We sifted through the spoils, looking at each object in wonder. No, they were not spoils of war; they were the spoils of archaeology. And they weren’t spoiled at all, come to think of it. Most of the objects were made of plastic, some were metal. Large boxes with sharp edges, shiny circular pieces of plastic, coiled metal wires, small cylinders which we knew to be writing instruments, shards of glass. Other objects which we couldn’t identify, presumably they had been of use to the late twenty first century humans. The professor would know. He was old; not very old, but old enough to have a lot of knowledge about these things. He had devoted most of his life to it.
The digging site was on the edge of what was supposed to have been a thriving city. The floods and wars had changed that. There were no thriving cities on the planet now, no cities of any kind for that matter. Auto-controlled gun turrets dotted the landscape; and there were news reports once in a while of whole teams of archaeologists being wiped out by them. The offending turret would be deactivated as soon as something like this happened, but there was no known way to destroy them altogether. Legacy of a distant past, you learnt to live with it.
The professor was delighted with what we had collected. “We” being a bunch of students and digging bots. The students did the gross digging; the fine work of excavating the objects of interest was entrusted only to the bots. The professor always maintained that students no longer had the same enthusiasm and interest, that they were getting more and more careless by the day. His teachers probably said the same thing about him. He picked up each artifact carefully, turning it in the fading sunlight to note all the minor details. His voice was an interminable monologue, lecturing upon each find for the benefit of us students.
He termed this site wonderful. It would fill an important gap in the understanding of human culture of the twenty first century. More importantly for us, we could probably write a couple of papers on this and finally graduate. Commercial archaeology was much more lucrative.
“Late twentieth, or early twenty first,” said the professor, “it’s difficult to tell exactly. Their technology was so stagnant at that time.” He was holding up one of the shiny discs. There were twenty or so of them, all in protective plastic casing. “These were a means of storing data at the time, primitive though it may sound,” he droned on. “I have rigged up a device to read them; it is similar to the way they did it in those days. We think these discs were called ‘CD roams’, probably denoting the fact that they were portable.” He wiped the disc with a soft piece of fabric and held it up again for all of us to admire. We dutifully admired it. “Let’s see if it works”, he smiled as he said this and led the way to the device he had ‘rigged up’.
He powered on the device which he had hooked up to an energy cell and a viewer, and then pressed a knob on the front of the device. We all gasped as a section of the device actually moved and slid out of the main box! “Nothing to be afraid of,” smirked the professor. “I just place the disc in the tray like this.” He put the disc onto the section that had moved out and pressed the knob on the front again. The movable “tray” smoothly slid back into the box. “We are coming to the conclusion that these people may actually have been better at mechanical stuff than us,” the professor explained, a bit ruefully. A low pitched whine filled the room. “The plastic disc apparently rotates inside the box, that’s what’s making the sound,” the professor said and disconnected the box. “I think I’ll check it out in the night sometime. But I have a feeling that we are on the edge of some great discovery. The rotation mechanism of the box had set me thinking last week. It’s very similar to the systems we use. Perhaps they were more advanced in their technology than we previously imagined.”
Early next morning we found the professor sitting on a rock, sunk deep in thought. He looked up and smiled sadly as we walked up to him. “Our entire civilization is a sham. A lie,” he said. We were distracted by the sound of a large military vehicle which made its way towards us over the horizon. Within minutes, dozens of armed bots surrounded the professor and marched him into the vehicle.
(To be continued..... :D too lazy to type more...)
