Seeming

The hallways passed by in a cool stillness, met only by the rhythmic tapping of feet as Dorothy walked, guided by George Lewiston, toward the last door on the left. The air was stale, as if this place hadn't seen a soul for nearly a decade, outside of the hushed tones of congregants, conspirators, or crackheads. She felt like one, or maybe all three. Where was she, even? An abandoned warehouse that once held miles of glues and other adhesive products, now farmed out to companies overseas. The dust was all that was left, and the shelves made a fine home for all that dust and empty space. Graffiti marred the walls, some talented, some useless. Los Angeles was a place for all sorts. Debris amongst dead air.

The room was far less sterile than she imagined it might be when George Lewiston first told her to meet him here. Just a stainless steel work table serving as a desk, and a couple of folding chairs. The two of them sat down, Dorothy's heart reminding her it was there with every other beat. She was nervous, of course, but also excited. She was uncomfortable, but somehow she felt like she was in the right place.

"You know, there really is no difference between being anxious and being excited. It's all the same feeling." Her mother had told her once, "It's just in how we choose to feel it."

She took a deep breath as George pulled out a manilla envelope from his valise, one with a peculiar small marking on the cover: A simple green triangle. He flipped it open, and looked up at her.

"Are you nervous?" He asked.

She shook her head, "Excited." Her eyes were wide as she took in the room around them, and tried to get a bering on where she was in this maze of a building. George turned the folder around to her, and she noticed several items were blacked out. Redacted. She began to read the rest that wasn't. As she did, her face was a kaleidoscope of emotions: interest, confusion, disgust, shock and finally awe.

"They... killed all those people?" She finally asked, peeling her eyes away from the file. George nodded slowly. "Did they believe that what they were doing would actually work?"

George looked at her for a moment, maybe deciding how to respond, or formulating his own thoughts on the matter, or just getting a read on her. "I think so," he said, eventually. "I think they were on a path, and they were hellbent on accomplishing whatever they set out to accomplish. When it comes to cults, it's hard to tell who really believes what. Never underestimate the power of belief to shape a person's actions. Beyond that, someone's ability to tune out reason in favor of what they wish were true." At this last sentence, he almost scoffed.

"But... They really thought they could conjure some kind of... god?"

George nodded again, "I think they did. But I don't think whatever they were working toward had anything to do with God."

"You think they did..." Dorothy repeated slowly, "...did believe what they were doing would work? Or did conjure something?"

Lewiston was quiet for a moment again, but no longer looking at Dorothy, his eyes were preoccupied with his hands folded in front of him. "Honestly, how much of a difference does it make? Those people are dead because of what they did."

Shifting gears, Dorothy asked a question that had been burning in her mind since the library, "Where did they come across the artifact?"

"It came from Portugal," he said, "but you already knew that. It was already in the Americas by the time it got into their hands."

Dorothy nodded, as if she had expected something like that. Maybe it was in a Museum, or sold on the black market or something. There was a silence between them, as they both contemplated their own thoughts, and it was broken by Dorothy who finally said, "Show me."

Lewiston didn't make a move, again just eyeing her up, perhaps gauging whether she was serious or not. He shifted in his seat, and then replied, "If I show you, there's a couple things I need you to do first."

"Name it."

He produced a single sheet of printed paper, the top of which read simply:

Consultant Non-Disclosure Agreement and Release of Liability

"For starters, I need you to read this, and sign it." He handed it over to her. "And I mean that, please read it first."

It was all standard fare NDA terms, but the repercussions for violating this agreement were left quite vague, with language like "The Agency may take any action deemed appropriate to protect its assets, intellectual and / or tangible, and the confidentiality thereof." and "The consultant agrees to release any and all findings to the Agency, and remit any transmission of said information for their own records or to any other party, including any proprietary or a priori confidential information, and / or any new discoveries or revelations."

"Revelations?" She asked out loud as she continued to read. Lewiston was silent. "This is pretty unorthodox," she added skeptically.

"If we go any further with this," he began, quietly, "you have to understand that this is very serious, and very confidential. You cannot tell anyone, not even your secret diary. Whatever happens in that room," Lewiston gestured to a plain door on the far side of the room, "stays between you, me, and the black ink."

Dorothy nodded, and signed the form. That plain door was locked and required two separate keys to open, which she found a little odd. It squeaked a tired moan as he pushed it open, and flipped on the lights. Who's still paying the electric bill here? She thought. The room was pale and bare. In fact, the only thing in it was another table and a single chair. Unlike the first room, this one had no windows looking out onto the open warehouse floor and all its shelves. This one was tiny and cramped. It reminded her a bit of an interrogation room she had been in once, years ago. Lewiston led her in, and asked her to sit, then disappeared. After a moment, he returned with a metal box.

"Look... Ms. Fairfield--"

"Somerset, please. If it's all the same to you," she corrected.

"Ms. Somerset," George sighed, "When you're done, just put it back in the box, and shut the lid. It'll automatically lock. Don't shut the lid without the artifact inside." He spoke slowly and carefully. He then placed a pair of gloves, a pair of earplugs, and a pair of what looked like sunglasses on the table. "Please put on these gloves, and don't take them off until you're done. If you need me, just knock on the door."

"You aren't going to be in here with me?" She cracked a nervous laugh. Lewiston just shook his head, gravely. The excitement returned to her, or was it anxiety?

George Lewiston left the room, and left her alone with these items on the table. The creaking of the door as it closed was the last sound she heard as the seconds passed, just her and this metal box.

Everything felt so industrial, so official. She was used to her library, the comfort of books and warm bulbs burning away the stale pallid light of... all this. But here she was, right in the middle of it, and she felt like she was in the right place. She slipped on the gloves, heavy and rubber, and felt like she might as well be prepping for surgery. Scalpel, please, she thought jokingly, as she reached for the box in front of her.

There was a button on its front, and it seemed to depress willingly, like it was just waiting for someone to let out whatever lay inside. She knew what lay inside, or at least she thought she knew.

The artifact was dark, apparently ebony, carved with painstaking precision. She lifted it gingerly out of its metal enclosure, and held it fast in her hands, careful not to let it touch her skin. For a while, she felt silly, but she knew the caution with which archaeologists were supposed to handle things from the past. Delicate things. Things left behind by a culture we can no longer know. This thing felt that way too.

It was small, but heavy, and at first it felt solid. It wasn't until she started to turn it around in her hands, taking stock of each of its sides, that she noticed it felt like something was inside. Something that shifted its weight around. She expected something hard, like another piece of wood, but this felt organic. She pictured a small heart, still beating, still pulsing with life, carrying blood from nowhere to nowhere. She pictured an eye, peering out from the solid sides of that box, watching her, rolling around freely as she turned it, but never taking its watchful gaze off of her. No, it wasn't anything like that. It couldn't be. Maybe something dead, she thought, and yet there seemed to be an electricity that came from the box, into her hands, gently tearing through her nerves, all but imperceptible. She felt it, and it felt alive.

For a few minutes, she just held it, staring at it, in total disbelief of where she was and what she was doing. Oh, if only Dr. Fulani could see her. Dorothy didn't know if she would be jealous or proud. She pulled out a small pad and a pencil from her purse, and began transcribing the symbols on the box. Each side was a perfect square spiral from the inside out to the edges, and each symbol of the Tartessian language so intricate and precise. It almost looked laser-cut, but she knew better. Unless this was a forgery, it had to have been made by hand. As she finished transcribing the last of its six sides, she noticed with some amusement that the numbering and placement of the characters seemed highly significant:

Every character of their 36-character alphabet appeared exactly 36 times. A perfect square, she thought. Every side had exactly 216 characters each, though no two sides shared the same combinations. 216 is 6 cubed, and the total number of characters is 1,296. 9 sets of 144, 12 squared, each set overlapping between the 6 faces in such a way to balance out in thirds. So many precessional numbers.

When she added up the numeric sums of each character on each of the faces, every face totaled 3,996, in other words, 666 times 6. She didn't find this spooky, since she knew the history of that number, but she made note of it anyway. That meant that the total numeric value of all characters on all faces was 23,976, another precessional number, and the number of years in the Great Year. That was more spooky to her. Clearly, she thought, this was very intentional.

Dorothy continued to work at the symbols, trying to pull words out where she could. Here or there she would stumble across something that almost formed a full word, or parts which seemed disparate but could form words when crossed over each other. Words like "corn", and "char", and "sea". Words that didn't make any sense out of context, mostly nouns. The characters did not form perfect grids, but they did create seemingly linear cross-sections. They formed trails, and forks, and loops. They seemed to go every which way, and yet when she took a step back, it always seemed so simple.

After an hour, she put the box down. She stared at it still, trying to think of any angle she could approach it from which might elucidate its secrets. What if I look at it from a point, seeing three sides at once? She mused, though again it yielded nothing more interesting than seemingly ironic geometrical patterns.

She stared, and wrote, and drew, and thought, and repeated this process for another half hour before suddenly she leapt to her feet. The box had just moved! Eyes wide, she continued to stare at it, but now wary and less interested in unraveling its mysteries... Or, was she growing more interested? By now she had over 40 pages of notes, drawings, and guesses, many things crossed out, some circled, a handful underlined.

Still wary, Dorothy sat back down after a few minutes without seeing any movement, but she didn't touch the box. Not yet. Perhaps it was a trick of her eyes? She sat there with her thoughts, imagining what might be in it. It was airtight. There didn't seem to be any openings, or even any seams. It seemed to be solid. Then... she heard it.

"How long?" came a strange, smooth voice, almost like a chorus of voices, pouring out from all directions in this room, echoing around the flat and barren walls. "How long has it been?" The voices seemed to speak in unison. Some she noticed were male, some female, some old, and others very, very young. She noticed her own voice in this choir. Not the voice she hears when she speaks, but the one she hears back when she listens to recordings of herself. Recordings of her singing. Some of the voices seemed to whisper, some were speaking with a flat affect, some seemed worried, some excited, others happy, or sad, and some too buried in the deepest parts of it all were screaming. It spoke slowly, as if it was pained to do so.

"Have you come for me to come for you?" It continued. "Have you heard me hearing you? Have you seen me? Have I seen you?"

A chill ran down Dorothy's spine, and she moved for the box to put it in the metal enclosure, but decided to reach for the earplugs instead. The ambient drone of the room's fluorescent lighting was drowned out by the plugs, and she was reminded of so many concerts, fighting through the noise to hear just the band. And like that music, it came through too.

"Have you dreamt me, dreaming you? How long?" It cut through like there was nothing else except for it, and all those myriad voices toppling over each other to cry, shriek, exclaim, explain, and sing. "Where was I? Where are you? Can you help me?"

Dorothy never took her eyes off that box, and she watched as it seemed to bump and shake, moving around... twitching. "I can help you."

With that, she grabbed the artifact, and shoved it back into its cage, slamming the lid shut on it, and then leapt over to the door in one quick hop, and gave three sharp knocks. Almost immediately, the door opened, and she burst out of the room and nearly fell over. Lewiston helped her up, and grabbed her by her shoulders. Dorothy was shaking.

"Ms. Somerset, are you alright? Talk to me," he implored urgently. She gave an unsteady nod of her head, and snapped the gloves off of her hands, leaving them discarded on the floor. She walked to the far corner of the room and sat down, facing that door, and that room, and that box, just hugging her knees. George walked in and retrieved everything that was on the table, including Dorothy's notes. He slipped them into his valise and he placed the box on the metal desk.

"Put that thing away!" She cried, "Please! Get it out of my sight."

Lewiston picked it back up, and bent down, opening up a hidden safe and slipping the thing inside. He then buried his keys for this place in his pocket, and walked over to sit down next to her. He didn't say anything, just watched her as she took deep breaths and calmed down. It took a few minutes.

After a while, he spoke up again, "Do you want to talk about it?" Dorothy just shook her head.