The Statue

The Statue
By
Raman Jalota

   Rahman looked at his crew, “What the hell is this place?”
   Everywhere he looked, it looked like a war zone. Broken pieces of concrete and glass; twisted metal and ashes from a million tons of burnt rubble were all over the place. The water was full of floating debris. The area was whipped with harsh gusts of wind from time to time, filling their eyes and noses with the fine dust of war-damaged cities. On a signal from him Hazari stopped digging and came over.
   “I think I just hit something metallic. Get me a small scraper and brushes.”
   Hazari knelt and crushed the dried soil with his gloves. He removed his right glove and felt through the dirt.
   “Yes, there’s an object here. A metallic object.”
    They started scraping soil and moving further down. A few more centimeters and a bluish green blunt object was exposed.
    “That’s a strange looking thing. What do you suppose it is?”
    “I think its part of a larger object, maybe a sculpture, let’s get further down, to the bottom of this thing.”
    As if with renewed energy, they both started scraping and digging deeper. It was soon apparent that they had exposed a metallic bar that was buried deep under the ground.
    “Damn thing is pretty big, we have already got more than one meter exposed. Hazari, do you see how it’s getting thicker as we dig more?”
    “Yep, it’s like a pointed bar that’s connected to something heavy, I can’t even move it. Let’s try together.”
    They joined together, intertwining their hands around the exposed bar and pulled. It didn’t budge at all. They wiped their brows, looked at each other and commenced digging.
    By now the whole group was assisting Rahman and Hazari and in another six hours the bluish green bar had led them down two meters and it had gotten broader at it’s base; almost one meter at the base. One of them digging around to make the hole bigger and easier to move in had discovered another bar almost identical to the first also headed towards the same unknown base.
    Rahman measured the distance between the two, pulled a computing device out of their van and looked at Hazari with a glint in his eyes. “They should meet each other or a common pedestal in another two to two and a half meters. Let’s get going. And Hazari, you take another digger and move two and a half meters parallel, I think there may be another bar.”
    “It’s getting too tiring for me and you have to call the other site, on the mainland, they need you.”
    “Darn, I had forgotten that other excavation. This is so interesting, I was forgetting everything.”

…..

    “Ziang? How’s the excavation going on the mainland?”
    “Rahman, it’s wonderful. We have unearthed a big cave that’s lined up with devices of all sorts. This would need a computing specialist like you to decipher what they used this cave for. Can you come up and take a look?”
    “Who else do you have there?”
    “I have Katerina but she is not as intuitive in solving these riddles as you are.”
    “I will be there in a couple of hours. Is there enough to see with artificial lights?”
    “There’s enough. Why don’t you camp here with us tonight? You can spend some time analyzing the site tomorrow.”
    He couldn’t wait to go to the site. He rode the cruiser across the water deep in thought. Devices … Ziang had mentioned devices … Is it possible, we may have uncovered the first known computing devices? … That would be a remarkable find … at least three thousand years old! Will we be able to decipher what these devices really are and what purpose they accomplished in the olden days of this awful continent?
    As the cruiser touched land, he hurried towards the giant diggers, glowing orange in the closing rays of the sun, only a few hundred meters from the shore. Ziang had heard the cruiser and was climbing out of a 50-meter deep excavation pit as Rahman approached.
    “My, my … I didn’t know you were moving so fast.”
    “We have been here for three weeks, so this is not that remarkable. Come on, let’s go down and take a look. Watch your step, there’s loose dirt here.”
    He looked around in awe. A huge cave, lined with glass and wood and surrounded by primitive video screens. The center was still untouched. But the peripheral revealed an extremely important, possibly religious place.
    “I am sure they performed religious rituals here, I can feel it. I would love to get to the source of these screens and find the base data. When do you start clearing up the middle?”
    “In two or three days. Anything interesting at the island site?”
    “We are uncovering a metallic structure, probably a statue of some kind. It could turn out to be quite large.”

…..

    Rahman woke up feeling refreshed and looking forward to the day’s task. He teamed up with Katerina and showed her how to identify the devices. They seemed to be data displays. Katerina watched intently as he dismantled one of them.
    “Here, hook up the decoder to these two points.”
    They got a display of several three-letter codes followed by a group of numbers.
    “That’s interesting. I don’t know what that signifies but it’s strange. Dismantle the other one and decode the last display for me, please.”
    He stared at the row of displays lined up all along the cave. Could they be displaying different sets of data that made up the script for a ritual?
    Katerina worked furiously and shouted, “It’s the same message.”
    “The same message?”
    “Here look, it’s identical. Same codes … same exact numbers.”
    Rahman ran his fingers through his hair, “Hmmm … why? The only difference between the two is how far the data traveled for the display. Can you do the same for the rest? And let me know how far the data traveled on each. Map it out and maybe we can get to the source transmitter.”
    He stared at the walls of the cave and then closed his eyes and stood still. He left her at that end and went to a spot several meters away. I can feel it. This is where the source must be.
    He borrowed digging tools and started digging at a spot where there was a huge amount of dirt, away from the center. Ziang walked over to see him just before lunch.
    “What the hell are you doing at this end?”
    “I think this is where the data storage devices are. I know I only checked two monitors but I feel this in my bones, the source has to be at this end.”
    “If you are certain, then I will lend you some more diggers.”
    “No, I want to wait till Katerina maps the rest of the devices.”
    Two hours after lunch, Katerina had all of the thirty-eight devices mapped. They had varying distances to the source but intersected at one common point, an area six meters from the spot Rahman had picked and four meters down. Ziang sent three diggers up to them. They started clearing large areas of dirt headed straight down a hallway that ended by a door with the silhouette of a man.
    As they went past the door, they burst out laughing. This wasn’t the first or the second. They had excavated many a sites and yet here again they had found their way into another bathroom.

…..

    By the time they had dug behind the bathroom and made their way to the lower floor, the central chamber was fully excavated. There was nothing in the middle of the huge hall … Just bare floor.     Hanging from the ceiling were eight more displays. Katerina discovered that they too originated from the same source … The server on the lower floor. Katerina jumped at the chance to decode the contents of the server and help draw some conclusions.
    Rahman nodded his head, “You say numbers?”
    “Yes, that’s all it has … numbers. A few alpha characters but mostly numbers. A set of numbers being displayed all across the big hall at the same time. Then the numbers would abruptly change; some going up, others down.”
    “Numbers being displayed all day long?”
    “No, not all day long. From about 8:30 in the morning to 4:30 in the afternoon. Five days a week … They were obsessed with this random number generating game.”
    “I agree. It has to be a game. What other purpose can there be behind such a vast arena?”
    “This was apparently a great source of joy for these people. They spent a lot of time studying these numbers and adding more numbers to some and subtracting from others.”
    “And what did they name this great arena?”
    “I will have to try and find that.”
    She punched the keypad on her decoder and looked puzzled, “I don’t understand what it means but it was called ‘The Stock Exchange’.”
    Rahman took her hand and led her out of the pit, “Someday we will make sense out of this ancient civilization, but for now it seems to get more confusing as we learn more.”

…..

    Rahman was back at the pit. By now of course the pit was eight meters deep and almost seven meters wide. Rahman stared in amazement. The pointed green spears met on a common circular base. And the base had several more spears attached to it at equal intervals. The circular base sat on a metallic head that was still not completely exposed.
    Hazari stood up rubbing his hands, “See this Rahman. This is a statue of some unique being, maybe a ruler of the people.”
    “You are right. But this is so huge. By the size of the head, I would assume its 40 meters high. That would have been quite a difficult thing to create. This has to be something very important.”
    Hazari put his arm around his shoulder, “I am glad you are here. I have to go and help Katerina figure out the next puzzle. She has obtained large amount of data from this new site but can not logically fit it into any pattern.”
    “Another game? In another arena … like the last one?”
    “She says not … but I will find out what it is and call you up when we know.”
    Rahman walked to the bottom of the pit and taking a small trowel started scraping the dirt at the base. As he made a small clearing one of the other diggers pushed in a small spade and removed a big chunk of dirt.
    “Good … may be some on the other side.”
    Yes, It’s the forehead under the crown! I should find the eyes just under that and then the nose.
    He worked feverishly, scraping and digging, exposing parts of the head, measuring, remeasuring, marking spots to scrape … Finally the head was fully exposed. It was still intact. Just over five meters from its chin to the crown; three fourths of a meter across the eyes, Rahman recalculated the height to be 46 meters.
    As the sun set across the statue’s meter and a half long nose, the whole team stood watching the green head turn orange and then purple and finally black as night fell.
    Rahman called Ziang, “I am amazed at this beautiful statue. It looks like a young man with strands of hair on both sides, wide open eyes with a long, straight nose. It has to be a young man, but it does have a feminine touch in its features.”
    “How large do you think the whole statue is?”
    “I calculate it to be 46 meters or so.”
    “And how far down are you?”
    “We are about 10 meters deep.”
    “Broken … It must be broken. They wouldn’t have buried such a large statue in the ground!”
    “I never thought of that. You are absolutely right. It has to be broken up in several pieces.”
It was proven correct the next day when they found the neck ending in jagged edges barely a meter from the chin. A large digger dug more dirt without hitting any metal. All they had left to do now, was to get the crown with its seven spikes completely excavated and they will be able to lift it in one piece.
    I better get back to the other site. This thing is over except for figuring out what it’s a statue of.

…..

    Katerina turned her hands palm side up, “That’s it. No more.”
    Hazari: “You sure?”
    “That’s all I can gather. Look again at the third videodisc I found. People come up to the desk and write numbers on pieces of papers and give it to the person, who stays here through out the day. That must be a job. She takes slips of papers with numbers and sometimes gives them green papers with numbers and other times just white paper with numbers.”
    “But I also saw people bringing back those green slips with numbers on them. Rewind … look on the left side.”
    “You are right. I have seen that on another disc too. But what does it mean?”
    “Obviously, it’s an exchange of some sort. But what does it accomplish?”
    “That’s what I can’t understand. The database is quite large, but it’s full of numbers … all associated with names and coded identifiers. I can decipher that. But I don’t understand what they are accomplishing.”
    Hazari drummed his fingers on the desk, “Can you extract all associated details of a single person or group?”
    Katerina pushed several keys on her pad and a set of dates and numbers were displayed. She pushed another key and the display slowly moved up and finally stopped.
    Hazari: “That must be the last date of activity on this individual … 8/17/2154 … That must be when this stopped functioning. Probably at the same time this continent collapsed. Pull another one.”
Four hours later, they sat across each other puzzled but grinning. Rahman had joined in their analysis and was shaking his head in disbelief.
    Katerina: “So you think this is a lifetime record of some kind, where these people added and subtracted numbers from their accounts ... Some going up and others going down?”
    Hazari: “Another number’s game. But what for? These people were everywhere … worker ants … running all over, doing unpleasant and unnecessary tasks … and doing it willingly. And for what … this is insane … how can there be such mindless creatures … manipulated into madness but not even aware of it? Spending their lives in pursuit of numbers!”
    Katerina: “Strange but that’s it. A strange, useless, completely illogical society that lived and died for numbers. I wonder how they were manipulated into accepting their roles in this mindless game?”
    Rahman: “And what was the name of this place?”
    Hazari: “Bank of New York. I assume New York stands for either the place, the country, the continent or a Supreme Being that they prayed to.”

…..

    Katerina walked over to Rahman and put her arm around him, “That’s quite pretty.”
    “Such a large head and that crown with the spikes. What could it be?”
    “It may be a statue of the supreme being they prayed to – New York.”
    “But they kept it away from the mainland. There must be a reason for it.”
    Hazari called over to them. They hurried to where he stood with a digger. Shattered pieces of rocks and stones lay in the rubble they had dug up. He pointed to one of them.
    “That one … It still has some letters left on it … The last piece of the pedestal still intact.”
    Katerina clapped her hands, “Wow … Something followed by B E RT Y … That won’t be New York then. I thought I knew the answer.”
    Rahman: “Search your databases … all words with ‘berty’ in them.”
    Katerina punched a few keys on the pad and then stared at it. She handed it to Rahman.
    Hazari: “What is it?”
    Rahman “There are only two words in the database with ‘berty’, ‘Liberty’ and Puberty’.   Hmmm.”
    Hazari: “This civilization was a slave civilization. Slaves who lived and died for numbers. It can’t be a monument to ‘Liberty’. What were there sexual habits like?”
    Katerina: “As far as we have gathered, they were very backward in sex too. They were hung up on sex. These people loved sex but could not tolerate any overt expression of sex in society. There are some videodiscs of public display of affection but I would be willing to bet that they had more problems in dealing with sex just as they never figured out the purpose of life. Their lives were spent in pursuit of numbers. These people were incapable of visualizing a society that worked by letting individuals do what they pleased. It had to be controlled by a forced mastery ... a master that was just a concept … numbers.”
    Rahman: “I agree completely. This definitely was ‘The Statue of Puberty.”

The End   2866 words

Copyright © 2004 Raman Jalota. All rights reserved. No part of this electronic publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, recording or otherwise, without the written permission of the author.

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