Chương 6: Assumptions and Perspectives

Goblin Realm — Blackwood World Headquarters — Two Years Before Prophesied Birth Elios sat alone in the laboratory. The pale green walls reflected the cold glow of the overhead fluorescents. Dust coated the unused microscopes and silent monitors, softening their edges like relics in a forgotten museum. The air smelled faintly of disinfectant and stale paper, which only confirmed that the cleaning crew had stopped pretending months ago.

He drummed his fingers on the metal workstation, the hollow taps echoing in the empty room. A faint hum from the ventilation system was the only other sound. Six years in this place, and it was starting to feel more like a tomb than a lab. He exhaled sharply and looked down at the pages scattered across the table. It now seemed laughable and incredibly egotistical of him to even begin to think when he first took over the archaeological site, he would have everything figured out in a week.

Despite having no real training in the field, or any anthropological qualifications, how hard could deciphering text from a primitive race be with all the modern technology at his disposal? That early confidence had long since evaporated. What he once assumed would be a simple task had become an enigma for six long and agonizing years, with little progress to show for it. He picked up Wentworth's report on the remains that had been concealed in the chamber. The findings were almost useless.

Wentworth had dissected the bodies, run every test he could think of, and still had no idea what they truly were. Their internal structures resembled Goblins, but there was no genetic link at all. Elios let out a humorless laugh. At least he was not the only one who had no idea what they were dealing with. Mordak Blackwood had divided the project between them.

Elios was ordered to transcribe the ancient text and reverse engineer the technology found at the site, while Wentworth was placed in charge of examining the remains and determining their origins. Blackwood believed the discovery was some kind of weapon that would make him invincible. This was no longer a matter of taking over Falotopia. It had become a pursuit of complete world domination. How he had managed to keep the discovery hidden was beyond Elios's understanding.

Looking back, Elios realized he should have asked more questions. When he'd been appointed by Mordak Blackwood, the newly elected High Chancellor of Falotopia, he never dared question why. He never stopped to consider why a lowly research assistant had been selected above all other scientists for such a prestigious position. He convinced himself it was because Blackwood saw something in him no one else did. This was by far the greatest scientific discovery of all time. It was a miracle the news had not leaked.

Not a single reporter had come sniffing around. No nosy looky‑loos hovered at the perimeter. Not even a conspiracy theorist with a podcast had tried to spin wild theories about the site. To the outside world, the location appeared to be nothing more than an old chemical dumping ground undergoing cleanup, which made the steady flow of personnel seem unremarkable enough to avoid attention.

He had fully expected pushback from the scientists and archaeologists who had been working the site, especially Rasmussen and Palladore. He had been the one sent to shut the dig down, and he still remembered the outrage in their voices as they were escorted away. They were leading experts in their fields and had always fought to bring the truth to light. He assumed they would speak out once they were free to do so. Instead, there was nothing. No press conference, no interviews, not even a whispered rumor.

It was as if they had fallen off the planet after the shutdown. Their silence unsettled him, but at the time he told himself it was not his place to question it. Blackwood's smear campaign had its desired effect. He had systematically discredited every finding they had ever made. Not only were they discredited, but disgraced, causing the scientific and academic communities to turn their backs on them. As a fellow scientist, he almost felt sorry for them, but the feeling faded as quickly as it came.

Support the creativity of authors by visiting the original site for this novel and more. He guessed the pair were hiding in shame somewhere. Elena, serving emberbrew while Alex swept the floor, in some hole-in-the-wall diner. There was no way they would work in their fields again. Blackwood saw to that. It was how he worked. There was no concession, only destruction. Now, a decade later, he realized Blackwood wanted someone who would simply do his bidding, not question the moral or ethical implications.

It wasn't until the Everybody Needs a Friend campaign several years ago that he began to question where his line in the sand was, but there was no quitting Blackwood Industries. Employees were terminated or relocated but resignation was not an option. Blackwood had the power and resources to shut entire digs down before anyone caught wind of their very existence; he controlled what and when the public knew. He had a finger in everyone's pie and once he got a taste there was no stopping him.

Over the years, Elios learned all too well what a master illusionist Blackwood really was. He had a gift for diverting the public's attention to a fictitious crisis, shifting focus from the real issues. He would create problems, then miraculously have the means to solve them. Every time he saw a new beep on his news feed praising Blackwood for his tireless work in finding and cleaning up these sites, he scoffed.

To date, Blackwood's efforts had uncovered six other potentially critical sites, each one holding new keys to the growing mystery surrounding this extinct population. Blackwood, however, remained hyper focused on the Alpha Sector site. He was convinced that this site in particular, held all the answers he needed. The other sites were secondary and inconsequential in Blackwood's view. Elios argued that the other sites may hold the keys to translating the text.

Blackwoods response was simply, why am I going to pay to dig up dirt piles when I pay you to give me answers. Elios stared at the page in front of him. He didn't know why he was bothering. He no longer needed to look at it. He only needed to close his eyes and he could see the ancient writing. The top code breakers and linguistic experts had used specialized equipment to decipher the text, but no one had even come close to figuring out so much as the meaning of a single character. It was dubbed unreadable.

Elios sighed, wondering what he was missing. There had to be a key, something that would make all the pieces fit. Out of sheer frustration, he flung the stack of papers up in the air.

"This is pointless!" he screamed to the empty room. The pages fell haphazardly. He watched them fall like snowflakes during a winter storm. They landed in various positions, one sideways, one right side up, one upside down. He sat staring at the pages that littered much of the floor. Out of the corner of his eye, one page seemed to morph. He could see a pattern.

"Are you kidding me?" he asked, jumping up from his seat.

"We have been looking at this flipping page in the wrong direction?" The machines had been calibrated for standard Goblin script, which used vertical columns read from bottom to top. The ancient text, however, ran in horizontal lines from left to right. He picked up the page and examined it more closely. He walked slowly toward the desk, bending over occasionally to pick up a fresh page. He turned each page in the same direction as the first, there was no mistaking the pattern.

The whole structure was unlike anything he had seen before. Now that he saw it, he could no longer unsee it. He placed it in front of him, grabbed a pad, and began frantically writing for what seemed like hours. He finally began to understand that they had been trying to decode a sound based system with the mindset of a people who used symbols to express whole ideas. To Goblins, the ancient script had never looked like language at all. It had only ever appeared as repeated shapes with no meaning.

Once the page was turned, the pattern revealed itself. Suddenly, it was all so clear. He could not believe it had taken so long to figure out. It was a rather simple language after all, only twenty-six characters. He couldn't yet make out all the words, but he could make out some and that was progress. Understanding the basic phonetic construct was crucial to learning the language. This was the most progress he had made since starting the project.

Now that he could recognize the sounds certain patterns of characters made, it was only a matter of time before he would decipher the rest. Elios could kick himself. The solution was never in complex algorithms, machines or advanced decryption technologies. It was something far more fundamental. Tactile. Almost primitive. All it took was a change of perspective and physical eyes. He had been so hyper-focused on the assumption that the ancients wrote the same way they did, that he couldn't see the fatal flaw.

The ancients wrote from left to right, not up and down as they assumed. By simply turning the page, he found what had been lost. Elios had unlocked what he and dozens of specialists had missed for years. With a little more time, he would crack it. Once the text was deciphered, he could translate the diagrams and plans found with the machines. Then they would know what these machines did, and maybe, just maybe, what had happened to those poor saps, two hundred thousand years ago.