Raiders on Aardvarks
Part I
“Next.”
It was my first day on the job, and I was standing in line for my first assignment—and my first partner.
“Next.”
Working at a new job sucks, especially when they don’t recognize your skills.
“Next!”
They’ve so far treated me like a child. What, do I need a badge or something? Shouldn’t they know I graduated with honours and distinction from the Ford-Emerson Musical Archaeologist Academy? I was the 2008 head of my class. That’s, like, the highest of the highest, right there!
“Next!”
And now I’m going to be assigned a sucky field job with a sucky partner. Why don’t they just shoot me right off, rather than let me slowly suffer.
“Next!”
It’s probably going to be some dig investigating oddly shaped rocks an old, senile man found in his back yard.
“Next!”
And I bet my partner will always be late and not care about his job.
“Next!”
Or else he’ll always be early and anal about work.
“Next!”
Or he’ll always be on time and rub it in if I’m ever late.
“Next!”
“Will you stop screaming next already?”
“You are next!”
“Then why didn’t you tell me?”
“I’d said it nine times already!”
“Fine! What am I next for?”
“Your assignment! Here!”
The fat man at the assignment booth shoved the assignment in my face and turned to the next person. I have a habit of narrating my life inside my head, so I was only angry out of spite. I stormed off, but it was way too hot to be angry for no reason for long. Then I realized I hadn’t taken the assignment, so I got angry again and stormed back to the booth. I took the assignment and stormed off again, finally settling on being slightly peeved due to the heat. Why do they insist on making us come out onto the field to get our assignments? It’s to friggin’ hot to be outside, and I’m just going to be driving to another place. Oh god, I hope wherever it is has shade.
I opened the manila envelope to pull out my assignment. Frig, I was right. It is some old, senile man with oddly shaped rocks. Why did I have to be right? Now I know my partner is going to be a complete and utter ass. Oh well. At least he will have to suffer as much as I do.
I decided to head straight to the old man’s house so that I’d be earlier than my partner. When I got there, however, my partner had just beaten me. If he says one word about getting there early, I swear I will punch him in the face.
“Hi, are you Indi...” he looked down at this assignment, “anagea?”
“Yeah.”
“Right, sorry. I was surprised. I was expecting a guy.”
“Right, because of Indianagea, I know.” I really didn’t want to hear again how much my name is like Indiana Jones.
“No, actually, I was expecting a guy because it’s a male dominated field, and they usually don’t assign women jobs like these.”
“What do you mean jobs like these?”
“Well, the administration is run by sexist pig-dogs, right? So they don’t think women can handle the more complicated jobs, especially ones that involve a lot of digging and hard labour.”
“What do you mean complicated job? The old guy is going to show us a bunch of funny rocks left over from some mine or something claiming that they’re ancient Native American artifacts. He’s just looking for money.”
“Right. Well, they said it was one of the tougher jobs. I’m sure that’s why they assigned it to you, since you’re the top of your class.”
I was beginning to really dislike this guy. Who did he think he was? He probably ready up on me to see if I did better than him. “How did you know I was the top of my class?”
“I read up on you to see if you did better than me. I didn’t want to be stuck with some rookie. I’m glad we’re more or less on the same level.”
Ha. He can’t admit that I did indeed do better than him. “Let’s get this over with.”
We headed towards the nearby house. It looked like a typical cottage. It was the kind you’d find in back country such as this. I had heard that this man was actually insanely rich, and had huge tracts of land. The old coot probably never even used his land for anything. We made it to the door and my partner knocked. We stood for a few moments as we heard some shuffling on the inside. Finally someone opened the door. It was Mick Jagger!
“Oh, hey! I was wondering when you people would be showin’ up here. Come on in.”
That was odd. He didn’t even ask us what our names were. For all he knew we could have been a couple of Jehovah’s Witnesses or something.
“I knew you weren’t no Jehovah’s Witnesses or something ‘cause of your clothes. If you had been Jehovah’s Witnesses I would have set my dog Johan Sebastian on you.”
I looked down at what I was wearing. My clothes were certainly very archaeologist-like. And a little bit musical, too. My partner’s clothes were the same, the bastard.
Mick led us into his cottage. It was actually much bigger than I had thought it would have been.
“My cottage seems a lot smaller on the outside ‘cause I made it outta local granite. It makes the whole cottage look smaller.”
Uh-huh. Next he’s gonna tell us his lastest music sucks because it makes his old music sound better. My partner leaned over and whispered into my ear.
“You realize that since it’s Mick Jagger, he’s probably not looking for money.”
Bastard had a point. “But his career has gone to shit. He’s probably just looking for attention.” I made that up on the spot, but it fit. I wasn’t going to give Mick Jagger any friggin’ slack for dragging me out here. Bastard.
Mick took us into his study. All around were shelves and shelves of big, leather bound books with gold letters on them. I took a closer look, but the book writing wasn’t very revealing. I picked one up that had Mel-Met written on it, and flipped through. It was just a bunch of names, phone numbers and addresses!
“What is this?” I said.
“That? These are all of the groupies with whom I have illegitimate children. I have to keep track of them all so I can pay my paternal fees. I also send a gift every year.”
God, I knew Mick Jagger had slept with a lot of groupies, but this was insane. At least one wall of his study was dedicated solely to groupies and their children.
“Actually, that wall is dedicated solely to groupies,” Mick said, “The rest of the study is dedicated to their children.”
God damn. That means he would have had to have gone back to each groupie after the first kid was born and slept with her at least twice!
“I have a whole lotta love.”
“Wait, isn’t that a Zeppelin song?” said my partner.
“What? I can’t listen to any but my own music? Bloody Americans.”
"Will you just get to the point? Why are we here?" I said. You can tell that this was starting to piss me off.
"Right," said Mick, "please have a seat." He indicated two peculiar chairs that I hadn't seen previously upon entering. My partner sat down right away, but I was more cautious. Who knows what devious things Mick Jagger might have done to his chairs. I hesitantly sat down when Mick also took an equally peculiar chair. My suspicions were for naught, it seemed.
Then we were suddenly whisked away to an unknown locale underneath Mick Jagger's cottage. My intuitions told me it was a basement, but the bright sunlight told me a different story.
"This is level one, my hydroponics lab. In here I have the world's most natural artificial sunlight."
"Hydroponics?" said my partner, "What are they used for?"
"We're experimenting with genetic engineering to see if we can grow a cross between rice and hemp."
"Why the hell would you want to do that?" I asked.
"Why the hell not? It's my hobby."
I turned in utter disgust as we descended farther down into Mick Jagger's secret basement compound. I can't stand pot heads--getting high while eating rice? great.
"The rice-hemp splice will help us create more hemp than we could previously. As you know, hemp is an amazing plant. It's much better than cotton as a textile. And we only need the fibrous parts of the plant to make cloth. The fruit--that is, the grain--can be harvested and eaten. Rice-hemp will enable us to feed and clothe the entire world. Also, the THC levels in the Rice-hemp are be too low to get high."
Whatever. “Why are you growing it underground, then?”
“We aren't the only people playing around with plant splicing.”
“So you need to keep this a secret?” my partner asked.
“Yes.”
Again, whatever. He probably thought of it while getting high. I can't think of anything more obnoxious than stoned Stones. There must have been about five levels to Mick Jagger's secret basement lair—I don't really know, since I lost interest after I heard the word 'pot.' Well, not 'pot' really, since no one ever said 'pot.' I only imagined that they said 'pot' when really they said 'rice-hemp.' But 'pot' is close enough a word to 'rice-hemp,' since that's what it is, essentially. I digress—each level was at least as big as a football stadium, and they were all lit by the same artificial sunlight. Mick explained that the AS kept his researchers healthy, who necessarily had to spend a lot of time down in his lab in order to conduct their ongoing studies and experiments. The real reason is probably that Mick intends to use them in some crazy British stoner cult fetish festival. That's probably why we're here.
“ You're here,” Mick said, rudely interrupting my thoughts, “because of what we found on the newest level.” He said this, of course, just as we landed on the rough, uneven ground of the dark, dank bottommost level. “I apologize for the lack of light and the wetness; I had my team pull out of here when we made our discovery.” This emphasis on discovery annoyed me. I like to emphasize words in my head, but never when I speak.
“ What is this discovery?” I said, inwardly scolding myself for emphasizing the word just as Mick had, and thereby probably encouraging him to emphasize more in the future.
“ I'll show you in a moment. First, put these on.” His obnoxious emphasis indicated helmets—or hard hats—that had been left on a shelf. Why the shelf itself had been left there was a mystery that I cared not to ponder. I was still angry about the 'these.' After donning our helmets and switching the lights on, Mick led us into the darkness. Our helmet lights only cut into the gloom so far. We couldn't see any walls. The surrounding echoes of water dripping further reinforced my theory that this level was pretty big. Mick confirmed my theory: “When we were digging this level we cut into a gigantic underground lake. Initially I had planned use the lake for further research—I could turn this level into my own personal biodome, and the lake would provide a perfect natural water system.”
“Initially ?” I said, in disgust. Mick misinterpreted this, however, for curiosity.
“ Yes. That is, until the discovery.”
I retched, but luckily Mick wasn't paying attention. He was pointing into the gloom, and I could just make out a small motorboat. Mick climbed in and beckoned us to join him. I wasn't too impressed by the prospect of having to get my feet wet, so I looked for reasons not to. “Wait, if the entire cave is pitch black, how are you going to navigate?” It was good criticism; I could feel my partner's head nodding behind me. I turned to look at him—okay, he wasn't nodding, but he seemed just as puzzled as I would have been had the question been a sincere query of intellectual curiosity and concern for my well-being. It obviously wasn't, since any idiot other than my partner could guess that Mick Jagger would have some insane means of navigating a deep, dank, underground lake. Can lakes be dank?
“It's guided by three lasers that triangulate our position anywhere in the lake.”
I told you so. You can never trust aging rock stars not to be completely obnoxious. They always do things like this to annoy me. They always prove to me that the boat on the underground lake is perfectly safe, thereby leaving me no choice but to get on. Don't they realize that my question was really aimed at keeping my feet dry? Oh, there's a dock. I guess it's okay then. I'm still annoyed.
When we were all aboard the boat silently glided across the lake and into the unknown. Well, I guess it's not so unknown, since Mick Jagger of all people was able to install a laser guided system that has mapped the entire lake. Still, I don't know the lake, and therefore I am annoyed.
In what seemed like five minutes—too long for my tastes to be sitting on a motorboat traversing an underground lake—navigating, not traversing—whatever—we landed on the opposite shore.
Traversing sounds better.
Mick Jagger jumped out first, and we followed. He pulled the boat up on shore and then led us into the gloom. This gloom was exactly like the previous gloom, except that it felt like we were no longer in a large underground cavern. Instead if felt like we were in a medium sized walk in closet. The air was close, and it was getting warmer. There was no way I was going to let Mick Jagger think I'm losing my nerve, so I didn't say anything. I just let him lead on, as if he is a leader, and ignored to pointedly obvious closeness and warmth. Did I mention the rising humidity?
“I'm surprised no one has mentioned the rising humidity.” Said Mick Jagger, interrupting my train of thought once again. He certainly has a bad habit of doing that. “We're approaching an underground thermal spring.”
“How much further do we have to go?” My partner asked. I admit, that's a question that had been on my mind as well. My partner is proving to be creepy.
“We're almost there. In fact....” Mick stopped walking. He stayed in one spot and turned 270 degrees, training his flashlight on the ground. “There it is!”
I looked to where his flashlight was pointed. I wasn't at all surprised to see a pile of rocks. I sighed at the tedium of my job and approached the rocks reluctantly. My partner may have been right about everything else, but there was one thing that I got right; Mick Jagger was wasting my time. At first glance the rocks looked natural. I knew they weren't, because why else would I be here? I looked closer and found that the rocks were, in fact, marked all over.
“Where did you find these rocks?” I asked.
“They're all over the place.” He flailed his flashlight. “They're all in piles just like that one.”
I scanned the surrounding area with my flashlight helmet and saw that he was not lying. There were a dozen or so piles just within range of my light. I looked back to the first pile and picked up a rock, examining the marks.
“You don't need me here,” I said. “I'm an archaeologist. I look at old rocks. These were obviously machined.”
“Yes, I am aware that they are machined.”
“You knew and you dragged me here anyway?” I said in as an indignant voice as I could muster. “Why are you wasting my time?”
“I was hoping you could explain how machined rocks got into a cave when we're the first people to ever step foot here.”
