earlier, that Aniquilus was coming. Somehow, they had predicted it, and had protected as much of themselves as possible from it. And yet humans had been so oblivious that they had simply failed to save themselves. Instead they had done Aniquilus’ job for him. They had already destroyed themselves.
But it wasn’t just anyone who had destroyed humans, it was Seth: an emissary. Everything he had done had been because of that. And he was still alive. Even as she had been speaking to the Xynutian, he had been receiving a similar message. After so many years she could barely remember his face, but she fancied she could almost hear his voice, feel his presence. They were, after all, linked.
She had always known that she was different, after all, who isn’t? she thought. But from that to finding out that she had been sent by the Xynutians. To do what? Seth destroys the world, and I just get caught up in it all. And then it occurred to her, that somehow her innate intuition, seeded by the Xynutians, had led her to this very spot, to make her momentous discovery. And without that, Seth would have no book of Aniquilus, no Mars landing site, not even an Armana Stickman.
She was vaguely aware of George kneeling beside her, looking down at her with a worried expression and she realised that she was no longer standing, looking towards the horizon.
She was lying on her back, looking up into the sky. And she could feel herself slipping away.
EARTH, it thought as it entered the Solar System. Its myriad taste buds tingled with anticipation. The cold depths of interstellar space had made it weary and, more notably, hungry.
Nine years later, it passed Mars with a cursory glance, before a carefully calculated slingshot round the Sun brought it perfectly into orbit around the third planet.
It stayed there, observant, for several milliseconds, before unfurling six tentacles round the planet, to join on the other side in an astronomical embrace.
Moments passed, and then slowly, inexorably, it drew closer, tightening its grip on Earth until its body touched the outer fringes of ozone. Any closer would be deadly to it, and so it stopped.
Aniquilus let its senses run free in the thick atmosphere.
Trillions of filaments poured down from its vast body, connecting it with the land below. Most plunged into the depths of the seas, sending back countless readings that were processed and stored with interest. Evolution, intelligence, it seemed, was slow in the waters of this planet compared to others. However, future visits could still be worthwhile, it noted.
Many billions of the infinitely-thin filaments reached solid ground, some penetrating several hundred feet in their quest.
CURIOUS, it thought.
Aniquilus reeled in its first prey: a human.
The harvested mind was weak, both in terms of intelligence and knowledge. The energy gained from absorbing it didn’t even compensate for the energy used to harvest it.
Aniquilus knew that one of three higher species was likely to be dominant at this time. It was very hard to believe that with such an outlook after its last visit to Earth, the reality could be so different. In nearly two million orbits of this fertile planet around its star there should have been ample time for intelligent life to repopulate, evolve and expand. It already knew that there had been trips to nearby planets, from radio transmissions it had intercepted on its voyage.
And yet the mind that it had sampled was stale, devoid of nutrition.
It withdrew momentarily, to think things through, and then approached again for a more detailed analysis; it sniffed the ozone cautiously, the tentacles drawing it as close to the noxious atmosphere as it dared.
The upper atmosphere was full of heavy particles, and little light was reaching the ground. It was a miracle that any life had managed to survive at all.
WASTED, it thought, forlorn; a wasted crop.
It knew what had come about on Earth. It was one of those things that just happened sometimes. It was one of the undesired side-effects of intelligent life.
That creatures with so much at their disposal could be so preoccupied by the certainty of their own deaths that they simply forgot to live was one way of ruining a harvest: depression tasted awful.
And this was another undesired side-effect; with intelligence mostly came technology, but not always responsibility. In this case, it was a catastrophic combination.
There was nothing that could be done. It didn’t even dwell on the thought for more than a second.
Once more the filaments descended, but this time only as far as the upper stratosphere. They sucked away the pollutant particles and scrubbed the air. Several moments later, they withdrew, and Aniquilus pushed away from Earth.
CLEAN, it thought.
It orbited the planet one last time before heading to the Moon, which it used to slingshot out towards the Sun, which in turn it would use to slingshot to the next solar system, and the next world.
It left a bright blue planet behind, its shroud of deadly grey removed.
George cradled Gail in his arms and looked down at her in despair.
“It’s like someone’s opened a curtain,” she said weakly, looking up at the clear blue sky. Her voice sounded odd, as if she were drunk.
“Don’t try and talk,” he said. “Zahra and Ben have gone for some medicine. You need to rest until they get back.”
She looked up at her husband in adoration. Screw the Xynutians she thought to herself. My only purpose in life was you, George.
“Hold on, Gail. Everything’s going to be alright.”
“I love you,” she managed to say with a faint smile. A dull pain started to spread across the top of her head, and down her temples to her cheeks, causing her jaw to lock in pain. An involuntary spasm caused her teeth to grate violently against each other. The pain gained in intensity, until her vision blurred and a piercing whine filled her ears.
I love you, George, she thought with all the willpower left within her. Thank you for always being there for me, for giving me Jake, for loving me so much. I love you.
George buried his head in Gail’s greying hair as her final breath left her body with a sigh. He squeezed her tight and wept as the muscles in her neck went limp. Her hand let go of his arm and fell loosely to the soft sand below.
“I love you too,” he whispered.
Firstly, I would like to thank my numerous proof-readers: Nigel Budd, for his technical insights, my brother Alex and my parents, for their efforts to remain unbiased, and Najam Mughal, for her insights into the Qur’an, Islam and Arabic. I would lastly like to thank my wife, Sonia. When we first met I told her of my ambition to become a writer, and without her it would still be just that.
On 10th February 2011, protests began in Egypt against the establishment of Hosni Mubarak. Spurred on by peaceful revolution in Tunisia, citizens occupied Tahrir Square and within weeks Mubarak ceded all presidential power, which he had held uncontested for nearly thirty years. There were hopes that this would be the start of a new democracy for Egypt.
Unfortunately civil unrest and violence have persisted during the two years since this largely peaceful revolution.
One of the sad consequences of this disorder has been a sharp rise in illegal excavations in Egypt. In a country fiercely proud of its heritage and seven thousand years of civilisation, in 2013 there have been reported cases of people simply going to sites and digging, removing any artefacts they find and can get away with.
It is in exactly this environment that Seth Mallus’ scroll would be found in 2015. Unfortunately, we may never know what finds emerge from this chaos as they disappear onto the black market and into personal collections. For those that do reach an honest eye, they will have lost all context, something that is hugely important for any archaeologist.
The clay tablet delivered by the two messengers in the prologue, which Ben nearly throws away over three thousand years later in chapter six, was actually part of the famous Amarna Letters, a collection of 382 clay tablets that would have originally been housed in a building now referred to as the ‘Bureau of Correspondence of Pharaoh.’ They were first discovered by a local woman digging for sebakh (deteriorated mud bricks from ancient sites, used as fertiliser by farmers) around 1887 and sold on the antiquities market. The vast majority now reside in the Pergamon Museum in Berlin, a few hundred yards away from Nefertiti’s bust in the Neues Museum.
The Shuwardata of Keilah, just south of Jerusalem, was indeed asking for help from the pharaoh. As far as we know, his plea went unanswered.
The story of Akhetaten and its erasing from history by subsequent kings of Egypt is the epitome of the old ‘winners write history’ adage. Were it not for the archaeology, an entire city that was once capital of ancient Egypt would have gone unnoticed.
We still know relatively little about Tutankhamen’s father, Akhenaten, and even less about the enigmatic Nefertiti (she was his ‘Great Royal Wife’, he also had a lesser Royal Wife, Kiya, and at least two other consorts).
Suggestions that one of the two female mummies found alongside Akhenaten (in KV35 in the Valley of the Kings) might be Nefertiti were quashed following detailed analysis of the remains, now known to be those of Akhenaten’s mother Queen Tiye, and an unnamed daughter of hers and Amenhotep III. So Akhenaten was buried with his mother and sister.
Nefertiti’s burial remains unfound.
There is a library hidden under the sands of Egypt, we simply haven’t found it yet. The Villa of the Papyri in Herculaneum is an indication that such hoards exist. One can only imagine what future civilisations would learn about us, and think about us, if they uncovered the British Library.
The Backscatter X-Ray the engineers used to peer through walls is not science fiction. Such devices do exist already, and have been used in airports around the world, particularly in the United States and the United Kingdom. I have, however, taken some liberties and assumed that in the next twenty years science advances considerably, making them both more portable and powerful. It’s a wonderful thought that one day we might be able to see through solid walls and have some idea of what is inside without having to take an articulated lorry-full of equipment with us. The potential applications for search-and-rescue, let alone archaeology, would be worth it.
There has been much debate on the nature of the first manned mission to Mars, and I won’t add to it too much here. However in speaking of Clarke’s relatively small team of four explorers, it has recently been announced that a crew of two, a married couple no less, may be sent to Mars as early as 2018.
I would love to think that a manned mission to Mars will have occurred already by 2045. Both George W. Bush and Barack Obama made pre-election speeches promising a landing on Mars by the mid-2030s. In both cases, these promises were followed by budget cuts to NASA after they reached office. It seems increasingly likely that private enterprise will make the most daring steps into space in the coming decades, and those steps will be built on business case rather than the spirit of adventure. So while it’s more likely we’ll land on an asteroid before we reach Mars, I am still hopeful that someone will set foot there within my lifetime.
It does seem unfair to give the ESA the burden of not being part of the manned mission, but there is a very real risk that with funding decisions for the successor of Ariane 5 (tentatively named ‘Ariane 6’) set to take place in 2014, and current economics being what they are, there simply may not be a European rocket capable of launching large payloads into orbit after the 2020s, so their ability to contribute significantly may be low. The possibility that the ESA will lag behind the Chinese is increasingly likely, and with manned missions being undertaken by others, the focus could indeed centre on satellites and robotic exploration. Getting Beagles 3 and 4 onto Mars would be a worthy consolation prize, though.
Nuclear War is something that seldom concerns people in the 21st century. And yet there have never been so many countries with weapons capability. There could be as many as 250 warheads held by countries that have not signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty, and thousands held in countries that have.
In 2012, the United States spent up to $31 billion on its nuclear weapons activities. In the same period, the NASA budget had been reduced from $18.5 billion to $17.7 billion. And if you think this is an American problem, the annual cost of running the UK’s Trident programme in 2008 was $3.3 billion. The UK Space Agency was set up in 2010 with a grand total of $350 million of non-recurring funding.
There’s a reason we haven’t gone to Mars yet.
In ecosystems, there are particular species that provide equilibrium. They may not themselves be very abundant, but they play a critical role in maintaining the order of an ecological environment. Their presence helps to determine the variety and population of other species in the community. It could be a certain species of starfish that eats mussels, which have no other natural predators, stopping them from endlessly multiplying and taking over the sea bed. Or a sea otter that protects kelp forests by eating sea urchins, which would otherwise completely remove the kelp from the ecosystem.
Such a species would have been of great interest to Gail’s husband George, a marine biologist.
He would have referred to it as keystone.
Luke Talbot
February 2013