Through Glass Darkly Episode 1 (14 page)

‘The only question for me,’ continued Marlow with a tone of determination I hadn’t heard in his voice before, ‘is where I go next.’

‘I’m with you Rob,’ responded Harry without delay, ‘I don’t yet know where this ride is taking us, I don’t even know whether I’ll like where we end up, and I certainly don’t know how these things can have come about. But I know this place is real, and that for me confirms there’s at least an element of value in what we’re doing.’

‘But are we sure we really wish to achieve this goal?’ Retorted Jean. ‘If this should by some miracle lead to… such a discovery. . . to unending life! My friends such a thing could change and damage our society in ways which I can barely imagine.

‘To suddenly increase a lifetime beyond measure, it could have psychological repercussions upon even the strongest mind. Perhaps undermine a person’s faith, damage their relationships with loved ones and friends… How could a marriage survive if just one member chose to become young again? How would you or I feel at the sight of our parents or even grandparents made younger than ourselves?’

‘They’re all good points Jean,’ responded Peter with an unexpected enthusiasm. ‘But take a look at it from another angle. Surely a longer life would fit right in with those exalted socialist ideals of yours? With just a few more years might not a person overcome even the most humble birth, to acquire the education and opportunities of their more fortunate peers. What would it take… another fifty years, perhaps a hundred? Before your long awaited peaceful revolution delivered itself.’

‘Perhaps so,’ conceded Jean, thoughtfully, ‘and yet . . . with immortality a man could become many things, not all of them so good.’

It was dusk by the time we finally finished debating the pro’s and con’s of our situation, and what we should do next. Harry was eager to share the temple discoveries we’d made with the world’s academic community, but also begrudgingly accepted that to reveal such a find might well jeopardise our chances of pursuing the thing further. As such, after much disagreement and compromise we all eventually agreed to document the site as best we could, before concealing it pending our own further investigations.

Copies of our collective notes along with directions to the site would be sent for secure storage with family or friends in our respective homelands, in order to avoid the possibility of the site ever being lost again. We would then journey to Jerusalem to discover what the scroll and wall writings could reveal.

Despite the debate and disagreement though, it was still an amicable decision once made, and then it became just a question of breaking the work down into its necessary actions for the following few days labour. Documenting our findings was going to be the single biggest task, and for that we were going to rely heavily upon Harry to identify the areas where we should focus. Jean would then attempt to capture as much detail as possible of the relief carvings and inscriptions in a number of sketches and rubbings. Peter and myself would simultaneously attempt to survey and map the layout of the temple, its dimensions and alignment, the chambers we’d discovered within it, as well as to describe as best we could its construction materials and the location of the different elements being documented in more detail. The idea being that we’d be able to figure out where each illustration, script or feature was located within the complex, even after we’d left the site.

Marlow had decided to focus entirely upon the final chamber. He was convinced he’d missed something or not understood his vision correctly, as such he was going to attempt to document the layout and detail of the cavern, its obelisks and perhaps most importantly the altar. We’d also asked Mkize and the other men to work on a couple of makeshift ladders for the entrance and a cover that we could place over the hole before filling the earth back in, once we were ready to leave.

It was interesting work once we got into it, and there were several details within the chambers we only really began to pick up on once we started to examine them in a more systematic way. In fact it was only the gradual build up of smoke from our torches that made us break off from the work once we’d started. But even with our dedication the level of detail was always going to be too great for us to be able to capture anywhere near all of it. Perhaps if we’d had better lights to enable us to take better photographs it would’ve been different. But without them, having to record everything by hand became at times frustrating and overwhelming experience, especially for Harry. Over the course of the next week though we eventually managed to capture enough detail for him to give his reluctant approval he still made us leave a message inside indicating when and by whom the temple had been rediscovered, just in case.

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