ArchivedLogs:The Serpent and the Turtle

The Serpent and the Turtle
Dramatis Personae Isra, Iztali	2013-02-01 Two obsessed academics meet in the middle.
Location <NYC> Columbia University - Morningside Heights
Situated in the Morningside Heights neighborhood, Columbia University is one of the most prestigious universities in the nation. This Ivy League school is the oldest university in New York, and attracts students from all over the world to study in its halls. With a generous sprinkling of Greek life and a Manhattan campus, Columbia students need not sacrifice anything by way of social life for their rigorous academic pursuits. Butler Library's neo-classical facade is one of the most recognizable sights on university grounds. Its core stack was the largest in existence at the time of its construction, and though almost eighty years old now, the building is still the heart of Columbia's library system. Students and staff can be found there at all hours, and some never seem to leave. Isra herself had spent very little time there, since most of her research needs were covered by the much newer Science and Engineering Library. Still, Butler's study rooms made good meeting spaces in a pinch, being quiet and well-equipped. Not knowing what part of her expertise might be required, she had brought along the larger and more powerful of her notebook computers and arrived early. Now, perched a little awkwardly in the chair--ergonomic for most, but not for her--she peruses her lesson plans and waited for Ms. Choben. There is a gentle rapping at the study room door prior to its opening just a crack. A dark-haired head comes peeking in the not-fully-opened door, its short-statured body remaining on the other side. "Ms. Al-Jazari?" Iztali's softly-accented voice inquires in a hush appropriate to the library setting. "Dr. Felder gave me your e-mail?" A slender-fingered hand catches a stray lock of hair as it falls into the young woman's eyes, tucking it behind an ear. "Yes," Isra says, rising, "please come in." Even in the comfortably climate-controlled library, she has not removed her chador, which hangs loosely over the thinner gray shayla wrapped over her head and draping down over her chest. She does not offer her long-fingered hand to shake, but smiles warmly to make up for it. "You may call me Isra, if you would like. Sit, please." She resumes her own seat, pushing the computer aside for the moment. "This isn't the most comfortable setting, but I was on campus anyway, and it seems better to err on the side of less walking in this kind of weather." A closed-lipped smile warms Tali's face. "Thank you. I'm glad I found the right room. There are enough to pick from." She slips into the room, closing the door gently behind her. "Please, call me Tali," she offers in reply to Isra's introduction. She also does not offer a hand. Tali moves behind another chair, slipping out of her long, black wool coat that is dotted with cat hair. She wears a long-sleeved tee underneath, printed with a Mayan calendar, an Aztec calendar, and a large Oreo cookie, each labelled beneath: /This is Mayan. This is Aztec. This is Oreo./ Oh, those anthropology students sure are clever with the screenprinting! Tali slips into the chair and pulls an iPad out of her old messenger bag, tapping the power button. Her thin leather gloves are the type with capacitive tips on the thumb and index fingers, and she doesn't remove them to navigate the touch screen. "There is a fragment of pottery that we found at our active site over the winter break... Most of it is missing, but I have a really good hunch of what should be on it. I think it is supposed to depict a precise date...for a ritual, the time it needed to be performed...and if I can just get the astronomy right behind it." She pauses before realising that more explanation would probably be good for those who aren't inside her head. "Mayan. It's Mayan. Dates and times are terribly important...astrology...and they had mapped the heavenly bodies they could observe quite accurately..." She searches the other woman's face for signs of understanding to stop her babbling. "So, it's a star chart," Isra muses absently while Tali searches. "I understand the Mayans were quite diligent in terms of astronomy. If they recorded the brightest stars, as opposed to ones of arbitrary cultural significance, and if the fragment contains five--six, if it's an unfortunately generic formation--I should be able to identify the area of the sky we are looking at." She gives her headscarf a slight tug to seat it lower on her forehead, then tucks the excess cloth under just above her ears to pull the folds taut again. "Even then, though, we would need to know the geographical origin of the chart to estimate the date and time it shows with any kind of precision." She frowns, hazel green eyes straying to her own computer. "Of course, if this is a particularly /ancient/ artifact, we will have to account for the Earth's axial precession and the proper motions of the stars themselves..." Suddenly, she stops herself and chuckles. "Ah, we should probably just take a look at the thing." Tali grins as it becomes apparent that Isra has managed to hop aboard her train of thought, the bridge of her nose and the corners of her eyes crinkling slightly. "Exactly that! There also tends to be reference to planetary visibility...particularly Venus and Mercury...equinoxes or solstices... Stars can be tricky since the Mayan constellations are /not/ the same as the traditional Greek ones, except for, say, Scorpio is also a scorpion..." She realises that she has wandered off topic a bit and brings up an image of the pottery fragment on her iPad. "I think we're dealing with a Winter Solstice ritual, helping the deepest of the winter to pass. This," she enlarges a region on the right edge, along a breaking point, "I believe to be the White Boned Serpent. It comes directly overhead during the dry season, when the 'Winter Milky Way' is dominating the midnight sky. I think that its jaws should be progressing from open here, to closed...there-ish." A gloved finger indicates a point off the edge of the screen, where artwork would continue on part of the pottery that was broken away. "Oh, and it's not so ancient at all. Somewhere between 1200 and 1450 at best guess, until we get more test results." Tali looks up again. "Does that help?" Leaning over the tablet, Isra studies the image of the fragment. "Yes, that does help," she says abstractly. "I wonder if they represent magnitudes proportionately. That is a problem with a lot of ancient astronomy, though..." Trailing off, she tilts her a head and focuses in on a small cluster of stars, not a part of the White Boned Serpent. "That...looks familiar." Suddenly keen, she moves around the table to look at it from the other side rather than asking that Tali rotate the image or the device. There is a strange fluidity to her gait that recalls the prowling of large predators. "If these sizes are in any way related to visible magnitude, those three stars almost assuredly Algol, Epsilon Persei, and Zeta Persei." Leaning even closer, she nods. "Yes, yes! And there's Rho, just south of Algol--which is Beta Persei, but that's not important. Of course the Mayans didn't use the same delineations of stars as the Greeks, but!" Isra dashes back over to her laptop and fires up a program with two swift keystrokes. "Let's leave aside axial precession for the moment and get the Winter Solstice over Yucatan..." She types in some coordinates and dates, calling up a sky map busy with dots, symbols, Greek letters and arcane abbreviations. With a few more keystrokes, she re-centers and steps back as though the new map should somehow make more sense. "There you go--compare your fragment to this region," she says, indicating the southern region of the constellation Perseus. "Those two stars should point directly at Taurus, which is at the zenith at midnight on the Winter Solstice." Tali nods repeatedly as Isra's description flows into stream-of-consciousness that is above her level of technical proficiency in that field. Gears turn and click in her head as the visual aid is added. "/Turtle!/" She exclaims, entirely too loud for a library. Sheepishly, she clears her throat and continues at a more reasonable volume. "That would be the turtle?-at least that matches what I had in my head?-like this..." Her fingers trace a dot-and-line pattern in a paint app, then reproduce the pattern on Isra's monitor including a few of the stars in Taurus, bleeding off into Gemini. Isra compares the sketch to the map and nods. "That is most certainly it. This would represent the zenith over that region on the night of the Winter Solstice. The passage of a few hundred years will not make a significant difference in these terms." She looks at the sketch again. "So you already had a decent idea of the star formation you were looking for, just from studying Mayan sources?" Tali draws in breath to speak once, twice...her mouth even opens, but nothing comes out as she works on editing her thoughts. /Say something, idiot!/ "Ah...yes, mostly. I also just...tend to have a strong feeling of what artwork should look like." A nervous chuckle escapes her lips. A gloved hand rests reflexively over the left side of her ribcage. "My father says I have good instincts." "Familiarity with a particular subject can look magical to the uninitiated," Isra says, not unkindly, "but the shape of art not seen is a pretty specific thing to divine on a hunch!" She smiles, tugging her headcloth to keep it in place again. "Instincts like that must be very helpful in your studies. Do you suppose..." She shakes her head, snickering softly. "Well, there are a lot of people who can do amazing things. I have come to realize this only recently, and now I suppose I look for it everywhere." Were she a cat, her ears would have perked. As it is, she narrows her eyes at Isra, as if trying to read small print without her glasses (which are, indeed, tucked into the collar of her shirt at present). Was Isra saying what Tali thought she was saying, or was Tali thinking so hard in one direction that what Isra said sounded like what she was listening for? Tali blinks...she almost couldn't follow that thought anymore, and it was /hers/. "I suppose they do...people, that is." That was a weak attempt. "Do you happen to know...a lot of.../talented/ people?" Too much, too little? Too confusing? Just stop talking and see what happens, for the love of... She draws her lower lip between her teeth, biting it nervously. "I happen to know many.../talented/ people," Isra replies evenly. "I would like to consider myself one of them, although there are those in my field who have choice words about my theories." She braces her hands on the back of the chair she had been sitting in before and looks at Tali appraisingly. "I also know a fair number of persons who carry the somewhat unfortunately named 'X-gene'; I am one of them. That may or may not be what you were asking, but I thought it best to be plain about it." With that, she shrugs--which looks quite odd, as it causes her shoulders to expand outward a bit in a way that human skeletons generally do not do. Huh. Tali had not expected things to get that above-board. She offers a self-deprecating grin. "I apologise for...well, me, I guess. I don't know why I had the idea that this needed to be all cloak and dagger." She shifts her weight from one foot to the other. "How do you know? 'You' in the general sense, I mean. Do people go in for genetic testing for this? I...I only suspect. It was either start asking about 'powers' or start looking for a good residential psychiatric facility." Her hand strokes at her ribs again, in that same spot. "Those for whom the mutation is not...blatantly manifest?" Isra asks, rhetorically, and with a note of amusement. "Yes, I suppose genetic testing would be logical, though that is still largely the purview of specialists. I could put you in contact with a trustworthy physician who is quite familiar with this matter. Here." Isra retrieves a smartphone from a pocket deep in the folds of her many-layered garments. "I will email you my personal contact information. You can still reach me at my Columbia email address, of course, but this will be more appropriate for communicating matters outside of academia." She fires off the message and looks at Tali again. "There are many who are quite secretive about their conditions, for various reasons. Certainly, I am not ready to walk down the streets of the City uncovered, and the City is not ready for me to do that, either. But I did not believe that you would do me any violence even if I had misinterpreted your question." She smiles. Gloved fingers snatch up the iPad, swiping and tapping to get to the e-mail message, as if it will escape if she doesn't read it immediately. "Oh, you do? That's... Thank you!" Tali bounces on her toes for a moment, half looking like she might launch herself at the other woman for a hug. She shifts her weight back onto her heels, since there are /so many/ reasons that would be a horrible idea. "I can't even tell you what a /relief/ this is." A chirping alarm sounds from the iPad's speakers, startling Tali so thoroughly that she releases her grasp on it and has to snatch it back to her chest to keep it from falling to the floor. "Aaaahhh...that's my class! I TA. A class. Here. Well, not /here/ here. Across campus. Oh, dammit." She runs her fingers through her hair agitatedly, dislodging a pencil that she had stuck there for safe-keeping earlier in the day. "Can we talk again...soon?" "Absolutely, though I may have trouble getting here in person on some weekdays," Isra replies. "Mostly I come down to the City in the evenings, though not always. We can hash out a time via email." She glances at the clock and sighs. "I should also get going before everything out there freezes over completely again. It was a pleasure meeting you, Tali, and I'm glad I was able to help--" She grins wryly. "--even if only to confirm your instincts! Have a care on those sidewalks!"