Transience (2022)
There was a sense of honour that she was walking in the steps of her ancestors from millions of years ago. As badly as she wanted to analyze the carvings and potentially find something that had not been recorded, she wanted to get to the end of the tunnel to see what made the archeologists stop even more.
BY JOSEPH ZAGO
IMAGE BY EBRU KUR
Andalusia had all the archaeologists they would ever need. Being ruled by different religious and governing bodies throughout history, there was much money to be made and too many people willing to do it. Alora was among the unlucky ones.
“Nobody is in power to vouch for you, no proper work experience…why should we care?” they continuously said.
Being obsessed with the origins of mankind, Alora was blessed with being born and raised in a land near the origin of humanity. History was all around her, yet she had no access to it. The closest she could get was her father, Hugo. Hugo couldn’t stop feeding information to a wide-eyed Alora growing up and bringing her along to scope out historical sites.
Alora hunted for jobs vigorously, not only for the adventure she so desperately craved, but also for the money. She lived at home with her mother, Ana, doing what she could to take care of the aging woman. Her father was presumed dead a few winters ago, and not once have they spoken of his death. Money was tight and Ana worked so Alora could hunt.
“I take care of the house too, ma,” Alora moaned.
“Yeah, right, and I relax,” Ana rebutted sarcastically.
Alora twisted and turned in her sleep most nights; it hurt that she couldn’t provide more. Thankfully, a lot of her dreams consisted of her father. The adventures they shared, the endless debates about human history, and the happiness that flowed through the family.
Alora’s dreams of her father’s tales excited her. She only wished she had ventured the way he did. Hugo had had one of the first compass watches ever made. He had always rambled on about how it guided him and it stuck to him like glue. Unfortunately, Alora only had a pocket watch that she never used, but it only ignited her to pursue something—anything—to be better. She would wake up each day and visit museums on repeat, go to libraries, and would often read the same books several times. Meaning escaped her. She felt stagnant; no matter how many books she read or how many times she learned, there was no opportunity. Countries, companies, and excavation directors turned her down repeatedly, with the reason never changing. She decided that this life was not worth living anymore. Alora started working as a janitor for the library. It wasn’t what she wanted, but it helped fill one of the holes in her life. At least now she brought home a paycheque, gave back to her mother, and was well on her way to creating a life. Was it a fulfilling one? Meaningless, her dream was too much to triumph and she had to concede.
On the outskirts of this small Spanish village was an archeological dig site. Alora remembered trying to get in both as an employee and as a pundit, which only drove her deeper into depression, so she chose to forget it at all costs. It was hard when the director and his compatriots came in every week to use the library for business meetings or to hang out. All they would ever talk about was which sites would amass the most amount of profit. It pained her to be around a dream that could never come true. She tried her best to stay away. Cleaning up after them grew harder and harder. Seeing remnants of the dirt that could have been a part of the civilization she yearned for was becoming too much to bear. She put off cleaning their table a little more every week until she almost didn’t do it at all, at the risk of losing her job. Luckily, she recognized one of the excavators coming through the door just after closing. Alora never so much as glanced at their table, so she never noticed the lone file staring at her. Alora could barely bring herself to allow the man in, knowing that this was the closest she would ever get to archaeology again. Stan introduced himself and informed her of a missing file that he needed to collect. Alora handed it over but couldn't help enquiring, fully expecting to get turned down.
“It’s confidential.”
The words might as well have been a door shutting in her face. A door she was all too familiar with, the door she was anticipating without flinching.
“...but…”
She had never heard such a beautiful sound.
“The directors only want what they want anyway. If they don’t care about this, what’s the harm? These files are the sites that aren’t what the directors are looking for. Too much money, time, resources, or they just think there is nothing to be found there…I don’t know,” he said as he shook his head disgracefully. “Too many dig sites have wasted their time apparently,” he stated, mocking the directors.
How could these so-called archeologists think any site is a waste of time? Alora thought to herself.
“Feel free to look through them if you're interested.” This was a dream come true. Alora bathed in realizing her dream of opening the file. The first site immediately fascinated her.
“A site from an unknown civilization?” Alora had to read it out loud as it sounded too crazy to be true. “We have to go!”
Stan was hesitant but couldn’t help itching to take this opportunity. “If they find out, I’m out of the job.”
Alora could see he was another wanderer like herself as she rolled her eyes at him.
“Fine, but they can’t find out. I'll pick you up tomorrow.”
No sleep, no rest, only planning and excitement.
For a while, Alora had given every penny to her mother to make up for lost time, but it was once again time for a selfish endeavour in the name of knowledge. When she arrived home, she went snooping through her mother’s belongings, hoping to find the money that was once hers. Alora knew her mother would gladly give her the money for this chance, but she couldn’t bring herself to openly revert on her promise and see the financial pain in her mother’s eyes once more. Alora instead invested the last of her savings and put it all towards upgrading her old digging tools. The last thing she wanted was a shovel to snap when her dream was staring her in the face.
Alora and Stan made their way to survey the dig site. Upon arriving, they immediately noticed the site had already been tampered with. Alora’s face only lit up more, as they didn’t have to waste any time. They could pick up from exactly where the file left off, but Stan’s face glazed over as they walked deeper into the mined site.
“There is no recording of it going this deep,” he said.
The more they walked, the more stonework Alora noticed. Driving lanes from the ice age laid out for her to study. She already knew about the hunting practices of the ice age but to see them in the flesh was like being on Mars and seeing a rover for herself. There was a sense of honor that she was walking in the steps of her ancestors from millions of years ago. As badly as she wanted to analyze the carvings and potentially find something that had not been recorded, she wanted to get to the end of the tunnel to see what made the archeologists stop even more. Was there truly nothing? Stan stopped Alora, who was quickening her pace, skipping over all other findings.
“According to this file, they stopped a while ago. The findings apparently weren’t what they wanted more of, I guess,” Stan said, trying to find a reason.
“Maybe they just didn’t record digging the rest of it out? They sound like they didn’t care about this information, why record it?” Alora spoke hastily.
“Either way, we’re in the unknown. Let’s just take our time and pretend that everything we’re seeing has never been seen by anyone,” Stan said.
Alora shrugged and continued through the tunnel, increasingly enthralled by what awaited on the unrecorded end. Stan quickly looked through the carvings, unable to immediately decipher their origin, but he didn’t have long before Alora was out of sight, and he was forced to catch up.
As she turned the corner, there it was: a large round room, deep within the trench that had been pre-dug for them. At the center was a large stone tomb that was filled with cracks and markings beyond Alora’s knowledge. Alora quickly turned her head, staring at Stan. The look of confusion on his face mimicked hers.
“These markings have never been seen throughout history; they resemble nothing of any culture we’ve ever seen.”
Alora starts to walk around the coffin, curious about what else can help them—maybe this really was outside both of their knowledge?
“I’ve been on too many sites to not see anything like this,” Stan confirmed.
As Alora walked around the dark room using her only source of light as a way of traversing the terrain, she began to think to herself that this discovery was not only outside of her amateur knowledge and Stan's experience, but it was entirely possible that only one other set of people had seen or heard of this place. As her sconce lit the room while circling the coffin, she noticed a silhouette at the base of it. For the first time, her fear outweighed her intrigue. She glanced back at Stan with terror in her eyes, as if she was waiting for the experienced man to give his blessing. Stan was too fascinated with being where no other known person had been before to notice Alora’s fear. She had always known that one day boundaries would need to be pushed; every story her father ever told was accompanied by his drive to uncover something that scared him. With this in mind, she lit one more sconce and the corpse revealed itself lying against the coffin. Shaken at this sight, she ran toward Stan who was still standing in awe of the place. Stan shook out of his delirium as Alora told him about the corpse. Stan began circling the coffin. He saw and examined the area of the corpse. As he did this, he noticed that the side of the coffin near the corpse had been broken into by force. The hole beside the corpse that had been created was too small to see what was once inside. Stan slowly began to take a closer look, anxiously anticipating the unknown, only to see that the coffin was empty. Then, Alora shrieked in terror.
Stan looked up to see an illuminated pink person with disfigured ligaments standing over Alora. Its tall, brooding presence was enough to freeze her. It had the resemblance of a decayed human with a slim build and no clothes, but the light emanating from it was too strong to stare at for longer than a few moments.
“Daughter of the intruder. Why here? Why impede on my afterlife again?”
It felt like the words came from a PA system ringing through her ears.
“Daughter?” Alora mumbled to herself.
The figure looked towards the coffin as Alora made her way around again to look at the corpse, only to see her father’s compass watch weaved in and out of his decaying skin. Alora, in shock, started to tear up.
“Are you looking to impede my afterlife or restore it?”
Alora’s sadness turned to visible anger as she began to disregard her life. “I’m here to question it.”
“What is there to question? We left markings so we could rest. We are the creators of homosapiens.”
“What? How?” Stan interjected.
“The end effect was to wipe...Seeds were planted.”
“What about my father?” Alora growled.
“We are the creators, but we are still susceptible to the anger of intrusion. We died so we may rest, not to be reanimated. Do me this favour and I will restore a favour in return.”
Stan grabbed a nearby rock, patched the hole, and moved the body away from the coffin. “A gesture of good faith,” he said.
The pink being appeared behind Alora and grabbed her head despite her resistance. Her head began to light up a fluorescent pink. Alora’s mind began to warp, causing her immense pain. Streams of thought and pinched nerves caused Alora’s eyes to roll back and her body to spasm. After the being loosened its grip, Alora took a long breath and closed her eyes. The pink being walked towards the coffin and opened it with ease, encasing itself once more.
“Speak the words,” it said as Alora began to overcome her anger as she she spoke an ancient ceremonial speech from memory with her newfound knowledge. As she did this, the coffin and body began to morph back to their original forms. The coffin was now one and so was her father’s lifeless body.
Stan, still in mild shock, asked what it did to her.
“I have it all, the knowledge; everything’s wrong, everything we know,” she said as her eyes darted from left to right. “The archeologists didn’t want to dig more because everything they’ve worked for, for hundreds of years, is a lie; this questions everything they’ve told us. They were just too lazy to start over.”
“How? Don’t we have proof?” he asked. “We only had a piece of the puzzle; we only had the physical remnants; it's the culture they got wrong; humans must unlearn before they know the truth.” Stan's visible confusion was paired with a heightened fascination to learn more.
Alora finally understands that Stan will never comprehend what she’s experienced: She walks away, back toward to the surface.
“No! Wait! Teach me!”
Alora looks back at Stan and says, “I will; it’s not as easy as just telling you. I must show you as he showed me. In due time, you will learn, and our leaders will learn even though it won’t benefit them, and our way of life will change as history dictates life. It will happen there is no choice in the matter.”
Then, she turns back around and walks away with the same brooding mannerisms as the pink being. Stan stares at Alora in awe, and worries about the changes to come.
Joseph Zago is a creative writer and aspiring filmmaker based in Vaughan, Ontario. He is in the final semester of Humber’s Media Foundations program and is currently submitting his writing samples to festivals and competitions while pursuing a career in the film and marketing industry.
Image: Transience (Ebru Kur, 2023)
Edited for publication by Louis Simonin, as part of the Bachelor of Creative and Professional Writing program.
HLR Spotlight is a collaboration between the Faculty of Media & Creative Arts and the Faculty of Liberal Arts & Sciences and Innovative Learning at Humber College in Toronto, Ontario. This project is funded by Humber’s Office of Research & Innovation.