I remember the moment as if it were yesterday although I was twelve at the time. My dad, a renowned-archeologist, presented his only son with a gift of one of his most prized possessions; a marble-sized piece of the famed Rosetta Stone. I believe his goal was to spark my interest into following his rather large footsteps. He had acquired the fragment on a dig at Fort Julien, along the Mediterranean Coast, many years before my birth. Though the artifact should have become the property of Egypt, my father covertly smuggled it out of the country. Over the last twenty years, my own ambitions have taken me away from his yearning. Fashioning the cherished memento into a bracelet after his passing was my way of keeping a lasting remembrance of him.
Being in London for a symposium, I decided to visit the British Museum to view the granite block from whence the piece came. Making my way into the building, I began feeling an overwhelming tingling in my right arm. I was mysteriously being drawn to Room Four by an unknown power of some kind. The closer I got to the display, the more intense the sensation became. A stream of yellowish-light now dimly glowed around the glass case holding the tablet. With every step closer to the Stone, the light became more intense until I felt as if I were hovering above the exhibit in its brilliance.
The once-dark, granite monolith now seemed translucent. Suddenly, my mind began racing uncontrollably with visions of ancient events. Though my physical surroundings seemed blurry, the focus of the images projecting in my thoughts were crystal clear. I saw scenes of entire nations rising and falling in an instant. Races of people, numbering in the millions, stood vividly before me and then vanishing as if they had been exterminated. I viewed great and mighty wars in the blink of an eye; where the victorious would reign supreme and then be vanquished almost as abruptly.
Dizziness overtook me and I placed my hands upon the glass case to steady myself. At that point, the images began to slow and I realized these new scenes were of the twentieth-century. I visualized the struggles and tribulations man had tried to overcome in just the last hundred years. But they also revealed the violent nature of the human beast. In what had seemed like only minutes, I had witnessed the entire history of our civilization’s existence.
The light then changed from a yellow hue, to a dark reddish glow. I was now observing things I didn’t recognize. The violence was still there but I realized these were dramatic events that had not yet occurred. Then as suddenly as the experience began, it ended.
I now lie in a St. Mary’s Hospital awaiting my release. The physicians say I was comatose for exactly twenty-four hours. Knowing what tomorrow holds and who I have to stop to prevent the total annihilation of the human species will be my only motivation. I have been given the power to see the future and it cannot come to pass. The fate of the world rests in my hands…
Texte: all rights reserved © 2011 Glen Marcus
Tag der Veröffentlichung: 29.09.2011
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