Agamon, Judy Colella [novels for beginners .txt] 📗

(Article found in the Travel Section of a small California newspaper):

A city like no other, the diving team discovered it while remapping a section of the Pacific Ocean, a section that had been disturbed by an underwater fault shift. Oddly, the city appeared in no way to have been damaged or even disturbed by the movement of the geological plates, only revealed.

On approach, one sees a massive façade rising ten stories straight up from the ocean floor. What makes it so unusual, so mind-boggling, is its condition. Its edges and face are completely without signs of erosion, but crisp and straight, as if its construction had ended only days earlier, not millennia. The fashion of this façade is somewhat Greco-Roman, with pillars or columns lined up perfectly on every level, one above the other, a massive doorway with a triangular capitol giving entry into a self-contained metropolis surrounded by these gigantic walls, which have been measured to be exactly one mile square.

Once inside, one sees a main avenue running straight to the back wall, with smaller avenues running in perpendicular lines to either side. These streets are remarkable in their very presence; one would think that in an aquatic environment, streets of any kind would be unnecessary, as the denizens would be swimming. However, it has been established that this city did not come to be there as the result of an earlier quake or tectonic shift, but in fact had purposely been built underwater. The only reason, then, that these avenues exist, would logically mean that its population was capable of walking on them, and must have been water-breathers. Judging by the structures of this city, these denizens were not piscine, but very human in form, need, and habit.

A huge library graces the right side of the city as soon as one enters, and while some of its contents have become petrified into a kind of smooth stone, it is clear that the books were originally paper of some sort. Beautifully laid out, this library contains shelving, tables, chairs, stairs and railings of a type of marble never before discovered by modern, terran man. It is of this same material that the outer walls were built, explaining the pristine condition of the place.

Other, less easily identified buildings, populate the avenues; some appear to have been workshops, some were very likely stores, the larger ones appearing to be offices, perhaps governmental in nature, while the rest were clearly apartment homes, all of them reaching the same ten-story height as the walls. The most impressive structure, however, apart from the library, is the one that takes up most of the back wall. It has wide steps leading into a stately multi-portaled entrance that opens onto a vast, well-appointed vestibule, around which are tall doorways leading into various large chambers. A central staircase leads to the second floor, and from there are stairways built parallel to each other on the far sides by which to access all the other upper floors. This, it is believed, is the main government building; in the absence of anything resembling an actual palace, it would seem this place was used exclusively by a body of lawmakers to run the city.

A most interesting discovery was of a huge plaque on the front gates of the outer wall that gives this place a name. In what can only be a much earlier form of Greek is a single word which, if indeed written in an ancestor of the Greek language, would be understood as this: AGAMON. However, Greek has some strange but undeniable parallels to ancient Hebrew, and one cannot discount the existence of Agamon Hula, a freshwater lake in Israel, a lake that is partially man-made. The reason all of this is so fascinating, is that “ag” is the prefix for “gold” while “agamon” means “little lake.” This is where the enigmatic nature of the place is brought to a head: the waters immediately surrounding and within this city are completely non-saline! No one has been able to explain this, either, but it may in part account for the undamaged condition of the walls and the city within them.

It was concluded that this place was given a name that could be transliterated to mean “Small Golden Lake” or something along those lines. This would lead to the conclusion that gold is in some manner and/or form present here, a possibility being researched rather feverishly by the corporation funding all

research into the place. In lieu of a flag, the corporation has been granted permission to erect a structure of gold-infused glass that stands at the same height as the walls and is shaped like a modified obelisk. The letters AG grace its northern side and its tip ocassionally glints in the sultry light that filters down through the depths when the sun is directly over the spot.

Tours have lately been made available to adventurous souls who wish to see this city, and while the equipment needed by the individuals booking these tours represent a somewhat prohibitive expense, the cost of the tour itself is surprisingly low. There has been talk of removing control of the city and the tours from the private sector and handing it over to government authorities, but since no jurisdiction has been established, there has as yet been no agreement as to which government has the right to claim it.

Publication Date: 07-12-2011

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