And it was hard to believe that, by this year 2513, there was anything left in Olduvai undug by enthusiastic anthropologists. However, recent flash-floods – which were not supposed to happen any more – had resculpted this area, and cut away several metres of topsoil. Del Marco had taken advantage of the opportunity: and there, at the limit of the deep-scan, was something he could not quite believe.

It had taken more than a year of slow and careful excavation to reach that ghostly image, and to learn that the reality was stranger than anything he had dared to imagine. Robot digging machines had swiftly removed the first few metres, then the traditional slave-crews of graduate students had taken over. They had been helped – or hindered – by a team of four kongs, who Del Marco considered more trouble than they were worth. However, the students adored the genetically-enhanced gorillas, whom they treated like retarded but much-loved children. It was rumoured that the relationships were not always completely Platonic.

For the last few metres, however, everything was the work of human hands, usually wielding toothbrushes – soft-bristled at that. And now it was finished: Howard Carter, seeing the first glint of gold in Tutankhamen's tomb, had never uncovered such a treasure as this. From this moment onwards, Del Marco knew, human beliefs and philosophies would be irrevocably changed.

The Monolith appeared to be the exact twin of that discovered on the Moon five centuries earlier: even the excavation surrounding it was almost identical in size. And like TMA ONE, it was totally non-reflective, absorbing with equal indifference the fierce glare of the African Sun and the pale gleam of Lucifer.