《Waves》 First Wave Claudia felt like picking up the laptop and throwing it at the blonde-haired boy in the middle row. His whole attitude and demeanour drove her way past the point of mild irritation, to simmering anger. She knew who he was of course. The son of a wealthy hedge-fund manager. Someone who¡¯d had everything handed to them on a plate their whole life, who had never known what it was like to lose everyone you knew, everything you owned, to starve, never had to drag themselves up from nothing, broken, and see the world around you collapse into ruin. A pompous little shit, she thought, but restrained herself, remaining calm and polite on the exterior. ¡°Not quite Stephen. The tablet shown on the slide is Minoan Linear A, not Linear B. Michelle, would you like to explain to us the difference between them please?¡± The mousy-haired girl at the front went a pale shade of crimson as she was spotlighted but replied succinctly. ¡°Linear A predates B and was used for religious records. It hasn¡¯t been deciphered yet, unlike Linear B.¡± This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere. ¡°Deciphered by whom?¡± ¡°Sorry, I don¡¯t know.¡± Claudia smiled. Not a complete answer, of course, but that was to be expected at this point, so early in the course. She could always rely on Michelle Baker, she thought. ¡°Correct. Linear A was used from 1800 to 1450 B.C.E., whereas the oldest examples of Linear B discovered, date to 1400 B.C.E., and, as Michelle alluded to, used within religious and palace writings. It¡¯s probable Linear B shows the adaptation of Linear A script to represent the Archaic Greek language introduced by the Mycenaeans as they invaded and conquered the already declining Minoan Civilisation. Linear B was initially deciphered by Michael Ventris, but we¡¯ll cover that in more detail next week. Now, moving on.¡± ¡°Pauti¡± came a muttered voice which stopped Claudia cold in mid-flow. Pauti. A word she had not heard uttered in over 3600 years. Not since the time of the great waves, and one of the words etched upon the tablet in the photograph, displayed on the large screen in front of them. Second Wave She had been a mother then, in her mid-twenties, and gone by a different name. The wife of a fisherman with two children, a boy and girl, native ¡®Kunisu ¡¯ people, living on the northern coastline of Crete, about a day¡¯s travel from the grand palace at Knossos. And what a grand palace it was! Adorned with bright yellow ochre walls; crimson columns; and beautifully painted frescos depicting dolphins, ships, and bull- leaping. The women in the palace ¨C priestesses, the high-born, wives of administrators ¨C strode along with laughter and joviality, dressed in luxurious brightly coloured patterned gowns. Antechambers were filled with skilled artisans creating beautiful clothing; ornaments; and jewellery from ivory, bone and precious metals. She had visited the palace on several occasions with her family for religious ceremonies and festivals. But that was before the waves, before she lost everything. Before the collapse. The first wave came in the early morning. She remembers walking near the beach, carrying a clay jar of g aros, a fish paste, with her children next to her, laden with baskets of molluscs. They were making their way to a town further inland to sell their wares in the market. But there would be no market today. There had been talk of course for several months. People were muttering about the Gods being displeased. They had heard stories from traders: first of the ground being shaken at Akrotiri, buildings falling and people leaving the settlement in fear. Ash had fallen from the sky. The priestesses were consulted, offerings made, but life carried on as before. She remembers hearing the explosion some minutes before. Like a huge clap of thunder. The ground seems to wobble for the briefest of moments. She looks out but everything appears calm for the moment. She thinks that it¡¯s just a normal storm and gathers the children before leaving the house. Minutes later she turns back to look at the sea, as if some instinct told her of impending danger. She sees the water suddenly recede, swept back out into the ocean, then the towering wave coming directly towards them. She doesn¡¯t remember anything else. Not the wave hitting them, nor being dragged and churned around and deposited amongst gorse bushes at the foot of a cliff. She assumes later, thankfully, that she was knocked senseless from the impact. This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it. When she regains consciousness her first thought is for her children. She knows her husband is lost. He was out at sea, fishing, a couple of miles from shore. He would have had no chance. But the fact that she¡¯s still alive gives her hope and she spends the coming weeks frantically searching for her children, questioning other survivors, before accepting her loss. The ground shakes. Three more waves come; each brings more devastation. Their homes are broken, the beaches littered with the smashed pieces of their once proud Navy. Each high tide brings more debris ashore. The sky turns orange and dark; and an immense column of smoke can be seen far out to sea, towering into the heavens. After a few weeks boats begin to arrive once more, bringing ever more frightening reports of death and destruction. An expedition is arranged to what remains of the island of Thera, finding that it has been largely destroyed and Akrotiri obliterated. It is as if the Gods had smashed their fists down upon it. All around her the once great civilisation, the jewelled centre of their world, is paralysed for a moment, before commencing a painfully drawn-out two-hundred-year decline towards collapse. It was unnoticeable at first, but once started proceeded with an unstoppable momentum. It becomes obvious that ¡®those-in-charge¡¯, the King Priest and Priestess, religious leaders, and palace officials are overwhelmed and incapable of the enormity of the task facing them. For years the efficient bureaucracy of the state has guaranteed their prosperity and safety. Now it acts as an encumbrance, thwarting the task of rebuilding. Survivors along the coast move inland, seeking food and shelter, in fear of more devastation. The people who live inland close their settlements to outsiders, refuse to trade or share resources, and violently attack strangers. Orders from the Palace are ignored. The coming winter will be the coldest they have ever seen. Starvation, exposure, and disease rise as crop yields collapse and outside trade dwindles to a trickle. Eventually the people turn upon their rulers. Many have already fled months before and attempt to hide. Most are quickly discovered and unceremoniously and brutally battered to death by crowds. They are the obvious targets for blame. The right offerings hadn¡¯t been made; prayers left unsaid. Rumours circulate that offerings intended for the Gods have been stolen, sold, or stockpiled by corrupt priests. The Great Civilisation tries to repair itself, tries to climb back to its glorious heights, but they are not the same people anymore. They are a people who have been knocked down and now lack the confidence to rise back up. No longer a community but individuals vying against each other for survival. Across the sea the Mycenaeans see the opportunity and grasp it, greedily. They arrive, install themselves in the palace, and impose their culture and rule upon the island. Archaic Greek replaces the Minoan spoken language, and the writings change their meaning to match. Third Wave It was around ten years after the destruction that she first begins to suspect that something was wrong with herself. The waves had changed much with the coastal communities. Countless numbers had been lost. It takes several years for the people to feel safe to return, and for the towns and villages along the shore to be rebuilt. This resurrection brings with it many new faces. There are few, if any, that knew her before, and of those, well, people had more pressing things on their minds. One day though, long after the wave, someone comments about her youthful looks. She doesn¡¯t think much of it to begin with, but after a few more years other people notice, then she manages to purchase a bronze mirror and looks aghast at the youthful face staring back. She guesses she doesn¡¯t look a day past twenty-five. At first she thinks it¡¯s her diet but as time goes on she realises the truth: she¡¯s not aging. Oh, she can get injured still. Cuts, bruises, grazes: they appear and heal normally, no different than anyone else. She can become ill, catch a malady, but recovers over time. She wonders at first if she¡¯s been cursed by the Gods, never to die, never to be reunited with her family in the underworld. Did she offend them in the past? Had she been judged unworthy? Then she thinks: if she can still be injured, then presumably she could still be killed through violence. This scares her more. She starts hiding herself, moving around: island hopping. She leaves Crete and travels around the Mediterranean. Watching over the years as new civilisations rise, prosper for a time, then fall. The Mycenaeans, Athens, Sparta, Persia, Corinth and Rome. She sees them all crumble eventually into ruin. She forms the theory in her mind that she is a living witness to what was once her world: the land and its people. She wonders if any of these new nations she sees will have their recorders, their witnesses, and if she would ever find another like herself. She has not yet encountered anyone else though. So she turns to other pursuits. Difficult at first for a female, but gradually the world changes. She starts to consider that she has been blessed, rather than cursed, and feels a sense of duty and obligation. She hovers in the background. Meeting people, encouraging and inspiring them, providing financial assistance, sometimes, when she can afford to. Pushing them to accomplishments. Nothing so grand as the Sistine Chapel, or the Theory of Relativity. Just small things, for ordinary people. She is intrigued at the beginning of the 20th century, when Evans uncovers the lands of her youth, and the palace at Knossos. She realises that sometime in the past she has forgotten the faces of her children and husband. She has vague images in her mind, the colour of their hair, complexion of skin, but the details have faded. They are like blurred watercolour paintings in her mind. She makes a single visit to Evans¡¯s excavation. However, painful feelings of loss reawaken, and she departs, vowing never to return. Support the author by searching for the original publication of this novel. World War comes, twice. The wars she had seen before in her past had seemed great, but this is something new, with death and destruction on a totally different scale. It frightens her and drives her into a black depression. She retreats and shuns the world around. Creeping further into solitude, her only connection with the outside world is a radio. The radio sits upon a sideboard, encased in polished walnut with a cream-coloured grill over the speaker. It plays out Dick Barton and Mrs Dale¡¯s Diary, until one day the radio-waves it receives change her world. An architect, of all people, on the BBC, makes an announcement on the discovery he¡¯s made. A discovery that re-ignites her interest with her past and reconnects her to the present world outside. The architect¡¯s name is Michael Ventris and his discovery: the decoding of Minoan Linear B. The irony is that she can read neither Linear B nor Linear A herself to begin with. A fisherman¡¯s wife, being able to read? Well, she could recognise a few inscriptions: numbers, and hieroglyphs. What she needed to be able to conduct trade at the market, to make sure she wasn¡¯t being fleeced. It isn¡¯t until the 1950¡¯s, when Michael Ventris and John Chadwick, together, translate the majority of the surviving records, that she is able to first read the tablets from her homeland. With fresh vigour she snaps out of her melancholy and signs up to study Classical History, first at the University of London, before being accepted for a Doctorate at Cambridge. It isn¡¯t very long before she becomes known and respected in the field, and that of course brings fresh problems. Ten years: that is always her deadline, with the emphasis on ¡®Dead¡¯. She hadn¡¯t needed to be quite as careful in the past as now, but times are changing and so must she. Ten years is her time-frame for enrolling, as a slightly older student, completing a Bachelor¡¯s degree, PhD, a couple of years of research, then, tragically, an accident. A car crash whilst driving abroad, sorry but the body is too mangled to view; drowning whilst surfing in California, body swept out to sea; lost hiking in the Australian outback, presumed eaten by dingoes. Much to her supervisors¡¯ frustrations she declines to attend conferences and contributes the minimum to academic journals. Her contemporaries despair. ¡°A waste of talent¡±, ¡°Imposter Syndrome¡±, and ¡°needs to come out of her shell¡± are phrases she occasionally learns are whispered about her in common rooms. She doesn¡¯t mind though. The numerous University Authorities have to admit that her knowledge of the subject is exceptional, and the students she teaches have particularly high success rates at examination. In private, after lectures have finished for the day and the last students leave the library, she opens document wallets, spreads photographs of tablets, inscribed jewellery, and painted cups upon the tables, and, with never wavering enthusiasm, works upon her secret project. It takes her a little over three decades but eventually she accomplishes her task. She can now finally read the ancient language of her people. Now, she alone is the one person alive in the whole world who can not only read every written word of Linear A, but also knows how to speak it. Fourth Wave Until today that was. Until Evelyn Salik, the young black-haired girl in the middle row just read out ¡°Pauti¡± from the picture of a 3700-year-old tablet in front of the whole class. Claudia placed the laser pointer down upon her desk and stared intently at Evelyn. The girl made a grunting noise, looked flustered and appeared to fumble something in her hands. Claudia decided to go with humour. ¡°Miss Salik appears to have deciphered Linear A for us all in...¡±, Claudia glanced quickly at her watch, ¡°a little over half an hour! Would you like to fill the rest of us in?¡± ¡°Oh. Sorry, I was just messaging a friend¡±, Evelyn explained quickly, placing a mobile phone on the desk in front of her, ¡°I¡¯m sorry, it won¡¯t happen again.¡± There were sniggers from some of the other students as they saw hilarity in one of their number being embarrassed in front of them. Claudia smiled, ¡°I would prefer you devote your attention to my teaching in future Miss Salik¡±, picked the laser pointer up, and turning back towards the large white screen, continued teaching. Her students might not have noticed but it would certainly not turn out to be one of her better performances. She had become agitated and kept losing concentration on the subject at hand; constantly adjusting the gold pin holding her hair in place. Her mind kept going back to the moment Evelyn had said that single word: ¡°Pauti¡±, pronounced perfectly. Had she really misheard the girl making a grunting sound or coughing? It wasn¡¯t the first word that appeared on the tablet, but it wasn¡¯t an insignificant word either: a simple noun. A noun used for a small robe, such as a child may wear, scribed on the tablet listing the inventory of a high-ranking merchant¡¯s stores. For the remaining twenty minutes, Claudia kept making brief glances at Evelyn. Was she imagining it, or was the girl also staring at her a little too intently, and too often as well? What did she really know about this girl? She had enrolled at the same time as the others, recalled Claudia, and in the short time the course had been running, the assignments she¡¯d submitted could, at best, be described as ¡®average¡¯. This novel is published on a different platform. Support the original author by finding the official source. Might her work have been too average, wondered Claudia? Her first thought was that she may have encountered the girl previously, under a different name. But that seemed unlikely. She had been very careful to conceal herself over the years. Perhaps it¡¯s time for a new start Claudia thought. Yes, that would work. Time for ¡°Claudia¡± to meet her demise. Time to make a clean break now, time to run. Stay away from academia for a few years. Yes, she decided. She would start making arrangements tonight. Maybe not go back at all tomorrow. Phone in sick and disappear. She always had a backup plan, an escape route planned, just in case. The lecture ended and the students filed out. Evelyn leaves with everyone else, lost somewhere in the middle of the crowd. Good, thought Claudia, as she gathered up her papers, laptop, and bag, before walking hurriedly to her office where she started to empty out some of her more precious belongings. She quickly dropped into the Department Office and explained to the secretary that she was feeling unwell and she¡¯d be taking the rest of the afternoon off. She had only a single tutorial, in an hours¡¯ time, and could get a PhD student to cover that for her. She walked briskly to the staff car park where her car, and escape route, waited. Rounding the corner Claudia sees Evelyn standing there, arms folded, leaning against the car. Claudia froze as the girl stood upright and walked purposefully to meet her, tears running slowly down her cheeks. She hadn¡¯t noticed Evelyn¡¯s basket bag before. The girl had probably kept it under the desk all the time, but there it was now, slung over her shoulder. It was corduroy, a yellow colour, and when the late afternoon sun shone through a gap in the pillars onto it, resembled straw. Just like a straw basket. A straw basket carried by a small girl, a straw basket containing molluscs. Feelings of euphoria swept through Claudia¡¯s mind like waves as the girl calling herself Evelyn smiles and whispers a single word: ¡°Witea.¡± Witea. It was a word that didn¡¯t appear on the tablet Claudia had shown in the lecture, but a word both she and Evelyn knew very well. It is the Minoan word for ¡®My Mother¡¯.