Teddy Fairchild took a deep calming breath as he stared at the screen—in through the nose and out through the mouth, just like his sister had taught him. Teddy muttered in quiet tones: "More of you and less of me in this world." The glowing screen seemed out of place in the confines of his circa 1930's safari tent.
Teddy pushed weathered hands through a thick shock of dark brown wavy hair with a sprinkling of salt and pepper at the temples. Looking at his reflection in the computer screen, he examined the start of a receding hairline and pushed a single wavy lock across his tanned forehead in a vain attempt to conceal it.
Pulsating green letters shared the news: We are sorry to inform you that we will not be able to renew your grant.
Some grant: $5000 that had barely covered plane tickets, excavation permits and the dingy white canvas tent that provided scarce cover for him and his four boys, Joshua, Caleb, Jonah and Amos. He shouldn't be complaining, he was blessed to be here following his dream. Providence had provided a very thin silver lining to the dark black thundercloud that threatened to swallow his heart and soul any time he thought of her. The main thing was that he was together with the boys.
Teddy had chosen Tiwanaku after researching hundreds of megalithic sites because it was believed by the Incas to be the birth canal of the world. Teddy believed ancient myths contained grains of truth. If this is where it had all began, it made the perfect jump off point for the adventure he had craved every day while serving his twenty-year sentence entwined in an Ikea-style office cube. He used to joke that it was carved by and for three-foot high Scandinavian gnomes.
Teddy felt at home among the megalithic structures preserved at the World Heritage site. It was located at almost 12,000 feet above sea level near the southern shore of Lake Titicaca on the Altiplano, Bolivia's highland plateau. Here he could avoid his grief by throwing himself into the quest for truth. When Claire had died suddenly and unexpectedly, the truly important things in life had hit him in the face too late.
Teddy fingered the gold key chain she'd given him for his birthday just one month before she had passed. He didn't have to look at it, he had memorized the inscription: Succeed at your passion or despise your success. It had been her way of encouraging him to follow his dream: to follow the truth wherever it might lead. After the accident, he'd put the house on the market with a real estate friend and bought tickets for Bolivia for him and the boys. He wasn't going to waste another minute. He liked to believe she would have approved.
Now it looked like the dream was over. Over before it had even gotten off the ground. The house hadn't sold, there was no money left in the bank account and he hadn't found anything of significance all summer. In a way, he didn't blame them. He wasn't even looking…
Teddy felt his stomach drop as the creaky wooden chair he was sitting on jumped three feet straight into the air. He didn't have but a second to wonder before it crashed back to earth smashing into hundreds of splintered pieces. Several of the sharper ones jabbed into various organs as he slammed into the refuse that was now all over the floor of his tent.
The table with his laptop fell over on top of him as he did his best to cushion the laptop's fall. The entire tent was viciously shaking, the bed crab walked toward him as his mind registered the sounds of glass breaking and people in terror. He heard someone shout outside the tent: Earthquake!