Kevin pressed his foot on the accelerator, and his new Camaro took off, just a blur of red on the open road. His girlfriend laughed in the passenger seat next to him, her mouth open in an amazed smile, and Kevin grinned back. The Camaro shot down the highway in the early morning. Everything was right—the car; the woman next to him; the empty highway; the clear, pale sky of the new day.

Helena couldn’t contain her excitement at the opportunity that had just been granted her, and she let out a whoop right there in her office. The government of a nation halfway across the world had selected her archaeological team to excavate what they thought were some ancient ruins outside one of their cities. A farmer had been preparing a field for planting after flooding earlier in the year had washed some of the soil away. He had plowed into a large stone. On closer inspection, he found it to be a hewn block.