Green Fires Burning: The World Is About To Change by Paul McGowan

Author:Paul McGowan [McGowan, Paul]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Viceroy Press
Published: 2023-12-11T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 22

Word spread quickly through the IFDC, and within two or three hours, the conference room was abuzz. Team leads and their assistants filled seats—everyone had been pulled from various tasks, from workout sessions, like Julia, to mealtimes. Dr. Faulkner sat at her table with a grilled cheese sandwich and cup of tomato soup. Harry sat next to her with a cup of coffee, nibbling on a chocolate bar.

It had taken some convincing to get Reginald to accept taking center stage to explain this particular revelation. Julia couldn’t understand why—he seemed to be a natural in front of the group.

“If you will, Dr. Gutierrez?” he asked.

Mari nodded and tapped a series of keys on her laptop. The screens ringing the room came to life. The first image on the screen was the high-resolution image that had started out as the blurry background in a poorly lit smartphone photo.

“I’m sure by now we’re all familiar with some iteration of this image. And,” he said, nodding to Mari, “there is a chance some of you might also be familiar with this one.”

Mari hit another sequence of keys, and the image of the Ptolemy map replaced that of the cave wall. A murmur rippled through the room, and Julia looked over at Harry to catch her reaction.

Harry smiled.

The next image displayed on the screen was a semi-transparent Eemian map superimposed over the Ptolemy.

“Well, I will be damned,” Harry said quietly. “It’s—that’s Norway.”

Nodding, Julia said, “Of the two sanctuaries we’ve already unearthed, one is in Greenland and the other in Antarctica—poles apart but similar in their remoteness from what we know must have been the equatorial furnace of a hundred thousand years ago. Land-based, isolated, and inhospitable to most but perhaps a sanctuary to some. Norway makes sense if we assume that these sanctuaries would be as far away from the equator as possible and located on land masses.”

“Dr. Bassi is correct,” Reg said. “However, there was a portion of the Eemian map we still couldn’t decode.” The next image showed a section of the cave wall, enlarged even more. “Putting aside the fact that cave-dwellers produced a map of Ptolemy’s level of accuracy, this”—Reginald gestured to the screen—“confounded us until very recently.”

Mari advanced the slide again. Another image filled the monitors: dots of varying sizes and colors appeared on a dark grid; lines connected them into different shapes, forming geometric figures in three-dimensional space.

“Say hello to an Eemian sky, after a fashion,” Reginald announced. Another murmur, this time louder, moved through the room like a wave. He waited for the noise to die down before adding, “The key to this map isn’t terrestrial. It’s celestial. They knew thousands of years ago what explorers didn’t figure out until thousands of years later: Navigation via the stars.”

The image advanced yet again, showing a series of Eemian language characters. “Thanks to Dr. Faulkner, we have a rough translation of this portion of the map.”

“A rough, incomplete translation,” Dr. Faulkner corrected them.

Harry waved a hand. “It’s more than we had a month ago.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.