Morning all. Less chipper this morning. Yesterday I managed to work through the day pretty well and then after work ended up going down the rabbit hole with the 9/11 retrospectives and memorials. While it is important to remember, it might not be so wise to remember right before bed. Those are not the visuals you want to take into sleep with you. So I am feeling a little draggy this morning. But draggy or not it is time to start the day. So the coffee is brewing and nothing counteracts nightmare residue like the scent of coffee, while it brews, we write. So timers at the ready and off we go…
I like this. I like the idea of knowing treasure maps are fake and then finding the story the mythical maps are based on and eventually learning the treasure isn’t anything like what the fake maps dreamed it was. This could be a really fun story to work on. I will need to clean up the extra bits but it could be fun for next year’s fifteen minute novel.
Tuesday, September 12th: He studied the ancient texts.
He studied the ancient texts and soon enough a pattern began to emerge. He kept them to himself, afraid of being ridiculed. After all who hadn’t heard of the fabled treasure? Every curio shop in the old town district had at least one map for sail claiming that it was the one genuine map to the secret treasure of the ancients.
In fact, he made a habit of collecting them. He used them as part of his lecture on history and myth. It was a good example of how stories altered over time, many of the maps shifting to show more recent beliefs in the various ancient cultures said to have hidden the treasure. In fact no one could quite figure out who the stories originated with.
Given the history of the area Peter believed that when the invaders arrived they came primed for looking for treasures and asked the fist group they found about them. Many of the tribes wanted only to be left in peace and it was tempting to simply point the invaders in a direction out of their territory and spin a tale about how what they sought was over there somewhere.
Peter rarely shared that view as he was certain it was more of what he would do in the situation rather than anything there was hard evidence for, but he suspected he wasn’t far off. The stories of the fabled treasure within each culture always pointed to it being some other group’s treasure trove and located it far from themselves.
‘And given that the descriptions always included information about the travels being difficult, but not too difficult seem to encourage sending the invaders off,’ Peter thought. He stretched.
This cache of ancient texts was found secreted in one of the mountain caves. The cold and dry conditions preserved them beautifully as it did the mummies that were stationed around them. As one of the fe2w capable of translating this rare and ancient script, Peter was called in while others dealt with the forensic of the mummies. If he hadn’t seen the mummies themselves, he would have wondered if the documents were faked.
The documents were, in a round about way about the treasure hidden in the mountains but it was like none of the other stories he found. And yet, it had similarities to most of the older versions.
‘It’s like all the little details that were parceled out into all of the other tales somehow were gathered into one. For a moment the story of the three blind men trying to describe an elephant came to mind. In the story, one touched a leg, another the trunk and a third the small tail and each of them described a different beast depending on which part of the elephant they held. None of them could describe the whole elephant from the piece they held. The story of the treasure seemed a bit like that. Each of the other tribes had a small piece and they spun the tale out from there, filling in the gaps they thought most likely. The documents he held were a bit like viewing the elephant in its full form instead of piecemeal.
‘If it is real,’ he thought. Peter decided that it might be time to pay a visit to the other research sectors. The mummies and other bits, including samples of the documents were undergoing analysis to determine age and authenticity. With luck something might have come back and if not, at least he could talk about what they contained with someone.
Ten til Midnight 