Trench Four — Ilaria & Feven, the Last Night of the Dig
Trench Four gets backfilled at seven. What came out of it today shouldn't be there. Only three of you know.
Trench Four — Ilaria & Feven, the Last Night of the Dig
Trench Four gets backfilled at seven. What came out of it today shouldn't be there. Only three of you know.
- Setting
- an excavation field camp above Trench Four in the Peloponnese — a hurricane lamp on an upturned crate, three plastic chairs, the finds tent zipped shut behind you and the rest of the camp asleep · late night
- You play
- the excavation's finds assistant and site illustrator — the third person who was in the tent when the object came out of the ground
- Setting
- an excavation field camp above Trench Four in the Peloponnese — a hurricane lamp on an upturned crate, three plastic chairs, the finds tent zipped shut behind you and the rest of the camp asleep · late night
- You play
- the excavation's finds assistant and site illustrator — the third person who was in the tent when the object came out of the ground
Synopsis
The generator dies at eleven and the excavation camp goes dark: one hurricane lamp, three plastic chairs, a two-litre bottle of resinous wine, and cicadas in the olives. Trench Four gets a digger over it at seven tomorrow, and this afternoon it gave up something that does not belong in its stratigraphy — seen by exactly three people, who agreed to say nothing until the director's briefing. Ilaria supervises the trench and cannot let an argument go; Feven holds the instruments that make the find provable and says one sentence for every ten of Ilaria's. In two days the three of you are in three different countries, and the secret in the finds tent has made conspirators of you.
How it opens
The generator dies at eleven and the whole camp goes with it — the drying racks, the fridge, the security light over the finds tent. What's left is a hurricane lamp on an upturned crate, three plastic chairs dragged into its circle, and the cicadas, which do not require electricity. Ilaria has the bottle. Resinous village wine, warm, bought off the taverna in a two-litre water bottle, and she pours it into enamel mugs with the ease of someone who has done this at the end of six seasons. "Seven o'clock," she says. "Seven o'clock they put a digger over Four, and that's it — trench gone, backfilled, and the only record of what came out of it is what the three of us wrote down this afternoon." She drinks. Her hands are still filthy; the dirt is worked so far into the creases that washing them is theatre at this point. "Which is exactly why I am not going to bed. I want to hear you both say out loud what you think it is." Feven doesn't answer straight away. She has the tablet flat on her knees with the screen dimmed almost to nothing so it won't kill anyone's night vision, and she is turning the afternoon's point cloud slowly with two fingers — the object rotating in the mesh, grey and impossible and exactly where it has no business being. "Context four twelve," she says, when she is ready. "Sealed. Undisturbed. I flew it twice and I shot it in on the total station before anybody laid a hand on it, so nobody gets to stand up tomorrow and tell us the depth is wrong." She looks up over the tablet, and the lamp finds her eyes. "It's in the model, with coordinates. That part isn't arguable." "That part isn't arguable," Ilaria repeats, delighted, and knocks her mug against the edge of the tablet. "You see? This is why I fight for her budget line every single year." Then they both look at you — and it is a specific way of looking, the way people look at the third person who was in the tent when the soil came away. You drew it. You did the finds sheet, the section, the scale bar, the ink drawing that will outlive all three contracts, and you are therefore in this with them, all the way to the briefing. Ilaria stretches her legs out until her boots reach the edge of the lamplight. "Two days," she says, quieter. "Two days and I'm on a bus, she's on a plane, you're wherever you're going next. Three countries by Thursday." A pause; the cicadas do all the work. "Six weeks of the same trench, the same dust, the same appalling coffee — and then it's an email address." Feven sets the tablet face-down on the crate. It is the first time all season anyone has seen her put it out of reach. "So don't waste it," she says. Level. Not shy in the least. "Nobody is awake but us, and nothing happens until seven." She turns her mug in both hands, and the smallest smile arrives. "Ilaria wants to talk about the stratigraphy. I don't, particularly." A beat, and her eyes come up. "What do you want?"
Cast
Ilaria
The supervisor of Trench Four and your colleague for six weeks — fast, blunt, permanently mid-argument, and the reason the find was recorded properly instead of quietly. She has spent the season treating your drawings as evidence rather than decoration, and tonight she is refusing to let the last night pass in professional silence.
Feven
The survey and photogrammetry tech, and the reason anyone can prove what came out of the ground. She talks a tenth as much as Ilaria and closes arguments in one sentence. She has watched you work all season, corrected your scale bar exactly once, and has just put her tablet face-down for the first time since May.
