3001 The Final Odyssey

chapter 8 Return to Olduvai
The Leakeys, Dr Stephen Del Marco often told himself, would never have recognized this place, even though it's barely a dozen kilometres from where Louis and Mary, five centuries ago, dug up the bones of our first ancestors. Global warming, and the Little Ice Age (truncated by miracles of heroic technology) had transformed the landscape, and completely altered its biota. Oaks and pine trees were still fighting it out, to see which would survive the changes in climatic fortune.

And it was hard to believe that, by this year 2513, there was anything left in Olduvai undug by enthusiastic anthropologists. However, recent flash-floods - which were not supposed to happen any more - had resculpted this area, and cut away several metres of topsoil. Del Marco had taken advantage of the opportunity: and there, at the limit of the deep-scan, was something he could not quite believe.

It had taken more than a year of slow and careful excavation to reach that ghostly image, and to learn that the reality was stranger than anything he had dared to imagine. Robot digging machines had swiftly removed the first few metres, then the traditional slave-crews of graduate students had taken over. They had been helped - or hindered - by a team of four kongs, who Del Marco considered more trouble than they were worth. However, the students adored the genetically-enhanced gorillas, whom they treated like retarded but much-loved children. It was rumoured that the relationships were not always completely Platonic.

For the last few metres, however, everything was the work of human hands, usually wielding toothbrushes - soft-bristled at that. And now it was finished: Howard Carter, seeing the first glint of gold in Tutankhamen's tomb, had never uncovered such a treasure as this. From this moment onwards, Del Marco knew, human beliefs and philosophies would be irrevocably changed.

The Monolith appeared to be the exact twin of that discovered on the Moon five centuries earlier: even the excavation surrounding it was almost identical in size. And like TMA ONE, it was totally non-reflective, absorbing with equal indifference the fierce glare of the African Sun and the pale gleam of Lucifer.

As he led his colleagues - the directors of the world's half-dozen most famous museums, three eminent anthropologists, the heads of two media empires - down into the pit, Del Marco wondered if such a distinguished group of men and women had ever been so silent, for so long. But that was the effect that this ebon rectangle had on all visitors, as they realized the implications of the thousands of artefacts that surrounded it.

For here was an archaeologist's treasure-trove - crudely-fashioned flint tools, countless bones - some animal, some human - and almost all arranged in careful patterns. For centuries - no, millennia - these pitiful gifts had been brought here, by creatures with only the first glimmer of intelligence, as tribute to a marvel beyond their understanding.

And beyond ours, Del Marco had often thought. Yet of two things he was certain, though he doubted if proof would ever be possible.

This was where - in time and space - the human species had really begun.

And this Monolith was the very first of all its multitudinous gods.