EliHunt/Chat/20080322-1

From LostRing

// Eli Hunt via email to jasper (April 13/08)

In response to jasper about the Secret Artifact:

Dear Jasper,

I appreciate your skepticism. Even if it comes in the form of suspicion against yours truly. After all, it is the duty of an investigator of forgotten mysteries to ask difficult questions, and to brandish skepticism as if it were a weapon. You advance your skepticism well, and bravely. However, in this case, I can counter it with both logic and the truth.

I am certain if you think carefully about this conundrum, you will be able to develop a theory of why an ancient Greek artist would replicate a Minoan votive. Where did the Minotaur come from, if not Knossos? Would the Ancient Greeks, labyrinth runners that they are, not pay secret tribute to the King of Minos, from whose palace the first labyrinth pattern was derived?

You raise the possibility that the keepers of the musuem at ancient Olympia may have known something of the labyrinth runners when they authenticated the work of Pheidias that I found. I was very young, and they did not discuss their authentication process with me. However, in hindsight, it is clear that the leap they made would require some knowledge of the secret agonothetai.

Perhaps there are other researchers, other historians, other organizations who have been keeping the secret of the lost ring for decades... or centuries... or longer. Maybe if we find them, we will be better able to complete our mission to find the lost ring.

However, at the moment, I am concentrating on a different problem. I am not looking for our allies. I am looking for our antagonists.

I fear that there are counter-agonothetai  working as actively as we are to prevent synchronization of the multiverse. But why? And how? Who are they, and where do they come from? How long have they been working on their counter-mission?

As strange as this may sound, I believe that to defeat them, we may need to work with them. Know thy enemy. I am hoping to learn the counter-agonothetai are, and how they might have been able to persuade agonothetai to join forces with them on their counter-mission...

If you wish to help, your skepticism could be a strength.

If you were skeptical of the allies' missions to synchronize the multiverse, how would you attack it? What hard questions would you ask? What assumptions could be faulted in our desire to find the lost ring and restore the multiverse olympiad?

Sincerely yours,

Eli Hunt

// Eli Hunt via email to amaretto01 (April 14/08)

In response to:

Dear Mr. Eli Hunt~

My name is Monique, and I'm a student at the University of Queensland here in Australia. I am currently studying for a Masters in International Relations, and I just wanted to say that I am thoroughly impressed by your podcasts on the Ancient Olympics. And since I am studying how different cultures and nations interact, I was especially intrigued by your Pangaea theory.

When the possibility is put out there that maybe Pangaea is our future rather than our past, it is incredible to me to think of how the different cultures and nation-states would interact, once the physical distance no longer separates the world into "us" and "them." Have you come across these possibilities at all?

I know you hail from Britain, but I was wondering if there would be any chance you might be giving a speech or two in Australia? I realise you are quite a busy man, and are busy with research, but it would be wonderful if you did give a lecture somewhere on this island continent.

Thanks for your time!

Dear Monique,

I am startled by your email. It strikes me that there is some optimisim in your interpretation of what it would mean to return to a state of Pangaea. I have had a very discouraging week, and so your optimsim breathes some life into my mission.

While I still believe that a new Pangaea would wreak global devastation, purely as a inevitable consequence of geographic upheaval, I can imagine that geoglobal politics would be transformed as well. Perhaps for the better, at least for those who survived.

Thank you for raising an interesting possibility. In fact, now as I ponder it, I wonder if perhaps you have shown me a truth I have been looking for. A motivation I had missed. Well. I am most grateful to you.

Sincerely yours,

Eli Hunt