EXCERPT from Deep Structure:
I’m so damn close! What’s the bloody code breaker?
Gatsby Donovan stared into the humming computer monitor, frowning, entranced by
the glyphs on the screen. A diskette containing image files of stone burial vessels,
recently excavated and donated to the British Museum, had arrived on her desk two
days ago. Clevis’s memo noted that it was up to her to decipher the Mayan
inscriptions before the artifacts arrived from Guatemala.
What a shame that my vacation starts in two hours, she thought, smirking, in the hush
of her small office. Actually, it was unfortunate — she was eager to get the burial
ritual legends on the vessels deciphered and had made it through most of them. One
contained astronumerical references that she couldn’t quite place. Had she seen
them in some dusty reference book in the museum library? Were they alphabetic or
syllabic?
She closed her eyes, leaning back in her padded chair, and ran her hands through
her long, chestnut brown hair. Too many hours at the computer; her retinas were
jitterbugging behind the dark canvas of her eyelids.
I need a break . . . too much epigraphy makes Gatsby a dull . . .
The computer screen popped to black — instead of Mesoamerican symbols, tiny stars
now floated toward her like falling snowflakes, as if she’d just materialized on the
bridge of a starship. A nice screensaver.
It was a few minutes past four o’clock — some of the museum staff had already gone
home, some remained to work late, and in just two hours, she would savor the act of
closing up her office for her ten-week sabbatical. It was a well-earned vacation, and
the Mayan vessels would have to wait for her until September.
She flashed on the fact that the museum director, Nelson Clevis, had mentioned that
morning he would stop by before she left — if there were benevolent gods, his visit
would be short. Gatsby genuinely respected Clevis’s commitment to the institution
that kept her in linguistic magazines and thrift-store jeans. On the surface, however,
he was to all who knew him an anal-retentive and officious prick.
The mental image made Gatsby laugh out loud, eyes still closed.
She’d made a stab at organizing but had only succeeded at rearranging the piles of
books, notes, computer disks, catalogs, and files that constituted her office. It wasn’t
the most aesthetically pleasing office at the museum, but it truly afforded the best
view, overlooking a lush courtyard of exotic plants and gurgling Grecian fountains.
A thousand years from now, who’s going to care how tidy I kept my office? she thought,
relaxing back in her chair and letting her mind wander as it did on the rare day like
this when she felt mentally lazy, at long last detached from the intense focus of her
work.
Her education at Blake University, Seattle, and then SUNY had given her a thorough
background in linguistic systems. She considered herself very lucky that the British
Museum’s internship program had accepted her and eventually offered her an
associate position. And in the last six years, she’d received a fantastic education in
translating the writings on ancient manuscripts and artifacts—coming to love the
challenges of the job and to endure the stress.
Moving her wheeled chair so that the late spring sunlight drifting through her
window bathed over her body, she listened to the quiet. The occasional whoosh of
the air conditioning system. Muted footsteps in the hallway. The hum of her computer.
All these words, thoughts. So long ago. Did the people of Palenque ever imagine that
thousands of years in the future, someone like me would pour over their scribblings?
And be fascinated by what was there? Be driven to know how cultures of the ancient
past lived, thought, spoke, perceived? . . . how much we know of ourselves by studying
the writings of those who come before us . . . the process itself of comparing the words —
the symbols of thought — of cultures millennia before your own makes you acutely
aware of the mutable nature of perception. What I do here, translating these scribbles
and fragments from the past — will any of this prove enlightening to some culture
millennia from now? Who knows how future cultures will think and write? . . . maybe
they’ll be beyond writing their thoughts. She smiled a little, lost in the daydream. Maybe
they’ll be beyond thought . . .
A jolt raced down her spine — a tingling, electric spasm that shot from her neck down
her left arm to her hand. The daydream shattered and she bolted, eyes wide at the
shock of the sensation. She stared down at her left hand, resting on the cool surface
of her desktop.
The finger muscles quivered — her hand jittered on the laminate surface, as if
something under it were about to erupt. Her heart moved into high gear and her
lungs locked as she watched, terrified and helpless.
As if sentient, her hand jerked to eye level, palm away from her. The thumb dipped
forward, then pulled back as the third and fourth fingers tipped down. The action
repeated and repeated again, faster and faster, as if her arm were trying to flap
invisible wings and fly away.
“Son of a bitch,” Gatsby hissed. Her heart thudded in her ears and with each thud,
the movements repeated and it wouldn’t stop — there was nothing she could do to
make it stop . . . She swung her right hand and slapped the left down hard on the
desktop.
Panting, Gatsby stared down at her hands, the right one smashing the left like the
stronger of two wrestlers. A sick feeling cramped her stomach; nothing like this had
ever happened to her
except
before . . .
What the hell! Good god, some kind of stroke? Embolism? Tumor? Epilepsy? Oh christ . .
. Other bad-to-worst-case suggestions tried to rise into her mind; she brutally shoved
them out. If there were congenital illnesses in her family, they were unknown to her.
She opened her mouth to suck in a lungful of air, feeling her tongue rake over dry
lips. She sat paralyzed in the chair, terrified that if she moved or breathed, it might
happen again.
Waiting, watching. Barely breathing. Cautiously observing.
After two minutes — nothing. A long, shuddering sigh helped her lungs to unlock.
Jesus H . . .
A knock at the door made her jerk and painfully nip the inside of her cheek. Whoever
it was, their timing was terrible. She rolled her neck to pop out the kinks and pressed
her hands against her Levi’s, trying to quickly think of an excuse scenario. A sudden
phone call? An emergency sprint for the bathroom? Her body was still trembling; the
cold stone in her stomach seemed to grind against her ribs.
The door opened. Nelson Clevis, short, bald, with tiny glasses and creases that
screamed, appeared in his usual humor: constrained. A grey suit and burgundy tie
had been his uniform since the day Gatsby had interviewed with him six years ago. He
took one step into Gatsby’s office and stood rooted like a Paleolithic fossil embedded
in the earth’s crust. She never knew exactly how it happened, but his grand efforts at
reserve usually made Gatsby feel positively impish around him.
At the moment, all she wanted was to get rid of him.
“Nelson,” Gatsby said, knowing full well how he hated the informality of first names.
She wondered when her shoulder muscles would loosen their death-grip on her
spine.
Clevis merely raised his thin grey eyebrows and parted a set of lips as starched as
his shirt. “Ms. Donovan. I dropped by to bid you well for your sabbatical. You
generally holiday in the warmer climes, do you not? South of France this year? Italy?”
His tiny eyes, behind the lenses, reflected only the smallest glint of warmth.
“Anywhere but London, I know that. Perhaps Tenerife. Whatever I end up doing, I
know I’m going to be fretting over these vessels.” She managed, somehow, to keep
her voice level.
Clevis blinked, one of his more subtle signals of understanding. “Yes, the Maya. One
can only imagine what they did for their holidays.” His hands stole into the depths of
his pants pockets and Gatsby recognized Clevis’s gruel-bland form of humor.
Before she could reply, her hand trembled. An involuntary gasp broke from her; she
swept both arms up over her head, feigning a lazy stretch, and then clasped her
hands behind her neck. “Hard to say,” she murmured, trying desperately to sound
casual while adrenaline raced through her bloodstream.
Clevis’s reputation for wordiness was askew that day. He stared briefly and then said,
monotone, “Well. Enjoy the time off. We shall see you in the fall.”
“You will. Thanks for dropping by, Nelson.”
An almost imperceptible stiffness drew the man up to his full height of five foot
seven and a half inches. He nodded curtly and left the door ajar as he walked out.
Gatsby exhaled loud and long and pressed her hands to her cheeks, noting how hot
they felt. What if Clevis had noticed? What if he had gotten the notion that she had
contracted some appalling handicap and was unfit to work anymore?
Moving her hands out in front of her, as if resting them on an imaginary keyboard,
she stared hard at them. Just two hands, firmly attached and seemingly once again in
synch with the rest of her fit, thirty-five-year-old body. Two simple, unadorned hands;
short, smooth nails, a small birthstone ring on the middle finger of the right.
She breathed in deeply, thinking, Okay, best case scenario is simple stress. Overwork.
Nothing that some warm salt water and a few friendly White Russians won’t fix in a
hurry. But I’m calling Dr. Berger in the morning, just in c . . . The thought dissipated,
dissolving into the darker alleys of her subconscious. She sniffed, rose, and
gathered up the books and files that would necessarily accompany her for the
summer.
A beep signaled a transmission on her fax machine. Gatsby glanced toward the
machine, stared warily as a piece of paper began chugging out of it, almost
convinced herself that she hadn’t seen it, and reluctantly walked to the filing cabinet
on which it sat. The transmission completed and a single sheet of paper dropped.
Gatsby picked it up with a sigh and read:
Ms. Donovan, imperative that we speak immediately.
An unknown glyph discovered in Egyptian tomb.
Your urgent attention requested.
I’m so damn close! What’s the bloody code breaker?
Gatsby Donovan stared into the humming computer monitor, frowning, entranced by
the glyphs on the screen. A diskette containing image files of stone burial vessels,
recently excavated and donated to the British Museum, had arrived on her desk two
days ago. Clevis’s memo noted that it was up to her to decipher the Mayan
inscriptions before the artifacts arrived from Guatemala.
What a shame that my vacation starts in two hours, she thought, smirking, in the hush
of her small office. Actually, it was unfortunate — she was eager to get the burial
ritual legends on the vessels deciphered and had made it through most of them. One
contained astronumerical references that she couldn’t quite place. Had she seen
them in some dusty reference book in the museum library? Were they alphabetic or
syllabic?
She closed her eyes, leaning back in her padded chair, and ran her hands through
her long, chestnut brown hair. Too many hours at the computer; her retinas were
jitterbugging behind the dark canvas of her eyelids.
I need a break . . . too much epigraphy makes Gatsby a dull . . .
The computer screen popped to black — instead of Mesoamerican symbols, tiny stars
now floated toward her like falling snowflakes, as if she’d just materialized on the
bridge of a starship. A nice screensaver.
It was a few minutes past four o’clock — some of the museum staff had already gone
home, some remained to work late, and in just two hours, she would savor the act of
closing up her office for her ten-week sabbatical. It was a well-earned vacation, and
the Mayan vessels would have to wait for her until September.
She flashed on the fact that the museum director, Nelson Clevis, had mentioned that
morning he would stop by before she left — if there were benevolent gods, his visit
would be short. Gatsby genuinely respected Clevis’s commitment to the institution
that kept her in linguistic magazines and thrift-store jeans. On the surface, however,
he was to all who knew him an anal-retentive and officious prick.
The mental image made Gatsby laugh out loud, eyes still closed.
She’d made a stab at organizing but had only succeeded at rearranging the piles of
books, notes, computer disks, catalogs, and files that constituted her office. It wasn’t
the most aesthetically pleasing office at the museum, but it truly afforded the best
view, overlooking a lush courtyard of exotic plants and gurgling Grecian fountains.
A thousand years from now, who’s going to care how tidy I kept my office? she thought,
relaxing back in her chair and letting her mind wander as it did on the rare day like
this when she felt mentally lazy, at long last detached from the intense focus of her
work.
Her education at Blake University, Seattle, and then SUNY had given her a thorough
background in linguistic systems. She considered herself very lucky that the British
Museum’s internship program had accepted her and eventually offered her an
associate position. And in the last six years, she’d received a fantastic education in
translating the writings on ancient manuscripts and artifacts—coming to love the
challenges of the job and to endure the stress.
Moving her wheeled chair so that the late spring sunlight drifting through her
window bathed over her body, she listened to the quiet. The occasional whoosh of
the air conditioning system. Muted footsteps in the hallway. The hum of her computer.
All these words, thoughts. So long ago. Did the people of Palenque ever imagine that
thousands of years in the future, someone like me would pour over their scribblings?
And be fascinated by what was there? Be driven to know how cultures of the ancient
past lived, thought, spoke, perceived? . . . how much we know of ourselves by studying
the writings of those who come before us . . . the process itself of comparing the words —
the symbols of thought — of cultures millennia before your own makes you acutely
aware of the mutable nature of perception. What I do here, translating these scribbles
and fragments from the past — will any of this prove enlightening to some culture
millennia from now? Who knows how future cultures will think and write? . . . maybe
they’ll be beyond writing their thoughts. She smiled a little, lost in the daydream. Maybe
they’ll be beyond thought . . .
A jolt raced down her spine — a tingling, electric spasm that shot from her neck down
her left arm to her hand. The daydream shattered and she bolted, eyes wide at the
shock of the sensation. She stared down at her left hand, resting on the cool surface
of her desktop.
The finger muscles quivered — her hand jittered on the laminate surface, as if
something under it were about to erupt. Her heart moved into high gear and her
lungs locked as she watched, terrified and helpless.
As if sentient, her hand jerked to eye level, palm away from her. The thumb dipped
forward, then pulled back as the third and fourth fingers tipped down. The action
repeated and repeated again, faster and faster, as if her arm were trying to flap
invisible wings and fly away.
“Son of a bitch,” Gatsby hissed. Her heart thudded in her ears and with each thud,
the movements repeated and it wouldn’t stop — there was nothing she could do to
make it stop . . . She swung her right hand and slapped the left down hard on the
desktop.
Panting, Gatsby stared down at her hands, the right one smashing the left like the
stronger of two wrestlers. A sick feeling cramped her stomach; nothing like this had
ever happened to her
except
before . . .
What the hell! Good god, some kind of stroke? Embolism? Tumor? Epilepsy? Oh christ . .
. Other bad-to-worst-case suggestions tried to rise into her mind; she brutally shoved
them out. If there were congenital illnesses in her family, they were unknown to her.
She opened her mouth to suck in a lungful of air, feeling her tongue rake over dry
lips. She sat paralyzed in the chair, terrified that if she moved or breathed, it might
happen again.
Waiting, watching. Barely breathing. Cautiously observing.
After two minutes — nothing. A long, shuddering sigh helped her lungs to unlock.
Jesus H . . .
A knock at the door made her jerk and painfully nip the inside of her cheek. Whoever
it was, their timing was terrible. She rolled her neck to pop out the kinks and pressed
her hands against her Levi’s, trying to quickly think of an excuse scenario. A sudden
phone call? An emergency sprint for the bathroom? Her body was still trembling; the
cold stone in her stomach seemed to grind against her ribs.
The door opened. Nelson Clevis, short, bald, with tiny glasses and creases that
screamed, appeared in his usual humor: constrained. A grey suit and burgundy tie
had been his uniform since the day Gatsby had interviewed with him six years ago. He
took one step into Gatsby’s office and stood rooted like a Paleolithic fossil embedded
in the earth’s crust. She never knew exactly how it happened, but his grand efforts at
reserve usually made Gatsby feel positively impish around him.
At the moment, all she wanted was to get rid of him.
“Nelson,” Gatsby said, knowing full well how he hated the informality of first names.
She wondered when her shoulder muscles would loosen their death-grip on her
spine.
Clevis merely raised his thin grey eyebrows and parted a set of lips as starched as
his shirt. “Ms. Donovan. I dropped by to bid you well for your sabbatical. You
generally holiday in the warmer climes, do you not? South of France this year? Italy?”
His tiny eyes, behind the lenses, reflected only the smallest glint of warmth.
“Anywhere but London, I know that. Perhaps Tenerife. Whatever I end up doing, I
know I’m going to be fretting over these vessels.” She managed, somehow, to keep
her voice level.
Clevis blinked, one of his more subtle signals of understanding. “Yes, the Maya. One
can only imagine what they did for their holidays.” His hands stole into the depths of
his pants pockets and Gatsby recognized Clevis’s gruel-bland form of humor.
Before she could reply, her hand trembled. An involuntary gasp broke from her; she
swept both arms up over her head, feigning a lazy stretch, and then clasped her
hands behind her neck. “Hard to say,” she murmured, trying desperately to sound
casual while adrenaline raced through her bloodstream.
Clevis’s reputation for wordiness was askew that day. He stared briefly and then said,
monotone, “Well. Enjoy the time off. We shall see you in the fall.”
“You will. Thanks for dropping by, Nelson.”
An almost imperceptible stiffness drew the man up to his full height of five foot
seven and a half inches. He nodded curtly and left the door ajar as he walked out.
Gatsby exhaled loud and long and pressed her hands to her cheeks, noting how hot
they felt. What if Clevis had noticed? What if he had gotten the notion that she had
contracted some appalling handicap and was unfit to work anymore?
Moving her hands out in front of her, as if resting them on an imaginary keyboard,
she stared hard at them. Just two hands, firmly attached and seemingly once again in
synch with the rest of her fit, thirty-five-year-old body. Two simple, unadorned hands;
short, smooth nails, a small birthstone ring on the middle finger of the right.
She breathed in deeply, thinking, Okay, best case scenario is simple stress. Overwork.
Nothing that some warm salt water and a few friendly White Russians won’t fix in a
hurry. But I’m calling Dr. Berger in the morning, just in c . . . The thought dissipated,
dissolving into the darker alleys of her subconscious. She sniffed, rose, and
gathered up the books and files that would necessarily accompany her for the
summer.
A beep signaled a transmission on her fax machine. Gatsby glanced toward the
machine, stared warily as a piece of paper began chugging out of it, almost
convinced herself that she hadn’t seen it, and reluctantly walked to the filing cabinet
on which it sat. The transmission completed and a single sheet of paper dropped.
Gatsby picked it up with a sigh and read:
Ms. Donovan, imperative that we speak immediately.
An unknown glyph discovered in Egyptian tomb.
Your urgent attention requested.
Deep Structure
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