A/N: This is my first real BSG fanfic, so I hope you guys enjoy it. I was experimenting with a theory and ended up writing a story, and so in the first part/prologue no recognizable characters will be there. I hope you'll stick around though, Apollo and Starbuck will be there in the second and third parts. Any and all feedback is greatly appreciated, and thanks for reading!
The Thirteenth Sign
By Lola Ravenhill
The amber liquid caught the florescent light and filtered it, splitting it into gleaming bits that fell over the metal desk. Suzanne Ludwig lifted the small glass to her lips and sipped the vanilla and citrus flavored drink. The door opened behind her, and she held the glass up to the light.
"'Cuarenta y tres'," she said, staring through the glass. "Arguably one of the oldest liquors in existence. Legend has it the recipe originated with the ancient Phoenicians."
"That's rather fitting," Adrian Somerled said, coming around to sit on the edge of the desk. He was a tall, well built Brit with a passion for archeology, leading a few colleagues to wonder if he could have been Indiana Jones in a past life. Adrian just rolled his eyes and continued his digging, leaving a snickering Suzanne in his wake. "They're almost all ready out there."
"Great. They get an up close and intimate look at me making a fool of myself," Suzanne sighed, taking another drink. "They'll yank our budget and before you know it I'll be stuck giving tours at some museum in East Bumfuck, Ohio, and you'll probably be shuttled off to the basement of Magdalen College, never to be seen again amidst the piles and piles of paperwork."
Adrian grinned, raking a hand through his fair hair. "I doubt that'll happen. We're in the remnants of ancient bloody Atlantis! Neither Oxford nor Harvard will want to let this one slip through their fingers. We're sitting on one of the biggest discoveries in human history, and they're not going to let go of the person who's led the Harvard division of the entire project so far."
"Yeah, they're too afraid that I'll expose this work to the world before it's ready for it," she smirked. With another exhalation of breath she tossed back the rest of the drink. "Well, from your mouth to God's ears, Ade, that I don't get canned when I tell them their precious Atlanteans most likely took a cue from E.T. and made for the stars."
"Should we get them drunk first?" Adrian asked, hauling Suzanne up from her seat and brushing a piece of black hair out of her eyes.
"Couldn't hurt." Suzanne picked up her folder, crossed herself, and then kissed the small gold cross around her neck that she had received for her confirmation. "Let's do this thing."
A year and a half earlier, just like a scene out of a wonderfully irrational book, a little bit of land had risen up in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. Shortly after the first geologists had landed there, they had discovered with unnatural haste that the island may have once been a part of the famed and legendary Atlantis. The highly secret bidding war began, with Harvard and Oxford universities and their respective governments winning the rights to lead the teams exploring the ruins that were on the island.
Suzanne and Adrian had been there since the beginning, stuck on the tin can of a boat that had been home for a year and a half. Adrian had been the one to discover the carvings, the literal writing on the wall that eventually gave an idea to where the Atlanteans had gone. They still didn't know the reason the ancient people had left, but after the translators had made some progress with the writings they found out that that wasn't the most important thing.
Suzanne smoothed her hair back into a bun and adjusted her nicest pair of khaki pants. She was trying to make a good appearance, but it was kind of hard when you hadn't seen modern civilization for a good few months. Oh, what she wouldn't give for a Gap at this point. She spotted Adrian, standing in the back of the room, and gave him a weak smile. Adrian smiled back, nodded, and winked.
"Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee," she muttered to herself as she walked up to the podium. Suzanne smiled at the audience, seeing the stern faces of worldwide academia gazing back at her. She resisted the urge to start chewing on the inside of her cheek, then shuffled her papers and began to read from them.
"Good afternoon everyone; we're all very glad that you made the long trip out here to come to our little conference. For convenience's sake, please hold all questions until the end of the presentation. There will be plenty of time afterwards to deal with them. As you all know, we have been investigating and excavating what is believed to be a small part of what was once the continent of Atlantis. The amount of discoveries that we've made in the past year have been truly astounding, things that will change the traditionally held views of human history.
"The reason that you have assembled here today is because of a sample of writing discovered on the inner walls of a temple we believe was at one point in time dedicated to the sun. It…it is…we ha—"
Suzanne swallowed roughly and tugged at the collar of her blouse. She despised public speaking, to the point that she had almost not gotten her doctorate because of the stage fright that took over for her oral exam. 'Oh, fuck it,' she mouthed, and put the prepared speech aside.
"Okay, here's the big thing, why we've spent all of this money getting all of you out here." In the back of the room Adrian bit back a moan and covered his eyes. He was afraid that this would happen. Now all that had to make an appearance was Suzanne's Brooklyn accent and they were truly done for. "In an antechamber of what we've taken to calling the Zodiac Temple, we found these carvings." She took up the remote to the projector and clicked it on. "Ade, hit the lights please?" He quickly obliged and soon Suzanne had a red laser pointer flickering on the projector screen.
"These carvings bear a strong resemblance to ancient Persian cuneiform script. The first examples that we have of this specific script in the Middle East have been dated to about some time in the 6th century BCE. However, as you have already seen in some of our preliminary reports, carbon dating tests on the ash in the pottery fragments found in this area have shown that this temple was used around the time of 3000 BCE. We could then postulate from this that the Atlanteans, when they abandoned the island, took this method of writing with them and introduced it to people on the Eurasian continent."
A murmur flowed around the room, swelling like a wave and making Suzanne tap her fingers nervously against the podium. If they thought this was unorthodox, wait until they heard what the team had possibly translated the cuneiforms into.
A German accented voice called out from somewhere near the back. "Do you have any proof of that sort of migration?"
"No, as I said before, it's just a theory at this point. Now, if I may move along. Our team of linguists has made an attempt to translate the cuneiforms. They used a key based on the 6th century BCE carvings, with some old Sanskrit tossed as well. And what we came up with is, well…pretty damn surprising." She ignored the groan she just knew came from Adrian. The next slide clicked onto the screen, where a couple of lines were highlighted.
"These are probably the most intriguing bits. It basically translates to 'The time to leave is soon. We take our ships and fly for the heavens. A new life and home awaits us in the firmament.' Now, in light other examples of religious and prophetic literature, this could just be a metaphorical statement, however..." she took a deep breath, "we do know that from other evidence found on site that the Atlanteans most likely had the capabilities of space travel."
This time, it wasn't as much a murmur as an explosion that went through the room. Suzanne was prepared for this. She knew that she held a bombshell in her hands, and that one word could easily set the explosion alight. Let the truth be known, though the heavens may fall was the guiding statement in her mind, and her gut feeling was obligating her to not keep this light hidden.
A vaguely familiar face stood up; she suspected he had been her boss at a few points in her career. "So what you're basically saying is that these writings are definitive proof that the ancient Atlanteans, when their continent was destroyed, took off for outer space?" The clamor rose again, and Suzanne raised her voice to be heard over it.
"Nothing is definitive at this point," she said. "This is all speculation, but the evidence we have is leading us in that direction, as incredible as it is."
"Incredible might be understating it," the man fired back. "We humans, as a culture, haven't been able to physically make it past the moon yet, and you're saying that these people a good 4000 years ago were not only able to go into space, but to also leave the planet permanently and look for a new home out there."
Suzanne clicked to another slide. "Well, there's also text that we found that has them headed for what is most likely Delphi in Greece. A few geographic landmarks in that area appear to correspond to some things described in these sets of cuneiforms," she said, her voice like sharp spikes. Her patience was fast wearing thin. She knew that the backers of the project wouldn't take the team's statements as well as some of the others in the past, but they didn't have to be so damned snide about it. She grinned widely, showing all of her teeth and making Adrian begin to sidle his way up to the front of the room as fast as possible. "But yes, I'm saying that a portion of the Atlanteans, when things got bad, used their get off of Earth free card and left."
The snickers coming out of the audience were now obvious, and it was pretty clear they weren't laughing with her. From somewhere another voice called out "You're a loony!" Suzanne growled under her breath. "Why thank you, Mr. Chap—"she got out before Adrian yanked the microphone away from her mouth.
"All questions and comments should be limited to dealing with the subject matter at hand. If anyone makes any more disparaging comments towards the work or any of the members of the team they will be ejected and summarily sent home," he said in his poshest English accent. That settled them down. As implausible and impossible as they found the statements about Atlantis (which was a bit of an oxymoron in itself when dealing with ancient bloody Atlantis) they wanted to stick around to see what happened. It was almost like a train wreck in that sense, especially if Dr. Suzanne Ludwig was bound to do any more public speaking.
She covered the microphone with her hand. "Would you mind taking over for me?" Suzanne murmured to Adrian. "I've got to get some fresh air before I end up driving a knife through my heart or someone else's."
"Go ahead," he whispered back. "You've already got the important stuff out of the way, and you've certainly gave them a lot to think about. I'm just doing to do a word by word break down of the cuneiforms, and then we'll be done."
Suzanne nodded, looking deep into Adrian's hazel eyes for just a moment. As she moved away from the podium she heard him launch into his part of the speech. "Our translation of the lines that have caused us to make this speculation hinges on this word here—'Kobol', which in Old Persian means 'heaven'…
Later that night, when all of the academics were safe back in their quarters on the ship and the sun had set behind the sea, Adrian found Suzanne sitting on one of the highest hills of the island. As he approached from behind, he could see the bottle of Cuarenta y tres once again in her hand and a thread of smoke curling up from the other one.
"What are you having?" he asked, sitting down next to her.
"Cloves," she sighed, exhaling smoke. "McKinney smuggled them in for me, God bless that wonderful woman. So how did the rest of that fiasco go in there?"
Adrian shifted, dislodging the pebble that was irritating his leg. "Well…they'd really like to see more proof before they consider our ideas even remotely plausible."
"I think it's remotely plausible that one or more of them might have a lead pipe stuck up their asses."
"That may be true, but they are in charge of our continued study of this place, so we have to try and be nice to them."
"Were they at least intrigued enough to let us continue digging more into this place?" Suzanne asked.
He glanced sideways at her. "They're convinced that this is Atlantis. They're not going to give up this plot of land for anything."
Suzanne nodded and took another drag. "True. I just wish they'd be a little more open minded when it comes to the things that we've been discovering here lately." She gazed out over the darkened sea, the salt-scented breeze tugging her hair into whorls and knots.
"People are scared of what they don't understand." Adrian reached over and helped himself to a clove and the bottle, taking a draught and lighting up with efficient movements. "Although you do have to admit we did start with the biggest thing with them. We could have worked our way up to the space travel theories."
Suzanne shrugged. "I guess I thought that was the most important part in the grand scheme of things these days." She sighed and flopped back onto the scrubby grass, letting the smoke drift lazily out of her mouth. "Look," she pointed out at the clear sky. "You can see some of the zodiac constellations. There's Sagittarius, and there's Capricorn, and I think that's Virgo."
Adrian lay down next to her. "The Atlanteans could see these exact same constellations over four thousand years ago, give or take a few changes. Current theories say the ancient Sumerians came up with the original symbols about two thousand BCE…"
"And I'd bet anything that when the Atlanteans abandoned this island some ended up in that area of the world also and took their constellations with them. If they could space travel, they were most certainly watching the skies," Suzanne sighed. "And we know that they knew about the constellations. Those statues in the Zodiac Temple back that up." She rolled over onto her stomach and dragged her knapsack closer, pulling a file folder out of it. Suzanne flipped it open, revealing black and white and also color pictures of the inside of the temple. Adrian drifted to lean on his side and get a better view of the shots. "If we'd found, you know, maybe a single solitary statue of a ram or a scorpion it wouldn't be as suspicious, but twelve of them? All in a circle, in the same order as it is on the calendar today? I wish I'd have told those jerks today about this, it would have been stronger evidence that if anything they'd traveled to the Eurasian mainland, but noooooo, I had to go off ranting on and on about space travel." Her head dropped forward, banging into the dirt over and over. Adrian reached over and placed his palm under her forehead.
"Stop that. You're just going to give yourself a headache." Suzanne looked up at him, her forehead a smeary mess of dusty brown dirt.
"Already got a headache."
"Well, banging it against the ground isn't going to help. Now what else do you have in that folder?"
She gave him a suspicious look. "What makes you think I have anything else in here?"
Adrian leaned in close, whispering into her ear. "I know you, Suzanne. I know you get obsessive about things, and that when something catches your eye, you're not going to let go without a fight."
"All right, I'll give you that." She pulled out another photo, laying it on top of the pile. "Look at this photo of the statue of the archer, Sagittarius. Notice anything wrong with it?"
After a few moments, Adrian murmured, "There should be an arrow in there, shouldn't it? It doesn't make sense that he'd be drawing back a bow with nothing cocked in it."
"Bingo. Well, loser with no time that I am, I attempted to figure out that if that arrow was fired, so to speak, where could it lead to." Adrian shot her a skeptical look. "It's metaphorical."
"It couldn't just be pointing in the direction of the sunrise?"
"After nearly a year and a half on this rock, have you not come to see that things are rarely that simple?"
"Good point."
Suzanne pulled a scribbled-up map and placed that on top next. "Okay, look here," she said, the finger acting as a pointer shaking just slightly, and she took a drag from the clove to steady herself. "At first, it looks like it's just heading in a northeasterly direction that eventually ends up somewhere in the Norwegian Sea about to smack right into the Arctic. But…" she pulled out a sheet of marked up clear plastic, the kind used in an overhead projector, and placed it over the map, "…if you get a little more precise with your calculations, you find that the straight line traced directly from the notch on the bow leads you through the northern bit of Scotland and cuts right through the Orkney Islands."
Adrian sat up a little straighter, staring at the map in surprise. "Scotland? Everything else we've seen so far ends them up in the Hellenic and Middle Eastern areas of the world."
"Which is what makes this so drastic, I know," Suzanne nodded in agreement. "It gets better though." Another paper came out of the pile. "I looked up what that line crossed through specifically on those areas of land. Nothing of much significance was in Scotland, but it got really interesting once I hit the islands." She flipped over the paper, revealing a glossy color picture of four standing stones, tall and skinny and gleaming in the sunlight captured on the print. "These are called the Stones of Stenness. There's only four major stones left now (and don't be fooled by this picture, these stones are a good twenty feet tall in real life), but the post holes on the ground indicate that during its heyday, there were twelve large stones on the site."
"The same number as the zodiac signs."
"Yeah. That's not the only thing though. Within the last year archeologists have been examining the top of the stones in greater detail, and they've discovered some carvings there. They're just small holes drilled into the stones, but they're in very precise positions." The next paper in the pile had the detailed pictures of the top of the stones with ink linking the holes together as if it were a game of connect-the-dots.
"Oh bloody hell," Adrian breathed. "Capricorn… Aquarius… Aries… Taurus… They've got the constellations carved into the stones. The exact same ones that are carved into the bases of each corresponding statue in the Zodiac Temple."
"That's what it looks like to me, and to the archeologists there as well. The stones are said to have been erected around 3000 BCE as well, one of the oldest examples of standing stones on the planet—"
"And existing at the same time as Atlantis did. Even if they hadn't perfected their space travel at that time, I'm sure they could have gotten to Scotland and back fairly easily. And they definitely would have had the technology to put up those stones and make them stick for 5000 years." Adrian laughed incredulously. "This is amazing. I don't know how in all the hells you came up with this, but good Lord…"
"I've started to scare myself," Suzanne agreed. "If this is true, we've just changed the perception of human history up to this point irrevocably."
"This, along with them pulling an E.T., and everything else…" Adrian flopped onto his back, waving his clove in the air and watching the smoke drift around in lacy patterns.
"It's amazing." Suzanne closed the folder, shoved it back in her bag, and lay down once more.
"So what are you going to now? You're not going to bring this up to the sponsors, are you?" Adrian asked, a worried note in his voice.
"God no. I think…I'm going to make a pilgrimage to Stenness. Check out the area, really get up close and personal with those stones, and examine the skies around there. I've got some vacation days coming up, and I'm sure after today's performance they'd be more than happy to give me some time to prevent me from cracking up." Suzanne looked over at Adrian, a gleam in her eye that was enhanced by the fluorescent lights around the excavation site back down the hill. "Wanna come along?"
Adrian grinned back. "Wouldn't miss it for the world."
to be continued...