The Mummies of Blogspace9 (2 page)

We’ve been focusing most of our attention on the little church ruins...

LEON HERE
- Hate to INTERRUPT, I do, but sometimes it becomes necessary. This place is haunted as fuck, and Michelle knows it as well as anyone. Ask her about the shuffling zombies that patrol at night, or the howling ghosts that wake us up sure as any alarm clock might. At dinner time, the banshees wail. Actually none of that is precisely true, but there is something truly demonic going on here. I haven’t put my finger on it yet, but I will. That being said, I’m going to give the laptop back to Michelle so that I can resume my Kim staring.
OK, I’M GIVING THE LAPTOP BACK TO MICHELLE.

Thank you for that, Leon. We scientists are truly fond of superstitious nonsense, really. So it’s a blessing that you are among us.

As I was saying, we’ve been focussing most of our attention on the church. Little remains of it except a few wall segments from the central nave and part of the sacristy. But we archaeologists are in the business of digging, and dig we have done. We’re down underneath the altar now, and underneath part of the sacristy, and damn if we haven’t found actual pieces of paper. This is exactly what we were hoping for; the writings, letters, maybe even diaries, of the priests who came here in 1578.

Imagine why that is important, won’t you? To have a firsthand account of what it was like to try to convert the natives, not the whitewashed version that was sent home to Spain. No, this is going to change history. That’s what we’re doing here, changing history.

So we find our writings, our letters, etc., then we scan them and send them off to our project historian, Bruce Wheeler, who just yesterday headed off to work at the Archive of the Indies in Seville, Spain, to see if he can orient our findings to some broader historical context. And just because it’s worth mentioning - there have long been rumors of a pile of Inca gold that was hidden somewhere around here by the conquistadors. So hey, maybe we’ll find that too.

So now that I’ve shared our adventures, I’ll take a moment to introduce our cast of nine characters:

1)
me -
Michelle Cavalcante
- field director

2) Bruce Wheeler,
our historian, my true love, who is working the archival end of things in Seville, Spain

3) Leon Samples,
our lab director

4) Cyrus Sanderson,
our fearless leader

5) Kim Castillo,
our crew chief

and…and we haven’t identified the other four yet, but give us time.

This is as good a point as any to thank the good folks at
Blogspace9
who are generously funding our excavations, and providing some seriously high-end computer equipment.

Blogspace9
is a startup blogging/social networking site. It’s unique in that it allows a core group of nine peers to remain in nearly constant contact, and to communicate across an integrated series of platforms. You’ve probably heard about it, and about us. We were featured in all their initial advertisements. You remember - the ones with the photo of Cyrus standing in front of the pyramid, with the headline
Famous Archaeologist to Investigate the Mysteries of Segovia.
Boy, was Cyrus mad about that! It’s always important to read the fine print before you sign something.

In any case, it was
Blogspace9
who courageously interceded when our excavation permits were cancelled at the last minute. Although we have every reason to believe that those permits were cancelled because we initially refused to accept
Blogspace9
’s funding (mostly because we are archaeologists, and not very much interested in social networking experiments)
Blogspace9
convinced the ministry of culture to issue those permits in exchange for us agreeing to work with
Blogspace9
.

So that’s my story for now. I should go. Cyrus just woke up and is either feverish or in the grip of more delirium tremens. More tomorrow. - Michelle

June 11, 2011
Seville, Spain
Bruce Wheeler
http://www.historyismine.
Blogspace9
.ex

Feels like just yesterday I was in Peru. Wait, I was. I’m horribly jet-lagged. We’re supposed to introduce ourselves, that’s what lovely Michelle told me, so here goes: Bruce Wheeler here, Dr. Bruce Wheeler, Ph.D., under-employed historian extraordinaire, temporarily in service to the great Cyrus Sanderson. And I am writing to you from beautiful Seville, Spain.

It’s hot as hell here. I just had my lunch at a little restaurant by the Archive, a little filet of pork with spinach and garbanzo beans. Absolutely delicious! I haven’t had pork filets since that night at the cabin, Michelle, when we were celebrating the one month anniversary of the first time we…we…, you know, I’m not used to this blog thing yet. It’s so public. I guess that’s the point, right? There is a story to be told here, and all of us have a part in telling it. But nine bloggers, Michelle? You think this is a story to be told by nine bloggers? Why couldn’t someone start a site called Blogspace3?

I’m not even convinced that Cyrus is going to chime in. Unless there’s a peer-reviewed publication in the works, Cyrus won’t even write a laundry list. Oh nuts, he’s going to read this, isn’t he? This isn’t like one of our regular e-mails where I can just dump on him.

Just kidding. Love you, Cyrus, prince among men and all that. By the way, that
Blogspace9
ad with your photo is over here too. I picked up the International Herald and saw your big face on the last page. Seriously though, I am truly grateful for the job. Without you, I’d be selling tube socks under a bridge, and Michelle would leave me for someone with nobler prospects.

Back to my day. After lunch, I walked down to the center of the old town, admiring the great cathedral, and the Giralda Tower reaching up to God. And next door, one of the greatest buildings in the world to a historian - the Archive of the Indies. I took a moment to catch my breath.

This was once the Council of the Indies, as you know, the nexus of all exploration in the new world. This building is where exploration permits were written, where trade licenses were negotiated, and where treasure and plunder were recorded. For a short time, this building would have been the center of the world. Now it’s the Archive.

Thanks to my sterling paperwork, my letters of recommendation, Cyrus’s missive to the minister, my excellent Spanish language speaking ability, my impeccable posture and winning smile, I am now a registered investigator at the Archive of the Indies.
Investigator #00219222
at your service. I’m told that the first two digits of the license are the most important. The double 00s, as we elite investigators refer to ourselves, are the only ones permitted to carry firearms. We double 00s are looked up to with respect and envy by all the other investigators. Actually, I made that part up.

I was told that most of the archive is online. And some of it is, but not the good parts, not the parts that an apostate priest would leave lying around, not the parts that tell what it was really like to sit there in the sand and try to convert the natives who didn’t know whether to kill you or eat you first.

No, those parts were filed away quietly, if they were filed away at all.

OK, so before they would give me this investigator’s license, I had to read the regulations in front of them, so that I could demonstrate to their satisfaction that I understood the rules, which I did. I am not allowed to bring a hat into the reading room, nor an overcoat, nor any beverages. I assured them that I would arrange to lodge my hat elsewhere.

I do not have clearance to look at original maps, I was reminded again and again, so I was not to request maps. And I could request only one book at a time, and could photocopy no more than 30% of any document. Once I agreed to these rules, my license was issued.

So I’m in, guys! One day down, and I’m in. I’d tell you more but it’s like 3:00 in the afternoon, and I’m still jet-lagged. I’m going to take a nap. Love you, Michelle. I’m glad you love me too, otherwise, we’d both be in for an uncomfortable few decades of stalking, and the attendant legal issues resulting thereof.

Before I sign off, I have to mention a strange thing that happened. As I was having lunch earlier, a gypsy women wandered over. I guess Roma is the more accurate term, not gypsy, but she had two little boys with her, twins, and she had her begging cup out making her way from table to table. I had already gotten a two euro coin out, figuring I could stand to burn off some karma. But when she got to my table, she dropped her cup on the ground, and all her coins rolled out. She just stared at me.

The little boys grabbed for the money, but she just kept staring. I was getting kind of creeped out, so finally I held out that two-euro coin, thinking it might make her go away, and she pulled back like she was horrified.

“Perdido,” she whispered as she grabbed the little boys. “Nunca descansara.” Then she ran. One of the waiters caught this exchange, and I figured I’d ask him, but he ran inside and I didn’t see him again. So here I am, day one in Spain, and I’m cursed, it would seem. Perdido means lost, and the rest of it – “
you’ll never rest.
”

June 11, 2011
Segovia, Peru
Leon Samples

Sorry to hear that you’re cursed, Bruce. That’s a tough break. But I want you to know that if anything happens to you, I’ll take good care of Michelle. Nights can be lonely when a loved one passes, but I’ll help her through them.

More to the point, your girlfriend has ordered me to do this blog thing, and she’s the boss, so here goes: My name is Leon Samples. I’m a grad student working on my Ph.D. in historical archaeology. I’m writing from this horrific little land reform town on the Peruvian coast, where Cyrus has brought me to toil like a slave.

Cyrus is my dissertation advisor and I have to do everything he says. Otherwise he’ll never sign off on my dissertation. He told me that himself. But before he can sign off on my dissertation, I have to write it. And before I can do that, I have to dig up some things to write about. Luckily, Michelle moves me from one excavation unit to another, driving me like a mule.

It’s close to midnight here, and I’m the only one still up. We archaeologists may play hard, drink copiously, and party mightily, but we go to bed early. I’d go to bed too, but I haven’t been sleeping well. And I’m pissed off, because I had to take the car into town this afternoon to get supplies. So instead of sitting around drinking beer and staring at Kim Castillo, which is my favorite thing to do, I had to buy thirty gallons of diesel for the generator, and four chickens for dinner. I’m a man of many talents, more than one woman has confided, but I’ll be damned if I’m a good judge of chickens. Dinner was tough, and I was blamed.

And if that isn’t bad enough, my eyes are killing me. We’ve been down here for four months already, and not a day goes by without another sandstorm. The wind blows so hard that the sand gets inside your eyes. Seriously, my eyeballs feel like those little snow globes that you shake up. If I stand up too fast, it looks like Kim Castillo is hiding behind a wall of snow.

And if that isn’t bad enough, there’s somebody walking around outside the gate, and it’s starting to creep me out. We’re living in this crazy mansion down here in the middle of nowhere. They built it as an archaeological research facility in the eighties but then it was abandoned until Cyrus trained his learned eye on it. Now we rent it.

It has three bedrooms and a giant living room, and a huge kitchen that is the province of our wonderful caretaker/cook/majordomo. I’ve forgotten his name, but presumably he has some living quarters back behind the kitchen. I’m not sure; I’ve never been back there.

The whole place is walled, and when that gate closes at dusk, Cyrus locks it tight with his giant key, and he won’t open it for anyone. I asked him about this when we first got here, and he says it has to do with local superstitions. Night visitors are not the kind of folks you want to entertain. Then I asked our caretaker, and he told me that the men who cut cane all day long get rowdy at night, and they drink. Peru is filled with retired and semi-retired guerillas, and some are not averse to the occasional temp job.