He gave each of us what he called an “Earth Science starter kit,” which comprised of a rock hammer, a brush, a hand lens, a magnet, and, of course, gloves and safety goggles. Each of the trenches had been marked off with laser grids, and our job was to each take a square and dig it out, carefully documenting everything we came across. Erick had sent us a link to an app for our palmtops that would let us record every find and map its exact position with GPS targeting. The app even had a built-in compass and inclinometer that would let us determine every feature’s angle and orientation. Every detail would be captured and preserved exactly, and all our data together could be downloaded to any computer later on for analysis.

By the time Erick was done showing us the ropes—and since just about every task at the site had ultra-rigorous protocol assigned to it, that took awhile—the rest of the team had stopped for lunch.

“Hey, partner,” Scylla said, tossing me a water bottle from the plastic cooler. Then she pulled out a second and wiped it across her sweaty brow. “Ready to get your hands dirty?”

Surprisingly, I was. As much as I hated to admit it, seeing the trenches all gridded out actually made me excited. So many of the tools they were using out here were just like the ones Abuelo’s team used on his digs. I used to visit him for a month every Earth-summer—which corresponded with summer here some annums, and winter others—when he’d go down to Veracruz to excavate. When I was really little, I used to come home and grid out the backyard with kitchen utensils and dental floss, since Abuelo had told me they used to use string before the laser grids got more common. Mom would protest that she’d never get any gardening done if I had the backyard roped off like a spiderweb, but she always played along with it.

I had given up on archaeology. I knew it was an unrealistic, implausible fantasy. I couldn’t afford to chase down immaterial dreams when I had a solid future in front of me.

But as I sat there in that trench that day, my jeans caked in red mud and the sun beating down, with nothing but a trowel and the observations on my palmtop… for the first time, I felt like a real archaeologist. Sure, I wasn’t uncovering lost civilizations or exploring ancient pyramids, but when I dug up that first little stone seashell—Erick said they’d found dozens on the site already, evidence of primitive aquatic life—I felt like I’d just uncovered King Tut’s tomb.

So as much as it irked me to lose my weekends, and as crazy as Erick was driving me, I started thinking that day… maybe this project wouldn’t be so bad, after all.

Chapter 6