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The House
Clark - an archaeological gem
- James Clarke
South Africa is a treasure trove for fossil hunters
and archaeologists. - Out There magazine.
The year is 6000.
Professor Floog is on one of his frequent visits to
Planet Earth. Floog with his seven heads and 16 tentacles
is from Zog, a planet 450 897 465.83 light years from
Earth. Planet Zog, long ago, annexed Planet Earth but
failing to find intelligent life (they found only humans),
the Zogolottes drifted away.
Nevertheless Floog, the great astro-archaeologist,
wants to discover the Earthlings' past and his personal
archaeological dig has become known as "the house
Clarke". It is on the outskirts of "the Forgotten
City" - the city, once known as Johannesburg. It
was deliberately buried 3989 years before and is slowly
being excavated by Floog's team.
Records say the city was written off and buried after
the Great Gridlock of 2011. Its citizens abandoned the
metropolis after four minibus taxis entering the area
from different points of the compass, accidentally ran
into the backs of the taxis in front causing simultaneous
shunting incidents that compacted long lines of vehicles
all the way into the city centre.
So solidly fused was the city's traffic that it would
have taken years to sort it out. Three hundred vehicle
insurance executives are said to have jumped out of
windows that day.
The city was abandoned and slowly it became buried
beneath windblown mine sand and street posters. Later
the citizens buried it deeper still, intending to start
again on top of the newly levelled ground, but they
never did.
The House Clarke site in what were the suburbs is
posing many questions. Floog has found 371 rolls of
insulation tape, some barely used, as well as 245 barely
used tiny tubes of super-glue.
"This fellow, Clarke," he says to his colleague,
Grooby Dinkle, "was obviously some sort of collector."
"Unless," says Dinkle scratching one of
his heads, "he kept mislaying rolls of tape and
tubes of glue and had to buy fresh ones each time. After
all, look at the 2056 Bic pens - some hardly used. They're
turning up everywhere!"
"Can a man be that stupid?" asks Floog.
Dinkle says: "We at least know he was a garage
worshipper like the rest. Look at the filling stations
we've unearthed. They were in their time set among lawns
and flowerbeds and were built with great reverence."
"I think," said Floog, "that as oil
supplies became scarcer petrol companies became deified?
These petrol-churches even had tiled bays and gaily-coloured
brushes where cars were ritualistically cleansed and
polished."
"But what puzzles me about House Clarke,"
interrupts Dinkle as he lifts aside the 79th varnish
brush he has found stiff with paint and useless, "is
this half an oil drum. Patently, it was used, outside
the house - and frequently. I think it was a sort of
fiery sacrificial altar. From our scrapings, we deduce
that pieces of animals were systematically incinerated
on it - perfectly good meat burned to a cinder."
"Sacrificed to the fuel gods?" suggests
Floog. "Instead of sacrificing whole animals like
the ultra-Ancients before them, these neo-Ancients seem
to have cut up their animals first."
Dinkle says: "Floog, what of all these apparently
lost keys we keep finding?
This site has yielded 265! And look how each house
is walled off. Walls everywhere? What were these funny
little Earthlings afraid of?"
"Taxis, Dinkle! That's what! The very taxis that
eventually destroyed the city. These taxis and buses
appeared to have been forever bumping into things so
suburban homes walled themselves off."
"This was a very primitive society," says
Dinkle. "Just look at Clarke's computer! How did
he manage to get anything useful out of such a primitive
system?" Dinkle pretends to switch the PC on and
in mock alarm quickly withdraws his tentacle.
One of Floog's heads laughs uproariously. The rest
quickly join in.
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