The 10th Cycle Quotes

“screen filled with symbols, only this time it was Arabic letters that meant nothing to him. He assumed they meant nothing to Raj as well, and was therefore surprised when Raj pointed out a short sequence. “This is the word for ‘person’ or ‘human being’.” Daniel stared at Raj. “You know Arabic?” “No, not really. I have read Nizar Qabbani in translation, and this word is a particularly beautiful shape, is it not?” “Still waters run deep, Raj. So you read Arabic love poetry. I wouldn’t have ever guessed.” Raj blushed. “Sushma is more woman than I can handle without help,” he admitted. “Qabbani writes more than just love poetry. It is quite erotic.”
― J.C. Ryan, The 10th Cycle

“No legitimate field of study should be suppressed because of academic politics.”
― J.C. Ryan, The 10th Cycle

“You can always count on the government to do the right thing, after it’s tried everything else.”
― J.C. Ryan, The 10th Cycle

“That philosopher and poet of ancient China, Lao Tzu was right when he said, “If you are depressed, you live in the past. If you are anxious, you live in the future… If you are happy … You live in the present.”
― J.C. Ryan, The 10th Cycle

“El Al was one of the most secure airlines in the world, with armed sky marshals undercover on every flight, and most of the pilots having military experience. It was even the only airline so far to be equipped with infrared countermeasures systems, to combat the threat of anti-aircraft missiles.”
― J.C. Ryan, The 10th Cycle

“You must cease fighting amongst yourselves and work together on the answer. Only then will mankind achieve the shared knowledge to avoid the same fate as those who have gone before you.”
― J.C. Ryan, The 10th Cycle

“We leave this monument for your enlightenment. However, our leader has decreed that it must be coded in such a way that it may not be read until you have achieved a measure of civilization to equal our own. Know this: if wars still disturb the peace of your world, you will not be able to escape the destruction that will come in the fullness of your cycle.”
― J.C. Ryan, The 10th Cycle

“We of the Tenth Cycle believe that we have achieved more than any Cycle before us, and, knowing our fate, wish to leave evidence of our knowledge. With this knowledge, perhaps you, our children, may continue our progress and stop the cycles of destruction that have held our kind to less than our full potential for ..." Again, Sinclair paused, "Some number again, I can't make it out. Then, 'years.”
― J.C. Ryan, The 10th Cycle

“In the year unknown, the Supreme Council of Knowledge, commissioned the least of their number, I, Zebulon, to build this monument and record our history for Those Who Come After. In all the cycles, this has never been attempted before.”
― J.C. Ryan, The 10th Cycle

“We salute and address you, Those Who Come After. All the knowledge we have gained in the Tenth Cycle is contained in this monument. Learn from it and use this knowledge wisely.”
― J.C. Ryan, The 10th Cycle

“facts about the pyramid that he sometimes forgot some of them until reminded. This was one of them. Instead of the typical four flat sides, the Great Pyramid had eight, but it had been forgotten in the mists of time until an aerial photo had been taken at just the right time. It was now known that at dawn and sunset on the spring and fall equinoxes, a shadow appears in such a way as to divide the pyramid in half, and the concavity that divides each side on the center line is revealed.”
― J.C. Ryan, The 10th Cycle

“major security breach.” “True, but what you may not realize is that this time it’s compromised US spying operations globally. Our operatives are at risk, not only from governments that are not our friends, but also from international criminal elements. Any of them might become aware of you, and your value.” “Wait a minute,” Sarah objected. “What value? We don’t know anything of any value.” “They may not realize that yet. They may think you’ve cracked the pyramid code that people have been trying to decipher for hundreds of years. That may even be why they killed Mark, because he refused to give them the key. Until we know what it is that they think you know, your lives may be in danger.”
― J.C. Ryan, The 10th Cycle

“these people have computing power that will be able to crack even AES encryption in a matter of hours. Our government has made it difficult in the extreme to legally distribute programs that will encrypt even to that level, and our cipher is nowhere near that powerful. All they would have to do is read one of our messages and then perform trial and error runs on computers that would put a Cray supercomputer to shame. It would take days, perhaps, but not a week.” “So you think we should make ourselves scarce until you find out more.” “Yes, I do. What makes it even more alarming, is that if it is our government that is after you, they could easily make you disappear, but recent developments mean that even more nefarious groups may know of the government’s interest.”
― J.C. Ryan, The 10th Cycle

“ancient dialect of the Arabic family of languages. He thought it was more ancient still, and asked if they had more data, as it needed lots of work. But, he was pretty confident that the message went something like this: [Unknown word] traveler/person/human/man from future. [Unknown word] critical/important/significant [Unknown word] telling/story/message [Unknown word] read/browse/assimilate/learn all/ [Unknown word] everything/all here/in this place/at this location [Unknown word]”
― J.C. Ryan, The 10th Cycle

“I’m thinking that he could write a fairly simple computer program to run through the data and show us the translations. We’d be able to see in moments whether any direction gives us actual Arabic words. If not, we’ll select some other ancient language, one of the precursors of the Indo-European group perhaps. But my money is on Arabic, or more precisely, Sumerian language expressed in the Arabic script.”
― J.C. Ryan, The 10th Cycle

“This sequence will have to be put through all its iterations, starting with each of the thirty-four letters or symbols we come up with at the top right corner. Then we need to repeat the process from left to right and bottom to top just in case.” “Why not do the same thing reading down in columns instead of across in rows?” Sarah asked. “We should, with the same process; right to left, left to right, top to bottom, and bottom to top.” “How about diagonal?” Daniel’s question was meant to be a little sarcastic, as he contemplated the painstaking work involved. “Good point,”
― J.C. Ryan, The 10th Cycle

“So, what we need to do is assign a letter, and I’m suggesting it be one of the letters in the Arabic abjad, to each block, beginning with the top left block and repeating all the way to bottom right. If I remember correctly, that’s the way Sumerian was written. We’ll have to find out where those extra letters that Sarah mentioned belonged in the sequence, and if there are letters that sound different if they have an extra dot or tittle, we should include those.”
― J.C. Ryan, The 10th Cycle

“Let’s say the alphabet is actually in the size and shape of the stone; that is, each stone represents a distinct letter, even though they were clever enough to leave a clue in the ratios to show us what alphabet to use. Or at least they thought so, not realizing maybe that by the time their message was seen, many diverse alphabets would have developed. Let’s set that speculation aside, because it doesn’t matter what they thought, the key is, they have written a message in the blocks themselves.”
― J.C. Ryan, The 10th Cycle

“So, we’re looking for a language resembling Arabic. How many letters does Arabic have?” “Twenty-eight, if I’m not mistaken. But, look, there could be diacritical marks and punctuation marks as well. If we include those, it wouldn’t be a stretch to say the 34 that you say is the highest expression of the blocks Raj has done so far…” “Represents an alphabet that we can eventually understand, at least phonetically,”
― J.C. Ryan, The 10th Cycle

“think it’s best for Raj to do as he suggested, continue getting the database populated with at least the Great Gallery stones, and then if we haven’t found the key yet, maybe those in the inner passageways, and possibly the chambers. But the Great Gallery is intriguing. It’s another anomaly. No other pyramid that I know of has one. I think it’s another attention-getter.” “You could be right, but what about the language?” “I already said it. We need a linguist. Let’s talk to Mark, see if he knows anyone.”
― J.C. Ryan, The 10th Cycle

“We may have been going at this all wrong, thinking in terms of modern writing, where we use these symbols to mean a sound. What if these builders did use pictographs to express their language in writing? It would fit the times. Their spoken language and written language could be completely different, and unless we can find another Rosetta Stone, we could be screwed.” Daniel slumped in his chair. They had come so far, only to hit a dead-end.”
― J.C. Ryan, The 10th Cycle

“Look, the numbers up to eight are expressed everywhere in the pyramid, all the angles and measurements, everything. That was the builders saying, ‘look at this, we’ve left you a message if you can interpret this’. Now we’ve got three more numbers in the sequence, thirteen, twenty-one and thirty-four. I don’t know of any alphabet, ancient or modern, that had so few as thirteen characters, so I think it’s just that they chose Fibonacci numbers to get our attention and then point to the alphabet; the thirteen has no significance. I can’t see any, at least at this time. But twenty-one, and thirty-four, now we’re getting somewhere. We just have to find the alphabet that has one of those numbers of letters, and we’ll know what language they were speaking.”
― J.C. Ryan, The 10th Cycle

“And yet, not counting zero or the repeated one, we have only eight numbers, the highest being thirty-four. Could we have been mistaken about the message? It doesn’t seem like enough.” Raj said, “You know, it looks like we have discovered the keyboard and the screen of a computer, but where is the computer?” Daniel and Sarah saw it almost at the same time, but Sarah found her voice first. “That’s it, it’s a sign, but it’s only pointing to the alphabet, it isn’t the alphabet itself.” “Why do you say that?” Raj asked. “Because, there aren’t enough letters, if we assign a letter to each number. No alphabet has so few.”
― J.C. Ryan, The 10th Cycle

“I added new fields to the database, with the calculations your colleague applied to the data. Now we are able to see the result as soon as I have put the raw data into the record,” Raj was saying. As he typed, a dizzying array of numbers in rows and columns marched across the screen. A few more keystrokes, and the data arranged itself into a chart, showing the final calculation in colored numbers. Sarah and Daniel looked closer, to notice that the different colors always represented the same number, red for five, green for eight, and so on. The sequences, clearly Fibonacci numbers, went no higher than thirty-four. “How many of these blocks have you finished, Raj?” Daniel asked. “All of them in the passageway, both sides.” “And yet, not counting zero or the repeated one, we have only eight numbers, the highest being thirty-four. Could we have been mistaken about the message? It doesn’t seem like enough.”
― J.C. Ryan, The 10th Cycle

“the numbers in awe as Mark rearranged them according to the location of their blocks. It was like watching an animation of a Scrabble game, as the numbers that represented letters slid into their respective places one by one. It was easy to see that there were gaps. “We need the rest of the blocks.” “Yes, we do. Obviously ten letters isn’t enough for an alphabet. Do you know what language this code would have been in?”
― J.C. Ryan, The 10th Cycle

“Why, just that the Fibonacci numbers have to be significant. Because of the ratios in the structure as a whole, you see. I think the builders were trying to draw our eyes to the fact that there’s an alphabet here. We can’t see all of it, because we don’t have enough data. But I’d be willing to bet that if we arranged these Fib numbers by location of the blocks they came from, we’d see something that looks random but is actually some representation of a written language.”
― J.C. Ryan, The 10th Cycle

“There are only eight numbers. They repeat.” “That’s right, and it’s amazing that we could calculate this with only one hundred examples. Despite every block being a slightly different size and shape, calculating the ratios gets us only eight different ones, and the same thing happens when we divide the circumference by the ratio as a percentage. Furthermore, the eight unique numbers that result from that calculation are all Fibonacci numbers.”
― J.C. Ryan, The 10th Cycle

“What’s a Fibonacci number?” “It’s a number derived from the sum of the two previous numbers, starting from zero or one. The sequence starts, from one, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5…”
― J.C. Ryan, The 10th Cycle

“value of Pi is so ingrained in the sciences that it was probably the most widely-known mathematical expression in the world, even among the general public. Musing about this fact, and about it being found in such diverse disciplines as cosmology, fractals, thermodynamics and even electromagnetism,”
― J.C. Ryan, The 10th Cycle

“aerial photo had been taken at just the right time. It was now known that at dawn and sunset on the spring and fall equinoxes, a shadow appears in such a way as to divide the pyramid in half, and the concavity that divides each side on the center line is revealed.”
― J.C. Ryan, The 10th Cycle