Chapter 4

The trio of Carly, Sarah, and Paulina eventually recovered from the shock that their raccoon teammate, who dropped out of high school at 16 and currently works as a barmaid at a Hackney pub, had the highest intelligence in their group. Soon, the four of them placed the stone slab on Carly’s desk as they browse the artifact for any distinguishing features.

“So all we have got to work on is this relic which has a square inscribed?” Sarah inquired.

“Mm-hmm,” Carly confirmed.

“Which itself is formed from a smaller square, a right triangle, an equilateral triangle, and a trapezoid,” Paulina added.

“Mm-hmm.”

Emily also joined in by adding, “And we ‘ave no idea as to where it came from except for the fact that it was discovered in a Panamanian village.”

“Mm-hmm.”

A long pause took place to have it all sink in, but that pause would be ending once Emily made the obvious assumption that, “Blimey! Now ‘ow are we going to get anywhere with this rubbish rock?”

“I hate to say this, but Emily is right,” Sarah opined, sitting in front of many computer screens. “There’s no record of this in any of the files I’m looking at here on the net.”

“Maybe we aren’t looking hard enough,” Paulina had pondered. “What about the shapes which make up the huge square?”

Carly looked over towards the stone to look at the patterns inside the square. “All of these markings look like they were carved out of the stone. Perhaps we should search the files for any artifacts that look like the shapes.”
“All of the records?” Sarah turned from the screens to ask.

“That is 60 años worth of material!” Paulina exclaimed.

“It’s the only way,” Carly said. “Let’s get started.”

And so, the members of Team Zeta walked into the Atlas Hall of Records and got to work researching the files and databases to find any artifacts that resemble the shapes inscribed in the stone disc.

“Any luck?” Carly asked her teammates.

“I wish,” Sarah answered.

“No luck here,” Paulina added.

“Nope…nope…still looking…” Emily said as she sat there with a glossy-eyed look as she watches her computer screen. The thought of Emily actually doing some work concerned Carly, so she took a look at Emily’s screen and got a perturbed look on her face.

“Of course. What good is a historic artifact compared to the importance of another video of people putting Mentos into Diet Coke bottle on YouView.”

Emily got lucky to escape another lecture from Carly, as Sarah and Paulina had looked over to Emily’s screen and were surprisingly interested in that.

“Hey! It’s a new Mentos and Diet Coke video!” Sarah exclaimed.

“I have seen that already,” Paulina said. “It also shows an aerial shot of the creator’s name.”

“You’ve seen this before?”

“Sí. In fact, my brother tried to something similar in my hometown of Guanajuato. You see, he and his friends took all the bottles to spell out the word mierda, which means—“

“Focus!” Carly shouted loudly enough for Sarah, Paulina, and Emily to pauses shortly, and head right back to work. Carly does get a response from only Emily, as she answered Carly's command with a one-fingered salute.

Later in the day, after hours of browsing, Sarah finds an article of a recent finding which has a photo of an artifact which is almost the same size of the square in the disc.

“Say, this photo from a recent find looks familiar,” Sarah said. Her teammates walked over to her screen and looked at the square slab, which was being held by two smiling agents: one a female panda from China with short, black hair tied up in small pigtails, wearing a tan shirt with the flags of China on her sleeves and green cargo pants, and the other a peach female cat from the United States wearing a black shirt with the flags of the United States on her sleeves and brown cargo capris.

Carly leans in to read the subtext of the photo. “Atlas agents Ruth Campbell of Irvine, California and Xu Chan of Beijing, China present their latest finding, a blank square tablet found in a quarry in Zhangzhou.”

“A picture on file for that?” Emily pondered. “What’s so special about something with a blank face?”

“You know, I could say the same thing about you Emily,” Carly said before placing a call to Moonie. “Yes, Moonie? This is Carly…do you happen to know where agents Xu Chan and Ruth Campbell are? Thank you.” Carly puts her phone back into her pocket and gives the team their first big announcement. “Pack your bags! We’re heading to China!”