The Man From Mars - Episode Two

   "Mister Johnson, are you sure you want to spend this kind of money on Carbon Dating and an Alloy Analysis? It seems quite obvious to me that this man, whom you met in a bar, is some kind of slick con-artist."
   The smirk on the technician's face was clearly the smile of ridicule. But ignorance is bliss as they say. And what does he care? It's my time and my money that we are wasting here. Besides, it's the value of the amulet that I'm really interested in.
   "I already paid up front, so why don't you just get along with it and get it done, OK?"
   He couldn't stop smiling, so I was surprised when he asked me, "Tell me a little more about this fellow who you say is your real father and from the planet Atlantis. Maybe I'll write a book on it someday."
   "Ha, ha." Is all I could think of saying. But what ever had me hooked, believing the old guy and his story, infected me in ways I don't understand. I couldn't help myself it seems. The more I thought about him, the more I wanted to talk about it.
   "I kind of made a mistake when I said he was my real father. I should have phrased it in a more Biblical sense. I'm sure you know something about human genetics and that we are all descendants from a particular Mitochondrial Eve. Where each person can trace their lineage back, through their mothers, through the mothers of those mothers, and so on, until all lines converge onto one woman."
   "Sorry," the technician said to me. "My expertise is in carbon dating, not genetics. But go on, it sounds like you have done your homework on the subject."
   "Well, he told me that, when he came to our planet, the only survivors from Atlantis were him and twelve others of his kind. Five Atlantean men and seven Atlantean women."
   "Wait, are you going to tell me that we can trace our ancestry to these seven Atlantean women?"
   "What I am trying to do, is to explain to you, what I was told."
   I knew this was a mistake right from the start. I shouldn't have said anything. Just got my results and got the hell out of here. I don't need some chemistry schlep making me feel like a fool.
   "Can you please hurry up. I thought you said it would be done by now?"
   The tech had the strangest look on his face. Then he told me, "I'm sorry. This has never happened to me. I need to re-calibrate my computers with something that I know has a confirmed date from antiquity."
   "Why, what is going on?"
   The tech looks at me with disbelief and says, "You know that pure gold does not combine easily with oxygen. So it will never rust or tarnish?"
   "Yes, OK."
   I wasn't really sure what he was getting at. I'm not one to go shopping for shiny things to adorn myself with. My vanity doesn't need that kind of support.
   He went on.
   "Pure gold is too soft to use in jewelry by itself. It is almost always alloyed with other base metals. Those other metals are the ones that react to oxygen, sulfur, and moister that will cause your jewelry to tarnish. Remember when I said I didn't believe this amulet couldn't be older than a hundred years?"
   I just shook my head yes.
   "That's because I didn't see any part of it oxidizing."
   He shakes his head in disbelief.
   "The oldest trick in the book, to find out what kind of base metals might be blended to the gold, is to see if it can be pulled by a magnet. Now watch."
   He put the magnet about a foot away from the amulet and it started to slide, ever so slightly towards it.
   "That is one powerful magnet you've got there," I said. "But it looks like one of those toys you buy at a story or see at a school in Science class."
   Now his smile was a dumbfounded look.
   "It is," he says. "This is one of the weakest and cheapest magnets on the market. But it will attract itself to any iron in compound metals."
   "So, you are telling me there is iron in my piece."
   "No, my findings says it is completely 24 Karat gold. But see, I can't even bend it. It is rock solid. Then I tested the amulet with a small piece of iron bar. The jewelry has its own magnetic field. Gold can't hold onto its own magnetic field. I can't figure out where it is coming from."
   I had to interrupt the technician now. He was hyper-ventilating. I thought he was going to pass out or something.
  "Did you carbon date the amulet?"
  "Yeah, but that is way off too! My readings say it is two-hundred-fifty thousands years old!

To Be Continued...

This is,

My Version Of A Weekly Television Show Except You Read It,

Every Thursday,

Jim Hauenstein,

And,

“I'll pretend, I tell myself. Pretending is safer than believing.”
- Sarah Miller -

That is my story and I am sticking to it!

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