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“Why?”

“For reasons that still remain unexplained, the Maya abandoned some of their greatest cities around that time. The entire civilization stopped progressing, almost as if they lost their purpose in life.”

“Was it because of the Spanish conquerors?”

Slater shook his head. “No, that came much later. Around
A.D.
1600. By then the once-glorious Maya had declined into rather primitive groups spread across the Yucatán Peninsula and southern Mexico. Something else prompted the Maya to stop advancing. They lost their inner fire. After several centuries of explosive growth, they just went belly up for no obvious reason.”

“Any theories?”

“Plenty. Some scholars believe that around 900
A.D.
, slaves and the common people revolted against despotic rulers. However, I don't quite see how such a solidly established civilization could be overturned so easily. Besides, if the slaves and commoners were dissatisfied, there is certainly zero evidence of that in the centuries preceding their decline.”

He went back to the breakfast room and returned with another book, this one more recent. He opened it to a section of color prints. “This is the way Tikal pretty much looks today. Here we have the sets of twin pyramids built facing each other across the Great Plaza, with its numerous stelae and altars. That one over there is the Pyramid of the Giant Jaguar. Other pyramids included the North Acropolis, the Temple of the Masks, and the Temple of the Lost World, which was used as an observatory by the Mayan priests. The whole place is part of a national park with plenty of wildlife on-site, including one of the last collections of quetzals in the region.”

Susan stared at the photos while listening to him, all the while wondering how on earth such a virus could originate from a place like the one shown in Slater's book.

She leaned back. “This is all very interesting, Professor, but—”

“Cameron, please.”

“All right. Like I was saying, this is all quite fascinating, but I'm not making any connections. We're talking about the world's most advanced computer virus, something that appears to be a generation ahead in sophistication from anything we have to fight it. And I'm supposed to believe that it came from a primitive place like Tikal? Also, you still haven't explained what you meant by your comment about something having started.”

He regarded Susan like a father regarding a teenager who thinks she knows everything but who in reality has
everything
left to learn. “In order to truly understand the Maya you have to stop thinking like a Westerner,” he started. “In the eyes of our modern world, the Maya do resemble a stone age society, nothing more than another ancient, pyramid-building civilization. They had no metallurgy, no wheels aside from those used in toys, no weaponry beyond knives and spears. J. E. S. Thompson, the admirable compiler of two large tomes on the Maya, essentially regarded them as idiotic scholars, skilled in mathematics, architecture, and astronomy to the point of obsession, but to no apparent practical or meaningful end. Thompson, in all his expeditions and research, was never able to explain why. Why did the Maya go through the trouble of creating such civilization and then suddenly decline? Where did the astronomers and the mathematicians go? What legacy did they pass on to the generations after them? Why did they abandon not only Tikal, but also other great cities, like Palenque, Uxmal, and Chichén Itzá, leaving behind nothing but the ruins you see in these pages, and the glyphs and codices which have kept historians and archaeologists busy for decades trying to decipher?

“You see, Susan, the problem is not with the Maya. The problem, according to this theory, is with
us,
with the way we measure—have measured—their accomplishments.”

She frowned. “Now you have
totally
lost me.”

“For many decades now, we have measured their civilization using the yardstick of Renaissance European values, which are based on the invention of material technology, the innovations that essentially have continued to the modern day, from the steam engine to the space shuttle, from a crossbow to nuclear missiles, from vacuum tubes to the silicon chip. In that light, Thompson was right, the Maya were indeed quite primitive.”

“But you seem to believe otherwise,” she said, intrigued to see where he was headed.

Slater rubbed his eyes and tried to suppress a yawn. “It's not a belief, really. I'm simply considering other theories that may explain why they did what they did. Think of us archaeologists as detectives at the scene of a crime. We inspect what's left and try to put it all back together again. Many times we can't be certain, so we opt for possible explanations, or theories.”

“Tell me.”

Slater went back to the first book, finding a two-dimensional array made out of squares, each containing a different number written in Mayan. Susan made a quick count. There were thirteen squares across and twenty down. After Slater's crash course on their number system, she was able to read the numbers in the squares. Some of the squares were white with black numbers. Others were reversed. The black and white tiles formed a strange pattern that resembled a crossword puzzle.

“The theory that I'm going to propose is quite controversial, and you'll soon see why. But I'm offering it to you because some observations do seem to match it. This is the Tzolkin, a matrix of thirteen numbers and twenty symbols created by the Maya as a harmonic matrix to achieve galactic synchronization.”

Susan narrowed her eyes, puzzled. “Harmonic matrix to achieve galactic synchronization? I'm afraid you're going to have to be a little clearer than that. I have no idea what that meant.”

Slater smiled. “Very few people do, and those who do understand it are quite reluctant to accept it. What I'm about to propose is going to seem farfetched and, in layman's terms, downright crazy, because it goes against our modern-day acceptable scientific state of mind, which is based on physical evidence—proof—to back suppositions. The reason why Thompson and many other archaeologists before and after him failed to understand the Maya is because they were never able to transcend their way of thinking from the Western mind to the mind of the Maya. They were incapable of seeing beyond the material evidence left behind, and thus were unable to answer the most fundamental question about the Maya: why? Why did they do what they did? Why create such large cities, develop such great mathematics, architecture, astronomy? Why? There is no evidence that they were able to apply their knowledge in the way Western culture would have: to advance the standard of living, to improve transportation, communications, health, physical life. Had they applied that knowledge in the way that we would have, in the way that
we
did, the Maya would have grown into an advanced society in a matter of a few hundred years, certainly way before the Spanish conquerors arrived. Actually, the Maya would have been the ones
discovering,
and possibly even conquering, Europe.”

“Do you really think that would have been possible?”

“Absolutely. Look at our own civilization. Four hundred years ago we had very little in terms of technology, medicine, communications. Look at us now, just four centuries later, or one
baktun.
We evolved quite rapidly, and the evolution has taken an exponential form. We have accomplished more in the past one hundred years than in the last millennium—as measured by our ability to create an incredible array of creature comforts. But the Maya did nothing of the kind with their science, and then, in their glory, at the peak of their scientific accomplishments, they suddenly regressed to a very primitive society, starting around
A.D.
830, the beginning of the eleventh
baktun.
By
A.D.
900, they had declined so much that it marked the official end of the Classic Period.”

“What's a
baktun?
”

“A measure of time in Maya. About 395 of our years. The theory is complicated, but you'll understand its concept shortly.”

“All right. Go on.”

“The Maya, this theory offers, had a different reason for being on this Earth. In simple terms, there's been enough evidence to theorize that their mission was to place the Earth and its Solar System in synchronization with a larger galactic community. Once that purpose was achieved, around 830
A.D.
, the Maya departed. Some remained here as caretakers, overseers of the code left behind by the Classic Maya to describe their purpose and their science. That's the Tzolkin, the harmonic matrix used by the Maya to achieve galactic synchronization.”

Susan regarded him long and hard. “And you really believe this?”

Slater smiled graciously, obviously used to getting such a reaction. He continued. “Like I said at the beginning, Susan, I'm just a scholar who is providing suppositions that may or may not help explain the phenomena that we've experienced in the past few days. Think of this as a free lecture. The Maya do challenge our science, requiring us to open our minds to a new level of thinking. When you heard me say, ‘Has it started?' I was referring to the beginning of a new Mayan Great Creation Cycle. Like us, the Maya measured time in intervals of ever-increasing size, like our seconds, minutes, hours, and days. Western civilization measures time according to the Gregorian calendar, which has 365 days per year, marking one circle around the Sun. After that, it follows our decimal system: 10 years per decade, 10 decades per century, 10 centuries per millennium, and so on. The Long Count Mayan calendar is different only because it's based on the vigesimal system. A
kin
represents one day, measured just as we do, a complete revolution of the Earth. A
uinal
represents their month, made up of 20
kins.
A
tun
is their year, made up of 18
uinals
or 360
kins,
quite close to our 365 days. A
katun
is equivalent to our decade, only twice as long because their system, again, is vigesimal. Twenty
tuns
form a
katun,
which is around 19.7 years. A
baktun
is made up of 20
katuns,
or close to 394.5 years. The start of the last Great Creation Cycle, according to Mayan scribes, who kept a record of time with good accuracy, is around 3129
B.C.
These cycles last 13
baktuns,
or 5129 Gregorian years. The ninth
baktun
ended around
A.D.
830, when the decline began. The thirteenth
baktun
comes to a close at the end of the year 1999, if you assume the year 3129
B.C.
as your starting point.”

“Are there any other starting points?”

He grinned. “Now you're getting to some controversy. Some scholars feel that the end of the thirteenth
baktun
is more around 2012 because of evidence that the cycle started around 3116
B.C.
instead of 3129
B.C.
”

“But you seem to believe otherwise.”

“It seems like an incredible coincidence that after 5129 Gregorian years the two calendars would miss each other by a mere thirteen years. My theory, which is 99.766 percent accurate, is also more exciting, more intriguing, more Mayan than my colleague's stolid and narrow-minded views. That also means that my translation of dates from Mayan Long Count to Gregorian differs from my colleagues' by thirteen years, something that drives some of my friends crazy, but so do some of my other theories.”

“Well, there seems to be some validity to your suppositions.”

“I was actually beginning to wonder the other day if we would indeed start seeing any signs that marked the conclusion of this cycle. The daily computer events, all at the exact same time, one minute after eight in the evening local time, and starting on the first day of the last
uinal
—month—of the last
tun,
of the last
katun
of the last
baktun,
suggests that we are being contacted.”

Susan shook her head and stood. “Contacted? This is…”

“Bizarre? I know how it sounds, believe me. Problem is, as an archaeologist, I must consider all of the evidence and try to piece together a reasonable theory. This one, as crazy as it may sound, does fit the observations.”

“Well,” she said, “I'm having one hell of a time not only understanding everything that you're telling me, but also trying to digest it, to make some sense of it.”

He smiled again, his dark eyes regarding her warmly. She felt something stirring inside again and quickly looked away. “I'm having difficulty visualizing the relationship between the Mayan calendar, our own, and this Great Creation Cycle.”

“It's all actually quite simple, once you write it down. Here, let me show you.” Ripping a piece of paper from a pad, Slater wrote: