Gail had always wanted to make a difference. She had wanted to change things for the better and really achieve something. For as long as she could remember she had been ambitious, and deep down inside had felt that she was destined for something big. A first-class honours degree in Politics and International Relations had been her first step along that path, after which she had opted not to continue as a postgraduate but instead take a position working as an assistant for her local MP. Which was where it had all started to fall apart.
There had been nothing wrong with her employer, far from it: Janet had been just as full of integrity as Gail aspired to be. But gradually, over the several years she worked with her, she had become frustrated and disillusioned with the inner workings of politics. It was a job in which she felt she could make little real difference, despite Janet’s assurances to the contrary.
It was at that time that she met George, and everything changed. Seeing how unhappy she was in her job, he encouraged her to go back to university to pursue something she loved, not become bitter working in something she was quickly losing faith in.
So politics went out of the window, and in came a degree in archaeology. Because alongside her burning desire to make a difference in the world came a passion for ancient civilisations: of the scarce vivid memories she still had of her father, her fondest were of going to ancient Roman ruins with him. He’d pick her up in his arms and explain everything to her in amazing detail, so much so that her early childhood dreams had been filled with chariot races, gladiators, vast temples and the Roman Forum.
Ellie had heard all this before. She knew how much Gail loved archaeology, she just needed a spark to get going again.
“Look, we’re both just frazzled from working so bloody hard on our master’s, so having to think about what we’re going to work on for the next four years is a bit like asking someone if they fancy swimming the Channel right after finishing the London marathon,” she joked. “The only difference between me and you is that I’m just going to take what I did in my master’s and build my research on that. But you’re not me, you need a new challenge. I’m sure something will come up, it always does.”
Gail scoffed and took the first sip of her coffee.
“That has to be cold by now,” Ellie commented.
“You know I always drink my coffee cold!” Gail replied with a grin. “And no, before you say it, it isn’t easier to ask for iced coffee. It’s not the same.”
Ellie looked back at her and laughed. Four years earlier they had happened to be sitting next to each other in their first lecture, ‘The Archaeology of the Roman World’. Whether it had been that they shared the same sense of humour, or simply the fact that they were both the same age, they had instantly clicked. They had spent the next three years pretty much joined at the hip, even going so far as to choose parallel dissertation topics. Gail had then gone on to do a master’s in Social Archaeology, while Ellie had taken Ceramic and Lithic Analysis, something Gail had always loathed since her first taster unit as an undergraduate.
Now, here they were about to do PhDs. And along with her husband George, Ellie was the closest Gail had to family.
“You’ll find your Burynshik sooner or later, I know you will. Just make sure it is sooner rather than later: you’ve pretty much got a September deadline for your proposal, which is less than ten weeks away!” Ellie exclaimed. “Why don’t you ask David if you can look into those Caspian Sea structures with him?”
“I don’t know,” she mused. “I do find it really interesting, but then is that really a good idea?”
David Hunt obviously enjoyed his subject matter enormously, and his enthusiasm always rubbed off on his study group, but he was by no means what you would call a traditional academic, having written more than one bestseller on the subject of ancient conspiracies and so-called forgotten history. His theory was that the history of the human race had been vastly underestimated by scholars, and that there were advanced civilisations tens of thousands of years before the rise of even the earliest known written records. This usually led to unfortunate parallels with Atlantis theories, which never went down well with his peers, regardless of how enthralled his students were.
He was in the middle of investigating some new finds in Kazakhstan; pretty much all of his spare time was spent on site, and he was preparing to return for the summer break.
The rapidly receding waters of the Caspian Sea had uncovered some perplexing archaeology near the small town of Burynshik, on the north-eastern coast of the country. What the remains had once been was certainly nothing unusual: wooden posts sunk deep into the mud, forming the foundation of what had almost certainly been small buildings above the water, possibly a fishing village. The technology and architecture were similar to that found in early northern-European Iron Age settlements, before the arrival of the Romans. But experts had started to scratch their heads when the results of dating analysis had returned from Moscow State University.
At first, they had tried to use radiocarbon dating, and their first samples were found to contain less than five percent of Carbon-14. This meant that the wood had to be over twenty-thousand years old. Not believing this to be the case, further samples were sent to Moscow, all returning similar results. The wood was also sent to Cambridge in England, to be dated using dendrochronology, or tree-ring dating. The combined results were conclusive: the Burynshik remains did not fit into any known long tree-ring sequences, meaning they could not be chronologically linked with any other wood found to date.
As he had told them this, he had put his tablet on his desk and leaned forward, fixing them all intently with his gaze. He then almost whispered, as if letting them in on a closely-guarded secret, that the structures were confirmed to be between 23,560 and 23,760 years old. The general intake of breath from his small audience made him smile, and they had finished the study group with an animated debate on the subject of dating accuracy and sample contamination.
In the café, Gail was now scrolling through her notes on the site while Ellie went to get another cup of tea. She was just about to open a browser and start surfing the net when David Hunt’s face popped up on the side of the screen.
She tapped it.
“Hi Gail,” he said as his face filled the screen. “Studying hard, I see?” he smiled.
“Just having a chat with Ellie about your dig, actually,” she told him.
He grinned. “Excellent! Look, I’ve got some great news. Do you want to come and see me in my office?”
As Gail walked with Ellie along the main corridor of the Department of Archaeology, she thought about Mr Hunt and his passion for upsetting the natural order of things. In her mind, such a tack was a bit risky for her thesis; knowing her luck she would be shot down in flames for it, and she couldn’t risk her PhD like that. She and George had invested heavily in her academic career and had spent the last four years relying principally on his income. To throw everything away now wouldn’t go down well.
“What I really need is a good mystery that doesn’t involve upsetting half the department!” she said aloud, causing strange and amused looks from a group of future first-year students being shown around the campus.
For all their similarities, two more physically distinct people could not be found on the entire campus: while Gail was athletic and dressed in fashionable jeans and blouse, with smartly-combed chestnut hair tied back in a short ponytail, Ellie was plump and round, wore baggy combats and a loose t-shirt, and her hair was a mess of long dreadlocks.