Once Upon an Alien
Chapter 1: The Dangers of Archeology

Copyright© 2014 by MisguidedChild

Note 6: The following pages from 'A View of History' were derived from multiple sources. The primary source was the partial journal of Professor M. C. R. Frost. Portions of his journal were lost due to a book burning frenzy during the Crazy Time. Journals from his interns were used to 'fill in the blanks', as one researcher phrased it. Corrections to 'A View of History' will be made as new sources become available.

LIFE

Wander through chaotic rooms.

Look for meaning; look for truth.

Find the door to secret dreams

and run into the light.

Life Is when you set a pace

to win a race you thought was through.

Life Is when you run a race

as if you had a clue.

Find the meaning of the dream.

Seek the clue to everything.

Run the race with all you have

and keep the goal in sight.

Life Is when you set a pace

to win a race you thought was through.

Life Is when you run a race

Face to face with who you thought you knew.

What happens when the nightmare realm

we sometime see in daytime dreams

hides the way that we must go

to reach the goal that we must know?

Life Is when you set a pace

to win a race you thought was through.

Life Is when you run a race

with battles won and victory comes to you.

M. C. R. Frost - After the Awakening (2029 CE)

"Professor Frost!" the throaty, anxious voice of one of his more impressive interns called urgently. It sounded like she was trying to whisper across the thirty feet separating them. The anxiety and fear was clear in her voice.

"What is it, Miss Jorgensen?" Cody Frost called back tiredly, but at a normal volume of voice, as he continued to carefully clear another edge of the large shard of ceramic he was trying to unearth.

Marshal Cody Randall Frost was known as Cody to his friends and family, and Professor Frost to his interns and students. He was a Professor of Archeology and was currently on a dig in the mountains of Peru.

Cody and five interns, with the help of fourteen native Peruvians, had been working on this site for twenty four days. Their permit authorized them sixty days of 'Archeological Research' in ancient Incan archeological sites. It was hard, dirty work, and the altitude made it even harder. They were working at almost eight thousand feet above sea level in the ancient Incan city called Machu Picchu.

Professor Frost was attempting to verify or disprove, something that could not, or at least, should not exist. Cody felt he was honor bound to resolve something his father had found on his last dig before he was killed. It was convenient that, for once in his life, his profession and his honor were leading him in the same direction. That hadn't always been true. It had been five years since his father had been killed.

It took two years after his father's death, to negotiate the retrieval of his father's belongings. The brief civil war that left a divided United States had put every request and action under a microscope. But, he was finally successful, with the backing of the Smithsonian Governing Board.

There hadn't been much left of the small house where his father had lived. Fortunately, the house hadn't burned. It had been crushed by the concussion of a fuel-air explosion. Many of the his father's mementos had survived, along with most of his notes from his latest expedition to South America. Cody had found the anomaly along with more notes in a fire proof lock box. It had taken three more years to set up this expedition, depositing himself and five interns to the mountains of Peru in April, 2026.

They should have plenty of time to resolve the anomaly before their Peruvian permits expired. The mystery that brought Cody to these ruins was a symbol on an amulet found in strata that predated the Incan civilization. The Machu Picchu site dated to around 1500 CE. Some institutions that do not follow the governmental dating requirements would recognize that date as 1500 AD. Cody's father had found an ancient land fill, essentially an ancient garbage dump. His father's notes stated the amulet was found in strata at the bottom of the dump which was dated between 5000 BCE and 7000 BCE, well before Machu Picchu was built. Material found with the amulet pointed to a civilization that predated the Inca by several centuries. They were called the Caral-Supe, or more commonly, the Caral. The Caral civilization was the oldest known civilization in the Americas, and one of the six civilizations that originated separately in the ancient world. That same material had led Cody's father to a nearby site, on the edge of Machu Picchu. That was where Cody was working.

The problem was, Cody recognized the symbol on the amulet, just as his father had. Cody had seen it before on a Sumerian artifact that dated to 12,000 BCE, also thousands of years older than the Incan civilization. He thought he remembered seeing it someplace else, but hadn't been able to figure out where. Cody felt honor bound to clear up the mystery his father had found before they had to return to the United States.

'The Constitutional United States, ' Cody reminded himself, bitterly. He didn't know if he would ever get used to a divided United States. He was authorized to travel between the CUS, and the New Constitutional United States, or NCUS. The Smithsonian was one of the few public institutions that still bridged the divided country. Their UN Charter may have been instrumental in forcing the divided country to accept the Smithsonian in both camps. His mother still worked at the New York Smithsonian Museum. Cody was able to commute between the Denver facility and the New York facility. He preferred the Denver site, where the Washington DC museum had moved to after being destroyed in the brief war.

Cody didn't really side with either faction in the short Civil War that had been fought in 2021. He believed there was enough blame for both sides in the struggle, and enough blood on all their hands.

His interns' next words snapped Cody back to the present.

"A Peruvian Army Captain told us we need to move," Briana Jorgensen replied urgently. "The Peruvian army is moving into position to block the rebels. The rebels are advancing from the north and the army is deploying in the ruins. We need to get out of here before we're stuck in the middle of a battle!"

"Our permit is for sixty days and doesn't expire until May ninth," Cody reminded the young intern calmly as he continued to clear the dirt around the ceramic shard. Cody had been trying to free the shard for the last two hours and nearly had it free. It was much larger than he originally thought. Only one long edge remained. "We've only been here for, what, twenty-six days?" he asked absentmindedly.

"Twenty-four days, but the permit was issued by the Peruvian government, not by the rebels," the statuesque, blonde intern from the New York Smithsonian replied in frustration and fear.

Cody Frost's focus on dig sites was a well known affectation among peers and students alike. Some did have other names for it, like 'an acute case of tunnel vision' as one of his reviewers reported. One of the intern's task on the dig, directed by the Museum Board, was to ensure the Professor ate meals and slept at least six hours a day. Another of their tasks, in locations with questionable safety, was to ensure he was kept as safe as possible. Peru, along with most of the world it seemed, fell into the 'questionable safety' category. Cody couldn't think of one country whose borders or government resembled the world map of his youth. The whole world was in turmoil and battle could be expected wherever he traveled.

Cody Frost wasn't as distracted as his friends and colleagues believed. He liked presenting the 'absent minded professor' persona, because it gave him more latitude with his own studies and explorations. It also gave him a different view of his students. He found it amazing what a student would do or try to get away with when he or she didn't think the professor was paying attention. It also made it easier to conceal the flashes of insight he seemed to get at the most opportune times.

Once again he felt the pang of the loss of his father. He could talk to his father about anything, including his 'sixth sense.' He could talk to his mother about most things, but she seemed more grounded. When he spoke of 'knowing' something, she brushed it off as flights of fancy that had no place in archeology. But she didn't ignore his suggestions about where to dig while looking for archeological clues. His father, on the other hand, was often described as having his head in the clouds, too.

His father, Professor Minden Frost, had been an archeologist with the Washington DC Smithsonian until the brief civil war in 2021 had killed him. His mother, Professor Cynthia Randal, was still an archeologist with the Smithsonian Museum located in New York City. His parents had never married. They had chosen a 'civilized' approach to Professor Randal's pregnancy, after a brief fling. His father accepted paternity and was fully engaged in raising their offspring. Cody was relegated to that most hated of children's situations; six months of each year spent with each parent. Cody didn't realize what the six month schedule cost him until he was grown. The young Cody accepted the situation as normal, and blossomed.

Cody spent his six months with each parent, no matter where they were in the world. Because of his schedule with his parents, Cody received a unique education. Grades one through twelve and even most of his awarded college credits were spent in a strange amalgam of home schooling and formal classes. He learned to add, subtract, multiply, and divide at age four on a dig site in Cairo, along with a group of Egyptian boys, sons of the workers helping on the dig. He also learned modern day Egyptian during that dig. And he learned that ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs were a language, just like his own, and not much harder to read. It was many years before he discovered that everyone didn't learn to read the odd picture language.

He learned to parse sentences and how the English language was structured in England, on a dig site near Stonehenge. Science was learned at dig sites in Greece, along with the Greek language. Learning the dead Sumerian pictograph language was simply another dig with his parents, and the boy's curious mind soaked it up like a sponge. When Cody's six months with either parent was spent at their home museum, he was surrounded by artifacts and remnants of civilizations dating back thousands and thousands of years. Cody had questions, and discussed them with his parents. His parents treated those discussions as if they were with equals. Cody's view of the history of mankind was very different than other young men.

His formative years were spent soaking up modern and ancient languages, and other odd bits of knowledge in places like Egypt, South America, Iraq, Turkey, Ireland, England, and the United States. There may have been better translators than Cody for individual languages, but there were few in any field that had the broad knowledge in as many modern and ancient dialects and cultures as Cody. His knowledge of ancient history, writings and hieroglyphs from many corners of the world were equally as formidable.

Cody's earliest memories were of dig sites with one of his parents and wandering the halls of their museums. His earliest understanding that evil was very real and present in the world was at his eleventh birthday party. It was during his mother's six months. The party goers consisted of other professors from the New York Smithsonian and some of their interns.

The birthday party was held in the morning, before an Archeology Symposium that was supposed to start at 10:00 AM, in Manhattan. His mother truly wanted to make his party special. She had selected an upscale restaurant with a private room and a view of the World Trade Center. Cody was having fun. It didn't occur to him to wonder that no one was his age at the party. These were his friends. His world seldom included other kids, unless they were the kids of the laborers they employed at dig sites. He was having a lot of fun, until 8:46 AM, when the first passenger jet flew into the North Tower of the World Trade Center.

Professor Randal, his mom, didn't wait to see what would happen next. Her time in remote areas of the world, searching for elusive clues to the history of man, had taught her not to stick around to see what or why disaster was striking. She and her son were in a cab and speeding away by 8:53 AM. Of course, traffic stopped them soon afterwards. However, they were near enough to the bridge by that time to walk out of Manhattan.

Cody didn't personally witness the collapse of the towers, but he was glued to the television for the next four days and watched it over and over. His mother didn't have a good explanation about why anyone would want to do such a thing. His dad called that night to make sure everyone was okay. His mom explained where they were when the first plane hit, then moved off to talk to his dad out of Cody's hearing.

Cody talked to his dad after his parents finished talking. His dad wished him happy birthday, then asked him how he was doing. They talked for a while, but his dad didn't have a good explanation, either.

That image of a jet flying into one of the landmarks of his young life never left him. Something inside the boy on the brink of puberty changed with that image and the experience. He began having feelings, something beyond the feelings a young boy entering puberty would normally expect. He would 'know' things that didn't make sense for him to know. Cody spent the next seven years much like he had spent his first eleven years. But, he was quieter, and his attention was focused on the NOW as much as it was on the past. His growing 'insights' certainly made Cody a more valuable asset to his parents on their digs. He would 'know' another corner of a room would be more productive while looking for archeological clues. He would 'know' if they moved just a little farther down a hillside, a trove of artifacts would be found. 'Knowing' didn't prevent his troubled young mind from wrestling with the puzzle of why men would do such evil.

Cody joined the Marines the day after he turned nineteen; 9/12/2008. He had made the decision when he turned eighteen but had elected to spend one last expedition with each parent. Cody had accumulated a lot of college credits while traveling and studying with his parents. He was only a few prerequisite credits short of his Bachelors of Science degree when he joined, so was offered a chance to be an officer. Becoming an officer required a six year obligation though, so he turned it down. He decided that if he liked it, he could always go the officer route after three years. The last year of service was often used to explore possibilities of future service. Lance Corporal M. C. R. Frost was in Iraq as a rifleman by September 2009 on an eighteen month tour of duty.

Lance Corporal Frost's ability to speak Arabic like a native accomplished three things. First, he was in high demand any time his company interacted with the Iraqi people. Second, because he was constantly near the friction points of two cultures clashing, he was often in the thick of battle. Third, he was a Sergeant before he rotated back to the United States.

Sergeant Frost was sent to Afghanistan in August, 2012, after six months of training in the mountains of Camp Pendleton, California. His second eighteen month tour in a combat zone went very much like his first. His fluency in the two major languages of Afghanistan, Pashto and Farsi ... also known as Farsi-Dari ... put Cody in high demand again. That high demand also had the same results. Cody saw friends fall in battle, again.

His enlistment was up in September, 2013, but the US Government's 'Stop-Loss' policy, involuntarily extended his enlistment and tour of duty to February 2014, when his unit would rotate back to the United States. He only lasted until December before he was wounded. Cody had been wounded twice before, but they had been minor wounds that had only resulted in missing a few patrols. This time he was shot in the leg. He had to be flown to Germany, and then back to the United States. The wound was a 'through and through, ' with no bones broken or damage done other than a hole in his calf muscle.

Cody would have been promoted to Staff Sergeant if he had agreed to reenlist. He had actually considered staying on active duty longer during his first couple of years. However, the 'Commander-In-Chief' that was elected the year before he enlisted changed the atmosphere in the Marine Corps ... and in all the other services, too. The pride in the Marine Corps was still present. The confidence in their civilian leadership was lost and even the 'lifers' were getting out.

Cody's conclusion was that when the primary value of military lives to their civilian commander was to purchase political advancement, it was time to find another line of work!

M.C.R. Frost hadn't ignored academia during his enlistment, either. The Marine Corps ... actually, all branches of the military ... had many educational programs. He finished his under-graduate degree during his first year in the Marines. Cody continued taking classes through the New York State University, AKA SUNY. His Masters was completed while on convalescence leave, and was awarded the day after he received his discharge. Cody received his PHD of Archeology from Columbia University two years later, at the ripe old age of twenty-six.

Doctor M. C. R. Frost was hired at the New York Smithsonian immediately after receiving his Doctorate. He was also hired as a part time professor at SUNY. Professor M. C. R. Frost was a Smithsonian Senior Fellow at the very young age of twenty-nine.

Cody Frost had grown up in academia but became a man through the fire and blood of battle. He returned to academia as a different animal, one that could be dangerous when cornered.

Cody was on a dig with his mom in Turkey two years after being named a Smithsonian Senior Fellow. It was the first dig where he was on an equal footing with his mom, and he liked it. They had always been close, but working together at the oldest known religious site in the world, Gobekli Tepe, seemed to draw them closer. They were near the end of their dig, in January, 2021, when the second United States Civil War broke out. His father had returned from his own dig in Peru on January 3rd, 2021. Cody's father died in the first of the fuel-air explosions that destroyed Washington DC on January 5th.

"Professor Frost, we have to leave ... now!" Carl Sanchez said, interrupting Cody's thoughts again. Carl was another of the interns, and he sounded worried. "The army is fighting in the hills to the north. It's only a delaying action so the army's main force can prepare their positions in the ruins. We have to leave before the rebels break through."

"Okay, okay," Cody said calmly.

He started carefully putting his tools away. He carried brushes, hand trowels in various shapes, and knives in a leather roll like satchel. It allowed him to keep everything well organized but also gave him quick access to a few of his more useful tools.

"We don't have time for that!" Carl hissed. "I talked to the Captain in charge. We need to be out of here in the next twenty minutes. It'll take us that long to get the truck loaded and get on the road."

"Why are wild dogs able to run down a man and kill him?" Cody asked as he calmly continued putting his tools away.

"What?" Carl asked in shock, accompanied by a groan of fear and frustration from Briana. "Professor, we ain't got time for this shit. We gotta get outta here."

Carl often slipped back into the street lingo he had used while growing up, when he was agitated.

"The reason is," Cody continued calmly, as he stood and began looking for any other traces of his presence, "because the man panics. Use your brain, Mr. Sanchez," he ordered sternly. "We can rush out of here, and leave evidence of the presence of 'gringos, ' and what do you think will happen?" Cody didn't wait for an answer as he continued, "The rebels would like nothing better than to capture some American archeologists. They would contact their sympathizers to the south of here and we wouldn't make it fifty miles!"

The two students gaped at Cody in surprise. They were so used to his head being in the clouds that his occasional display of being very aware of real world situations astonished them.

"Well, get moving!" Cody ordered in a hard, brisk tone. "Make sure all the tools and the garbage is picked up! Get rid of anything that would indicate Americans were here."

The interns didn't say another word as they nodded and turned to rush out of the chamber.

Cody had five interns on this dig. He had carefully selected them because he knew that Peru could fall back into turmoil at any time. Their government had just finished putting down one insurrection. Cody had hoped they would have a few months of peace for this dig. Still, he had learned in the Marines that where safety was concerned, don't leave anything to chance. Every one of his interns were competent as far as archeology went. The whole pool of interns he had available to select from met that qualification. Each of the five he selected had further qualifications that would help with their survival if there was an issue with local politics.

Briana Jorgensen was a five foot eleven inch blond of Swedish decent. She was twenty-two years old and the youngest of five children. Her siblings were all older brothers and were all fourth degree black belts in the Jing-Wu style of martial arts. Briana was a fifth degree and based on campus gossip, very dangerous to dates that got out of line. Cody had witnessed one of her more aggressive devotees pressing his case. The girl was hell on wheels in a fight.

Carl Sanchez was a twenty-six year old of Mexican descent and was fluent in his parents native language. He had grown up hard in some of the most brutal gang wars of south Texas. He had escaped the trap the gangs represented but he still possessed skills with knives and guns. Carl would have been surprised at his professor's adeptness in the skill set of Carl's former profession.

Amy Ruiz was a twenty-three year old of Mexican descent, and also spoke Spanish. She was a last minute addition to the team.

Professor Frost had watched in surprise when the girl had been cornered by two burly jocks. He was walking towards them, prepared to put a stop to their harassment, when one of the jocks reached out to grab the girl's breast.

The hand never reached its target. The next thing Cody knew, the two jocks were on the ground. One jock had an arm with the elbow bent at the wrong angle. He was screaming. The other had a butterfly knife at his throat, with a thin trickle of blood flowing down his neck. He was desperately trying to apologize without moving his throat. Finding out the small girl was an archeology student and available for his expedition was a bonus.

Brian Miller was twenty-five years old and looked like a surfer dude. He actually was from Southern California and did like to surf. Brian was had just started on the archeology track at UC Berkley, when the Chinese had taken Hawaii and the west coast of the United States.


Note 7: The national debt at the time of the United States Second Civil War, was nearly twenty two trillion dollars. A large portion of that debt was owed to the Chinese. To put that national debt into context, all the gold, silver, and platinum that has ever been mined or that is available to be mined is estimated at fifteen trillion US dollars in 2012 money. The Chinese government took Hawaii and the west coast of the mainland US for recompense when the US government split. They also tried to take Alaska but discovered how dangerous a well armed population could be. The divided United States was not able to oppose the Chinese. Cuba tried to do the same thing with Florida. Both the CUS and NCUS hit them with fuel-air bombs and Cuba was still fighting their own civil war in 2026. Apparently, Raul Castro didn't have a clear line of succession when one of the bombs ignited approximately one hundred feet over his head.


Brian Miller had managed to get back to his family in Los Angeles and got his mother and sister out of the lands that the Chinese controlled. His father had been killed during their escape. Three Chinese solders decided an extra 'tax' was required of the females to let the family pass. Brian killed the three soldiers, two with a knife and a third with a club, before he escaped with his mom, his sister, and his father's body. Cody didn't know if the 'surfer dude' was as competent as his history indicated. The expedition did need another strong back, so Cody accepted Brian's application to be an intern on the dig.

Shawn McLaughlin was a quiet, twenty-six year old redhead. He was also a former Marine and was attending school on a military veteran's grant. During the interview for inclusion on the dig, Cody learned that Shawn had been in Panama, helping the government protect the canal during the short US Civil War. He refused to fight for either side after he returned to the CUS and took an immediate discharge.

'My mother came from Ireland," Shawn had explained during the interview. "I grew up on stories of a divided country and I don't want my country to be divided. She emigrated to escape that kind of insanity. I refused to enable it, so I got out," Shawn said with a shrug.

"Professor Frost," Shawn called quietly from the entrance to the chamber. "The tools are packed and the area is policed up. We're ready to go."

"Thank you, Mr. McLaughlin. I think I'm ready now," Cody replied, as he quickly looked around for a final check of his area before leaving.

He looked at the ceramic shard that he had been carefully unearthing when Briana had given him the news. He only debated with himself for half a heartbeat. Correct procedures required him to carefully exhume each historical clue like a lost piece to a jigsaw puzzle. The archeologist's job was to figure out which jigsaw puzzle the piece belonged to and then how the puzzle piece fit. That required careful, recorded processes. However, his 'sixth sense' was telling him that this shard was important in unraveling the mystery that his father's amulet had created.

Cody reacted quickly, before his better judgment took control. He grabbed the shard and pulled it from the soil that had held it for seven centuries. It was much larger than he thought. The shard was nearly ten inches wide and at least twenty-four inches long and nearly an inch thick. He glanced at the side that had been face down in the dirt. It was covered in odd hieroglyphs. There was the expected picture language of the ancient Inca's that he had expected. But, there was more that he hadn't expected. And, he didn't have time to study it now. He shouldered his satchel so the open end was under one arm and turned towards the door with the shard under his other arm.

Shawn was looking at his professor with raised eyebrows, surprised at his action. "Professor?" the young man asked.

"That's not exactly the trade craft that you expected, is it, Mr. McLaughlin?" Cody asked with a slight smile.

"No, sir," Shawn answered hesitantly. "I'm sure you have a reason. Are you going to tell me what it is?"

Cody sighed before saying, "These ruins may be nothing but rubble when we return," Cody explained as he passed his student. "Proper procedures are important to learn and know, Mr. McLaughlin. Always remember that the procedures are guidelines. It is just as important to know when not to use them."

"Yes, sir," Shawn replied, following the tall, black haired man up the passageway towards the rectangle of sunlight. The explanation made sense, but why did Shawn feel like there was more to the answer than his professor was saying.

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