prologe

Lina Richards poked her stick impatiently in the hard soil. Her watch beeped. She looked at it. Midnight she thought. Looking up into the navy blue sky, she positioned herself so she could see the night sky more clearly.
2008 is such a cool year for me she thought randomly. Then, she saw it. The beautiful southern cross. She heaved the heavy backpack off her shoulders, just as a lizard came scuttling from out of the dense forest and darted across the clearing. Lina flicked her light brown hair from out of her grey eyes as she assembled a telescope. She fumbled with her pockets, and pulled out a scarlet pocket-knife. She cut the cords of the telescope, and tied them together again. Finally, at 12:34, she was ready.
Lina looked up at the sky. She positioned the telescope until it was perfectly straight up and down. She looked closely at the handy constellation, southern cross. Then, she whooped with joy. She fiddled with the telescope, pulling it apart.
She pulled out a metre-ruler, which was portable. She unfolded it, and measured the heights. Then, she picked up a spade that was lying in the collection of tools and started digging. She dug until 1:46, and then the hole was big enough. She pulled out a huge metal book and flipped through its engraved pages one last time. Sentences like the world will end in 3006; the sun will have enlarged enough to boil water and kill animals with the heat jumped at Lina. She was sure that once her scientific investigation was found by the future humans, they would escape to Mars, where we could live for a long, long time while the sun cools it.
She smiled to herself, and placed the heavy metal book in the concrete-lined pit she had prepared earlier. She piled earth back in the pit. It took her an hour of hard work, because the pit was about ten metres deep.
She finally finished, packed up and ran to the edge of the forest. She threw her bags into the boot of her BMW, and jumped into the drivers seat. She quickly revved down the dusty road to the motor-way, all the way from Wellington, New Zealand, to Rotorua, New Zealand. She was confident her research would not be found by present scientists, only the futures'.

When she got home, she changed out of her dirty clothes, had a shower and went to bed.