Multiocular.blog

John paced his office. It was quickly becoming apparent to him that his chances for promotion were disappearing. Simon had gotten the field assignment. If there was anything to find in Iraq based on the new genetic analysis he would find it. John had worked too hard to end up stuck here. Even if Simon didn’t find anything, the fact that they picked him did not bode well for his chances to leave and work on something else.

He didn’t dislike Simon. They had met on this project and the man had only ever been a competent and respectful coworker. John just saw the writing on the wall. If Central was really going through with these new terms then it could only mean that he needed to move on before his chosen career path was closed off from him.

While Simon was probably coordinating archaeological teams under armed escort, John had gotten stuck with the job nobody wanted, negotiating with Amerenzu. For five years she’d been asking for more and more. In a way it was almost John’s own fault. It had been his idea to allow the NS to build their own community here. They had been starting to get restless at the first camp and were refusing to cooperate with researchers and staff. Letting them farm, cut down trees, and build houses kept them occupied. It kept them cooperative. It also cut down on costs. Central would only have to provide food and other resources until they became self sufficient.

They hadn’t expected how quickly they would build and expand. The next year Amerenzu sat in her newly constructed temple and asked for livestock. Goats, and sheep to graze in the fields around the town. The next year she wanted more animals, tools to dig out irrigation trenches, blacksmithing equipment. She wanted to dig out a quarry on the other side of the hill. She demanded jewels and precious stones to decorate the temple with.

Central viewed this with increasing consternation. They had expected taking in these aliens to lead to great advances. Central expected they would be rewarded for their hospitality with the secrets to inter solar travel and answers to the mysteries of life in the universe. What they were getting instead were the demands of some very religious Bronze Age farmers.

John paced because he needed to decide how to tell the high priestess that Central was scaling back their support for the project. If nothing valuable was going to be derived from letting them expand the Agency had more important things to devote resources too. So no quarry, no mining, no semi-precious decoration, and no more new construction. This last one was justified by Central saying that more construction would increase the risk that the site’s secrecy would be compromised. John thought they were really just taking out some of their frustrations on the NS.

When John had first heard that he’d be working with a bunch of extraterrestrial refugees he couldn’t help but feel excited. What would they look like? How would they react to their new home here? What sort of new tech would they bring with them? John could tell that everyone in the room was thinking the same thing when they had heard the word extraterrestrial at the beginning of the briefing. But excitement quickly turned to confusion.

“Wait…. so they’re human?”

Compartmentalization meant that they wouldn’t be told everything. All information was strictly need to know. A week prior, the Agency’s advanced satellite sensors had detected an anomaly, barely visible even with that state of the art tech. The extraterrestrial object entered Earth’s atmosphere lingered briefly near the surface and left like a ghost. Ground teams were dispatched to the area to investigate. They discovered a group of about 500 people wandering a remote area. They were dressed very simply in wraps, tunics or dresses and spoke a language unknown to any of the ground team members. The area had been secured and all unauthorized witnesses were administered amnestic.

Their job was to work with these people and extract information as to their origins. Simon came as part of the nueor-linguistics team. Their first task was to learn the “aliens’” language. The discovery that the group spoke a dialect of Sumerian only raised further questions and led to their designation as NS, for Neo-Sumerian.

Central Communication had put together a language module for them with lightning speed after they got the brain scans. John knew that everyone experienced language insertion differently. It depended on your background and what languages you already spoke. He knew that the hallucinations during the process were just that, hallucinations. But had he been more suspicious he might have recognized the bad omen when he saw it.

When the magnetic coils of the helmet started to whir and rewire his brain he could suddenly see something in the dark behind his eyes. He was lying down in a desert somewhere. Standing over him against the sun he saw a thin figure. It bent over flowing like an elastic shadow to take a closer look at John on the ground. It’s head filled his field of view and he saw that it had no face.

Then the process was done. He got up and walked over to the check room. The other’s were practicing speaking and writing. Though they might understand Sumerian now but pronunciation and reading comprehension still had to be trained.

Understanding the Neo-Sumerians speech did not however lead to any explanation of their sudden appearance on Earth. According to their own accounts they had been brought here by their diety, Zal-Gi. Zal-Gi had spoken to them saying that their world was soon to be destroyed but he would take them to a refuge. They did not remember the journey.

“Zal-Gi led us through a dream and we awoke again in this strange land” Amerenzu had explained cryptically. All of the NS echoed her words.

Zal-Gi knew all and saw all. Zal-Gi had brought them peace and laughter. When the people needed guidance Zal-Gi would speak to them so that all understood what needed to be done. They made the rivers and the mountains and brought the animals. All of the NS lived in service to them.

John stopped and took a breath. This pacing was just working him and getting him off track. Better to just get it over with and tell Amerenzu the bad news. Then get out of there before

the resulting fallout.

He left his office and headed down the hall and around the corner to the elevator lobby. The other researchers and site personnel were going about whatever business their was left at Site 11. They were unaware that Central had officially decided downgrade the project priority otherwise they’d be frantically looking for positions at other Sites. Nobody wanted to go through required mind wipe that accompanied getting let go.

He checked himself in the elevator mirror as he travelled up to surface level. Two green eyes and a clean shaven face looked back at him. His brown hair was neatly parted and his thin black tie neatly clipped to his white shirt. John tried his best to look like an engineer you might see in a movie about NASA in the 60’s.

He emerged into a medium sized room built to mimic the local style though it had a wood floor rather than a dirt one. It was furnished with chairs and tables donated to the staff by the NS. Today it was empty. Everyone in town was busy with the harvest festival so that wasn’t surprising. He walked out of the building and into the cool bright morning.

For all their oddity John couldn’t help but be impressed with what the NS had built at Site 11. In just five years and with nothing more than hand tools and manual labor they had built about 30 houses, numerous storage silos to hold grain, several pastures and barns for the goats, and a small temple on top of the nearest hill. The town grew around the temple but most of the structures were clustered on the side of the hill that face the staff base. A well trampled but unpaved thoroughfare wound its way from where John was standing up to the grand little wooden building that was his destination.

On his way he passed men and women working on pottery, mending tools and doing other chores. Others were busy preparing food for the celebratory feast tonight. They poured beer into pitchers and everyone would be gathering in the field near the base of the hill to party and enjoy the bounty of this year’s harvest. Staff were also invited to participate. Some on the staff avoided the festivities because of all the drinking that usually went on while others had been forbidden for inappropriate behavior at this gathering in the past.

As he climbed further John could see more of the surrounding area. The fields stretching out around the town. They mostly grew barley but the researchers had introduced them to corn as well. The NS had diverted a nearby creek to irrigate the land. Further out, he could make out sheep and goats grazing. He was approaching the temple.

The houses nearest to the temple housed those who worked directly with Amerenzu in her duties. The two houses that flanked the main building were for the priests and priestesses. A lot of their duty was administrative as well as religious. The temple organized labor, kept track of livestock and harvest, settled disputes between common-folk. It did all this in addition to it’s religious functions.

John was a familiar face at the temple though not necessarily a welcome one at this time of the year. His arrival would usually signal an argument was about to happen. The NS had hollowed out the crown of the hill piling up the dirt in earthworks around the circumference.

The temple sat in a gap in the earthworks like the crown’s jewel. A solid rectangle of stacked logs with a small tower built into the center of the roof and wide doors.

When they had first been brought to Site 11 the Sumerians marveled at all the trees. They described to the researchers that they had never seen so many. Before Zal-Gi had brought them here the trees lived far away and could only be brought back with great effort. There wonder showed in the temple building. Any available surface that could be carved and decorated had been.

Normally, the men and women of the temple would stop their work when they saw him approach but they paid him no attention now. They were almost frenzied in the pace of their work. They were scrubbing the stone tiles of the temples floor and weaving wreaths of barley to hang on the walls.

John walked in through the front doors. The layout of building was simple. Four stone braziers were placed in a square in the middle of the room between the front doors to the town and the back doors to the courtyard. To his left the priestess’s throne sat on a pedestal and behind that the door to her quarters. Opposite the throne was the door to a private room for the temple staff. John passed swiftly between the braziers and out into the courtyard.

Amerenzu was kneeling with her back turned before the sacred heart of the temple. One of the first projects the Neo-Sumerians had undertaken was the construction of this space. On the top of the hill was small stone cliff. They had dug it out exposing more of the stone face below and creating a courtyard with the cliff as the far wall. Next, the chisels worked day and night chipping, scratching and breaking until it was pebble smooth.

Before this 8 foot wall and carved from the heart of a pine sat Zal-Gi, the holy sovereign. They sat rigid with eyes of obsidian and necklaces of lapis. The high priestess was washing their hands and face purifying them before the harvest feast. She hummed a little tune as she worked. Other priests of the temple were adding a new layer of black paint to the mural on the wall behind the statue. A meticulously perfect circle of black crowned with carved accents suggesting an arch. Standing before the sovereign it seemed they guarded the entrance to a dark portal. The high priestess finished her work and turned around.

“Jon-Kanterly” she said warmly.

Her tone and general serenity took John by surprise. Amerenzu was a smallish woman, about 50 if John had to guess. Her hair black hair was pulled back into long braid as usual and she wore her ceremonial robes as befitting the date. She too wore a lapis necklace. Yet her demeanor was entirely different then the one John was accustomed to. Normally, he compared Amerenzu to a storm on the horizon. Though small in stature she had a presence that fit her role as leader of these people. She would thunder and judge and demand to get what she wanted. Now, it seemed clouds had parted. Her stance was welcoming and her face conveyed the feeling of someone who has just awoken from a deep fulfilling sleep.

“With the blessings of the harvest I come to request a meeting with Who Sits Before Zal-Gi, the holy Amerenzu.” John began with the formal Sumerian greeting. After five years he

thought his pronunciation was pretty good.

“Truly I am honored by these blessings. Let us meet before the throne.” John didn’t know how to handle this sudden politeness. Even her walk seemed different as they returned to the throne room to discuss. She called over one of the men to bring a clay tablet and record the meeting. She sat down looking mildly back at John.

“Shall this meeting concern the nature of your future support for the holy sovereign?” She rested her hands in her lap.

Very direct as always. Seems that hadn’t change. “Your holiness I am afraid that my brethren and I…” There wasn’t exactly a word in Sumerian for “Staff” so John had learned to make due.

“That my brethren and I have learned that our council of superiors can no longer be as generous as they have in the past to the temple. From now on our council wishes to only provide no more than basic needs and replace what cannot be mended. The council also requests that you do not grow beyond the region of the temple hill. Build no more houses than what are built now.” John had lit the fuse. He was ready to get out before the clouds rolled back in bringing back the old priestess.

Amerenzu paused to consider this. For a second John thought he saw her serenity waver, a cloud passing over the sun. But then she looked back at him and with the same warm tone as when she greeted.

“I grant your council their release. On this day I have heard Zal-Gi and they have told me that soon their guidance will return to us. We no longer need the tithe of your council. We shall grow stronger without it by the grace their knowledge.” The scribe pressed down her words with a sharpened reed keeping a record as she spoke.

John was honestly dumbstruck. He had come up here all worked up about the bomb he was about to drop and it turned out to be a dud. All the better for him though. He imagined Central would be more than impressed that he had managed to convince Amerenzu to cut ties on her own. At least that’s how he was going to spin it.

The scribe copied what he wrote onto a second clay tablet to give to John. A group of men and women were carrying a long table into the courtyard and John stepped out of their way. Zal-Gi would of course sit at the head of the table at tonight’s feast. Only the priests and priestesses could share a table with the holy sovereign. Amerenzu herself would pour their beer and feed them the bounty of the harvest.

“I am most gratified by her holinesses decision. If there is no more business I will take my leave.” John took the finished tablet from the scribe.

“You may go. You will enjoy yourself at the festival tonight.” John was already planning his report. He didn’t pick up on what she said.

There were a couple theories that the researchers had developed as to the origins of the NS. The staff agreed that at some point during the actual Sumerian period the ancestors of the NS were taken off world. This was much more likely than the alternative explanation of time travel. This theory implied that some other alien race existed to do this since they clearly couldn’t have done it themselves. But these theoretical aliens hadn’t shown themselves since the NS arrived.

Simon’s theory was that the iconography of the temple might be a clue in itself. Perhaps the mural could be taken literally and there existed some portal or artifact of these visitors on Earth. Maybe the NS had passed through some mysterious portal to another world. He had taken genetic samples of all the residents at Site 11 and cross referenced them with geographic and genealogical data. The ancestors of the NS likely lived in modern day Iraq near the city of Mosul. Even with the war going on in the region Central couldn’t pass up the possibility of finding actual alien tech.

Personally, John thought the premise of an alien gate sounded a bit too much like something out of sci-fi.

Now, he let it all go. He’d spent the weeks since Simon flew off worrying but the world it seemed had decided to send him a gift today. As he walked down the path he put all those worries away. He would go out and have a good time at the festival to commemorate the occasion.

Later, when John and the staff joined in the festivities he did have fun. The food was out and shared among all. Roasted goat meat, raw vegetables served on fresh bread together with all the beer you could drink. John joined in when the Sumerians began to sing and he listened to an old man recite an epic poem reminiscent of the epic of Gilgamesh. After a couple of beers he grew sentimental.

He hoped the NS would be alright. That Central would let them stay here even if they didn’t let them expand. They were a simple, productive people, farmers and artisans. They didn’t deserve to get crammed into an underground complex somewhere so that Central could keep them a secret. They deserved better.

Later, he sat at one of the outer tables and watched the sunset. His buzz was gone and he wondered if he should quit early. Maybe get that report started. One of the lower priests approached him. The grim man told him, stiffly, that Zal-Gi awaited for him on the hill. John’s confusion showed on his face but only for a moment. On this night the temple courtyard was normally closed to those outside the temple. The priests would eat from the offerings brought to the long table in their own ceremony, ritually feeding the statue so that it too could enjoy the bounty of the harvest.

He nodded to the grim man to communicate that he understood. The priest turned and started walking away from the party, towards the darkened hill. The first step John took after him set his heart beating a little faster. The dark of the moonlit night quickly surrounded them. John listened to the party fade away and then to the pair of soft footsteps up the hill coupled with the beat in his chest.

Near the top the man turned and indicated to the gates. John walked ahead of him into the throne room. Lit by no sun it was a house of darkness. The grim priest lit two of the stone braziers. A dull orange light began to fill the room. John could feel the sweat under his clothes and decided that it was the climb up the hill.

He felt nervous as he walked across the room. He was the simple kind of nervous that he’d felt before when facing an unexpected meeting or summons. Jitters produced by the subconscious preparing for the worst. John wouldn’t be in the position he was today if he didn’t know how to handle those kinds of situations. One hand on the door he took a

small breath before pushing it open.

It took him much longer than a second to process what he saw and then he did not understand. The table was absent. In it’s place John saw only a glistening obsidian void. Above the ground untethered, unsupported as the moon above it, hung an orb of near perfect black. It’s top was covered in a dull silver crown. The metal twisted and warped in four long ridges like the talons of a claw.

The throne had been moved to the courtyard and turned around toward John. With the light of the fires behind him he could see Amerenzu. She sat limp as if she were asleep. Her arms and shoulders loose, her hands relaxed. Only her neck was stiff pointing her absent eyes right at him.

She smiled.

“Oh there he is. I was wondering when they’d bring you up here.” She spoke in perfect English. The familiar tongue from an unfamiliar source was like oil pouring suddenly from a faucet instead of water.

“I really didn’t expect much when I brought them back here but I’m surprised,” it continued.

“I’d hadn’t had the chance to see any particular line progress to this stage. Maybe I should have given them more space on the stations?” Amerenzu froze and the orb began to let off a soft whir. The quiet pause shattered John’s confusion. Breath that had caught in his throat suddenly grew quick and his heart raced to catch it.

They had been wrong! In John’s brain all of Site 11’s pieces moved together into cosmic alignment. Like a tear down his spine the realization shook through him all at once.

“I should definitely include this in my report.” Amerenzu restarted suddenly. “It could be enough to convince them to give me more time with the project. Good thing I didn’t scrap the station constructs after I sterilized them. I could just repopulate from some of the wild type here and keep going.” Her attention now returned to rest on John. “I’m sorry talking to myself is just a bad habit I’ve picked up in field work.”

John’s training kicked in. He knew his first move should be to run away. He need reinforcements from Central and a complete Alpha Black lockdown on Site 11. He turned

prepared to run only to face the Neo-Sumerians lining up behind him the fires throwing shadow on their faces. He tried to burst through them but in unison they moved to catch and throw him back. On the ground he began to hear it like tone impossibly loud and impossibly far away. His body rang like a bell and his bones grew cold.

“Oh don’t go anywhere yet! I need a sample for the report. Don’t worry it won’t hurt at all. I remember when I first imprinted on this group they couldn’t get enough of it.” The music began to swell. It gushed up from somewhere deep inside of him. John filled with emptiness. The tide of people lifted him up and he stumbled forward with them.

“They were one of the first too. Always been a favorite of mine that’s why I’ve been keeping them like this. So cute and tiny. I couldn’t bring myself to dispose of them They didn’t deserve that. I’m hoping that they’ll be able to grow out here while I’m away.”

John was almost pressed up against the the orb now. It gave off a cool air like water on the beach at night. The hands of the crowd reached out to stroke it’s terrible smooth surface. Where they touched John began to see ripples, waves on a sunless sea. The music grew unbearably thin. It was an infinite plane splitting him down the middle. Left hemisphere from right hemisphere. John could feel the seam down his forehead.

It ached.

Maybe if he just rested his head it would go away. He leaned forward to touch his forehead to the void.

And the music led him in.