Words Of The Ancients Read online

  Words Of The Ancients

  After Dinner Conversation, Volume 41

  T. Lucas Earle

  Published by After Dinner Conversation, 2020.

  Words Of The Ancients

  Copyright © 2020 by T. Lucas Earle

  All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations em- bodied in critical articles or reviews.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organiza- tions, places, events and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Book design, cover design, and discussion questions by After Dinner Conversation

  First Edition: June 2020

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  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Words Of The Ancients

  About the Author

  Words Of The Ancients

  After Dinner Conversation Series

  “Praising what is lost

  Makes the remembrance dear. Well, call him hither;

  We are reconciled, and the first view shall kill

  All repetition: let him not ask our pardon;

  The nature of his great offence is dead,

  And deeper than oblivion we do bury

  The incensing relics of it.”

  -‘illian Shakes’eare

  Part I

  KESSLER DREAMT OF HIS world freezing in the void, silent and lifeless. He awoke in a strange mood that morning and climbed down from his house to watch the cattle sleep. They twitched and moaned in the half-light of dawn. It was comforting to him to know that even on this strange planet, everyone dreamed. Even the beasts.

  A villager quietly emerged from the mist and approached the sleeping cattle. He patted one of them until it awoke. He guided the creature out of the pen and gave Kessler a solemn nod as he walked it towards the slaughter house. The beast gazed at Kessler with dull eyes and did not look away until it disappeared into the mist. Kessler sighed and climbed back into his house. He couldn’t bring himself to eat breakfast that morning.

  As the sun rose and the village came to life, Kessler stayed in his room, poring over glyphs, trying to decipher the language of the Ancients, hoping to uncover the elusive past of this glorious planet. The hours slipped by, until Kessler received word from a colleague that he was needed at a new excavation located some distance from the village. He collected his tools and a few reference documents, then promptly jumped out the window.

  High above the forest bed, Kessler free fell for a moment before unfolding his wings and gliding through the forest, deftly dodging trees and branches. He alternated between gliding through the canopy and leaping along the forest bed, until he reached his destination.

  The trees abruptly gave way to a grassy clearing. It was midday and the sun had burned away the morning mist. He shielded his eyes and looked up. A massive ruin stood before him, a long towering block leaning to one side, covered in vines, gray and crumbling in the hot sun – an ancient behemoth being wrestled to the ground, strangled by the foliage.

  Kessler approached the team of scientists congregated around the base of the monument. He recognized most of them from previous excavations: Hissun, the engineer; Ki’en, the archeologist, accompanied by his team; and his friend and neighbor, Ti’ek, the resident xenobiologist, who noticed Kessler first and bobbed his head to greet him. Kessler bobbed back and approached the group. Ki’en’s team busied themselves, setting up tents and unloading equipment from their vehicles. Ti’ek lifted his tail, affectionately swatting Kessler’s side as Kessler inspected the building closely. It was so weather-worn there was very little chance any glyphs were left intact on the structure. But Ti’ek seemed quite excited as he led Kessler into the ruins.

  They approached a long descending shaft, half bouncing, half gliding down it until they reached the bottom. This was the largest ruin Kessler had ever seen.

  They crawled through the tunnels dug by Ki’en and his team before emerging into a chamber bursting with energy and motion. The commotion seemed to be focused around the far wall of the chamber, where there stood a strange blue and white metal panel flush with the chamber wall, edged with glowing fluorescent strips.

  Kessler had no idea what the object was, but he gathered it was something important. Ki'en explained that the panel was a door. And, because the hatch was completely sealed, Ki'en speculated the chamber beyond was most likely airtight, perfectly preserved. Ki'en's team had found a geothermal power generator below the cavern. Whoever made this room had wanted it to stand the difficult test of time. Kessler approached the door with reverence. He hoped there would be some intact glyphs preserved within the chamber.

  Sessek, the engineer, was working with his team on severing the door's power supply in order to turn off the magnetic lock. Neither Ti’ek nor Kessler could contribute much to the procedure, so they crouched in the corner and attempted to contain their excitement.

  Whatever lay behind this door had been waiting a dozen lifetimes to be found.

  The panel slid into the wall, releasing a powerful gust of frigid air and bathing the cavern in a majestic white light. The group squinted into the chamber. They approached the door, carefully stepping into the room beyond. It was alive with mechanical equipment, blinking and pulsing. Its technology, advanced – its purpose, unknown.

  They proceeded through the sterile white chamber, wing tips twitching nervously, tails raised and alert. No one spoke.

  Through a side door, Kessler found a long room. Blocks of varying color were lined up in horizontal compartments along the wall. Kessler examined one cautiously, running his hands along its smooth surface. It was covered in unfamiliar glyphs. The object was topped with a hard flap. He pulled it back and beneath it were thousands of glyphs on thin layers of parchment. The awe nearly toppled him. Each and every block on the wall was filled with glyphs. Each one was packed with knowledge, bursting with hidden histories. Ti’ek stood next to him, occasionally clicking, as Kessler inspected each layer of thin parchment. Ti’ek asked what the glyphs meant. Kessler told him he had no idea.

  Then Hissun’s hand was on Kessler’s shoulder, and he was being led to the entrance of another room where the engineers and architects were huddled, staring at rows of white pods.

  At first, no one spoke. But every one of them knew what these pods were. The Ri'ik had slept in them for centuries as they sailed through the stars from their old, dying world to this vital new one. These were hibernation pods.

  There could be no doubt these pods were built by the Ancients. And inside each pod was a creature, they presumed an Ancient, with the answers to a thousand questions.

  Hissun, Sessek, and Ti’ek spent the remaining daylight hours and many of the sunless ones examining the technological differences between these pods and the Ri’ik’s own. They began the cycling down process slowly with just one pod, picked at random, so as to safely awaken its inhabitant. Most of the team slept in the cavern, where they could set up heating units without worrying about damaging the find.

  Kessler would not be separated from his work, so he slept in the hall of documents, wrapped in layers of heated blankets. He had spent so much of his life digging thr
ough the faded remnants of an ancient language, and yet, surrounded by millions of glyphs, he felt suddenly out of his depth. What would these glyphs sound like, spoken aloud? Would he even be able to hear the sounds? Perhaps the Ancients communicated with frequencies the Ri’ik could not perceive. Kessler’s mind squirmed under the enormity of it all. He fell asleep with the irrational hope that the glyphs would somehow leak out from their bindings in the night and permeate his dreams, filling his mind with the wisdom of days long past.

  The next morning, he immediately began poring over the documents. He couldn’t decipher the symbols yet, but they were familiar in their general design, if not pattern. He constantly referred to his notes, matching each glyph with the few intact glyphs from other finds. It was Ti’ek's chirp that finally broke his concentration. He was crouched at the doorway, explaining that the awakening process was starting. Kessler leapt up, still clutching the document he had been examining.

  Kessler watched, transfixed, as Hissun and Ti’ek slowly opened a pod. Strands of a gooey substance spilled out as the pod was pulled apart, leaving the creature within lying in a puddle at its base. The ancient monitoring equipment, as well as the Ri’ik’s, hummed, telling everyone that the creature was alive.

  As the last of the viscous substance ebbed away, a silence fell upon them.

  Of all the theories Kessler and his colleagues had debated about the Ancient Ones, this was the one they had never entertained.

  It was a cow.

  One of the scientists, an engineer, actually wagged his tail.

  Kessler saw the humor. That was, until the creature began to howl. It was a horrible, ear-splitting sonic explosion. And while disorientation was not unexpected, given the recent awakening of the animal, it was still rather alarming.

  Quickly, Ti’ek and another biologist approached the animal with sedatives. The creature, though still sluggish, was surprisingly strong and managed to ram the other scientist, sending him tumbling into the far wall. But Ti’ek’s syringe found a home in the beast’s back, dropping it to the floor. The whole group of scientists pushed in while Ti’ek made sure it was not injured as it lay before them, breathing shallowly. It was not unconscious, only weakened.

  It was a female, but it was bigger than the other cows. Its face was longer, and its eyes were larger, brighter, shockingly aware, and terrified. And it was making noises—noises unlike any they had ever heard a cow make. Ti’ek prepared more sedatives while Kessler listened to the incapacitated beast. The sounds it made involved a motion with its lips that Kessler had never seen before. Ti’ek swooped in with another syringe and crouched by the beast, but before he could level the syringe, Kessler’s tail landed heavily across Ti’ek’s chest. Kessler’s wings spread protectively over the cow, and he screeched for his colleagues to stop. They retreated instantly, and looked on as he dropped to all fours and looked into the beast’s eyes.

  It was speaking.

  The other scientists fell silent and listened to the creature. It was undeniable. The sounds had repeating patterns. It wasn’t mewling, or whimpering, like the other cattle. It was speaking. But how could a cow speak? They had been dwelling alongside the beasts for decades now, and the creatures showed a pronounced lack of communicative or even cognitive skills.

  Yet there she lay, speaking, pleading with them. Then, without warning, she stopped and looked directly at Kessler, who was still clutching the ancient document to his chest.

  The two of them stared at each other for a moment before Kessler, remembering his training, placed his hand on his head. “Kessler,” he said, simply.

  The creature paused. Then it placed a pale paw on its upper torso and uttered a single word.

  “Human.”

  KESSLER SAT ACROSS from the cow and watched as she inspected the glyphs on the hibernation pods.

  She was refined, delicate even, for such a large and peculiarly proportioned animal. She opened a cubby and took out fabrics, which she wrapped around herself. She glanced at Kessler periodically as she went about investigating the pods. Cows couldn't understand the simplest tools. It was odd – even humorous – watching one operating advanced machinery.

  Kessler had persuaded the scientists to allow him to spend some time alone with the beast, to try to communicate without the distraction of the others. So far, the plan seemed to be working. She spoke often; although Kessler couldn’t understand what she was trying to communicate. He tried speaking back, but she understood nothing. Kessler tried pointing at objects in the room and saying their names, but she didn’t respond. So, instead, he opened his bag, where he had stored the document he had been studying earlier, and presented it to her.

  She looked at it for a long moment. Then she opened it and sat down on the floor. As she examined the glyphs, she wiped moisture from her eyes, and her breathing became quite labored.

  Kessler cautiously approached her. She did not react. He crawled next to her and looked at the parchment she was inspecting. She lifted the thin sheet and moved it to the left. He observed her eye movements. She was clearly reading the glyphs from left to right. Finally, Kessler worked up the courage to point, first at one glyph, then another, and another. She looked at him and he at her, his thin finger tapping the parchment. Then she spoke.

  “Words,” she said.

  What a delightful sound she made. A bilabial! But of course she could, with prehensile lips. Kessler clicked with excitement.

  Kessler was overjoyed to discover that the symbols the Ancients used were not glyphs at all, but phonemes. Each symbol did not represent a word but instead a single meaningful sound. It made her language simple to write. All he had to do was learn all the corresponding sounds, which was easy enough once he found replacements for all the bilabials.

  He had finally figured out the tenses – the language actually had a means of conveying a future hypothetical situation that did not yet exist! The sophistication! – when he, quite surprisingly, blacked out. It was in mid-sentence, and it was only for a brief moment, but in no time at all he was lying in Sara’s powerful arms. He shook his head and tried to stand up, but the room seemed to bend and wobble. Sara made frantic sounds.

  “What’s wrong?” she said.

  “I hath not... eaten.” His head ached. “Need thood.”

  “Food,” she said.

  Kessler nodded.

  Kessler stood, Sara hovering over him in case he fell again. He tried not to make eye contact as he crept on all fours to the door. He tapped on the metal hatch a few times until it opened.

  Under the warm rays of sunlight, a bright-eyed young villager brought him food. The young attendant hummed pleasantly as she laid out an assortment of foods. Once she was done arranging the food in the proper ceremonial manner, the villager watched Kessler expectantly, waiting politely for him to eat.

  Kessler stared at the thin gray strips in the center of the platter.

  TI’EK AND THE OTHER biologists came in daily to examine Sara. They found that she was, for the most part, biologically identical to the beasts they ate. The differences were minute enough to be caused by simple mutation – an extra chromosome.

  “LET HIN NOT ASK OUR ‘ardon.”

  They read together, as they had done the days prior. Kessler had quickly unpacked the syntax of the language and was in the process of devouring its majestic contexts.

  “The nature oth his great othence is dead,” he went on, “and dee’er than...”

  “Oblivion,” she said.

  “Odlithian,” he echoed, poorly. “O’at does it nean?”

  “Oblivion? Let me think...” Kessler waited eagerly for the new concept. “It’s where things go when they are lost forever.”

  Kessler stared at the word. Thoughts of his freezing home world came to mind.

  A sharp rasping sound made him raise his head. Sara coughed once again, then she began to wheeze and clutch her chest. Kessler leapt to his feet, but, just as he was about to ask what was wrong, she collapsed. Kessler shoute
d for Ti’ek and the other biologists to come in. They crowded around, frantically trying to find something to do.

  Sara grabbed Kessler and whispered, “My lung... is... filling...”

  Kessler hushed the scientists. He relayed what Sara had told him. They worked quickly and efficiently. Sara moaned as they stuck the needle between her ribs. They pulled out a full vial of fluid. Kessler stood back as the biologists rushed about the room.

  He clutched his document.

  Hours later, when Sara’s condition was stable, he asked one of the biologists what was wrong with her. The biologist tried to find a diplomatic way of saying he didn’t know. Kessler sat down next to Sara.

  “I should tell you.” Her voice was weak. “I’m dying. You know that word?”

  Kessler shifted from one foot to the other, his claws clicking on the hard floor. “Odlithian?”

  Sara waved at the rows of pods. “All the people, all the humans sleeping in this room, are all dying of the same disease. It’s incurable. The disease will affect my brain. Then it will kill me.”

  “O’aye did not you tell I this dethore?” Kessler grasped at the words.

  “Because it was obvious you had never seen a human being until me. We must all be dead.”

  Kessler said nothing.

  “That means that the cure was never found. There’s nothing you can do.”

  “O’ee are scientists,” he said.

  “Who have only two months’ worth of knowledge of human physiology,” she said.

  “No. O’ee hath nuch knowledge,” Kessler said before realizing the implications of his statement. Sara stared at him, her eyes huge.

  “Kessler,” she said. “Is there something you are not telling me?”

  Kessler feigned confusion. “I do not understand.”

  “What do you know?” Sara grabbed Kessler’s fragile arm.