Antikythera

There are no forests in Equestria but there is everything else. Buildings and houses, train stations, shops, farms, arcades, and open spaces where there are hills high enough to see panoramic views of all the city and parks, and these parks have little flowing rivers, babbling brooks, grassy hills, sand pits, and trees – lots and lots of Jacaranda trees’. But still there are no forests in Equestria, a suburb in the city of Pretoria in the northern part of the Gauteng Province of South Africa. There is however the Rietvlei Nature Reserve which is in close proximity to the city spread out over thirty-eight square kilometers. The Rietvlei Dam is here and the Tambo Airport highway is just west of it. A network of roads go all through out the Reserve making it accessible to everyone so you can see the sights like the indigenous Common Hook Thorn Tree (Acacia caffra) to the more exotic Weeping Willow (Salix babolynica). There’s over three hundred different species of bird living here and if you’re lucky maybe you’ll be one of the few to name one of them that still hasn’t been identified yet. Then of course there are also some sixteen hundred individual mammals that make this place their home, including four lionesses and one lucky lion…but oddly enough no horses.

Still, all these stats are things you could learn for yourself from Wikipedia if you wanted to. What really makes all these dry facts and boring numbers interesting is how fast they have recently become outdated. One day not that long ago the Rietvlei Nature Reserve was found encroaching onto the Tambo Airport highway and the internal network of roads that go all through out the Reserve were also becoming overrun with nature. Seemingly over night the sleeping forest had awakened and grown without anyone noticing from thirty-eight to thirty-nine square kilometers. The government civil servants of Pretoria worked tirelessly for three days to restore the roads back to their original condition, often and most frequently to the thankless jeers of passing motorists on the airport highway yelling at them that they had no idea how to do their own job and they needed to hurry the (expletive) up because they have a flight to catch.

Of course such strange phenomena tend to get the attention of the whole world. While people trying to catch their flights found the encroaching Reserve to be a nuisance, there were scientists who specialized in ecological and environmental studies that desperately wanted all the forest preserved just the way it is so it could be fully studied and analyzed. The scientific community wanted to know how all these different genus of trees could cohabitate so densely packed together – there was a strong theory it was tied into a phase of the full moon. There were also strange reports from random people sighting a giant red hawk that had a coat of brilliant red feathers which blended to orange and then yellow like flame – people were calling it a phoenix. Hawks in general no matter how colorful they appear to be are not one of the three hundred nineteen different species of bird found in the Rietvlei Reserve; they aren’t even indigenous to South Africa…but then again…neither are horses and some of the Reserve personnel were reporting findings of smaller than usual hoof prints in the dirt by the roadsides.

The Rietvlei Reserve was quickly gaining a reputation as the eighth wonder of the world over the following weeks with the air of mystery that was surrounding it now and all the attention it was receiving. Tourists wanted to visit it thinking the place was magical, while the scientific community believed it to be its own perfectly encapsulated eco-system, kind of like an oasis in the middle of the desert. There were countless theories and strange wives tales about the Reserve being spun every day, none of them really more plausible or credible than the other, even other nature reserves tried to cash in on the craze with little or no success to match the original. It seemed whatever the mystery was surrounding Rietvlei would stay that way...to everyone else, except maybe to those who have seen something like this before.

Egerton University in Njoro, Kenya three days later…

Molly Williams is a 14 year old girl from the farm belt of Kansas, she is fair skinned despite being a farm-girl, she has blonde hair in twin pig-tails and blue eyes…which you can’t really see because she is currently wearing giant oval shaped blue glasses that match her blue farmer overalls and blue hoody jacket that is zipped all the way up with the hood pulled over her head. So really the only part of Molly you can actually see is her hands propping up her, bored out of her gourd, face. Her father Jack Williams – yes THAT Jack Williams the one you’ve always heard about – thinks she’s crazy for dressing up like its winter back on the farm instead of summer in Africa since that was actually the case – mid July as a matter of fact.

Molly was in her own way protesting her father opting to work on what was supposed to be the family vacation. This error in judgment was coming after her older sister Megan decided not to go this year so she and her fiancé could help their mom (ne future mother in-law) with the summer load of farm work. Then her brother Daniel got the letter of acceptance to law school he had been waiting for and POOF! off he went with his bags packed to some big time university.

That just left Jack and his precious youngest child to go by themselves off to Africa to engage in the frivolous joy of sight seeing…right up until yesterday when Prof. Williams got a call asking if he would come to Egerton University to meet with someone who wanted to see him. Now Molly had no choice but to go where her father went and engage with all the same people he wanted to see instead of going off with her siblings or mom to somewhere more interesting like on a safari to see lions and zebra’s.

Young melodramatic Molly was probably making this out to be a criminal waste of precious vacation time in her mind, this meeting that had been requested was only going to be for an hour after all…except that was two hours ago, and now time was creeping up on that third hour. In Jack’s defense he had a captive audience; the first thing he did when he arrived at Egerton U. was go to the faculty office and ask for the man who requested to see him – Professor Smith. Simple enough except that the professor was running late for whatever reason.  His last class finished twenty minutes ago but he hadn’t come by the faculty offices yet like he tends to do. Jack made the fateful decision to wait, which irked Molly some, but not as much as when he decided to give tips to the Anthropology students who came by looking for their missing professor who had questions about their lessons and found a willing professor from America eager to share what he knows.

Professor Williams was in his element here, one by one the students gathered to take notes and as his conversation pieces about Anthropology grew more and more detailed, Jack realized this small office lacking a chalk board would not cut it, so he migrated to a nearby empty classroom and sprawled his thoughts across the room. More and more students started to gather and even a professor or two stopped by to see who this guy was, a new hire perhaps? He sure was enthusiastic about his teaching that much was certain. Molly contained herself to the very back of the room where she didn’t have to care about any of this and could use her smart phone to post on Twitter her disdain for the situation she was in…five people retweeted her comment.

Mercifully a man – who was a young fellow in his late twenties with his brown hair pushed into a swoop that went off the right side of his face and actually he looked like a professor because he was one of those guys wearing a pale green tweed jacket with leather elbow patches, black slack pants with brown suspenders, black suede shoes, white button down pin striped shirt and a red bow tie – he was back by the main door and raised his hand.

“Uh yes, professor sir…how long does it take a team of Anthropologists to screw in a light bulb?” That made everyone look to the back of the room, and Molly heard a few of the students comment that the man was actually a professor, Professor Smith - who had a charming English accent – he was also a dork for telling such a crummy joke according to some. Jack smiled and shoved his hands into his pants pockets.

“Oh I would say about 20 seconds, plus 3 years to complete their field notes, and then 10 years to publish the results.” Then everyone laughed, except for Molly and then was asked to exit and go home already by Mr. Smith while he attended to his business with Mr. Williams.

The kids all said their thanks for the time Mr. Williams gave them along with their goodbye’s and finally departed leaving the two professors alone with Molly.

“Mr. Williams, hello at last we finally meet!” Molly and Jack were taken back. Professor Smith was rather exuberant. He walked right over to professor Williams with great haste and grabbed his hand giving him a vigorous handshake.

“So glad you could make it out here to see me! Usually I make it a habit to go out of my way to find someone, it helps to foster that feeling of being special if you know what I mean, like Christmas but not really more like All Saints Day except this time there’s a bit of a problem with my…uh…wheels? Is that something the kids still say nowadays?” Professor Smith looked at Molly when he asked that question and Molly just stared on.

“Anyway yes problems with my wheels, my big sexy blue set of wheels they’re sort of lost at the moment, well not really lost more like somewhere I can’t get to her, well more here than there anyway what you should take away from this whole experience is that I’m glad I could persuade you to come since I couldn’t come to you.”

After that conversational blitz Jack found himself reeling and had lost his train of thought.

“Um…you’re Professor Smith I take it?”

“Well of course I am, weren’t you listening to a word I said just now? Never mind don’t answer, that’s a whole other ball of wax that’s in the rabbit hole we don’t need to go down right now, here look at this.” Professor Smith reached into the inside of his jacket and pulled out a black leather card holder that had a blank white card in it…or wait…it was actually a government issue United Kingdom ID for John Smith…why did Jack think it was blank?

“Well it’s nice to meet you as well Professor Smith. But I have to ask, how did you know I was going to be spending my vacation here in Africa? AND PLEASE!” Jack reached out and actually put a finger to Mr. Smith’s lips right as he was about to annunciate his first word in a long stream of complicated nouns.

“Keep it simple for people with IQ’s under 150.” Mr. Smith smiled wryly even as Mr. Williams held that solitary finger to his lips. So he made the hand sign for OK and Mr. Williams removed his finger.

“Right 150. Well luckily enough it’s not that complicated. As a matter of fact I can sum it all up in one word; Australia.” That made Jack realize he wasn’t going to get his straight answer or even the short version of a story.

“You see I’m substituting for my old friend Dr. Miles Mason who’s been asked by the Carrington Corporation to do some Anthropology-like consulting work for them in their Australian branch. Marvelous opportunity, The Serpentine Cathedral, Clausteral Canyon, and The Aboriginal Trail, oh the places he’ll go…and the things he’s already seen.” Professor Smith was intentionally coy as he mentioned that last part.

Professor Smith was reaching into his jacket again to find something else now.

“That thesis you wrote all those years ago about, “Out Of Place Artifacts” what was it you titled it?”

“The Antikythera Mechanism – Helping Us Find Untold Worlds.”

“Well Professor Williams -” Mr. Smith pulled out a small set of photos from a pocket inside his jacket.

“I believe my friend, Miles may have found proof to support your theory.”

Jack could feel his heart beating a little faster now, which made his outstretched hand tremble as he took the stack of pictures. The photos showed something that evolved around horses, very old markings found carved on trees and etched into cave walls depicting equines with all sorts of different symbols around them; a multitude of tools shaped like horns and…and wings? There were some markings at these locations and on the tools that looked like language, but they were a composite of different languages that already existed. Greek, Hindu, and what appeared to be Norse.

“What is this?” Asked Mr. Williams losing all his professional composure, his voice almost gave way to a shrill shriek of Anthropology joyfulness in that moment.

“I thought that would be obvious. Its proof you were right that there are other worlds out there and as such I think it’s only right you be the one to lead us to these untold places.”