Stereo
Stereo speakers couldn't drown out the words playing in Michael's head. The memories weren't fazed by the Taproot track playing on repeat in his room. He laid on his back staring lazily at the ceiling; the window passed a warm breeze in from the street. Michael had three months left of his senior year and his mind was repeating over and over the words his father had said to him a week ago.
"When you turn 18, you're out!"
Michael's birthday was in a week and he wasn't sure what would happen to him. He tried to use the music to hide the truth but if anything it only hid his movements in his room from the outside world. He could turn it up as loud as he wanted, no one else was home. No matter the sounds the reality wasn't being masked. He had to find a way to get through the next week without losing his mind. What would happen to him if he moved? What would happen to school? His job? Who would he live with? All this swam in his head as his father's words played over and over.
After the tenth loop of the same song Michael finally got up to switch it but his hand froze before touching the display as the song was ending. Standing with his face so close and his ears no engulfed by the sound he started to sing.
"sometimes I would give anything to be something more than nothing,
something more than nothing."
The words finally drowned it all out, once his own voice was melded with the music. He didn't know what he would do, he couldn't imagine it but he felt that if he held onto something in him, that he could make it through. He had to make it through. One way or another.
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Seventh
"Seventh from the right, down two, and that should be it." Mary guided Jason's hand as he traced the markings on the wall. The image of the wall and Jason on her view screen were shaky and kept cutting in and out but it would suffice for this purpose. They had been trying to decipher the hieroglyphics on the wall for three hours now but it was written in a cipher and not straight forward like most wall writings of the area.
This was the third cave they had uncovered in the Martian Valley "Eileithyia", named after the Goddess of Birth, since this place seemed to be the birth of Martian civilization or at least a primitive language. It looked vaguely like ancient Sumerian and Egyptian but wasn't a clear match. Scattered over Mary's desk lay pictures of script written in the other caves and simple scribblings trying to match up markings and discern simple ideas from them. Pictographs were her specialty and were the reason she was on this mission now.
"This one?" Jason's voice came cracking through the radio. He was pointing at a scribble on the wall and held up his scanner to transmit the image. Mary was looking for a specific order of pictographs so getting the wrong one might mess up the order.
"No, one more down. That one." Mary pointed to the screen with her pen out of habit.
"Scanning." The blue light from Jason's handheld scanner sent a digital copy of the pictograph to Mary's computer screen as well as a print out simultaneously. She held up the paper to the light and placed it next to the fourteen pictures in the sequence.
"Alright Jason, you can come back in." Mary radioed back. Jason turned to the camera and gave a thumbs up, then the screen went out completely. Mary's attention was drawn wholly to the fifteen scraps of paper. The pen in her mouth was being chewed to bits as her eyes jumped from image to image. She turned to her desk and pulled out her notebook. Worn and bent from constant use she flipped to a clean page and started to write words. The decipher of the previous caves went rather smoothly once the initial shock wore off; the shock of finding writing on another planet. Mary, a linguist and historian of ancient and dead languages had been sent up to Mars three years ago when the first cave was unearthed. She along with a team of researchers arrived to find walls filled with pictographs, not unlike what one would see in Ancient Egypt or Babylon on Earth.
The current cave they were working on was similar but right away Mary noticed a cipher. The team of scientists had figured out, roughly, what most images, might, mean and had pieced together a rather simple narrative. Again, not dissimilar to what one might find in a pyramid back home. However, the third cave didn't make sense outright, as if the images were in a jumble. Mary's burning question was, why would they write in a cipher on a wall? On a tablet, or something small makes sense. Write a secret message, hand it to someone in secret, and it stays between you. This would be the equivalent of writing a cipher on the side of a building in New York City. Ciphers were meant to conceal truths and were secretive, not something you'd paint on the side of a wall.
The configuration Mary had instructed Jason to send was the third iteration of her decryption formula. It seemed to have a rule of fifteen, hence the fifteen pictograph sample. In the corner of the room was a recycle bin crammed with the old iterations, which Jason had offered to burn but Mary held him off "just in case". Right now she could pull out different words or images and make sense of them. As she thumbed through the pages and made her own little scribbles Jason reentered the room having completed his decontamination and re-compression.
"How's it looking?" Jason said taking a seat by the computer. He noticed an old cup of coffee, sniffed it and took a swig. For scientists, their crew lived more like a college dorm than what one would expect of such high thinkers.
"Bird," Mary pointed to the first pictograph, "which we've decided means flight or movement." Jason stood from the chair cracking back and tossing back the last of the cold coffee and took his place next to Mary.
"Bird, canyon, cart, waves...I know most of these now Mary, but what does the phrase mean? Or is there even a phrase in there?" Jason asked pointing back towards the monitor, his mind extending to the cave he just left. Mary frowned looking from her notes to the pictures. It didn't make a phrase but Mary didn't want to admit it to Jason.
"Maybe the base value is wrong..." Mary said under her breath. She pulled the images down and started to toss them into the bin when she caught the sight of one image upside down. She started to tear apart the bin and laid the pieces on the ground. Jason came up to her.
"What are you doing?"
"They aren't just out of sequence, some are upside down." She said spinning the characters on their axis. As she shifted the pages the phrase started to make sense in her head and she went to the notebook to take notes. She wrote furiously as though if she didn't get it down right that second the idea would be lost to her forever and she wouldn't be able to discern it again. Jason was kneeling down trying to "read" the phrase but his knowledge was still rather elementary.
"What does it say Mary?"
"Give me a second." Mary scribbled and tore her pen across the page then dropped the cap from her mouth. She turned the paper to Jason as he walked up to her.
"Really?" Jason said a little confused and dumbfounded.
On her notebook read the words "Flight from Mars, catastrophe,
"A secret in plain sight, a warning to those who could read it. It was a message to save those from the end of Mars." Mary said. Now it made sense, not everyone would see through the cipher, only those who were looking would know.
"Not just that Mary, this proves life came from Mars. We're Martians! I have to send a report." Jason jumped to the computer screen to start a message but Mary was left in the idea of what it must have looked like on Mars eons ago, the cipher out int he public, an enigma to most but a warning to others. A "get out while you still can" warning to those who could see. What had happened to the planet not much was left to tell her or any one else, but this proves the Martians knew something was happening, something they had to escape from. But why would they not spread this news? Then it hit her, it was a cipher for the ones who were worthy.
The cipher told her two things, Martians knew they were in danger, and there were classes even here. Those worthy and unworthy of life. It made her sick.
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