In the Time of Man

Chapter Eight

Sitting in the green room at KSUN-TV, Elliot Anders marveled at the luxuriousness and abundance of America. Every time he returned to the U.S., he was struck by the cultural and economic differences between his country and the rest of the planet, and particularly Africa. The commonplace, like the bowl of shining fresh fruit on the table in front of him, appeared like a waste of abundance after living in regions of Africa where people often went days without eating. Even the Dogon, who had been innovative farmers for centuries and kept themselves generally well-fed, were subject to the whims and relentless unpredictability of the changing climate. Elliot Anders thought most of his fellow Americans were fools for not believing in global warming; he had seen the effects in numerous travels and he was frightened.

“Dr. Anders?”

A woman with oil-black hair and bright red lips was standing in the doorway.

“Yes?”

“We’re ready for you in makeup.”

“Oh. Okay.  I, uh, always find this so foolish but I guess it’s required.”

“Well, we do have to do some things to help the camera,” she said.

“Certainly isn’t much you can do to help me,” he mumbled.

“Now, now.”

Less than two weeks ago Elliot Anders was lying near death in a rock crevasse in Mali, Africa and now he was on a book tour and someone was concerned about the aesthetics of his appearance. Always aware of the absurdities of his life, Elliot realized that the dart that had been shot at him in the Yougo Rock was supposed to be fatal.  Either there was not enough poison on its tip because it was aged from disuse, or Phil Traynor, who had come looking for him at the end of the day’s Sigui ceremony, had arrived in time to save Elliot. Phil had discovered a tepid pulse in his mentor but it was enough to awaken Elliot and he forced him to drink two canteens of water to dilute whatever poison might be in his bloodstream. After sitting up for an hour in the beam of Phil’s weakened flashlight battery, Elliot had been ordered by his student to stand and begin walking.

“We need to get your blood circulating so your liver can clean out the toxins,” Phil had told him. 

For a few hours they stumbled around the perimeter of the Yougo Rock and found their way in its ethereal light until Elliot was able to make it back to the hut of the Hogon priest-chief. He had collapsed onto his sleeping mat while Phil sat outside and leaned against the adobe walls waiting for the sun’s first brush of light against the sky and his own personal conviction to arise that Elliot was out of danger.

Whenever he was sick or alone for long stretches of time, Elliot thought about his wife and daughter. Kim had thought him a wonderful and loving man and she had cared for him as if nothing were more important than Elliot’s happiness. Their daughter Sandra’s birth had drawn them even closer and Elliot had considered retiring to a teaching position at a university. Kim, though, insisted he continue with the research that had always fired his imagination. Her determination to keep him happy and their lives interesting is how Kim and Sandy were aboard a single engine plane when it went down in Peru. Elliot’s family had been traveling to spend the summer with him at a South American archaeological dig. His wife and daughter both perished in the crash and he spent almost two years in abject despair and social isolation before resuming his work.   

Elliot felt only partially recovered from the poison when the Hogon left shortly after sunrise and said nothing but he returned a few hours later and angrily motioned for his guest to leave. He picked up Elliot’s matt and suitcases and laptop and carried them over the threshold to sit them in the dirt. When Elliot tried to assist, the Hogon growled at him, angrily. In the few days that remained before he left for London and then on to his American book tour, Elliot slept in a tent beneath a tree not far from where Phil Traynor was staying. They had moved the Honda generator and the satellite dish to this new location and Elliot retired each night wondering if one of the Dogon might slip through the darkness to exact a greater punishment. Nothing, however, happened and Elliot assumed it was because the cave of the Sigui had been examined and there was no indication he had stolen their sacred artifacts.

What he did have was inside the briefcase he had been carrying with him since the charter plane had landed on the plateau at the Cliffs of Bandiagara. The digital recordings he had made of both the Sigui totems and the masks carved by the Dogon several thousand years earlier were invaluable to his research, and possibly even to humankind. In London, when he went to dinner and up to Hampstead Heath to visit friends, the briefcase was in his hands. In fact, it had not left his sight since his plane had lifted off from the Dogon settlements, even though he had taken care to upload all his photos and videos to his private cloud server. In Elliot’s mind, the digital recordings he was carrying around were sufficient a priori evidence that there was another intelligence in existence outside of man’s and it may have been interacting with humanity from before the development of sentience. What if he had recorded the face of god?

“Dr. Anders, I’m Robert Austin, the producer of Desert View.”

“Oh yes, yes, hello. How are you?”

“Very well, thanks. We just wanted to thank you for launching your book on our show.  We think you are going to get great exposure here. The networks tend to follow much of what we do.”

“That’s great. That’s great. Thank you. Is my material ready?”

“Yes, we have set up a laptop that will stream video directly from your cloud. It will display on several large high-def 4K monitors around the studio for the audience and of course the same signal will be routed to our control room so it can be switched to full screen over the air.”

“That’s terrific. Thanks so much. Will I meet Miss Mina before I go on?”

“Well, that’s kind of a different story.” Robert Austin was slender and average height, wearing a white shirt with a red tie loosened around his unbuttoned collar. He had the baritone of an old time radio newscaster and he wore his sleeves rolled up as if to suggest there were something physical about his work. 

“Michelle just doesn’t like to socialize with her guests prior to broadcast. She sort of thinks that meeting people in advance takes the edge off of her interviewing style.  I’m sure she’ll want to talk to you a great deal once the show is over. She’s fascinated by your work. Anyway, I’ll come get you about ten minutes before broadcast and we’ll get you miked up and ready to go.  Okay?”

“Sure, thanks.”

Before he had been called in for makeup, Elliot had been reading about Michelle Mina in a feature article that had been published in the Arizona Republic Sunday newspaper. It had been framed and hung on the wall in the room where guests waited for their interviews. The writer, whose resentment of Michelle’s success was less than subtle, nonetheless, described her as relatively straightforward and having no peculiar approach that might be perceived as a style of her own. She did have a sarcastic edge, the reporter conceded, and she knew how to use her beauty to disarm unsuspecting guests. A full-length color photo of Michelle was published in the midst of the text, which showed her almost smirking at the camera as she held her arms folded across her chest. Elliot saw a deceptive feminine fullness set upon a delicate frame. 

According to the article, beauty was not Michelle Mina’s greatest asset. “Using intellect and enterprise,” it said, “she was always as prepared as the guests who had been booked for her show. After graduating in the top ten percent of her class at Stanford, she undertook the task of overcoming the disadvantage she believed her beauty to be. First, though, she had to settle for a job selling cosmetics at a Scottsdale department store, where she was eventually discovered by KSUN-TV’s general manager, Walter Robbins, who was shopping for a birthday present for his wife.”

The article pointed out that there had been dozens of people who had appeared on Desert View and had dismissed Michelle Mina as just another television ingénue.  Invariably, the reporter wrote, they had later regretted their perception. She apparently researched topics tirelessly, on her own without staffers, and then waited for holes in the logic and arguments used by her guests. When they appeared, the charming blonde in the thousand dollar pumps attacked the contradictions in the guests’ rationale. The adversarial nature of Michelle’s style contributed to the program’s domination of valley television and had prompted all of the national attention. Very few authors or experts made it to the network broadcasts before being interviewed on Desert View. Michelle Mina and KSUN-TV had become a kind of clearing house for network talk show bookers and producers.

In the studio, Elliot brought his briefcase onto the set and placed it next to his chair.  When Robert Austin walked over and offered to store it on a nearby shelf, Elliot informed him that it was not to leave his side. 

“Seriously?” he asked. “Well, I guess we’ll either have to treat it as a prop or shoot around it.”

“Whatever works for you,” Elliot answered. “But it stays within my reach.”

“We’re live in thirty.” The tinny, disembodied voice of the director filled the earpiece they had given Elliot to wear.

As the bubbly intro music played Elliot turned to see Michelle Mina doing her glamorous, high-heeled glide onto the set, which was her standard opening shot.  The camera was always set low to emphasize her legs. Until she sat down after doing her introduction, the producer maintained the perspective of what his staffers had come to refer to as the “leg cam.” 

The studio audience applauded wildly as Michelle approached center stage and as Elliot assessed her appearance and movement even he thought the reaction was at least momentarily appropriate. Although he rarely thought about his own attire and grooming, Michelle Mina’s glaring perfection made Elliot self-conscious of his own frumpiness and sartorial contradictions. On his feet were five hundred dollar Italian loafers but he was dressed in a shiny black suit made of some artificial fiber blend.  The shirt he was wearing had a starched, button-down collar with a severely wrinkled front and his round chin was hidden beneath several days’ growth of a reddish and gray beard. His haircut, though, was expensive and meticulously styled.

“Hello everyone, and welcome to today’s edition of Desert View.” The red applause lights flickered in their discreet locations in the recesses of the studio and the audience responded heartily. Elliot noted that Michelle Mina had not bothered to smile at him or even nod in his direction as she crossed the stage in front of him. She seemed to be avoiding acknowledging his mere existence.

“For those of you who don’t know,” she said after the applause had subsided, “My name is Michelle Mina and today we have both a guest and a topic I think most of you will find utterly fascinating. Some of you may have already picked up this publication.”

A full-screen shot of Elliot’s latest book, Monumental Proof, appeared on the monitors around the studio and in a large but unknown number of homes throughout much of Arizona. The jacket cover photo of the pyramid had been shot by Elliot out of the door of a helicopter and the angle made the ancient structure look more imposing than most photos. 

“Monumental Proof is arriving in bookstores this week and its controversial author, Elliot Anders, is launching his national book tour here on Desert View. Please give a warm Valley of the Sun welcome to today’s guest, Dr. Elliot Anders.”

When Michelle Mina came over to shake his hand Elliot rose to greet her and noticed how dark and tanned her skin looked against her cream-colored dress and the stark white pearls laying across her neckline.

“Dr. Anders, thank you so much for being with us today.” Michelle sat in her chair across from Elliot. “I guess your publisher expects this book to be quite a success since I read on their web site that the first print run was 500,000 copies. That’s pretty impressive.”

“I hope their optimism is justified,” Elliot said. “Most of my books have been reviewed as boring treatises on anthropological or archaeological minutiae. I wouldn’t mind being popular and a bit more widely-read.”

Michelle smiled. “Well, let’s see what we can do about that. I’ve read your book so I obviously know what it’s about but most of our audience has not. Why don’t you tell them what the title is referencing?”

“Of course. Monumental Proof is about the Great Pyramid of Cheops on the Giza Plateau just outside of Cairo, Egypt. The title is simply a way of saying that there is abundant evidence, both mathematically and otherwise, that the Great Pyramid simply could not have been and certainly was not built by humans.”

“I’m sorry?” Michelle leaned forward and crossed her arms over her knees. “Who built it then?”

“I don’t know that,” Elliot explained. “I only have proof of who didn’t and it sure wasn’t the ancient Egyptians as most archaeologists want us to believe.”

“Well, the implications of what you are saying are obviously quite far-fetched but let’s not talk about the builders, whoever they are, just yet.” Michelle sat back in her chair, crossed her legs, and pulled down the hem of her dress. “Can you share some of your proof, Dr. Anders that the Great Pyramid was not built by humans?”

“May I?” Elliot pointed in the direction of the laptop computer sitting on a table, which had been situated off to the side of a tall video screen.

“Yes, please do.”

His URL was already loaded into a browser and had projected a high-definition still shot of the Great Pyramid onto the screen and all of the studio monitors. Elliot simply hit the enter key and turned to the audience to begin his presentation.

“The first thing I want to talk about,” he said, “is the location of the Great Pyramid. We all know it is in Egypt, near Cairo, but what about its location with regard to the rest of the planet?” 

He paused and looked at Michelle Mina to be certain he had her attention. “You see the 3D globe spinning on the monitors. Let’s stop it and fold the continents out into a one dimensional map of the world. And then the program will run a longitudinal line across the map and make it cover as much land surface as possible and compare it to the east-west axis of the Great Pyramid.”

A bright red line traced its way through the various continents and passed into a portion of Egypt.

“Assuming that the computer cannot make a mistake with such a simple command, I then ask it to run a latitudinal line, which is obviously north and south, and I used the same parameters; the course must be straight and cover the most land mass on its trip around the globe. You can see that this meridian goes through Antarctica, Asia, Europe, and Africa.”

The latitudinal line rolled up in blue from the bottom of the map and intersected the red one in Egypt. 

“Okay,” Elliot said as he looked at the audience and ignored the camera wheeling in closer across the stage. “Let’s take an up close look at where these two lines meet.  Obviously, it appears to be somewhere in Egypt. Now let’s put the coordinates, again latitude and longitude, of the Great Pyramid on the same map and then let the program place it in its correct location.”

The pyramid icon slid from the lower left corner of the screen to cover up the intersection of the two lines. Elliot was silent, assessing the audience as everyone watched. The point-of-view of the digital pyramid was from above and it zoomed down to the top and then seemingly peered inside of the ancient structure where the two lines crossed. The audience began to audibly mumble and Elliot thought he heard a few people gasp.

“The intersection of those two lines is exactly in the middle of the great pyramid.  Wouldn’t each of you consider this to be the ‘geographic center of the surface of the Earth?’ Many researchers do. What are the odds this is a random coincidence, ladies and gentleman?”

Michelle Mina answered. “I take it the odds are not very good, professor?” She rose from her chair and walked over to stand about ten feet away from Elliot Anders.  Sitting off camera was not her style.

“Well, let’s just do a little math,” Elliot said. 

 The pyramid shrank and all of the land surfaces of the map turned to red.  To the side of the screen shot, an absurdly large number appeared and not even Elliot was certain of its total value.

“That figure, whatever it is, has been calculated by the computer and represents the total land mass of our planet in square footage,” he explained. “The number appearing below it is the actual square footage of the base of the Great Pyramid of Cheops.  Divide the base of the pyramid into the total land mass and you can figure out what the odds are for the specific location where the meridian and parallel you see are intersecting in the exact geographic center of the pyramid. And from the results of that simple math, a number it looks like I can work with is 3 billion. So the chances of this happening are, at a minimum, one in three billion. Now, if you look at the east-west axis of the pyramid, which is 30 degrees north, you discover the longest land parallel on planet earth while the north-south axis, on the other hand, at 31 degrees east of Greenwich, is the longest land meridian. And there they are crossing as a near statistical improbability right smack dab in the middle of the Great Pyramid.”

“How do you think this happened, Dr. Anders?” Michelle Mina stood in profile between him and the audience. She seemed to have known the spot on the set where her hair would be elegantly backlit.    

“I have absolutely no idea,” he laughed. “But any educated person who thinks it was either a random placement that the pyramid just happened to be built there or that it was constructed over 4600 years ago by a civilization that knew what this location represented……well……anyone who thinks that is just being foolish.”

“I guess you consider that statement the difference between you and most of the other serious archaeologists and scientists who have researched and written about this through the years…………that you dismiss as impossible the notion that the ancient Egyptians could have done this while countless other scientists ascribe to them mathematics and other scientific advancements.”

“I say they are wrong,” Elliot answered. “The Egyptians were clearly very intelligent and civilized in certain ways but they were not capable of this.  There’s another reason this location is both perfect and improbable. Because of the great weight of the Pyramid’s building blocks, it had to be constructed on a foundation that could support it and keep it from settling through the centuries. And that’s exactly what exists beneath the Great Pyramid. Geologists say it sits atop a flat, granite mountain just beneath the surface of the Egyptian soil. If it did not, it would have likely settled and tilted over the course of time. How likely is that? Let’s do some more math and maybe that will convince you.”

“Are we going to do Algebra, Geometry, or Calculus, Dr. Anders?” Michelle smiled at the audience. “I guess it doesn’t matter; I wasn’t very good at any of them.”

A few people laughed at Michelle Mina’s attempt at humor but the majority of the audience focused rapt attention on the monitors and the voice of Elliot Anders, who ignored the hostess’ attempts at being clever. 

“When the Great Pyramid talks to us, it speaks with numbers,” Elliot said. “Whoever built it understood that mathematics, geometry, and calculus would be universal languages. Here’s one of the more astonishing numerical facts revealed in the construction of the pyramid.” Elliot had turned his back to Michelle and the audience and was looking at the tall video screen. “The Great Pyramid of Cheops on the Giza Plateau, which was supposedly built under the orders of the Pharaoh Khufu, has an angle of elevation of 51 degrees; 51 minutes, and 14.3 inches, to be exact. That’s significant for a couple of reasons. One is because it means the pyramid was built in a precise manner at a location that was chosen so that on the exact time of the Vernal Equinox each year it would not cast a shadow. Now, I don’t know the significance of that but I am not aware of any other structure on the planet similarly situated to not cast a shadow, for even a moment. What’s interesting about the slope and location of the pyramid’s sides is that they give the structure a unique geometrical property.  That is, its height, which is 5,449 inches, is in the same ratio to its total circumference as the radius to the circumference of a circle. In other words, the pyramid is a square circle.”

On the monitors, the audience stared silently as a larger image of the pyramid illuminated the screen while lines and arrows pointed to the numbers and angles of which Elliot Anders was speaking. 

“What does this mean?  Well, for those of you unlike Michelle, who did fairly well in math, the ratio represented between the circumference of a circle and its diameter is known as Pi, 3.14, often described as an irrational real number; it’s definitely a sort of transcendental number in all of mathematics. The pyramid was built to a ratio of ½ of Pi because its height represents radius and not diameter. And it is very accurately constructed, I might point out. My team of scientists measured the base circumference using lasers and we found no discrepancy in this ratio greater than one part in one thousand. Now, I know I’m not the interviewer here but I have some questions of my own and one of the biggest ones is how in the heck did the ancient Egyptians understand the value of Pi before anyone had even begun to develop geometry or hieroglyphics, or, for that matter, even mathematics? And anyone who answers that it was coincidence has to sit through senior high school calculus class again.”

Attempting to make things a bit more light-hearted and warm up the audience, Elliot thought he was also slowly charming Michelle Mina. Her normally aggressive interviewing style was being gently disarmed by her fascination with the scientist’s subject matter.

He went back to the laptop and continued his presentation. “Our measurements of the base, by the way, showed each of the four walls to be exactly 9,131 inches in length. When you add those all up the total is 36,524 inches. That number will look a little bit more familiar to you if you take the decimal point at the end and move it two digits to the left. The figure becomes 365.24, which we all know, represents the exact length of a solar year on Earth in number of days.” 

The numbers appeared on the three dimensional graphic pyramid along the baseline of each of its four sides.

“Let’s go back to the height of the Great Pyramid,” Elliot said as he returned his attention to the quiet crowd. “As I mentioned earlier, and as you can see on the screen, our lasers measured that exactly as it has been measured many times by many others to be precisely 5,449 inches. It’s been less than four decades since modern man figured out the relevance of that number, beyond its relationship to the total circumference of the pyramid. But thanks to global positioning satellites and computer technology, we have determined that 5,449 is the average height between the highest and lowest land masses on Earth. Those are the Himalayan Mountains, of course, Mt. Everest, and Miami, Florida is the lowest spot. Obviously, whoever built the Great Pyramid at the geographic center of the planet also wanted its dimensions to reflect an understanding of where the middle is in our topography and altitudes of land masses. Frankly, I think it might have been easier to design a planet to meet the pyramid’s inflexible requirements of location and dimension than the other way around.”

“Why inches?” Michelle Mina asked. “What did Egyptians know of the English form of measurement.”

Elliot clapped his hands. “An outstanding question, Michelle. Those of you who have done Bible studies will recall that when god gave Noah instructions to build the arc, he did so in what was called a cubit. A cubit is just over 25 sacred Jewish inches, possibly history’s oldest form of measurement. The pyramid was built using cubits for its dimensions, which turned out to tell a rather compelling story in inches all these centuries later.”

Michelle appeared to be thinking when Elliot finished speaking. A question formed on her face before she asked it.

“You know, Dr. Anders, I’ve never been there. But I’ve seen it in photos, very detailed, I might add, and the pyramid looks very rough. Yet you say it’s constructed with amazing precision. I can’t reconcile the appearance with what you claim are exact dimensions.”

“Part of that, Michelle, are the missing casing stones.”

“I don’t understand.”

“The original pyramid was finished off with polished casing stones to protect the structure and they made it shine in the sun for miles. After an earthquake about 600 years ago, most of them were rattled loose and stolen over the years to finish other buildings in the region. But the casing stones also tell a story in their number, Michelle. There were 144,000 of them and they served as a kind of breastplate or armor for the pyramid. In the Book of Revelation, though, that number represents 12,000 virgins from each of the original 12 tribes of Israel, who are supposed to evangelize the world during the End Times. So maybe there is something symbolic in the number of casing stones.”

When he turned around to see the reaction of his audience Elliot saw that Michelle Mina was walking along the front edge of Desert View’s set and was talking almost to herself rather than him or the audience. 

“Now, professor,” she said. “I’ve known some of this, as I am sure a lot of people here have who have read even some of the various books written about the Great Pyramid through the years by the so-called pyramidologists. But you are the only scientist to so emphatically declare the pyramid is not the work of the Egyptians. How do you get there when nobody else did? Why could they not have done this?”

“It’s simple, Michelle,” Elliot smiled. “They, the Egyptians, just did not have this kind of intelligence. Nobody on Earth did. It didn’t exist for at least another 4000 more years.  You want more proof? Watch this.”

The one-dimensional map consumed the screen once more and colored arrows defined the four points of the compass. As this concluded, the pyramid icon zoomed into position and appeared to be sitting in a position perfectly aligned along the line marking true north.

Elliot began to explain. “There is almost nothing in science more difficult than finding true north on planet Earth. Magnetic north is no problem, of course, but because of minor shifts in the planet’s pole and our technology’s inadequacies, historically, we have had a problem locating true north. But the Egyptians did not. The Great Pyramid at Giza is as close to alignment with true north as any structure built in the history of humankind.”

Michelle interrupted. “Dr. Anders, if we can’t find true north, then how can we appreciate the pyramid’s alignment? I’m not sure I understand.”

“Another good question, Michelle,” he pointed at her for emphasis. “More than a half century ago, during something called the International Geophysical Year, a team of the world’s top scientists spent that year trying to locate true north. They were never able to come closer than six degrees of minute arc to identifying the North Pole.  When the Great Pyramid was measured for polar alignment, however, it was found to be oriented to within three degrees of arc to true north. And let me point out that a building that is made of that much stone, even sitting on an underground granite mountain is subject to significant subsidence, which could have caused it to shift off of what was probably a true north orientation. Also, as I mentioned, several centuries ago there was a significant earthquake at the site that busted loose the polished casing stones and sufficient energy to do that probably also caused the pyramid to move.”

“What about today, Dr. Anders?” Michelle asked. “Has anyone built anything correctly pointing to true north?”

“Strangely enough, Michelle, the answer is no. There is no known building, monument, or even astronomical site in existence today that is more accurately aligned with true north. Only the Paris Observatory, which is six minutes of a degree off, comes close. But we are quite a bit better at finding true north thanks to GPS, satellites, and other technologies.” 

“And if I were to say it’s a reasonable coincidence, this near true north alignment of the Great Pyramid, I assume you would scoff, Dr. Anders?”

“Well, I wouldn’t be rude, Michelle,” he laughed. “But things like this do not happen accidentally. In fact, I’d like to emphasize this little piece of information just a bit more. Let’s all bear in mind that it was little more than 500 years ago that Columbus sailed for the New World with the great trepidation that his ship might fall off the edge of the Earth and only three centuries ago Copernicus was struggling to convince the church the Earth was revolving around the sun and was not at the center of the universe. How are we supposed to accept the idea that ancient Egyptians understood a concept like the North Pole more than four thousand years before humanity even accepted the idea of the planet being a globe?”

“Simply amazing, Dr. Anders.” Michelle had made a fairly quick transformation from interviewer to admirer and promoter. “We’ve got just a few more minutes before we go to break and I’d like to come back and give our audience a chance to ask you some questions. Is there anything else you can show us?”

“Of course,” he answered. “The data is almost endless and sometimes overwhelming.  But very quickly let’s consider some of the stones, which weigh from two to twenty tons and make up most of the structure of the Great Pyramid. We used our lasers to check both the cut and alignment of those huge building blocks. We discovered that they are within 1/100^th of an inch from being perfectly straight; not the kind of accuracy you would expect from ancient stonecutters.”

The on screen pyramid projected from Elliot’s computer was outlining the shapes and locations of the great stones in the pyramid. One of them was graphically highlighted and moved out to rotate on screen three dimensionally. The digital stone was measured for the audience looking at the monitor. 

“But I think the placement of these huge blocks of stone is the greatest achievement of the ancient builders, whoever or whatever they are. These blocks have been stacked next to one another with a separation of less than 2/100ths of an inch. Again, any reasonable person has to ask how they carried out such precise movements that long ago. You couldn't fit a human hair between the stones because it would be too thick much less force a sheet of tinfoil into the crack between two of them. I recall, actually, that some time back in the 80s or 90s that NASA gave rather a large grant to a Canadian company to develop a prototype for what was called a mega-manipulator.  This finely-calibrated machine was designed to lift one and a quarter ton objects and place them within an accuracy of 5/100ths of an inch. What does that make the size of the object, one twelfth, one fourteenth the size of one of the larger cut pyramid stones? And this gigantic hydraulic machine with all of its twentieth century technology cannot equal the performance of ancient Egyptian stonecutters and builders?"

“Well, I just can’t get over this stuff.” Michelle Mina faced camera one as the red tally light came on for the big close up of her face. “We’ll be right back with more from Dr. Elliot Anders regarding his research on the mysteries of the Great Pyramid of Cheops and his new book Monumental Proof. Stay with us.”

The bump shot from the “leg cam” took in a wider view of the set going into the commercial break, which was always wide and low to make Michelle's legs the predominant feature on the screen. While the commercial segment ran, she clicked off her wireless microphone and spoke privately with Elliot and told him she wanted to ask him about any theories he had regarding who actually had built the Great Pyramid. He demurred but Michelle insisted she was obligated to confront the issue and surely he had already been asked such questions. 

“We’re back in thirty,” the pony-tailed floor director said. “You’re on camera two Michelle.”   

“Welcome back to Desert View.” Michelle Mina’s straight rows of shining white teeth seemed to fill the lens as she smiled at her viewers and the crowd of about 300 sitting in the studio. Behind her, Elliot Anders was relaxed in the leather chair reserved for interview subjects. His object of interest, the Great Pyramid at Giza, was still projected onto the tall video screen and standing motionless in the other HD monitors viewed by the audience. 

“We’re talking today to Dr. Elliot Anders about his new book, Monumental Proof, and in it he claims that the scientific evidence shows that the Great Pyramid was absolutely not constructed by the ancient Egyptians or any other humans, for that matter. Is that fair, Dr. Anders?”

“Yes, absolutely.”

“Of course, you are begging the question, aren’t you, of exactly who did construct this amazing monument?”

 “I suppose that’s a natural response when I argue the proof that the Egyptians were not the builders. But I have no data to even theorize who that might be.”

“But if it isn’t the Egyptians, really, Dr. Anders, who’s left? God? The proverbial little green men?”

A few people in the audience giggled but Elliot ignored the second part of her question. “All I can do, Michelle, is continue to cite data that builds a case against human construction. We haven’t even talked about the ball and joint construction of the Great Pyramid. As another example, remember, this structure is several football fields long and the slightest expansion or contraction caused by heat and cold could do great damage to these cut stones. Except, the cornerstones of the pyramid have ball and socket features to allow for contraction and expansion. There’s no reason to think the Egyptians would understand such a thing more than 400 years even before humans had figured out how to make a spoked wheel. And let me assure you, without the ball and socket cornerstones, the elements would have turned the Great Pyramid into a rock pile by now.”

“Interesting,” Michelle conceded. “But I think you might be avoiding my question about the architects and builders.”

“Let me just say I am not a deeply religious man. I’m a scientist and I think it is the obligation of science to relentlessly pursue god. I believe the only way to know the truth about god is to die. We’re nowhere near proving god exists. However, the Bible does refer to the Great Pyramid in one passage. In Isaias, Chapter 19, verses 19 and 20 say that, ‘At that time there will be an altar for the lord in the middle of Egypt and a monument to the lord at the border of Egypt. This will be a sign and a witness to the lord all-powerful in the land of Egypt.’ This seems clearly to be a description of the Great Pyramid, in my estimation.”

Michelle was now sitting across from Elliot. “That’s possible, Dr. Anders but I have to ask how is something both in the middle of Egypt and on its border?”

“As would anyone, of course,” Elliot conceded. “At the time Isaias spoke, though, there were essentially two Egypts, upper and lower. They were more or less defined by the delta region of the Nile and land south of where the delta ended, which is where the desert began and the more fertile lands turned arid. The Egyptians denoted the upper and lower portions of their nation based upon the directional flow of the Nile. White wool designated the upper Nile and red straw marked the lower delta. In the middle of these two is where the pyramid is located. I should also point out that the name Giza or Gizeh is translated to mean ‘border.’  When Egypt became one country, though, the pyramid was situated in its middle, just as described in the Bible and if you want to look at this through a contemporary perspective, it is still in the middle of that country because Cairo is both the cultural and economic center of Egypt.”

“So did god build the Great Pyramid, Dr. Anders?”

“I don’t know, as I told you. And if we did not have such time restrictions as we do here, I could spend time walking you through the predictions made in the measurements of the ascending and descending passages and the Grand Gallery.  They foretell the birth and death of Christ, the Exodus of the Jews, and even the beginning of World War I. Anyone who’s interested will find in my book a chart of those prognostications and how they are marked out in the pyramid. But back to your question, Michelle; I am not even certain there is a god. But it’s possible someone else built the Great Pyramid, some other intelligent life form, and decided to erect a gigantic messianic temple of witness set at the exact geographic center of our world.”

“So, we’re talking about construction crews arriving for work driving flying saucers, aren’t we?” Michelle leaned forward to show Elliot her expression was more serious than sarcastic.

“No, I’m not,” Elliot said curtly. “Actually, you are.”

“Why won’t you talk about such a thing, Dr. Anders?”

“Because it’s not what I am looking at. Like any scientist, I am trying to acquire data and determine what it means. The data, in this case, are in the structure. It proves who did not build the Great Pyramid; not who did.”

“But you don’t even engage in conjecture about who these ancient architects were.  You say they weren’t the Egyptians but you seem to have no sense of obligation to tell us who you think they were.”

“Because I don’t know who they were, as I have said. I don’t have any kind of a theory.”  Elliot stopped and stared at Michelle Mina. She did not appear smug. The room had grown quiet and the noticeable silence lingered at the end of Elliot’s answer before he felt compelled to continue speaking.

“Michelle, I have spent my entire career, more than thirty years now, studying questions that most of mainstream science doesn’t want to touch. And yes I’ve had some financial success as a result. But there are some areas you simply cannot go into without suffering ridicule and being marginalized. You lose grant money. You lose stature. If I were to ever have anything to say on that subject, I would not do so until I had scientific data to support anything I might argue.”

“I have sources, Dr. Anders, who tell me that’s precisely what you are working on in Africa. You came here from London after leaving Mali in Africa and you insisted on bringing your briefcase onto the interview set with you. Is there a great secret to be revealed in what you are carrying there, Dr. Anders?”

“I have my other computer in here, Michelle,” he said as he tapped the leather briefcase. “And a lot of other important information. That’s all.”

“Dr. Anders, what are the Nephilim?”

 The question came from out of nowhere. Elliot was momentarily off guard. “Well, since you asked you are familiar with the term, so you know without being told.”

 “Yes, but would you tell our audience here in the studio and at home what the Nephilim are?”

Michelle Mina’s style had gone from warm and engaging to chilly and confrontational.  Elliot suddenly suspected he was being set up and she was attempting to make him out to be a kook.

He smiled and began to speak in a monotone to convey his dissatisfaction with the turn of events. "It’s written in the book of Genesis that, in the beginning, 'the Nephilim were on the Earth in those days.' Some theologians have described the Nephilim as titans, 'heroes of old, and men of renown.' But we don't know for certain whom they are or where they have come from.”                          

A bible was on the table next to Michelle Mina’s chair and she reached over and opened it to a page she had bookmarked. She looked down at it and then lifted her eyes but not her chin to gaze back up at Elliot Anders.

“That passage you are referring to, Chapter 6 of Genesis was written by Moses and he says that 'the Sons of God saw the daughters of men were fair and they married any of them they chose.' Now, we know simply by the way this passage is constructed that the 'Sons of God' are not men because in the same sentence Moses referred to 'the daughters of men.' The question, therefore, arises as to who are 'the Sons of God’ Dr. Anders? Are they the Nephilim, these so called ‘giants of the Earth’ as they are referred to in other translations or versions of the Bible? Couldn’t giants have moved those big stones at the Giza Plateau?”

“I don’t know. I don’t think anyone does. It’s a question that hasn’t been answered by either scientists or biblical scholars. But what cannot be disputed, if you believe in the Bible, is that there was a presence in our world, beings who were much greater than man, though considerably lesser than God. We don't know what they were or who they are.”

“Do you think perhaps the Nephilim built the Great Pyramid, Dr. Anders?”

“I don’t know who built the Great Pyramid, Michelle. I know who did not build it. I think I’ve said that a few times.”

“Let me ask you this, then, Dr. Anders: is your work in Africa in any way an attempt to identify the builders of the Great Pyramid?”

This question also caught Elliot by surprise. Technically, his research on Dogon history had little or nothing to do with the Great Pyramid, even though the tribe’s history and lineage appeared to have originated in Egypt. Vague connections existed between the Egyptians and the Dogon on matters like astronomy and gods but that was not where Elliot had concentrated his investigations.

“I’m not ready to talk about what I’m doing in Africa, Michelle.” Elliot smiled a bit coldly. “But when I am I will get on a plane and get here very quickly.”

“Fair enough, Dr. Anders.” Michelle tilted her head in the direction of camera three.  “As promised, we’ll be right back to take questions for Dr. Anders from our audience and callers at home.”

The second half hour of Desert View went by in a blur. People were standing in the audience demanding to be recognized and the flow of questions seemed to Elliot as though it could have lasted unabated for days. He was asked about the chronological predictions he had mentioned in the descending and ascending passageways as well as the Grand Gallery. Michelle Mina proved to be an able moderator and often clarified or expanded on the inquiries from her audience. Very judiciously, she placed herself in the role of being their ally in a unified attempt to extract information from Elliot.

 When the program ended, Elliot Anders was surrounded by dozens of people wanting more of his time and insights. A few of them accused him of being a heretic, insulting both god and the Egyptians. Robert Austin, Desert View’s producer worked through the crowd, which was largely ignoring Michelle, and helped Elliot take his leave without offense to his admirers.

“Dr. Anders, your car is here,” Robert said. “It’s out front waiting now.”

 After thanking Michelle Mina, who was distracted by listening to a bouquet of flatteries from a few men who had been in the audience, Elliot edged his way through a scrum of people still hanging around after the show.

“Before you go out,” Robert Austin said, “I need to inform you there’s a bit of a crowd outside and it’s not exactly fans of yours.”

“No?”

“No, it’s protestors. About four dozen of them I’d guess. They’ve got posters and everything.”

“Exactly what are they protesting?”

“Oh, we have a local evangelical who thinks anyone who doubts god created everything in existence needs to repent or burn in hell. And I mean he wants you to give god credit for everything from twist off caps to the double cheeseburger, the Grand Canyon and the internal combustion engine.”

“Might just be good publicity for the book. Who knows? Maybe my publisher set this all up.”

“Ha. Not likely. This guy’s our own genuine Phoenix wack job.”

At the glass-walled lobby of KSUN-TV, Elliot peered out and saw people chanting and waving placards. He couldn’t read anything specific but they did not look very friendly and he had to pass them to reach the passenger side door of the car waiting to deliver him to his hotel.

“You sure you want to go out there now?” Robert Austin asked.

“Oh, I’ve always found it quite stimulating to confront ignorance; especially in its collective forms.”

“They don’t look very interested in intellectual debate, Dr. Anders.”

Elliot silently shook his head and then stepped into the maw of a crowd of angry religious fanatics and the hot, white blast of an Arizona summer day, clinging tenaciously to what he believed was a profound secret contained in his simple briefcase.