The Lost Battalion

In 8,200 BCE, the book says, a 3,000-member Domain battalion was based inside a hollowed-out mountain in the Himalayas, concealed by a projected false image. A surprise attack from a hidden Old Empire base on Mars wiped it out. The captured Domain personnel were given amnesia, implanted into biological bodies, and — the book insists — "are still a part of the human population today." The Domain has allegedly tracked its lost people for 8,000 years along the path of civilization: India, the Middle East, Babylon, Egypt, Greece, Rome, Europe, the Western Hemisphere. [CLAIMED.]

And in the postscript, MacElroy makes it personal: she says she is one of them — a Lost Battalion member who has begun recovering 8,000 years of memories, mostly of lives spent as a nurse. A claimed detection device, the "Tree of Life," has now located them all.

Test the edges. Genetics traces bodies; the book traces beings — the two cannot confirm each other, and I say so upfront. What would a 3,000-person installation leave behind after 8,200 years? Compare that expectation against what Himalayan archaeology has actually found. What the file has: a story with unusual internal consistency. What it lacks: a single artifact, a single record, a single independent witness. The MacElroy identification is the book authenticating itself — the narrator claiming membership in her own story's lost battalion. Note the move. CASE OPEN, because the claim is structured as history and history can be checked. But checked so far: nothing found. What do you think? *wink*