Anton Dr. Hedwick. Please allow me to introduce myself. I am Dr. Anton Yevgeny Korzhakov, with Kunstkammer in St. Petersberg. Bartholemew Ah, the Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography. A beautiful building with a fine legacy, Dr. Korzhakov. I visited it about 12 years ago. I found the collection impressive. Anton Yes. Sadly, I'm not there most of the time. My current work has me hanging around old orthodox churches in the Ukraine or chasing around the Urals. Bartholemew Fascinating. What do the Ural Mountains have in common with Russian Orthodox Temples in the Ukraine? Anton Ukrainian Orthodox. But, you ask, what in common? Different aspects of same job. In mountains, I am archeologist. In churches, I am sociologist, also congregant. Dr. Hedwick, I was intrigued by your question of Dr. Schwartz, about carbon dating. You see, I also am troubled with the dating methods relating to artifacts we have at the Kunstkammer. Bartholemew I see, Dr. Korzhakov. And did Dr. Schwartz' answer shed any light for you? Anton Yes, it confirms our work by eliminating idea that we may have used improper methods. It is why I attend this talk. I came to this conference for symposium on stratigraphy, this year's panel was on artifacts unearthed from uncertain geological strata. So close to my current project that Kunstkammer bean counters were willing to pay for airfare to Alexandria. And very nice symposium it was yesterday. But I know, and my boss doesn't really know, that we are desperate for finding what we are doing wrong with dating. So this talk was real gemstone. Bartholemew And what aspect of the dating seems to be giving you troubles? Anton Troubles. Yes. Radiation contamination of artifacts. It is problem. We thought maybe it was impossible to carbon date such a radioactive sample, but Dr. Schwartz has addressed this in his answer to you, indirectly. Now I am satisfied that we can continue our research with confidence. Bartholemew Very good, Dr. Korzhakov. Now perhaps you can go home and your boss will not be too upset about your expense account. Anton Not really, Dr. Hedwick. He is not entirely briefed on the results of dating, and I fear he will not like what we are finding. It is highly unlikely result. Bartholemew How so? Anton Perhaps you will join me for dinner after assembly this evening, and I can explain more fully. Tell me, Dr. Hedwick, what are challenges you are having with your dating methods? Bartholemew Well, I'm still single after 10 years, but I think that has more to do with being absorbed with my work. Anton Excuse me? Bartholemew Sorry, self-deprecating joke. Our carbon dating methods seem rigorous, but we are dating a scroll--parchment has its own challenges, in terms of accuracy. Also, we have a problem in that the work is not peer-reviewed yet. It is me and my team, such as it is. Anton Ah yes, I know about staffing research teams in this economy. If you build hadron supercollider, there is so much money. But old artifacts found in desert? Not same cow cash. Bartholemew Oh, cash cow. Yes. I agree. Anton So, you will join me for dinner? I am staying here in hotel. We could meet in hotel restaurant after assembly? Bartholemew Certainly Dr. Korzhakov. I look forward to hearing about your mysterious project.

Anton Ah Dr. Hedwick. I'm so glad you came to dinner. I feel we have some interesting things in common. Bartholemew Certainly, Dr. Korzhakov. I found your teaser too tantalizing to pass up. Anton "Teaser too tantalizing." I already am learning new idioms, and enjoying your speaking. Bartholemew Yes, well, I wouldn't say it's an idiom yet, but thank you. I am looking forward to some delicious Egyptian food. Shall we get a table and get comfortable? Anton Absolutely. Although, this hotel does not serve real Egyptian food. Perhaps one day I will be able to show you some real Egyptian street food I have found outside of hotel district. But restaurant here has very good food. I can recommend dish I had last night. Have you already spoken to Maitre D'? Bartholemew Ah, not, yet... I thought I'd wait for you. Anton Please, is courtesy of Kunstkammer. I know you will enjoy these, Dr. Hedwick. Bartholemew Thank you Dr. Korzhakov. I'm sure I will. So you have been in the country for a while? You have found good food outside. When did you fly in? Anton Oh, you must get out. Alexandria is a wonderful city. Bartholemew Well, I live here. I'm not staying in the hotel. In fact, the library and my research office are close to the hotel district. I enjoy walking the streets, but I work so much. I moved here after my project started because of the wealth of information locally, and the fact that the scroll was found here in a private collection. The scroll is registered now with the antiquities authority, and now that it is registered, it can't leave Egypt. Anton Ah, the scroll, I will be interested to hear about your scroll if you can tell me about it. Bartholemew Oh, yes, it's not... secret, just that we haven't published our findings yet. But our research goes beyond what is apparent on reading the scroll. Anton And how old is the scroll, based on your latest methods? Bartholemew It dates to about 400 BCE, and documents recovered with it indicate that it was stored in the library at Alexandria in about 60 BCE, just a few years before the first wave of library losses. And how old is your artifact? Anton There are many artifacts in the collection, but they all appear to date to about 70,000 BCE. Bartholemew Impressive. Stunning, in fact! Are these bone tools, or pot shards? Anton Machine parts. Bartholemew Well, don't stop there! What kind of machine? Inclined plane? Lever? Anton No, Dr. Hedwick, it is parts of very complex machine. Made from steel alloy. Some gears, some brackets. Polishing marks are gone, of course, but you can still tell the parts were machined by some sort of milling machine. Some mating parts that fit precisely together. More importantly, the dimensions are in precise multiples. Naturally we don't know what measurement system was in effect, but the ratios of the dimensions, and the equality of certain dimensions suggest that the original tolerances were less than 1 micron. Bartholemew Well, I think you better check that soviet-era carbon dating equipment you have in your lab. There's no way there was a micro milling machine in 70,000 BCE. And certainly not steel alloy that could survive so long! Anton Well, age is probably past limit for carbon dating. Parts are steel, and carbon in very low percentage of steel alloy anyway. Encasing dust has enough organic content, perhaps, is showing correct age. Also, alloy is very sophisticated and inert. Also, pieces found in dry, igneous rock cave in layers of fluffy dust. Dust dry and radioactive, kills anything that tries to grow, soaks up any water, this was perfect packing material. Until disturbed by archeologists. But...this date, is problem. This is why boss does not have my report. I do not want to lose my post. Bartholemew So how do you know these parts weren't just jammed into some old dust? Anton Radioactive decay of steel exposed to nuclear power plants follows predictable curves; and industrial data very extensive on different steels and different levels of radiation. Also data available from Uranium and Plutonium reactors. So we plot decay levels of isotopes that don't normally occur in steel, and same math as carbon dating, we also get 70,000 years, plus minus. Bartholemew What do you think the parts were for? Anton We don't know. But I wonder how they got so radioactive. Parts are more radioactive than dust around them. Bartholemew Maybe the alloy responded to irradiation differently than the surroundings. And presumably the surrounding dust settled after the parts. And what of the site? Anton Site is destroyed, and lost. Parts came from dealer in Ukraine. Bartholemew How do you know the site is destroyed? Anton I have traced the find to two researchers, who have since passed away. But I had opportunity to speak to them when they were alive. So you see, date is surprising, but I have strange confidence in the measurement. Perhaps I will convince you to visit lab to check my results. I also have access to other labs. Despite what you have read from American press, we have modern facilities. Bartholemew I'm sorry for that crack. It's just that I would be suspicious regardless of the equipment. But in any case, I'm not a carbon dating expert, or even an archeologist. My degrees are in Mechanical Engineering and Computer Science. I came to this conference because I work in Alexandria, and I saw there was an interesting lecture on carbon dating that seemed it would answer one of my nagging to-do items. Anton Mechanical Engineering? And how do you come to be obsessed with scroll? Bartholemew I was in business for a while, and became interested in big data, but hated advertising, which is what had become of the computer science field in business. So I went off and started applying data analytics to ancient texts. Anton Yes, is big activity these days. Archive data sets. Bartholemew I was interested in the history of science, religion, warfare, art, music, and consciousness. I was interested in seeing if semantic webs created by researchers behaved differently over time, in other words, do information systems have personalities, tendencies, moods, that tell something about their creators and maintainers. I wrote an analytics engine that could crawl archive data sets and map datatypes in the archives to standard semantic identifiers. It is adaptable to new and non-standard archives--all I have to do is write a mapping file, which is just two trees containing the terms in two datasets, and the mapping between the terms--one-to-one, one-to-many, alias--and so on. So it was very easy to plug in new datasets. Academic archives can never quite agree on standards. Most of the organizing of the archives has actually been done very well world-wide. At this point, it's about sharing those sets in a system that can ingest them and correllate them with all their niggling differences. That's what we're slowly building. Soon, I was finding anomolies and correlations that can't be spotted by eye, poring through thousands of references by hand. This engine was pretty good at saving people time when working with large research sets, so with some partners I soon had a nice, grant-funded cluster, and was giving time on the cluster to the granting research institutes who uploaded their datasets. Analytics for Archeology was the idea. Anton Nice. Someday you will be big rock star software founder. Bartholemew I had done an interesting project in the corporate world where we did analytics on stock analysts. The correlations between what they strategized for and how the market did were very, very interesting, and were excellent predictors. Naturally, the trading houses would never allow analytics on their performance to leak to the outside world. There are disclosure laws and worries of front-running buying trends. So we got the big firms to agree to share aggregate data with a select club with a high entrance fee. We made the entrance fee, they got to legally snoop on their "competitors," and everybody in the club made more money, and made it more safely. Anton I will never understand Wall Street! Bartholemew Neither do I! But I did the same for the archive consortium. We figured out keeping access to the digital archives limited to each institute's terms. But then we also got them to agree on sharing aggregate data, so that we could do analytics across all sets. We got enough organizations interested on those terms that the grants pay for me, and my small staff, and the cluster. We mostly work on massaging the data into the hive database, and also writing queries for the client institutes. After the NSA scandal, our clients would never agree to hosting on U.S. soil, and most of the archives that wanted to participate were in the Mediterranean, so Alexandria was chosen as a symbolic and practical home for the Analytics for Archeology office. Actually many of us are virtual, but I stay here full-time. The whole data mine is valuable, and surprising. I started using my time to ask wild, what-if questions, like what is the correlation between musical invention and economic activity. Naturally, what we wanted was an engine that we could ask historical-oracle questions of: "O Oracle, when resources are low, and religiousity is high, will high-brow music flourish?" But that's not what we've got, of course, or you'd have known about me by now. No, we can ask questions like: show the correlation between citations of musical works and the infant mortality rate as given by authority X. These results have to be interpreted by a human, but just having those correlations is more than we've ever known in some fields. So I got interested in tracking the wild questions I had, and seeing which information systems could answer them with more confidence. I started seeing a group of predictors around the various Alexandria Library archives that showed that they had excellent cross-linking in the past. In other words, lots of good indices, concordances, references, etc. Maintained in the present, of course, which makes for lots of connections, but also there is proof that the Alexandria Library itself was maintained very well by its librarians of antiquity. So we started manually looking for documents that were indices and concordances. That's when we bumped into the scroll. Up for auction, ultimately acquired by an archive. It was almost entirely an index. That much was obvious. But the index was huge. And not obvious what is was indexing into. We know it mostly from the patterns of external linkage. It is a sophisticated index with data-structure-like organization showing tables and hierarchichal outlines, and external links and citations having metadata. It indicates very modern thinking... for example, it has GUIDs. Anton GUIDs, are these like druids? Not so modern. Bartholemew Sorry, between teenagers who know more programming than I do, and old Egyptian ladies walking downtown thumbing their mobile phones, I forget that my computer world still has lots of geek speak. GUID. Globally Unique IDentifier. It's a long ID that is clearly generated by a computer, guaranteed to be about as unique as a single horton-hears-a-who helium molecule in the Sun, yet short enough to be human-readable. They have interesting properties, such as: the date and time are part of the hash code to generate the number, so that in the future, it will be impossible to generate a number you generated today, as long as you tell the truth and set the clock on the generating computers acurately. Modern GUID generators incorporate a unique card ID that all network card manufacturers agree to generate and use, so each computer is unique. So the ID is a function of: time, place, and other randomizing factors. Even if world-wide, two computers generate an ID at Noon, they still get different IDs. Another useful property: even though they are generated this way, the different IDs sort and perform well in the large index schemae we use in database searches. The funny thing about the Alexandria Scroll, as I call it, is that it has GUIDs. In 400 BCE. Anton Well, wouldn't all librarians use these GUIDS if their library got big enough? Bartholemew GUIDS of the length found in the scroll require computers in order to even be generated. You couldn't generate these numbers by hand in a human lifetime. Anton Well, Dr. Hedwick, computers in 400 BCE is as much of a problem as micro milling machine in 70,000 BCE. I will give you this. Either we will both lose our jobs or both get Nobel prises. Perhaps your database can go back past antiquity so I can look up my machine parts? Bartholemew Sadly no, Dr. Korzhakov. Still, your artifacts are not ... impossible perhaps. Anton How so, Dr. Hedwick? Have you seen machined artifacts this old elsewhere in your travels? Bartholemew Certainly not. But there's just one thing. The Alexandria Scroll, as we call it, is an index of other archives that hold proof of previous civilizations. Anton With descriptions and drawings? Bartholemew No. Most of these archives are just references, with names and places that are not extant. Anton So how do you know these civilizations were real? Bartholemew The Alexandria Scroll also has a cross reference to a 100,000 year timeline that categorizes each of some 20-odd civilizations by their technical evolution and ultimate demise. We don't understand the categorizations yet, but if the scroll is to be believed, then there are 20 great epochs of civilization, each potentially like ours, that have risen and fallen before us. Some of these civilizations did not disappear, but morphed into later ones, and some knowledge transfer was preserved. Anton Well I'm intrigued, Dr. Hedwick, as this relates to my research. I think this is a very lucky meeting. Because, in 1989, Soviet researchers discovered these radioactive machine parts at an archaeological dig. The artifacts are likely over 60,000 years old--usual limit for radiocarbon dating--because they exhibit no C-14. But radiocarbon dating for the small amounts of carbon in steel, not very reliable anyway. Dust packed around items was also very old, and they had plenty of that. So how did modern items get packed in ancient dust? We don't know. Unwilling to believe this result, and fearing reprisals from various beauracracies for uncovering ... perhaps a previously hushed up underground nuclear device that contaminated the site... or perhaps the deliberate burial of a failed nuclear experiment some time after World War II. This part of our soviet history is not so different from the stereotypes you mention. Anyway, these scientists covered up the record of these parts and discounted carbon dating, saying it was thrown off by the presence of radiation. Either way, Dr. Boris Mendelev and Dr. Sergey Vladnikov did not want to face Politburo for digging up a previous cover-up. The cave was dynamited and the dig abandoned. Any geologic record at the site was thus spoiled. I had the privilege of speaking with Dr. Mendelev and Dr. Vladnikov before they died. The artifacts have never resurfaced, until recently. Dealers in Khazakstan had been saying they have parts from failed nuclear experiments on Russian soil. Bartholemew And how did you acquire these artifacts? Anton I tracked dealers down and quietly negotiated sale. We matched the signature of radioactive steel isotopes found in the artifacts to decay as found in modern steel that had been exposed to intense radiation at high temperatures. But the decay curves indicate very long times for the ratios we are seeing in the artifacts, also in the 50,000 to 100,000 year range. I myself have been unable to believe the results. Bartholemew And possibly other irregularities may be apparent: like different metallurgy than our epoch knows, or technologies we haven't developed. Anton These machine parts are beautiful, and do imply technologies that we haven't explored. You are correct there. I don't have the artifacts with me, but I do have photographs, and some microscopy that I can show you. Bartholemew I'd be interested in these. I think, Dr. Korzhakov, that you have been looking for me since before today. Did you come to Alexandria to speak to me? Anton Waiter, we'd like desert.

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Anton So the Alexandria Scroll was just an index into the real archive? Bartholemew Yes, but the real archive was destroyed. The real archive contained coordinates of previous civilization, and artifacts from many of them. Anton And there was only one such archive? Bartholemew No, the creators of this archive realized its significance, and replicated it at several spots around the Mediterranean. We believe there was a great purge in 6,000 BCE which found all those archives, followed all the references, destroyed all the sites, digs, and artifacts, and then destroyed the replicated archives. So complete had the record been, so blasphemous to the society of the great purge, that the destruction of the record had to be as complete. I believe that after this purge, the society maintained a tight rein on intellectual thought, punishable by death. After a thousand years of this, certainly all memory of this event could have disappeared, and the society itself could then perish for lack of progress and intellect. Thus setting the stage for a clean start to the civilizations in Mesopotamia in 4000 BCE and China in 2400 BCE. Anton But the Alexandria Scroll survived. Bartholemew Yes, one thing we know from more recent times, such as the destruction of Alexandria itself, is that even during a government-ordered destruction, which may take months or years, there are those insiders who have connections to the black market, and will spirit away a few artifacts that won't be missed after the destruction. These black marketers profit, and stay silent about their crimes. Art dealers snatch up the pieces, which disappear into private collections for a few generations or more. This was the fate of the Alexandria Scroll. It itself was a copy of some kind of record from the original pre-great-purge archive. So really, it survived twice: the sack of the pre-purge archive, and the later sack of Alexandria's library. The Alexandria Scroll is cross-referenced to many documents supposedly in Alexandria, and a number of these are extant and are referenced correctly, so it is tempting to think that the losses at Alexandria were planned. I'm open to the possibility that the forces that tried to destroy the archive the first time somehow regrouped to destroy Alexandria's trove. It is too fantastic to think that any actual dogmas survived the dark age to appear in Alexandria, so I believe that these forces are wired into the human genome, and can regenerate in any complex human society. Anton But it is too fantastic to believe science progressed the same before! The history of modern science is a trail of happy coincidences and chance discoveries. Bartholemew Well, that's what we've been brought up to believe. It's like the Manifest Destiny of the United States, or the biblical blessing in Genesis to allow Man to have dominion over the earth, including "every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth." Humans must explain the choices and atrocities that led to their success and survival, and make them seem justified. With the lucky progress of science, we humans are thus blessed and given permission of dominion. Anton "Permission of Dominion." It is so enjoyable to converse with you, Dr. Hedwick. My English I practice with other scientists, and from reading scientific papers. But listening to you, I can hear the poetry of English. I wish I could share with you the beauty of Russian in the same way. Bartholemew Please! Call me Bartholemew, or Bart. I'm enjoying our conversation, too. You are being modest: you have an excellent command of English. Anton Then you must call me Anton, or Tosha. So, Bartholemew, you think that we would have discovered X-Rays, colorimetry, Uranium, and the planet Pluto's perturbations of Uranus' orbit the same every time? Bartholemew No, but you don't need all of that to have an advanced society. And once you have an advanced society--one that has developed science--and that society has an elite class that can think, study, and experiment, and share the results socially, then most of the "discoveries" are the predestined result of applying science to the physical world. Phenomena, once solved, point to the next level of inquiry. Anton But what if no one ever postulated the existence of atoms to explain alchemy, and thus turn the discussion into chemistry? Bartholemew Good point, Anton. I see it like this: the physics of the Earth are constant, at least in the lifetime of our species. Mountain ranges come and go, climate change happens, but the basic charge of the electron is inviolate. Eventually, with enough looking, only one model explains the subatomic world. Anton Not quite. It would be possible to assume that an oxygen atom is actually half the atomic weight, and then fix the accounting by saying that these half-weight oxygen atoms always travel in pairs that can't be split. If this half-weight oxygen "atom" were O-prime, then relative to our modern model of diatomic oxygen, O2 that we breathe is actually O-prime times two, grouped with another O-prime pair. Bartholemew Hah! Does one pay an O-prime pair the same as one's au pair? Anton Only if they don't bond on your couch! But you see my point, Bartholemew? Bartholemew Yes, chemistry would still work with that model. And it's possible that you could go very far with that model before some other correlated phenomenon can't be explained until the model must be fixed, such as the fundamental charge experiments. We are constantly revising our models. In fact, they must be revised in order for technological progress. We believed in electricity as a fluid until we needed to change the model to include particle behavior of electrons. This revision allowed mathematical and theoretical models of reality to predict and explain more technologically advanced lab results. Anton So your theory is that humans need and desire technological progress so strongly, that they have overcome any theoretical errors every time? Could we not get stuck in a society that understands chemistry and physics, but not the subatomic world? Bartholemew Of course, but such an advanced civilization that didn't destroy itself through nuclear winter, or climate change, or biological and genetic disaster would eventually build such fabulous relics that surely we would have found or heard about them. The theory is that technology always leads rapidly to severe environmental degradation, which causes mass die-offs. If humans were dinosaurs, we would have simply disappeared. But something about our intelligence, our thumbs, our nomadic abilities, our need for religion... something causes us to regroup, shun the discoveries, and go back to basics. Human intelligence and our ability for non-genetic adaptation rescue us. What is fascinating, and almost unbelievable, is that religion, orthodoxy, and superstition have an ability to steer us away from too much discovery when our discoveries come 'round to bite us in the ass. Anton But what about Maths? None of the reach for space would have happened without the lucky discoveries of Euclid, and so on. Bartholemew Well, it turns out that two kinds of math can be used to describe one phenomenon. So you don't have to invent the same kind of math every time. But that math just has to be consistent with reality, and the symbols' manipulations must model reality close enough to predict outcomes, hopefully some extrapolation as well as interpolation. Once a mathematical model can do this, it is an effective model of some physical reality, and the causes of phenomena can be hypothesized and investigated. And human brains are rigged to describe the world with math. Math is many things, but at its core, it is a language of our abstractions. Abstractions and language are what humans do best among the animal kingdom. Math has the singular property, among all human thought, that it needs to hold a level of internal consistency with regard to object representation and the transformations and operations permitted on those objects. Anton Like linear algebra, where the arithmetic operators for addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division can be redefined... Bartholemew Yes! As long as the operations cover the set of real numbers, and the legal operations don't produce numbers outside of the set of numbers--say, real numbers. Without this level of consistency, the math is not very useful. Humans create math to be useful, and they constantly work and refine maths to be consistent and inter-operational. This tends to reject pointless maths, and to reinforce the development of useful maths. Anton Math is the one true language of the universe, perhaps even of God. Bartholemew I don't really believe that. Math is abstraction. Humans do abstraction. The universe does not do abstraction--the universe does infinitely complex, messy, chaotic, interrelated reality. The universe does not need math to enact the dramas that the basic physical forces allow. But Man needs math to simplify the infinite into the small sets that will fit into his thinking. Anton OK, so humans invent math, and math is constantly updated and revised. But the chances of missing something, getting something wrong, and missing the technological revolution for another 6000 years... Bartholemew Well, think of Newton and Leibniz "discovering" calculus at the same time. Anton That was probably a case of plagiarism. Bartholemew Maybe, Anton, maybe not. But plagiarism is just one way social animals share information. And there's new understanding in our day of how the "hive mind" works. Once a million software developers are in some kind of proximity over the Internet, similar discoveries are made "simultaneously" around the world. The Zeitgeist is a form of communication. So either the two geniuses simultaneously came at the problem slightly differently, and founded two versions of the Calculus, or they had some cross-pollination. But the point is that Homo Sapiens invented not one, but two flavors of Calculus in a very short time. Both flavors had different derivations, but yielded the same techniques and results. Newton and Leibniz did their work a little over 300 years ago. Remember, most of modern math and technology has been discovered in the last 600 years. 600 years is only 20 or 30 generations. The Calculus took a single generation. Anton But getting to the point of being 600 years away from modern science could take thousands of years, perhaps tens of thousands, or even longer than we have been Homo Sapiens. Bartholemew Sure, but technology in this epoch has been on an exponential growth curve. So regardless of where it starts, with a 1000 year lead time, or a 5000 year lead time, the last evolutions in technology would probably always accelerate, and come about in 30 or so generations after the discovery of alchemy, science and math. Anton Because of the cross-pollination of discovery that comes from social, intelligent civilization. Bartholemew Exactly. But we are finding that these factors and abilities are built into the genetic code of all humans. The tendency to want to sit on a stump in the woods and relax and wonder "why"; the tendency to fight battles using evolving technology; the tendency to want to communicate discoveries for recognition and to inspire an "AHA!" moment in your peers; the tendency to create symbolic languages; these are all human attributes, baked into our genome. The ability to go nuclear turns out to be a human genetic wiring. Anton But then, so must the tendency to resort to taboo, myth, superstition, religion, morality, and censorship to hide these abilities. Bartholemew Yes. Say a society caused a massive nuclear disaster or nuclear winter, the survivors would realize that after the Fall of Civilization, only taboo and myth would prevent the mistake from reoccurring. These survivors would be inclined to eradicate any artifacts or records. Possibly even special orders and priests were set up to perpetuate these taboos beyond one generation. The fear of science would have to be total for several generations in order to be effective. We now think that roughly the same scenario of taboo and repression has played out dozens or scores of times. Anton And we've never escaped the planet before, or come up with peaceful nuclear energy? Bartholemew There are certain restrictions the Earth places on us. We live in a very thin layer of air, water, and soil containing the biosphere, on a very large chunk of rock. This big rock has a powerful gravity well. Thermodynamics dictates that the vast energy used to get out of this well has to end up somewhere. In most schemes, that somewhere is the Earth's biosphere. To get significant numbers of our kind out of the well with chemical drives creates massive heat build-up in the troposphere. To do it with nuclear fission would leave lots of heat and also radioactivity all through the biosphere to boot. We'd need a space elevator, anti-gravity, worm-holes, hyperspace, or other fantastic options. In fact, as far as we have progressed, it seems that for all we can figure out, nuclear energy on the surface of the Earth is deadly to the biosphere. Add to that the tendency for humans to crave technology for war, for survival of clans, and for individual gain. So to get beyond the "Nuclear Speed-bump" of technical evolution, we have to have a spiritual revolution so that we don't destroy ourselves or our environment in the process. The one thing we do know, is that we have never had that spiritual revolution completely enough. Anton Or that the human brain and hive-mind have some kind of mechanism that shuts down development as it becomes too harmful to the environment. Bartholemew Well, many of these times, it is a cycle of survival, security, greed, war, pestilence, famine, fear, religion, orthodoxy, and social control which roll back advancements into a safer "dark ages." Anton And you are suggesting that the healing power of dark ages is built into the human genome. Bartholemew Yes. Anton That deliberate ignorance and obfuscation of human creativity and intelligence are wired into us!? Bartholemew Have you a better explanation? Anton Well, maybe there are gods. The gods don't like us messing with that kind of nuclear fire, and stop us every time. Bartholemew Anton, I can see that you'll be working for the New Inquisition. Maybe I better buy you a beer so we can become friends. Perhaps you'll remember our friendship and save me from the rack when the time comes. Anton Hah! I think I'll be on the rack just as soon as you, so I won't be your savior. But I'll take that pint!

Anton Colleague Bartholemew, now that we are in more informal setting, please entertain my fantasies. What if one of the societies in your archive actually went more biochemical that nuclear? What if they genetically modified their genes to create a subservient worker class which were our human ancestors, and then died out or left the planet? What if we are the descendants of a failed or obviated genetic experiment? Or what if these super-humans actually came from outer space and colonized earth, and we were the results of their experiments. Bartholemew Well, we share too much genetic information with plants and dinosaurs for us to be a different lineage. So these aliens would at least have to have been billions of years old and populated Earth with microbes, single-celled organisms and so on. But certainly the ability to mess with the genetic code of life itself leaves open your possibilities. As far as leaving the planet, the super-humans would have had to invent the stuff of science fiction--hyperdrives, ships that can pass through wormholes, etc. Otherwise they wouldn't have gotten very far. Anton Or the invention of psychic ability, astral travel, or other ways of bypassing strictures of this reality? We fly in our dreams, we imagine all these options. Is it fantasy, or archetypal memory? Bartholemew You've read Arthur C. Clark's "Childhoods End" where he gives us a vision of extraterrestrials that visited and fostered us very early, who had the appearance of devils: leathery wings and spade-tipped tails. I suppose anything is possible, but what we are seeing in this archive, is that the cycle has been repeated for at least a hundred thousand years, maybe more, and has come to the same dark ages at least twenty times. This suggests that we have the ability for technical evolution, but not the ability to transcend the sophisticated challenges that come with the godlike powers that technology gives us. However, our survival as a species seems equally tied to our ability to forget, to obfuscate, to destroy knowledge. Anton But, Bart, there is not enough time for twenty modern technical societies to have developed! Bartholemew Good question! Consider this. In the last 6,000 years, we have gone from just figuring out agriculture, to flying to the Moon, splitting the atom, and cloning and modifying DNA. OK, assume we conservatively estimate 100,000 years of being Homo Sapiens with a 10,000 year rags-to-riches social evolution cycle, means that humans could have gone nuclear 10 times already. Or, assuming a more liberal 250,000 years of sufficient evolution, being Homo Sapiens, and a 6,000 year cycle, lopping off 10,000 years at the beginning for the invention of agriculture, leaves 240,000[years] divided by 6,000[years/cycle] , or 40 complete cycles of modern history. That gives humans enough time to invent nuclear, space, and genetic technology forty times in a row! All that would have to happen is that previous civilizations would have to be wiped out from the record accessible to modern archeologists. The sinking of an Atlantis, or the rising of the seas, or a massive glacial event, volcanic activity, or the nuclear melt-down of a city down into the core of the earth could all wipe the record clean or at least bury it so well that no expedition has found artifacts yet. Anton But many of our colleagues believe that most of the advancement of humans only became possible after some behavioral evolution, such as agriculture, trade, and tools. And these developments are pinned at 50,000 years ago. Bartholemew Not quite, Anton. In the last 250 thousand years, we've been genetically modern, and current science holds several theories for the behavioral evolution of humans. Behavioral evolution did not affect the human genome, so more rightly could be called Behavioral Inventions, such as sophisticated language, agriculture, trade, and tools. Yes, this social/behavioral evolution happened between 250 thousand years ago and 50 thousand years ago. But many hold that the "great leap forward" could have simply been a time of increased activity, communication, and trade that left more artifacts lying around to be discovered, and that Homo Sapiens have had the abilities from the beginning, that is, up to 250 thousand years ago. We've had the ability for rational thought, and for religious ignorance, the whole time, and these two tendencies must be battling and balancing each other in every epoch. Anton Do you not find it interesting, Bart, that nearly every human society has some form of religion, or a creation myth? Could it not be that all are on to some basic truth, but see it differently? Bartholemew Yes. But my research now inclines me to believe that this is because we are genetically wired for religion. You know the English word religion comes from the Latin religare, meaning to bind together? Anton Yes, root is same for russian word religiya. Bartholemew So societies need binding together, or man needs binding to God, or the bonds to God come through dilligence which does us good. Our genetic predisposition for religion allows us these necessary ligands. So we are programmed to invent God even if he doesn't exist. And somehow, our dependence on religion, superstition, and orthodoxy helps us survive. Perhaps even to survive our infantile desire for technology. Anton Ah, Bartholemew, your paranoia and distrust of religion are eclipsed only by your creative and towering intellect. I'm so glad not only to have found you, for the sake of my project, but also I hope to be able to count such a fertile mind as my friend. Let us drink to friendship! Bartholemew To friendship, Anton! And to the eventual enlightenment that our species needs to survive! Anton Well, we have survived these 250 thousand years without that enlightenment, so we can surely survive to enjoy a few more toasts in our friendship! Budmo! Bartholemew Skoal!

Anton Think of the impossibility of the moment of genius for Einstein. Could this happen again and again? Bartholemew It must. Phenomena exist. Humans poke at the rough edges of understanding. Some humans theorize, that is to say, dream, tell stories. Others measure and poke. Eventually, the correct ideas get tried, and become successful stories. Anton But the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle should really be called Heisenberg's Uncertainly Possible Idea. How unlikely to conceive this uncertain idea! And for this idea, he gets due credit--he was correct! Bartholemew So too the genius of Einstein--that there is a maximum speed for light, and that relativity explained the perturbations of our favorite conceptualizations: mass and momentum, matter and energy. He was building upon some brilliant mathematical ideas which didn't have satisfying physical explanations, such as the Lorenz Transformation. The genius was being willing to pursue an anti-intuitive idea. Because he was right, though, Relativity led quickly to nuclear capability. Anton You say Einstein was merely explaining phenomena and experimental results using math? Bartholemew The fact that he was on to something, something that models the natural nuclear process very well, this made his theories become lab results quickly. Useful, paradigm-shifting, remembered. On top of other phenomena, on top of other ideas. Each leap seems prescient in hindsight. Anton Yes, there were Heisenberg's ideas, along with Bohr, Planck, and radioactivity lab results going back to Marrie Currie and her husband. Bartholemew She found these holes, these ragged edges of decay in our world, where the atoms themselves need to shake themselves out and change their chemical identities, having been trumped up, all the way up the periodic table to the lofty position, the crowded atomic coctail mixer of 92 protons and a changeable number of surly neutrons. The edges of our reality leak and spurt out these rocks of uranium, a stone crazed enough, stoked with just the right number of partying protons, to eject its own protons, to break up the party, to violate the fabric of the universe. Radioactive rocks are the ragged edges of reality, like the volcanoes, inconvenient rifts between the green biome and the ruddy, molten world below. God left these rocks to float around the magma and pop up every once in a while. Their addition to the background radiation and their pulverized ingestion by the biosphere bring their zeus-lightning-bolt waves of alpha, beta, and gamma within striking distance of the DNA, the precious code of life built from muck. These mutations of DNA code, this primordial evolution, once bootstrapped, can develop self-modifying-code, the ability to design onself, and intelligence. Or perhaps, atomic reality just gets strained at the joints, and we call these lesions radioactivity. Messes left behind by the Big Bang. Uranium and Cesium and Radon, the ragged left-behinds, parties where the odd wallflowers and jilted lovers sulk. Centuries later the rowdy, the dowdy have left the crowd and the nuclear social lattice stabilizes once more, and life goes on in the chemical and biological realities. But really, space is a ripple in time, and our little neck of it is rife not only with the perturbations of nuclear/space/time reality, but also of chemical reality, and biological changes, and volcanoes and asteroids, and the depredations of man. Anton And now those depredations are creating most massive die-off since last ice age, or maybe the Flood. Bartholemew The Flood. Talk about a story! Anton But we remember Einstein, because relativity worked. Bartholemew Yes, but also because it is all about story. One man says "Pssshah! Assume Light has a Maximum Speed! Now back to work!" and then the story is bought, and the believers follow the map of the story and make reality. If they don't, they fail and we forget about them. If they succeed, it is because they were guided by a master story-teller. Anton And telling stories is as basic to the human genome as modifying DNA is to the genome of a virus. Then we are the gene that can modify itself by telling stories!

[Editor's Note: This portion of the text is translated for the modern english reader for maximum understanding. Modern usage is preferred except for instances of proper nouns or compound words requiring modern substitutions.]

Miwok And this area is where we are testing Homo Sapiens Agresis. Zho Very clean and orderly. Miwok We're very proud of this group. They are testing highly for social adaptability, individuation, and positive social feedback for invention. Zho Are you not concerned about the individuation? I have to say that was the first thing that jumped out of your report. I've been looking forward to discussing it with you. Miwok Individuation, yes, but the social aspects are still there. They are very much hominids, and have 99.98 percent of our DNA. But we are very excited that Homo Sapiens Agresis uses this individuation to hold onto ownership of ideas. Zho That sounds unhealthy! Ideas can't be owned. The People all work for a moment when an idea is ready to be born in the People. Thousands of conversations, thousands of dreams, and the idea will certainly pop out of one head first, yes. But that same idea comes out of more people, too, because the people, through discourse and cooperation, have prepared themselves for the idea. Miwok Yes, Assistant Zho, that is all true. But Homo Sapiens Agresis believes that the individual has his own ideas, and that spurs him on to develop them with all his energy and intellect, which is formidable. He attacks his ideas more forcefully than we do, and shepherds them through more investigation, with more willingness to be wrong, to explore options that make no sense, than we are used to. In short, Homo Sapiens Agresis seems to be the inventor we have tried to create these millenia. Zho That is wonderful news! I wonder if this new man will be able to share the bounty of his "private" inventions with the People as freely as we share our collective inventions. Miwok His whole purpose is to share the fruits of the idea. He will share the work, and the bounty, as long as the credit for the ownership of ideas is given. Zho Well! Who doesn't like to be told that their work and contributions are helping the People, especially those around you. This is how we transfer the social love. Zho Yes, but Agresis retains the notion of ownership of the idea even after others have worked on it, as a beaver defends its pond, as a mother defends her baby. Zho So bizarre that there is a hybridizable trait for this behavior! I hope we will keep an eye on that, Director Miwok. Miwok We are, Assistant Zho, and we'll share more in our reports now that we see you are interested in these developments. Do let us know what your home team thinks. Now. Even though several languages have begun to be developed in the colonies, we continue a Sankar-first education system, so that we can communicate deeply in our mother-tongue with them. We'll know more in a few generations how this individuation plays out. Zho Yes, I was going to ask about the languages. I've not been trained in Sapiens languages... I spend so much time making sure that you have the resources you need, that I don't have time for all the studies I should. Miwok Of course, Assistant Zho. We are all grateful for your team's work. Zho Actually, Director Miwok, I'm thinking of taking next year off to work on music, specifically investigating lyrics without rhyming schemae. Miwok Ah, two years ago, I was also working on music as emotional language. Zho How rewarding for us all! I've been at it for a while, and now the ideas are coming so fast that I am ready for full time study. Miwok Of course. As you desire and need, Assistant. The Love of the People. Zho The Love of the People.

Yob And is he your boss? Miwok This word "boss." I don't know this Sapiens word. Yob Does he run the show? Miwok No one runs the show. He is the Assistant. That is a title that means he is an emissary of our direct sponsors, those who assist us in our project here. Yob But he tells you what to do, yes? Miwok No one can tell me what to do. I do what I do for the good of the People. Yob Your people. Miwok All people. Including you. The Love of the People. You know. Yob Yes, I've been brought up with that, but I secretly doubt it. Miwok Of course we all have doubts. That is why we all must experiment with our lives, take quests, study a variety of pursuits, and so on. But you know, and I know, that the Good of the People is furthered by these explorations. Just as your life, and the life of your community is an experiment to further hominid development around technology and invention. But all are in for the Good of the People. Yob So I could just walk out of here and be free? Miwok What is this Sapiens word "free." I've been hearing it more and more. Yob Free. To have no boss. Miwok And a boss tells you what to do. Yob Yes. Miwok But I don't tell you what to do, neither do any of the other providers here. Yob You won't take me back to the big City. Miwok It is not within the controls of the experiment. Yob See--experiment. You are experimenting on us. The same way you'd experiment with growing new crops. Miwok No. Plants aren't sentient. Plants grow where they are put, and are happy to be provided for. Hominids all share choice. "As you desire and need." Yob Exactly my point. You put us here, you keep us here, you chose our genes. Miwok No, you are able to leave at any time. The mountains, the earth, the sky, are yours. Yob But not your city. Miwok In the city we live closely. There are many who must make consensus in such a place. So far the consensus has been that we are not ready to receive you. But we hold nothing back from you. Yob So if I just grabbed my family, and we made it over the mountains, and tried to enter your city, what would become of me? Miwok We would meet with you at the border, and try to achieve consensus. To convince you that the Good of the People, and the good of your family, would be best served by continuing with the experiment, and at least that you should not enter the city and break the trust of consensus. Yob And if I persisted? Miwok The gatekeepers could not let you pass. The will of one must not exceed the will of the many. If you needed shelter or food or tools to survive, or safe transport, of course these would be provided, so that you could get back here, or establish your own home in the countryside or in the wild. As you desire and need. The Love of the People. Yob So I'm a free man, but I can't do as I wish. Miwok If you asked me if you could walk into my house and assault my family, I would also remind you of their needs for safety and life. So already you can't do everything you might wish. But I would also defend my family. Hominids are animals, and all animals will defend what is close to them. It is why I would defend you if any rogue scientist in my work group suggested amoral experiments on you. You have the right to chose your destiny, as long as you don't break the rights of others. All the experiments to date have been in consensus with Sapiens. If the Sapiens opt out of the experiment, that is their choice, as "free" people. Is that the right use of the word? Yob Yeah, it's right, but you are missing the fundamental concept of Free People. We can't control our destiny so long as our destiny is planned by you. Miwok No. You are free to go back to nature, and see where your genes take you naturally in the next thousand years. Remember, you are part of the People. That includes me, you, and all our ancestors starting a thousand years ago. We are brothers, you and I. Cousins, technically, fifty times removed. Your ancestors elected to go on a quest. A bigger quest than any other ever undertaken by a hominid. They chose to receive new genes, to agree to marriage regimens. At any time, the right to choose partners has been respected, because you have the same rights as all the People. Yob But I couldn't marry your daughter. Miwok No, my daughters live in the City, so that would be impossible. Likewise, I would not condone my sons marrying your daughters if your family opposed it. We are all most beholden to our family first, then our tribe, then our city. It is the civilized way. When hominids scraped themselves out of the muck a hundred thousand years ago, and invented language and cultivation and tools, we did so because we worked as a social group, able to communicate more subtly than our ancestors the great apes. With this communication, we were able to understand that emotions and desires come from the needs of mind and body; that unmet needs lead to rising emotions; that emotions rule the body through our animal brain; that the emotions could be vital to life and not destructive or painful if not constantly needed to raise the body up in fight or flight. And that the needs of the greatest number of us could be met with civilized behavior. So civilization leads not only to physical needs being fulfilled, but also a more joyous living. Ancient man had battles and killed to meet his needs. At some point we gave that up as inefficient, and too painful to our spirit. It is why, even though you and your families have gone beyond me and my line, we can still have this conversation about your needs, my needs, the needs of the People in the City. It is why I don't fear you as I would fear a bear. Look, by our measurements, you are smarter than I am. You understand technology better, which means you understand efficiency. Imagine all of hominidity as one giant machine. We are all working on optimizing that machine. We need you, you need us. If you wish to wander in the woods with your family, or to stay here and research anything you desire, you may. To each his desires and needs. That is what I think of as rights, or maybe in your word, free. Yob You do not understand free. Don't use it if you don't get the fundamental point: that each individual must be his own master. Miwok Master? As in he who tells the sheep where to go? Yob Yes. Miwok The sheep are free. They can come and go. They stay around the master, the shepherd, because the master knows how to convince the wolves to stay away. Someday the wolves will try to join our fold, too, and become domesticated. We'll have them lounging about our houses, howling at our enemies. Perhaps even we'll domesticate the great cats! With the sheep, we trade this protection for the right to harvest the sheep from time to time. The sheep either don't know, or they accept it. Yob So you control them, and kill them when you want to eat. Miwok Well, there are hominids who are vegetarians. But most of us understand that if we keep our agreements with the other animals, and kill humanely, give the sheep, the chickens, the pigs, the fish, the protection and happiness they require, that we can harvest them. It is our genetic inheritance to require some meat in our diet. Yob You have a central conceit, one that you are so close to that you cannot see. You think that hominids are not animals. Miwok Of course we are animals. Yob But you don't really believe that. You don't believe in your animal instincts. Generations of living separately from the animals has bred this out of you. You don't believe in killing the way animals do--as a basic survival need, as blood-thirst. You kill animals. Why is this not murder? Miwok Because they are not sentient. Well, not like us. Yob I'll give you another view. Animals are sentient. Harvesting animals is murder. But we allow murder because we need it. We want it. Hominids are animals. In times of need, murder of hominids is allowed, too. Miwok Murder is not allowed by civilized hominids. Yob See, "civilized" here means you place yourself above animals. Perhaps you forgot, but Sapiens have remembered. Miwok Thank you, Yob, for showing me an error in our educational system. I appreciate your wisdom and willingness to teach me. In my upbringing, I was taught that only by rising above our animal ancestry, could we evolve and spend our time in higher pursuits, for the good of the People. In the schools we have set up here in the colonies, we must be missing this somehow. Yob I don't know that I signed up to be your teacher. I feel more like your sheep. Miwok So much anger, Yob. What need of yours is unmet that this anger grows in you? Help me to understand you, Yob. Are you saying that without the right to ignore the needs of others, to rape, kill, rampage, steal, and despoil, as our genetic precursors did, that you are equivalent to sheep? Yob No, I don't want to do all those things, I just want the right to do them. Miwok You are having fun with me on a very fine philosophical point! Yob No, I'm serious. I just don't think you are capable of understanding the distinction. Every Sapiens baby gets this idea. But you don't. Miwok So you teach this to your children? Yob No. They know it innately. When they grow enough to ask about the concept, we give them the word. But each child feels free--free even from the loving constraints of his parents. Perhaps that is one of the things you have changed about us.

Siddha It is perfect! Flower Hello, Siddha. Siddha I am here, and Flower is here, but flower is older than Flower or I. Before, it was non-being, then it was somehow created, and then had offspring. And so have my generations of elders. And we are here, as in a golden loop, together in our state of being. Flower Siddha, we are beautiful! Siddha Everything has led up to us sitting here. I am a part of everything. And part of the everything is that now I am here having this thought, and thinking about this thought. Nothing I do will change our existence. But everything I do will change our future. And in the big picture, it may not matter. I cannot posibly do anything but partake in the making of the future. Flower We face the future with love! Siddha Love--the essence of life and meaning, love--inquiry and understanding, love--the desire to live, to yearn, to raise, to grow, love--to move forward with hope. So, with hope, let us move forward!

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THE END