max_epper | (no subject)

When he gets home, Doris is practically waiting for him. She sees the box in his hands and instantly forgets whatever she was going to say.

"Max?" she asks in a quizzical voice. He never brings his work home if he can at all help it. And given the call he made earlier today...

Max, meanwhile dumps the box on the couch. "Hmmm?"

"What's this about Max? You call to tell me we're having a dinner guest on an afternoon's notice, and now you're bringing work home?"

Max smiles gently at his wife. "I'm sorry, I should have warned you that this might happen. I wasn't sure when he'd get here, though. Jack's come from Australia to help me," he says, watching as her eyes widen at the last statement. "Yes," he continues, "it's about that. Hence why we couldn't talk when he came to see me at work."

Doris settles down on the couch and flips open the lid of the box. "So, are you actually going to tell me any details about that?" she asks, looking at, but clearly not understanding what the stuff inside the box is.

"Well, given I expect it is going to come up at dinner, yes."

Doris looks shocked for half a second, her eyes flickering between the door to the kitchen where the tourtière sat, cooking steadily, Max's face and the box of stuff he'd brought back with him.

"Okay," she says after some time.

Doris gets up, heading back to the kitchen to finish up the preparations. Max meanwhile, sets to getting things out of the box and into place for later on. After a little while, he joins her in the kitchen to assist with the preparations. It's comfortable, and the two of them have developed a good routine out over the years.

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Jack has a slightly different question to ask. "What's the connection? And how does this relate to, Tartarus?" he says, trying to remember his briefing materials.

Doris looks curiously at Jack, wondering where he got his information.

Jack shrugs at her. "I've had a half briefing from my CO, but I'd sooner hear it all from the expert, than rely on second hand information."

Doris nods, and Max continues.

"The questions are related. But, in order to do so, I need to explain some things that are a completely different topic. So, we'll leave this discussion of the Wonders for now. Tartarus, is a sunspot."

Max taps the book Jack had been looking at carefully. "There's a more complete description in this book, but for now, it will suffice to say that it is the hottest spot on the Sun's surface. In 14 and a bit years, we will be witness to the second great turning of the sun. Something that has not happened for 4,500 years."

Jack's eyes narrow. He studied Egyptian history too closely not to know those dates. 2570BC was the completion of the Great Pyramid of Khufu at Giza. Which later was described as a 'Wonder' in a 'not-an-idle' list. It's too close to be a co-incidence, isn't it?

"How many years, exactly?" he shoots at Max.

Max bites his lip carefully, doing the maths in his head.

"The best estimate would be that it's been approximately 4,560 years since the previous one. Before that, we see another cycle. Floods. Across the world. In 15000BC, 10500BC, 6500BC. Every 4,500 years or so."

Jack stares at Max, his mouth half open. Out of the corner of his eye, he can see Doris is doing the same thing.

"Every four and a half thousand years. And then nothing. Because Giza?"

"It's never been conclusively proven, but..."

He reaches and grabs a photograph, handing it to Doris, who studies it before passing it on to Jack.

Jack studies the photo for some time, before speaking.

"I'm gonna need to brush up on my Egyptian," he mutters, before looking up. "I presume you have a translation."

"Cower in fear, cry in despair,
You wretched mortals
For that which giveth great power
Also takes it away.
For lest the Benben be placed at sacred site
On sacred ground, at sacred height,
Within seven sunsets of the arrival of Ra's prophet,
At the high-point of the seventh day,
The fires of Ra's implacable Destroyer will devour us all."

Jack stares, processing that statement in the context of their discussion.

"Remind me. The Benben?"

"Another name for the capstone. The bona fide Golden capstone of the Great Pyramid, which vanished in antiquity. On another note, Ra's Destroyer is the Egyptian name for the Tartarus sunspot, and indeed, it is preceeded by another sunspot by exactly seven days. Hence, Ra's Prophet."

"Okay... Do we know when Ra's Prophet is due?"

"As it happens, we do. The Vernal Equinox, 2006, 20th March to be precise."

"Okay. 15 years. So, how do we go about averting this global flood, or the fires of Ra's Destroyer, or whatever you want to call it?"

Even as he says it, he knows that there's an obvious answer...

"We find the Benben," Max replies.

Doris has been watching this exchange with interest, but it's not until now that she speaks up again. "How? You said it was lost in antiquity."

"No, I didn't. I said that it vanished in antiquity. Not that it was lost. Just because something has vanished from public view, does not mean that knowledge of it has been lost."

Jack sits back and thinks on all that they've said since dinner. Eventually, the answer to the riddle comes to him.

"The Callimachus text..."

"Very good, Jack. Yes. As I said earlier, the Wonders and the Callimachus text are the key."

"However, first, I'm going to bring another thread in, before I look to tie it all together, so bear with me. Alexander the Great. Now, there's a well known story about Alexander. Before he went on his all conquering Persian campaign, he visited an Oracle, at the desert oasis of Siwa, in Egypt. The things that were said between the two of them are widely recorded, I won't repeat them here, more pertinent to our discussion is the gift the Oracle gave Alexander. Something he would take on his campaign, despite the vast effort that required, given that it was so large and heavy, it took 'a whole covered wagon, and eight donkeys to draw it'."

Doris was quicker on the ball than Jack this time, and promptly suggested, "The Capstone?"

Max smiled. "I believe so. Further more, I believe that during his Persian campaign, or, perhaps more accurately, immediately after it, he broke the capstone into seven pieces and placed them within the wonders. The two wonders that were yet to be constructed at the time of Alexander, the Lighthouse and the Colossus, would be built or paid for, respectively, by Ptolemy I of Egypt, Alexander's closest general."

"Which then brings us back to the Callimachus text."

"Indeed. And, while it may bear his name and he may have been the originator of the list, Callimachus was by no means the only person to write the text. His disciples watched and kept track as the wonders fell, through the ages. And they amended the text appropriately, keeping track of the wonder."

"They died off in the 14th century, but nothing in public knowledge has ever come close to describing a find that matches the any section of the capstone since then."

"The catch?" Jack asks.

Because, you know, there must be a reason not to simply follow the text to it's conclusions and find the capstone.

Max's mouth quirks into a smile, glad Jack's not just assumed this was going to be easy.

"The catch? The catch is that Callimachus and his followers wrote the most pertinent verses of their scroll in a curious, ancient language. One which has defied translation by those who do not know it for the entirety of modern history. The Word of Thoth. Now, since Callimachus' followers died out in the 14th Century, and with them went the last vestiges of knowledge of Thoth from modern society."

Doris looks between the two men. "So, you have a map in a language you can't translate, and no one alive can translate it either?"

"Not quite. We have a map in a language we can't translate. But, hopefully, there is one person alive who can."

"Who?"

"The Siwan Oracle. A line that extends back beyond 2570BC, through the oracle Alexander met, hopefully to one still alive. One of the consistent descriptions of the Oracle is their possession of a so called sight, which certainly includes the ability to read Thoth without being taught it. I'm not sure what we'll do should we find that the line has been broken, but certainly identifying and locating the current Oracle seems to be our only option at the moment."

Doris gets up from the table. "Well, if we're now past facts, and onto actions to be considered, if you don't mind, I'm going to go to bed."

Max nods his assent. "I think we are."

Jack, however, holds up a hand.

"Just, a quick recap, check I've gotten the facts right."

"There's a sunspot that's going to bring major disaster in about 15 years. There was a Golden Capstone to the Great Pyramid, which was given to Alexander the Great, who proceeded to split it up into it's subsections (how that works we need to discuss, also putting it back together), He concealed it within some great monuments of his time, which were later considered Wonders of the World by Callimachus of Cyrene. The followers of Callimachus edited and updated his text as time changed where each piece was hidden and they did so in a language none save the Oracle of Siwa can read now. That about right?"