Before I get into the specifics of the database and the gospel, I think it’s important to reiterate something. The immortals are the granddaddy of all ancient secret societies. Before we get into how our heroes discover proof that the immortals exist, I want to stress again that acquiring such proof should be really, really hard. I can get away with a little in terms of the gospel because they find it in Iraq, a part of the world that has been brutally tilled and sifted in recent years. The idea that an American bomb uncovered a long forgotten underground shrine or library isn’t too far fetched, nor is the idea that such a discovery wouldn’t be noticed by western or even non-Iraqi eyes amidst the rest of the chaos.
But overall, we’re still talking about a group that has managed to keep themselves mostly secret, silencing or discrediting any discoverers, for longer than recorded human history. Perhaps it’s inevitable that word would get out at some point in the internet era, but perhaps not. We need to have a real sense of struggle and accomplishment here. This is a story that, once accepted by the mainstream, should garner Susan a well-deserved Pulitzer (for a blogger!). Make her earn it.
Let’s tackle the gospel first, since it’s the easier of the two proofs to explain. What is it?
I think it’s a scroll, an early old testament era text largely predating bound codices. It would be written in early Hebrew or late Babylonian, and it describes immortals as minor gods in their own right. It identifies the major players (Michael and Gabriel on one side, Satan and Beelzebub or Baal on the other) and details their schism. It then describes the early days of the war between the immortals, including how one may be permanently destroyed. In this text are the seeds of Abrahamic portrayals of angels and demons, that they were God’s first race of servants which was largely cast aside in favor of humans, and that demons differed from angels primarily in ideology rather than appearance (it was only later, when Biblical scholars contemplated the effects on demons from being removed from the grace of God, that they gained their grotesque appearance). This scroll can be authenticated to around 2,000 BC, and may be older still. More importantly, it reinforces Daniel and Susan’s direct observations and the data they get from the database. Alone, it’s an archeological and scholarly curiosity, but when added to the other evidence, it seals the story.
The scroll was discovered in an ancient underground cache of documents, most of the others being of a more recent vintage. The cache had lain dormant and undiscovered for centuries, before the entry tunnel to it was cracked open by an American bomb dropped outside Faluja. After the attack, an Iraqi scavenger found the tunnel, located the scrolls and brought them to his Imam. The scroll is currently in a Shiite mosque awaiting translation, or is being translated by a Shiite scholar with some knowledge of Babylonian or ancient Hebrew.
So how do Daniel and Susan find out about this scroll, its location in Iraq and how to they obtain it from Shiite clerics who are probably hostile to Americans? I’m thinking the clerics will have to become believers in Daniel’s cause, and that pretty much requires direct experience with the demons. How and when this happens I’ll have to ponder.
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How is this for a new opening:
Near Fallujah, Iraq, August 2004.
It was 120 degrees in the shade. And at high noon, there wasn’t much shade to go around.
But in the Graves trailer, it was at least cool 55 due to the leaky doors on the Wall of The Dead - the morgue cooler of chilled metal drawers for remains.
The tattoo on his left bicep said ‘Unit, Corps, God, Country’ above the USMC logo and below that Semper Fi- Always Faithful. That was Daniel Cho.
Or at least it was when he got inked so many months ago. He’d signed up to be a corpsman, hoping to continue on to medical school when this was all over.
Instead, after medic training, they’d made him a corpse -man.’Put him in Graves,’ said the Sergeant with typical military sense of humor.
And so they did.
‘Yo, Cho-man grab your med kit and lets git,’ Corporal Arden said kicking in the door,’We need you on the flight line in five for dustoff, slick six. Doc got hit and they need a replacement pronto.’
‘But Corporal, I’m in graves, I haven’t treated a live person in six months,’ Cho said, shrugging out of the green scrubs like a snake shedding skin while reaching for his medkit.
‘Don’t much matter Doc Cho. We’re pushing into a huge cemetery and it is one hell of a mess. All you gotta do is stabilize them.’
They sprinted across the tarmac toward an idling ‘hawk. Corporal Arden ran around the chopers nose to the far side and Cho ran up to the open door.
The blast hit him in the face full force and almost knocked him down. Cold and wet.
‘What the fu-’ he yelled, wiping wetness and bits of something off his face. He grabbed the door edge and the Crewchief grabbed his other arm and puled him aboard. Cho put on a headset. The floor was slippery wet.
‘You’re supposed to load-up on the other side, Corpsman!’ said the Chief, pointing at the ground crew Marine retreating with a high pressure hose.
‘Thirty seconds to dustoff,’ the pilot said in his other ear. He knew that voice from somewhere.
‘-because the ground crew washes out the blood and remains between trips with a hose. You should see yourself, Doc. All covered in blood and God only knows. You look like Death Himself.’
‘I hear we’re flying into Hell, Chief,’ Cho strapped in as the medevac leapt into the air and banked right. ‘Fallujah’s got the oldest cemetery in Iraq, if not the world. Corpses on corpses, going down a few thousand years. If we’re landing on Deaths doorstep, I want to look the part.’
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