He reached bottom to a waiting Sarah, but his eyes were already fixed on The Obelisk. He stepped out of the cage and breathed, "You weren't kidding." It was so black, it almost hurt his eyes. If it wasn't for the silver diamond on the front, it would have been hard to discern its shape or even if it was a structure or an entrance to a cave. His mind wandered, thinking about how the universe radiates at a temperature of three degrees Kelvin and how the space between the stars didn't look as black as this.

"This is our workstation here, which monitors The Obelisk." It was Sarah voice breaking the spell. Alex looked at where Sarah was pointing. There were three tables next to one another with a series of monitors and computers hastily networked together. Three people were sitting there looking at the screens. On the screens there were multiple views of The Obelisk, a false colour image moving through various permutations and a couple of graphs showing the data that's being received from the various sensors. Alex took a quick glance around at his surroundings. The chamber was moderately big, roughly four metres in height and some 20 by 30 metres in width and depth. The Obelisk itself was located at one end, with a pool of water, surrounded by caution tape, at the other. There were multiple flood lamps lighting up the chamber, along with space heaters and several cameras including an elaborate one in the centre of the chamber that was no doubt a spectrometer used to record other energy radiation beyond that of visible light. There was also a fourth person who was walking in amongst the various skeletal remains, taking careful notes of the surroundings.

Sarah introduced the other people at the tables as Lt. Dan Barrow, who was handling communications, David Simon, who was the site engineer and Adrian Fenske the computer and spectrographic tech. The remaining person was Julie Mandres, a student assistant that has helped Sarah on digs in the past.

"Have you done a spectroscopic analysis of the artifact yet?" asked Alex staring at the data on the screen.

"Yes," replied Fenske without looking up, "it's very unusual. The partial diamond section is showing almost normal light reflection except no absorption lines."

"None?" exclaimed Alex incredulously.

"Sure there are strong spikes and weak spikes along the spectrum but it almost looks like it's trying to mask what it's made of."

"What about the black section."

"Ah, that's even more fascinating. It has absolutely no reflective light and virtually no emissive radiation coming from it." Fenske quickly punched up a bar graph that was almost completely flat, with each bar occasionally making a small jump up a notch, then back down. Fenske pointed at the graph. "Here we're getting an ever so slight reading in the ultraviolet. In terms of intensity I would say that your average TV remote probably outshines it, if one could see into the ultraviolet that is."

"Interesting." mused Alex lost in thought.

"Does it mean something?" asked Sarah.

"Hmmmm? Oh, I have no idea. It probably does mean something though."

"Way to put yourself out there old boy." It was Morten. He and Kraus had made their way down and were now standing beside them. "Well, I must say, when you first told me about this, I figured you had all collectively gone funny in the head. However, I must say, I am impressed, very impressed." He suddenly turned to Sarah, "Does your husband know what you do for a living?"

Sarah ignored the question, "Do you have any idea how long this may have been here?"

Morton's eyes narrowed and a look of annoyance crossed his face. "Well let's see." Morton quickly looked around the cave while rubbing his chin as if deep in thought. "Well there's the K-T boundary up there. Fairly well defined, no surprise considering where we are. So I would say it's been here anywhere between at most 250 million years to, oh let's say, last month." Morton crossed his arms and angrily stared down Sarah.

"Seriously?" replied Sarah angrily.

"Well what did you expect? Did you think I can look around and give you a precise time and day when this thing was put here? It was a stupid question! Had you asked 'Will you be able to give an approximate period when this was put here?' I would have answered 'Maybe.' And be significantly less annoyed. This thing shows no sign of decay, it's not covered in dust or soil or sediment. As I recall from the briefing, you tried to take a sample from it, and found it impervious to all means of extraction."

"We will be bringing a laser in next week." interrupted Simon.

"Thanks Scooter." sneered Morton sarcastically, "It will probably fail too. The point being is, that at best I can take some samples and do some radiological testing, which will take time I might add, and be no closer answering your original question, or even narrowing down my original timeframe."

Sarah sighed, "I actually understand the process; graduated with a Ph.D. you know. I wasn't expecting an instant answer; I was expecting a plan of attack on your part."

"Then you should have made it clearer. Perhaps you should have minored in English while you were at university." Morton glanced at The Obelisk, "I guess I will look around and see what I can dig up, literally."

"Sarah."

Alex looked over; it was Kraus squatting next to one of the skeletal remains. He was motioning to Sarah to come over.

"You found something?"

"Yes," replied Kraus, "I've been examining this skull and a couple of others here, I'm pretty certain these remains are not Amerind, they can't be Mayan."