Free Otherness by David Brin Page B

can't be done. Not today. It would be like asking Schliemann to sift for pollen instead of ripping through ancestral walls in search of gold. Perhaps future researchers will dissolve ancient cities, atom by atom, recording the location and orientation of each molecule so that the dust of pharaoh, slave, and temple cat might be tagged, trajectoried, and finally reassembled on a chip like God's own jigsaw puzzle, resurrecting the dead in simulated splendor, if not the hoped-for afterlife.

    My techniques are crude in comparison to what may come. Only a minuscule portion of the raw data we dig up is captured on photos, slides, and these journal entries. "Slash-and-burn archaeology," Keoki called it last week, in black humor.

    Yet each evening, when the day's work is done, I climb out of our trench to look across the vast expanse that is Hyperion, and am consoled. Our trench is just fifty meters by fourteen, while the landfill stretches far away in all directions.

    Mile after mile of garbage. The largest midden—the largest single thing —ever built by human civilization. Bigger, by volume, than even China's Great Wall.

    There'll be plenty left over, after we are through digging here. Plenty of data for others to plumb through later, with fine future sieves.

    I'm no Schliemann. I do little harm.

MONDAY

    Sometimes an object strikes me in a certain way, and I wonder—could this have once been mine ?

    I am bemused by how different that makes this research from any other I've done. My own father or mother might have thrown out this box, that sofa or old turntable, back when I was very young. The thought makes me sensitive to toys. Pathetic, broken bits of plastic and metal. They grow less electronic and more sturdy with each meter we descend into the past, affecting me with something between deja vu and a poignant sense of lost innocence.

    Then my beeping pager interrupts, and I must climb back to the present world, dealing with the latest crisis.

    Never have I faced so much political aggravation on a dig! Each day some old fart bureaucrat comes on-site, scratching his head and muttering confused objections. Even the infamous red tape of India pales in comparison. There, or in Egypt, you could smooth things over with a little honest baksheesh. Here a bribe would just land me in jail without ever discovering what it is these people want!

    One learns to be resourceful. Always, in every government department, one can find some bright youngster who is off the formal chain of command. The idea boy. Trouble-shooter gal. This techie plays no office games, but simply makes things run. Boss is usually terrified of Wunder-Kid, so I invite them up together. All moon-wrapped in full breathing gear against the occasional methane blurp, they get a full cook's tour. Nearly always the young guy goes crazy over something we've found, leaves with an armload of gamma-sanitized "memorabilia" . . . and makes damn sure we get our permit, license, whatever.

    Works every time.

    It's been much the same with the press. One curmudgeon city editor had it in for us from the moment our department got this grant. Tried angling stories about disease germs, festering in the dump along with five billion ancient disposable diapers. Radio DJs and Net Jockeys came to our rescue . . . so effectively the cops had to cordon off Sanitation Road, keeping out hordes of young amateurs who flocked up to "help out."

    Los Angeles. Who can figure? Some old-time rocker once said—"No place is ever weirder than your own native land." Maybe that's why, after years exploring the past far away, I finally came back home to dig.

WEDNESDAY

    Inch by inch we descend, uncovering mundane wonders. For example, we keep finding newspapers so well preserved they could even be ready by moonlight. So much for biodegradability. No archaeologist ever had better help dating strata.

    Household mail is a rich font of information. Charge slips and bank records found their way into the