Chapter Ten
Over the next few days, Zephairi examined the altar of the large pyramid closely, climbing up and down the stairs every single day, in the hope of finding a clue that would lead to the codex. Clarity helped Flower with the task of attempting to examine every single stone of the large pyramid and turn it over if there was any visible sign or symbol on it. One day, just before lunch, tired from climbing the pyramid, Flower sat at the bottom of the stairs on a stone looking at the East side of the site. The stone moved slightly and the motion took Flower by surprise.
"Clarity, this stone has moved. Come here." Clarity placed her hand on the stone that had moved, and it moved again when she pushed inwards towards the pyramid.
"Let's tell Zeph, he'll know how to deal with this." Zephairi came and used a large tree trunk to push the stone further inwards. After several hours, an opening could be seen from the outside. It was a side entrance to the pyramid.
Zephairi took a large flashlight and pointed it towards the dark passage before him. He began exploring the corridor, followed by Flower, who was wearing a mini skirt, and by Clarity, who preferred to wear shredded denim shorts and a baggy t-shirt. A few minutes later, they reached the entrance of a larger room. Zephairi checked a drawing of the pyramid, which emulated other pyramids in Palenque. Clarity glanced at the vaulted stone ceiling, which showed no decorations or paintings.
"This is a burial chamber," he said. Filling nearly all of the ten feet by eight feet area was a sarcophagus made of limestone, which was closed by a stone Zephairi called his crew, who lifted the lid of the sarcophagus a mere seven inches after twenty hours of work. Inside, there was a woman lying on her stomach, covered with pearl collars, figurines and ear spools made of jade.
"The Queen of the golden disk," said Zephairi. Clarity bent closer to the head of the skeleton, noticing a disk made with gold, which was placed at earlobe level.
In front of the head, there was an old manuscript, rolled. Zephairi carefully lifted the book, made with amate paper. All known Mayan codices were made of that kind of paper. The pulp was extracted from the bark of the wild fig tree, which was boiled in water until it became softer. The bark was then cut into strips, aligned on a piece of wood. Then, the strips were left to dry in the sun and a lime coating was added. The strips were kept together with glue made from orchids.
"The Xuleiha codex," said Zephairi triumphantly, "all the mysteries of Mayan sexual transmutation are here for us to interpret." The old book read boustrophedon; it was undoubtedly an important discovery of pictographs, which could also shed light on the Maya almanac depicting various long cycles. While Zephairi and Clarity made their way back to the exit, Flower stayed a few more minutes to examine the adornments of the Queen of the golden disk. Following hieroglyphic indications, she entered a narrow corridor, different from the exit. A few minutes later, Clarity tapped on Zephairi.
"Where is Flower?"
"She'll be out in a second," said Zephairi, busy keeping the codex rolled in place. Clarity looked at her watch.
"Let's go find her." They walked back into the burial area and yelled the name of the ethnographer. A faint voice reached them from another corridor.
"I'm here."
Clarity used a flashlight to reach Flower, who was inside another area used to carry out rituals, depicting Xibalba, the name of the underworld for the Mayas, ruled by the gods of death, in particular Hunhau, lord of the underworld. She found her friend bending over a stone, showing her bum beneath the mini skirt.
"It's all so strange, why would you honor death?" asked Flower.
"Probably because the Mayas realized eventually everyone ended up there."
"I could never be an adept and follow anyone spiritually. Good thing no one does any human sacrifice rituals these days." Clarity nodded.
They walked out of the burial area and reached the outdoors again. They could see Duldu engaged in an argument with Kish, regarding the use of the ballgame area found. The game between competing teams symbolized the struggle between the gods of the life and fertility, and the lords of the underworld found by Flower. The underworld for Kish was Duldu himself, who was preventing him from reaching the cabin of a bulldozer that threatened the craftsman’s home, fence and garden.
"My home is staying and no bulldozer will run it down. Now that you found this ballcourt, I want it to be an authentic Mayan ballcourt, one that will pitch your boss, Fahibian, against Zephairi. The loser will die in a ritual sacrifice," said Kish casually.
"That's harsh, there are no human sacrifices today," said Duldu "no, your home is in the middle of this court, it should be you against Ms. Morales, that way we'll know with certainty that one of you won’t annoy us anymore refusing to leave this place. Anyway, this place is going to be an entertainment area that will be used for night shows."
"A ritual area, maybe not so harsh as to carry out human sacrifice," said Kish.
"Entertainment," said Duldu.
"Ritual," said Kish.
Confirming Duldu’s statement, a crew of ten workers approached the ballcourt and began installing poles with metal halide fixtures providing one thousand watts of light each. Additional workers brought thirty truckloads of sod brought by refrigerated trucks, and installed the rolls of natural grass on the ballgame court. Clarity noticed another crew of twenty men getting past Zephairi, who checked for their work permits. They were bringing over two hundred video lottery terminals and electronic gaming machines to the ballcourt. Working during five days, they covered them in a large tent made with canvass, leaving the home of Kish surrounded by all the terminals and their noise.
Clarity was impressed by the efficiency of the workers, and she walked closer to one of the terminals, noticing they were being powered by large generators feeding five machines. The gaming terminals allowed gamblers to bet on the outcome of popular video games which had been pre-played, games like Call of Duty, Grand Theft Auto, Imperium, Age of Empires, and Assassin's Creed. Instead of playing the games themselves, gamblers had to foresee the outcome of the scenes. Clarity occasionally played some of those games on the PlayStation or the X-box, but she found some of them particularly violent, and she felt that all the power and the riches offered in the games was short lived. The artifice of it left her with a sense of outright loss, and a feeling that her life was not as glamorous as that of the characters in the games, or that it was not as successful or attainable in any way. For some reason, she didn't connect with those games.
Clarity checked the money of her purse, and noticed it had less than one hundred dollars. She wasn't making much money as teleoperator, and she valued experiences, which either broadened her way of thinking or led her to make better choices with the money she had. It struck her that human sacrifice rituals allegedly carried out by the Mayas had evolved into some of those games. Personally, she preferred games based on trade and commerce, where the goal is to discover new products, find ways to transport them, or delivering commodities to make money. Clarity’s friends thought differently, and she saw Jenna, Cynthia and Taimi throw themselves on a Lord of the Rings video lottery terminal, checking out the basic play instructions and the pay table showing the number of coins paid out when a particular pattern showed up onscreen.
"Tonight is the inauguration of this amphitheater," said Duldu, "the Xuleiha gaming resort is a reality. Kish will have to leave or begin gambling." Clarity walked to the home of Kish, followed by Flower. The craftsman was not working on his loom, he was building a board to play Bul, or Puluc, a traditional Maya war game involving two players, where the goal was to reach the enemy base, by throwing corn kernels, or 'buls', painted black or yellow.
"What do you want to do?"
"I want to challenge Fahibian or Zephairi to a game of bul. It's our only chance of recovering Miradorcito."
"I doubt they'll want to play," said Clarity.
"They'll play because I'll put my home at stake if I lose," said Kish.
"And your loom?"
r /> "Not my loom, just my home will be at stake. If I lose, I'll leave Miradorcito with my loom."
Clarity touched the beautiful loom that Kish prided himself in knowing how to work. She was sad for the craftsman, who barely had time to defend his home from the bulldozers brought in by Fahibian. If the risk of losing his home in a game wasn't exactly gambling, it was certainly close to being so for Kish. The all-or-nothing duality of winning or losing was precisely what got all gamblers in trouble and Clarity sensed that a sudden change in circumstance could bring someone, anyone, to the dangerous conclusion that Kish was reaching. Kish cursed the excavators and Western civilization, not understanding how the civilization of his ancestors had disappeared.
"This wouldn't be happening if they were still here, if Miradorcito was still a Mayan city."
"Maybe climate played a role," said Flower, "I've read a report that says that an increase in aridity led to the collapse of Maya enclaves."
"What does Zeph say?" asked Clarity.
"That it was war among rival cities which caused the disappearance of the whole civilization."
"I'm not disappearing," said Kish.
At eight thirty that evening, Fahibian and Zephairi hosted an official dinner for the crew who had been working for weeks on the site. They served the items that one of the slot machines, the Atkins Diet gaming terminal offered, which was ham, bacon, sausage, eggs, and cheese. At ten PM, several buses reached Miradorcito with a flock of tourists coming from the Hard Rock hotel in Punta Cana, the Renaissance Curaçao Resort and Casino, and the Occidental Grand Aruba. Tourists began playing on a large number of video lottery terminals, which were similar to slot machines. Lanai glanced at Clarity, who was amazed by how emotional and absorbed people were by the gaming terminals.
"You see, people are having fun," said Lanai.
They reached a couple coming from Nevada, who was deciding on the best method to gamble on, based on a par sheet detailing the payout probabilities of each outcome. The husband argued that pulling on a lever didn’t mean that every spin was necessarily random, that the payout probabilities were non-zero, and that they should play to align the icons, which showed the highest probability on the par sheet. The wife did not look too happy; she was looking at their bank account balance on her iPhone, saying that their savings were limited and that they possibly could not spend more than two hundred dollars that night. Lanai asked the wife how she felt about their gambling activity.
"All right,” the woman replied.
“But you feel perfectly safe, right?” Lanai pressed. “Like everything will be back to normal tomorrow?"
"No, I have to watch out with him and keep watching him. He'll spend a thousand dollars if left on his own, and then he tends to think he can recover the loss. I'd much rather be in Cancún or sun tanning on the beach or swimming in Xelha."
"But I mean, the gaming is not threatening the relationship," said Lanai.
"No, we just mentioned divorce a couple of times, and I coaxed him into letting me handle the bank account with our joint salaries."
"You'll have to agree that an ecovillage doesn't lead to these problems," said Clarity, it doesn't ruin a relationship." Clarity kept thinking about Joe Falkenrich, who had lost several thousand dollars on the Atkins Diet slot machine, betting on the ham icon and the bacon instead of the Buffalo wings. Lanai nodded and began questioning that gambling was a riskless activity.
Clarity and Lanai ran into Ms. Morales, who thought the place was becoming too noisy. The former head of the village also began considering Clarity's idea, the building of a new ecovillage, as a way out of the nightmare of living in a casino resort area. Pulling the plug out surreptitiously on the gaming machine that was being used by the couple from Nevada, Ms. Morales realized that some flexibility and a sense of compromise could actually improve the situation of the village. Based upon the existence of the environmental impact report, there had to be at least a scoping process to solicit public comment on the issues and concerns of establishing a gambling resort in Miradorcito. Flower rushed inside the large tent holding the gaming terminals, looking for Clarity with an excited look on her face.
"Clarity, you got email."
"You looked at my email?"
"Yeah, I figured you'd be busy here." Clarity sighed and accepted the fact that she had no privacy anymore. She read the news and found that one of her ex-boyfriends, Brock Cheevers, a human resources executive working at Stevenson Garden Products in Malibu, wanted her to return to Malibu to work as teleoperator. Clarity's fingers began tingling at the thought of being with Brock, and she nearly pulled on one of the slot machine levers out of joy. After her recent travels to Acapulco, Cayman, Bahamas, Abu Dhabi, Cuba, and the British Virgin Islands, she felt uncertain that she would fit back in Malibu enough to settle there. Brock believed in stability and was busy exploring the investment options of his 401k plan, whereas she was beginning to think that the world offered avenues to make a living she had never thought even existed. To some extent, it was early to think about settling in Malibu, but she missed jogging near Surfrider beach in the early hours of the morning getting all sweaty, before getting to work at Stevenson Garden Products. She saw Duldu speaking with Zephairi a few feet away from a Money Surge slot machine.
"Ms. Morales wants to create a scoping process to prevent the resort from being built," said Duldu.
Zephairi pondered the statement for a few seconds, scratching his chin. He then began making some calls to the Cancun airport inquiring about the arrival time of an Egyptair plane from Cairo landing in Cancun the next day.