JOURNAL OF JULIUS GABRIEL
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
EPILOGUE

Permissions and Credits

Back Cover

About the Author

Epigraph

… and in these ancient lands encased and lettered as a tomb

and scored with prints of perished hands, and chronicled

with dates of doom …I trace the lives such scenes

enshrine and their experience count as mine.

—THOMAS HARDY.

The most beautiful experience we can have is the

mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion that stands

at the cradle of true art and true science.

—ALBERT EINSTEIN.

Fear and religion. Religion and fear. The two are

historically entwined. The catalysts for most of

the atrocities committed by man. Fear of evil

fuels religion, religion fuels hatred, hatred

fuels evil, and evil fuels fear among the

masses. It is a diabolical cycle, and we

have played into the Devil’s hand.

—JULIUS GABRIEL.

JOURNAL OF JULIUS GABRIEL

JOURNAL OF

JULIUS GABRIEL

I stand before the vast canvas, sharing the feeling of loneliness its creator must have surely felt thousands of years ago. Before me lie the answers to riddles—riddles that may ultimately determine whether our species is to live or die. The future of the human race—is there anything more important? Yet I stand here alone, my quest condemning me to this purgatory of rock and sand as I seek communion with the past in order to comprehend the peril that lies ahead.

The years have taken their toll. What a wretched creature I’ve become. Once a renowned archaeologist, now a laughingstock to my peers. A husband, a lover—these are but distant memories. A father? Scarcely. More a tortured mentor, a miserable beast of burden left to my son to lead about. Each step across the stone-laden desert causes my bones to ache, while thoughts forever shackled in my mind repeat the maddening mantra of doom over and over in my brain. What higher power has chosen my family among all others to torture? Why have we been blessed with eyes that can see the signposts of death while others stumble along as if blind?

Am I mad? The thought never leaves my mind. With each new dawn, I must force myself to reread the highlights of my chronicles, if only to remind myself that I am, first and foremost, a scientist, nay, not just a scientist, but an archaeologist—a seeker of man’s past, a seeker of truth.

But what good is truth if it cannot be accepted? To my peers, I no doubt resemble the village idiot, screaming warning cries of icebergs to passengers boarding the Titanic as the unsinkable vessel leaves port.

Is it my destiny to save humanity, or simply to die the fool? Is it possible that I have spent a lifetime misinterpreting the signs?

The scraping of footsteps on silica and stone gives pause to this fool’s entry.