Veiled Ruin
Amarilla knew one thing: what she was looking at was going to change the world. No, not just this world, the entire universe. Her team had been hard at work on this dig for the last year—time that had been eaten up by her appealing to the High Council to receive even more permission to dive into the ruins to discover more. But her team had really pulled it together and unveiled the greatest ruins she had seen in her long career as a solarchologist.
The intricate metal, once covered in dirt and rock, now stretched to the sky, forming something that looked like a mix between a pre-Millennium castle and a 21st-century skyplat, except that the ruins were firmly ensconced in the ground rather than floating in the heavens. The dig team had piled up the dirt that used to fill the halls of the ruins next to it, forming a new mountain. Enough dirt to rise above even the building it had covered. Amazing, Amarilla thought.
“Do you want to go in?” Dryden, her lead researcher, asked, giving her just the right amount of time to stand in awe but also stopping her before she looked like she was gawking or too filled with pride.
“Yes,” Amarilla said, nodding. She needed to control her emotions more. History was something that the Apostolic Brethren could take away from her at any moment, and she wasn’t about to let them.
The situation with these ruins was…delicate, to say the least. Not only were they pre-Millennium, they were also anti-Deseret. Or at least, that’s what the translations of the language on the outside of the building were coming out as. They spoke of the Child visiting this planet, too, and of the establishment of a Church of Jesus Christ on this land as well. The question that Amarilla could never write about but that was always on her mind was, if the Child had set up their church on this planet, why hadn’t it lasted? If the Child had set up churches on various planets, why had Golden Deseret, the Church of Jesus Christ on the planet Earth, felt the need to send out emissaries and missionaries, converting the universe to its way of worship? The textbooks spoke of the need for purity, but Amarilla was taught to trust the texts of the dead and lost more than the texts of the living winners.
Dryden led her in through the front gateway. It was in the middle of a wall that stretched from one side of the outer segment to the other, then curved to form a square that surrounded the taller tower-like building in the center.
“This gateway must have held a door or something, surely.”
“Wood,” Dryden answered. “We found particles in the stone. From those tall trees on the other side of the planet.”
“Other side of the planet? So planetary trade was a thing.”
“Yes, it seems like parts of this building, we’re calling it a templus because of its…similarities…to other buildings, parts of it were taken from all over the planet.”
Templus. Amarilla smirked at that. It was smart. Got the point across without worrying those in higher positions who got stressed out over these things. The middle management bureaucrats of Golden Deseret would hear something that sounded just a little off and come down full force. Templus was just enough different, though, to hopefully go under the radar. Plus, they wouldn’t use the term in any professional publication. This was just Site #447B-J9082, and that’s how it would be referred to in papers, articles, and presentations.
“Do you think that’s because the civilization that built this templus had conquered the entire planet or because of peace between the various civilizations?”
Dryden led Amarilla into the outer courtyard. A large bowl-like contraption was off to one side and a large pit was off to the other. Amarilla nodded at both of them. She had expected this in the outer court.
“We believe an argument could be made for both.”
A diplomatic and academic answer.
“But what do you think, researcher?”
Dryden knew when Amarilla used the title she meant for him to fulfill his role. He was still a student, technically, and this was his upper research work, before he could become a solarchologist himself.
“I think they were at peace. I’m not sure any civilization at war could’ve built something like this.”
Amarilla pursed her lips but she didn’t say anything. She’d need to assign him Dredscoff, Nels, and Park, just so he could strengthen his views.
“What was the part you really wished to show me?”
“Oh, follow me. This way.”
I am participating in #Archtober from the ARCH-HIVE. They challenged creators to create something every day, or every other day, for the month of October and base it on a theme. I’m free writing for 30 minutes every two days based on the two-day schematic and theme rules they’ve established. So, the writing will probably not be super coherent, but it’ll be fun.
I struggled a lot with this one because I kept thinking about how I could bring ruins into my free-written, Mormon-based universe, so this morning, I just decided to get caught up and write something, no matter what, and so I mediated on the mystery I introduced in an early freewrite about the mysterious rebirth and how a Mormonism that has accepted the Millennium as being now might struggle over this concept of resurrection/rebirth/etc.
I also wanted to think through some of the historical arguments that have happened around the Book of Mormon and the struggles that contemporary Mormonism has with the modern/ancient hypotheses. For my work at Dialogue, I’ve been putting together social media storytelling of the history of the scholarship on this matter, so it’s been on my mind.
