Antediluvian

by Wil McCarthy

  Ba felt a final burst of energy then, and kicked hard and steadily until he’d reached the surf zone. He even found it within himself to time the waves, and catch the right one, and ride it in toward the beach.

  As the wave curled and broke, the front of the raft finally came apart altogether, but it hardly mattered, because Ba’s feet were on the sand. He was chest-deep in the water, in the still moment between crashing waves, and with a grabbing, sawing motion he managed to pluck Orr’s hand axe off the timbers and stagger forward, until the water was at his waist, and then his knees. And then the sea was pulling back, draining away beneath him, and he was ashore, leaving the world’s first ocean-going vessel behind him as the world’s first bit of floating garbage.

  Ahead, the human figure was back again, feeding another log to the fire, and Ba could see it was a woman. In fact, Ba could see that it was Mar herself! And then Mar caught sight of Ba and rushed toward him with open arms, squawking in amazed delight, and the two of them were embracing on the beach, with the waves lapping and breaking and shushing behind them.

  Mar kissed him and squeezed him and joyously turned around to offer her rump, and although Ba could barely stand, much less mate, he found he could stay upright by leaning on her, in the warmth of the beacon fire she had lit to guide him home.

  Foothills Hospital

  Boulder, Colorado

  Present Day

  The seizure lasted over an hour, which the doctor said was not a good sign, given the high level of medication Harv was on. They switched his IV from something called Balanced Salt Solution to something called Lactated Ringer’s, and injected a drug called carbamazepine into the feed. When he finally started to show signs of consciousness again, they added nine grams of something called fosphenytoin.

  “That’s all we can give him,” the doctor warned.

  “I’m fine,” Harv said, rather suddenly.

  He didn’t look fine. He was curled on his side, his eyes closed.

  “Harv?” Tara asked.

  “Yeah. I’m here.”

  “Can you open your eyes?”

  “No. Not yet. The light hurts.”

  “The lights are off,” she told him.

  “Still.”

  She took his hand again, and sat quietly with him until he finally blinked and looked at her.

  “Hey,” he said gently. “How are you?”

  She coughed out a laugh. “You’re asking me?”

  He smiled at that, and closed his eyes again.

  “What happened?” she asked.

  “I invented boats,” he told her. “A long time ago. I’m pretty sure I discovered Europe.”

  She snorted unhappily. “These results would be better if you weren’t loaded to the eyeballs with psychoactives.”

  “Sorry.”

  “I’m so worried about you.”

  “I know. Thank you. I’m glad you’re here.”

  Doctor Steph said, “I’m sending him up to Intensive Care. He’s going to have to stay there for a few days, and if he has another seizure, it could be life-threatening.”

  “I think it’s over,” Harv said.

  The doctor paused, pulled her hair behind her shoulders, and leaned forward to peer into Harv’s eyes with a penlight, propping the lids open with her fingers.

  “Your pupils do look better,” she said. “EKG looks better. Why do you say it’s over? Tell me how you’re feeling.”

  “Different,” he answered. “Quieter. There was a kind of…buzzing sensation that I didn’t notice, but it’s gone now. The headache is also getting better. I think I reached the end of the tape. I’m not sure the quantome goes back any farther.”

  At the doctor’s look of incomprehension, he added, “There are no more injected memories to process.”

  Steph looked at Tara. “Did that make sense to you?”

  “Yeah.”

  “He sounds lucid?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, that’s a good sign, given his present drug load. He’s not out of the woods yet, but I’m going to back off the fosphenytoin and see what happens.” Then she looked at Harv and added, “You’re still going upstairs. Even if the seizures are over, you’re going to need massive supportive therapy. Your neurons have been highly stressed, and they’re going to start dying if we don’t intervene.”

  “Hmm,” he said, sounding rather embarrassed at that.

  “Is he going to be okay?” Tara asked.

  “It’s definitely too soon to tell,” Steph replied firmly. “But he looks better than when he came in.”

  “I feel like a million bucks,” Harv said weakly. “And a Nobel Prize.”

  * * *

  They ended up keeping him for three days, and discharging him with firm instructions not to drive, mow lawns, or operate any other sort of machinery. The police interviewed everyone and, with Patel’s help, made a cursory inspection of the lab. After ascertaining that no obvious or significant crimes had been committed, they referred the matter to the Occupational Health and Safety Administration. The OSHA rep, of course, issued numerous citations (“Unsecured Cables, Multiple Trip Hazard,” “Emergency Stop Activated,” “Emergency Stop Not Tied To Main Power,” “Magnetic Field Related Injury” and “Workplace Injury Requiring Hospitalization”), along with a ten-thousand-dollar fine, and orders to correct the defects within thirty days, and cease all use of the equipment until that time. He also tried “TMS employed with no licensed TMS operator on site,” but that turned out to be only in the draft regulations, not the current ones, and had to be dropped.

  “I’ll pay it out of my own pocket,” Harv said. “It’s not the university’s fault.”

  “Mmm,” the OSHA rep said. Then, half-jokingly, “I don’t take cash. By the way, I didn’t turn anything off in your lab, for fear of damaging the equipment. You’ll need to send someone in there to shut it all down.”

  “Do you feel up to it?” Tara asked.

  “Sure,” Harv said. “As long as you’re driving.”

  So she drove and parked, and they walked to the Engineering Center and down the stairs to the lab. In the darkened sub-basement corridor, he touched her on the small of the back, and she drew close to him, and they kissed, really kissed, for the first time in days.

  “Wow,” he said. “I needed that.”

  “We both did.”

  He unlocked the door and flipped on the lights, then picked his way over loose cables to the operations console, where he leaned over and keyed in the commands for the shutdown sequence.

  “There,” he said. “What a week, eh?”

  “Yeah,” she agreed, then added, “There’s something I’m still wrestling with, though. Statistically, Manu should have carried a Y chromosome from haplogroup F, which dominated India at that time. It’s ancestral to ninety percent of Eurasians and indigenous Americans, and even some Australian Aborigines. But it couldn’t have come from a ‘Cro-Magnon’ person in Europe. That would be haplogroup I or R1. And yours is group D-M174, which ought to make you Tibetan. Or Ainu, from Siberia and northern Japan. Or Andamanese, I guess. The Andaman islanders have their own global flood myth, by the way, and so do the Ainu. But they’re not related to the European early modern humans. Not closely.”

  He worked his way back over to her, pointing at the NMR target receptacle and nodding. “Yeah, okay, but who says that chromosome stayed put? It appears to come from a long line of adventurers. I have to say, I’m quite proud to be part of their legacy.”

  “It is impressive,” she allowed. “And there is some D-M174 in India and Eastern Europe. So, maybe. If your genealogy goes back any farther than Scotland, it might tell us something.”

  And Tara knew, in that moment, that she and Harv were destined to break up. Not today; she didn’t want to ruin what could well be the most important week of both their lives. Not next week, either. Hell, she wasn’t through fucking him, or curling up to sleep with his her hand on his hip. It might not even happen this decade.


  But she wanted children someday, and she realized she didn’t want that chromosome passed on to them. And that meant all this heat and drama had been a glorified summer fling all along, and couldn’t last. And perhaps that was okay. Perhaps a good Hindu girl from Chennai could forgive herself that much.

  “I love you, you know,” he said to her in a gentle voice. He touched her hips with both hands.

  “I know,” she answered. “I love you, too.”

  “We traveled in time together.”

  “I think so, yes. I think we did.”

  “There could actually be a Nobel Prize in our future.”

  “Indeed.”

  With the power-down sequence activated, the green status lights winked out one by one. Harv turned off the overheads and closed the door, saying, “You know, this technology has a lot to teach, and a long way to go. For all we know, someone from the future could be watching us right now.”

  “Oh. I hope so!” she said, and kissed him hard. “Let’s make it worth their while.”

  Postscriptum

  In the decades since Harv Leonel’s historic journey, few researchers have attempted to replicate the result, and none have unambiguously succeeded. However, no genetic, linguistic, cultural, archaeological, or quantum-mechanical evidence has emerged to refute any of his claims, and considerable supporting evidence has been uncovered in nearly every year since then. His Y chromosome (of the D-M174 haplogroup) is certainly the most studied in all of human genetics, and its wanderings are consistent with groups that can still be found in these same locations today.

  Thus, scientific opinion has gradually shifted from general incredulity toward a broad consensus, that the past occurred more or less exactly as Leonel claims it did. His reports of backward influence remain controversial and, one fears, unfalsifiable, although it must be admitted that the laws of physics permit (if grudgingly) such temporal interconnects.

  Time will tell if the human quantome has been irreversibly scrambled by Leonel’s experiments, or whether the tape must restart from scratch with every reading. Or indeed, as many have speculated, whether the Y chromosome is only one of many quantum repositories in our collective lineage. And if it happens that these words are being read by humans or hominins from our own distant future, let me say, we thank you sincerely for your attention, which permits us to live again, if only briefly, through eyes of which we can only dream. Adieu.

  Notes on Part One: The Deluge

  The Neolithic comet impact was a real occurrence, as was the permanent (though gradual) flooding of the coastline as the polar caps melted at the end of the Ice Age. There’s no evidence these two events overlapped, but if the myths of Manu and Noah were based on real events, then there would have to be not only massive and rapid flooding, but also some significant warning that disaster was about to strike. If water levels were already rising, then the comet impact would have been particularly devastating, so the scenario outlined in the story seems to fit with both the legends and the known facts.

  The Comet Impact: For purposes of this story, I’ve assumed the impact site is 7000 kilometers northwest of The City—close enough for the effects to be catastrophic but not immediate—and occurs at 6 p.m. Since the speed of compression waves in rock is around 5000 m/s, the first ground shock would then take twenty-three minutes to arrive. The speed of shear waves in rock is around 3000 m/s, so the second, bigger ground shock should arrive sixteen minutes after the first one. The only route for shockwaves to travel through water would be around Africa, a distance of roughly 27,000 km. Since the speed of sound in water is 1550 m/s, a series of reflected and refracted compression waves should begin arriving after a total of 4.8 hours, or shortly before midnight.

  Of course, the real danger is from tsunamis, which are transverse waves, and the soonest one could arrive directly from the impact site would be about thirty-four hours, with numerous reflected and refracted secondary waves arriving in the hours after that. However, the passage of compression waves through both the ground and water means that numerous undersea landslides are likely to occur, triggering tsunamis of their own that could arrive almost anytime. In the story, I have the first tsunami reaching The City twelve hours after impact. Tsunami wave heights of up to 30 meters have been reported in modern times, and unlike normal ocean waves, tsunamis have extraordinarily large wavelengths of up to 100 km. This means they don’t simply break on the shore and then roll back, but travel inland for significant distances. The weight of all that water has to slide back into the ocean eventually, but with additional waves arriving before the first ones begin to retreat, the resulting flooding could well reach tens of meters in depth and hundreds of kilometers in reach. Literally the end of the world, for anyone living within a few days’ travel of the coast.

  Words and Names: The language of Kingdom (aka, “The Language”) is a loose amalgam of Sanskrit, proto-Indo-European, and other ancient languages, with an attempt on my part to match the sounds to words that occurred in later history. For example, in the Old Testament, Noah’s boat is referred to as an ark, which is derived from the Latin for “chest” or “receptacle” (literally “curve”). In the Torah, it’s referred to as a tevat. One of the Sanskrit words for raft is tarka, and one of the words for boat is tari. Putting it all together, the word tavitarka (raft of boats) is a plausible enough precursor for fictional purposes.

  Similarly, the three sons of Noah are named Shem, Ham, and Japheth, while the three sons of Manu are named Sharma, Charma, and Yapeti. Here I’ve rendered them as Sharama, Hamurma, and Jyaphethti. Manu’s wife is Saturupa, while Noah’s is either Naamah or Emzara; the name Emzananti doesn’t fit all of these, but it sounds nice.

  Noah figures appear in myths throughout the world, with diverse names like Ziusudra, Utnapishtim, and Fuhi. Manu’s story in the Hindu Rig Veda appears to be the oldest of these myths, but around the world there are a suspicious number of Noah-like heroes with Noah-like names, including the Hawaiian Nu-u, the Arabic Nuh, and the (female) Chinese Nüwa, that likely have common origins. Thus, I opted to combine these names with Manu’s, yielding Manuah. Yes, I know it sounds like “manure,” but I think that may be pretty close to a real person’s real name, and I didn’t want to bastardize it any further. There are dozens of such reconstructions in the book, including place names, character names, and basic vocabulary words, but truthfully my notes are a mess, and some of them were foolishly thrown out along the way. But I think you get the idea.

  By naming the city The City, I’m echoing the Sumerian city of Ur (once thought to be the world’s first city), from which we derive the modern word “urban.” Similarly, the name Kingdom is intended to reflect that this is the world’s first kingdom, at least in the sense we understand it.

  The ancient Akkadian Epic of Atra-Hasis is old enough, and a close enough match to the stories of Noah and Manu, that I slipped its protagonist in as Manuah’s brother, and borrowed several of its details. I’m sure I’ve gotten a lot wrong here, but if all these myths mutated from a single story that predates the Rig Veda, then its broad outlines could well be similar to what I’ve scribbled here.

  Kingdom and The City: Yes, there really are two drowned cities off the coast of the Indian subcontinent, that are tens of square kilometers in size, feature megalithic stone architecture, and prove conclusively that civilization is substantially older than our histories have taught us. Anyone interested in this should look for Graham Hancock’s excellent Flooded Kingdoms of the Ice Ace and Magicians of the Gods.

  Present age estimates put the destruction of these cities about 9,500 years in the past (9.5 kya), which is not a match for the suspected time of the Neolithic comet impact at 13 kya, or the end of the Ice Age at 12–15 kya. I suppose I’m guilty of artistic license, but were there really two disasters, either of which could trigger worldwide flooding, and also a pair of flooded cities that vanished in yet a third, unrelated cataclysm? That all seems a bit suspicious, given that our myths describe only a single flo
od of global proportions.

  Also, the drowned cities are located off the northwestern coast of India, over 400 kilometers east of the suspected course of the Sarasvati River in Pakistan. However, the cities are located in the Gulf of Cambay, 40 kilometers from the present-day coastline, and that coastline has changed a great deal over the past 13,000 years, with the water being at least 120 meters deeper. The Gulf of Cambay is separated from the Indus River by the flat ground of the Indo-Gangetic Plain, parts of which are now submerged, and large rivers like the Mississippi are known to wander in their courses over time. Given all of this, I do believe it’s plausible that before the Deluge, the deltas of the Indus and Sarasvati rivers were farther south and east, and significantly wider, than we see them today.

  In any case, most large cities are constructed near major rivers, not in the middle of nowhere, and as far as we know there aren’t any drowned cities where these two rivers end today. Again, disagreeing with current scientific theories could be considered artistic license, but if the Rig Veda holds any truth, then I do think my timeline and geography may be consistent with it.

  Ancient Astronomy: Amazingly enough, the Vedas really do reference the speed of light, placing it at 2,202 yojanas in half a nimisha. How this was derived is unknown, but modern translations of these units imply an error of only two percent. At the time of this writing, an analysis can be found at http://nirmukta.net/Thread-Speed-of-light-in-Vedas-can-you-prove-it-wrong. Weblinks don’t tend to be very stable over time, but Archive.org may retain a copy of it, and in any case the basic terms should remain searchable.

  The first modern estimate of the speed of light was made by Danish astronomer Ole Römer in 1676, based on telescopic observation of the moons of Jupiter, whose eclipses varied in time based on the distance between Jupiter and the Earth. In other words, this calculation relies not only on telescopes, but on accurate measurement of celestial distances, and the orbits of Jupiter and its moons! Is there a simpler way to measure the speed of light, using only tools that would have been available in the ancient world? If so, we have yet to rediscover it. The simplest explanation is that the ancient proto-Hindus understood telescopes, measurement of distances by triangulation, and also Keplerian dynamics. Incredible? Yes. But apparently true.