by Jack Geurts
Then, nothing happened for a while. At the rate Io was going, he guessed it was a number of centuries before a line of men in Spanish armour rode their horses backward through the settlement. Conquistadors, Jasper thought. Recently arrived in the New World and hungry for gold. So hungry that they bypassed these ruins without even realising what they were – a treasure more valuable than all the precious metal in the world.
They came down from the mountains, over the river and back through Caral to their ships that were moored off the coast. If Io was to switch to a Time Progression, they could follow these conquistadors up into the Andes. He could watch as they exterminated the native people and a way of life that had been evolving since before these pyramids were built.
But that was something he did not want to see.
After the conquistadors had gotten back into their ships and sailed away, Jasper and Io continued to hurtle backwards through time. Through years and centuries and millennia. Every now and then, a tribe would pass through, camp among the ruins, and then move on – even they, it seemed, failed to notice the importance of the mounds. The knowledge that they were man-made had already been lost, their creators forgotten.
Slowly, Jasper noticed, the mounds began to age in reverse with the rest of the world, repairing themselves instead of crumbling – becoming what they once were. Soon enough, they had reverted to the peak of their glory, before the city was abandoned. They were giant monuments, truly huge – six of them towering over the plain, made up of great stone tiers and capped with what appeared to be religious shrines.
Other buildings returned too – smaller temples and residential houses, probably built from the same quarried stone as the pyramids, or maybe even mudbrick like the dwellings at Eridu.
Life began to return. Irrigation ditches that had been filled in by the wind-blown sand were carved out again. Water began to flow back through them. Immediately, crops began to grow, turning great stretches of desert into fertile green all around the city.
It wasn’t long after that Jasper began to see people milling around and smoke rising into the air from fires. Then there were more people, and more, until once again Caral was a thriving metropolis. Io slowed time back to normal and they looked upon the ancient civilisation at its height. The lost city of pyramids in a garden paradise.
Presently, it was night, and a crowd of people were gathered around the southernmost pyramid, rimming the edges of the amphitheatre – all trying to see something that was blocked from Jasper and Io’s view by the pyramid. As Io manoeuvred around to see what all the fuss was about, it began to appear as if the entire population of the city was present – many thousands of people, all huddled close and peering over the heads and shoulders of those in front.
As they came around, Jasper and Io saw a small group of men standing around a large bonfire in the centre of the plaza. The men were dressed in strange, brightly-coloured robes, and right away Jasper got the impression they were priests of some kind.
Their apparent leader – the high priest – stood directly between the bonfire and the pyramid. He had his hands raised over his head, palms to the flames. His mouth was moving and Jasper supposed he was chanting or speaking some kind of prayer. As they watched, a llama was brought to the high priest. Jasper looked away as they sacrificed it and cast the body onto the pyre.
The priests were swaying now, eyes closed, and Jasper noticed the people watching in silent awe, beholding these mystical men communing with the gods. After a while, they picked up torches, lit them in the fire and began walking toward the pyramid in single file – the high priest out the front with his head bowed and the others in tow.
Io brought the Flight Pod around even further and they saw that the procession was heading towards a large, square doorway in the base of the pyramid – a yawning black hole leading to some unknown space within. On either side of the doorway were staircases leading up to the higher levels. Jasper and Io watched, along with the people of Caral, as the priestly procession disappeared inside, until even the flickering light of their torches was swallowed up by the blackness.
Jasper noticed that Io’s gloved palm was aimed at the pyramid, and she was studying the radar display on her Window. It was showing an outline of the structure, its many hidden rooms and corridors. Right there at the centre of it all was a glowing red dot.
The third Marker.
“There it is,” said Io. “Right underneath the pyramid. Just like at Eridu.”
They grinned broadly at each other, exhilarated by the discovery.
“Do you reckon that’s where the priests have gone?” said Jasper.
“To the Marker?”
“Yeah.”
“I do not know. Would it not be buried like the one in Eridu?”
“Could be. Why would they go inside, though? And the people are still there, like they’re waiting for something.”
“That might be where the priests live.”
Jasper couldn’t argue with that. Often in the ancient world, religious shrines such as this one contained living quarters for its priesthood – even today, some Catholic priests still lived in rectories right by their church – but, looking out at the people, Jasper wondered what they were waiting for. All of them stared expectantly at the black void that had swallowed up their holy men.
“Is there another way in?” said Jasper.
Io zoomed in on the radar display of the pyramid, revealing more rooms and passageways. Directly opposite the tunnel that bored into the base of the structure, where the priests had gone, was another passageway coming in from the other side. A perfect mirror of the front path.
She brought them down on the far side where no one was standing, right before the supposed entrance to the path – only there was no entrance. It had been sealed up with a large stone door. Io frowned and faced her palm to the blockage. Suddenly, the radar image was projected up from her Window, showing a cross-section of the pyramid as she had in the temple at Eridu.
This time, instead of a temple and the layers of rubble beneath it, what they saw were the various levels of the pyramid in a kind of three-dimensional x-ray. The tunnel behind the stone door burrowed away toward the centre of the pyramid to meet the front tunnel. Where the paths would have met, the ground dropped away into a large, cavernous space, and it was at the bottom of this cavern that the red dot was glowing. The front tunnel angled downward to the floor of the cave, while the rear tunnel was flat and straight, emptying onto a kind of viewing area above.
The walls of the cave rose up to ground level, where a dome had been carved into the base of the pyramid to act as an artificial ceiling. There was a walkway between the sides of the dome and the edge of the cliff, where people could stand and look down at the Marker buried there. It curved away from the rear tunnel on either side, hugging the dome walls in a wide circle. At the far end, directly above the mouth of the front tunnel, the walkway diverged into twin flights of stairs that wrapped around the walls of the cave, descending in a long, gentle spiral to the cavern floor below.
All the other rooms and corridors seemed to be confined to the higher levels, accessed from the outside via the staircases on either side of the front entrance.
Dia lifted his drowsy head, but Io petted him gently and said something in her native tongue – something to the effect of ‘stay there, we won’t be long’. The bird didn’t need much convincing – he rested his head back down on the saddle and, within seconds, he was snoring.
“How do we get in?” said Jasper.
“How else?”
Io lowered the ramp and walked out onto the sand with a confused Jasper in tow. It was bitterly cold – Jasper saw his breath fogging up in the air before him. Io’s did too, but the cold didn’t seem to bother her as much. Maybe Precursors were more resilient to extremes in temperature. Maybe she was just tougher than he was.
He rubbed his arms to warm them up as he watched Io aim her glove once again at the stone door. She proceeded to concentrate a
Time Reversion directly on the sealed-off entrance. For a moment, nothing happened. Then people appeared out of nowhere and the great stone slab was dragged out in reverse by workers who appeared to be pushing it. In a process that had probably taken hours, the door was hoisted back onto a series of log rollers that had brought it here and taken back to the place it had been carved.
When the doorway was finally clear, she stopped the Reversion and they both stared into the gaping black hole before them. A perfect mirror of the front entrance.
“You reckon anyone noticed?” Jasper said, looking both ways to check the coast was clear.
“I think we should not wait to find out.”
And before he could respond, Io strode into the tunnel, once again leaving Jasper behind.
“Will you stop doing that?” he said, as he caught up to her. Io only smiled and kept moving, lighting their way with her glove. Jasper did the same.
As they ventured further into the pyramid, they began to get an idea of just how massive this place truly was. The stone walls and ceiling had been hewn by hand over many years, only to be sealed off and never used again. Never seen.
“Are there any traps we should be concerned about?” Io said, in a whisper.
“I don’t think so. They were a peaceful people. Still, I don’t know how they’d react if they caught us breaking into their sacred temple.”
They continued on to the end of the tunnel, seeing the flickering light of the priests’ torches on the domed ceiling up ahead. Io dimmed the glow of her hand and Jasper concentrated, trying to do the same. At first it grew brighter and Io shot him a look. He stopped and fixed his eyes on the glove, mentally instructing it to decrease its brightness, not increase it. Finally, like a disobedient pet, the glove obeyed and went dim, providing just enough light for them to move forth without being visible to the priests down below.
As they emerged into the cavern, they turned their gloves off completely and got down on their stomachs, crawling to the edge of the walkway. Peering down, they saw the sheer walls of the cave dropping straight to the subterranean floor, where the priests were now standing in a circle around the third Marker. The shiny metal walls of the pyramid reflected the light of their torches, illuminating the cavern in a warm glow.
Neither of them said a word, just watched as the high priest stepped forward and laid his hand reverently on the Marker. Instantly, an image was projected up from the peak of the pyramid as had happened in China. But this time, instead of the image being projected onto the domed ceiling of the cavern, it formed a holographic image in mid-air, halfway between the ground and the apex of the dome overhead. The priests all looked up to behold the hologram, and Jasper and Io looked down, careful to stay as far back as they could so they wouldn’t be seen.
Jasper was surprised when he saw that the hologram wasn’t a still image. It was a video. A holographic video of what appeared to be an asteroid hurtling through space.
The image then shifted to a close-up of the asteroid, where what appeared to be some kind of mining operation was under way. An enormous crater had been gouged in the surface, resembling an open-cut mine. Hovering above this crater was a space station of some kind – a floating fortress with many levels and long tentacles dangling beneath it, each of them affixed to a different part of the mine.
It looked like the ship was feeding off the asteroid, sucking out the precious resources buried within. Gold, silver, iron, titanium – the list of riches that might be contained in there went on and on.
The next image showed another space ship, this time with a massive scoop attached. It was flying low, scraping a huge chunk out of the asteroid’s surface. Another image showed this same ship dropping its load onto a huge conveyor belt that carried all the dug-up rock toward a vast processing facility, where it would presumably be broken up even further so the minerals could be extracted.
“Are they mining that asteroid?” Jasper said in disbelief. Io didn’t answer, her eyes wide as she watched the space rock being consumed by machines.
He had heard of asteroid mining before. Since resources on earth were becoming scarce, humans had been looking to outer space to meet their ever-increasing need for raw minerals. It had not yet been attempted, but was being talked about and researched.
Apparently, Io’s people had had the same idea.
The next image showed the asteroid approaching a planet that looked strangely similar to earth. The one after that showed it burning up as it passed into the atmosphere of this planet. The holographic video then cut to the asteroid colliding with the planet’s ocean, sending out a cataclysmic shock wave.
Jasper realised the planet wasn’t similar to Earth.
It was Earth.
The next series of images showed a dark and dying world – a thick blanket of cloud covering the sky and keeping the sun out. Precursors fleeing their towns and cities, boarding great space ships on the backs of dinosaurs. A mass exodus of these vessels leaving earth for their new home among the stars.
Meanwhile, back on Earth, plants were wilting without sunlight. The dinosaurs that had been left behind began to die – the herbivores first, then the carnivores.
Then, the hologram vanished.
The high priest took his hand off the Marker, then led the procession back into the tunnel and up the inclined passageway toward the front entrance. As they disappeared with their torches, darkness returned to the cavern, leaving only a faint, flickering light at the mouth of the tunnel, then no light at all.
Jasper and Io lay there in the dim turquoise glow. It was a full minute before either of them spoke.
“It was them...” Io said at last. “Us. We caused the asteroid to hit earth.”
For the moment, Jasper’s mind was still reeling. He finally gathered his thoughts enough to say, “They destroyed their world...just like we’re destroying ours. That’s it, isn’t it? We’re supposed to learn from their mistakes before it’s too late. Before we do the same thing.”
Io had gone quiet, thinking deeply.
“All this time...” she said, softly. “We thought we were so much better. We watched over you like gods. Pitied you. And all along, we were just as bad...if not worse.”
Not reading her tone, Jasper said, “Yeah, well...I mean, you guys actually destroyed your planet. At least ours is still going.”
Io glared at him. He got the message and promptly shut his mouth. They sat there in silence for a while, both of them taking it in.
“I wonder if he knew,” Io said.
“Who?”
“My father.”
Jasper didn’t say a word, wanting to stay out of it.
“Do you think that he did?”
“I don’t know,” said Jasper, uncomfortable. “Someone definitely tinkered with the second Marker, but it could have been anyone in the last two thousand years. There’s no evidence a Time Reversion was used to do it, so maybe it was someone way back then and the information really has been lost.”
“You sounded fairly certain before.”
Jasper shrugged, a little sheepishly. “I was angry. I said things I shouldn’t have.”
“But what if you are right? If he knew about the map, did he also know about the Precursors destroying this world? Have I just been kept in the dark this whole time?”
Jasper didn’t know what to say. He stared down into the darkness, where the Marker was only faintly visible in their combined glow. He wondered about the first people who had come across it, who had laid their hands on it.. He wondered how many people had laid their hands on it since then – how many people had seen this hologram and had absolutely no idea what it was.
Something clicked in the back of his mind and he got to his feet. “Come on,” he said, and before Io knew what was happening, Jasper was heading out along the left-hand walkway.
“Where are you going?”
“Down there.”
Io sighed and got up, following him around the walkway to the far end, where it dive
rged into the long, spiral staircase cut into the rock of the cave. They descended the stairs all the way to the bottom and brightened their gloves as they approached the Marker. It loomed out the darkness in the bluish-green glow.
“What are we doing here?” Io asked him.
“I was thinking...” Jasper said, taking a step forward. “I don’t think your people are as bad as you make them out to be. Sure, they made the same mistake we were making, but they came back and left this map, didn’t they? They wanted to help us – you said so yourself.”
“What is your point?”
“My point is...how many people do you think have seen this hologram?”
Io looked at the pyramid. “I do not know. A lot, probably.”
“Exactly. Back before they built this city, when the first settlers came across this thing, they would have been touching it all the time. Watching the hologram without any clue as to what it meant.”
“So?”
“So...where does it lead?”
Io thought about it. Didn’t know.
“Nowhere,” Jasper said. “It doesn’t lead anywhere.”
“It must lead somewhere.”
“It doesn’t. The first clue showed us China, the second clue showed us this place. This...” He touched the Marker with his bare hand and the holographic video began playing through again, showing the Precursor mining operation that sent the asteroid careening into earth sixty-five million years ago. “This is just showing us something that happened. There’s no clue here, no hidden meaning.”
“How do you know?”
“Because it’s not giving us anything to go on. Where do we go next, an asteroid? Is that it?”
“Then what do you suggest?”
Jasper waited for the image to run its course and disappear again. He turned to Io. “Your people came back to leave this map. They didn’t want to abandon us to the same fate. They wanted to save us from ourselves. And I don’t think they wanted us to do it on our own, either.”