The Scorpough Document [FICTOID]

The Scorpough Document proved as elusive a text to translate as the Voynich Manuscript or the Codex Seraphinianus, driving several scholars mad, from its original discoverer the Earl of Scorpough to a Jesuit priest in the Vatican library to most recently Professor Harold Branwith, who was Tanisha Jefferson’s mentor at the university.

The Earl found the manuscript in the late 18th century while on an expedition to Turkey.  He could date it back to the 16th century but no further. 

His efforts at solving the secret of the document left him chained to a bedpost in his country estate, waited upon by servants in suits of armor to save themselves from being bitten but the earl when they fed him.

The document passed through several hands, eventually winding up in the Vatican library until Father Kohlo, the ancient document historian, tried to erase Michaelangelo’s painting on the Sistine Chapel by laying flat on his back and urinating straight up.

Father Kohlo fortunately lacked the internal pressure to get the stream to rise more than a yard in the air but it proved sufficient to get him bricked in the wall of the Vatican, fed through a tiny slot.

This prompted Pope Muszak IV to proclaim, “Exi hic fornicando cacas!” and the document made its way across the Atlantic to Professor Branwith’s university, where the pope hoped it would wreak equal havoc among the Protestants.

Tanisha liked Professor Branwith, and seeing him reduced to sitting naked save for a straight jacket in a puddle of his own drool and urine made her vow to crack the Scorpough Document’s secret once and for all.

She employed an advantage none of the previous scholars enjoyed:  Artificial intelligence.  She ran the mysterious symbols through every possible method of scanning them:  Left to right, right to left, up, down, diagonally.  Then she compared the symbols to every known language, reading them forwards and backwards in the hopes of somehow deciphering them.

Nada.

Then her breakthrough came.  Realizing the symbols on each page of the manuscript equaled prime numbers, she figured the exact middle symbol on each page and spiraled out from there.

At last, success! 

The Scorpough Document proved to be written in arcane symbols based on an obscure dialect of the Abkhazo-Adyghean language group from the Anatolian region of Asia Minor.  Using her AI, Tanisha translated the ancient forgotten language into contemporary English.

It read:  “You who are reading this book, rejoice!  This tome has been prepared for thee across the centuries.  Prepare to reclaim thy birthright, oh great one, for thou wert born six centuries ago as a tsar in Anatolia, and are now reborn as a great fighting man of the Caucasus to lead thy people to even greater glory!”

Damn, thought Tanisha, wypipo have always been into some funky ass shit.

© Buzz Dixon