“Because of that difference, they developed in a fundamentally different way than we did. It’s not a question of what they did, it’s more a question of how they thought differently at the most basic level.
“There is a precedent for this,” she said. “All the ancient civilizations, which we now know were founded by survivors of Atlantis merging with the locals, were different in some fundamental ways that our current civilization. It is thought that it was only when mankind became basically mono-theistic that we changed.
“When man believed in numerous gods, the messages received from Wernicke’s area in the right hemisphere- what I have told you is the voice of the Gods- they were accepted. Man made decisions based more on those messages than clearly linear thinking.
“Ancient Egypt spanned over three centuries at the height of its power yet in those three thousand years how much did they develop in terms of technology?” Sin Fen didn’t wait for an answer. “When archeologists uncover a relic of old Egypt, they often have trouble dating it unless there are some sort of writings attached. But what if you lived three thousand in the future from now. And you were excavating New York City? Hasn’t New York constantly evolved, changed? New York a hundred years ago is very different from New York now and will be very different in a hundred years. Yet none of these ancient civilizations show this development.”
Sin Fen was focused on the screen now, reading the runes. “They developed differently than our civilization. They started by harnessing forces at a level we’re only starting to approach. That’s the biggest difference. They worked on the inner self first, before the outside world. We don’t have a clue how the brain truly works- they knew exactly and were able to exploit that knowledge to build a very unique civilization
“Look at this boat,” Sin Fen said. “It’s an example of their technology. When we first saw it we thought it was primitive, but it’s more advanced than anything we’ve developed. It’s power system is right there-” she pointed at the black cube. “No propeller, no jet- it works using the earth’s magnetic field to move the ship. They worked within the harmony of nature, not against like we do.”
“The shield?” Dane prompted.
“We have to understand what happened,” Sin Fen said. “The shield is worthless without the knowledge behind it.”
“Then how about the quick version,” Dane suggested.
“The Atlanteans developed on their island continent in the middle of the Atlantic,” Sin Fen said. “They explored the world around them, but did not settle elsewhere. It appears they realized the differences between themselves and the humans on the other continents and desired to keep their bloodlines distinct.
“Of course, they weren’t totally successful. They-” Sin Fen’s voice trailed off as she scrolled through.
“The Shield,” Dane reminded her. “The Shadow?”
“The Shadow came out of the west in the place we now call the Bermuda Triangle gate. The Atlanteans didn’t know what it was. They sent ships- like this one- to investigate. And nothing came back. The Shadow began growing. And they learned of other gates on the face of the planet. They realized the threat- probably faster than we did.”
“When was all this?” Dane asked.
“Around ten thousand BC.” Sin Fen watched the screen. “On the other hand, since they had never really experienced war, they weren’t exactly prepared. They had to use what they had for defense and they knew little more about the gates than we do.
“But they did develop something- the Shield.” Sin Fen frowned. “It is hard for me to tell exactly what is meant. How it worked. It used the power of the firestone. From I read before, the firestone sounds a lot like nuclear power.”
“Foreman hasn’t nuked a gate yet, has he?”
“No. That would be a rather extreme step,” Sin Fen said, “and based on what we do know, atomic weapons probably won’t work. The firestone was like nuclear power, but not the same. It didn’t need to be shielded. It was able to be harnessed quite easily. The Atlanteans used firestone to power some sort of weapon- the Shield- that they used.”
“But they didn’t win,” Dane noted. “This ship is here. Atlantis is gone.”
“They didn’t win, but they didn’t lose,” Sin Fen argued.
“Where’s the Shield?”
“According to this, the Atlanteans used the Shield from an outpost near the gate. Within visual sight of it. They stopped the expansion of the gate, but they acted too late- the seeds of their own destruction were already sown.”
“How?”
“It seems the Shadow appropriated their use of the firestone just as it’s taken our nuclear weapons. Sowed firestone around the base of the continent and used it to destroy Atlantis just as the Atlanteans were using their Shield against the gate. A pyrhhic victory.”
“The Shield,” Dane repeated.
“It was here,” Sin Fen said. “This ship carried it to their defensive base.”
“And?”
Sin Fen reached down and slid a lever forward. The side of the black cube slid down, revealing a six inch deep open space, backed with gray material. There was nothing in it.
“That’s where the final parts of the shield were carried,” Sin Fen said. She was looking back down at the display. “This ship carried the hardware, but not the power source.”
“So we don’t have anything,” Dane said.
“Not yet.”
“The message on the sail of the Scorpion was in Norse runes,” Dane said. “It directed us here. There must have been a reason.” He turned to the center of the vast chamber where Deepflight was cruising.
“DeAngelo!” Dane yelled. With the lack of any other sound, his voice carried clearly across the water.
“Yes?”
“Have you seen a Viking longship in here?”
“Over there-” DeAngelo was pointing to their right.
“Let’s go,” Dane was already climbing over the side of the black ship.
“Run that again,” Nagoya ordered Ahana.
In slow motion, the various readings that had been picked up by the Can and other surveilling instruments were displayed on an array of screens, all running at the same time.
“It’s all about time,” Nagoya whispered.
“Excuse me, sir?”
Nagoya felt the stir of excitement that came from sudden insight. “We never consider time a manipulative variable- always a constant. But it’s been there staring us in the face all the time. We wondered why the Scorpion crew didn’t experience any time lag. Why Dane’s teammate Flaherty hadn’t aged. We assume that it was because they were in some sort of stasis, but what if there was no stasis? What if no time had passed for them?”
Ahana kept silent, recognizing the mood her professor was in, letting him think out loud, crystallizing a new theory.
“We really don’t know what time is,” Nagoya said. “We don’t even know when the universe started. The Cosmic Background Explorer Satellite has given evidence that the universe was formed by an explosion fifteen billion years ago- the Big Bang. If that is indeed so, then t equals zero- then we have a start point to start our universal clock.
“That simplifies things, perhaps too much. There are still those who postulate theories other than the Big Bang. Those who say the beginning was the result of a quantum fluctuation. That’s where we are now, with several different hypothesis about the very nature of our universe and time. We have Hawking’s and his timeless quantum cosmology; Adrei Linde who talks of chaotic inflation; Roger Penrose and time-asymmetric cosmology. Then like a large wall at the end is Dyson’s thermodynamic death of the universe theory.