The City of Mirrors (90 page)

I am a historian. I deal in facts, in evidence. My professional creed dictates that only through the prisms of doubt and patient scholarship can the truth of the past be revealed. But one thing my various travels in the past have taught me, ladies and gentlemen, is that behind every legend lies an element of truth.

May I have the first slide please?

<~?~ART 002 TK: Twin maps of North America, circa the year zero and 1003 a.v.>

Since our return to North America, thirty-six months ago, a great deal has been learned about the state of the continent both before and during the Quarantine Period. These side-by-side images represent two very different North Americas. The contrast could not be more vivid. On the left we see a reconstruction of the continent as it stood in the final years of the American Imperial Period. Cities of millions dominated both coasts. Unsustainable agricultural practices had decimated virtually all of the continent’s interior plains. Heavy industry, powered by fossil fuels, had rendered vast swaths of land virtually uninhabitable, the soil and water fouled by heavy metals and chemical by-products. Though some wilderness remained, primarily in the alpine regions of the Appalachian uplift, the northern Pacific coast, and the Intermountain West, there is little doubt that the image represents a continent, and a culture, consuming itself.

On the right we see North America as it now stands. Airship reconnaissance, conducted from floating platforms situation beyond the two-hundred-mile quarantine line, has revealed a pristine wilderness stunning in its organic diversity. Virgin forests now rise where once stood huge cities and poisonous industrial complexes. Gone are the tamed fields of the continent’s interior plains, replaced by grasslands of incomparable biological richness. Most significantly, a majority of the great coastal metropolises, including New York, Philadelphia, Boston, Baltimore, Washington, D.C., Miami, New Orleans, and Houston, have all but disappeared, subsumed by rising sea levels. Nature, as is its wont, has reclaimed the land, wiping away the leavings of the imperialistic power that once radiated from its shores.

Powerful images, indeed—but hardly unexpected. It is at ground level that our most startling findings have occurred.

Next slide?

<~?~ART 003 TK: Two mummified viral corpses side by side>

These mummified remains, one male, one female, were recovered twenty-three months ago in an arid basin at the foot of Southern California’s San Jacinto Mountains. Their monstrous appearance is inarguable. Note the elongation of the bones, particularly those of the hands and feet, which have taken on a clawlike aspect; the softening of the facial support structure, creating an almost fetal blandness, devoid of personality; the massive jaws and radically altered dentition. Yet, surprisingly, genetic testing indicates that they are, in fact, human beings—a paramutational counterpart of our species, endowed with the physiological attributes of nature’s most fearsome predators. Excavated at a depth just under two meters, these remains were found in the midst of many others, suggesting a mass die-off of some kind, probably occurring at or near the end of the first century
A.V
.—the same time frame to which carbon dating has attributed the writing of “The Book of Twelves.”

Are these the “virals” that our forebears warned us of? And if they are, how did these dramatic changes come about? To this there appears to be an answer.

Next slide?

<~?~ART 004 TK: Two viruses side by side>

On the left we see the EU-1 strain of the GC virus, taken from the body of the so-called “frozen man,” a polar researcher who succumbed to the infection a millennium ago. This virus, we believe, was the primary biological agent of the Great Catastrophe, a microorganism of such robustness and lethality that it was able to kill its human host within hours and virtually wiped out the world’s population in fewer than eighteen months.

I draw your attention now to the virus on the right, which was extracted from thymus tissue of one of the two corpses found in the Los Angeles basin. We now believe this to be a precursor to the EU-1 strain. Whereas the virus on the left contains a considerable quantity of genetic material from an avian source—more specifically,
Corvus corax,
known as the common raven—the one on the right does not. In its stead we find genetic material linking it to an altogether different species. Though our teams have yet to identify this organism’s genetic author, it bears some resemblance to
Rhinolophus philippinnensis,
or the large-eared horsehoe bat. We are calling this virus NA-1, or North America–1.

In other words, the Great Catastrophe was not caused not by a single virus but by two: one in North America and a second, descendant strain that subsequently appeared elsewhere in the world. From this fact, researchers have built a tentative chronology of the epidemic. The virus first emerged in North America, infiltrating the human population from an unknown vector, though in all likelihood a species of bat; at some later point, the NA-1 virus changed, acquiring avian DNA; this new, second strain, far more aggressive and lethal, subsequently made its way from North America to the rest of the world. Why the EU-1 strain failed to bring about the physical changes caused by NA-1 we can only speculate. Perhaps in some instances it did. But by and large, the consensus of opinion is that it simply killed its victims too quickly.

What does this mean for us? Put succinctly, the “virals” of “The Book of Twelves” are not fiction. They are not, as some have claimed, a mere literary device, a metaphor for the predatory rapaciousness of North American culture in the
B.V
. period. They existed. They were real. “The Book of Twelves” describes these beings as a manifestation of an almighty deity’s displeasure with mankind. That is a matter for each of us to weigh in the privacy of his of her own conscience. So, too, is the story of the man known as Zero and the twelve criminals who acted as the original vectors of infection. Speaking for myself, the jury is still out. But in the meantime, we know who and what the virals were: ordinary men and women, infected with a disease.

But what of humanity? What of the story of Amy and her followers? I turn now to the matter of survivors.

Next slide?

<~?~ART 005 TK: Map of North America, overlaid with three points: First Colony, Roswell, and Kerrville>

As everyone here certainly knows, it has been an exciting year in the field—very exciting, indeed. Excavations of several newly discovered human settlements in the North American West, dating from the first century of the Quarantine Period, have begun to bear fruit. Much of this work is still in its infancy. Yet I think it’s no understatement to say that what we’ve uncovered in the last twelve months alone has signaled a truly radical reconceptualizing of the period.

Our understanding of the early Quarantine Period has long presupposed that no human inhabitants remained in North America between the Equatorial Isthmus and the Hudson Frontier Line following the year zero. The disruption to the continent’s biological and social infrastructures was believed to have been so complete as to render the continent incapable of supporting human life, let alone any kind of organized culture.

We now know—and once again, the last year has been extraordinary—that this view of the Quarantine Period is incomplete. Indeed, there were survivors. Just how many, we may never know. But based on the findings of the last year, we now think it possible, indeed very likely, that they numbered in the tens of thousands, living in a number of communities throughout the Intermountain West and the Southern Plains.

The size and configuration of these settlements varied considerably, from a mountaintop village housing just a few hundred inhabitants to a city-sized compound in the hills of central Texas. But all give evidence of human habitation well after the continent was thought to have been depopulated. These communities also share a number of distinctive traits, most significantly a culture that was both classically survivalist and, paradoxically, deeply attentive to the social practice of being
human.
Within these protected enclaves, the men and women who survived the Great Catastrophe, and generations of their descendants, went about their lives, as men and women do. They married and had children. They formed governments and engaged in trade. They built schools and places of worship. They kept records of their experience—I am speaking, of course, about the documents known to everyone in this room, indeed to people throughout the settled territories, as “The Book of Sara” and “The Book of Auntie”—and, perhaps, even sought contact with others like themselves, beyond the walls of these isolated islands of humanity.

Using “The Book of Twelves” as a road map, research teams on the ground have identified three such settlements, all named within those writings. These include Kerrville, Texas; Roswell, New Mexico, the site of what has been called the “Roswell Massacre”; and the community we know as First Colony, in the San Jacinto Mountains of Southern California.

May I have the next image please?

<~?~ART 006 TK: Aerial photograph of First Colony excavation>

The photograph we see here provides an aerial view of the layout of the First Colony site, which might, for our purposes today, be considered a “typical” human settlement of the Quarantine Period. Situated on an arid plateau two thousand meters above the Los Angeles coastal formation, and guarded to the west by a granite ridge rising an additional fifteen hundred meters, the settlement presents itself very like a walled medieval city—roughly five square kilometers, irregularly shaped, with high ramparts defining the outer perimeter. These steel-and-concrete fortifications, which stood twenty meters high, appear to have been constructed right around the time of the Great Catastrophe. This conforms to “The Book of Twelves,” which asserts that First Colony was constructed to house children evacuated from the eastern coastal city of Philadelphia. Beyond these fortifications, the terrain now presents a mixture of alpine forest and high desert chaparral, but soil samples taken both within and outside the walls indicate that the mountainside was decimated by fire as recently as fifty years ago, and during the first century of the Quarantine Period, the terrain was almost entirely denuded.

The entire settlement seems to have been surrounded by banks of high-pressure sodium vapor lamps. These were powered, we believe, by a stack of proton exchange membrane fuel cells, connected by a buried cable to an array of wind-powered turbines, also dating from the pre-Q period, located forty-two kilometers to the north, in the San Gorgonio Pass. Seismic activity has substantially altered the northern slope of the mountain, and we have yet to locate the power trunk connecting First Colony to its primary energy source. But we hope this will happen in due course.

Inside the walls, we find several discrete zones of human activity, arranged in a ringlike formation and leading to a central core. The outer ring, which has received the most extensive excavation, seems to have served as a staging platform for defense. From these areas we have recovered a range of artifacts, including, at the lowest levels, a variety of conventional firearms of the pre-Q period, yielding at the upper levels to more homemade weaponry, such as knives, longbows, and crossbows. Though more primitive, these armaments were surprisingly sophisticated in their design and manufacture, with arrow points honed to a width of just fifty microns—sufficient, we believe, to pierce the crystalline-silicate breastplate of an infected human.

Moving farther in, we find discrete regions for sanitation, agriculture, livestock, commerce, and housing. Structures in the eastern and northern quadrants of the interior appear also to have served as domiciles, perhaps for married couples or families. The exposed foundation we see near the center seems to have been some kind of school dating from the pre-Q period but converted by the citizens of First Colony to perform a variety of civic functions. We believe that this building, the most substantial structure on the site, could have been employed as a final refuge in the event that the colony’s outer defenses were penetrated. But in daily life, it seems to have served as a kind of communal nursery or hospital.

On their own, these findings are remarkable enough. But there is more. “The Book of Twelves” speaks of First Colony as the place from which Amy and her fellows traveled east, eventually coming into contact with other survivors, including an armed force from Texas, known as the Expeditionary. Is there any archaeological record to support these claims?

I draw your attention now to the large, open area at the center, and in particular to the object located on the northwest corner.

May I have the next image?

<~?~ART 007 TK: First Colony Stone>

This object, which we are calling the First Colony Stone, sits adjacent to the settlement’s central public space. The stone itself is an ordinary granitic boulder of the type found throughout the San Jacinto uplift, standing three meters high, with a basal radius of about four meters. Etched into its surface we find three distinct groups of writings. The first group, by far the most extensive, begins with a date, 77
A.V
., followed by a list of what appears to be 206 names in four columns. As we can see, they are presented in family groups and include seventeen different surnames. Though there is some debate on this point, the arrangement suggests that these individuals may have perished in a single event, perhaps one associated with the massive earthquake that struck California at about that time.

Below this we see a second group of three names, also legible: Ida Jaxon, Elton West, and a person named as “The Colonel,” evidently a military leader of some stature. Beneath these markings we see the single word “Remembered.” Our best guess is that these individuals may have perished in some kind of battle, perhaps one in which the fate of the Colony itself was determined.

It is the third grouping, however, that is the most provocative. As we can see, the etching is much less sophisticated, and exposure to the elements has rendered the names unreadable to the naked eye. Significantly, wear-pattern analysis indicates that these markings date to about 350
A.V
., well after the settlement was abandoned. Again, there’s some disagreement on this point, but prevailing opinion holds that these markings are, like the others, a memorial of some kind. Digital enhancement reveals names well known to all.