A line of people passed, and Milly peered through the bushes and recoiled, her eyes growing wide as Helga growled. “Sssh,” Milly said.
The people were clean and wore bright colored clothes and sported red hats with tall peaks. They carried bows and long knives, but she saw no guns. When she turned to Tye, he was already shaking his head no. She wanted to meet these people, get news, find out what was going on in the gone world, but she understood Tye’s reluctance. Things were hard and people didn’t take kindly to strangers.
They waited a few minutes until the strangers’ rearguard passed, then continued on as Larry disappeared over the trees. They walked the rest of that day, and sixty-seven more before they saw Larry again. Milly feared the bird had been lost, but he reappeared one early morning as they crested a tall rise overlooking the vast forest between them and Cheaha Mountain.
Tester said, “The mountain is a series of rolling hills and valleys that sharpen to a peak at Bald Rock, which is only two thousand feet high. There should be the remains of a road heading up there. The original tourist map said Mount Cheaha was the highest point in Alabama.”
By Tester’s count it was August 19th, 2075, when they first saw the guidestone. They’d trudged over difficult ground finding only the occasional marked hiking trail leading to the center of the old state park at Cheaha Mountain. Tye spied the large granite monument through the binoculars, and the party jumped and hollered, hugging each other, forgetting for a few minutes what they’d sacrificed for this small victory.
For Milly, it provided affirmation of what she’d been chasing since she left Respite. Something to believe in. The turtle was real, she knew that now. “We should make camp here, away from the guidestone. We have thirty-four days until the equinox and we can take our time and check things out. From here we can watch from afar. There might be traps. People and virals watching. This way we can take it slow.”
Tye and Tester nodded and the party made camp.
The guidestone sat in a bald spot overlooking a blanket of green forest, its gray granite slabs catching the mid-morning sun. It was September 22, 2075, and at noon, the guidestone would give them the final clue. Milly’d seen many strange things since she’d left home, but the guidestone topped the list. Its size, precision, everything about it amazed her.
Forest surrounded the glade, and the remnants of a stone tower stood to the south. The road leading up Mount Cheaha was gone, but the winding flat path left behind made getting to the guidestone easy. Larry circled above the clearing, but in the thirty-four days they’d been scoping-out the area, they’d seen no people or virals.
In the center of the clearing, four rectangular slabs of gray granite stood upright and fanned out from a central pillar like spokes from a square wheel hub. A large gray granite capstone sat on top, and a smooth piece of black marble served as the guidestone’s base. Both sides of each vertical slab were covered with writing of various languages, and the top capstone was etched with symbols and pictures. The center column displayed numbers listed in groups of six or seven: 1 11761, 13 13283, 6 99902, 19 11781, 22 38901, and on and on. The numbers filled the column from top to bottom on all sides.
When Milly asked Tester what the other languages were, he’d said, “Spanish, Swahili, Hindi, Hebrew, Arabic, Chinese, and Russian. The symbols on the top I’m not sure about. One set is most definitely Greek, and another looks like Egyptian hieroglyphs, but I don’t know about the other two.”
The granite slab before Milly was marked with English, and it read thusly:
Proclamation of Argartha
Those wishing to join us must live by these covenants:
Maintain humanity under 500,000,000 in perpetual balance with nature.
Guide population expansion wisely — improving fitness and diversity and the reborn.
Unite humanity with a living new language.
Rule passion — faith — tradition — and all things with tempered reason.
Protect people and nations with fair laws and just courts.
Let all nations rule internally resolving external disputes in a world court.
Avoid petty laws and useless officials.
Balance personal rights with social duties.
Prize truth — beauty — love — the reborn – seeking harmony with the infinite.
Be not a cancer on the Earth — Live with nature.
“You’re sure this was placed here in 1980?” Tye said.
Tester nodded. They’d had this discussion a hundred times.
“That’s still hard for me to believe,” Robin said.
“How does this thing work again?” Milly said.
“Climb the mountain that leads to the top of the world when day and night are equal and the bright noon sun will shine upon the final guidestone’s clue,” Tye recited from memory.
“See those holes in the capstone?” Tester said. “At noon, sunlight should shine through one of those holes and the ray of light will mark the set of numbers we need.”
“Then what?” Milly said. They’d debated what the numbers meant and only one credible idea emerged. Each sequence was a number, a space, and then a set of five numbers together. Tye and Tester believed the five number grouping was the key.
“What has five numbers?” Robin had said.
“Zip codes,” Tye said.
“What’s a…” Robin said.
“A way to
