Spoiler
Your story is about a Graphic Designer at the Panama Canal stealing time.
The Mayans had planned this. They knew the Panama Canal would be built, and had created a delay built around the water. To stop their calendar ending in 2012. Panama was far out of their kingdom to be destroyed, yet close enough they could have built it just for safeguard purposes.
The designs had been etched in every temple and artifact. The designs so sophisticated, it took Damian three years to examine every artifact spread around the Mayan territory to try and piece together a puzzle most people said wasn’t there.
It had been two stones placed next to each other, each holding an untranslated symbol. Chance had had it that Damian’s eye for detail, honed in a decade of graphic design work, to even see a pattern.
He’d asked where the stones had come from, noting that the description had said “time stones” and provided a rough translation, indicating it was an old Mayan belief they could monitor time in such a way to manipulate it.
According to the museum guide, they had come from a fragmented calendar found near South America. The next question was if he’d like to see it.
Damian didn’t wait for the guide to finish her question before saying “yes.”
It had peaked his interest because the two symbols together formed a near-perfect presentation of the Panama Canal, dividing Central America from South.
People had called him crazy for using his design conferences to travel across Central America and go to every museum, tourist destination, and even some archeological digs.
But he knew the world was running out of time, as the calendar steadily clicked closer to 2012.
With only a year left, he’d found the place he was looking for, along the Canal in the most inconspicuous spot. Stepped hills— remnants of an old farming village— were the only things around. Or so it seemed. The clues he’d pieced together from a myriad of untranslated characters had created a map he now held in his hand, having put all his clues together over the years. The guide told him to turn back. He said no.
One hill was more forested than the rest. He traveled in the jungle, thinking he knew it based on his research. Three wrong turns and nearly falling into quicksand later, he’d found what he was looking for.
The structure was like so many Mayan pyramids he’d seen, including the wide staircase and sacrificial altar. Not seeing another entrance around the pyramid, he climbed the stairs.
Instead of the altar being bloodstained and chipped from the tools of sacrifice, the Calendar Wheel was etched— worn and faded from the elements— onto the top. Around it were characters Damian could translate from his time spent asking about every character he could find. These were remarkably clear, as their context had already been defined in other artifacts. There were normally several ways to interpret symbols in the Mayan alphabet, but these only had one
They had planned this.
‘Time stolen from kingdoms fall.’
Damian replaced “fall” with “fallen” before translating the second sentence.
‘Calendar cycle repeated.’
He frowned. There were no other instructions, and none that he could remember from his research. He ran his hand over the stone for any hidden mechanism, but couldn’t feel any.
Once again, the guide wanted to turn back. Damian said no and began examining the sides.
A feathered snake— Quetzalcoatle, if he was right— circled the altar. Empty inlays for gemstones were at certain parts of the snake’s body. Interestingly, all were labeled, although Damian couldn’t translate these symbols.
After much persuading, the guide agreed to explore the pyramid more in-depth. At the base were gemstones inlayed in the rock. Each stone had the same character found on the altar next to it.
Damian went and collected all the stones, replacing them in the altar as he went. It was exhausting work even after three years of being an archeologist and a designer.
The final piece to be inserted was gold, at the snake’s mouth.
Click.
Both Damian and the guide jumped back, eyes widening as the calendar’s stones began shifting. Stone on stone grated and revealed the mechanisms hidden before. The numbers on the calendar began changing. The date corresponding to 2012 going from the end, to the beginning of the calendar.
He realized it was the name for the Mayan kingdom. Had time been taken— stolen— from their demise, or their beginning, to fuel the reset? Was such a thing even possible?
Shouting drew both of their attention to the surroundings— and the churning waters of the Canal. The remains of a whirlpool existed, slowly swirling until the current had returned to normal.
Damian noticed the stones ejected from the altar, and the water beginning to flow off the very subtle slope of the pyramid’s top. Damian was sure the underground pipes were supposed to go farther, but they’d simply run out of time— or oxygen when digging. It could have been time stolen from death.
The Mayans had planned this.
