Excavation site

Finally, they arrive. When the bus stops, a gray mass is already waiting for them, eager to disembark. Helmeted security guards with scanners are on high alert, ensuring they don't mix during the transfer. It hasn't rained as much here, but it's still wet, and the wind makes the tarps flutter at the various excavation sites. Pontus is directed to the same spot as yesterday and the week before; he knows perfectly well where to go, yet he's shown there every time. The box with instruments is ready, and he signs today's assignment on the pad: "Unearthing an artifact." He notices that the night and morning teams have managed to uncover several square centimeters since he was here yesterday. In the beginning, he was much more enthusiastic, working quickly and efficiently. The foreman immediately quashed that. "What are you doing?" he had said, gripping Pontus's arm tightly when he saw his progress. "Don't you realize this is a job for three people in a month? Are you going to mess it up for us?"

Patiently, he positioned the thin chisel against the deposit's edge and tapped it gently. Another fragile flake broke off, revealing more of the intricately veined tin-titan surface of the artifact. The constructions of the previous civilization were exceptionally durable, always built in their favorite material, or maybe this was all that remained after all this time. The catastrophe that ended them had covered everything with a film of concrete-like ceramic. Most of the time, they simply left them in the ground when they encountered them, but here, a new security complex was to be built, and in accordance with the regulations, all foreign objects had to be removed and analyzed. In this case, "analyze" meant packed in boxes and forgotten.

Pontus's father was an artifact geologist. As a child, he often visited his father's workplace, wandering the dusty corridors and admiring the displays of strange constructions. In the basement of the institution, his father and his colleagues proudly built an X-ray machine powerful enough to penetrate the ancient relics. However, even after weeks of exposure, the films only showed solid, impenetrable black. When he inquired about the random marking with yellow and black zebra-striped masking tape on the floor in the basement, he was told it was where the radiation was slightly too high, despite the thick walls' shielding. "Not directly life-threatening to be there, but you shouldn't stand there for too long." Sometimes, Pontus wondered if that was why his father got cancer throughout his body and died. Once, he complained to his therapist about so many people he knew dying of cancer, "Just a mathematical anomaly, it's called a Cancer Cluster."

Of course, attempts were made to cut through the constructions as well. One summer, he spent leaning over a microscope, counting the crystal structures in thin sections, categorized by their shapes. It was like a kind of summer job, but later, he suspected that it was something his father had come up with to keep him occupied, make him feel meaningful, especially after his father's death when he found all the boxes of thin sections in his father's cabinet at home.

As he patiently chipped away small flakes from the surface and felt his fingers slowly going numb from the damp cold, he noticed that the strikes seemed hollow and dull. With horror, he realized that a large piece was coming loose from the surface, probably as large as what would take several days to uncover. He contemplated whether he could leave the area, cover it with clay, and pretend to work elsewhere on the site, but the work order was quite specific. With dread, he removed the shell, and inside was an elongated rod-like shape, not at all like the organic designs the ancients usually used. The rod was deep dark, slightly rough on the surface, cylindrical but also convex, with both ends gently curving outward. He touched it absentmindedly with his fingertips, it felt dry even though everything else was slippery and wet. He noticed his glasses were fogging up and wiped them, but even after they were dry, it felt like the haze lingered. He took off his glasses and looked at them closely. They were slightly scratched, with a little dirt on one lens. He wiped them more carefully with the edge of his shirt, but still couldn't shake the feeling of a blur in his peripheral vision.

Carefully, he extracts the cylinder and puts it in his pocket, then places the large, shell-like chunk back to protect the surface, he thinks. He swallows hard. It won't be easy, but he might as well be honest. With heavy steps, he heads over to the shed where the foreman is usually stationed. He stands in the doorway, observing the foreman engaged in what is likely a non-work-related discussion with the other employees; they chuckle intermittently. After a while, the foreman can no longer pretend he doesn't see Pontus and glares at him. "What is it?" he exclaims irritably across the room. "I need some help," Pontus replies cautiously. With a sigh, the foreman gets up and retrieves his coat from the hook, then follows Pontus out into the gray afternoon. "What the hell now?" he swears. "Something happened," Pontus says. They walk together to his excavation site, the foreman's annoyed footsteps trailing behind him. When he bends down to remove the lid and show, it's stuck, stuck as if it had never been removed. Pontus pulls at the edges, feeling them cut into his fingertips and turn them red. The foreman snatches the work order and studies it for a moment. "Calm down, for God's sake," he yells, tosses the pad back to its place, and walks away.