Lost and Found
Posted on Wednesday, January 25th, 2012
I promise we’re back to the 13 treasures next week, but this week’s theme and archaeology.org came together too beautifully to pass up.
Things get lost all the time. My mom and I used to joke about my stepfather’s inexplicable ability to put things in what he called “a perfectly logical place” and then be completely incapable of finding them, but the fact is that we’ve all done it. I’ve lost my keys in my living room, and I still have no idea what became of my bunny coloring book.
The whole thing gets worse when you add more people. I’ll bet half of my old office-mates didn’t know I had a stapler hidden in my top desk drawer. Out of sight is really out of mind.
This week?
A scientist at Royal Holloway, University of London, found a collection of Charles Darwin’s specimen slides in an old cabinet. Think about that for a minute.
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Here’s a cabinet in a major facility, and no one really knew what was inside. It could have been anything.
Now, personally, I have trouble coming up with anything cooler than Darwin’s slides, but that’s not necessarily a really great story hook. I mean, sure, he could have samples of alien plant matter there, Stepped over by some even-more forgotten pergressor, but that seems doubtful.
But the fact is that this happens fairly frequently. People open old boxes and realize they have a really important artifact, something truly telling, just sitting on a shelf in the back, long forgotten.
What else is back there?
Are there lost pergressor coordinates tucked away in materials stored by the Janus Syndicate? Are there lost colonies that have had no contact with the Ingressa for ages because someone filed the coordinates somewhere weird? Undoubtedly.
Or equipment. Ancient magitech items that were originally incomprehensible but now might be usable? Or the plans for same, now more readily understood because we’ve finally found the Rosetta Stone for their language? Does someone have the plans for a pergressor tower and just not know it because it’s in a dust-covered box on a high shelf in a dark corner of a storage room?
Or are there just enough pieces to tantalize someone’s curiosity and send them out in search of answers? Just enough information to imply that someone once saw the gef homeworld, perhaps.
And what happens when those things come to light? Are there people who want that information to stay secret? Are there people who want that information for themselves, when they realize it could be had?
What is in that cabinet and what stories does it have to tell?
Further Reading:
UK scientists find “lost” Darwin fossils
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