This week’s More Odds Than Ends writing prompt challenge was from the Duke of Chaos. He suggested, “You stumble across proof that humans did not evolve on Earth. What now?”
Apparently, I had lots of thoughts, and it got longer than anticipated. Enjoy.
Janna pushed back the soaked bandana covering her hair, wiping yet another trickle of runaway sweat off the side of her face with her free hand. The dusty tunnel made her nose twitch, and her eyes ached from straining in the dim light.
“Sometimes I wonder why we’re out here when we spend all day hauling dirt and rocks outside,” she said. She sat back on her heels, wondering if she could persuade him to quit for the night.
“For the amazing discoveries we haven’t made yet,” a khaki-clad man said. He was kneeling, nose squashed sideways against the tunnel’s floor, heedless of the dirt covering ground. A flashlight held over his head with one hand dangled from strong but battered fingers. The other hand brushed dust away from a small glyph embedded in the floor. “Obviously.”
“Come on, Frank,” Janna wheedled. “Everyone else has already gone back to the house. We’ll miss dinner if we don’t head out soon. Susan promised Italian. You know how much you love Susan’s meatballs.”
Frank adjusted the flashlight. Dark, short curls gleamed briefly in the glow. “Give me some more light, will you?”
She sighed and pulled out her phone. The flashlight flickered on, a tiny spotlight in the stone gloom. “Sometimes I wish I’d outgrown playing in the dirt.”
“You’re not really cut out for fieldwork. No shame in it.” He grunted. “But that translation you did was the key.”
Janna ran a hand up her face and shoved her hair back again. She looked down and wiped her hand on her shorts with a grimace. “That weird tablet you kept obsessing over that didn’t make any sense?”
He grunted again, this time with satisfaction. Unfolding himself from the tunnel floor, he stood up and brushed himself off. “It was a map.”
A slow burn started up her chest and spat out of her mouth. “You’re unbelievable. Keeping me from dinner because you want to treasure hunt? You’re chasing figments.” Her lips twisted into a scowl.
“Janna,” he began, one hand reached out in entreaty.
She turned and started walking toward the tunnel entrance, phone clenched in hand. “It’s hot out there. I’m tired and hungry. I’m leaving. Maybe a six-mile walk will clear your head.”
“Janna!” His voice had that excited quality she’d learned to heed when she’d been his lowly grad student.
She stopped, but mulishly refused to turn around. “What?”
“Pull that lever.”
It only took a few seconds for curiosity to win out. Her flashlight caught the feverish look in his eyes as he touched a stone protrusion on the far side of the tunnel.
“And then we leave?”
Frank darted over to the depression carved in the stone wall. Austin had thought it was the start of a new passageway when they’d seen it, but Janna had wondered why it was completely smooth, with no tool marks of a tunnel in progress at all. Preparation for art, she supposed. They’d seen plenty of weird markings as they mapped the tunnel.
Reaching up, she tugged on the jutting stone. “Tunnel’s been abandoned for well over a thousand years with no signs of grave robbers, and you think it’ll just –“
The stone moved with a rumble. She yelped and snatched her hand back. Her phone clattered to the floor. “What the hell?”
Behind Frank, the wall depression dissolved in a cloud of sifting powder. It billowed outward, swirling in eddies around his head. The dust settling in his short curls made him look like a Greek statue.
Dust undulated in the beam of his flashlight. She had the fleeting impression of a moth swarm. Janna shuddered and bent to pick up her phone, grateful for the additional light.
Straightening, she hesitated. Frank’s dusting of stone gave him an eerie luminescence in her jittery cell phone light.
Everything about this made her uneasy. Frank had spent hours studying the stone tablet, insisting on multiple translations with nuanced meaning. He’d gotten downright testy over one hieroglyph’s multiple possible connotations. It bordered on obsession, weirder than she’d ever seen from him in eight long years, and archaeologists were a weird bunch to start.
For that matter, this dig in the middle of nowhere had been odd, too, surrounded by desert and rock and little else. One of her fellow students had even cackled with delight when he’d heard where she was headed, swooping down on a choice job she’d rejected. Frank had refused to tell the team why he thought this was so vital. Only his most loyal students had trusted him enough to join the small team.
“We should call the others back,” she said, scuffing a worn boot in the settling dust. “They’ll be furious about a new discovery without them. We can get it sealed up and protected faster with them here.”
Frank laughed and brushed his hands over his face, streaking off most of the powdered stone and leaving him with odd tiger stripes. “We can’t stop now.”
He grinned, baring teeth, and stepped through the entryway. The light bobbed, dimming as he headed into the unknown.
“Wait!” She gulped and squinted into the new cavern, hesitant to cross into that boundary. “We all followed you here for this. All of us. We need the team.”
“You’ve got to see this,” Frank called. “And I need your camera. My phone died hours ago. Get in here.”
Janna desperately wished her phone had broken on the cavern floor. Throwing her guilt aside, she crossed the line. Pearlescent dust shone on the floor where the wall had been, marred by Frank’s boot prints. Stale, musty air greeted her twitching nose, and she shivered at the temperature drop.
Frank laughed, the noise echoing as it bounced through the room. It looked huge and round, mostly empty, with walls covered in carvings.
Janna hurried her steps and moved toward his outline. “What’s so important this couldn’t wait?”
In answer, he shone the flashlight over the walls, illuminating pictographs and symbols different from any she’d seen before.
She inhaled sharply. “Frank, what is this? I don’t understand.”
His voice was quiet and wondrous. “It’s proof, Janna. It’s what I’ve been looking for.”
Shining his light around the room, he settled on what she’d thought was the last panel. “I think it goes right to left. Film this, would you? Hit that button to take real pictures as you go, too.”
She obeyed, hoping her hands would stop shaking enough to get a clear image in the dim light.
“Initial impressions, Frank Abernich, on the discovery of a hidden cavern.” He’d turned on what she called his teacher voice.
“In the first panel, we see creatures with bulbous heads and big eyes boarding what looks like a spaceship. The line indicates an evacuation, maybe a colony. On the left of the panel, it shows an explosion. The destruction of their planet is my guess.”
Janna followed his flashlight to the next panel.
“Here, the group arrives on a desolate planet. The ship stays in orbit. See, it’s circling there.”
“That’s our planet,” Janna whispered. The continents were in different places and closer together, but recognizably Earth.
Frank ignored her. He was beginning to lose his professional tone, replacing it with sheer childlike glee. “The panel next panel splits. See, the top shows increasing life as time goes on – first plants, then trees, then animals.”
“My God. That’s terraforming.” She stepped back, shocked, and then professional curiosity overwhelmed her again. “What is that on the bottom?”
“Forced evolution.” Frank’s voice was tight and pleased. He laughed again, the room sending shattered echoes back at odd acoustic angles.
She winced, jerking the camera for a moment. “Adapting to suit a new planet?”
“Yes. You see? The eyes grow smaller. The old planet must have been darker. Limbs shorten and ears emerge. Gravity differences, probably, and maybe to better handle predators with an additional sense. They edited until it looked quite recognizable. Fascinating, isn’t it? The technology they must have had!”
He stepped forward and studied the stone carvings, reaching a hand out to follow the engraved paths with fingers carefully kept an inch away. The carved stone was remarkably crisp after millennia sealed off from human interference.
Janna swallowed and turned the camera to the next panel. “Some sort of conflict here.”
She felt his nod, a whisper of air in the darkness, her eyes focused on the illuminated panel in front of her.
“Only a small group made it earthside. The rest leave.” He pointed to the colony ship, heading away from the planet.
Janna covered her mouth with a hand, this time heedless of the dirt. “Taking most of their technology with them. They left them to die.”
He ignored her horror. “I’ll need you to work on translating the symbols surrounding all of these later, of course. See if we can figure out the cause of the conflict.”
The lines were jerky and haphazard to her eyes. “It looks like cuneiform rattled apart by an earthquake.”
“Just make sure you get clear pictures.” Frank’s impatience urged her on, through the panels twice more before he was satisfied.
She frowned and glanced over at him. “How’d they create this place, then?”
He shrugged, a dusty outline in the darkness. “They devolved. Handling all the challenges of a new planet, without anything they’re used to. I’d guess they made this place, then sealed everything they wouldn’t be able to replace in here.”
Janna lowered her phone, noting the battery indicator edging into red. “Frank, what does this mean?”
He was suddenly very close, dust-streaked face garish and unnerving. His hand gripped her arm, powerful fingers digging into soft and dirt-covered flesh.
“It means we are the aliens, Janna.” He flipped the flashlight in his free hand, gleeful like a child with a new toy. His teeth flickered, sharp and white. “Our ancestors looked like that before they adapted. They populated this world.”
His hold on her arm tightened further, and she squirmed. “You’re hurting me. And I don’t believe you. That’s a stretch too far, Frank.”
“All these images, and you won’t accept the evidence. That’s willful disbelief,” he snarled. The whites of his eyes shone around irises subsumed by pupils. “I thought you were a scientist.”
He dragged her toward the middle of the room, heedless of her attempts to pull away. Her boots skidded, dust over a slick floor, smoother by far than the tunnels they’d excavated so far.
“Do you believe this, Janna?” His words hissed in her ear.
The light illuminated something round and silvery, rising bubble-shaped above a sloped metal grade. A faint layer of dust rested on the bubble, but she thought it might be faintly transparent underneath.
“Like a windshield,” she said. A whimper escaped her mouth, and she pressed her lips shut. She shrank away, but he used his body to block her from escaping.
“Not like, Janna,” Frank said in her ear, and his mad cackle was back, ringing around the room. “That’s exactly what it is. The floor to this room is the spacecraft our ancestors used to get here. We’re standing on it. We’ve been standing on it this whole time. The first humans in millennia to know where we came from.”
“We need to leave this place,” Janna said. Her conviction grew with every word. “We weren’t meant to know. They sealed it off for a reason.”
He snorted. “They left us a damn map, Janna. Now film the spaceship like a good girl.” He let go of her bicep, but her gratitude was short-lived as he seized her wrist in a crushing grip.
He moved to stand behind her, heat radiating as he pushed her forward. He balanced the flashlight on her left shoulder, her right wrist captured in his hand. The app continued to film, phone now turned toward the saucer’s cockpit.
“Get closer,” Frank said, and nudged her shoulder from behind. “I’ll pick you up if I must. I want to wipe that dust off and see what’s inside.”
Janna planted her feet, but he shoved her forward. Falling to her knees, she slid the rest of the way, slamming to a stop as she hit the bubble with both patellas. She froze, Frank’s delighted laughter making her ears ring again as the cavern reflected it back.
He still held her wrist, her arm uncomfortably wrenched back above her head, directing the phone’s angle. His fingers dug in cruelly. “Wipe it off.”
Lifting a trembling hand, she dragged it through the powder as fast as she could, hoping a quick swipe would be enough to appease him. Dust flew up, and she started coughing.
Frank let her go and wrapped his hands around his eyes, peering into the bubble for a closer view.
Janna staggered to her feet and took a few steps back. She eyed him warily.
“You’ll have to come get a close-up of this,” he said, his head still down. “I think I can see my great-grandpa.”
Janna turned and ran, stumbling as she hit the uneven floor of the tunnel they’d thought was the main discovery earlier. The air was hot and dry, burning her lungs as she ran. She’d never been so grateful for the earthy scent of dirt, real dirt, dirt that wasn’t strange powder that dissolved and turned respected scientists mad.
She reached the end of the tunnel, breath ragged and harsh. She couldn’t hear anything else, and didn’t dare turn around to see how close Frank was behind her. She slowed as the ancient, rusted Jeep came into view, digging a frantic hand in her pocket for the keys.
She leapt in, tossing her phone in a cupholder. Fingers gone numb with tension dropped the keys twice before she managed to get them in the ignition. Succeeding, she threw it in gear and punched the gas. The jeep rumbled and growled, shaking as she pulled off the dirt path onto a real road.
“I’m so cold,” she mumbled. Her eyes darted to the rearview mirror every few seconds. There was no sign of Frank, which only increased her paranoia.
Hours later, wrapped in a fuzzy blanket and stuffed with meatballs so garlicky she was sure to ward off vampires, Janna was beginning to shake the cavern’s chill. “I’m telling you, I’m not exaggerating. He’s lost it.”
“Play the video again,” Callie said. Susan nodded behind her. Austin clicked play while the rest of the crowd watched for what must have been the fortieth time, crowded around a forty-inch television in a packed living room.
The video cut out on a squeal of tires, when her phone’s battery had finally died halfway through the drive home.
“You can’t release this,” Susan said. She braided and unbraided her long black hair, a longstanding habit Janna knew meant she was nervous. “The world can’t handle it.”
Austin frowned and ran a hand through his shaggy brown hair. “I don’t know. It’s a huge discovery.”
Janna felt dull and exhausted. “I don’t care. I’m headed home. And I’m never leaving the lab again. I don’t have to do fieldwork to translate.”
“How can you justify ignoring it?” Callie demanded. A cold beer dripped condensation onto her hands as she rolled the bottle between them. “People need to know.”
“I can justify it because I’ve got bruises all over my arm and scraped knees,” Janna snapped. “From a man I’d known and respected for eight years, with no sign of obsession or madness before now.”
She buried her head in her hands and spoke into them. “Do we have any whiskey?”
The debate raged around her as she drank. Eventually, the house quieted down as her colleagues drifted off to sleep. Janna stayed in her armchair, dozing and waiting for Frank. She ran through a dozen different scenarios of what she’d do when he arrived.
She never decided, but it didn’t matter. Frank stayed at the site all night.
The video was posted online the next day. She never discovered who had borrowed her phone to upload it, but she didn’t care. Her phone still worked to book a flight home.
Alien hunters flocked to the site afterward, but the archaeological team left the night after she had. Frank hadn’t come back because the cavern’s ceiling had collapsed on him, destroying the work the team had already accomplished. The rumble hadn’t been the Jeep, but collapsing rock.
She kept waiting to hear news that they’d found his body, waiting to feel guilt for leaving him to die in an unstable underground cavern. Supposedly the local authorities kept rousting the groups trying to sift through the rubble.
Janna didn’t care. She’d respected Frank, but she was wondering if a different career might be in order now. The video had become a subject of mockery, and her name was part of the film. Reactions alternated between sympathy and laughter.
“Most people think it’s fake,” she said to Susan over cocktails one night back in Chicago, yelling over the pounding music. She twisted her cherry stem into a knot and threw it into the melting ice of what used to be a Moscow mule.
“Do you blame them?” Susan asked. She tipped back her whiskey sour and slammed the glass down on the hightop, then grinned. “I see it all the time at the grocery store. You know, checkout tabloids.”
Janna grimaced, a twisted attempt at a smile that showed teeth. “I can’t stop thinking about how obsessed Frank got with it.”
“Lighten up,” Susan suggested, flipping her carefully styled curls over her shoulder. “Stop watching the video and forget about it. You’re getting obsessed. Just like he was.”
“I just wish he hadn’t been so weird at the end.”
“Look, if he’d wanted to manhandle you, he could have taken you to bed.” Susan met Janna’s eyes dead on. “Oh, come on. Your crush on him was kind of obvious. You know you’d have jumped him. But no, instead he brought aliens into it. Who does that?”
Janna’s thoughts were scrambled after four drinks. “But we’re the aliens,” she protested. “That was the point.”
“Yeah, whatever,” the other woman said. She eyed a passing broad-shouldered man with brown hair in a tailored blue suit. “You think that guy’s too young for me?”
Janna sighed into her drink and gave up. “If you’re going manhunting, I’m going to get some water and a cab.”
Later that evening, she found herself lying in bed, sheets twisted around her legs, unable to sleep. She reached over and grabbed her phone.
Pulling up the video, she watched it yet again before making a disgusted noise.
But an hour later, still restless and awake, she looked at the photos she’d made while in the cavern she’d once hoped to forget, but never seemed to be able to leave.
Flipping through the images, she thought the jagged lines were beginning to click in her head. “I need to finish translating these,” Janna whispered.
She smiled, and set her phone down. She knew what she needed to do now.
Janna leapt out of bed, heading for the second tiny apartment room she called an office. She’d downloaded the photos weeks ago. If she couldn’t sleep, she’d work on the translation. It was only natural that she finish Frank’s work.
Her eyes were wide, her thoughts fevered and dizzy. She bared her teeth and cackled at the wide screen monitor, gripping the desktop in an iron hand.
Of course, this language made perfect sense. It was her ancestors’ original words, after all. There were clear instructions on how to reactivate the ship and reanimate the pilot. It was time to colonize another planet.
She laughed again, barefoot and hair askew, continuing until her neighbor pounded on the wall.
When she was done with the translation, she’d book a trip back out to the desert and finish what Frank had started.
Nothing else would do. Nothing at all.
