Bubba And The Mayans

Seeing Atlantis

We were given separate rooms due to the limited staff at the lab. Felicia knocked on my door a few minutes after the Mayans departed. We spent a while talking about what happened when we were together. We revisited some of our favorite memories. One thing led to another. Before I fell asleep, she returned to her own bed. I was not sure how to feel about it. The beds were freaking amazing! I am not even sure how to describe them. You have heard the term sleeping on air? We were literally sleeping on air! It was some sort of anti-gravitation or levitation set up. There was a platform to lie on, but you never quite touched it. You floated above it with your blanket wrapped around you. You did not need a pillow either. It adjusted to your movement to keep your head aligned with your body whether you were on your back, side, or stomach.

I wanted to get some for the ship as soon as possible. It was a perfect night’s sleep. Drinking the better part of two bottles of asha by myself also might have had something to do with it. I woke up feeling wonderfully refreshed.

There was also this little machine in the bathroom that washed, dried, and folded your clothes while you took a shower. A coffee maker in the room made it the perfect morning. Well not perfect. I had woken alone. I did not know if Felicia wanted to rekindle what we once shared or was just visiting the past. I was not sure what I wanted. My granddaddy always said to never relight old cigarettes or old flames. They always left a bad taste in your mouth. Felicia was the only viable option besides one of the Mayans. I assessed I was better off by myself.

I found Arlo and Ariana in the lounge we had occupied the night before. They were eating breakfast. I did not ask about their sleeping arrangements.

Arlo showed me how to use the screen Elias had used the night before to order food. It soon appeared, carried by the same robot as the night before.

“I’ve been thinking,” I said as I sipped coffee and took a bite of fruit.

“That can’t be good.” Arlo responded. “It usually means we are going to do something crazy, or which will get us shot at.”

“You guys have been shot at before?” Ariana asked with surprise.

“We were almost shot at this week.” I replied. “Dingo was shot with a tranquilizer dart. Of course, Dingo is an idiot.”

“Arlo and I talked quite a bit last night.”

“Regarding?’ I asked.

“I feel like I can’t go back,” Ariana repeated. “What am I supposed to tell my students or my colleagues? They would never believe me, but I cannot ignore what I have seen.”

“We were thinking she might be able to come with us.” Arlo said. I realized it was more of a request than a statement.

“That’s not really for me to decide.” I replied after a moment. “I may be the captain, but this would be something everyone on the ship would have to consider.” I could see they were disappointed. Arlo knew how things worked on board.

“Ariana has archeological and medical training.” Arlo started to argue his case. I held up a hand.

“You don’t have to win me over,” I said. “Also, I do not want you to have to make the same case to each person on the crew. When we get back together, we can discuss this.” I knew Arlo would hit Danny Boy up anyway. He was the only other crew member here.

“What were you thinking about?” Ariana inquired. After a confused look crossed my face, she spoke again. “When you walked in you said you had been thinking.” She prompted.

“Something you said last night has been rolling around in my head. I thought Arlo, and perhaps you, could give it some clarity. You said you could not go back. You just repeated it.”

Ariana nodded her head. “That is why we were thinking I might go with you. I cannot go back and pretend none of this happened.” She was pointing around the room. “If what you said last night about the planets you have visited was true, how could I ever be content staying here on earth?”

“I said something along the lines of ’you cannot just disappear.’ You have students, family, and maybe other responsibilities to address.” Ariana nodded thoughtfully.

“Arlo, Atlantis could not just disappear. I know it vanished. It had to go somewhere. Or, what if it did not? What if it is still in the same place, caught in a time loop or something? Earth’s orbit is different than when the event happened. What if it never moved? Maybe it is still there. It could be frozen in time while everything else kept moving.”

“We never got around to talking about this.” Ariana said to Arlo. “What is he talking about?”

We finished our breakfast as Arlo brought her up to speed on what the Mayans were working on.

“Your theory is Atlantis is still where it always was?” Ariana asked after a few moments, looking at me.

“Not exactly where it was,” I corrected. “It’s like when we got the Herpes.” I said as I looked at Arlo.

“Wait a minute!” Ariana proclaimed.

“Went to the planet of Herpe,” Arlo replied with a sad look. “What he means is that Herpe was discovered completely by accident.”

“There is a planet called Herpe?” Ariana inquired.

“Yes, and the inhabitants are called Herpes. The universe is a strange place.” I answered. “Not relevant at the moment,” I commented.

“Except it was discovered by accident,” Arlo insisted.

I shook my head negatively. Arlo always wanted to be right. If not right, then at least validated. “What I suggest is, if the explosion caused an energy signature like a space jump, Atlantis may have moved a great distance instantly.” I stated. “Or it may not have moved at all. It may be exactly where it was. If so, I do not think it is when it was.”

“Okay,” Arlo said thoughtfully after a moment. “If it was a time jump instead of a space jump, how do we figure out when it went?”

“We talk to Syntyche and see what she thinks.” I replied. “I am afraid if it went backwards it may appear in the void of space and no one would survive. Atlantis would be one more rock out there.”

“The same thing could apply if it went forward?” Arlo reminded me.

“True,” I said as I nodded my head. “But they might be able to figure something out if they know when it will reappear and where.”

“It’s an odd idea.” Ariana said as she looked from Arlo to me. “I’m not saying it’s a good idea, but it is an idea.”

We finished our coffee. We went to find one of the Mayan scientists. Felicia passed us in the hall but said little besides a greeting. No hug, no smile, no morning kiss. I did not know what to think about her.

After wandering the halls for a while, we found the lab again. I was surprised I was able to differentiate the Mayans enough to recognize Syntyche.

She turned to greet us as we approached. Within a few moments I explained my theory to her. A time jump had been considered in some of her research. It had always been combined with a space jump. Her models proposed Atlantis should appear seventy-six-thousand years from its disappearance.

Syntyche had spent the better part of the last two-thousand years trying to find some trace of a trajectory. She agreed seventy-six thousand years in the past would mean the destruction of Atlantis. Analyzing the asteroids in our system had proven they were not of earth origin. They were not the remnants of Atlantis.

If they could project where it would appear in the future, they might be able to design a rescue plan for the inhabitants. Everything they knew would be seventy-six thousand years in the past, but they could cope with that.

She never considered the possibility of Atlantis staying right where it was. If it traveled through time, but never changed locations, she should be able to calculate when it would reappear. She turned back to her computer. She began punching in new data and models. She said she would get back with us later.

When we turned around Ttaliss waved us over to where she was standing.

“I have given great thought to what you proposed last night about our plans for the engine,” she said as we approached.

“Most of the plans,” I reminded her.

She nodded. “I have an idea I think you will approve of. I believe my long presence on this planet has affected my thinking.” She smiled tentatively and turned around to pull something from a box.

Ttaliss sat a crystal skull on the table before us.

Arlo instantly reached for it. Ariana slapped his hand away. She bent down to gaze at it intensely. I could see Arlo was disappointed and embarrassed at the same time. Ariana did not reach out to touch it.

After several minutes of inspection Ariana stood up. She looked at Ttaliss. “Okay, it is a perfect replica of the crystal skull in the British Museum. Where did you get it?”

Ttaliss looked confused for a moment. She went over to a cabinet on the wall and opened a door. Inside there were about thirty of the crystal skulls.

“I thought all of that was debunked as some hoax,” Arlo said in recovery as he walked towards the cabinet.

Ttaliss opened the cabinet to the left. It revealed crystal balls inside. “These,” she said pointing to the balls, “are data storage devices. She walked back to the table and opened a door underneath to show us a crystal ball with a light shining through it.

Ttaliss removed the ball and placed the crystal skull in upside down. She closed the door and tapped the tabletop to pull up a menu of files of data.

“This was my idea,” she said with some pride. “These were outdated twenty thousand years ago. We still use them because they work well even though they are cumbersome. The only negative is that once the data is written it cannot be erased.

“There are seven different spectral planes to write with and read with though.”

“How much data does this hold?” Arlo inquired.

“And why do you have skulls?” Ariana asked.

“It was what you would call a practical joke,” Ttaliss said. Although, it seemed more of a question. “One of the balls was broken. Instead of throwing it away one of the technicians cut it to look like a skull with the eyes glowing if you set it on the analyzer upright.”

“What does that do?” I asked.

Ttaliss shook her head. “It does nothing besides shine the light through the skull in assorted colors. The analyzer will search through its frequencies trying to find data. If it does not find anything it will search again.

“If you flip it over, as I did, you can still write and read information from it, but it only has about one third the capacity of an intact ball.”

“And how much capacity is that?” Arlo requested again.

“You do not have a word for it in English,” Ttaliss replied. “Everything ever been written, spoken, published, transmitted, or communicated in any way in the last six thousand years of your recorded existence would only fill a small portion of a single frequency.”

“Do you have pictures of Atlantis?” Ariana asked.

Ttaliss nodded. She went to retrieve a ball. She removed the skull and placed the ball on the reader. Video files began to pop up. Ttaliss picked one. It was a news report from the day the energy beam was first used in Atlantis.

“I don’t understand what they are saying.” Ariana stated. Ttaliss made a couple of quick adjustments. The audio was translated to sixteenth century English.

Arlo and I had had translator microbes in our bodies for three years. I never thought about what language people were speaking because it was always translated into English.

Ariana was crying quietly. I did not know if it was tears of joy or some other emotion. The city we could see was spectacular. It would be impressive to earthlings today.

“Perhaps,” Ariana said when the video ended, “There is somewhere I could watch the other files.”

Ttaliss nodded and motioned for someone else. “This is Geoffrey,” Ttaliss introduced us. “He catalogues our data. Perhaps he can show you how to access the files and point you in the right direction to what you want to find.”

“Thank you,” Ariana said quietly. Geoffrey removed the crystal ball. He led Ariana out of the lab.

Ttaliss put the skull back on the reader. She began explaining the files to us. She pointed out some of the files had been corrupted in light but devastating ways. Guesses would have to be made. It would take time and resources. Additionally, some critical information was missing altogether.

By writing the data onto the skull they had given it to us in a medium which would not be common in the rest us the galaxy. The technology was thousands of years out of date. It would be unusable until the military redesigned a reader and found the right spectral frequency.

Ttaliss explained that there were millions of pages of unrelated data on the earth and its history mixed in randomly so that the full capacity of the skull memory had been used.

We would be given an additional skull which was set up similarly. It housed different corrupted files which contradicted some of the information provided on this one. Arlo and I thought it was a brilliant plan.

Ttaliss produced the second skull. She gave us carrying cases for each that looked like bowling ball bags.

We were just finishing with her when Elias came in with Johnny Boy and Felicia in tow. “We have enjoyed your visit,” Elias announced, “but hope you will understand if we want to get back to our research.”

“I do understand,” I replied. I hefted the bag from the table and bowed slightly. “We appreciate all the help you have given us. Is there any way we can repay you?”

“The theory you have given Syntyche is helpful,” he replied. “We had not considered what may be the simplest of explanations.”

“That’s Jack, he’s pretty simple.” Felicia offered with an insincere smile.

“Perhaps we could join Ariana for a while,” Arlo suggested. “I would love the opportunity to see more of Atlantis before we go.”

“You have pictures of Atlantis?’ Danny Boy asked with surprise.

Elias nodded his head. “I will show you where she is.”

I thanked Ttaliss again. We said a quick goodbye to those we had met. Elias led us to a small theater with twenty seats where Ariana was housed drinking fruit juice. She paused the video for a moment while we settled in. Elias showed us how to contact him when we were ready to go.

We were sitting there six hours later when Elias returned. The films were amazing in ways I have no words to explain. I suppose that is why Plato did not have the words either.

“I hate to interrupt,” he said as the light seemed to intensify automatically.

“I apologize,” I said as I arose. “We just kind of got caught up in the history of Atlantis. It is utterly amazing.”

Elias waved his hands dismissively. “You may stay as long as you like. But there seems to be some kind of disturbance on the surface not far away involving your friends.”

“I can’t imagine Dingo and Bubba getting into any trouble on their own,” Arlo said sarcastically.

I nodded knowingly. Somehow, I was not surprised. I looked at Felicia. “Are you going back with us, or do you want to hang out here and wait for the next ship to come along?”

“I want you to get me off the Earth Jack.” She answered.

“It’s still going to be a few days,” I reminded her.

“After eighteen months, what are a few more days?” She said as she stood up. We followed Elias through the city.

“I’ve got a quick question,” I started as we walked with Elias back towards the elevator. “What about the Mayan calendar and the end of the earth in 2012?”

“Another error on our part,” Elias answered and waved his hand absently. “Syntyche and a few others were using their scant spare time to model when we would be able to locate Atlantis based on the progress we had already made. The stars were used. The calendar was based on earth’s rotation around your sun. The charts could be used as a regular calendar.

“What you know as the Mayan calendar was the most popular of these models. We hoped to know the location a few years ago. When the earthlings and Mayans left earth in the Middle Ages, several of the calendars were left behind. They were not of any real value.”

“The calendar doesn’t go beyond 2012 because you thought you would be done by then?” Ariana asked in amazement.

Elias nodded. He lifted his hand to indicate we were only a few hundred feet from the elevator. I stopped to shake his hand and offer one last thank you.

“Syntyche says her calculations based on Atlantis being in a static time loop will have it reappear exactly where it was in one hundred thirty-four thousand years from now. It is we who owe you thanks.” Elias said.

“Do you believe she is right?” I wondered.

“It explains why there is no trace of a trail. Atlantis could have traveled away from the planet via a space jump. Even a space jump combined with a time jump should have left some sort of trail. If our theories and models are accepted on our home world, we will also be leaving earth.”

“Is there a way to contact you if I have other questions?” I inquired.

Elias took my communicator and punched a code into it. After a few moments, a new icon appeared. “Only use this for an emergency.” He urged. “We have much to do, and little time left.”

“It has been a pleasure to know you,” I said in parting.

Elias nodded his head. He turned back towards the lab. I jogged to catch up with the rest of the group. We climbed onto the elevator together.