18 Lydia, did you know about these Civil?

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Lydia, did you know

About these Civil?

 

 

 I did Danny

 

 Jonathan mentioned them

 

 So when Randall called them Civil

It was easier to use the name

 

 And yes

I suppose they could be

Behind Jonathan and Allen’s death

 

 As for who they really are?

 

 I thought spies or government

Trying to discredit or steal his ideas

 

 Then they killed him

So we still don’t know

 

 

 Randall

 

 Have you anything more

To tell us about your Civil?

 

18001


 

My Civil?

 

 Why are they my Civil?

 

 

 Miss Lydia says they aren’t hers

Jonathan Warbel’s gone

 

 They’re not mine

And they’re not Daniels

 

 So Mr. Sparks

They must be yours

 

 

 I suppose they must be

 

 Jonathan spoke of a garden

Eve and the snake

A tree of good and evil

 

 

 Genesis

The garden of Eden?

 

 

 Yes Phillip

He said they were there

But they weren’t behind it

 

 They were just there

 

 

 Angels

 

 

 Liamsi?

 

 

 When Lucifer

Was cast down from Heaven

A third of the angels

Were cast down with him

 

 In the beginning

God created Adam and Eve

 

 Bystanders

Would have to be angels

 

 

 There’s no reference to them

 

 

 Correct Phillip

Why would there be?

 

 

 Jonathan told me

The Civil were at the tower

 

 They were responsible for it

And the confusion of tongues

 

 

 The Bible credits God

With confounding of tongues

You must be mistaken

 

 

 You’re right Liamsi

I could be

 

 

 The Civil are angels?

 

 

 Yes

Fallen angels Phillip

 

 In league with Lucifer

Angry against God

Because of man

 

 Angry because of us

 

18002


 

In lore and scripture

 

 Liamsi shares

 

 It’s said sons of God

Came in to daughters of men

Conceiving Nephilim

 

 Children who then grew up

To become giants

Great men of renown

 

 Such stories instilled fear

In the hearts of enemies

 

 Goliath was such a giant

 

 He was a Philistine of Gath

Who presented himself forty days

Defying the of armies of Israel

 

 Until a boy David, son of Jesse

Smote Goliath with his sling

 

 Other angels lost their wings

 

 They became mortal

Living for hundreds of years

 

 It’s conceivable

They could ascend to power

 

18003


 

The hypothesis of angels

 

 Tell me Liamsi

 

 If angels want to destroy man

Because they’re mad at God

And they have all this power

 

 What’s stopping them?

 

 

 Ah yes, the question Phillip

 

 Why doesn’t God stop bad things?

 

 Why doesn’t Satan destroy us?

 

 Perhaps we should consider

The story of Job

 

 It seems there are rules

In the hierarchy of Heaven and Hell

Principles governing good and evil

 

 God cast Satan out of Heaven

God could stop anything he does

 

 But what would it prove?

 

 Satan was allowed

To destroy everything Job loved

To turn Job’s faith away from God

 

 But Satan failed

Job’s faith was too strong

 

 It’s our faith Satan covets

Our alliance and reliance on God

And God’s faithfulness to us

 

 In order to hurt God

Man must turn away

 

 Destroying us can’t kill our soul

Satan needs us to do that

 

 

 The Civil want to kill the planet

 

 

 Randall?

 

 

 Jonathan said

The Civil use our will against us

 

 They control it

Somehow they shape it

 

 He said

Satan believes in free will

The Civil don’t

 

 There was evil in numbers

And the Civil control structure

 

 From what Jonathan told me

They weren’t working with Satan

 

 They were working alone

 

 

 Perhaps not Randall

 

 But if there were such a league

Not seeking to lure souls away

 

 But instead intent to teach us

To destroy ourselves

By shaping culture and civilization

Civil would be a good name

And Babylonia the perfect place

 

18004


 

Why Babylonia?

 

 Are you a scholar Liamsi?

 

 

 Yes Phillip, in a way I am

It’s an area of self-study

Quite interesting to me

 

 And pertinent to our quest

Given the list of names we found

 

 The Persian Gulf was once

A hundred miles further inland

Than it is today

 

 In early Babylonian history

Towns like Ur and Eridu or Eri-dugga

Were considered costal

 

 Eridu is a Semitic corruption

Of the old name Eri-dugga

Meaning “good city”

 

 Eri-dugga without the hyphen

Was one of seven listed names

In the data file I showed you

 

 Shirpurla was on the list

Kish was the other one

 

 The rest were rulers or kings

 

 Around 5000 years before Christ

In the Euphrates valley

 

 These city-states or monarchies

Maintained such a state

Of cultural rivalry and progress

That the valley’s been called

The cradle of civilization

 

 Not just of the Semitic world

But of Egypt as well

 

 At that time there were

Many cultures and races

 

 Primitive inhabitants

Were the Sumerians of Sumer

Of Sungir and Sennaar

 

 Likely of Mongolian ancestry

 

 Sumerians invented cuneiform

A cursive hand script

Developed out of picture-signs

 

 Sumerians built the oldest cities

 

 They brought peace and prosperity

To the country

 

 They were gradually overcome

By Semites from the north

 

 The Semites adopted and improved

The culture they had conquered

And the new culture spread

 

 The first settlement was Eridu

Early myths suggest the first man

Adapu or Adamu

 

 Some say this was Adam

This ties to the ‘Garden of Eden’

 

 Semitic language spoken

By the original invaders

Was so different, yet still Semitic

That it’s categorized separately

 

 That’s significant

 

 The most ancient ruler

Probably of Shirpurla

Was Enshagkushanna

Who was also on the list

 

 Which leaves three names

Alusharshid Sargon and Hammurabi

 Alusharshid was likely at one time

King of Kish, also on the list

 

 Sargon as in Sargon I is called

First founder of a Semitic empire

He promoted Semitic language

Literature, art and architecture

 

 Hammurabi

Was the sixth king of Babylon

 

 He obtained control

Of north and south Babylonia

Forming them into one empire

 

 

 Liamsi

Why wasn’t Babylon on the list?

 

 

 I don’t know Randall

Perhaps it was incomplete

 

 What stands out across time

Specifically in Southern Babylonia

Is very few records of succession

 

 There are more gaps than entries

 

 Existence of the Civil

Would fit the gaps like a glove

 

 Yet in the north

Very good records were kept

 

 So the Civil in the south

By allowing themselves

To be conquered by the Semites

Gained influence and dissemination

 

 And as Phillip likes to say

That would make sense

 

 In a sense they became benefactors

 

 Teaching us every discipline we know

Gaining power and influence

And teaching us their way

 

 

 Didn’t the Greeks found civilization?

 

 

 No Phillip

The Greeks organized it

 

 Euclid did so to a great degree

Many others contributed

 

But Babylonian mathematics

Preceded the Greeks

 

 Having developed much influence

The Civil could have instigated

The building of the tower of Babel

 

 If so, Jonathan Warbel was right

They were behind it

 

18005


 

What did he see

That we don’t?

 

 What do you mean Phillip?

 

 

 Simple, Miss Lydia

 

 Your mentor and colleague

Somehow put all this together

And decided to commit himself

Rather than expose it

 

 Why?

 

 

 We don’t know that

 

 Did he see what we’ve seen?

We don’t know

 

 Why did he go away?

We don’t know that either

 

 What we do know is

Some of what he knew

He shared with Randall

 

 

 True, Miss Lydia

 

 But if he didn’t believe

This data held an answer

 

 Then why share it with Allen?

 

 And if he did believe it

Why didn’t he tell Randall?

 

 

 Ok hold on

 

 Allen sent us the packages

 

 But the cards were here

Not in England

 

 If Jonathan protected the cards

He wouldn’t tell Randall

Without having a good reason

 

 Maybe he didn’t see it coming

 

 Allen was to send the packages

If anything happened to Jonathan

 

 Which he did

Then he was killed

 

 If they’d broken the codes

 

 It would have been easier

To hide thumb drives

Instead of leasing storage units

 

 The keys could have been sent

For safe deposit boxes instead

And for less cost and effort

 

 

 So our premise Miss Lydia

Is that neither Jonathan or Allen

Broke the codes or the cards?

 

 

 Maybe the codes Phillip

 

 

 Danny?

 

 

 They had the dongle and the drives

 

 So the RAID5 files were available

Even without the data cards

 

 Maybe the drives

Were an earlier attempt

To transfer the cards

 

 

 Did we find duplicates Liamsi?

 

 

 No duplicates files Phillip

 

 However, we don’t know

If these were all the cards

 

 We know there were no gaps

The sequences were contiguous

 

 The drives could have been

From an earlier sequence

 

 

 That would make sense

 

 For now let’s assume they were

And Allen and Jonathan knew

 

 And since the drives don’t say

They were produced by the Civil

We can’t connect the two

 

 Right?

 

 Anyone?

 

 

 Right Phillip

 

 

 Jonathan must have found them

Somewhere else

 

18006


 

He studied them Lydia

 

 Sparks?

 

 

 The Civil

 

 Jonathan studied them

 

 He said they were dangerous

They tried to use him

 

 Unfortunately

He also said he was crazy

And that he was lying

 

 Almost in defiance

 

 He told me they’d done it before

To De Vinci and Nostradamus

And to others

 

 And to me

 

 Jonathan said I spoke

As if they had contacted me

 

 When I asked him once

About some numbers

 

 He was right about that

I didn’t have to tell him

 

 It was like he knew

 

 I don’t know who called me

First about the calendar

And then to go see him

 

 He said they call themselves

Civil servants

 

 Jonathan didn’t mention

Where the name Civil came from

Or how he came to know it

 

 He could have made it up

 

 But that wouldn’t square

With the civil servant thing

 

18007


 

This is precious

 

 Laughable!

 

 

 Phillip?

 

 

 Think of the irony, Miss Lydia

 

 Here we are

Five reasonably intelligent

Supposedly rational people

 

 Deliberating the name

Of a society of fallen angels

 

 A name Civil

 

 Introduced with respect

By a deceased and self-committed

And self-proclaimed madman

 

 Who explained it to a writer

That came for a story

 

 Which fortunately for said writer

Co-authorizes the original source

And deflects any question

Of the writer’s rationale

 

 Otherwise

We could be left to decide

Which madman if either

To believe

 

 All in trivial pursuit

Of this name Civil

 

 It’s precious

You can’t make it up

 

 It’s like something you’d find

In a bad fiction novel

 

 It’s co-delusional rationalization

 

 Tell me

Anyone

 

 Does it matter

Where the name came from?

 

 Or what significance it holds?

 

 For lack of another name

May we agree on the Civil?

 

 Anyone?

 

 Then Civil it is!

 

 But we need more

Than Babylonian hearsay

To tie our Civil

Now

 

 To fourteen tons of data cards

 

 Or we might find ourselves

Committed for our work

And not just to it

 

 

 That would make sense

 

 

 That’s my line Daniel!

 

 (Everyone laughs)

 

18008


 

Red flag - Password?

 

 Daniel?

 

 

 What have you got Phillip?

 

 

 This file, Ingress?

 

 It wants a password to open

Ingress means entrance

 

 

 Really?

It asked for a password?

 

 

 I think so, Daniel

 

 “Password?”

 

 I believe that’s asking politely

 

 

 Politely?

 

 

 Yes, in English

That says something, right?

 

 Of course that doesn’t mean

The answer will be in English

 

 Should we try Civil?

 

 

 Press the escape key top left!

 

 

 Escape?

 

 

 Yes Phillip, escape!

 

 Some of these files are moody

They don’t play well with others

 

 Let’s limit this little guy

To his own sandbox

Before we try to break him

 

 Copy it to this flash drive

And to a fresh computer

 

18009


 

Open sesame

 

 Liamsi?

 

 

 Yes?

 

 

 Can you take a copy

And open it through Debug

To see what you can see?

 

 

 Yes Daniel

I can do that

 

 

 Ok Phillip

Let’s try ‘Civil’ no caps

 

 

 < civil >

 

 Civil didn’t work Daniel

 

 

 At least they know we’re here

 

 

 Sorry?

 

 

 Just kidding

Let’s try ‘password’

 

  It’s an oldy but a goody

 

 

 < password >

 

 It didn’t like that one either

 

 

 How about ‘Babel’?

 

 

 < babel >

 

 Not Babel

 

 

 Try ‘sesame’

 

 

 < sesame >

 

 Seriously?

 

 Nope

 

 Next?

 

 

 It’s not important

 

 I just wanted to see

If we had a three strikes law

 

 And we don’t

Sesame was four

 

 We need to script it

To a password generator

Since attempts don’t matter

 

 

 Will that take long?

 

 

 It could take a day or so Phillip

 

 

 Try ‘Eridugga’

 

 

 Liamsi?

 

 

 ‘Eridugga’, no caps

Just a thought Daniel

 

 

 Try ‘Eridugga’ Phillip

 

 

 < eridugga >

 

 It’s chewing on it!

 

 ‘No Network Connection’

 It wants a network

 

 

 Bingo that’s it!

 

 Liamsi?

See anything IP over there?

 

 

 Checking

Yes, we have a port request

 

 And

 

 

 And?

 

 

 And up to eight variable entries

That can follow the program name

 

 I can’t see what they’re for yet

Possibly privilege qualifiers

 

 

 Possibly?

Ok good

 

 Phillip

Can we try ‘eridugga’ again please

 

 But this time follow it with a space

Then ‘Kish’ another space

Then ‘Shirpurla’

No caps

 

 

 Yes sir

 

 < eridugga kish shirpurla >

 

 Chewing again

 

 ‘No Network Connection’ again

 

 

 Liamsi, it seems your list

Might be a password script

 

 Otherwise it might have choked

On the errant variables

 

 And the variables are hardwired

 

18010