(Former) Archaeologist's Lament Addendum

Excerpt from THE NEXT COMING RACE (as yet unpublished).

Pot hunters held rave-type, secretive, pic-nic-style parties, complete with bar-b-ques and beer, on little known or overlooked archaeological sites. They socialized, ate a good meal, and then broke out the shovels, leaving behind a landscape so littered and cratered you'd think you'd landed on a mock-up of the moon.

I suppose what happened next was my fault. Goaded by the wealth of my online data mining and the voracity with which we’d hatched the previous night’s plan, I emailed the others with my findings, urging them to follow through with our stratagem.

It got exciting two months later. One of the pot hunters suggested they get together and investigate an abandoned and soon to be demolished property south of Stouffville. They used SurveyMonkey to determine the best date and settled on having a tailgate-style dinner prior to the dig. Undaunted by the sheer gall of what the pot hunters had suggested, I emailed every one of the original archaeologists. None of us had the slightest clue as to how to proceed. We knew that prosecuting the buggers would be a difficult task—to date, there had been only one case of successful prosecution documented. The solution, we all agreed, was to be on hand to disperse the rave and then hightail it to the Ministry of Culture to register the site.

So we’d have some official capacity, we’d enlisted Michael’s assistance whose job it would be to flash his badge and look menacing, no grand feat for Michael who had the physique of a well-padded football player and the sombre, stoic gaze of a Terminator on a mission permanently tattooed onto his face.

On the date in question, we caught the looters with their metaphoric pants down, munching on ribs and chicken, guzzling beer and Coke by the cans-full. We drove up the dirt access road at dusk, circled them with our vehicles and parked with our brights on. Mesmerized to paralysis at first, the looters presently scrambled, Hibachis and shovels clanging as they were thrown into the beds of their pickups. One by one they snaked between our cars and drove away.

Our group had participated in no less than three such raids since.

To have that power, to be able to do something to protect our passion from marauders, was exhilarating, if not entirely legal. To that end, we swore each other to secrecy, vowing only ever to meet clandestinely, and only when dictated by the slightly lesser legal activities of our pot-hunting nemeses.

The ghost town of Ballycroy in the northern GTA was our first failure. I’d been monitoring online chatter for weeks, trying to pinpoint the message containing the exact date and time of the party. Once I’d found it, I’d marked it on my smart phone’s calendar. Busy at school, I hadn’t gone back to check for revisions. At some point between entering it into my calendar and the scheduled date, the pothunters had changed their meeting and I’d missed it.

After a few minutes of uncomfortable silence between us I said, “I fucked up big.”

“Come on, Moll,” Palmer said, “you had no way to know.”

“I need to put Vash’s email on my cell,” I said. Vash, the archaeologist-slash-profiteer character from Star Trek: the Next Generation, was the pseudonym I adopted in the pot hunting chat rooms. “If I’d thought of it sooner, I wouldn’t have missed the time change.”

“Hindsight is 20/20,” Michael said.

“Really, Michael?” I said. “Platitudes? Now?”

“Say, is there any cream?” Michael asked. He left the table and took his coffee with him.

“You need to calm down, Moll,” Palmer told me. “Stop beating yourself up.” I looked deep into his dark eyes and saw the calm I sought. How was he able to slough off what had happened so easily? Probably because he wasn’t on point for plan-making. “Crestwood means well, you know he does.” Palmer reached out and pried my hand from the near death-grip it had around the coffee cup, and squeezed.

When Michael returned to the table I apologized.

We agreed I would be the one to go to the Ministry office first thing the next day and register the site. Not that it would stop future looters from spoiling the archaeological record, but if we were ever going to see these guys prosecuted, it was the first step.

About the Author
Elise Abram, English teacher and former archaeologist, has been writing for as long as she can remember, but it wasn’t until she was asked to teach Writer’s Craft in 2001 that she began to write seriously. Her first novel, THE GUARDIAN was partially published as a Twitter novel a few summers back (and may be accessed at @RKLOGYprof). Nearly ten years after its inception Abram decided it was time to stop shopping around with traditional publication houses and publish PHASE SHIFT on her own.

Download PHASE SHIFT for the price of a tweet. Visit http://www.eliseabram.com, click on the button, tweet or Facebook about my novel and download it for FREE!

PHASE SHIFT - Prologue

Here is the Prelude, the first chapter of my novel PHASE SHIFT.


Enjoy.

I am laying in the dark listening to my husband’s raspy almost-snore, unable to sleep. To keep myself occupied, I try to remember when I first knew I wanted to be an archaeologist.

After seeing the first Indiana Jones movie as a teenager, perhaps? No, Indy merely served to bolster my interest in the field. The real turning point came while watching a documentary called “In Search of Noah’s Ark” when I was no more than twelve, back in the time before the super cinemas. It was then, I knew. Wood decomposed to nothing but dark shadows in the soil, aerial photographs of well-fed vegetation, and measurements approximating those in The Bible—I still shudder in awe at the thought of it.

My first real taste of archaeology was in the middle of a conservation area almost an hour’s drive north of the city: dark soil dampening trouser knees and buttocks, dirt rammed under fingernails, blowing out a peppering of dust mixed with snot on the Kleenex—man! I was hooked.

A few years later I was near graduation and looking toward grad school. Dr. Richardson, the head of the Archaeology department, offered to be my faculty advisor and I accepted without hesitation. He assigned me a site, the remains of a carriage house behind a restored clapboard house, built nearly two centuries ago. The planning, supervision, excavation and analysis of the site over two years’ time would earn me my Master’s degree.

My assistants and I arrived at the house, to find Dr. Richardson sitting on the stoop reading Scientific American, anissue featuring an article about a cache of Peruvian mummies. Dr. Richardson is a forensic anthropologist. That means he gets off on dead people and figuring out how they died. He works extensively with the police, to give them clues as to what decomposed bodies and skeletons might have looked like while they were still living and breathing.

We approached the stoop and he stood to greet us. I had to crane my neck and shield my eyes from the sun in order to meet his gaze. He smiled at me, said hello and squeezed my shoulder. My stomach lurched. Dr. Richardson is what we used to call “a hunk”. The first time my mother met him she called him “a dreamboat” and said she wouldn’t throw him out of her bed for eating crackers. The way things turned out, that comment was so many different levels of wrong.

The house was converted to a living museum sometime in the late eighties. The side entrance, added on around the same time, smelled of new carpet and fresh paint. Pictures of the house in various stages of disrepair and renovation hung on the walls like windows into the past. Dr. Richardson gave us the grand tour: men’s parlor, women’s sitting room, dining room, upstairs ballroom, and nurseries. A narrow staircase took us up to the third floor servants’ quarters.

Back downstairs, Dr. Richardson showed us the kitchen. The walls were of unfinished wood made dark by soot. At the centre of one wall was the original hearth, complete with bake ovens. A single wooden table stood in the middle of the room, deeply scarred through use and over time, and in the far corner, the kitchen pantry, converted to a small storage-cum-utility closet after the restorations. Near the ceiling Dr. Richardson pointed to a series of wallpaper layers. He recited each occupation and era by rote and I was in awe of him.

He finished his lecture and ushered us out of our cramped quarters. I chanced a glance up at him and he smiled at me. A perfect three-toed crow’s foot appeared to frame the outer edge of each of his eyes. The solitary, unshaded light bulb that dimly lit the room shone in his dark eyes—a girl could get lost in those eyes. I blushed, embarrassed at the lust I felt for him at that moment, chastising myself for falling for my faculty advisor. But then I reminded myself that Dr. Richardson was a good sixteen years’ my senior, and everyone knew he was seeing Suzanne Pascoe, the Egyptologist. Dr. Richardson was safe, like a movie star. Like a movie star, he was unattainable, and consequently, not entirely real. I told myself the crush would pass, and it eventually did.

Palmer’s snoring again. I nudge him, tell him to roll over, then roll over myself, wedging one hand between his rib cage and the mattress and one foot arch-deep between his thighs. He doesn’t protest.

Sleep has eluded me this evening. Pretty soon my bedside alarm will begin to shriek at me, signifying the start of yet another day. I need a drink. Tea would go down good right about now. Hot tea with honey and lemon.

In the kitchen I fill the kettle and plug it in. While I wait for the water to boil, I stroll into the living room and take a peek out the front window. Two black sedans are parked on the road, each facing opposite directions, waiting for me in case I decide to take it on the lam. Inside each car sits a pair of officers—which officers are out there tonight is anybody’s guess. The possibilities read like a who’s who for law enforcement: CIA, CSIS, OPP… It’s funny how quickly things spiral out of your control: yesterday I was an archaeology professor considering earning my doctoral degree. Today I am the prime suspect in a murder investigation.

The kettle begins to boil. I unplug it. Sometime between eying the sedans and thinking about the death I may have expedited, I’ve lost my appetite for tea.

I return to bed, drawing my body close to Palmer’s, more for security than warmth. I find solace in the fact I was right about one thing when I was struggling with that crush on my faculty advisor all those years ago: Palmer Richardson is safe.

The Seven Year Itch

Here is a cut scene from PHASE SHIFT. I wrote the novel over about 10 years before I self-published it this month. In that time, I had it vetted by writers in residence at the local library, workshopped it with my writer’s circle group, had it complimented and ripped mercilessly to shreds in the “Amazon Breakthrough Novelist Award” competion, and a good portion of it edited the “A Woman’s Write” contest. The largest re-write occured after I lost the “A Woman’s Write” competition to someone who was an accomplished playwright, but for whom this was her first novel. The feedback from that contest was to homogenize the narrative to use Molly’s voice only. Rather than make some scenes from Palmer’s and other’s points of view, I wrote any scenes that didn’t include Molly in third person. I think it made a huge difference for perspective consistency.


I took this one out primarily because it’s in Palmers voice, but also because I think I was trying to do too much in marrying the two planets. Everything from solar flares to UFO sightings to paranormal activity seems to increase in seven year increments, or so the story goes. This scene documents Molly’s and Palmer’s perspective on that statement.

Other similar pseudo-scientific beliefs have come to us by way of perfectly explainable Gaian phenomenon. The area on Earth known as the Bermuda Triangle, for example, has long been known on Gaia as an epicentre for shifts in the planet's phase. The area had been proclaimed somewhat of a disaster area around the middle of the twentieth century. Travelers wishing to fly over or pass through the area are cautioned to alter their trajectory, lest they never return. Ironic that the area has long been known as dangerous to traverse on Earth as well. Though the cause for the crashes and disappearances in the region are prolific, none of them speculate it to be what is essentially a glitch in the planet's electromagnetic field, let alone a link to a sister planet.

Further adding to the mystique imbued in the popular culture of pseudo-science is Reyes's observation that scientists who monitor reports of random phase shift bubbles account an increase in occurrence of the phenomenon every seven years. When Molly tells me this, I simply nod. She says nothing more, as if waiting for me to make the connection. I wrack my brain, but come up empty. "So?" I ask, prompting her to continue.

"So all sorts of things are reputed to happen in sevens on Earth. June bugs for one." My mother told me this once when I was young. June bugs seem to grow in number around year three or four of the cycle, reaching the height of their population around year seven. Following that, population frequency tends to die off until their numbers start to increase and the cycle repeats itself. "I remember reading once that reports of UFO sightings reach their peak every seven years, too," she continues. It's then I make the connection. If random phase bubbles increase every seven years, that means the chance for hovercrafts being caught up in the phase bubbles also increases every seven years. It stood to reason that UFO sightings would follow suit.

"And that's not all," Molly says. "According to Reyes's information, nuclear activity on Earth has dire consequences on Gaia. Their worst disaster—and I mean something along the lines of 911—happened on or about the same day as Chernobyl.”

Don’t forget to check out PHASE SHIFT, available on KoboBooks, Amazon.com, Lulu, and now at the iBookstore. My novella, THE MUMMY WORE COMBAT BOOTS is available at the same outlets, and should be at the iBookstore in about two weeks. If you’re unsure as to if this story is for you, please feel free to download the sneak peeks before you purchase.

First Meeting

I wrote this thinking it fit into the scene I was working on but then realized it was what the sourcces called “Information Dump” and removed it. I don’t know if I’ll ever use it, but here it is anyway.


This scene documents the first meeting between Molly and Palmer. This time round I imagine Robert Carlyle playing Palmer. Feel free to imagine whomever you feel fills the part as Molly.

Second year. Department Star Trek Movie Marathon. Bored studying, I'd attended alone. Palmer, Dr. Richardson, manned the concessions. I watched him interact with the others in line in front of me. The stories the high school teachers told us about university profs still vivid in my mind, I grew more and more petrified at the thought of an informal interaction with a prof--any prof--as the line drew me near. Though I knew nothing of Palmer at the time, Dr. Richardson, the department head, had a reputation for being a hard-ass. Watching his mouth as he spoke, the way he flung his hair--the perfect mix of sandy brown, dirty blond, and grey--out of his eyes, the curve of his nose, I was surprised at how personable a man with his reputation could be. When at last it was my turn to order, I wasn't sure I'd be able to speak.

"What can I get for you?" he said with a smile.

I checked out the display of items in stock. "I'll have a popcorn and a Vernors, please."

He nodded over his shoulder. “Popcorn'll be a while.” This was followed by a very awkward silence. I looked over my shoulder at the people rapidly filling the auditorium and hoped my jacket would be enough to save me my spot. “Well,” he said, “it appears we have a bit of time.”

I nodded and forced a smile; I hoped it looked natural.

“So. All American girl, are you?” I noticed he trilled his Rs slightly and wondered which culture was of influence.

“Canadian.”

“Really?” He seemed truly astonished. So what if I don’t go around saying “eh” or mispronouncing “about”.

“Yep. Born and raised. Why?”

“Vernors claims to be the oldest ginger ale in the States.”

“Really?” I said, not feigning interest at all.

“Yeah.” He shook his head to force the bangs from his eyes. When that didn’t work, he used his thumb to push them out of the way. “Dates back to the 1850s or so.”

“It’s more a nostalgic thing for me. My grandfather drank it.”

“So he's the American, then.”

“Canadian. Well, British originally, but he immigrated here when he was still very young.”

Dr. Richardson smiled a polite smile and nodded at my response. Then the awkward and very pregnant silence rose once more.

“So,” he said at last, “are you an archaeology student?”

Where was my popcorn? I was no good at small talk. And he was only slightly better than I. “Anthropology,” I answered.

“You should switch.” He winked and nodded his head once. “Archaeology's cooler.”

“I'll take that under advisement,” I said with a chuckle.” Thanks.”

The popcorn continued to pop behind the glass of the movie theatre popper the club had rented for the week. It smelled of childhood and Disney movies. Then the opening fanfare of the movie sounded.

“You should come back later,” he said. “You'll miss the beginning”.

“No I won't. This is my favourite one of the series. I must've seen it like a dozen times.”

He laughed once. “Noob,” he said.

“See that guy? The one with the blue shirt and pointy ears over there? He's seen the movie 32 times. And that guy dressed in leather with the bad wig and dreds? 53 times. That guy? The one in the red jacket and white bib? Over 100 times.”

“So what's your number?” I asked him, intentionally provocative. The awkward silence gone, engaged in real conversation like we were, I was beginning to see why he was so popular amongst my female peers in the department.

“I haven't seen the movie yet.”

“Not even once?”

“Well I guess technically, this will be my first time then, won’t it?” He leaned forward on the counter between us, as if to let me in on a secret. “I saw a couple a few episodes of the original series when I was younger. Never quite got the hang of it, I’m afraid.”

“But you study anthropology. Star Trek's all about culture. It’s about all the cultures in the universe coming together. It's about hope in a world where hope is a rare commodity. It tells us that if we can just learn to get along the human race still has a future.”

“Maybe that’s the problem,” he said. A student had begun to bag the fresh popcorn. Dr. Richardson handed one the bags to me. “I don't study anthropology. I study archaeology. You should switch. Way cooler.”

I smiled in thanks and said that I should go. He told me to enjoy. When I got back to my seat I looked back at him. The light in the concession stand was the only one in the room besides the projection on the screen. Dr. Suzanne Pascoe, the Egyptology prof approached him from behind and placed a hand on the small of his back. He turned to her and they embraced.

After the movie I saw Dr. Richardson hold her coat for her. He seated it on her shoulders and then reached in behind the collar to lift her long, blonde waves from beneath the jacket. He kissed the back of her neck while it was exposed and then let her hair flow naturally down her neck and back. As I put my own jacket on, I wished I had someone that would treat me with the same tenderness and intimacy as the moment we, unbeknownst to them, had just shared.