A short, myopic, young woman browsed the archives of the library of Yucatan Regional University from a cramped desk in her messy apartment nearby. Smudged pale walls, worn asphalt tiles, beaten corners, and nicks and grooves in the writing surface hinted of generations of students living in poverty attending the old school, which itself had but few aged buildings, being replenished on a continual basis by grants, taxes, and donations.
“Think I just found the topic of my dissertation!” Porliche Pang Brewthon erupted, putting both arms above her large orbital head in triumph. Her small mouth grinned, full of square off-white teeth. Her face was dominated by large, at least for her size, glasses with dark-brown square frames.
“What did you say?” Bhat Brewthon asked his mate. Like his wife, he was Mayan in appearance, brown skin, round head, and a shock of black hair. His eyes were hazel, not the typical brown. Both were just short of plump.
“My dissertation. I found an intriguing story from 1803, one that involves religion and space. You could help me with it.”
He joined her at the meter-wide curved screen and looked. He played with her coffee-brown hair as he read.
“You’re jiggling my glasses, sweetie.”
“Sorry. What are you looking at?”
“When I was looking at historical events that had a religious theme, I found a series of articles about people from a sect that discovered an eight-thousand-year-old archeological site. They claimed that there was a message from an expedition sent to some other planet. The planet, they say, is enough like ours that humans could live there.”
“Sweet. Where was this site?”
“In France.”
“Where in the hell is France?”
“It’s a state or maybe a territory in Atlantic.”
“So you think there’s a dissertation in this?”
“I need to do more reading. I think I’ll run this past my professor and see if the topic will do for my project. It looks like some of this was suppressed by the governments at the time, so there’s probably a lot of material hidden. It will be a ton of fun to search.”
Porliche stood up, stretched, and turned to Bhat. “I’m so excited!” She threw her glasses, clattering on the wooden workspace, and threw her arms around his neck. “It involves astronomy that you can help with.” She stood on her toes and gave him a peck on the lips. “And religious history, my major, a perfect combination.” She jumped up and straddled him, looking him hungrily in the eye, threw her head back, hair almost touching the floor and squealed, “I’m soooooo excited!” She pulled up and kissed him hard. “Take me to heaven.” He was more than happy to comply. They had been married less than a year, and the newlywed thrill was still strong.
The next day, she returned exhilarated to their apartment with a tentative thumbs-up from her advisor. Bhat was at work. She sat at her computer for eight hours with music vibrating the empty spaces as she collected more articles, almost ignoring Bhat when he came home from the Plik Observatory. Progress was slow, as information was hard to find. She sat at the terminal for days, leaving only for a couple of classes and basic necessities. At the end of two weeks, she had collected data that included documents that went back ten thousand years. Most of what she copied into her computer had not been viewed in over a thousand years as far as she could tell. She found some writings by Kirik Gwolono, a professor at Saharia University over two thousand years earlier, who had rediscovered information about manned space flights and sought to find the headquarter building in the frozen wastelands. His wife began the Reaper religion. In truth, it didn’t start with her; she simply revived her version of it. Professor Gwolono’s papers were replete with references, most of which she could not find. She sent an inquiry to the University of Borigine on the north coast of Australia and found that they maintained some references peculiar to their university as proprietary information and not available except to people on site and for a fee.
That obstacle was a devastating disappointment compounded by problems extracting information from the Bunker. It was now a state park, a protected historical site combined with some other science relics. It had few visitors and held little interest for tourists and others. It, too, had a small archive that contained information available only to people on site and, of course, for a substantial fee.
The travel costs and fees to access the closed intranets were both far out of reach of Porliche and well beyond what was available in grant money. Her paper would not meet the criteria for a dissertation without data that existed but was not provided. Without a lot of money, it appeared she had wasted weeks of work. She felt defeated and plodded slowly down to the beach where she walked in the depth of discouragement. It was so close and yet so far out of reach. Her heart ached.
That weekend, Bhat’s parents had invited the young couple for dinner. They lived on a hill looking out over the Caribbean in a spacious house on a large lot surrounded by native Zen-inspired xeriscape. Porticos and sparse interior walls allowed the sea breezes to freshen the home. The four of them sat in a dining room that was open to the east and that had an aqua-colored pool with a disappearing edge that framed the seascape and beach below.
“Bhat tells me that you have a theme for your thesis and that you have been working day and night on it,” said Mr. Thaut Brewthon, the wealthy owner of a waste recycling business. He looked much like his son except for thinning hair with silvery streaks. He dressed in expensive leisure clothes, powder blue and imported from the land to the north named Texica.
“Had,” she corrected. “It was the absolute perfect topic for a dissertation from texts thousands of years old.”
“The topic is religion?”
“There was a religion based on travelers from here to other solar systems.”
“It sounds like pilgrims,” said Minnae Brewthon, the very thin mother-in-law. She had a long rectangular head, pale skin, and blue eyes, unlike most of her neighbors and her family. Her fingers were knurled and knotted, her back bowed, her breathing raspy. She hated physicians, and without them, her condition was as it was.
“How quaint,” Thaut replied.
“Go ahead, my dear,” Minnae wheezed.
“About ten thousand years ago, missions were sent to twenty-five places thought to be compatible with life. They were to signal back if the planet was suitable.”
“Oh my! I had no idea they could travel in space that long ago,” Minnae exclaimed.
“They could and did. As the ice age approached the base facility, a religion developed around the base, specifically the bunker where the signal from the ships would be received. The place was eventually covered in ice for thousands of years. The knowledge of the missions was buried as well. Around two thousand years ago, as the ice sheet receded, a form of this religion sprung up again. Believers found this place and found, or at least claimed to find, a signal that indicated one good, habitable planet. They claimed there were three others that were not perfect but possibly compatible with repopulation. I find the whole thing fascinating.”
“That is interesting, but I thought your interests were in religion,” stated Thaut.
“My interest is in history and how religious people have altered it because of things they do motivated by their beliefs.”
“I take it that these original space travelers were motivated by religion then,” Thaut offered.
“I don’t know yet, but I doubt it. I may not be able to find out. There are some texts that are unavailable except to visitors on site in France and Borigine. There is no money to fund a trip of that length or pay for the rights to see the information I need.”
“Where in the hell is France?”
“It’s in Atlantica,” Bhat said flatly. “That’s a name from antiquity, like Greece.”
“The locals still use it,” Porliche added.
Music started up gradually. Then a soft voice indicated that dinner was ready. The automated kitchen was in the process of completing the meal. The first course sat on the table. The topic of conversation turned until hours later as Bhat and Porliche were standing at the door, leaving.
“Just one more thing before you leave,” Thaut said. “How important is it to look at those documents in Borigine and in Prance, or what-the-hell it’s called, in Atlantica?”
“France. My paper is dead without them,” Porliche said. “I’m looking for funding to travel, but that seems to be unlikely at this point. I’ve already started looking for a different topic.”
“I would be pleased to fund your trip, if you mention me in your book.” Thaut held a pipe in his hand and stood comfortably in his affluence, the floor-length blue robe, and Moroccan leather slippers. Minnae stood smiling behind him, the likely instigator of the most generous offer. Her kyphoscoliotic humped back made her a full head shorter than her husband, about the height of a twelve-year-old girl in Yucatan. She wore tight clothes to emphasize her small frame and utter lack of fat. She wiped her hands with a towel for no reason. The kitchen automation did all the cleaning.
All Porliche could do was grunt in breathy glottal stops and look between Thaut and Bhat for several seconds. “You don’t have to do that,” she finally blurted out.
“I know. And I wouldn’t do it if it promoted some religion. That, however, does not seem to be your goal, and I like the idea. I would love to help you out.” He puffed thoughtfully, squirting jets of smoke as he did. “I bet I can make it tax deductible if I make it a donation to the university.”
Porliche threw her arms around the burly man. “Thank you. Thank you so very, very much.”