The Apocalypse Script Read Free

fragrant with the scent of gardenias and invisible birds
chirped in the distance.
    Looking up, his hostess asked, “Coffee or tea, Mr.
Mitchell?”
    “ Coffee, please. Black. And
please, call me Ben.”
    As she filled the porcelain cup,
she said, “Very well, Ben, and you may call me Lilian.” Without
raising her head, she said quietly, “Mr. Fetch, you’ll please wait
inside. I’ll ring if I need you.”
    The servant bowed slightly and
retreated. The woman handed Ben his coffee and then poured herself
a cup of tea. Taking a sip, she picked up the business card that
Mr. Fetch had placed on the table and began reading it
aloud.
    “ Ben Mitchell, Ph.D., Epigraphist
and Researcher, Ancient Languages and Writing Systems, Hittite,
Sumerian, Akkadian, Cuneiform…well, the list goes on and on. I
don’t know what most of this means. I’m surprised you could fit it
all on a business card.”
    He smiled. “Anything is possible
with the right font. So what can I do for you, Lilian?”
    She returned the card to the
table, saying “A close family friend by the name of Ridley, who has
an estate in the mountains, has some stone tablets bearing
inscriptions that he would like your assistance with. He says to
tell you they are quite ancient and that this something of an
emergency.”
    Ben swallowed his first sip of
coffee before saying, “The translation of ancient tablets is rarely
an emergency.”
    “ And yet,” the woman replied,
“Ridley assures me that is the case. He is, you see, very elderly
and is cataloguing his estate in preparation for the inevitable. He
believes the tablets are valuable and wants to ensure they end up
in the right hands.”
    “ They’ve never been examined
before?”
    “ Not by an expert.”
    “ Interesting. What can you tell me
about them?”
    In a banal tone, she replied, “Ridley says they
contain the oldest human writing system ever discovered.”
    Ben coughed, cleared his throat.
“Excuse me. That is…well, a rather spectacular claim,
Lilian.”
    “ Is it?” she asked, as if it meant
nothing to her. Seemingly out of nowhere, his hostess produced a
large manila envelope sealed with red wax, which she extended to
him. There were odd imprints in the wax. Cuneiform, the man thought
immediately, but then saw he was wrong. The characters weren’t
quite right.
    “ A few photographs,” she
explained.
    Ben broke the seal with his
fingers and peered into the envelope. There were about a dozen
portrait-sized color photos inside. He withdrew one and placed it
in his lap. It was of a black stone tablet, perhaps a foot square
in size, inscribed with thousands of densely packed lines, swirls,
and irregular shapes in a variety of colors. The individual
inscriptions appeared no more than a millimeter or two in width. He
couldn’t determine from the photographs what gave them their
colors.
    “ Where were the tablets found?” he
asked, placing a pair of spectacles on his nose before scanning the
next image.
    Lilian shrugged. “You’d need to
ask Ridley.”
    “ Uh-huh,” said the researcher
distractedly. After taking a few minutes to review the rest of the
photos, he said, “To be frank, Lilian, I have some concerns,
foremost among them being the physical properties of the
inscriptions. My impression is that they are too intricate to be
ancient. Also, the engravings might be decorative or ceremonial
glyphs. There are no distinguishable graphemes so I’m not sure why
your friend Ridley believes the inscriptions constitute a writing
system. I’ll need to study these photos and do some research before
agreeing to take the job.”
    Lilian shook her head. “You won’t
find anything like them in your reference books, Ben.”
    He removed the spectacles and
squinted. “Why do you say that?”
    “ All tablets of this variety are
in the possession of Ridley. There are no others, I can assure you,
and only his closest friends are aware of their existence - at
least, until now. Don’t you think a