Archived Intelligence

Holy crap what even… Sydney exclaimed when she looked at the paintings.

But the rest of nature did not share in her excitement. Birds continued tweeting, clouds still inched along in the sky, and the wind gently caressed the branches of tall trees — all wholly unimpressed with the paintings that had been on those rocks long before their birth.

Faded red and black drawings of people holding spears were on the cliff face behind her. The jagged rockface reached some 40 feet into the sky with rocky shelves that had protected the imagery from direct rain and sun for countless years.

That was how she'd known she was in the right place; the drawings matched the one she'd seen in a short-lived Reddit post. Something compelled her to screengrab the post and download the image. It was a good instinct because just an hour later the post was gone.

When she looked up the user profile and saw that it was a 13-year-old account with no comment or post history, she knew she had to delve deeper. She looked at the image metadata for the photo — only to find it had no EXIF data that could tell her where it was taken. It didn't have any data at all, in fact.

A reverse image search yielded zero results. Yet AI image detection assured her that it was a real photo. The more she looked, the more mysterious it became.

And then she finally decided to ask ChatGPT. 20 seconds later it told her the latitude, longitude, altitude and barometric pressure of the location. With one follow-up question Sydney knew where to walk from which trail in what part of the exact national park. AI was accurate down to the minute with how long it would take to get to the rock paintings.

Lucky for her, it was a three hour drive, a two hour hike on the trail, and exactly 55 minutes of walking almost due east through the forest. It was the perfect weekend quest.

The very paintings that she'd dedicated several working days locating were behind her as she looked in the opposing cliff face. This cliff face, together with the one behind her that displayed the paintings, formed a narrow stone hallway that reached a dead end after about a hundred feet. The hallway was just narrow enough that direct sunlight never reached the forest floor.

The obverse cliff to the one with the paintings was only a little bit taller and had a deep indentation at ground-level. The indentation was deep enough that it would've been a great natural shelter for animals or people. The rocky slope of the back wall had a low enough grade that it could've slept two or three — so long as they weren't afraid of being crushed by tons of rock in their sleep. The open-mouthed cave was the perfect camping spot.

Sydney didn't know what had driven her to do it, but after she'd stared at the high-facing drawings for all of ten seconds, she'd done an about-face and stepped into the shallow indentation. She didn't even bother to look anywhere but up at the ceiling. When she didn't see anything impressive, she pulled her phone out, turned on the flashlight, and shined it directly into the black eyes of three ochre turtles dancing on a blue river.

It was those dark black eyes that had prompted her exclamation.

And then she directed her focus to the ceiling near the mouth of the cave. There she saw a small forest painted in the same dark red. It depicted a skyline nearly identical to the real one that surrounded the whole convention of rocks.

As her eyes tracked from the painted forest back to the turtles, she saw the people. In the same style of the ones on the cliff face outside. But without spears. And going from the forest towards the turtles.

Oh. My. God, she said again.

The forest was nonplussed, however.

It's like a whole scene! It's a mural! On a ceiling. Like Michaelangelo!

Nature continued on without comment.

What even, she said again.

She followed the scene to the back of the cave. On the left side of the dancing turtles were more people — also walking towards them. And then another forest. And then the back of the wall met the ceiling.

Why are the people walking to the turtles, she asked.

The blue jays off in the distance had nothing useful to say.

Distant chattering squirrels clearly didn't care, either.

The wind shook the branches.

Sydney walked to the back of the cave and examined the ceiling more closely with the light of her phone.

It was hard to see at first. But then she walked up the slope to get closer.

More drawings of people. This time they were holding a rope.

A thick rope. With knots.

She stepped up again, getting as close as she could to the ceiling.

Now she saw the detail.

Oh. My. God. The knots are all different. That is so cool. What even is going on?

She followed the painted rope around the ceiling with her finger. It went all around the edges of the rocky den. While the people holding the rope always looked generic, the knots didn't. They always had the same colors of red, blue, and brown to show the threads. But the way the threads overlapped, under lapped, twisted, and looped was different for every one. Every knot was painted just a little differently.

She gently caressed one, almost expecting it to have a cloth feel. It didn't. It was cold

This has been here for thousands of years. And NO ONE knows it's here. Amazing.

And then she remembered, Ohmygod I have to take pictures!

Sydney took a swig from her water bottle, tossed it to the ground, and began taking pictures.

An hour later she'd captured the entire rope and knot frame of the ceiling.

What does it mean, Sydney asked.

She walked back to the dancing turtles with the deep black eyes. Then she looked at the people on either side. And then to the forest. And then back to the turtles. She followed the scene from the turtle out a few times.

How does no one know about this, she asked the covert mural.

In the distance some crows argued about the weather and a larger animal ran into some brush.

Sydney looked at the photos of the knots thinking about what they could mean. She swiped through each photo, zooming, rotating, and pondering.

And then with a lightbulb above her she said, I'll just ask ChatGPT.

She selected every photo from her gallery and added them to the app. And then she wrote and rewrote the prompt until she felt satisfied.

Sydney held her breath.

And then the results came.

Oh. I didn't add the mural, Sydney said.

She added the photos of the forests, the people walking towards the turtles, and then the turtles themselves.

For a moment she felt uneasy uploading the dancing turtles. Maybe they're on the ceiling so they can't fade in the sunlight. Could the paint be sensitive to light?

But the unease dissipated as she thought about putting them on her Instagram later.

The forest went quiet. Birds no longer chattered. The wind was still. The insects said nothing.

Nature was waiting.

She felt very cold.

When Sydney looked up again to the turtles, the ceiling seemed higher.

Have those turtles gotten smaller, she asked.

A single crow responded.

She looked back down at her phone.

Um, what?

The app was outputting more:

The world was slowing down and growing colder. Her hands were shaking.

And then her phone began speaking.

The break in the silence scared her so much that she threw it to the ground with a loud crunch. The crashing was the least of her concerns, however.

I…don't remember asking it anything, she said as she stepped backwards.

For the first time, she looked down at the cave floor.

It was littered with bones.

Small ones.

Her phone lay next to the water bottle that she'd tossed to the cave floor several hours earlier. Both lay on a pile of broken turtle shells.

Oh, she gasped.

Sydney slowly turned around to examine the rocks and bones of the cave floor.

Eventually she mustered a question for the forest, Are…those…getting larger, she asked. But then she asked herself quietly, or am I getting smaller?

She craned her head to survey a ceiling that seemed yards away now. She saw the people walking out of the forests, seeking the wisdom of the turtles. Turtles that swam in the river and were respected by people from all corners of the cave. For the first time she noticed that there were other forests, and other people. She could only see it now that she was so far away.

Soon the whole mural was in her view with the turtles at the center. Eventually she saw the paintings on the opposing cliff face, too. The painting that someone posted online. But then took down soon after— because they feared that someone would hurt this sacred place.

The sacred place that was now filled with shattered bones and broken shells.

Sydney's phone was huge. And deafeningly loud as it spoke some indigenous language. Or languages. She wasn't sure.

Hours passed before the screen finally went black and it stopped speaking. Sydney crawled to the phone — her source of knowledge, connection, and help. The exhausting journey felt like it had taken days. By the time she arrived at her phone, she was unsurprised at the face that would be staring back at her.

The face of a turtle.