Chapter 7

The Press

Dewey Manley sat in the main office, joking with Kelly Michaels, the pool cameraman from CNN, and Eric Jeffreys, the CNN reporter. Manley had been at the site for nine days, while the CNN crew had arrived only three days ago. So far, Manley had interviewed virtually the entire research team, but hadn’t yet been allowed to go downtown.

The discovery of what appeared to be a city under the ice in Antarctica had created quite a stir in the press. Both Time and Newsweek had run covers featuring the computer simulation of the echo soundings that had been displayed at the press conference, and all major newspapers had run stories. The tabloids had of course gone crazy. ABC’s "Nightline" had devoted two broadcasts to the story, interviewing Hal Reynolds before he had returned to Antarctica, followed on the second show by experts in geology, paleontology and exobiology, among others. The majority of the pundits were of the opinion that what lay beneath the ice in Antarctica was probably of alien origin, thought the more reputable among them characteristically hedged their bets.

Since the support resources at the site were limited, it had been decided to allow one print journalist and one television crew to take a limited role in the project. Access to both information and downtown itself was to be controlled by Hal Reynolds. Manley had gotten his assignment through personal connections; the CNN crew, who would share their footage with other broadcast organizations, won their spot by lottery.

Manley and the CNN pair knew that something had been found the day before that had shaken up the research team, but everyone who knew what it was had been tight-lipped. The meeting that had been held after dinner had also been for team members only; Manley, Michaels and Jeffreys had spent the time playing poker and speculating on what was going on.

As Manley got to the punch line of the joke he was telling, the door opened, and Hal Reynolds came in, accompanied by Dan Lightfoot. The CNN crew were laughing so hard at the joke that Reynolds asked Manley to tell it to him and Lightfoot, so Manley complied.

"This guy goes into a little curio shop in Chinatown in San Francisco. He pokes around for a while, and he comes across this little brass rat. The workmanship’s incredible, like nothing he’s ever seen, and it almost seems to have an energy to it. He takes it over to the proprietor, an old Chinese man standing behind the counter. The proprietor says, ‘May I help you?’

" ‘How much do you want for this brass rat,’ the guy asks. The proprietor smiles and nods and says, ‘For rat alone, ten dollar. For rat and story behind rat, one hundred dollar.’

"The guy thinks this over for a minute, and then he says, ‘Tell you what, I’ll take the rat for ten bucks, and you can keep the story.’ The proprietor nods and says ‘Very well, sir.’ The guy pays the ten dollars, puts the rat in his pocket, and leaves.

"So he’s walking down the street, and all of a sudden, from every alley, from every sewer grate, rats start pouring out, heading straight for him. He starts running, and the rats keep coming. He sees a cab, and he jumps in and yells to the driver ‘Take me to Fisherman’s Wharf!’

"The driver takes a look in his rear-view mirror, says, ‘No problem,’ and floors it. They’re speeding down to the wharf, and as they go, rats keep pouring out of every nook and cranny, following them.

"They finally get to the wharf, and the guy jumps out of the cab and runs down to the end of the pier, with the rats right behind him. He takes the brass rat out of his pocket and heaves it as far as he can into the Bay, and the rats go pouring off the end of the pier and into the water.

"After he catches his breath, he goes back up the pier, gets in the cab and says, ‘Take me back to Chinatown.’ He finds the shop, goes in, and the proprietor says, ‘May I help you?’

" ‘Yeah,’ the guy says...

" ‘Got any little brass lawyers?’ "

This cracked up everybody, even the CNN men who had already heard it.

After the laughter had died down, Reynolds brought the subject back to the business at hand.

"I apologize for the fact that we’ve been keeping our cards close to our vest, as it were. I think you know that we found something rather interesting yesterday, and we wanted to get a handle on it – and check with our bosses – before we went public."

There was no need to whet the appetites of the three news men; they were ready for information.

"What we found was what appears to be writing on the wall of Town Hall."

Manley was the first to speak up. "Is it in any known language?"

"No. It appears to be completely new, from the preliminary feedback we’ve gotten from our experts. We’ve sent digitized photos not only to Berkeley but to several other schools, and no one’s been able to match the writing to anything we’ve seen before. It’s new, and frankly, to my eye, it has an alien appearance to it."

"When can we get copies of the photos?" asked Jeffreys .

"The photo lab’s already burned DVD-ROMs of what we have so far, and there’s a copy for you guys to transmit to your offices waiting for you in the lab."

Manley leaned forward in his chair. "More to the point," he said, "when do we get to go down?"

Reynolds grinned at him. "How about right now?"

The three news men grabbed their parkas, zipped up and followed Reynolds out of the office. Ten minutes later the entire group was standing near the stairway up the side of Town Hall.

•

"This is Eric Jeffreys for CNN, on location in Antarctica at the site of a remarkable discovery." The picture showed Jeffreys standing in front of the base of the pyramid. "Behind me you see the base of the largest of the pyramids located back in January under more than 500 feet of ice. As remarkable as the mere existence of these structures is, the findings of the past few days have taken everyone by surprise."

The picture cut to a shot of Jeffreys standing directly next to the wall’s base. "What you see here is writing that runs along the wall of the pyramid. This writing is in no language known to man, and is presumed to be alien in origin."

The picture cut to a slow pan of the markings, assembled from the digitized images Kelly Michaels had transmitted back to Atlanta. Jeffreys continued in voice-over.

"This writing has experts all over the world scratching their heads, trying to ascertain what it might mean. The best minds in linguistics are already at work trying to decipher and translate this obscure language in hopes of unlocking the secrets of this Antarctic pyramid."

The picture cut back to Jeffreys.

"But that’s not all that’s been found." He was now standing in front of the base of the stairway, and turned, waving his arm at it. "This stairway, just uncovered, leads from ground level up the side of the pyramid." The picture cut to a slow tilt up the stairway. "Where it leads nobody knows, but it’s where this expedition is headed next."

The picture cut to a shot of Stephanie Mitchell, with Jeffreys in voice-over.

"I spoke to Dr. Stephanie Mitchell, a paleontologist from the University of California at Berkeley who’s a member of the research team."

The audio edit that followed picked Mitchell up in mid-sentence. "... we’re extremely excited by this discovery. We’ve been presented with something we’ve never before encountered, which is what appears to be a non-human language, which also implies a non-human culture."

"By non-human, Dr. Mitchell, do you mean that this is an alien artifact?" Jeffreys asked.

"Well, of course, it’s too early to say for sure, but that’s the direction most of us are leaning at the moment."

The picture cut to Jeffreys, back at his original position. "Five hundred feet below the ice of Antarctica lies a mystery that is only now starting to unravel. Are the structures here the work of alien forces, or is there another explanation? Only further exploration will tell.

"This is Eric Jeffreys for CNN in Antarctica."

•

Alien Origin Possible

by Dewey Manley

Times Science Editor

Antarctica — Researchers excavating a pyramidal structure located under more than 500 feet of Antarctic ice today announced the discovery of what appears to be writing of an unknown style and origin on a wall of the structure. Also found was a stairway starting at the base of the pyramid, presumably leading up to its second level, on which a smaller pyramid sits. The writing, made up of thousands of symbols neatly raised from the surface of the wall, does not appear to match any known human language.

The writing appears in a band roughly two feet high running along the side of the pyramid, and extending the full length of the exposed portion of the wall. Roughly one twentieth of the Southern base of the pyramid has been exposed to date, to a height of up to eight feet. Researchers here expect to find that the band of symbols extends around all three faces of the structure.

Dr. Stephanie Mitchell of the Department of Geology at the University of California at Berkeley, the research team’s resident paleontologist, offered her reaction to the discovery.

"It’s a tremendous find, with stunning implications regardless of who or what created these symbols. The mere existence of the structures we’re exploring had already challenged our understanding of Earth’s history, but there was always the small chance that these structures might have somehow been natural formations. The existence of what is clearly writing on the structure means first of all that these are artificial constructs, created by sentient beings, and second, that through their writing we may be able to learn who and what they were.

"We’re extremely excited by this discovery. We’ve been presented with something we’ve never before encountered, which is what appears to be a non-human language, which also implies a non-human culture."

Asked if she thought the writing indicated that it and the structure on which it was found represents an alien artifact, Mitchell said, "Well, of course, it’s too early to say for sure, but that’s the direction most of us are leaning at the moment. The age of the layer of dirt, ash and organic matter found covering the area surrounding the structure and under the ice, and dating of the material used in its construction dates its construction to at least 65 million years ago. That predates the start of human evolution by 60 million years or more. As we look for explanations, alien origin seems to be the one that makes the most sense."

Preliminary comparisons of the symbols with human writing have revealed no matches. Dr. Andrew Stasny of the Department of Linguistics at Berkeley was one of the first experts to receive copies of the symbols for analysis. In a telephone interview, he stressed the tentative nature of the results so far obtained.

"I can’t say with absolute certainty that this isn’t human writing, but the examples we’ve seen don’t match any known language, either contemporary or historic. The closest match we’ve found is with ancient Sumerian, but there are significant differences that make us all but certain that this isn’t Sumerian or any of its offshoots."

Samples of the writing have been distributed to numerous universities around the world, and an Internet teleconference will be held on Monday, April 14th to allow the various teams working on deciphering the writing to exchange information.

Meanwhile, as linguistics experts work on the writing, the research team plans to tunnel through the ice up the stairway on the side of the pyramid, on the assumption that an entrance will be located either along the way, or more likely, at the second level of the pyramid. Additional crew members and equipment, gathered from several universities, will be joining the effort over the next several weeks.

Unfortunately, with the Fall season well under way, the very act of getting to the excavation site becomes more difficult every day. Most personnel and equipment must be brought in by boat to McMurdo Station, which has served as a staging area. During increasingly rare breaks in the weather, fixed-wing aircraft and helicopters are being used to ferry people and gear to the excavation site, more than 100 miles from McMurdo Station. Ground transportation via heavy Snowcats is risky during the Fall and Winter months and well into Spring.

Dr. Harold Reynolds of U. C. Berkeley’s Department of Geology, who led the team that discovered the structures that are collectively called the "Town," spoke of the difficulties that lie ahead during a recent interview.

"We’re now faced with the job of digging our way up the side of the pyramid at just under a 45-degree angle for roughly 80 feet until we reach the second level. Digging down or horizontally is hard enough, but digging up is really difficult."

Asked what he thought the research team might find inside the structure, Reynolds spoke speculatively. "Until we either find an entrance or drill our way into the pyramid, I can only guess, the same as everybody else. Everyone seems convinced that this was built by aliens, and I think that’s probably the most likely explanation, but it still remains a theory. If that is the case, then there’s every chance that this largest of more than 30 structures was something like a central headquarters. We call it ‘Town Hall’ because of its prominence. If we’re lucky, we’ll find more written records and other artifacts that will let us determine who built it."

The excavation of the "Town" began with the drilling of a vertical shaft from the surface of the ice to ground level more than 500 feet below. There, an open space was dug out, creating an artificial cavern that now measures more than 20 feet square.

While the main effort will focus on opening up the stairway to the pyramid’s second level, as the size of the research team more than doubles over the next weeks and months, a second excavation team will begin tunneling from the current cavern horizontally a distance of about 45 feet to one of the smaller pyramids that surround the main structure. This much smaller pyramid measures roughly 20 feet to a side and 9 to 10 feet high, and the plan is to excavate it completely, opening a cavern in the ice that will surround it.

"The large pyramid is our main focus, but uncovering the smaller one will be a relatively quick job that could provide additional clues about the larger structure," Reynolds explained.

The expedition that began as a project of U. C. Berkeley with funding from oil giant Arcon will now be expanded to include more than a half dozen universities, each providing not only funding but additional personnel and equipment. The excavation effort, already impressive, will grow significantly.

Whoever or whatever built this city that now lies under the ice of Antarctica, they’re obviously now either long gone, long dead, or both. 65 million years ago, before this continent was covered with ice, beings possibly beyond human imagination built a city and then seemingly abandoned it. The pyramids they left behind will provide the clues to who they were.

Whatever researchers here uncover, one thing seems clear already. Based on the evidence obtained, these structures at the bottom of the world are not the work of man. And that means that an age-old question may already have been answered, which is: are humans the only intelligent life in the universe? The answer now appears to be no.

Times staff writer Shannon Carroll contributed to this report