Chapter 1: The Dangers of Archeology

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.