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big reveal isn't all that revealing, pretentious apocalypse shit, probably only funny if you're an archaeologist, spoilers it's an iphone, that didn't actually destroy your joy in the story, too much time on AO3 last night i guess, why can't i get the hang of tags, why was i so coy
“Here’s another one,” Elspeth said, brushing ash carefully away with her fingers. The rectangle of tech stuck for a moment and then came free of the compacted soil. To the north, Minseok was dusting silt away from another object, some sort of flexible ring of metal and nondegradable fabric. He swore under his breath and turned on his haunches to look at her.
“They’re with every body we find,” he complained. “But there’s no pattern to the way they’re presented. Some are down by the pelvis, some in the ribcage, they’re on one side or the other or even strapped to the humerus. It doesn’t seem to vary consistently by gender or race or even age.”
“Wish we knew what they were for,” Elspeth agreed, turning the slick object over carefully. Inside would be microcircuits, degraded beyond sense or repair by the Pulse. Fragments of contemporary art indicated that the front was a display of some sort.
“Religious, probably,” Minseok yawned. “So much religion. So many religions. You’ve seen the images. There’s a beatitude to the faces, looking into the glow. And the textual evidence that remains keeps referring to icons and iconography.”
“Probably.” Elspeth sighed, and labeled the device, to be sorted along with thousands of others similar but not identical. “I just hate labeling everything the same way. It always makes me feel like I missed something.”
The device sat in her bin, winking in the sun, ready to fulfill its destiny in a sterile museum case, over a carefully worded label describing where it was found, and by whom, and under what conditions, and terminating in her least favorite phrase in all of archaeology:
A ritual object.