The long dead scrolls (1)

I don't spend a great deal of my time in the day to day running of the museum, bar my thrice-weekly talks, the recruitment of staff and the selection and labelling  of exhibits. 

At the time this story starts I was writing a paper which examined whether public engagement with the exhibits was due to a 'connection with' the artefacts (thus indicating a shared realm of cultural understanding) or a 'reaction to (or against)' the artefacts', thus indicating that all cultures are self-centred and any shared reaction to art, music, or literature is purely comparative and/or competitive. 

I was interrupted by Bradley, the senior curatorial administrator (basically a curator paid at an administrator's grade, the museum sector is sadly not awash with funds right now).

"There's an American gentleman who'd like to see you," he said.

I'm used to being interrupted, it's part of my job, usually it's a dimwitted protester with a vague understanding of decolinisation wanting us to send all of our exhibits back where they came from, like an English Defence League for 'foreign objects'. "Can it wait," I said. "I'm in the middle of important work."

An American barged in. You could tell he was American by the way he barged in, and also by the way he spoke, loudly and confidently. "Are you the big cheese?" he said.

"I'm the Chief Curator, if that's what you mean," I said. 

"Ellis, yes? I've heard about your work. I need you to translate something for me."

Translation is not a service I provide, I would have said, but I never had a chance. He presented me with a photocopied page.

"It's Torlean," I said, amazed. I had read every text ever produced in the Torlean language, or so I had thought. Even at a glance I realised that this was a new piece. "Where did you find it?"

"Before I show you the rest of the document I need to know you deserve your reputation."

"There's more? How much more?" Even a new page of Torlean writing was a major discovery. If there was more, and I was the first to translate it... well, it could make my career. 

"In good time. If you wouldn't mind," he gestured to the document.

I made a hasty translation of the page. It seemed to cover the arrival of the Spanish, I observed, for there were references throughout to 'the visitors', 'strangers' and 'others'. 

"Very good," he said after I'd finished my first ad hoc translation. It took me months of studying the language to reach a similar conclusion- it would have taken me decades to translate the full document. But you're wrong about the Spanish."

I let pass the reference to the size of the full document, though I was doing the mental calculations, if it would take me any thing like as long to translate  as the American had indicated it would constitute the biggest single document in the Torlean language, indeed, it would be almost as big as the rest of the collected lingual remnants I had studied. But his other statement was just too bizarre to let pass.

"Wrong about the Spanish? Then who are the 'visitors', strangers and 'others' they refer to. I have read everything, EVERYTHING, about the Torlean people, there is no record of them having come into contact with any race other than the Spanish."

"Aliens," the American said. "The document in my possession details the visitation of the Torlean tribe by aliens from another planet."