Christian Clarity Review

What say ye lads? Are ye game for Moby Dick?!

Indeed.

Watched the older version of Moby Dick recently ..the one with Gregory Peck playing Ahab.

I have never heard of Ahab as hero before; he was always portrayed as the crazed lunatic who “hated” Moby Dick because of what the whale had done to him in former times and thus scared but not a hero in any sense.

The scene in which Ahab shows Starbuck the map of the whales journeys he nails it: “the thing behind the mask ..the malignant thing that has plagued and frightened man since time began. The thing that mauls and mutilates our race…”

Non-creating speech/anti-Christ. Come out, come out wherever you are. I seee you. I heear you…

Isaiah 47:10 For thou hast confided in thy wickedness: thou hast said, None seeth me. Thy wisdom and thy knowledge, it hath seduced thee; and thou hast said in thy heart, It is I, and there is none but me.

But God Says:

Amos 9:1-4 I saw the Lord standing upon the altar; and he said, Smite the chapiter that the thresholds may shake; and break all of them in pieces, in the head; and I will slay the last of them with the sword: he that fleeth of them shall not get away by flight, and he that escapeth of them shall not be delivered. Though they dig into Sheol, thence shall my hand take them; and though they climb up to the heavens, thence will I bring them down; and though they hide themselves on the top of Carmel, I will search and take them out thence; and though they be hid from my sight in the bottom of the sea, there will I command the serpent, and it shall bite them; and though they go into captivity before their enemies, there will I command the sword, and it shall slay them: and I will set mine eyes upon them for evil, and not for good.

Compare that with Ahab’s “from hell’s heart I stab at thee.., etc..”

God uses anti-Christ until anti-Christ’s usefulness is at an end..

Zep 3:9 For then will I turn to the peoples a pure language, that they may all call upon the name of Jehovah, to serve him with one consent.

The last scene before the showdown between Ahab and Moby Dick is very insightful. It comes out in the scene where Starbuck is going to shoot Ahab and take over the ship; Ahab tells him why he has to kill Moby Dick –I never saw it before: Ahab was hunting the anti-Christ. He doesn’t say it, but that’s it. Moby Dick was just the story. If you’re writing a Christian story its all there: Jonah, whaling, the time period of history in which Melville lived, etc. ( That’s also why Starbuck joined ranks with Ahab at the end instead of rowing away… a chance at the anti-Christ, harpoon already in hand .. are you kidding me..?! who is going to row away from that?)

“This is what you’ve shipped for mates ..death to Moby Dick.” Classic because its true. Even the pagans know it though they know it wrong.

I only saw it because in my own novel one of the characters doesn’t know what he is doing for a long time, but is driven in that same way. Late in the novel when confronted by an exasperated friend “well at least give me a physical description of what your looking for!” Izzy replies “It’s a got a man’s heart — a man’s heart –don’t forget that. It’s got feet like a bear and looks like a leopard, seven heads and all lies.” He’s has been sent after the anti-Christ and had to go through a period of oblivion that such a thing as anti-Christ even exists, then a fear of it, then a loathing of it, then a command to kill it and understand what has been going on his whole life…( I need to re-write a lot of the novel..)

Rev 13:1-3 And I stood upon the sand of the sea; and I saw a beast rising out of the sea, having ten horns and seven heads, and upon its horns ten diadems, and upon its heads names of blasphemy. And the beast which I saw was like to a leopardess, and its feet as of a bear, and its mouth as a lion’s mouth; and the dragon gave to it his power, and his throne, and great authority; and one of his heads was as slain to death, and his wound of death had been healed: and the whole earth wondered after the beast.

and later on reminds his friend of :

Daniel 7:2-8 Daniel spoke and said, I saw in my vision by night, and behold, the four winds of the heavens broke forth upon the great sea. And four great beasts came up from the sea, different one from another. The first was like a lion, and had eagle’s wings: I beheld till its wings were plucked; and it was lifted up from the earth, and made to stand upon two feet as a man, and a man’s heart was given to it. And behold, another beast, a second, like unto a bear, and it raised up itself on one side; and it had three ribs in its mouth between its teeth; and they said thus unto it: Arise, devour much flesh. After this I saw, and behold, another, like a leopard, and it had four wings of a bird upon its back; and the beast had four heads; and dominion was given to it. After this I saw in the night visions, and behold, a fourth beast, dreadful and terrible, and exceeding strong; and it had great iron teeth: it devoured and broke in pieces, and stamped the rest with its feet; and it was different from all the beasts that were before it; and it had ten horns. I considered the horns, and behold, there came up among them another, a little horn, before which three of the first horns were plucked up by the roots; and behold, in this horn were eyes like the eyes of a man, and a mouth speaking great things.

Melville was also warning in the character of Ahab against a self-willed attack against the anti-Christ –on the basis of human emotion “for hates sake I stab at thee! , etc…” Ahab was the classic flawed hero who won when Moby Dick died in the book. But it cost him his life of the flesh to do it.

————-

He’s after what?

Anti-Christ.

You’re joking, right?

The movie Moby Dick plays in the background. The young man points to Ahab stabbing Moby Dick with the harpoon over and over. “That guy look like he’s kidding?”

—————–

God reserves some things for Him to accomplish through new creatures in Jesus Christ. All that stuff about ‘can’t be killed by a man’ means nothing. The beast will come back to life. But he’s got to be killed first.

God says of the anti-Christ:

Revelation 13:3 and one of his heads was as slain to death, and his wound of death had been healed: and the whole earth wondered after the beast.

But He says of us in Jesus Christ as new creatures in Jesus Christ; we are Jacob:

Jer 51:19-24 The portion of Jacob is not like them; for it is he that hath formed all things: and Israel is the rod of his inheritance: Jehovah of hosts is his name. Thou art my maul, my weapons of war: and with thee I will break in pieces the nations, and I will with thee destroy kingdoms; and with thee I will break in pieces the horse and his rider; and with thee I will break in pieces the chariot and its driver; and with thee will I break in pieces man and woman; and with thee will I break in pieces old and young; and with thee will I break in pieces the young man and the maid; and with thee will I break in pieces the shepherd and his flock; and with thee will I break in pieces the husbandman and his yoke of oxen; and with thee will I break in pieces governors and rulers. And I will render unto Babylon and to all the inhabitants of Chaldea, in your sight, all their evil which they have done in Zion, saith Jehovah.

God also says of us:

Isaiah 27:6,7 In the future Jacob shall take root; Israel shall blossom and bud, and they shall fill the face of the world with fruit. Hath he smitten him according to the smiting of those that smote him? Is he slain according to the slaughter of those slain by him?

and

Proverbs 24:15,16 Lay not wait, O wicked man , against the dwelling of the righteous; lay not waste his resting-place. For the righteous falleth seven times, and riseth up again; but the wicked stumble into disaster.

In the Name of Jesus Christ, Amen

Chapter One

There he is.

Where?

Right there. Just behind the big cypress tree. He isn’t moving. He’s looking right at us. Look at the tree where it meets the water, trace it back up to the palmetto frond on the left. His head is between the tree and the frond. You can see the sunlight shine off the tips of his horns.

I don’t see him.

How can you not see him? He’s right there.

The black water is mirror smooth and reflects the scene before them upside down and in reverse just below the real thing. Dad inches his finger toward the trigger and raises the rifle slowly to his shoulder. The deer bolts, fading into the thick vegetation in a flash of brown, white and swaying palmettos.

The shot is lost.

There is something unsatisfactory in a shot not taken; even shots lost by other people. It isn’t the loss of the meat; hunger is only a limited threat even to the starving. It is the not finishing. Izzy hears the thought: Pull your own trigger. Anything less is unreliable.

Afterwards, when hunting on his own, he aims at the ground and squeezes the trigger just to hear the sound when he has lost the target. Taking the shot is not about killing. Or power. Yet shooting the earth doesn’t bring the satisfaction of getting the job done. It is only proof the effort still exists the way a river exists that doesn’t turn a wheel.

Over the years the shot morphs into many things completed. In Bosnia it had gone from the lost opportunity by the communications tower to taking the shot to saving her life. In Columbia it became the exposure of the Attorney General as a pedophile that just happened to delay the trial the three days they needed. In Afghanistan it was the deal on the border.

Everywhere he goes there is a possible “________” perceptible enough to mark the end of one thing and the beginning of others. But never the certainty of a big Ending.

Never the real one, eh?

————

He wheels into the parking lot, a finisher of things with the report in his pocket; parks with a view of the building. Spitting the lozenge into its wrapper, he places it on the dash. The radio speaks of rain.

Surrounded by a bustle of students and staff flowing here and there on concrete and grass thoroughfares, the biology building of Canton College stands to one side of its own parking lot in a pine and hickory isolation from the rest of the campus. A plain brick building, square with windows at regular intervals; it is an architectural experiment in keeping with what he has heard of the school: flat roof, faux columns; plumbing pipes on the exterior obviously symbolizing veins and arteries; a grand entrance of steps and benches in small nooks on several levels with multiple; automatic doors on his side complete the statement.

Izzy steps out of the truck and points the remote behind him; hears the doors lock in unison as he walks away. He pulls the parka closer around his neck and zips the collar tighter against the wind. A little weak and buzzed from the antibiotics, he moves toward a set of doors on the newly poured concrete walk and pockets the keys. Students brush by and smile at him as the breeze picks up.

Inside, at an intersection of long halls, he takes off the sunglasses; deposits them in a case he stores in a compartment in the arm of the jacket. There is a steel elevator door straight ahead of him, a sign that says ‘No Smoking’ and an emergency exit plan on the right hand wall. There is a directory of offices to the left. He finds her name and takes the elevator.

The door opens on three. Heading toward the right and hoping the numbers count upwards to match his hunch. There are no signs.

Four doors down her name is on a door. He knocks. Hearing a voice from inside, he takes it as a greeting and enters.

“I’m Izzy Baxter. I called yesterday.”

There is no one there. She comes in from a back room and smiles at him. She matches the photo.

“I remember. The Astrobiology Institute?”

“Yes.”

“You’ve got the report?”

He hands it over and waits.

“Sorry I can’t offer you a chair. I think it was borrowed for the lounge.”

“That kind of thing goes on here too?”

She thumbs the report, nodding absently. “’Fraid so.”

A picture on the desk in front of him stares out at him. It is familiar and quiet in solid object certainty while he waits for the verdict. He wonders how much it will weigh when he picks it up.

“So it’s only been removed from the substrate for .. seventeen hours?”

He looks at his watch; does the math. “That’d be about right. Plus one.”

“But you called me yesterday..”

“I was asked to get a specialist to look at it. It’s in route to our facilities.”

“And all you have is the hand?”

“It will be there when you arrive.”

“Uh huh.” She flips the page. “That means you don’t have it now.”

The photograph is still there retaining its weight and rosewood shine. It is a cutout of a man’s head against a blue paper background. The man is looking down and to the right with a tired, haunted gaze through reddened eyes that shine from the bottom up. He is old, with a few days worth of white whiskers. The sparse, white hair of his head needs a comb. His shirt is unbuttoned. A dirty T-shirt wet with sweat is showing beneath. The mouth is slightly opened in an exaggerated exhale frozen by the camera. His expression is one of a tiredness deeper than bone. Frustration and a fatigue that can easily have been mistaken for insanity pour out of the photo.

“Any photos of it in situ?”

“No. Sorry. It surprised everyone. Not one of those things you go prepared for –that way.”

“I see. How did you get my name?”

“We know some of the same people. The work you did for the I-R-C? You’re rather well known, I take it. You came highly recommended.”

“The B-R-C?”

“I-R-C. You proved the victims, the bones unearthed at Astara, on the Caspian Sea were ritually killed with a blow to the back of the head.”

She looks at his clothes. “Okay. I have all the things I need here. If you could bring it…”

“We would like to keep the news of the discovery to ourselves for reasons I can’t go into here. I think they’ll be obvious when you see it.” A peal of thunder booms simultaneous with a flash of lightening just outside the window, shaking the building. “I don’t mean to be short. But we are pressed for time. Our facilities are up to date and will have any equipment you may need.”

“I really don’t like to go elsewhere if I don’t have to.” She looks at the report again. “Where was it found?”

“I can’t say.”

“You mean you won’t.”

“Okay.”

She doesn’t know what to say.

He looks around the office. She is an attractive woman with straight brown hair which she wears long, with a clip that holds it out of her face that somehow manages to enhance its shine. Her make-up is one step up from utilitarian. She keeps up with the fashions. She doesn’t like them. She is surrounded by interesting but odd things to stare at, placed at random around the office. There is a deer antler, chewed on one end with teeth marks exposing the marrow. A pine knot shaped vaguely like a bird’s head with green lichen growing on it is perched next to the window. Shards from ancient pottery are arranged in a display case. Each piece is numbered, arranged and held in place by a number of copper nails. There is a small charcoal drawing of what the whole would look like if assembled and a handwritten note of its origin. There are exotic plants with stunning blooms; old, leather bound books.

“That has to be rare.”

She looks up and follows his gaze to an orchid in a glass case. A color photo of the bloom is taped to the glass.

“Just difficult. Paphiopedilum appletonianum. Hasn’t bloomed since I’ve had it. I never can get the humidity right. Why not?”

He shrugs apologetically. “That either. But I think when you see it that will take care of itself.”

She peruses the report. “When will I see it —if I take the job. When will you expect a preliminary and final report? I generally like to have at least ten full working days to do the analysis and at least another four to submit the findings.”

“I’ve heard you like to say that, but that you usually have it in three days. This time if it’s true you won’t need to make a report. Just a yes will suffice.”

“If what is true?”

“That’s all I can say at this time.” At this time? It seems such a formal thing to say. He wishes for something better.

“That’s not very much.”

“The money will compensate for the rest.”

“Beyond the money..”

“And because you will have to know.”

She looks straight at him for the first time. “Why?”

“It’s one of those reasons you do what you do.” He extends his hand. “Sorry. I can’t leave it.”

She hands him the report. He is tall and a little thin. Jeans. Boots. Nice jacket—the kind of particular equipment not found in every sporting goods store. Short hair. Clean shaven. Muscular but not bulky. Military. Maybe intel. She has seen his type before. Very clear, plain eyes that ask and answer in less than a second with no accusation. He looks as if he would be very quick for a guy his size on a better day.

“I’ll send a car for you. Tomorrow. Here? Say eight o’clock?”

She nods. “Eight o’clock.”

He closes the door behind him and folds the report back into his pocket. He is glad this part is over.

Heading toward the elevator, the sound of laughter drifting into the hall from another office, he thinks of the mission; of Bobby. Pushing the button for the ride, he waits.

The laughter spills out, filling every thought.

He has never heard anything like it. Is it a gym? For what? He thinks of being that kind of buff as if thinking of another being with his name.

When he was younger, in those days with Dad or even a few years ago, he would have wanted to say all the things he thought on hearing it to someone who would understand: genuinely deep and unexpected things worthy of the time to say them. They come involuntarily: thoughts like living beings, certainties that he knows the other person will know hurtling into the same privacy with the laughter. They would have been his side of very good and satisfying conversation, the kind you only have once every couple of years at best and remember always. But having got them in mind, there is no one with which to share them and no time even if there was.

The door opens. He steps forward, the elevator closes with a soft whish, mechanically sealing the laughter and the floor from behind him and descends.

—————————————————————–

The car is punctual.

Riding through the Virginia countryside she begins to make plans for the summer with Beth Ann. For the first time since Sam’s death, she will be alone.

Florida University has accepted Beth Ann. Their arguments about it being so far away have only further strained an already tense time. Over the past few weeks they both have come to realize things are changing. After this seeing each other will never be the same. She wants to plan but doesn’t want to force anything. Wanting only to create a good memory for the both of them, she is lost in her thoughts of a vacation in the mountains as the hours roll by.

A complex that sharpens into buildings as they drive closer brings her to the present. The driver stops at a gate some distance from the main compound and speaks into a speaker, “Dr. Mary Black.”

The gate swings open. They drive past a small brown sign with white lettering: “Crenshaw Humming Research Division in Association with The Astrobiology Institute: a division of the Jet Propulsion Laboratories, National Aeronautics and Space Administration.”

“NASA. Crenshaw Humming. The big leagues.”

The driver nods at her in the rear view mirror. “Yes, ma’am.” They drive past armed guards roving in golf carts. Geese with orange tags on their legs roam freely inside the fence. A few burros can be seen grazing.

—–

From an upstairs window, a young man looks out, spotting the approaching vehicle. “She’s here.”

Jack Wallace walks over to the window. He swirls the ice in his glass, watching her get out of the car. “They look the same as us.”

“Maybe they are.”

“Then we’d be right already? But then we would be out of the research business, wouldn’t we? And who knows? Maybe we’re wrong. And if we’re wrong, well, we’re already in ancient world that really does know more than we do.”

“We are the only intelligent unknown.”

——

Mary sees Baxter coming through the large, double doors.

“Good trip?”

“No complaints. What’s with the geese? Donkeys at NASA?”

He motions her toward the door. “Burros. The geese are very territorial–better than guard dogs for making noise. If anyone wanted to break in here they wouldn’t be scared of a dog anyway. The geese are cheaper too. Besides,” he says as the door slides shut behind them, “they make us popular with the wildlife people. The coyotes come for the geese. The burros kill the coyotes that don’t care about the noise.”

“Why would someone want to break in here?”

“A flaw in their upbringing. It happens.”

Marine guards escort them to the elevators.

“Burros kill coyotes?”

“They don’t hunt them. They just won’t tolerate them in the same area.”

“I didn’t know that.”

They begin to descend, standing silently for some time. He smiles at her, doing his best bureaucrat imitation to set her at ease.

“Are you alright?”

“Just in a hurry.” he replies quietly. “And out of practice with..”

“Civilians? You did okay yesterday. Marginal.”

He shrugs inoffensively and stars at the buttons on the elevator. “They have a casual outlook on everything. Their conversation is always fake.”

She smiles. “And you fake the fake just to get by.”

“Only for as long as it takes.”

A moment later the elevator stops.

The doors open to a steel grated balcony; stairs to their left lead down to the concrete floor beneath. Large, clear panels partition the room into smaller, rectangular laboratory and office cubicles. One central walkway runs the length of the large room.

Men and women in shirt sleeves sit arguing at a table in one of the larger offices near the foot of the stairs. Several of them look up at them as they walk down the steps. Everyone falls silent as they walk past.

At the end of the walkway, Izzy turns into a small lab, followed by an older man in white tennis shoes and lab coat. The small, steel briefcase he carries is carefully laid on the nearest counter. In a soft Russian accent he says, “I am here for ice while you study hand.”

For his part, Dr. Dmitri Pavolvitch sees a younger woman who looks at him with a direct, wide open stare. She is perhaps mid to late forties, naturally attractive, intelligent eyes, dark brown hair. She seems nice enough but has an expression that is a mixture of curiosity, apprehension and incredulity. There is a practical look about her, like a queen or a mother; a family sort of person, not very vain or arrogant, that has had any youthful vanity run out of her by caring for someone and being cared for in return. He knows looking at her face that she has children. The past is etched in her face. A hesitance, a guarded softness in her eyes, says she is sophisticated in a certain way, but not deceptive.

He likes her immediately and hears the thought “Sophisticated for defensive purposes only.” He smiles and laughs to himself.

“What?” Izzy is looking at him.

“Nothing”.

It shows that he likes her She fingers a small scar over one eyebrow and looks at the case.

Placing the steel case on a nearby bench, he opens it and takes out a large, clear container in which is a smoky haze.

“You placed it in nitrogen?!”

“Bad?”

She isn’t sure he is kidding until he says, “Wink.”

She knows she is supposed to laugh but frowns instead. He has the same sense of the absurd as Sam. Even though she knows it is a setup– it has been years– she says “You don’t say wink. It’s something you do.”

“Oh? It is C oh two.” He smiles.

Izzy frowns and clears his throat. “Am I the only one in a hurry here?” He taps a code in the keypad and the top slides open. The haze has obscured a cylinder of ice in which is clearly a human hand.

“I thought you said it was mummified?” she asks.

“That’s why you’re here.” Izzy points out the various instruments available. “Everything that you should need is here. We have x-ray facilities available as well, of course. You can call for anything more you’ll need on the intercom.” He points to the intercom on the wall.

Pavolvitch assists her until he has the ice.

Izzy points to the conference room. “We’ll be there.”

They walk away without another word.

She is alone and speaks to the silence as if it is a judge. “Okay.”

——

Baxter and Dmitri stand at the other end of the corridor, watching the technicians come and go.

“I said nothing. You said nothing. She doesn’t…”

“Then why are you defending yourself already? Wink?” Izzy said. “No wonder I’m not married. I can’t be that lame on purpose.”

Dmitri grins. “You’ve got to learn to relax, Israel. Today there is emergency. Tomorrow is emergency. Emergency everywhere. All the time! We go on living in the middle of them all. Did you notice?”

“What?”

“The ring.” Dmitri holds up his index finger. “She still wears her ring. Her husband has been dead almost two years.”

“No. I didn’t notice.”

Dmitri grips his arm. “She will find what there is to be found.”

They turn to the on-going conference to postpone the inevitable questions.

——

The x-rays reveal a human hand clutching a small, rectangular object. Mary waits for some time after getting the images for the technicians to return with the hand. By the time she gets it back it is thawing. A heat gun speeds things along after she has taken baseline photographs, measurements and weight.

The hand isn’t mummified at all.

It is ‘fresh’, as they say in school. There is no frostbite damage. She checks carefully again. But there is no tissue damage at all.

She does the microscopy of skin and muscular tissue. After looking at the tissue, she isn’t really sure why she has been called at all.

Never aware of her gift in any way which qualified as recognition, she has never been able name it, only understanidng that at the beginning of an investigation everyone seems to expect something of her. There is an odd kind of pressure. The only way she knows they have been satisfied is when they turn away.

Sam, in a rare, lucid moment before he his death had said she had a smooth combination of clarity and curiosity that would take her places. He had said she recognized beginnings and that she should recognize his passing as one for herself.

She loves that he said it. She repeats it sometimes; now to herself as she steps back and looks at the question.

She goes through the whole examination again, step by step. They would not have called her if they didn’t want her particular expertise. This is NASA. Crenshaw Humming.

Thinking the hand was mummified had been a mistake. But it is the natural assumption given the visual stimulus and the substrate.

She does a battery of telomeric tests. Not trusting the results, she does the tests again. Testing the equipment and doing the tests a third time afterwards, she stares at the confirmed results. “That’s not possible.”

——————————————

Revelation 4:1 After these things I saw, and behold, a door opened in heaven, and the first voice which I heard as of a trumpet speaking with me, saying, Come up here, and I will shew thee the things which must take place after these things.

In the Name of Jesus Christ, Amen

Chapter Eighteen:

BethAnn
Tallahassee:

The buildings are red brick; grey stone. The campus is filled with green lawns, walkways, benches, sports complexes, security phones, lamposts, trees and fountains. Driving is easy ( an ambidextrous confusion juggling coffee, books, and cellular phones mandated on all by the rules) as it is all one way roads blocked here and there with historic monuments and artsy statuary. Parking is no longer a problem, given the new decks and lots. The weather is good for outdoor scenery all four seasons.

She wants to see snow; the familiar and clean of it; the way it unites everything in white and cold and makes everything start over from a clean, abrupt line; to see the line grow and recede unpredictably as the days and hours go by; to see a standard of what is uncontrolable as the backdrop and surface against which people come into focus. But things being what they are here, the snow can’t exist here. There is a different kind of winter here; a cold of bare limbs and blown leaves; the absence of mosquitoes; vegetation growing and falling between the evergreen hollies and the wind that still has the nip that puts red on cheeks and chaps on lips. There is just enough of it for sweaters and warm coffees in the small shops that cater to lovers of books and winter fashions.

——-

In a large room with stadium seating and a huge heat pump humming in the background, she sits doodling on a pad.

Instructor: “What is disease? Beyond the textbook answer, what is it?”

The class is silent.

Instructor: There is no wrong answer. Other than God.

The class laughs at her obvious humor.

Instructor: But what is it? What does it do? When we say someone has a disease –of course we don’t say it like that –we say they have cancer –or MS –that they have a particular kind, even class of disease. The big news these days is bird flu. But what does it really mean to get a disease? To get bird flu? What happens to you? Anyone? Somebody!

The class laughs again.

Student: It’s a loss of function.

Instructor: Not bad. Loss of function. But what is a loss of function?

The class doesn’t answer.

Instructor, as she writes on the overhead: It is a ..loss ..of ..freedom.

She caps the pen: How much freedom? Depends on the disease and how far it has progressed. So philosophically, in reality, what is a disease? If disease is evil –and I think you’d better check into Chattahoochee if you think it isn’t –what is the evil of getting a disease beyond the possible pain?

Student #2: A temporary or permanent loss of free will.

Instructor: We have a prodigy among us. You’re the first student in my ten years of teaching this class to answer correctly. What is your name?

Student #2: Beth Ann Black.

Instructor: Well, Beth Ann Black, if the loss of free will is the result of disease, what of those born with organic dysfunction? To what can they be restored if they never had true freedom to begin with?

BethAnn: They have the freedom they have.

Instructor: But they are born into a larger world of freedom and their lack of freedom necessitates their care by others who have more freedom than themselves. So their dysfunction results in a net loss of free will for the overall civilization. They are, in a larger context, a disease of civilization, of us. Right?

BethAnn: No. If their care teaches, shows something deeper than what would be found without it, then they have contributed to the overall freedom by expanding what it is to be free. To be noble. To sacrifice.

Instructor smiles: The religious education peeks through. I take that back. You’re not a prodigy. You are a lawyer.

Class laughs.

BethAnn smiles.

Instructor: But we can agree that the foundational understanding of a disease is that it takes away freedom; it impairs the will first and foremost? That a loss of free will is evil and a disease to be fought? That fighting against losses of free will is the coordinating job of society? It brings us together. As nurses we are nurses not just of individuals but of society. Right?

BethAnn: Evil is a disease. Absolutely.

Instructor: Well done.

BethAnn blushes.

————

In a quiet neighborhood on the other side of town she unlocks the door. Dropping the book bag, she looks at the phone. There are two messages.

Message #1: “Hi Bethy. This is John. Meet me at Starbucks? Call me.”

Message #2: a hang up.

Your Mom still hasn’t called? : Her roommate comes in with an empty clothes hamper.

Beth: No. Nothing. You get my clothes too?

Roommate: Yeah. Again.

Beth: Thanks.

Roommate: How was class?

Beth: I made some points. I guess.

TV: In other news two more Marines killed today just outside Baghdad when a IED went off beside their humvee. Army spokesmen said the tragedy was that a Iraqi civilian had reported the possibility of an attack in the area but the report did not reach the unit in time.

Beth: Why would she say that?

Roommate: What?

Beth: Professor Guilles. She was going along on a line of thought and I was following in the book, then all of the sudden she goes off about retarded people and society.

Roommate: What class?

Beth: Nursing ethics.

Roommate: Maybe she’s skipping ahead.

Beth: Why tell us to study the book if she isn’t going to follow it?

Beth flops into a papazon chair and grabs the tv remote.

Roommate: My mom said you could stay with us over break. You should really think about it.

Beth: You worry too much. My mom hasn’t disappeared like this before. But she is gone sometimes for long periods doing stuff for the government. She’ll show up, say she’s sorry and buy me something.

Roommate: She shouldn’t put you through this.

Beth: She’s forging ahead to gain rights for us sisters in the marketplace.

Roommate: Riiight. Still, she could at least call. Maybe you’ll get a car this time.

Beth: I wouldn’t do that too her.

Roommate: Why not?

Pictures of large ice caps and rocks filled with penguins looking at the ocean’s edge flash onto the TV. An image of a leopard seal swimming under the water fades in. His underwater range is so far empty of penguins.

TV: The leopard seal hunts most successfully by laying in wait. His best chance is when the penguins first hit the water. Once they are out at sea they are safe. From him.

Music soars as the first wave of penguins flop onto their stomachs, slide toward the raging surf and plunge into the water in slow motion. The scene changes to an underwater shot of the penguins and lines of air bubbles they leave behind as they zoom deeper and deeper and then out to sea at normal speed.

Beth: I did something good today. Or something happened to me –I’m not sure which.

Roommate: What now?

Beth: I saw a beautiful boy and I let him go. I didn’t say a word to him at the cafeteria. You know how you can just sit near a waterfall in the woods and it’s a beautiful thing. You wouldn’t even think to take it with you or change it. It just is. You can’t stop it, even if you wanted to. He was like that; just sitting there reading a book. I didn’t go over. I just ..let him go. In my mind I guess I put him back when I never picked him up.

Roommate: You just got it like that, huh?

They both smile. Beth shrugs.

The phone rings. .

Beth looks at the caller ID and picks it up: Hi, John. Starbucks is good.

——————————————–

Homam:
Islamabad

Homam,

These things take time. I know I’ve said it before, but a coin like this just doesn’t ‘get sold’. It’s so rare that it will be a rather long process of authentication and then only an institutional buyer would do you justice. Working on it. Be patient.

I know it’s real. I just don’t know how I know. Perhaps it was you, standing there so simply in what, I’m sure as compared to what you’re wearing now, was rags looking straight at me with no guile. If there is any gold in this world, that is it.

Not to be rude, but to warn you: one dealer has already suggested it might be a multi-generational fraud. That your father or grandfather or even a great great grandfather made it, didn’t tell his son and now and you in good faith have passed it on as a true find. You shouldn’t worry about these things. Somebody made it. It’s gold. That is all. Besides, if you had somebody trying to look out for you that way, we shouldn’t look too hard on them even if it’s a fake.

The rest is a process you needn’t worry about.

Peace and prosperity,

Paul

Homam signs off the net and folds the notebook up.

He hasn’t told Paul that Paul is the first coin dealer he had come across or that when he had asked of coin dealers, he had only asked one friend. Non-believers don’t believe. That’s what they do. That’s who they are. They want you to go with them through a journey of discovery as if doing you a favor. They want to hold you up as a simultaneous liar and friend. They are caught in the laws of gold: they say yes to buy, then ‘I’m not sure’ after they have it while they try to make everything have a rare quality and are never sure if they have succeeded. They try to make every normal thing extraordinary.

She looks at him through the chic sunglasses and he smiles. She wears no burka amongst the heathen who are certain that they are holy because they do. And she is holy.

They are due at the airport in three hours. Paris is waiting.

——————————

Underground:

Albrite: It could be a very plain .. a simple abecedary program.

Gregg: Ab-sah what?

Albrite: Abecedary. It’s the whole list of little sayings for an alphabet to help you remember them. “A is for apple, B is for boy”. Like that.

Mike: So it isn’t trying to reach out from some distant past?

Albrite: Maybe. If it is, that would make sense. It would use an emotional situation of the same heart as that remembrance device. It would use the situation as the same kind of reminder to something we know, that we just haven’t noticed we know.

Mike: To turn the remembrance, or experience of feelings into..

Izzy: Pronunciation. It wouldn’t even need to be in the same type of body. Just something physical to make a sound through. So no matter if there were any physical changes..

Mary: ..the emotions would be the same.

Albrite: But which one ? That’s the thing about abecedaries: they are very subjective. You could just as well say “A is for another.”

Mike: It could be a validator for the whole alphabet in a wrap? It can be any pronunciation of any word or combination of them comprised of feelings as alphabet?

Albrite rubs his hand on the wall: Like a guardian. A passphrase brought out of the subconscious instead of a password. Only this could be an emotional set, like a master list of all possible emotions ordered and linked to be a database.

Jimmy: It’s waiting to hear something.

Albrite: The things people say.

Mary: It’s not teaching, it’s asking?

Hayt: Maybe.

Gregg: Six people walk into a strange room. At least one of them is going to worship it because it is strange. Another is going to doubt it exists and is strange at all. Another will doubt whether they exist at all because of what the room supposedly does to them as the essence of its strangeness. At least one will try to get out. At least one will say everything has always been strange. And somebody will try to break it up to prove their power over everything.

Albrite: ..and at least one will try to learn something from the room to use after one gets out.

Gregg: That would be the one that worships it.

Mike: Everywhere we go we take speech, emotion and awareness with us.

Albrite: And all of that came from somewhere.

Izzy: What would you call a living being, the source of a spirit that shapes other spirits into charms and spells as a alphabet and is an abecedary of those charms and spells? A guardian? Of what?

Mary: This room? Of getting out?

Albrite: Men.

Mike: An idol. Anti-Christ.

Albrite looks at Mike: What is an idol?

Mike looks at the wall, glimmering in the light: It’s an understanding you think you can’t get past. Because you think you are past all the obstructions and have arrived at enlightenment already. And we can’t force out way past it.

They stand in silence for some time.

Jimmy lays down and goes to sleep.

——————————————————————————-

Jonah 2:7 When my soul fainted within me, I remembered Jehovah; And my prayer came in unto thee, Into thy holy temple.

In the Name of Jesus Christ, Amen

I’m working on a page dedicated to the presentation of the novel: The Laughter Thieves.

The novel is a multi-genre/literary novel that contains some science, some future tech and what some will call ‘magical realism’, (as some deny Christ and call anything Christian ‘fantasy’ as well as the speech-science connection a myth). It is a contemporary story of destiny; of Christ; of four persons who are not who they thought they were, the world is not what they were taught to believe it is and the consequences of their discovery of the thing that was done as they are genuinely born again in Jesus Christ.

It is also a story of the fall of man, the substance of that fall and a play on why: a story of the two speaks in total reality and the war between them through men. It is also the gospel.

Satan has planted a device that is an artifact, a mind/a speech, a trap, and his own effort at determinism. He waits for his device to be discovered, for what was determined to come to pass: for the elect to laugh with joy in order to steal the method of that joy from them to activate the artifact and give him power to escape the wrath of God by gaining the speech that creates.

Is there such a method?

What is laughter? Where did it come from and where is it going? If it is a tax who collects and what does it pay for? What does it prove, if anything? If it is a word, what does it mean? Why is everyone trying to say it the right way and to say it as much as possible? Where did the system come from that makes laughter a proof of something? Why?

——————————–

Henry: You ever heard of non-creating speech, Jack?

Jack: One of us is crazy. And its not going to be me.

——————————-

Proverbs 1:5,6 He that is wise will hear, and will increase learning; and the intelligent will gain wise counsels: to understand a proverb and an allegory, the words of the wise and their enigmas.

***************************

You are welcome to print it out and read it, (reading it online in blog format can be tedious) but do not sell it , place it in another format, or distribute it. I go back and change a few things here and there from time to time; not basic story elements — just edits for correction or clarity.

Ch1

Ch2

Ch3

Ch4

Ch5

Ch6

Ch7

Ch8

Ch9

Ch10

Ch11

Ch12

Ch13

Ch14

Ch15

Ch16

Ch17

Ch. 18

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Matthew 11:15-19 He that has ears to hear, let him hear. But to whom shall I liken this generation? It is like children sitting in the markets, which, calling to their companions, say, We have piped to you, and ye have not danced: we have mourned to you, and ye have not wailed. For John has come neither eating nor drinking, and they say, He has a demon. The Son of man has come eating and drinking, and they say, Behold, a man that is eating and wine-drinking, a friend of tax-gatherers, and of sinners: –and wisdom has been justified by her children.

——

Song of Solomon 8:13,14 Thou that dwellest in the gardens, The companions hearken to thy voice: Let me hear it . Haste, my beloved, And be thou like a gazelle or a young hart Upon the mountains of spices.

In the Name of Jesus Christ, Amen

Okay. Something is amiss here. I know I posted chapter eleven of the novel as well but its not there either.

So without further ado:

Chapter Eleven:

——————————

Chapter Eleven

The Institute:

Archived video from the site has been reviewed from as far back as three weeks before the earthquake. All show an increasing trend of withdrawal from conversation.

The work at the station had gone on as usual. The habitat had been slowly coming together under the ice.

The opening of the exploration tunnels for the lower levels had coincided with the shift in behavior. The new tunnels had been melted using a smaller, portable device modeled on the subterrene that melted small-bore exploratory shafts. The ground sonar had indicated a series of caverns. Tunnels were bored to tie in with the natural caverns.

“We found something. Or rather, they did.” Peters says as Henry walks in the communications room.

Video:

The crew of the habitat walk into the caverns. Commander Smith is the first to view them with a small handheld light as the others follow behind.

The scene fades in and out of focus as the computers cut from one to another camera of each crew member. As the interior of the caverns came is lit, Smith reaches out and touches one of the walls.

Smith: These aren’t natural caves.

The wall in front of him is smooth, hard and glassy. Looking at the ceiling, the camera reveals stalactites that begin in some unknown height, appearing at the far edge of the light and reaching to the floor as if hanging in mid-air. Some are more than twenty feet in diameter. The lights playing over the walls show calcite deposits in lava-like build-up covering much of the original walls and floor.

“The air is okay. On the dry side: seventeen percent humidity.” says a voice from behind the camera. A hand reaches out from the side of the camera to the wall and brushing the calcite deposit. It crumbles like chalk, raising a small cloud of white dust.

“I thought we were the first ones down here.”

“This place is old. Ain’t nobody been here in a looong time. Stalactites grow about an inch every hundred years. These things are huge—and dried out. There’s no telling how long these tunnels have been here.” says another voice.

“There must have been water here. And these tunnels were definitely manufactured. I don’t know…..why…or.. ” Smith falls silent as they all became quiet except for the sound of their breath in the enclosed suits.

Lights play over a huge cavern studded with stalactites and almost completely covered with calcite deposits. The lights disappear into the darkness. Shadows and columns of white and grey intertwined at the extreme edge of the lights.

Smith: How big is this thing?
Another voice behind the current camera says, “I’m reading fifteen hundred and forty five meters to an obstruction dead ahead. To the right is three hundred ten meters, to the left is…..four fifty. There looks to be another entrance on the far side.”

“Giminsky, you’re with me. McGregor, Walters–go left. Jimenez, Roberts go right. See what you see and report back as soon as possible. Don’t go off the main …room.” Smith holds up his arm and looks at the oversized chronometer.

“Man, that’s what they always do. They always split up.” says a voice moving off to the left of the camera.

What are you complaining about now, Roberts?

In the movies, man! Just before they get eaten or somethin’–they always split up. Somethin’ slips up behind ‘em and when they look left, they get eaten from the right.

Yeah. They always go deeper into the darkness and then the lights go out. Knock if off. There’s obviously nothing here–nothing could live down here. Just stay sharp. Remember, this is for the record books. You getting this, Virginia?

There is a short break of static. “We got it. Be careful.”

“Thanks, mom.”

The teams explore the cavern. The camera switches back and forth to the current speaker. Each cut can be from the same scene.

The floor of the cavern/tunnel is completely covered in a fine powder of rock and mineral dust. Each step results in a small cloud. Over the next few moments their disturbance causes a fine haze of powdered rock and minerals to obscure the air.

Shadows and curved shapes of the huge pillars are now captured through a sparkling haze of powder. The camera angles show the teams struggling to pick pick their way through the dust as it grows thicker and thicker.

“This dust is getting thick. There’s no way to avoid it. I’m heading back to the entrance before I can’t see at all.”

“Wish there was some air flow in here. At least you could stay ahead of it.”

Smith cuts in. Everybody out. Head toward the entrance. This dust is only going to get worse. Whoever gets out first secure a line from the entrance and come get the rest of us. Hook up a static line to each other now.”

The next several hours of video showed them getting one person after another out. In the end the dust was so thick the lights would penetrate only a few feet in front of them. The images of individual team members had become obscure sources of haze.

Afterwards they sealed off the entrance from compound with mylar sheeting.

“Well, that won’t work. We’ll have to figure out a way to explore it without raising that dust.”

“One or two at most–and on a safety line. Maybe we lay down some rock.”

“I think you’re missing the point.” Smith took off his helmet. He wiped his face with the back of his hand and rubbed his eyes. “That glass melt is exactly the same as the by-product of our own subterrenes. They must be at least thousands of years old just from the calcite deposits.”

Giminski: You think they are old mines?

“Could be. There might have been a time when Antarctica was only partially covered with ice. We can explore in shifts and in teams as long as we keep up our schedule for the site.” Smith wiped his eyes again. “Well. At least we saw it first.”

The next few days of video show them exploring the newly discovered tunnels. A path is blown through the dust to the far walls day by day. After that, the exploration went quickly.

On two occasions the video suddenly winks off. A check by the operator reveals a satellite linkage glitch at the time. “Probably due to strong solar winds. We get a shower of highly charged particles from the sun all the time. Occasionally it overwhelms the equipment for short periods. The self-test code says error 193–an orientation problem of the satellite due to an electric overload. That’s consistent with a strong solar wind.”

———————————-

Underground
On site:

Rotating blades glow white hot as the subterrne slides by the opening and grinds to a halt. The rock melt flows until it freezes in place, sparks, glowing orange, then fading to yellow as the blades retract, the hatch opens inward as a small walkway settles onto the tunnel floor.

A hard beam of light shines out into the darkness as Hayt appears in the opening, walks down the steps and out onto the rock. The translucent glass of the tunnel walls and floor half absords the light in bent, oblong shafts that give a glow to the whole. The other half is absorbed in reflections that only make it a few meters with less and less shine. It all moves in tandem with Hayt’s hand and illuminates an empty tunnel in an instantly retracting path of light.

There is a break of squelch. “So?”

Hayt adjusts his earpiece. “Nothing yet. No lights. No sound. Nothing. The light is a little weird.”

Another light appears as Mike comes out behind Hayt. Together they walk toward the darkness receding in front of them. Around a sloping curve and fifty meters later they find the airlock.

“Still no lights. Nothing but dust and steel.” Mike plays the light over the entire steel door, encrusted with dust. There is rock debris in a pile to the left on the tunnel floor. A panel to the right juts out from the steel as if hastily left in place. A thick coat of caked dust covers everything. The cavity into which the panel rotates into the wall is partially filled with moist dust.

Izzy comes over the radio. “Hit it with the hammer a couple of times. It’s always polite to knock.”

Mike pulls out the small hammer and gives it to Hayt. Hayt hits the steel door once.
An echo travesl through the site and into the walls. It sounds through all the small caverns, all the small crevices and cracks. It goes only outward, traveling at the speech of sound.

Inside the subterrene Mary’s face is a question.

Izzy smiles. “You’re kidding, right? You’re in there and don’t know we’re coming, there isn’t supposed to be anything on the other side of that door but a few feet of empty tunnel. Suddenly the door opens..”

She smiles.

Hayt hits the door again and listens to the slight echo in the tunnel. “Sound doesn’t travel too far in rock unless at high or ultra-low frequencies. They probably won’t hear us anyway.”

Mike looks around at the tunnel. “Weird acoustics.”

———————

The Sleepers:

There was talk.

The talk is unlike anything that has come before its arrival. It has now lasted for millennia on millennia.

When it had first arrived, it was strange and wonderful. He had thought it exillerating and had sought to be a master of it. It had not been easy. It was alien to the Word he knew.

But he had become wise within it.

It changed him—elevated him above the rest.

The others had become jealous in their ignorance of it. They couldn’t even say his new name within it. It was a cloak in which he was hidden and none saw him as he got wiser and wiser within it. He liked being incomprehensible, invisible to them. It was like being the Most High.

He is a better speaker than they. It is a part of the wisdom it had given him. He merely spoke and it brought his desires to him. His power over the others with it in them was what made them jealous.

Now they had brought charges against him of treason. But they were liars. He could prove it with his wisdom.

The Most High would understand.

The Most High spoke, yet not in the speech.

He had smiled to himself. The others could only understand the common sort of tongue.

“How long will ye judge unjustly, and accept the persons of the wicked?”

The Most High paused. There was no answer.

“Defend the poor and fatherless: do justice to the afflicted and needy. Deliver the poor and needy: rid them out of the hand of the wicked. They know not, neither do they understand; they walk on in darkness: all the foundations of the earth are out of course. I have said, Ye are gods; and all of you children of the most High. But ye shall die like men, and fall like one of the princes.”

Something had happened then. He had turned to the speech and used his wisdom within it to find what ‘wicked’ and ‘die’ was. But there was nothing. It did not exist in his speech.

The Most High had spoken gibberish for the first time. He was growing weak.

That meant it was as Lucifer had suspected. The Most High hadn’t really created anything at all. He just knew secrets he wouldn’t share about what already had existed forever.And His front was failing.

But the others had begun to persecute him. Something was wrong.

Butno matter what else happened, he had understood the Most High’s power.It was too late for Him to hide it. It was speech. Now he had one of his own.

In his wisdom the speech had given him the location of the Oracle.

In his dream he relived his horror over and over on realizing he could not say it. He could no longer speak the common tongue! He could not answer the Most High! And he had to have an answer until he could overthrow the whole front the Most High had built and show them all they had been deceived by God

But the Oracle had given him names of creatures not yet that would come and speak the common tongue. He would follow them back to it and have the power of both speaks. All he had to do was hide so that they would find the him.

He dreamed of Gabriel discovering him before he had the list complete. He had escaped with only four names.

There were others who had understood him and agreed: something had to be done. He remembered Lucifer and his confidence in the plan. But where was he now?

He knew they couldn’t touch him. The Most High had made promises and di not yet know they had seen through the front. But remembering is no longer dreaming and he wondered if his long sleep was at an end.

Vibrations rolled past him. Sounds drifted in. Two long echoes. He sensed it. He knew it.

The names are here!

————————————

There is a break of squelch. “Do it again. Then introduce yourself.”

Hayt hits the steel once more and waits as the echo trembles around them and slowly dies out.

“Eight-seven-one-seven-three-zero-six-three.”

Hayt punches the code. The lights on the panel, flicker, and spark as the lock rotates and the door begins to open. Light spills out from the crack into the tunnel. The panel sparks again and the door freezes in place.

Hayt places a hydraulic jack in the door and manually work the jack. The heavy steel door slowly swings open far enough for Hayt to squeeze inside. “I’m in.”

Mike joins him inside. They walk into the fifth level of the site, past a huge “5” painted on the wall next to the door and into a central corridor.

The corridor is dimly lit by a small rope of lights pinioned in rough intervals to the concrete floor.

Mike looks left and right and then at Hayt. Hayt looks at the map strapped to his forearm and turns right, following the corridor. Their steps echo ahead and behind them.

“Hellooo!”

Hayt jumps slightly at Mike’s outburst. Mike shrugs, “Well what do you say? We, as technically trained and competent individuals are the first two members of the first rescue of the first underground habitat in existence. Yet in the same sense, we’re just two down to earth people walking down a corridor. I mean, they’re professionals too.”

“You can be inappropriate sometimes.”

“It’s called being polite.”

“So having gotten to a place of relative solitude and in the midst of the possible beautiful thoughts therein, they will no doubt be delighted to be dragged back in to the common nerf speech of polite society? Hi. The whole country just spent millions of dollars and I just risked my own life to have a pizza with you. Where’s the john?”

“Oddly, that would be the better part of professional courtesy.”

“Maybe in your world. No. I take that back. Not even in your world. You laugh like that and then say something like that?! You know something you’re scared to say and you cover it up with bullshit polite speak. …but I suppose it would be better than an implied “You guys couldn’t keep it together so we had to come save your ass.”

“See there? You wouldn’t like it very much if, through no fault of your own, the shoe were on the other foot.”

Hayt appears at the bend of the tunnel shaking his head, looks down the passageway, continues toward the camera and passes underneath. Mike is close behind.

Jack switches views and watches them from behind as they made their way away from the camera. He taps the keyboard and bringst them up on a different view from overhead.

——————————–

The hospital:

Henry knocks on the door and peers in slowly.

Dmitiri is in bed, bandages over both eyes, sucking on a package of juice with a straw. A nurse is writing on a chart.

Henry: You look the same plus eye patches. Why’d they keep you?

Dmitiri: American decadence has corrupted me. I am weak. Henry! It is good to hear the voice of someone I know. Sit down…anywhere.

The nurse smiles at Henry and leaves. “He’s always like this?”

Henry: Always. You’ve got your sense of humor. You can’t be too bad off.

Dmitiri doesn’t answer.

Henry sits, pushing the magazine he has carried with him onto the night stand. “Sorry, I wasn’t thinking. I brought you a magazine. Traditional hospital gift. I guess I really should have let Laura pick it out.”

Dmitri: Laura is good?

Henry: Yeah. Laura is Laura. So how long..

Dmitri: Is anyone with you?

Henry: No, just me. They’re getting together a little something for you at the Institue. Gunther and the guys. Even jack. You know how it is. It’s your turn.

Dmitri: Is anyone in the room?

Henry: Just us.

Dmitri: I have to tell, to ask you something.”

Henry: About what happened?

Dmitri: The laughter–the sounds came over the speaker. The artifact immeditately lit up–I thought it was going to explode.

Henry leans closer to the bed. “You’re saying that guy laughing activated the artifact?”

Dmitri: I saw you there.

Henry: Yeah. I was..

Dmitiri shakes his head. “No. In the light. You were laughing.”

Henry: Uh, no. I was with you in the office.

“I saw you there! Listen to me.” Dmitiri whoarsely whispers. “You were there–and you were laughing. And when you laughed there was another light. It was so wonderful. It was so wonderful I thought I would die.”

Henry: Maybe you mistook …

Dmitri: No. It was you. You must tell me the way to get there.

Henry: Tell you what?

Dmitri: How.

Henry: How to what?”

Dmitri: It was you! Tell me how.

Henry: Calm down. How to do what?

Dmitri: To do it. To laugh like that. To be like that. To say it–to pronounce the artifact. To say me in that language. You know. I saw you there. You must tell me.

Henry sit very still.

“Stop pretending you don’t know. We are friends. It was you. You know! You…” Dmitiri subsides into a coughing fit. An alarm begins in the room.

The nurse rushes in. “What did you do?”

“Nothing.” Henry said, rising rubbing his hands on his pants. “I didn’t do anything. It’s a mistake. He’s…mistaken.” He backs away while the nurse attends Dmitri.

Henry walks to the nurses station. The secretary looks up.
“Could you tell me how Doctor Pavolvich in three nineteen is doing?”

Secretary: “I’m sorry sir, I’m not his physician. But Dr. Hendricks is right there. You can ask him.”

Henry thanks the woman and approachs the man sitting at a small desk behind the counter, making notes on a chart. “Excuse me. I’m a co-worker of Dr. Pavolvich in three nineteen. I was wondering how he was doing?”

The doctor, a tall, balding man, who dwarfs the chair in which he sits impatiently waves his pen without looking up. “He’ll get his sight back over time. There was no permanent damage. But he won’t be ready to go back to work for at least several weeks.”

Henry: Is he in any pain?

The man lookes up with a frown. “No. Not unless he’s good at hiding it. He’s comfortable. Had some headaches but nothing unexpected. He’s fortunate.”

Henry: So he’s not taking anything that would make him…woozy?”

Doctor: No. His eyes are the only reason he’s here. He’s got a heart murmur, that’s why we’ve got him on the monitor. But that’s not related to his accident.

“Thank you.” Henry backs away and walks toward the elevators. Dmitri has calmed down and appears as if nothing has happened. Henry watches, as the elevator doors close, the nurse hang another bag of fluids.

He has to get outside. The elevator moves down one floor and stops.

A nurse and doctor get on, followed by a custodian pushing a cart. The nurse and doctor talk in low tones over a chart. The custodian stares at Henry’s shoes.

The elevator stops again. A woman almost came on, sees it is crowed and motions she will wait for another. All of them cast serruptitious eyes at Henry. He stares at the woman until the doors close to be seen by the others as staring very reasonably and uninterestedly at another human being. The doctor turns to him. “Are you alright?”

It’s not me! “I’m fine. Why do you ask?”

————-

The Institiute–

Jack sits in his office watching the misson unfold, a scotch on ice in his hand. He looks from the monitor to the ice floating in his glass, then drains the contents. A burning shot of satisfaction and courage spread through him as the whiskey flows down. Everything is proceeding exactly on schedule, just as they had predicted.

It’s really true!

He pours himself another as he watches the search continue level by level. The video switches between the voices in an eerie resemblance to the video he had watched only weeks before. An elation, an expansion of something in the pit of his stomach won’t go away. He can’t drown it with the scotch.

——————————————-

Genesis 19:14 …But he was as if he jested, in the sight of his sons-in-law.

In the Name of Jesus Christ, Amen

My apologies to the readers of the Laughter Thieves novel in progress/serialization. Here is chapter 15. I had thought I already posted it. Sorry for posting ch’s 16 and 17 and skipping 15.

If you haven’t gotten to chapter fifteen yet, then …everything is fine; nothing to see here, move along. :)

I’m working on a page for the novel itself. As it is if you click on the category “Laughter Thieves” you’ll get the novel, but the presentation is backwards for a novel though perfect for a blog (you get the latest chapter which is a backwards order rather than the usual linear and forward order of chapter one, chapter two, etc…) The result is a read down, then go back up experience. Not good form.

Also working on an mp3 audio reading of it.

You’re welcome to print it out for an easier read. Just don’t sell it, barter or advertise with it. Worpress comes with a built in “print template”. Click on the ‘laughter thieves’ category (for now) and wait for the page to load, then right click and ‘print’.

Enjoy. Comments welcome.

———-

Chapter 15

Underground:

The crew are gathered in the mess of the complex, eating a meal.

Mary: (to Albrite) What do you think it is?

Albrite: I don’t know. Maybe..

Gregg: The word generation makes sense now.

Hayt: Yeah. I got the sense that if I said the right thing it would give me whatever I wanted. All I had to know was the right words.

Izzy: This thing turned on when we got here. First it was a cave, now it’s ..whatever it is.

Mike: And it only reacts to our voices.

Albrite: That’s the thing. Our voices. Not our steps. Not if you drop something. Just our voices. It didn’t turn on for the other crew.

Mike: You think it killed them?

Albrite: I don’t know.

Mary: What is it?

Albrite: Best guess? Translation device.

Izzy: Translation to what? For what? How does something that old know English?

Albrite: It doesn’t have to be the English. It can’t be for that reason. It’s us. Our voices. English is just the latest in a long line of languages that have come and gone.

Mike: Language moves on. Why not use mathematics? We sent equations with Voyager specifically to overcome the whole pronunciation gap.

Albrite: Which hopes there is not a significant alphabet gap. But if there are those out there who don’t know mathematics, they won’t recognize what is said. They’ll think it’s gibberish and background noise if they haven’t reached a certain stage of civilization even if they hear it. By having us speak to it, and teaching us with shape, they deliver whatever they had in mind and don’t have to worry about where we started or where we were when we encountered it.

Izzy: What is it about our voices that is more than the way we speak? Beyond pronunciation? What you’re talking about is almost a dummy proof way of communicating. There is no such way.

Mary: What do you mean by that?

Izzy: Well, I’m no philosopher. But it seems the intelligence has to already be there, right? And the intelligence uses the speech. Intelligence is what manipulates the language.

Gregg: That makes sense. Free will.

Izzy: So there is no such way that could just cut across a language barrier because you can’t do that because of the free will of the other. The fundamental intelligence has to be there first.

Albrite: Yes there is—emotion. The heart is the key—it’s the thing in common with all languages no matter the level of advancement. Everybody understands a smile no matter what language they speak. Everybody understands laughter. It’s a universal—which points to a universal heart—the thing that understands it.

Izzy: How would they do that?

Albrite: Scenerio: You know in advance something could or is going to happen to your race—or you. Your knowledge is going to be destroyed by ..an asteroid. So you make a device that just by understanding the message it conveys restores those who come after to what they once were—your identity. The myth of the fall of man could be a story of collective memory of the overthrow of an advanced civilization. They’ve already gto your heart. All you have to do is give them knowledge through that common bond.

Gregg: Don’t you mean their identity?

“It takes your mind.” Jimmy taps his head. “.. and you can’t remember anything. Not even who you are. Not even your name.”

Albrite: But it doesn’t take the language. You didn’t wake up speaking Farsi. (to the others) So you can give them what was theirs by virtue of being your real descendant that they would never know unless you told them.

Mike: That’s not scenario—that’s religion. And it also presumes whatever built that thing is honest and is your real ancestor assuming your theory is correct.

Albrite: But even religion has roots in fact.

Izzy: Scenerio: You’re the evil that’s about to get its ass kicked. You make up some device to get you out of prison later on. Only somebody else—just by understanding, sets you free. It takes advantage of the mere existence of those not in prison who will find the device to activate it. The device automatically does what its programmed to do—get you out.

Gregg: What are you? Immortal. A word?

Izzy: There is the hand. The rest I don’t know. We have to consider all sides.

Mike: Only if you already think we can control it. If we can’t control it, then what is the difference?

Albrite: That device, whatever it is, is that massive hall. I swear, I got the impression that if I said the right thing, it would have showed me the cure for cancer. No kidding. I don’t know what its saying, but it’s important. And it’s not just word order. It’s how that word is spoken.

Mike: That’s the basis of all witchcraft. Say the special words the special way under the right circumstances in the right environment. Presto! Power.

Izzy: Everybody dreams of being the real son or daughter of some king somewhere and getting restored to the throne. Everybody wants to be more than they really are no matter how much they have.

Albrite: It could really be a failsafe against another device or attack by an enemy. You build a device to pass on your knowledge to those you know will come after. To restore to them what was lost or taken. But you already know that languages come and go.

Mary: Which means you’ve been around long enough to observe that.

Izzy: Which means you guys always think it’s about acquiring new knowledge no matter the danger or what it costs. I know that and I’ve only been around for forty three years. Just because we were all born into a world where speech already exists doesn’t automatically mean we need to get knowledge from somewhere else to prove ours is the truth. Our speech might not need fixing. Our knowledge either. Bobby, the whole crew has just vanished. That thing is the only oddity in the vicinity. Now we don’t have com ops with Virgina. There is a pattern here and its not looking good.

Albrite: The thing that remains the same is who we are as beings. We’re the physical –and spiritual progeny of others like us. Of somebody! The language, the shapes of alphabets, the pronunciation changes, but speech itself always remains.

Mike: The human heart will be the same.

Albrite: ..and the wall reacts to the emotions in what is being said. You can say the same thing in a different tone and get the same response. But if you say something again and you are angry or impatient, the response changes. I got angry when Izzy said we had to meet up here. I wanted to stay and see what else I could see. When I said the same thing over again, it changed. It isn’t just the word order or the voice.

Mike: They built a device that depends on the heart to be the same? And to be reflected in the speech.?

Izzy: Why us? Why not the first team? They have the same language, the same hearts.

Albrite: Could be a frequency, a harmonic in your voice that isn’t in theirs. Hard to say. I’m just speculating here.

Gregg: How will we know we got what they are trying to give us? How do we know we don’t already have something we don’t want from it?

Silence.

Gregg: What if it did something to the others? I mean, with as many technological advances we’ve been through ourselves, in our own lifetime, let’s not get dazzled by the gadget. What if they are trying to give us a lie? What if our ancestors destroyed them because they were worse than the Nazis and this is their get-even device?

Silence.

Albrite: Depends on your enemy and the stakes involved I guess. But it could be. But even if it is..

Mary and Izzy: ..we need to study it..

Izzy: ..and see if it has anything to do with the others not being here. It’s odd. And their absence seems to be set up to be convenient. As if we should just accept it.

Mike: ..and start talking to it.

Gregg: Is there a protocol on encountering new technologies?

Mary: A how-to for the unknown?

Izzy: This was discussed in the late nineteen forties; updated in the nineties. Basically a bunch of psychological crap for us that has nothing to do with whatever we might encounter. The view in the protocols assumes alien technology is produced with minds like ours with more time to know the universe; a kind of older us mentality. The assumption has always been that we are essentially the same no matter the physical form.

Hayt: Like saying there really is no such thing as an alien?

Mary: Yeah. That’s like saying there is no such thing as alien. That there can’t be by definition.

Izzy: Basic honesty: the alien you can’t see with your mind or heart doesn’t exist in terms of defending against it.

Mike: Whether or not they exist? What good is an alien you can’t understand? We can’t live that way. We’d be seeing conspiracies around every corner.

Gregg: Isn’t that what we do? We screw ourselves with our own free will.

Izzy: We have to be aware of our own true limitations. To say we don’t have any is nonsense. The other crew could very well have met up with what they did not perceive to be a limitation. Wake up.

Albrite: Just because we don’t understand it doesn’t mean it is alien. It could really be our own ancestor’s device. It really could be. We have to interface with it. What could be easier than speaking? If we’re right, it’s made to be stupid proof and language independent. It doesn’t have to be an insult.

Hayt: But what will that do to us? What is it doing to us –if anything?

Izzy: Right now it’s forcing the path of our speech –just like it did to the others.

Albrite: Environment does that. It’s supposed to. But it welcomed us. Us. We could have lost something as a race that it is trying to give back to us. Our inheritance.

Hayt: Technically, it welcomed Izzy, Mike and Jimmy and me. Now we won’t know what would’ve happened if you, Gregg, or Mary had been in there first. It’s too late for that.

Izzy: I don’t think we should speculate on that.

Albrite: But it reacts to my voice too. We can see if it reacts to the rest of you.

Mary: You guys are special.

Gregg: Don’t be too eager to be special. Being special is not all it’s sold to be. My great grandparents were in Auschwitz. Jews are special. Look what’s happening to them.

Mike: But the way we were brought up was to make the individual a flexible, multi-purpose being that could survive the encounter on the spot, rather than a robot that follows a given protocol.

Jimmy: Maybe it’s a robot learning from us.

——–

Hayt punches up the coms again to Virginia. There is only static as he runs through the frequencies.

——–

In the great hall:

Albrite: It’s a megalith. The earth has many megalithic structures that are thousands of years old.

Mary: But that architecture is always rough. This is far better than any of the surface examples. This is a palace.

Mike: (to Albrite) If it’s what you say it is, it isn’t a megalith. It’s the Metalith.
“And God took Man and put him into the garden of Eden to till it and to guard it.”

Gregg: Metalith. I like that. You’re alright, man.

Izzy: Guard it from what?

Mike: That’s one of those controversial questions of history.

Albrite: History? That’s not history. That’s myth even though it may have some true elements. I’ve always thought it could be a story of the overthrow of some advanced civilization told as metaphor.

Jimmy: Why is it controversial?

Mike: Impossible to know what was there before the fall of man as men are. They’re all the way they are. They’d have to be something else to know that.

Jimmy runs his hand over the smooth surface. “It feels like rock.” A blob morphs out and recedes. Jimmy backs away and falls against Gregg.

Izzy stars at the wall. “Somebody tell a joke.”

A shape morphs out and back.

Albrite smiles. “You mean somebody else?” The others can’t help but smile. A small shelf morphs out of the rock and settles into place.

Gregg steps back: Hello.

————————-

Jack

“Hello!” The big macaw walks back and forth on his perch, stops and bobs his head up and down as Jack opens the refrigerator door. “Hello! Whatcha’ gonna dooo?!”

“I hear you Pixy. Hang on.” Jack opens a drawer in the refrigerator and takes out a bag of baby carrots. “Here.” He takes one out of the bag and holds it up in his mouth toward the bird between the bars. The bird bends down and takes it in his mouth. Settling back on his perch, he grasps it with his claw and bites off the end, chewing the pulp with the end of his beak.

Jack takes one out of the bag and bites off half, chewing and watching the bird. He remembers the report, turns and walks toward the door.

The bird drops the carrot. It rolls away on the floor of the cage as it again paces its perch. “Hello! Hello!”

“Sorry Pixy. Business.” The closing door drowns out the bird except for a shriek.

The report of the hand still has him worried. It means there might be other players that understand the potential of the technology. Jack sits in front of the fireplace with the report in one hand and the carrots in the other. No telemeric damage.

He opens another report. Jimmy Bilpo, Israel Baxter, Mary Jo Reynolds, Gregg Arkansan. The Laughter Thieves are here.

He thinks back to those first days of discovery and how small and insignificant it had seemed at first: an anomally on sonar; a crevice; an opening; the cave. Now the first team are all dead and the prophecy is underway; whatever it is or will be. He picks up the last report to forget the uncertainty.

The report is of Henry’s movements. He has been to see a mission pastor. He knows that laughter is the key to the artifact.

Jack throws the report in the pile with the rest and throws the carrots on top, stretches and looks at his watch: They are still in front of the wall and have been at it for over three hours. Something is going to happen. Something has to happen now.

Jack grabs the carrots and walks back into the kitchen. The parrot is sulking; perks up when Jack appears. Jack throws the parrot a carrot. It catches it in its claw and waits, in a wary stare peculiar to parrots. Jack sits down as he crunches on a carrot. The bird quietly tears into its own and eats.

The grandfather clock ticks the minutes away.

Jack: Pixy, you’re the lucky one. You don’t understand all the experiments people say just to fill the time.

————————————————

Henry

Laura Fielding lets just a touch of gray at the temples show through. It makes her seem not so vain, a little wise to herself and at ease with the whole world. She knows Henry loves it. She loves that her gray is beautiful to him.

Fixing dinner is how she has expressed her love for years. The lamb is almost done. She can tell by the color of the skin under the roaster. As Henry comes in the door, she also knows something has happened.

Laura, kissing him and taking his coat: Something happen at work?

Henry, shaking his head: Something at work.

Laura: Well, which is it?

He doesn’t reply but goes to change clothes.

“Dinner in twenty minutes.” she calls after him.

He comes in later in his favorite sweatshirt and jeans toweling his hair: Need any help?

She kisses him again; a simple peck while brushing his face with fingers covered with Italian dressing: You only ask that when you know I could use some but you really just want to stand there.

“Okay. I’ll just stand here.” he says, pulling small bits of a dinner roll off and slowly eating them.

She set two places for them, then pulls him toward the table: I’m starved.

They sit looking at each other over the table.

Laura: So are you going to tell me or do I have to guess?

He picks up his fork: I saw Tom today.

Laura, around a mouthful of casserole: Tom who?

Henry: Tom.

It doesn’t hit her for a second. She slowly puts down her fork: Tom Chambers?

Henry: Yes. He’s been back for five years now–took over the mission from his father.

She nods slowly, holding both hands over her heart and swallowing: Rev.Chambers retired?

Henry: No, he died. Heart attack I think. Tom’s been ordained–he was at a church in Alaska after he ..left.

Laura: I see.

They eat in silence.

Henry: He’s not angry–not at all.

She gives a nervous laugh: “He wouldn’t be. Not Tom. He’s not one to hold a grudge.” She drinks a small swallow of wine. “Why didn’t you tell me Rev. Chambers had died? When is the funeral?”

Henry: Almost three years ago I think. He had retired–that’s when Tom came back.

She almost chokes: You didn’t tell me…”

Henry: I didn’t know. Why go on…

Laura: I always meant to apologize. I just put it off. You know I would never have…

She has turned white.

Henry: Honey, it’s okay. He’s not angry. He understood then it wasn’t personal. So did his Dad. There’s nothing to ..

Laura: I should have gone to him. I meant to…I just put it off. You know I was going to…I’m not that kind of person.

Honey, it’s okay.” he says again. “He doesn’t…”

“We’ll have him over! For dinner. Yes..” she nods to herself. “We’ll have him and his wife over.”

Henry: He’s not married.

Laura: Oh. Oh! I know some people…

Henry: You know Tom. He hasn’t changed. Don’t set him up. He’s perfectly capable…

Laura: Well if he was he would be married by now wouldn’t he? Some men just need a little push, that’s all. You’re not a woman. You don’t understand these things. We’ll..

Henry: Stop!

She freezes and stares at him in surprise. He rarely raises his voice to her. It just isn’t in him to shout.

“Just stop! Trying to make it even just makes it worse. He’s let it go–long ago.” Henry begins to eat and tell her about the telescope project to get her mind off the subject.

She eats in silence listening to him and feeling guilty. She has almost managed to forget. She hasn’t thought of Samuel in over two days.

—————————————————————————–

Hosea 13:1-3 When Ephraim spoke, there was trembling; he exalted himself in Israel: but he trespassed through Baal, and he died. And now they sin more and more, and have made them molten images of their silver, idols according to their own understanding, all of it the work of the craftsmen: they say of them, Let the men that sacrifice kiss the calves. Therefore they shall be as the morning cloud, and as the early dew that passeth away, as the chaff driven with the whirlwind out of the threshing-floor, and as the smoke out of the lattice.

In the Name of Jesus Christ, Amen

Dmitri

At Ufa State Technical University, being blind had not been among the available choices presented to him.

Ever.

There had been physics and mathmatics, the security of a technical job in an advanced world and the love that security could buy from a girl. He had played it conservative and kept his money.

Strange the things that come baldly forced from outside the realm of choice. The forced things turn truth into lies and lies into truth.

He hears the thought quickly, in a rush even as it is brushed aside by others. There has been success and failure in something he never understands, but his mother and his teachers had assured him he will at the proper time.

The time is now.

His use of choice is the determining factor. It proves he is unique and therefore invaluable. He has different choices now; different availabilities.

He has handed his best to others and others to him.

But to no avail.

If everything is truth, why know it? Why be told about it? If everything is scripted, then words are just toys to make the time pass and the soul is on automatic. But if everything is not scripted then..

Dmitri brightened: ..then there is hope. If there are lies here and there, then there is escape from them. Invent the language of hope.

Dmitri sees Henry laughing in a spark of light. Invent the language of hope! Not the language of repetition, of Dmitri, son of another Dmitri, but you as being spoken into existence with no lies possible: unique. Civilization will perish without the language of hope.

It doesn’t work (never has), this device called civilization he is supposed to master. It is a Frankenstein of various parts pulling at a whole job and walking inside …something else.

Civilization is not broken in that it is made to do what it does and performs its function. It moves as something joins the various parts together and makes it run. But it isn’t what he is expected to do.

Dmitri sits in the chair and stares with the expression of rest only the long mental and emotional workout of being in the most rigid of straightjackets in an absolute prison can bring; a clarity that has gone through hopeless as seeing beyond the lies into at least a new set of words. Knowing it is a small glimmer of freedom.

His conversation comes automatically. He understands that all the ends and outs of it have already been written somewhere and he will only walk though them now as if surprised and unpracticed, but that there is hope at the end of the automatic.

Nurse: Why the long face?

Dmitri: I have never been blind before.

Nurse: It’s only temporary.Lack of visual stimulous can have some strange psychological effects. I’ve set you up with someone to talk to if you need it.

Dmitri nods.

Nurse: Do you have anyone you can stay with?

Dmitri: I have friend coming to get me.

Nurse: That’s good. I’ve put your meds in a bag ..

She presses a plastic hospital bag into this hand.

Nurse: ..and there is a foldup cane in it. Remember: the effects should only last a month or two at most. You’ll be back in form in no time at all.

Dmitri: A month. Or Two.

Nurse: Yes. Uh, can your friend sign for you when they get here? Or do you prefer to write it sight unseen?

Dmitri: Yes.

He hears her writing something; sees a clipbard from memory.

Nurse: Okay then. I’ll leave you alone for a while. The button is next to your hand. So..

Dmitri: Yes. Thank you.

DNA. A living language impossible to lie in. It must have been terrible for Henry. He hadn’t thought of it until he had blurted out what he had seen. But it is so ..urgent!

But of course, that is Henry later, not Henry now. Henry now won’t know what to say or do. Dmitri hadn’t thought of it that way. Now it is too late to take back. Henry can’t do it until he can do it. Pushing him won’t help. It cannot be spoken until it is made.

He understands what it must be like to be Henry.

“So this horse goes into a bar.” Henry’s voice drifts in from the hall.

Dmitri: And bar keeper says “Why the long face”?

Henry smiles: You ready to go?

Dmitri: I think it is not such bad idea to ride a cow every now and then.

Henry: Take it slow for a while. I thought I’d take you home with me. We’ve got the room, a housekeeper than comes in during the day. Monita, you’ll like her. She’s ..spirited.

Dmitri: Will it be quiet?

Henry pushes the wheelchair toward the elevator: If you don’t mess with her; maybe more than you want. But you can ride to work with me if you like, keep your hand in what’s going on until the sight comes back.

Dmitri: They want you to sign for me.

Henry stops and heads toward the desk: All your parts in place? Nothing missing?

Dmitri: I suppose. What do I know?

The nurse tells Henry the routine and gives him the prescriptions; appointment slips. He signs.

——

In the car, the sounds of traffic go by. Dmitri makes it a point not to turn his head suddenly at the louder noises; not to do the archtypical mannerisms of the blind.

Dmitri: I’m sorry I ..said those things.

Henry says nothing for a time, then tells him what he has heard from Tom.

It isn’t true. Creating Speech has not already been made. Invent it. Don’t let them deceive you.

Say it.

————————————————

Underground:

Hayt slams the pick to the rock face. Small chunks of the material fall off, only to be replaced by more in the spot from which they were torn

As he rests from the effort, the rock slowly grows over the hole; implacably solid with a dull shine. He wipes the sweat off of his face; takes in large gulps of air. “That’s what happened to them.”

Albrite slides down the tunnel wall onto the floor. “It just keeps coming back. They couldn’t get out.” He runs his fingers through his hair. “This isn’t supposed to happen. This isn’t right.”

Mike: You knew about this?

Albrite: I was just supposed to come and..

Gregg: (to Albrite) You knew about this?!

Albrite: No. I’m just saying ..of course not. I didn’t expect this. How could I know about it?

Izzy: Nothing we can do about it now. They went into the tunnels. For whatever reason, something wants us to go that way as well.

Gregg: Something? You mean that thing.

Mary: We don’t know that they are dead. It could be ..a good thing. Maybe they—and we, just need a little push in the right direction.

Gregg: (as he drops the sledge hammer to the floor): I don’t trust it. And I thought you didn’t like it.

Mary: It doesn’t make any difference how I feel, does it? First it wants us to learn from it, as if its got something to teach us based on how we feel; then it forces us no matter what we feel.

Albrite: Like God.

Jimmy leans on the wall, watching them: “..oon inder seal.” What does that mean?”

Albrite doesn’t look up: It’s “und in der Seele”. It means
“and in the soul…”

———————

Jack watches as they walk toward the opening. Mike is the last inside. As they step in the rock seals them in and the video goes blank.

———————

Underground
In the Megalith:

The sound of their steps is swallowed quickly. They walk into the darkness, lit only by the lights in their suits.

No one says a word.

Thirty minutes passes. Then an hour.

Izzy: Pace count?

Hayt: Twenty seven thirty four. O two at normal levels. This thing is laid out on a north south axis. Magnetic.

Mike: It was set up to float in the surrounding rock as it waited. The magnetic poles shift over time.

Jimmy: Waited for what?

Gregg: For us. For lucky us.

Hayt: That means something.

Gregg: What?

Hayt: I don’t know.

Izzy: What do we know about our speech? What is it about our speech that it knows?

Mary: The words are sounds.

Albrite: Compression waves.

Jimmy: It’s not us.

Gregg: We are more than just what we can say.

Albrite: It could be that thing is just arbitrarily doing stuff and we’re associating intelligence with it that isn’t really there. The way we unconsciously try to force meaning onto every sound we hear—like there is really no such thing as gibberish; no such thing as lack of intelligence.

Mike: After you’ve seen what it has done? It’s a little late to be playing the objective doubter. We need to know what it knows about our speech and what it is doing with it.

Hayt: You mean lack of meaning? It’s a tool.

Albrite: How do you know?

Hayt: I’m talking about our speech. It’s a tool.

They walk in silence for a time.

Mike: It is less than us. Our speech is less than us.

Mary: The way a component is less than the whole.

Hayt: We use it to let other’s who understand our speech know what is in our minds and hearts.

Izzy: That’s the textbook answer.

Mike: It is less powerful than us. It’s powerless enough to be useful.

Albrite: And powerful enough to get the job done.

Gregg: It was already here when we were born. Its older than us.

Hayt: We learn more of it over time.

Izzy: But what is the job that’s being done? What are we doing right now?

Mary: And those that can’t speak it or learn it are retarded. If children haven’t learned a certain amount by a certain age, we know they have organic ..inaccuracies in the brain.

Jimmy: Can we stop this? This isn’t a normal place and you’re all saying things that aren’t normal on top of that. Can we just get out of here?

Everything looks the same. Columns extend into the depths of the light to the right and left and now behind and in front of them.

Izzy: This thing didn’t turn on for us. It turned on for our speech.

“Whilst the elephantine faires tiptoe around us.” Gregg smirks. (to Hayt) “I’m telling you, you’re a rennassance man in disguise. I didn’t know you had it in you.”

Hayt: I’m a complex person.

Izzy hears less noise behind him and turns to see Mary and Mike by Jimmy’s side: Let’s take a break.

Hayt and Albrite walk toward the wall on the right. Their voices drift through the hall; their lights play over the wall in quick search for whatever comes to their voice.

Izzy sits on the floor. Greggs, Jimmy, Mike and Mary lean against a column.

Mike: You can’t stop them. That’s what it wants.

Izzy: Why can’t they see that?

Mike(to Izzy): How long have you been with NASA?

Izzy: A few years.

Mike: How many missions do you know of where a group of people are not picked from inside the programs?

Izzy: This is the first.

A light plays over the wall. “Cool!” Hayt’s voice and their laughter erupt several minutes later. Hayt comes running back.

Hayt: You gotta see this!

Izzy: What did he say?

Hayt shakes his head, with hands on his knees to catch his breath. “Uh uh. You gotta come see this.”

Izzy: I’m sitting right here.

Hayt: ( to Gregg ) C’mon. You haven’t seen anything like this!

Gregg frowns as he gets up: “I’ll be right back.”

They walk back over to the wall. Hayt shoves Albrite. “Say it again.” He stands getting his breath back, almost under control.

(wall reacts with a shape of sharp angles but no discernable utility)

Albrite turns, a glow on his face; intoxicated. He turns to the wall. “All men are created equal.”

Nothing happens.

Hayt hits the wall: C’mon!

(The wall produces a shape of angles unrecognizable as any object.)

Hayt: Do it again!

(A blob with a yellow light erupts on one side and recedes.)

Gregg: Yep. Gotta admit– that’s cool.

Hayt: But it didn’t do it. That’s not it. It was a big triangle with lights. The lights went over the whole wall!

(wall reacts with shapes that look like alphabets that rise to the surface and recede.)

Gregg: I believe you. We saw the lights from over there.

Another blob appears and recedes. “But I’m tired. Get some rest.” A blob vaguely resembling a spoon comes and recedes as Gregg walks away.

“Some rest? How can you rest now? Think of the possibilities, man! This thing could give us—anything! It’s just like a .a lock—a combination. They were right.” Hayt bounces alongside Gregg: “I’ll show you, man. You’ll see.” He turns and walks back to the wall, staring up at it with fascination.

Albrite sits cosslegged on the floor, trying to concentrate and annoyed at Hayt’s antics.

—————————————————-

Psalm 19:2,3 Day unto day uttereth speech, and night unto night sheweth knowledge. There is no speech and there are no words, yet their voice is heard.

In the Name of Jesus Christ, Amen

Chapter Sixteen

Jack’s office

Jack sits leaning on his elbows, restng his chin in his hands; looking over the files: Where did he go?

The young man adjusts his coat in the chair: Downtown–Fifth Street Misson. He met the guy that runs the place in his office after serving food to the hungry.

The Young Man speaks in a deadpan voice. It is impossible to tell whether or not he is being sarcastic.

Jack doesn’t look up: I read that part. What did they talk about?

Young Man: Hard to say, didn’t have anything on site.

Jack: And now?

Young Man: Now we do.

Jack nods and closes the file: I want video as well as audio.

Young Man: Already in place.

Jack: Who’s the guy?

Young Man: Thomas Albert Chambers. The third. Took over the place from his father. Lives off and runs the misson on a trust fund set up by his grandfather. They’ve got history.

Jack: How far back?

The young man consults his own file: They grew up together. Same church Tom’s father pastored.

Jack: He pastored a church as well as ran a soup kitchen?

The Young Man nods: Seperate entities. Got a lot of support from his own congregation according to the financial records. Everything seemed to roll along nicely until Henry’s kid dissappeared.

Jack looks up: Henry has children?

Young Man: Had. A boy. Samuel James Fielding. Dissappeared when he was ten. Apparently Tom was the kid’s sunday school teacher. No one really wants to say why but Henry’s wife,..

Jack: Laura.

Young Man: Yeah, Laura. She accused this guy Tom of filling his impressionable head with religious garbage–She didn’t count herself among the faithful. Practically made it look like it was his fault the kid was gone. Made such a stink in the church Tom was asked to leave. Police never had any solid suspects. Wrong guy in the wrong circumstance by all accounts. He went into the Army, did four, went to Alaska, stayed six years, was ordained in the Presbyerian Church. Came back about five years ago when his father died. Has no connection with the church, just runs the misson. Sermons on Sundays and Wednesdays, room and board the rest. Solid reputation.

Jack: The boy?

Young Man: Hasn’t been heard from or seen since. It happens.

Jack stands up and walks over to the window. “I never knew he had a son.” he says, looking at the lights of Washington. “I’ve known him for over ten years.” He turns abruptly, “I want to know everything they discuss. Everything.”

Young Man: You can access the misson from here. The code is ‘lighthouse’.”

Jack raises an eyebrow: Think that’s funny?

The man gets up to leave: Somewhat appropriate?

Jack: How go the preparations?

Young Man: On schedule.

Jack pours himself a drink. “It won’t be long now.” He replaces the stopper. “They’re at the wall.”

Young Man: So you believe it?

Jack: It doesn’t matter what I believe.

Young Man: Even given that it changed for them, I still don’t see what they can do with it that we can’t.

Jack: Maybe there isn’t. Maybe there is.

—————————————

Underground:

“What about that artifact—the thing that was in the hand? It might be a key of some sort.” Mary sits against a column with Izzy watching the others speak to the wall.

Izzy: We haven’t found anything but smooth rock that dances for us.

Mary: We just haven’t said the right thing.

Izzy: In any case we don’t have the key, if that’s what it is.

Hayt (at the wall): Got somethinnn’.

Izzy walks over. A childs hat in full color with a twirling propeller on top is sitting on a shelf. “What did you say?”

Hayt hesitates: Uh, I don’t want to say.

Shapes morph in an out underneath the shelf.

Gregg comes over from his section of the wall: What do you mean you don’t want to say? That’s what we’re doing.

Hayt frowns: Enebriated elephants danced daintily under the canopy of trees whilst fairys tiptoed to the celestial sounds. I just made it up.

Another hat appears; not in color and with no twirler.

Gregg smiles a wide smile, holding in a laugh: With more feeling next time. And whilst? Whilst? Not really a scientist’s word is it?

A shelf appears with a rock ball on it.

Gregg shoves Hayt. “You renaissance man, you.” He laughs. “Whilst!”

“Now you see—that’s why I didn’t want to say. I knew you’d do that. What were you saying anyway? ‘These two protozo-eye slide into a bar?’ But Hayt is laughing too and shoves back. He mimicks being a tiptoeing elephant.

A four foot section of wall morphs out from the floor and slides up the wall, taking out the shelf and hat before disappearing into the mist of the ceiling.

“Whoa!” Gregg back away and looks up at the ceiling.

Mary: Where did they go?

Shapes morph in and out as they speak, resembling odd shapes of random density, texture and angles.

Hayt: If they were in here when this thing ..cleaned itself, then..

Mike walks up to the wall: “No beast but has some pity. But I have none and therefore am no beast.”

A wooden chair morphs out and is left on the floor beside him. He runs his hands over it: Real wood and real leather.

A shape goes in and out.

“Sit in it.” It is Albrite, extending a towelette to Mike and indicating his nose.

Mike gives a small smile as he wipes his nose and the towelette comes away red.”I think not.” As he walks away a glass curve extended outward and curved inward to form a circle, then, rotated fourty-five degrees and receded along the curve above the chair.

Albrite (to the wall) : Nicht die Menschen der grossen Sehnsucht, des grossen Ekels, des grossen Überdrusses und Das, was ihr den Überrest Gottes nanntet. Nein! Nein! Drei Mal Nein! Auf Andere warte ich hier in diesen Bergen und will meinen Fuss nicht ohne sie von dannen heben. auf Höhere, Stärkere, Sieghaftere, Wohlgemuthere, Solche, die rechtwinklig gebaut sind an Leib und Seele: lachende Löwen müssen kommen. Oh, meine Gastfreunde, ihr Wunderlichen, - hörtet ihr noch Nichts von meinen Kindern? Und dass sie zu mir unterwegs sind? Sprecht mir doch von meinen Gärten, von meinen glückseligen Inseln, von meiner neuen schönen Art, - warum sprecht ihr mir nicht davon?

A swastika appears in gold, with the image of a lion standing on the top and melts back into the wall.

Mary: Is that opera?

Hayt: What did you just say? la-chendee lowen moosen co-mun? Wonder lickin’? (he looks at Gregg) I like Art?. Freakin’ ..alas klar herr commissar!

Gregg smiles and almost laughs.

Shapes morph in and out.

Mike: It’s a quote from Niezsche, from Thus spoke Zarathustra:

———–

Zarathustra looks at Mike through the wall. The others look at Zarathustra.

———-

Mike (looks at Albrite curiously as he speaks) “Not for you do I wait here in these mountains; not with you I descend for the last time. You come unto me only as a sign that the higher ones are on the way to me,–Not the men of great passion, of great loathing, of great satiety; them you call the remnant of God; Oh no. No! Three times No. For others do I wait here in these mountains, and will not lift my foot from hence without them; For higher ones, stronger ones, those of the dominion, merrier ones, for such as are built squarely in body and soul: Laughing lions must come! O guests, you strange and little ones–have you yet heard nothing of my children? And that they are on the way to me? Do speak unto me of my gardens, of my Happy Islands, of my new, beautiful race–why do you not speak unto me therein?

The wall parts and deposits a large gold swastika with a lion walking on top. The lion leaps off; runs away into the darkness, before appearing again on the fringes of the lights. It roars in anger, walking back and forth just in the darkness.

The wall doesn’t react.

They stand stunned at the sight.

Albrite: Didn’t know you spoke German. Or Niezsche.

The wall reacts with strange, random shapes.

Mike: Oder Zarathustrian? Hier und dort. He looks at his arms and hands: Ein Feind.

The wall reacts continually as they speak with random shapes and textures.

———————-

The others look at Zarathustra. He shrugs.

———————-

Gregg: Intellectuals. I was right: You’re Mike-a-delic, man. Albrite –Don’t say anything else. Three times nine? Got some swine?

( Their consciousness of the wall recedes for a time..)

Mike: Worse still. I’m too stupid to be embarrassed by my ignorance of your etiquette of disdain.

Hayt suppresses a smile; hold his hands out. “What? I am the only one who sees what is going on here?”

Izzy: Please tell us. Because the point up to now is that we don’t.

Hayt shrugs: .. But we don’t have to be reduced to..gibberish.

No door has appeared.

Izzy: But not enough to finish it.

(the wall reacts)

Izzy kicks the wall in frustration. Nothing.

Jimmy smiles.

Izzy (to Jimmy): What?! Say something!

(wall reacts)

Jimmy smiles in defense: What will I say?

The wall ripples from top to bottom for as far as they can see; sounds like distant thunder roll down from above.

The hairs on the back of Hayt’s neck rise and he looks narrowly at Jimmy. “You’ve been holding back.”

——-

In the galley.

“It reacts after you are done. I said something, what, three, four sentences long and nothing appeared until I was finished.” Gregg sits down with coffee.

“And the thing it seems to represent is how you feel—not how you’re trying to make someone else feel with the words.” Albrite sips tea as the others eat.

Hayt: (to Albrite) You not hungry?

Albrite shakes his head: Tea is fine. My stomach hurts something awful today.

Mary: Mine did the other day—out of nowhere.

“And you can’t..” Gregg uses his fork for emphasis, “..fake it. You can’t say something you think will make someone else laugh or something that you think will be sobering.”

Albrite: I just said that.

Mary: Two different people saying the same thing gets two different results. Or saying the same thing in different languages.

“And the chair is still there. It’s real. Just like the lion, who is getting angry because he is hungry. Bravo, Mike.” Gregg continues. “Did you think that up there on the spot? That is true talent.” He shakes his head as he cuts a potato with his knife, the watch flashing in the light. “I’m glad I never know what to say.”

Hayt: You’re just simple and lame that way.

Mike: God gave it to me.

Gregg: God gave you something to say to a wall? The German guy who wrote that was a Christian?

Hayt and Gregg exchange looks.

Mike: Yes. And he was an atheist. God created atheists too. To show me–all of us, something. What I don’t understand.

“Scenerio: it doesn’t want us to leave.” Izzy comes into the galley. “The tunnel to the subterrene is completely filled in with that same kind of rock.”

—————————————————————-

Henry:

Laura leans against the counter as she watches Henry hand Lizzy a drink. She watches as he points out the specimen Virginia Stewartia just beyond the patio. She smiles as it seems Lizzy is impressed. As Henry enters through the patio doors, she says, “Is he coming?”

“I told you not to set him up. I told him you wouldn’t do that. This is bad timing. And an attorney? She’s going to cross-examine him for marital fitness while we eat?” He frowns as he opens the freezer. “We’re out of ice.”

“I’m an attorney. You did okay. We’ll be fine.” Laura eyes the table critically. “You’re sure he’s coming?”

Henry: “Yes. He said he’d be here. I’ll get the blame of course for the set-up.” He sees the headlights through the window. “He’s here.”

Laura takes a deep breath and brushes her hair back: How do I look?

Henry: Apologetic.

Laura: Very funny. I mean..

Henry: If you looked any better I’d be jealous. To be perfectly honest I am jealous. You never dress up like this..

Laura: Okay, I’ll take the soup out. The soup first.

Henry: I’ll bring the bread. You answer the door..

Laura: Nice try.

They leave the kitchen together.

A moment later Henry meets Tom at the door. They shake hands. He takes Tom’s coat.

Henry: Any trouble finding us?

“No, you gave good directions. I’m impressed.” Tom looks around. “This is really nice. Country lane, a house in the woods on a hill overlooking the river. I’m glad for you.”

“Thanks. Uh,” Henry pulls Tom aside. “You understand I’m a married man and sometimes I have to do things..”

Tom: She set me up.

Henry: Well I wouldn’t exactly call it that. It’s more of a..

Tom: Set-up?

Henry: Exactly–It wasn’t my idea. I was against it….

Tom smiles: It’s okay. We’ll make it good.

“What are you two conspiring in here about? Talking in hushed tones? Don’t you know that’s rude?” Laura comes in with her arms outstretched. Tom takes her hands and she pulls them wider. “Nonsense. I want a hug.”

They hug and Laura introduces the woman standing behind her. “Tom this is my friend Elizabeth. We work together at the office. She’s a tax attorney.”

Tom and Elizabeth exchange slightly embarressed hellos and smiles and shake hands.

“I had been meaning to have her out for the longest time. But we’ve been so busy. When Henry said you were back in town I thought it would be the perfect oppurtunity to entertain. Of course we don’t get to as much as we’d like.”

There is a small silence.

Laura: It’s not as if you two aren’t grown people. I haven’t set you up or anything.

Tom lets out a small laugh: Of course you did. But I’m glad. It’s true I don’t get out much.

Laura: Tom darling, there is such a thing as being too candid.

Elizabeth: So what do you do?

Tom: I…

Henry: He runs the Fifth Street Misson downtown.

Laura: He can speak for himself, dear.

Elizabeth: Oh? Are you in administration?

Tom: I’m afraid I’m adminstration, part-time labor and board all rolled into one.

Elizabeth: That must give you a lot of satisfaction.

Tom: It keeps me busy.

“We can do this while we eat.” Laura says, taking Tom’s arm and walking to the dining room.

“Could you ask the blessing for us?” Laura commands, looking at Tom.

They bowed their heads and Tom speaks grace.

The food is excellent.

Conversation dies as they eat. Laura keeps a speculative eye on the both of them to see how they were reacting to each other. She is pleased to see they seem to be enjoying themselves.

“What shall we talk about?” she asks between the lamb and the dessert. “I know! I have a question: What do you want to be when you grow up, Tom? Henry wants to be a tree.”

“A tree?” Elizabeth asks, looking at Henry.

“Actually I have raised my expectations since we had that particular conversation.” says Henry, now on his third glass of wine. “But at the time I hoped to be a myfruit tree. Long story. What about you, Tom?”

Tom: Well I don’t know. I never thought about it. Here or in heaven? Elizabeth?”

Elizabeth: Hmm. Maybe a star with lots of light. Maybe a heart with lots of love. Maybe even one day a human being. I guess I’ll find out as the years go by.

“You have to say something, Tom.” Laura says as she spoons out the cherry cobbler.

Tom: Well nothing like putting me on the spot.

A silence is born and lengthens.

His ears are turning red. “Okay. Uh.. I’m new creation in Christ. I’d like to be a word.”

“A word?” Laura stops.

“A word.” He nods. “Yeah. Just one word of truth. A liar couldn’t say me–they wouldn’t even know me. All my brothers and sister’s, my ancestors, parents and progeny..together we’d form a vocabulary that even though there’d be no repetition all those who love the truth would understand. You’d speak us and say Him, say His praise.” He looks upward and smiles, embarressed. “You ever think that?” he says, looking at them. “We’re being made a vocabulary to speak things that even now are unutterable without us? That have yet to be created until we are spoken? And once spoken we never end and never the same word twice. But each one in it’s place for a never ending reality and never ending creation in infinite variety.”

They don’t move but stare at him.

Tom: I’m sorry. I didn’t mean…

“Don’t say that. That just makes it worse. Sort of blew my tree away there Tom.” Henry smiles with a small laugh and picks up his glass. “We have missed you.”

Laura allows herself a wry smile. “You haven’t changed a bit in fifteen years. You’ve just gotten …more you.”

Tom has the look of being caught at something, but doesn’t quite understand what. Elizabeth looks directly at him for the first time.

The rest of the dinner goes well, with Henry cracking jokes and everyone laughing. It lasts late into the night until a significant silence and Elizabeth looks at her watch.

Tom and Henry stand on the porch.

Elizabeth comes out with her coat and gloves. “Walk me to my car?”

Tom: Absolutely. Let me get my coat. Henry, I’m preaching next week at a small country church. It’d be good to talk to you there and back, if you’ve the time.

Henry: Give me a call and let me know the details. I’ll be there.

Elizabeth and Tom say good-bye under the large oak by the drive.

Watching them drive away, Laura hugs Henry. “How was I?”

Henry: You were good.

Laura: Do you think they’ll…

Henry: I think that’s up to them.

Laura: Oh what was I doing?! Maybe it was too much.

He puts his arms around her and bites her gently on the neck. “You were apologizing. Remember?”

“Hmm. It was a good apology wasn’t it.” she says kissing his hand and smoothing his coat.

Henry: The very best.

——————————————-

Malachi 2:10-12 Have we not all one father? Hath not one God created us? Why do we deal unfaithfully every man against his brother, by profaning the covenant of our fathers? Judah hath dealt unfaithfully, and an abomination is committed in Israel and in Jerusalem; for Judah hath profaned the sanctuary of Jehovah which he loved, and hath married the daughter of a strange god. Jehovah will cut off from the tents of Jacob the man that doeth this, him that calleth and him that answereth; and him that offereth an oblation unto Jehovah of hosts.

In the Name of Jesus Christ, Amen

Homam:

Trading in the gold had relieved him of its weight; cut him off from the rules of gold. It has cut him off from all those still goverened by those rules.

He smiles. The creeping roots of evil has nothing to attach itself to in him now. He is rich in dumping what they call wealth. They pay him for having done it.

He is humbler and yet stronger in his freedom. Homam has pulled it off: he has made both of them free and humble. Not only are they free from the rules of gold, but the rules of the heart that leads the others to destruction.

The gold and the hearts of men can not touch them. They will be okay.

He has established a charity. They are an NGO. He has the papers to prove it.

He smiles as he thinks of it: he will pay them in paper, in buildings of tin, clay, mud and concrete, in electricity; food; in water supply and political independence to keep them away. He will use their own rules and their own hearts to be safe from them with the money of their pride.

The normal is not what you think it is even though you have been told it is whatever you make it.

He had heard the thought before: As a small hope late at night with her sleeping beside him after the day’s work was done. Walking ..somewhere. As a fear having a quiet smoke while thinking of the mayor’s son and the look on his face.

But he has always wanted to see what the French had made of their normal. They are well known for something. Everyone talks about them as if they know what it is. And yet no one ever says it plainly. Perhaps they are free too. Perhaps they are humble.

—-

The flight from Kuala Lumpur to Dhaka had been uneventful.

The attendant hadn’t wanted him to open his laptop until after they were in the air. He had been eager to show her where they were going.

His wife had held his hand tightly on takeoff. It was her first flight.

Later he had pointed out to her where they had been and where they were going on the digital map, tracing the flight path from home to Bangladesh and from Dhaka to Islamabad; then pointing to France.

But they are still on the ground in Dhaka.

He shows her the plastic and tells her how to use it; gives her a card with no limit.

He wonders sometimes what will be left to say if she knows everything he does. He watches himself dole it out: the knowledge, little by little; staying just ahead.

She needs me.To hide it and reveal it here and there.They all need me.

The English speakers are all around him. Whatever they are saying, he knows it is all the same. They all follow the rules of gold and hearts.

——————–

Henry

The Misson:

Henry looks across the counter at the faces in line.

The woman in front of him passes by with glazed eyes; her head forward on the next item under the glass. Others come behind her with nods in silent thank-yous to each server. Some look at him defiantly in furious, furtive glances. Others walk by in hunched-over dazes, barely able to hold the tray.

He dishes out the peach cobbler in large spoonfuls until a woman carrying more cobbler from the kitchen stops him.

“Everybody wants to be generous the first time. But we only have enough for a hundred and fifty. The weather turned cold on us last night. That means we’ll be getting more in than usual. We only have what we have. Give ‘em desert, not a meal in itself, honey.”

Henry nods and carves out more conservative portions. He is relieved after half an hour. He and Tom eat their meal in Tom’s office.

He mentions his mistake.

Tom nods: They keep telling me I need to convert to a packaged meal system–more efficent, less dishes to wash afterwards, requires a smaller staff, food doesn’t have to be cooked here, all the portions are the same size so the food goes further. Just haven’t gotten to it yet. Can’t really say I like the idea.

Henry: Why not? Save money.

Tom: Less personal, I guess. I want maximum contact between people, not some self-serve kind of thing. Maybe God will give me a better way.

Henry: ” I thought about what you said. That can’t really be true, you know.” He eats a bite of peas and immediately reaches for the salt.

Tom: Because to the world it is catastrophe?

Henry nods as he shakes out the salt: Okay—yeah. I mean you could never be sure you knew anything real.You have to have a minimum amount of certainty to live on.

Tom: Yes, you are.

Henry watches Tom talk and eat. He is easy with it. Wipe the gravy with the bread and say “There’s a fasade of many minds in the world agreeing as to what reality is when in truth they are in only one—the anti-Christ and they only speak him.” Stuff it in your mouth, chew and say “The only proof is knowing you’ve been born again in Christ.”

Henry carefully sips his tea. Tom doesn’t even realize the impact of what he said. He is just speaking and eating.

Putting down his mug, he grabs Tom’s wrist in the middle of the roast-beef-on-the-fork.

Henry: Do you hear yourself? Your saying things that are..awful—terrible.

Tom: I’ve already had my catastrophe. You saw it—you were there.

Henry lets go of his arm.

Tom: God doesn’t care what it does to you—the effect of you not getting what you were taught to want. He set that up on purpose. You’re going to run along behind his chariot pulled by a rope. When you can’t run you’re gonna get dragged. That’s what it’s going to feel like to the old heart. But in truth, he is running through you and is carryng you all the while. And when you know that, you can’t pretend as if something terrible is going on. But yeah, you are in complete divorce from the world. You know what God says about that? “If it be wonderful in the eyes of the remnant of this people in those days, should it also be wonderful in mine eyes?”

“God doesn’t do incredulity. There will be something good and wonderful later on after all this, “ Tom waves one hands around and swallows the roast beef. “But for now..for now I just stumble on and eat what is set in front of me. So do you.”

Henry: I can see that. But I need joy, Tom. As stupid as it sounds its true. Down the road it’s going to be the joy or my job.

Tom: No. It’ll be the joy or your life. You don’t see what anti-Christ is doing.

Henry: What is it?
Tom: Joy to me is contentment. I have contentment in short episodes. Jesus Christ is joy.

Henry: That’s the year book answer. But the mere ideal of it is not enough.

Tom: That’s the truth even if it is faith speaking. Joy as its own thing, as a kind of ultimate ideal of emotion and laughter together at the same time—that’s a stranger to me. I’m not saying it couldn’t happen, but God says that even in laughter the heart is sorrowful. So laughter seems to be a kind of extra that’s not emotion. I don’t think forcing laughter per se is the way to go.

Henry: Then I’ve wasted my time here.

Tom: No. Now when you go to all the other supposed religions, when in truth they are just emotional management systems and they offer some weird brew of emotions and call it joy, you’ll know better. Because all this world has is just the next emotional algorithm masquerading as the ultimate. But its numbers are liars.

Henry finishes his cobbler off with one bite as bravado.

“An emotional management system is not what you need, even through that’s exactly what you think you need. You’re going to have to walk in the desert with Christ. Maybe he will give you this thing, this experience with him coupled with laughter. Maybe he won’t. I don’t know.” Tom chews quickly and swallows. “But I do know this: there is no method. You’re not going to be able to make it a system that you can reproduce on command.”

Henry: Why not?

“Because language is alive and has a will of its own.” Tom pours himself more coffee. “That’s the thing with God really existing. He does what he wants and that’s it.”

The girl comes in, moves Tom’s plate and coffee over and lays some papers on the desk. She smiles apologetically at Henry as she speaks to Tom. “Signatures.”

Tom brushes his fingers off and picks up a pen. She points to the first. He signs. She pulls it away and points to the second.

Henry watches as he chews. As the girl leaves, he says, “What does it want with the artifact?”

Tom: I prayed about that: Moses before Pharaoh’s wise men. They could do wonders that at first seemed to match God through Moses. It seemed to match God literal event for literal event. That beast can make men who don’t know the difference, who don’t know there are two speaks in total reality, marvel. But if you can’t actually create with speech, what’s the next best thing?

Henry: Controlling what’s already there.

Tom: Exactly. That beast can say things through another human being –and in your own mind, that will make the heart of the flesh move one way or another and you can’t stop it. In fact, outside of the grace of God you’ll commit suicide in the absence of such movement and think life isn’t worth living without it. It’s technology versus actual creation.” Tom points at Henry. “That is a method but a vanity. The ultimate technology is to control everything that’s already created to include hearts and souls by spirit—by words. Voice activated everything. That beast is the special word for every circumstance to do just that and is searching to do as it wants forever with no restraint.

Henry: Spiritual technology?

Tom: A good way to put it. Another would be evil. Wickedness. Non-creation consuming what it did not create.

Henry: Is joyful laughter a word? Something that voice activates..

Tom: The artifact? It could be, must be if it exists. But like I said, it’s a stranger to me. Laughter I only know as ..well, I don’t really know what it is. But I don’t see where they necessarily go together. To search explicitly for joyful laughter seems to imply a kind of emotional episode, an apex of some sort rather than the on-going way of eternal life in the person of Jesus Christ. It’s very earth-now centric. Which basically means demonic of some sort. I’m not saying it isn’t real, but it sounds more demonic than of Christ. That or Satan using something he doesn’t understand himself to power his own agenda. Wouldn’t be the first time he tried.

“Like what?” Henry looks out the window as a van pulls in down the street and parks. He waits in silence as the people walk by. The light turns green and then red again. The van doesn’t move. No one gets out.

Tom: What do you mean like what? We use water to make hydroelectric power. But do we really understand what water is?

Henry: Of course we do.

Tom: No we don’t. Saying we do is like saying we know what the lilies of the field are because they have a name in the speech of the world. They talk about cells, leaf shape, bloosoms and green and photosynthesis, root systems and nutrients and think to have described the lily. But God says that’s just the lily’s clothes.

Henry: I need something simple.

Tom: Everything is just there, wherever God put it and we use it as he does it through us. And yet we hardly ever perceive it is him in us doing it. The other speech thinks in the mind of the flesh that we do what we do as we are able, like we get units of power from God and we do with them as we want. Satan just wants to use laughter like he thinks we use water.

Henry sighs. Tom is Tom.

Tom looks out the window, searching for what Henry sees. “It was activated by real joy—I think. But that joy is only in Christ and the purpose of the artifact seems to be otherwise. The beast will seek a method of duplication because it is genuinely deceived such duplication is the real thing. But it will look for a Christian, someone who has actually tasted the Holy Spirit to do it—to get the original laugh from.”

Henry: How do you know that?

Tom: Past experience. The Jews were taken to Babylon. The first thing the king of Babylon did was to take those of the Jews who had the Word of God dwelling in them and forcibly teach them the so-called sacred hieroglyphics so that they would push that beast as far as God’s wisdom in them could go. He tried to mix God’s word in them with his own to give his own more power.

Henry: Where did it come from?

Tom: God created it.

Henry: God created this speech—this beast?

Tom: Yes. Anti-Christ

Henry: Why?

Tom: I don’t know. Do you have to know to trust Him? There is always going to be something new. But I see that and I fear him. He created something that is the alien of himself. That means unlimited power and unrestrained use of it. This artifact seems like an attempt to get or circumvent some of that power.

Henry looks at the van, then at his watch: I have to go. Maybe you could come over? For dinner?

Tom: That’d be nice. I don’t get out much.

They look at each other.

Tom breaks the silence: I’m glad it was you.

Henry: Why?

“I never told anybody before. Not like that. He’s always said it as edges of it and in metaphors through me.” He walks Henry to the door. “Fifteen years of my life. But I got something real for it. God said through me in one sentence that there are two speaks in total reality, the difference between them and you heard it. You knew the truth of it didn’t depend on me. You know we’re both walking in something bigger than ourselves.” Tom smiles. “It was worth it—to go through that and come back and say it to you.”

—————————————-

Underground:

Zalmunna looks at the bodies in the wall: How far had they come?

Zeeb: They were not the names. They got nowhere. Empty words at random.

Zeeb squats with his back against the wall. The light is enough to see shapes and to move around. But it is not the sun. He longs to be in the sun again and feel wind in his hair. “They have the Oracle—and Zarathrustra’s hand. They will know we are here!”

“It does not matter.” Oreb calms his brother. “Now that they know, the plan is in motion sooner than we had hoped.Everything is well.”

“How long do we wait here in this pit?” Zeeb stands suddenly and paces.

Oreb watches him. “As long as it takes.”

Zarathrustra stands, saying nothing. The wait has worked patience in him.

——————

Gregg runs a hand through his hair and taps the code again. There is no coherent data or logs; an endless stream of words at random fill the memory logs. The screen is filled with words. “I don’t get it. There’s nothing here. There is one reference to needing a particular word combination, like a kind of lock they were trying to open. But after that the whole database is full of this ..crap.”

Izzy sits checking his commo gear in the control room. “Any word from Virginia?” He looks up as Hayt enters.

Hayt shakes his head: Nothing but static.

Izzy looks back at Gregg: A lock?

Gregg punches up the screen and reads: Memo from Commander Smith to Sys Ops: re: random word generator. On completion deliver same to my office and use available resources to run. Imperative to find plate in three days.” Gregg lifts the trail of paper. “I guess they did a good job.”

Izzy: What plate?

There is a break of squelch. Albrite: I think you need to come down here. The cave .. room.

Izzy: What’s wrong?

Radio Albrite: Nothing. You just have to see it.

“I’ll be here, seeing if I can salvage their old data.” Gregg says as Izzy and Hayt turn to go. “Don’t worry about me. I’ll miss everything. But that’s okay. I’ll just…” he turns to see if they had heard. They are gone. “..slave away right here.”

—-

Izzy and Hayt walk into the vast hall.

“Over here!” Albrite is to their right, out of sight. His voice drifts oddly over the distance.

It takes them several minutes to get to him. Their steps softly echo as a strange acoustic as they go. A wall comes into sight.

Hayt: It has edges.

Albrite: The wall. Watch it.

Izzy and Hayt scan the wall. It is a flat surface exactly as the floor.

Izzy: James, we really don’t have time for this.

A small protusion morphs out from the wall and recedes. Izzy and Hayt stare.

“Yeah.” Albrite points to the wall. “Keep watching. Little orphan annie went kayaking in Kalamazoo.”

A circle of glass morphs out from the wall, twists three hundred and sixty degrees and recedes in the reverse along the lines of its presentation.

Silence.

“What is it?” Hayt brushes the spot on the wall with his fingers.

Another blob of glass morphs out and recedes. Albrite looks at the wall as he speaks. They all do. “It responds to your voice—but not your steps.” A blob protrudes and recedes.

Izzy takes several steps back and forth. The sounds softly echo in the massive hall. The wall doesn’t move.

Izzy nods. “And he said let there be light. And there was light.” There is no response.

“So this horse goes into a bar.” Hayt says. A small curve of glass morphs out resembling a hook, turns ninety degrees, and receds along the curve.

Izzy touches the wall at the point the hook of glass has receded. There is no mark. It is perfectly smooth. He strikes the wall with the flat of his fist. There is only a flat thud of flesh on solid rock.

“It responds to different words and arrangements in unique ways.” Blobs of glass morph out and recede as Albrite speaks.”But I have no idea why or…”

Izzy says it at the same time. “What to say..” and finishes on his own. “..to see something new.” The blobs double at the sound of the two voices and recede in the same order in the silence.

Albrite: And it waits until you finish to react.

———

Jack watches as they speak to the wall. The other crew had come nowhere near this level of understanding. The names were really a prophecy.

He sips the scotch, swirling the ice.

The wall reacts with shapes that come and go.

Jack briefly considers that he has gotten in over his head and needs help.

Another sip of scotch drowns the doubts. There is no one to understand. There is no help. They are too far out from all they have known. Those who come behind will have to understand.

—————————————————–

Ezekiel 7:19-21 They shall cast their silver in the streets, and their gold shall be as an impurity: their silver and their gold shall not be able to deliver them in the day of Jehovah’s wrath; they shall not satisfy their souls, neither fill their belly; for it hath been the stumbling-block of their iniquity. And he set in majesty his beautiful ornament; but they made therein the images of their abominations and of their detestable things: therefore have I made it an impurity unto them. And I will give it into the hands of strangers for a prey, and to the wicked of the earth for a spoil; and they shall profane it.

In the Name of Jesus Christ, Amen

Henry

He’s really back?

Behind the wheel, he sits unsure of what he will do as the leaves fall from the oak and sycamore trees around him. The people walk into the park to his left. The old brownstone stands waiting as children draw graffiti on the street beneath the trees; an ambulance goes by, passing through slowly without its siren or lights.

Henry holds the torn out page from the phone book in his hand. There is an address; a small map of how to reach the Fourth Street Misson.

He had driven into the city. Several wrong turns and some one way streets later, he had found a parking space across from the misson. Right behind the Church.

He wants to talk with someone. But having already made his mistakes in front of the pastors in town and theirs in front of him made for a certain emotional economy between them all; a goo he didn’t want on his hands or his heart in the middle of all of this. Together they have always been no more than fake dissidents from something they can’t articulate even as they fight over who will make the next attempt to say it.

Henry doesn’t mind knowing that about himself, admitting it, if it means moving into what he wants to know. He wants, needs a real dissident; a bonifide son of a bitch from his own faith.

That is Tom of all people.

Maybe it’s better just to let things go.

Time had done a lot for Laura since Samuel had first turned up missing–him too. But the missing crew, the artifact and now the laughter. They didn’t simply make his personal life seem smaller and less important: they were hitting at the foundation of his own faith in which he had thought to be discreetly secure in the crowd that mattered.

Dmitri is scary now; really expecting him to articulate how to laugh with joy on the spot. To say it as a sentence!

The number one rule of science is reproducing the proof over and over: Reproducibility.

Joy? It is an unspoken rule: nobody does joy. You do happiness in small streaks if you are lucky. Children. Family. Next to the remnants of the okra and the peas on your plate is suddenly a slice of pie. In odd moments out of nowhere something happens and it is gone before you understand what’s happening. You just pretend you did it on purpose. Everybody knows that.

Joy is a word children use to make their own happiness seem a little bit better than their companions; a church word to make everything seem better than it really is. It is a fake word used in the middle of the general avarice for self-defense to let the other person know their life is just as good if not better than your own. It is one of those things that happens in heaven in the brilliant light that you can’t understand until after you are dead. Trying to actually make it happen on purpose, here and now, is for imbeciles.

Now it is a science project? People are killed for laughing at the wrong time the wrong way. Everyone hates fake laughter.

The whole thing is presumptuous.

You aren’t a joy kind of guy; rarely laughing out loud in public. You understand things quietly. You are steady and level headed. You are for the good and against the bad, for happy every now and then, especially on holidays. You know the rules.

But how do you fight the other guy’s holy vision for you? Now Dmitri really thinks you can do it, but you are horrible, evil enough to withhold the method from anyone else!

I should know where to begin to undo the weird roots of Dmitiri’s accusation and prove my innocence. Dmitri said it himself! You can’t prove you don’t know something.

I resent that I should have to try. They should know better than to ask me. It makes me guilty of something else in their eyes to prove I am innocent of the charge. And they know that.

This is going to wreak how things are, the decent life you’ve built. You are being endangered from these events that can’t be undone and which now force you into an idiocy you dispise in other people’s fake smiles and half-assed jocularity: they expect you to be happy now. They will say things that are their best happiness and well wishing and expect to hear more in return and that you will lead them to some place of paradise and agree that everyone can get there.

They will treat you like a pastor. Like Tom was treated.

After all, it is a vision. No telling how many people Dmitri has ‘confided’ in by now! If he hasn’t already, it is just a matter of time. You know Dmitri: to tell somebody else will be like giving a candy bar to himself. “Hey! I had a vision in which Henry laughted with joy. But now he won’t tell anyone else how!” Dmitri will say it humbly, as if it hurt him to think that about you. But he will say it. In the atmosphere of incredulity surrounding the artifact and the laughter, they will believe him.

Henry opens the door and steps out. His heart races as he makes his way across the traffic and fifteen years of silence.

He doesn’t know what to say. Each step closer to the door, instead of giving him words to say, takes away any thoughts he tries to prepare. All he can do as he opens the door and hears the little bell ring is to breath deeply and try to calm down.

It’s automatic.

The girl behind the partition looks at the ad, points down the hall and says, “He’s in the back. You don’t have to knock–he’s cleaning the closet under the stairs.”

He nods slowly.

“Do you want me to get him for you?” she asks.

“No.” he replies quickly. “I’ll find him. Thanks.”

———

The man hears the door open and close and assumes it is Gloria. If she is coming herself it means someone needs him despite his request that no one disturb him until he has sorted out the junk that has built up in the closet.

There are beer cans, whiskey bottles, old cigarette butts, a large piece of cardboard, a box of old magazines and various plastic wrappers and bags between the mops, brooms and dustpans. He has found a vacuum cleaner in perfect working order that he had lost so long ago he had forgotten about it. All of it is scattered around on the floor in small piles.

He holds a trash bag open and is sweeping a pile of broken glass into it when he hears a voice that speaks to him familiarly. He instantly recognizes Henry Fielding.

Henry: They changed all the roads. They’re all one way. Different.

Tom Chambers turns and stares: They did that three years ago. Henry.

They look at each other. There had been accusations, words said, things done, feelings trampled and spirits broken. Then silence.

Henry: We never came back. Laura..

“They changed the roads?” Tom smiles and begins to laugh. “Is that all you have to say?” He raises his hand. “No! No– don’t say anything. Let me wash my hands.”

Henry nods and rubs his hands together. He watches Tom walk through a door, listens to the sound of running water; a paper towel being torn.

Tom reappears wiping his hands on the towel. They look each other in the face.

“It’s good to see you.” Tom extends his hand and they shake and finally each hugs the other.

Henry: Tom, I’m sorry..

Tom: “No. It’s not necessary. It was God’s will.” He pushes Henry away and gives him the once over. “You’ve gained weight. You needed to. How’s Laura?”

Henry: Good. She’s good. She uh,… she finished her degree and opened an office downtown–consults corporate clients, you know, insurance companies, things like that on their investments. She’s good at it. You know her.

Tom laughs. “Afraid so. No don’t–it’s okay.” he adds quickly as Henry begins to apologize again. “I let it go, Henry. It wasn’t her fault. She couldn’t see anything.”

There is an awkward pause.

Henry: I didn’t know you were back in town.

Tom: Five, almost six years now.

Henry: I didn’t know. Really I didn’t know. I get so absorbed in work. I would’ve come. My god, Tom, there’s no excuse.

“Henry, don’t. That’s over.” Tom motions to a back office. “Come on in. I want to catch up. Tell me what’s going on.”

Henry: More than you can imagine.

Tom: Oh, I don’t know about that.

Henry: Not this. But that’ll hold for a minute. What about you? What happened to you? You dissappeared and no one knew where you were. Somebody–Buddy Wilson I think, told me you were in the Army.

Tom: Yeah. I went in for four. Then I went to a small church in Alaska.

Henry: Alaska? I guess I can understand that. We all acted so horribly. No wonder you wanted to get away.

Tom: It was a good thing. It was good for me. I loved it to tell you the truth. I came back only because I had promised Dad that if he retired and couldn’t find anyone to take his place, I’d come back. So ..here I am.

Henry: I was sorry to hear about your Dad. I didn’t get to go to the funeral. Work…

Tom: That’s alright. How are you doing? What are you doing?

Henry: I’m okay I guess. I’m a senior scientist with the Astrobiology Institute of JPL. We work with Crenshaw Hummings on space habitates.

Tom: J-P-L?

Henry: The Jet Propulsion Lab–NASA.

Tom: I’m impressed! Laura must be proud.

Henry: Yeah. Yeah, she is, I guess. Listen to me: ‘Senior’ scientist.

Tom: Why not? That’s good. Any word of Samuel?

Henry: No. Not since then.

Tom: I’m sorry. Not a word? Nothing?

Henry shook his head: No.

Tom: Something is up. What’s the matter? You looked me up for a reason.

Henry sees he has been misunderstood: No. No it’s not us. We’re strained sometimes you know, but we’ll be together ’til we die. No–it’s something at work. Something has happened.

Tom: A NASA scientist has come to me–a minister at a local misson to ask a work related question?

Henry cleared his throat: It’s a little complicated but…yes. Besides, we have psychologists on staff. It’s not quite the leap you might think.

Tom: Okay. What is it?

Henry relates the events leading up to the discovery of the writing that is the artifact and his theory concerning it. He tells of Dmitri’s vision.

Tom sits back in his chair, stunned and carefully looks at Henry. He leans forward, rises, walks over to the window and stares out at the crowds in the intersection, with both hands in his pockets.

After a moment, Henry speaks again. “So what do you think? What’s going on?”

Tom: Coffee? I drink a lot of coffee.

Henry: Sure.

Tom sets up the coffee maker and sits: This artifact? Can you just walk away?

Henry: I think its too late for that. Something is going on. I’m not sure what. But why would I want to? If I walk someone else will have to do it.

Tom: You know, everybody wants to be holy, until its time to be holy. And where we are going everything you knew is going to be left behind. I just want you to know that. I’m not saying you’ve got free will. I’m just saying..

Henry: You can’t protect me, Tom. We all have to grow. If I knew how to grow toward the answer I would. I just don’t.

Tom: Everything you know about life, about language—how to use it, what it is, what its for, everything–is a lie.

Tom says it comfortably; easily. He is obviously long past the intial indredulity it might have once held for him. He is old, maybe even mature in it. But he is wary of saying it.

Henry suspects Tom has wanted it to come out as if he is making a run for the truth before something catches him from behind; as if Tom thinks Henry would think it should cost him something to speak it but has forgotten to oblige Henry’s supposed expectation. He loves Tom for that weakness and pretense and for the inadvertence of forgetting it. The years disappear as he snaps back. “I don’t understand. And you are acting as if its something you don’t really want to talk about.”

Tom: It’s something I cannot say, but that God says through me. The speech of this world is a creature. He is anti-Christ.

Henry: The artifact?

Tom: No. All language of this earth. The non-creating speech of sin. It’s a creature. It is both an “it” and a “them”. It’s looking for something. I always thought that. Now this.

Henry: Language is a creature? The words we are speaking right now?

Tom: It’s looking for a way out. There are two speaks, two distinct languages in total reality: not one.

Henry: There are a lot of languages. The artifact…

Tom: No. Only two. Here is the proof: create something on the desk between us with an act of speech.

Henry: First Dmitri wants joy on cue– now you want an act of creation?

Tom: You can’t do it.

Henry: Thank you! Nobody can.

Tom: Create something invisible, then. The invisible is real.

Henry: I can’t do that. That’s not what words are for. You know that.

Tom: Would it help if you tried in German or Spanish or any other language? Zulu? Arabic?”

Henry: No.

Tom: So it’s clear that you really only know one language: a language which cannot create anything. Non-creating speech.

Henry: Put it that way, I suppose so. But that would be for everyone. Where do you get two?

Tom: And God said let there be light. And there was light.

Henry says nothing.

Tom: God is one. Jesus Christ is the only word of God. He is creating speech. He created the other. The other is sin, Belial, the anti-Christ, the anti-word of God. The voice of the dead.

Henry: Hold on. Wait a minute…just wait a minute.

Tom: You came to see me to do speech about speech. You speak words in search of other words that when you find them will enable you to speak still other words. That’s not God. That’s a beast that has devoured the world just to speak more of itself looking for a way out of itself. Wading through emotions on this doesn’t change the truth of it. This doesn’t fit in the emotional experience or wisdom you have because all you have up to this point is in the speech of sin—that creature. It could not let you go because it can’t create anything. In order to understand what sin is, you have to be free from it and you can’t be free from it by any use of itself. So if you are free from it and you understand what you have heard, you have heard the voice of God and you have been created again as a new creation in Jesus Christ. Do you understand?

Henry wants to be confused. His confusion would be staring at another human being in a reasonable way while he watches himself and what is going on inside. It would be to do the etiquette perfectly; to remain blameless to all he has known. It would be to be in the middle of graduate class, after years of great sacrifice, sweat and competition to get there, with your soul on display, with various pins in it and diagrams explaining its functions, the professor speaking authoritatively on its origin and uses, and all you had to do was pass the test to get the money; the universe to open up and deposit your own soul in your hand, for you to know it, that the other is a fake, for them to look curiously at it and say in genuine confusion “What is that?” and you, in naked solidarity with them against the truth you know to say, “I don’t know.” It is a bigger catastrophe than Dmitri’s accusation and the problem of joy.

When he had first entered the building he had not thought it possible: Tom had just trumped Dmitri’s accusation. He looks at Tom carefully, the way he has learned to look when saying certain and scholarly things, things of import to security and stability; starts to say something and stops.

Tom speaks quietly: God is sitting on an actual throne in actual heaven. He is issuing decrees as his word that are being created as he says them. One of those decrees is your actual individuality in Christ, his word. I know that you came in at a certain level of emotion, thinking to be of a certain education in the world, fluent in the speech of analysis of the world and thinking to use it to investigate the thing that has appeared in front of you. Now you have started completely over and know you know nothing and there are others waiting on you, depending on you to lead them toward joyful laughter in the speech you came in with as if it were the only speech in total reality. Welcome to eternal life on this earth in the midst of others who are as yet, dead in sin. It’s a dangerous thing to be really holy in this world, isn’t it?

After a short silence, Henry says, “We would’ve played golf and you wouldn’t have said any of this?”

Tom: I don’t control God as Word. But if I did, maybe if you were winning.

Henry: Why not?

Tom: God has to arrange circumstances in such a way as make you hear..quietly. What has happened is that God has re-created you in the belly of the beast and caused the beast to cast you out of its mouth. The sign of the prophet Jonah has been perfromed on you. Hang on a minute.

Tom picks up his Bible and thumbs through the pages: Here it is: Jeremiah fifty one, fourty four: “And I will punish Bel in Babylon, and I will bring forth out of his mouth what he hath swallowed up; and the nations shall not flow together any more unto him: yea, the wall of Babylon is fallen.”

Bel is that other speech, is the beast that does nothing more than set one of us against another as if it were not there –as if speech itself were not a living creature but just something we use in free will. You can’t just go out and tell everyone—you don’t control God. You can’t speak Him on que. You’ll get taken out of the flesh in the end anyway because of the enmity between God and Satan, but at least God may tell someone else through you once. That beast will kill your flesh to keep from being exposed and to keep its prisoners. That’s the reality. That’s why it killed Christ.”

Henry: You are a man of unusual conversation, Tom Chambers, even for a pastor.” Henry stands up. “I don’t know what I came expecting. But it wasn’t this. Lunch tomorrow? I’ll buy. I need to think.”

Tom: I’ll buy. You’ll just have to serve it first.

Henry smiles: You got me. What time?

Tom: Eleven thirtyish.

Henry: Done. But the artifact is real and that laughter activated it. Think..pray on it for me.

Tom: I will. Read your bible.

Henry nods: Why haven’t I heard this before?

Tom: You have in small increments here and there. Under the table. Behind the door. In flashes in the open. The little things that didn’t seem to make sense, that couldn’t be added with all that you knew as knowledge and what it was. Every elect soul goes through that first encounter, that being cast out of Belial, that certainty no matter the religion we think we’ve done for years sometimes.

The coffee announces it is ready with a gurgle. Tom sticks his hands in his pockets as Henry closes the door.

——————————————–

Underground

Izzy, Mike and Gregg walk toward the opening of the caverns.

“I really don’t want to go in there.” Izzy adjhusts his light and looks at Gregg. “Get into the system. See what was happening. Download what you can.”

Gregg nods and breaks off to the control room. Rounding the corner he freezes. “Holy moly.”

Izzy and Mike come up behind him to see the immaculate cavern through the hole in the corridor. It is now squared off into a massive room, the other side and ceiling of which cannot be seen. The columns strectch upwards, disappearing into darkness as if supporting the world above. No dust is evident, not even inside the site at the opening where it had piled up during the weeks. The corridor is in perfect alignment with the opening, as if the two were meant to go together and one an extension of the other.

Mike walks out onto the surface, his footseteps echoing softly into the darkness, his light probing the depths without finding any end.

Gregg watches Mikes light trace a path that is lost in darkness everywhere it points. He doesn’t know what to say.

————————————————–

Proverbs 30:1-6 The words of Agur the son of Jakeh; the prophecy uttered by the man unto Ithiel, even unto Ithiel and Ucal: Truly *I* am more stupid than any one; and I have not a man’s intelligence. I have neither learned wisdom, nor have I the knowledge of the Holy. Who hath ascended up into the heavens, and descended? Who hath gathered the wind in his fists? Who hath bound the waters in a mantle? Who hath established all the ends of the earth? What is his name, and what is his son’s name, if thou knowest? Every word of +God is pure: he is a shield unto them that put their trust in him. Add thou not unto his words, lest he reprove thee, and thou be found a liar.

In the Name of Jesus Christ, Amen

Underground—

Hayt looks over the hydroponics. Here and there on the surface of the water is a bit of floating scum. The plants are healthy. The air exchange is good.

Everything is in order.

Radio Izzy: Bill, you finding any debris?

Hayt: None. Not even any dust. No bad odors. The foliage on the plants are clean. The place is just ..

Radio Izzy: Empty.

Hayt: Roger, that. So far. You find anything?

Radio Izzy: Negative.

Hayt walks through the laboratory. Nothing is out of place.

———–

Mary scans the room. On a shelf is a group of pictures. A group shot of the whole family when Bobby had just gotten his new uniform stands propped against the wall with the glass broken out.

The door is marked with a small handprinted card taped to the outside: Robert W. Reynolds.

A photo of Bobby, herself, Beth Ann and Sam, with Bobby holding the peace sign above Sam’s head hangs from the wall.

A deer antler with teeth marks lay on another shelf. It is a match to the one in her office; a gift for blessing and humility from her as he had left.

The room is clean except the bed is unmade; the covers thrown back. Half of a cup of coffee sits on the nightstand.

Izzy leans in from the hall: Anything?

She shakes her head.

Izzy points to the antler: He’s got one, too.

Mary: Yeah.

Izzy: Let’s go. We’ll come back later.

Mary: Anybody … sign of them anywhere?”

Izzy shakes his head. “Not yet. Hayt and Gregg are still searching the lower levels. I don’t want anyone alone.”

She walks into the hall and follows him.

———-

Jimmy can hear them talking. Something is wrong. He tries to remember something from before he has seen her face. There is nothing.

He watches them move with purpose, speak to each other; smile; frown. They are moving toward something and coming from something. The past pushes them forward beyond him because they have purpose for something else even as they are here and now. They speak to him and imply they have something in common by the sounds they make. He tries to remember. It pushes you too. It is invisible to him now, yet there with visible effects through them.

Their voices carry the certainty of their push, a companion they see and know, even as they are oblivious to its function.

Izzy: The entries just stop. No explanation, nothing appears to have happened. They just ..stop. But not eighteen days ago when the quake hit. Three days ago. Something isn’t right here.

Hayt: They’ve got to be here somewhere. There is nothing wrong with their subterrene–they didn’t leave. It gives a perfect signal.

Hayt moves past them and replaces the probe he is carrying into its container.

“All their personal things are in their quarters.” Mary says quietly, adjusting Jimmy’s I.V. “Pictures, uniforms, jewelry, everything was just as if they were still there.”

Gregg: No signs of a struggle. No stress cracks from the earthquake on the site. Nothing.

Izzy: “We’ll try again after we get some sleep. Bill, contact Virginia. Tell them we’ll be down for the next eight hours.” He stands rubbing the back of his neck. “Everybody hit the sack.”

Mike: Shouldn’t we have a watch?

Izzy: You scared, Mike?

Mike: No. Just careful.

Izzy: We need everyone fresh. If somebody knocks, I’m sure we’ll hear them.

Jimmy listens for the next half-hour as they settle down; one by one fall asleep. He drifts off to dreams of darkness and cold that has no place in the present.

Awakened suddenly, he listens for more of what has awakenend him. There is only the familiar breathing of sleepers near him. Sitting up slowly, he begins disconnecting himself from the monitor and the I.V.

The controls on the hatch take some time to manipulate. Down the tunnel, the steel door is ajar. He sqeezes through easily.

Walking is just the thing he needs. When he grows tired, which is often, he leans against the wall. He isn’t going toward anything, he is running from the bunk and the kind of attention he doesn’t want one step at the time.

Breathing becomes easier the more he continues in the sweat. He continues toward the brighter lights, leaning against the walls less and less.

Jack puts the coffee down, swivels into his chair and punches up the video. He quickly scans the monitors to see that all is quiet.The last report is that cmms are down with Team Two.

Secretary through the intercom: Sir?

Jack: Get Henry Fielding in here as soon he as comes in.

Young Man: Yes, sir.

He glances at the monitors again. Jimmy has been leaning against the wall and now moves again. Jack stares, frozen in place.

Jack: I was talking to her. Who is this?

The young man puts down his pen, walks over to the monitors. He shakes his head. “Never seen him. He must be that passenger they picked up.”

Jimmy stands panting from the effort.

Jack: What’s his name?

The young man backs over to the small table and pulls out a folder. He flips through it slowly. “Jimmy.”

Jack: Jimmy what?

Young Man: Just Jimmy.

Jack smiles: Just Jimmy. That’s a good one. He smirks: Albrite is screwed.

Young Man: Why? He knew..

Jack: “That’s not his real name.” Jack turns to the young man, his eyes brigh: “He changed his name to fit the prophecy.”

Young Man: Then he already knows.

Jack picked up his coffee: It won’t matter.

The young man watches Jimmy walk on; disappear underneath one camera to be picked up by another. “So you think its true.”

Jack sips his coffee, nodding slightly, then shrugs. “We’ll find out.”

The young man sits down slowly in the big leather chair. “I didn’t really think it was possible.”

Jimmy continues forward, coming to an intersection in the corridors. The lights are bright here. A draft blows into the side of his face. He turns toward the breeze and continues on. Several turns later, with legs white from the dust, he comes to the opening of a vast cavern, lit here and there with lights.

———-

Mike blinks and is awake. The insistent monitor alarm light is blinking its steady warning. The leads are hanging to one side. The I.V. has drained out onto the floor.

Jimmy is gone.

He brushes sleep out of his eyes and rolls out of the bunk. Slipping into his pullovers, he sees by his watch it has only been five hours. The others sleep as he heads out and discovers the hatch open.

Jimmy stands in the middle of the cavern staring at the immense white, breathing deeply but evenly.

Mike searches the lower levels finding nothing. On coming to level six he finds the escape tunnel blocked; picks, sledge hammers and shovels are strewn about the floor. There is some rock debris but the tunnel is smoothly filled to make the opening seamless with the wall. He runs his hand over the glass-like rock melt. It is dense, yet not solid throughout. Tapping on it, he hears the same acoustic as in the tunnel to the subterrene.

There is a break of squelch. Izzy’s voice comes over the radio: Mike where are you?

He taps the wrist control: I’m at the escape tunnel for the other subterrene. I’m looking for Jimmy.

There is a short silence. “Have you found him?”

Mike: Negative. Did you know their escape tunnel was filled in?

Radio Izzy: Filled in?

“Yeah,”, Mike runs his hand over it again, “..almost like it was never there. Some pick axes and shovels, digging equipment here by it.”

Radio Izzy: Any debris?

Mike: None. It doesn’t look like they tried to dig their way out, just had the tools here for it.

Radio Izzy: We’re all up now. We’ll meet up in the control room, search from there. He couldn’t get far in his condition.”

Mike: Roger. Any word from Virginia?

Radio Izzy: No. the com ops is still down.

——–

Izzy turns back into the crew quarters.

Hayt is rolling out of his bunk: Anything?

Izzy: No, we’ll go and find him. Who searched the escape tunnel on level six?

Hayt: I did.

Izzy: So you didn’t actually see the subterrene?

Hayt: No. That’s why I got the probe and tested their system. It’s still there.

“Say something next time.” Izzy grabs a radio collar as they walk out of the hatch.

Hayt secures his own radio: “I thought you knew. I told Albrite.”

Izzy: Next time tell me.

———

Jimmy walks slowly around a large stalagtite that is a column twenty meters in diameter all the way to the floor. He rubbs the chaulky surface and looks at the white on his hand.

“Jimmy! What are you doing in here?” Izzy calls from the entrance.

Mike appears behind him, followed by Hayt.

A small piece of rock over their heads, indistinguishable from the rest, rotates at the sound of Izzy’s voice and disappears into the rock.The calcite dust on it is cleanly pushed off of it as it melts into the interior of the rock.

Izzy steps back at the falling dust and looks up.

Nothing.

Jimmy smiles and waves. “I got tired of laying down. Isn’t this great!” He slides down next to the column, his legs unable to support him. “I never saw anything ..like it.”

“Hold on there, sport. We’re coming.” Mike climbs over a rock and heads out into the white toward the column. “You’re a bit weak to be up like this.”

Jimmy smiles: “That I remember.”

———

Yes. They are here.

The rock flows downward and rotates until Zarathrustra is vertical with the floor; recedes from around him. For the first time in eons, he breathes air again.

His hand is gone. There is no pain.

They have the Oracle. Everything is in motion.

Lucifer had been right: He should have moved his hand away from the Oracle. But he didn’t really think it would work.

Lucifer had only smiled at his doubts. They had planned it down to the smallest distances. Time was the only unknown. They had hit his outstretched hand in the very center. It is a clean cut.They hadn’t penetrated the rock.

Zarathrustra is amazed. Man had not dug to the left or right. They hadn’t gone any deeper than was necessary. Perhaps this is what it was to be the Most High: to plan it out to the smallest detail and see it all come true.

The others take a breath as well, look at him.

I told you that you would not be harmed. And it is so. The hand is ..a small thing.

Oreb: We are not the same. Look at us.

It is true. The are less even as their garments are white.

They stretch, then dissappear into the darkness.

———-

Jimmy smiles up at Mike: I’m just a little tired.

Mike: I can see that. You feeling okay though– other than that?

Jimmy sniffs. Yeah. I just had to get out you know?

Mike looks around at the cavern: I can see how this would be the place to go.”

The chain of lights shakes as a tremor runs through the cavern. A large chunk of calcite cracks off of the stalagtite and shatters close by. The dust rises, obscuring the rest of the cavern and filling the air with a choking haze.

Izzy and Hayt duck back into the entrance as dust rains down on the wall above them.

“We gotta go. Up and at ‘em.” Mike grabs Jimmy’s hand and pulls him up.

Jimmy crumples back to the floor: Maybe just a minute..

“We don’t have a minute.” Mike pulls him up again and picks him up over his shoulder. “We’re heading out. Hang on.”

Other large pieces of calcite and whole stalagtites out of the depths of the ceiling crash onto the floor around them. A light bulb explodes further into the cavern. Mike picks his way through the rising dust and keeps his eye on the entrance. The dust grows thick as the tremors grow in intensity.

Mike runs into the wall unexpectedly: Izzy?!

A light moves few feet to his left as he hears Izzy shout “Over here!”

Mike and Jimmy both fall over loose rock at the entrance as they are pulled through by Hayt and Izzy.

————–

Back at the subterrene, Mike lays Jimmy gently on the bunk. Jimmy is unconcious. The monitor shows an irregular beat; he breathes deeply.

“What happened to you?” Mary stands at the door, looking at Mike and Izzy, sleep still in her eyes.

Mike begins to set up another I.V. for Jimmy.“You slept through the tremors?”

“What tremors?” Seeing the look on Izzy and Mike’s face she says, “I guess so. Albrite and Gregg are still asleep.”

Izzy: Wait a minute. You didn’t feel anything? How long have you been awake?

“A while. I was just laying there; waiting. We’ve still got another..” she looked at her watch, “..hour and a half on that eight hours. But I’m up now. Did you find them?”

Hayt appears in the bulkhead. “She’s right. I did a sonar sweep to see the damage. The sonar history over the last thirty minutes doesn’t show any quake or any damage to the site. It was localized.”

Izzy hands Mike a towel. Localized?!

Hayt nods: We saw it but there’s no sonar to prove it ever happened.

Mike: What?

Izzy taps his own nose as he looks at Mike: You’re nose. It’s bleeding. (to Mary) No. We found some tools next to the escape tunnel. It was blocked off by rock.

Mike looks in the metal mirror and sees the red just beginning to flow. He wipes his nose and leans his head back as he sits on the edge of Jimmy’s bunk.

————————

The Institute
Jack’s Office

Jack watches the last of the debris fall and the dust settle.

On another monitor he brings up the subterrene. He watches Mary insert the I.V. in Jimmy.

There is movement on the other monitor. The dust is being sucked away and the debris is being swallowed by the floor in pools of liquid rock in the large cavern. He grips the sides of his desk and leans closer.

All that remains is an immaculate, shiny surface everywhere. A few of the huge stalagtites had been columns incrusted with calcite. They now stand in rows as far as the camera can see on a floor of polished rock. The walls are of the same polish and shine as the floor.The colums rise out of the light and disappear into the darkness above.

The lights remaining cast the room in an odd reflectance.

Jack stares at the monitor. “Hello.”

——————————————————————–

2 Kings 20:10 And Hezekiah said, It is a light thing for the shadow to go down ten degrees: no, but let the shadow return backward ten degrees.

In the Name of Jesus Christ, Amen

Chapter Ten

Jack’s Office

Jack: How is Dmitri?

Henry: They’ll know in a couple of days. He’s in Jefferson Memorial right now. They’ll keep him for observation. He was a little hysterical.

Jack: Strange days.

Henry: Yeah.

Jack: I don’t understand what you’re saying. The DNA molecule was broken up and the parts used as some sort of pictographic alphabet? What does it say?

Henry: That is what it says–what we call Deoxyribose Nucleic Acid. And much more.

Jack: Either I’m trying to infer something because how you are taking this –that isn’t there, or you aren’t telling me everything.

Henry: There’s only one way to assemble the characters, one way because a true representation of DNA can only be constructed one way and still be DNA — to do the function that DNA performs.

Jack: Why break it up into some kind of puzzle? You are saying it’s a whole language?

Henry: It’s not a puzzle. It’s a lexicon.

Jack: That’s a leap. You can map it back and forth from one to the other but that doesn’t tell you what is being said.

Henry: What the difference? They are the same; the shape and the speech. Function follows form and form follows function. Either way in reality certain forms, shapes are tied to certain functions and visa versa. You can’t just throw out what you know of physical reality just because you found a new piece.

Jack looks over the report.

Henry: If the DNA molecule wasn’t constructed the way it is constructed, it would not perform the function it now performs. If it didn’t perform the function it performs, it wouldn’t be shaped as it is. We know dysfunctional DNA by the shape it assumes, what it turns into–which is not the normal shape for normal DNA. Shape is the key. It wouldn’t be the molecule we have named DNA if it doesn’t hold to that shape at all times. It’s the same shape every time, the same function every time. Not to be simplistic, but that’s why it gets it’s own significant name.

Jack: Everyone knows that.

Henry: You don’t seem to be phased by all of this. The hand, the artifact the earthquake..

Jack: Now hold on a minute. Just look at it from my perspective. I’m in charge of what is essentially a bureaucracy. Every day people come to me using their own version of incredulity to get what they want –their slice of the budget. On a certain level I’m deaf to it. Maybe I should be more wowed by all this. But I’m not. It’s just part of the whole process of growth and exploration. Strange things come up. Remember the supposed face on Mars, the Cydonia debacle? It’s not that I’m not open to new things. It’s just that I don’t want to hear one urgency over another artificially. I get this all the time. But granted. These are ..different.

Henry: If it reproduces itself and does not hold to a specific shape it will not only not perform its normal function, but will die and in turn bring about the death of the larger organism that was dependant on it to perform that function and hold that shape. Language is the same.

Jack: Okay.

Henry: Whoever made this invented an unambiguous alphabet and vocabulary. There are a lot of different ways to put the pieces together, but only one that is factual and true–one that holds to the original image and the original message. Of life. They made that alphabet for a purpose. You can’t lie with it. If you did it wouldn’t work—it wouldn’t fit and wouldn’t be alive.

Jack: I don’t see how you’re getting that out of this. That thing could match lots of shapes we just don’t have representations of for whatever reason. Have you considered it could be a one hundred percent match to another shape or shapes as well? Have you tested the program on other samples?

Henry: That’s the whole point, Jack. Don’t be obtuse. It’s an entire language contained within the shapes of the parts of the DNA molecule, not just one word that is “D” “N” “A”. It has to be a match to more than one shape. An infinite variety of actual flesh is made of the DNA molecule, but only living human flesh is made in that particular shape contained within the rectangle. The only difference between them is how the molecule is arranged—shaped. But those shapes can be words as well. Whatever the shape is, so is the word—the living thing. Don’t you see? We write the same way. We associate shapes and pronounce words based on how the letters are grouped into associated shapes. You wouldn’t have to say very much to perfectly communicate with this language–it’s extremely efficient. Imagine the possibility of never being able to speak an untruth, not from lack of knowledge–or impossible to speak a lie, not from a moral or free will point of view, but purely from the mechanics of the language itself. We’re talking about an extremely advanced civilization both morally and technologically.

Jack: If what you are saying is true. That’s a big if. I don’t see the link between the DNA molecule and language–or a lexicon. Okay, there is a match in rearranging the pieces that seems to construct something, but that could be coincidence. You have to rule that out.

Henry: Why?

Jack: You are not being objective.

Henry: Don’t tell me you don’t see this! I know it’s in the middle of everything else. I know it doesn’t fit the program. But that doesn’t make it go away.

Henry picks up the printout and places it back in the case.”We’ll need to study this more of course. But coupled with the telomeric evidence of perfect health, pure gold and now perfect representation to living DNA…”

Jack: That means you want money.

Henry: How can you not see this?! Yes. I want money. I want a grant just for this. Hands off by the other departments.

Jack: It can’t be more important than other projects just because you want it to be. We don’t know why it was made or what it was doing in Antarctica. Does it have anything to do with what happened to the first crew? All you’ve got now are theories. We’ve got a second crew on the way. Last word was they were three or four days from the site. If you can come up with some real answers I’ll pass them along. We’ll work on it some more until then.”

“We?” Henry says pointedly. “You don’t make that call. I’ll go to Larry Wilkins. He’ll at least tell them so they can know what’s going on. You may be a civilian plus and you may be in charge of the funding. I may have to come up here and keep you informed. But you are not NASA.”

There is a silence.

Henry: We’ve been watching the videos from the past several weeks. The crew seemed to be speaking to themselves more and more and to each other less and less.

Jack: Speaking to themselves?

Henry: They never stop except to speak to each other.

Jack: What are they saying?

Henry: Nothing intelligble. Nothing in any language we know.

Jack: Don’t play coy. You’re trying to draw a line from their strange behavior to this plate.

Henry: I’ve got no reason to think they saw it or even knew of it’s existence.

Jack: But the behavior is strange and we did find the plate near the site.”

Henry: Well there is that.

Jack: Okay.

Henry walks toward the door. “By the way, they found some tunnels. Had you heard about that?”

Jack: The reports said it was old lava flows. Underground isn’t as solid as you think it is.

Henry: Okay.

Jack: I just want you to know you can always come to me with whatever you are thinking. I may not agree, but I’ll listen. Understand?”

Henry just stares at him.

Jack: Oh! If it is language, how would you pronounce it?

Henry lets the door close and walks slowly toward the elevator.

—————————————–

Underground:

The crew are gathered around a central console in the aft compartment looking over a holographic schematic of the site.

Hayt: The crew quarters are here on the top level, along the south perimeter. The control room, offices, medical facilities and the mess complete the level to the north and east. You’ll notice the site looks like a horseshoe with the west end cut off. Levels two through seven are for experiments, storage and more offices as the site grows. They have yet to be complete. The red is what is already complete, up and running. Yellow is the future plans. This area here, the whole of the west, has been reserved for docking bays for subterrenes and in the far future a possible subway system to the site.

Hayt points to the bottom level on the west side. “At present these two levels, are the docking bays we have. Their subterrene is here on six..or at least that’s what we think. You’ll notice five is in yellow so far. We’ll be docking on five in about two hours.”

Why the long separation?” Mary points to the long shaft that connects the top two complete levels with the lowest level.

Hayt indicates the bottom level. “The bottom level is the power plant, a larger reactor than what we’ve got. It’s not the most ideal solution, but it works for now. The lift is electric and hydraulic.”

“Are we going to hit their trail? The tunnel they made going in?” Mike is watching the sonar.

“No. They went in from the south. Their’s is a smaller model subterrene that was flown in and assembled at McMurdo. The site is built, in fact was chosen for the solid rock of the whole area. There aren’t any shafts or caverns except for theirs. We’re coming in from the west.” Izzy indicates their route. “Once the tunnels are complete..”

Mary: Why not just use their tunnel?

Gregg shifts in his seat and sits up, twirling his watch absently. “The sub’s themselves. From what Bill has said, these machines don’t run well in open tunnels over distance.”

Hayt smiles. “You’re operating, as they say, tomorrows technology today that’s already headed to mothballs. But until then, we’ve got to get on site and tunnel back out.”

Gregg: Seems a shame. It’s a beautiful beast. It’s art.

“I suppose so.” Izzy switches off the schematic.

Albright smiles. “We’re comrades in exploration and rescue. We’re making history.”

“In the midst of the solving of the grand existential, bringing light, English, Colombian coffee and the stench of human excrement to the ancient darkness.” Gregg adds casually.

“At two thousand degrees Fahrenheit in the belly of a beautiful, already obsolete beast.” Mary says softly.

Izzy sees the common spark in them that has been missing. “We are the sons and spiritual technology of God masquerading to ourselves and the rest as the emotional fulfillment and merchandise of creatures we know nothing of, making what is not yet seen, the foundations of the invisible, intelligent unknown.”

“Here. Here.” It is Hayt, who has stopped his own calculations. “Renissance Man. Is there another you in there?”

Izzy opens a drawer and pulls out a small box as the others exchange looks. “Where do any words come from? Who cares as long as the right ones get said?” He opens the box and hands Mary a patch. He takes another and reaches over to Albright; walks over to Gregg and Hayt, hands them their own.

The image sewn on the black background with yellow thread is rays of light with a human hand reaching out from the center of the light. A motto is sewn across the bottom in red. “The motto is Latin. “Ad sum!” It means…”

“I am here.” Mike rises from his seat and walks over to get his own.

Izzy hands Mike a patch. “There is no official patch for us as a unit as the project doesn’t officially exist. But for us, among ourselves, the very few who came and are here now… It goes on the right arm. Like so.” Izzy attaches his own to the Velcro. “Ad sum.”

“Ad sum.” They all said quietly, attaching their own.

Albright smirks. “I always thought I’d hate this boy scout bullshit if it ever came. But it’s actually not bad. I feel as if I have …buddies.”

Hayt grins. “Good words all.”

The floor shifts under them as the subterrene surges forward quickly only to suddenly come to almost a complete stop before moving on. Izzy and Hayt helped Mary, Albright and Gregg off the floor.

“What did we hit? An air pocket?” Gregg wipes up the remnants of his coffee.

Izzy: Mike?

Mike: We hit the first of what looks like a maze of caverns.”

Hayt: That can’t be right. This area is all solid, virgin rock. That’s why we…

He stops, as the sonar sweep reveals a maze of caverns. Punching the keypad he calls up the measurements. “At least that’s what we thought.” He turns quickly and ducks under the doorway to the control room. Izzy follows behind.

Jimmy blinks slowly.

Mary sees him swallow carefully and lick his lips. Reaching into the compartment above him, she takes out a packet of water, opens one end and inserts a straw.

He smiles weakly and accepts the straw awkwardly with his mouth.

“Careful, there, you’ve had quite a little swim.” Mary wipes his mouth.

He speaks very quietly.

Mary leans closer.

“What’s you’re name?” He says again.

“Mary Jo. But everyone calls me Mary.”

He nods slowly and carefully looks around to see who can hear him. “What’s mine?”

She can see he is serious. Pulling a small flashlight out of her pocket, she holds the light in one his eyes and quickly moves the light away. The pupil has not reacted at all. One pupil is larger than the other. She holds the light into the smaller pupil and moves it away quickly. It grew a bit and then receded. She smiles, glad Izzy had told her. “James. But everyone calls you Jimmy.”

He nods and closes his eyes. “Jimmy. Jimmy.”

Mary pats him on the shoulder and goes to see what is happening.

Hayt is punching up his own sonar. He plots a course between the tunnels.

Baxter is beside him. “How bad is it?”

“We’re okay. It’s just better to not ram the rock on the other side next time we go through one of those. I’m slowing us down.” He taps the keyboard.

Izzy can feel the inertia carry him forward slightly as they slow. “What does this do to the time table?”

We’re only a couple of miles away from the site anyway. But instead of forming another docking bay, we may be crawling up one that’s already there—I think. Look at this!”

The sonar data refreshed on the screen to reveal a vast network of tunnels and huge caverns.

“Have they done this since they’ve been here?”

“They couldn’t have. The size of the tunnels is larger than ours. They’re subterrene is smaller.”

“Natural caverns?”

Hayt shook his head. “I thought maybe.. But look at the readings. They’re symmetrical. And honeycombed with microtunnels all around them. Those were made.”

————————————————–

Ezekiel 8:8 Then said he unto me, Son of man, dig now in the wall: and when I had digged in the wall, behold a door.

In the Name of Jesus Christ, Amen

Chapter Nine

The Institute:

The double helix slowly rotates on the screen, slowly flashing in various lengths up and down the whole. Some sections glow at the same time; other alone. The image of the artifact glows in small sections from within and on the exterior that correspond to the areas on the molecule in a running sequence.

Henry stares.

Dmitri: “I changed the parameters to look for part instead of whole symbol.”

Henry stares and a smile slowly grows on his face.

Dmitri: What?

Henry: I had a dream the other night. I discovered the cure for cancer. I got in my car to go and tell ..somebody, I don’t remember who. You know how dreams are. But as I drove it became obvious that my car wouldn’t let me out and wouldn’t let me stop. So I was trapped in my car. All this weird stuff happened. I passed a gang in an old chevy and they took offense because I wouldn’t stop. I guess I had a look on my face. See? I wanted to stop and tell them, but the car wouldn’t let me. It didn’t do anything to hurt me. It just wouldn’t stop. They followed me around, threatening to hurt me if I didn’t stop. But they finally gave up. I drove on. The streets were wet but it wasn’t raining.

Dmitri: What happens?

Henry: First time in my life I ever woke up praying for a wreak.

Dmitri: Hmm.

———————————

Underground—

The subterrene leaves a small tunnel it its wake. It pushes silently forward, going deeper and deeper at a slight angle into the heart of darkness.

Sitting in front of the panel inside, Mike is content. He checks the CO2 levels again: normal; the same with the oxygen and nitrogen. He does another diagnostic on the system that vents toxic gases created by any malfunction in the reactor.

All is as it should be.

All the lights were green. Every alarm is quiet.

Beyond the assurances of the technology of being safe he watches Mary, Gregg, and Baxter go about their own duties, absorbed in the details of precision and diligence.

Conversation is minimal. They collide casually and without incident into each other through speech, finding peace and a certain safety in silence: one ear always out for the unusual sound.

His prayers are not prompted out of habit or because of an awareness of any present need or urgency. God speaks as God often does. Mike finds fear and joy in the speech spoken through him; in the thoughts he has as prayer. God prays through him for peace and prosperity and for the birthing and building up of new creations in Jesus Christ. He prays through him for prosperity and an end to lies and for works of righteousness forever. He prays for the benefit of collectives: countries, groups, political parties, single people. He prays for individuals: Jennifer to get the job she wants; for the mission to end succesfuly; for the war to end.

He prays to understand prayer as understanding God. He prays for an end to what is called piety as merely doing something against the standards of the emotional world and to receive a deeper truth of simple existence in God as fundamental reality.

With the words come an assurance that God has of course, heard His own word and that these things, in the very middle of evil and death are coming true in him; around him. He watches them come true sitting in one place with all the lights green.

He remembers suddenly, “I slept, but my heart was awake.” and “And I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea exists no more.” and had no real answer of why the two now and no explaination for why each should seem to be its own unit as well as part of a larger whole.

It comes again, welling up in him, beyond his ability to surpress it. The old Mike is the heart that tries to know itself apart from God and then bring that knowledge to God.

God disregarded his the old Mike and spoke his prayers.

He understands that he is the purpose of God’s gesture and the recipent of His attention and His word, but not as one is looked down on or across at or seen from behind, but a boundaryless sameness the old Mike tries not to recognize forms the event that is beyond an episode.

The closest he will ever get to describing it to others is to say that God is the breath and word that are his thoughts. He is witness and part of what is witnessed in the same instant. He has not gotten anywhere with his reaching out by the old Mike, but God has come the whole Distance, done it all and together they are, oddly: sobriety.

Something flows through him not his own and yet his own. There is a flash of anger at some foreigner inside him that resented this clarity, as if it proved Mike should be free of himself.

But which one?–the one that insisted on evaluating and pronouncing value on every small detail–and even now wanted the ‘episode’ to be over so that it could then decide whether to pronounce it good and enjoyable or bad and something to be avoided in the future instances–the he that is a prisoner to past moments of emotional trade as words were exchanged, feelings shopped and traded–the same he that had no say and no control over God–and resented it, pronouncing it ‘evil’ to desire to be one with God? The same he that God had overcome with His word to be one with Mike. Or the new Mike?

Every time he happens, every instant of his immortality he is attacked again by his flesh over the rightfully use of the word ‘I’; over fundamental identity. Each time, every time he will know, God will know for him and with him that he is no longer his flesh but a new creation still marveling at his being one with God.

It is a wonderful, fearful thing it to have God live in him! He knows once again what it is to rejoice with trembling. His own flesh despises him for it.

As the weakness of his own flesh and death strike him, he is no longer one with his flesh but God-in-him and he rejoices. He knows the days of words in his flesh are numbered and coming to a close.

It is not slogging through a jungle of thoughts and a breaking out into a clearing of understanding. It is certainty of oneness that cannot be articulated by any other means than of joyful laughter far beyond any relief of circumstance. That he is free of his old self even for one instant makes him happy. That he knows and recognizes he is being participated with by God, sharing his reality with Him and that he always will even if he is blinded to the awareness of it for an instant, or for hours, or even for years at a time gives him the lucidity of joy.

The laughter, the joy is the evidence of what cannot be seen or handled.

His safety in the world of flesh in past times was to suppress the laughter by applying pressure elsewhere. Having as an instinct the certainty that it is rude, even risky to laugh in public, Mike has become a master of pinching himself, tightening his fists or sereptitiously biting his lip.

Now gumming his lips together stubbornly to get past it, he tries to stare straight ahead and beyond and ignore the faces that began to watch. He wants to point to the lights and say “See? All green. Nothing to see here.”

But he laughs anyway and with his eyes open.

The pencil in his hand snaps.

The anesthetic of the norm vanishes as the tears and laughter pour out of him.

Gregg’s hands hesitate over the keyboard; Mary’s face appears to the side of a report.

Turning their heads to one side they hear his laughter up close and something else in it of absolute necessity to life from a distance.
Glad to hear it again, Mary and Izzy are unsure why they had been tense and relaxed.

Hayt, tries a merry guess in hopeful comraderie and to laugh his way toward understanding what had sparked the sound. There is desire of flesh in his effort but no God. He sounds hollow; in the technical miss of attempt, evil. He stops trying by degrees, frowns and flips the switch on the com link to send it home.

The “ “ flows out through the antenna array, traveling through the earth and coming from all around and underneath the lab in Virgina, bursting out through the speakers.

————————-

The Institute:

Peters hears the laughter in the middle of everything else and hits the intercom: “Yeah, it’s really rough down there. They’re having a party.” and keys the mike. “That’s really appropriate on a rescue mission.”

Henry sits in his chair holding the artifact. He breathes on it again to outline the edge of the curves.

Dmitri bangs out a new program to relate distances, timing and placement of the setions of artifact to the components of the DNA molecule.

The laughter erupts into the room. The artifact explodes with light.

Henry jumps and drops the artifact on the floor, and shields his eyes.

Dmitri is transfixed and stares.

—————————

Underground:

Gregg is furious. Without permisson–and in front of the others! With no time to prepare, he tastes Mike’s experience and life, participating in a oneness for which he has no desire. Grinding teeth in silence and clinching his own fists, the laughter is crowding him into a bunch of people with only one privacy to go around.

But Mike’s awareness is too honest, his laughter too candid to be taken back.

No one says anything or looks at each other.

He laughes, unable to stop; even forgetting to put his hand over his mouth.

Then, he hears: They know. They hear.

He doesn’t want it to make a difference. But the sudden thought already has.

The thought of rudeness and being in the open creeps into the laughter. He falters, finally subsiding into a full stop and a kind of stunned saddness.
In the vacuum at the end of laughter and out of his own privacy, he looks around.

An audience confronts him. The faces are a kind of shout, a demand that he explain himself.

The vacuum generates a pause of its own.

The hum of the ship and rock surrounding them filtered through into the silence.

He is confused and sits unsure what to do next.

Everyone continues to stare.

“Excuse me. I didn’t mean to…disturb..” he says, blinking wet eyes, making a discrete effort at clearing his throat and having to do it again. Taking his glasses off, he wipes his eyes with the back of his hand, suddenly knowing above all else he needs to blow his nose.

There is inappropriateness; a kind of ignorance so complete they are ashamed to know how experienced they are as he apologizes. He is an evangelism of joy in motion as he is apologizing for it.

Too late, now.

He has to get out of sight, out of the thought that everything is abrupt and witnessed. He turns to the panel and begins the diagnostics again.

“The quiet ones.” Gregg said. “It’s always the quiet ones. I got my eye on you.”

Izzy smiles at Gregg.

The stir of activity slowly resumes.

Gregg munches a potato chip. “We’ll have to start calling him Mike-a-delic.” He adds with a snort of his own laughter. “He’s a trip.”

Mary wonders if anyone knows what begins that makes laughter end. Izzy writes his name down, suddenly curious to see what it looks like on paper.
“Everyone should be able to hear it once.” Mary said to Jimmy as she wipes his forehead and checks the I.V. “Whatever it is.”

Albrite is asleep.

Coming up through a layer of dreams and impressions, past a layer of curious sensations toward something that had called Jimmy hears the hum of the ship. The light hurts his eyes as he blinks slowly. “What happened? I heard something.”

———————————

The Institute–

Dmitiri is sitting, staring at Henry, unblinking with tears in his eyes.

“Dmitri?”

“Did you see?” Dmitiri asks hoarsely.

“Yeah”

“Did you see it?!”

“Yeah. It just ..lit up. I never saw anything like it.”

“It was horrible! I almost died!”

“What are you talking about?”

“It exploded! I thought I would die at the light. Nothing like you’ve ever seen–or could see. It…” Dmitri touched his face with one hand. “I can’t see. Is it still happening?”

“Still happening? No, it..”

Dmitiri is confused. “I can’t see.” he says again. “I’m blind.”

——————————————————————

Psalm 37:12,13 The wicked plotteth against the righteous, and gnasheth his teeth against him. The Lord laugheth at him; for he seeth that his day is coming.

Job 12:16-25 With him is strength and effectual knowledge; the deceived and the deceiver are his. He leadeth counsellors away spoiled, and judges maketh he fools; He weakeneth the government of kings, and bindeth their loins with a fetter; He leadeth priests away spoiled, and overthroweth the mighty; He depriveth of speech the trusty, and taketh away the judgment of the elders; He poureth contempt upon nobles, and slackeneth the girdle of the mighty; He discovereth deep things out of darkness, and bringeth out into light the shadow of death; He increaseth the nations, and destroyeth them; he spreadeth out the nations, and bringeth them in; He taketh away the understanding of the chiefs of the people of the earth, and causeth them to wander in a pathless waste. They grope in the dark without light, and he maketh them to stagger like a drunkard.

In the Name of Jesus Christ, Amen

Jimmy:

Timing is everything. There seems a perfect way to do it. But the timing of it is really the thing.

He waits for the ship to rise again so he will go far and fast enough to really make a splash.

It is more a fall than a jump; more a controlled crash than a graceful plunge into the water. It is the last departure with no one to even say goodbye.

Walking out of the cabin in which they had confined him, he had found his way nearer the water. When no one was looking, he climbed up on the railing and thought about it. He went over as the shift in the ships weight threw him off balance.

The water is very cold; colder than it looks! I told you! It goes everywhere: up his nose, his ears; into his mouth, around his groin; inside his shoes and socks. The effect on his skin is shocking. He can’t feel his fingers.

Everything that has gone before has carried with it a simultaneous camouflage of feelings. For an instant he is caught trying to arrange his feelings; to recognize what is happening and act to counter it. Don’t get punked by this.They will see.

All that has happened has never really been understood because all his attention was on the excitment. His life has been lived but only revealed to him in snatches and around the edges.

As he struggles in the water, his legs kicking the water away so he can go upward and his arms pusing the surface away to go deeper he hears: How could that have happened?!

Knowing it doesn’t change it. Hearing the voice of consternation doesn’t make the water less alien, less cold or wet. Leaving all of it behind, he will deafen himself with death. Some of the voices said they couldn’t reach him on the other side. Others disagree. A suffocating, stabbing pain grips his chest as the water rushes in. He tries to place it in a good feeling and fails. His mouth opens to scream…

—————

The water flees from his mouth.

They see him gasp for air.

“Got him!” Mary says triumphantly, easing off his chest. “We got him back!”

Izzy takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly. He leans over the metal ledge that serves as a small lab and drops the headgear into the locker.

Mary: You did the right thing.

———

Hayt was right: Going down was rough.

After the initial contact on the muddy bottom, they had checked systems as the air cushion deflated. Mike had detected Jimmy in the water. Everything had stopped.

Hayt directs the blasts of air and they are in the sand in seconds. The subterrrene has entered the mud and sand almost vertical and is burrowing straight down quickly. The mud and sand from the ocean floor flow in behind them. At two hundred and ninety seven feet from the ocean floor they hit bedrock.

Hayt brings up the com links. “We’ve docked on the substrate surface and are ready for entry. No damage. No complaints.” He is smiling.

Izzy: What?

Hayt puts his hand over the mike: I love this part. When I was a kid I always imagined myself doing this kind of thing. You know, “stand by to find out secrets”.

Izzy: Is it what you thought it would be?

Hayt: Yes and no.

There is a break of squelch over the com link. “Standby for testing.”

“Roger.” Bill watches the structural integrity tests flash in sequence across the panel overhead.

Radio voice: Standby to engage reactor.

Hayt: Standing by.

Radio voice: Engage reactor.

Bill taps in the code. “Engaging.” A panel appears on the screen. He taps the icon and the panel displays the reactor statistics. “Reactor output within normal levels.”

“Everything is a go. Entry in two minutes.”

“Two minutes. Roger. Setting count down.”

“On mark.”

Bill touches the screen again. “Mark.”

Radio voice: All systems in the green.

Hayt: We’ve picked up a passenger.

There is a silence. Then, “Say again.”

Hayt: We’ve picked up a tourist. It was that or a casualty.

Radio Voice: Roooger that. Standby. Entry is still a go.

Bill toggles off the com link for an instant and smiles at Izzy. “Damn right it is. They ain’t gonna try and turn off the reactor now. Not that they couldn’t—but we’re in the groove now.”

The operator in Virginia punches up another screen.

Jack Wallace turns from the map of the site in his office and picks up the phone. “Yes?”

Radio Voice: They’ve picked up a tourist.

Jack: They what?

Radio Voice: Apparently someone from the ship. They said it was that or they would have left a casualty.

Jack: I want a name at the first opportunity. I want to know why.

Radio Voice: Yessir.

Jack: Proceed.

Jack slowly placed the receiver onto the base.

“What?”

Jack approaches the map again and stares at the encircled corridor. “They picked up a passenger. A rescue.”

“What’s his name?” The other man speaks easily and without haste.

Jack: Who said it was a he?

The other man says nothing but smiles.

The controller taps a code and the screen disappears. He taps up the Enigma’s com screen again.

Radio Voice: Good luck.

Hayt: Now we’ll see how the new temp controllers really do. Everything looks good from here. We’re a go for entry.

They slowly move forward, silently melting into the rock.

Albrite looks shaky.

Hayt: “As soon as we’re horizontal you can get out of the seats.”

Twenty minutes later they begin to check equipment.

Albrite unbuckles cautiously. “Well, so far so good. Everything seems to be working.”

“You can’t really say so far it’s been good. What are we going to do with that guy? He’s going to require ’round the clock attention–if he survives. We haven’t even gotten started good and we’ve got extra weight!” Gregg is doing a diagnostic on the electronics.

“We’ll make out with what we have. We might be bringing back more wounded than just him. It’s what we’re doing here. End of discussion.” says Izzy.

Mary leans over Jimmy who is strapped to a bunk. Wiping his face again, she checkes his eyes. One pupil is large, the other is tiny.
“He’s had a stroke. His right side may be paralyzed for a while, maybe even permanantly.”

“Sent our coordinates home. We’re all present and accounted for–with a little extra thrown in. Sorry to mention food, but you pulled that drill on us kinda quick don’t you think, Izzy? We didn’t even get a last meal.” Hayt says, ducking into the main compartment.

Izzy: Better this way. Besides, some of us might not have been able to keep down what they ate in all the excitment.

Albrite: It’s not my fault I have a nervous stomach.

The subterrene moves on, silently melting deeper and deeper as the crew sets up for the journey.

————————————————————————-

Homam

Things are getting tense. The news is full of more Islamic jihadist’s growing bolder in their killing; in their rhetoric.

There is something he can do.

——–

He listens to the man speak with mild curiosity on the off chance he will say something new.

Speaking with people is always the same: They do the things you did or should have done when you said it. They are a mirror and don’t mind making it obvious. They can’t help it. They do things you used to do when you first encountered the same thing you just said; your side of the conversation.

Homam can’t do first things any more. He tries every now and then to remember as if really hanging on to the feeling whenever it hit. He tries sometimes to do the expected new thing again to prove he is a harmless novice at life.

But it is really gone and his fingers are really stained with nicotine.

In the middle of nodding and smiling to what they say in reply it hits him: he is old in more than one thing; has got multiple histories within the whole. They are reflecting him then at some particular (but really at various points—the him stretched over all the years) and thinking it is him now. They are being one with who he used to be and true in that solidarity. They have taken who he used to be for a friend in the particular of which they speak and missed him completely. It makes them smile, wave him over to a cushion and offer him tea.

The coin falls out of his hand and onto the counter with a heavy sound unlike modern coins. He is no longer a prisoner to the laws it has to obey; the things that make it valuable. Paper is lighter. And if you get into trouble, you can just burn it.

It is a coin with an image of a man on one side and a man a woman on the other. There are inscriptions. Old style. It is gold and very large; very heavy in his hand. His father had given it to him one day. No ceremony, no reason. He had just let if all into Homam’s hand and smiled a curious smile.

He takes the tea. He smiles. The conversation is on auto pilot. He trusts his experience to say the right thing while he plans the trip.

My god what a coin! Absolutely stunning! Stunning. Where did you come by it?

My father.

Um Hmm. Do you have any more?

Just the one.

Of course. Who would hope for more? The gods have already been generous. Do you have any idea of its value? It is rare indeed.

Yes.

I see. It is a twenty stater gold coin. Greaco Bactrian. I don’t know that it can be sold. Legally, I mean. There are only a handful in the world. If it is genuine.

Homam smiles easily on que.

..the man drones on about the history of money and mathmatics, weights and talents and purity. Why it is valuable. Why it is just, right and true it should be valuable. Bactria. Eucratides. His mother. See here? Basilicus Megalou. It means the Great King. The difficulty of such a rare coin. There is value and then there is invaluable.

France. It would be France. There is something in France that calls him. She won’t care. As long as no one knows. They will leave it behind. They will just …go.

..can’t possibly have a buyer before next week. Word has to get out to get the best price. You understand.

Today. We’ll make the exchange tommorow.

You are in a hurry.

Yes and no.

Is it stolen? I know it is rude to ask. But .. They’ll know of course.

No. It is not stolen. It is just unknown to you until now.

Of course. Uh..I’ll have to make some calls. Where can I reach you?

Homam gives him the number to his cell phone; his email. No later than five. American dollars and British pounds.

Yes. Of course. A man with that coin makes the rules.

I do not care to keep speaking. I don’t care if I am rude.

The man looks at him closely. A man with that coin could be free. He extends his hand.

Homam picks up the coin, backs away and disappears into the crowd.

———

A suitcase full of money is heavier than it looks.

The bank had given him plastic. The man had given him a numbered account he should check from time to time. This is only a downpayment –until I know a price.

She wants to go by plane.

The Institute:

Henry knocks on the glass in front of the communications sector. “Any word?”

“Not from onsite.” Peters turns from his monitor. “Team Two is on its way, about to go under.”

Video of the site is being played on a nearby monitor.

Henry: That from the site?

Peters: Yeah. We’ve replayed the last transmission over and over to try to determine exactly what was going on before the quake. Now we’re going back and analyzing the last few weeks.

Henry: The last transmission was just before the quake?

Peters: Right after the earthquake. Routine stuff until then.

Henry: Need some help? Things are slow for us.

Peters: Why not? You can watch some discs over on the far monitor. Here is the last recording as the quake hit.” Henry takes a small disc. The tech points to a monitor.

The video:

The crew in the middle of a normal days work. Experiments being conducted; data collected. Routine equipment checks on-going.

Scenes change as the different views of the camera spread over the site. A sparse crew of men go about the business of experimental space research.

—–

A crew meal. Gathered around a table in the conference room, they eat in silence. The other cameras show an empty habitat.

The meal goes quietly. The crew glances at the camera.

“They almost act as if someone would take something away from them, huh?” Peters says as he wheels his chair over.

Henry nods. “Am I mistaken or is that a sunburn on a couple of faces?” A closer examination of the other members shows them with small dressing stuffed in their noses.

Peters: They had previously said that some of them were experiencing sunburns, nose bleeds and nausea.”

Henry: Infrasound just prior to the quake? Pre-shocks maybe?

Peters: We thought of that. Theoretically would produce similar symptoms. The experts say it’s possible. But there has never been even one documented case of natural infrasound causing the sunburns. They don’t mention it again. We really don’t know what to make of it.

———

The crew is talking in hushed tones until Reynolds raises his voice. “We’ve got to find it soon.”

“Read it again. Maybe it’s really us…” someone begins but is interrupted by a deep rumbling from beyond the camera.

“What is that?”

“Earthquake? Here?” Reynolds asks.

The camera vibrates out of focus, then shakes along with the entire lab as tables, chairs, the ceiling, then the floor, a head, an outstretched arm, books and flashes of metallic objects go in and out of the cameras range.

The screen goes blank with static and white noise.

A short time later a hand in front of the screen adjusts the view. “Are we back? Are you getting this?”

Another voice says, “Try it now. We should have power.”

A head backs away from the screen to reveal the communications officer. “Okay, I think we’re back. I haven’t received anything. But I think we’re sending. If you guys back home are getting this we had an earthquake. No one is seriously hurt–a few cuts and bruises. We lost some equipment and some of the auxiliary tunnels collapsed. We’ve still got the smaller boring probe so we’ll just re-tunnel. But we’re not sure about the experiments themselves.. Commander Reynolds is out with Williams to try and assess the total damage. Power keeps going on and off–we’ll be cleaning up this mess for weeks at least. The good news is the lab withstood the shake-up. The shell is still intact and our air is still good. Considering what could have happened we….”

The screen goes blank again.

“Read what?” Henry asks.

Peters: Nobody knows. There hasn’t been any contact since. That’s why we’re viewing the past few weeks again. No one noticed any serious change or anything out of the ordinary from our end. But something must have spooked them besides the earthquake. The nausea, sunburn and nose bleeds started two and half weeks before the quake. Tests from our end indicate they could both send and receive–even now. But nothing. The best we’ve come up with is Seasonal Effective Disorder with the earthquake exaggerating the effects.”

Henry: Have you tweaked the volume and…

Peters: They’re discussing something they found. A shape in the rock, maybe a table. But we haven’t seen it on the video, it hasn’t been mentioned in any reports and they only make passing remarks about it. But as to what they should read again, that could be anything.

Henry: I’ll watch for a while. We’re just crunching numbers for now. Boring stuff.

———-

Several hours later Henry stretches and stands.

Peters motions him over to another monitor. “May have something. It wasn’t on the reports.”

Video:

“I’m telling you it wasn’t me!” a crewman is saying. “I didn’t drill those holes!”

“I suppose they just drilled themselves?” another voice responds. “It weakens the overall safety to just drill where you want.”

“I don’t know how they got there..but it wasn’t me–and it wasn’t our equipment. I checked.”

“You’re telling me they were here when we got here?”

“It wasn’t us. That’s all I know.”

Henry: What are they talking about? They found some old tunnels? Anything else on this?

Peters shakes his head. “Not that I know of. This is the first we’ve heard of it.”

Henry: Wouldn’t that have been rather significant? I mean if they really had found tunnels or caves they didn’t make?”

Peters: More than significant. It’d be incredible. It would call into question the structural integrity of the overall site.”

Henry: And nobody has heard of this?

Peters: Not us until now.

Henry: Who was watching the site?

Peters: The guys we replaced I guess.”

———————————————-

At Sea:

“How far out?” Izzy is leaning over a typographical map of the Antarctic ocean bottom.

“About here.” Hayt stands beside him and circles a spot on the map.

Mike: That’s over a hundred miles off the coast.

Hayt: According to the ‘eighty five core samples, that’s the last place the sediment is over three hundred feet thick. We need at least a hundred and seventy feet to cover the entire subterrene with enough mud and gravel to stop the ocean water from coming in behind us. The closer we get to the coast, the shallower the depth of sediment. We’re pushing it now. Any further out and the subterrene couldn’t take the pressures of the water. We need to be between one hundred and three hundred meters of water for the pipes to be at optimum operating environment.

Mary: And you’ve never done this particular maneuver before?

Hayt: In theory it’s sound. The key will be maintaining enough pressure to blast our way deep enough. The water will come in behind us and wash in sand and mud to cover us. According to the calculations, we need approximately one hundred and sixty three feet of tunnel filled in by the sand and mud to form an effective plug behind us.

Mike: A hundred and sixty feet doesn’t sound like a lot of room for error.

Hayt: I checked the equipment myself–twice. We’re good. After we’re in the rock we can collapse the tunnel behind us if the water is still leaking or the plug looks weak.

Izzy: Check it again. If we miss we won’t be coming back.

All of them are gathered in Izzy’s quarters for a last briefing.

“Everything checks. All the equipment is on board. We’re ready to go–but I still don’t see how we’re getting that monster off the ship.” Gregg leans against the desk and reads the chart upside down.

“The hull is a clamshell. I thought you would have noticed.” Izzy looks at Gregg.

Gregg: “It opens..?”

Izzy: “..the floor extends under us, breaks away in the middle, down we go. We’re top heavy with the forward tanks attached.”

Gregg looks at Hayt. “Ever done this at night?”

Hayt: Left handed either. Wouldn’t make any difference. But we’ve tested prototypes in shallower depths. I’ve got over three hundred hours in the simulator on this.

Albrite: Three thousand?

Hayt smiles. “Enough to get it right.”

Albrite: What happens if we get stuck on the bottom and can’t get into the rock?

Izzy: Somebody will just have to come and get us. But then where would the crew on site be?

“I see.” Albrite says nervously as he nods his head. “What if something goes wrong?”

Gregg: “Don’t jinx us, man. Just keep it to yourself.”

There is a silence.

Izzy: You’re a professional, right? I guess you better have tightened every bolt and secured every wire and strap.

Albrite: I thought, you know, someone would check it. I’m not a mechanic.

Izzy: We don’t have time to check it again and again. That’s what you were doing. Bill and I showed you how to put it together. I saw you doing it right. There isn’t a whole lot to it. That’s it.” Izzy looks around at them all. “This whole thing involves risk. Once we knew the air transport was out we needed a new plan. You’ve all worked hard all your lives, whether you knew it or not for this very thing. Here’s the payoff for the sweat and the diligence.

Mary: So when do we go?

Izzy: Three to five hours. I’ll talk to the Commander. We’ll be in a holding pattern ’til then or we’ll overshoot the objective.

Gregg: The objective?

Izzy points to the circled spot on the map. “Entry point.”

Mike: How long ’til we’re at the base?

Hayt: A week, plus or minus. But once we hit the rock it’ll actually be pretty boring, pardon the pun, ’til we get there. Sleep. Eat. Run the experiments. Our job really doesn’t begin until we’re on site”

Mary: You know all the puns don’t you?

Izzy smiles. “I won’t bore you with more than is necessary.” He looks around the room. A tight, constricting, heaviness charges the air. “Fear is a good edge.” he says quietly. “Get some sleep if you can.”

———————————————————-

Daniel 1:1-4 In the third year of the reign of Jehoiakim king of Judah came Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon unto Jerusalem, and besieged it. And the Lord gave Jehoiakim king of Judah into his hand, and a part of the vessels of the house of God; and he carried them into the land of Shinar, to the house of his god; and he brought the vessels into the treasure-house of his god. And the king spoke unto Ashpenaz the chief of his eunuchs, that he should bring of the children of Israel, both of the royal seed and of the nobles, youths in whom was no blemish, and of goodly countenance, and skilful in all wisdom, and acquainted with knowledge, and understanding science, and such as had ability in them to stand in the king’s palace, and whom they might teach the learning and the language of the Chaldeans.

In the Name of Jesus Christ, Amen

Laura

It is the shape mixed with material. Shifting and moving in a wordless speech, they are carried along by the spirit of the whole.

Trains have their own style of surrounding human presence. Sharp corners on the bottom, flat seats bolted to the floor, and rounded corners on the ceiling; with the steam going by in the long tunnels underground and the rocking of the wheels on the track, the souls know they are inside even as they see each other in the middle of it all.

Laura had thought by now to have said something; surprised herself at how long she had gone without saying a word. She looks at each curve, each small wrinkle on the woman’s face; her nose with the eyes almost as slits just above. Eastern european, maybe. Laura imagines the woman, for no reason she can place, to be a survivor of Buchenwald; perhaps to have a number tattooed on her wrist. She has things to say you wouldn’t believe if you hadn’t been there; a wisdom only survivors are given. If they would just say it…

Laura: Are you Jewish?

Old woman: Belarus, she says in a heavy accent.

Three layers deep in warm, expensive garments, the old woman seems to Laura to have more presence than anyone else on the train. As the stops flash by and the presence of the other people lessens, the old woman stares restfully at the numbers. If nothing else she knows how to wait.

The old woman catches Laura’s discreet, admiring look at her demeanor and frowns. It irks her that she can never fade in to the background; that there is never, ever any real anonymity; she never can watch other people the same way they watch her. It is rude; awkward: to be caught watching other people and satisfying one’s curiosity about the particulars of bodies and souls and all the in-betweens at their expense. She expects the other person to dislike being watched; to think of it as being used. Yet they do it to her all the time no matter what she does or doesn’t do. Never told she is beautiful except by her husband, she has always wondered if that’s what it is.

She rides this train all the time.

She remembers the young man with the troubled look that threw himself under the train. She had said nothing. What was there to say?

She remembers the old man who smiled at her everyday for over a year each time she had gotten on. He had always sat opposite her. She had never said a word.

She missed him, not having seen him in almost a month. It was as if a tree had died in her small garden that had never been a favorite, but had provided a function. It was useful in its own way; a shadow clock for that niche of her life that was a source of small, beautiful leaves in winter and shade too small for anything large but just right for the small flowers around it in summer. It stopped moving when he stopped sitting there.

Things change.

She remembered all the people of consequence, the noticeable ones to which she had never spoken a word and given them the privacy she never has.

But if not now, when?

Old woman: “I see you looking at me. What is it you want?”

Laura looks in the woman’s eyes, sees shine and depth, then traces her hair over her ear, falling over into the fur of her coat. “Something you probably couldn’t tell me anyway.”
She had wanted to say “You look like a likely place for a soul to hang out .. in. It was Henry’s first sentence to her. He had never been a master of one-liners. For that she was glad. But it was nifty enough to get by, the stumbling way he had said it and it had broken the ice. He had added, “Maybe even a spirit. You’re a woman so I know you gotta heart.” He had been looking at her face, but not in her eyes. What a stupid thing to remember. She shifted her packages.

The old woman nods: You want to know my face –how I came by the shapes and how that relates to my soul and the whole world. You want the shape of my soul framed in words that match my wrinkles. My husband is like that. My daughter, too.

Laura: Why not?

The woman glances at Laura’s eyes and stares. You always assume it is something you want to see; that I am beautiful. What if I am ugly?

Laura: Only beautiful people talk that way. Those who at least think they have something valuable to hide.

The woman smiles slightly. They expect it here. “What do you do?”

I’m an attorney.

I see.

You?

I’m a wife.

Me too.

What are you? You look expensive.

Expensive? I suppose it’s better than cheap.

What religion?

I grew up Presbyterian. But I’m in a non-denominational church now. You?

I’m Jewish.

They fall silent as the train moves on.

“Non-denominational. That where you ..” the old woman raises her hands and slowly waves them back and forth in the air. “..do this?”

Laura: Some do. I haven’t quite worked up to it yet.

Why do they do it?

I don’t know.

I’ve watched them on television and done it when they did. But I don’t understand. It seems ridiculous.

I don’t know.

Why did you leave the Presbyterians?

Something happened.

You couldn’t find another group of Presbyterians?

It wasn’t the same.

I see.

The train brakes and stops. The old woman stands up and gathers her bags: It was nice talking with you.

Laura: You too.

Maybe we will talk again sometime.

That would be nice.

The door closes and the train is moving again. All the shapes and sounds are the same, but no one is talking.

—————————————————

At sea:

Hayt: We’ll have to connect the outer pipes with the inner core here and here.” Hayt points to the front and rear of the huge subterrene on the schematic. Basically the outside rotates while the inside, where we will be, is stabilized by the rotation.

Mike: How fast is it?

Hayt: It’ll do six miles an hour in solid rock. Silt and clay soil slows us down; higher moisture content, harder to heat. So we look for the highway as they say. We burrow as far down as necessary until we hit the solid stuff, then we go, well, where ever we want from there.” Hayt is standing in front of a schematic of the subterrene. The pride is evident in his voice. “We’re fifth generation on this now, past the initial problems. We built the first one in ‘75, been smokin’ ever since.

“I don’t understand how you’re digging through the rock. Where’s the grinding thing–and what happens to all the ground up rock?” Mary looks over the schematic Hayt has laid out on the small table.

Hayt: “We don’t grind it anymore, we melt it–which eliminates any tailings–the ground up rock. The heat pipes are filled with liquid lithium. It has a melting point of two thousand degrees Celsius. As the lithium is melted, it’s circulated to the front via the rotating blades which are against the rock face, pulling the machine forward. As the rock melts, it’s pressed to the side of the subterrene where it resolidifies. That’s ‘vitrifies’ for you technical types,” he says, looking at Gregg, “.. as volcanic glass.”

Mary: “So we’re surrounded by liquid lithium at two thousand degrees.”

Hayt: “Yes and no. It circulates and is rotated around the subterrene. Think of it as a corkscrew that rotates around the main compartment of the subterrene. Once you get it started, all you have to do is keep it rotating and it will pull itself into the material. The melted rock flows back along the blades as the pipes rotate and shapes the tunnel wall.”

Mike: “How far will it go? How long can we last under the surface?”

Hayt: “We heat the lithium as it passes through a small nuclear reactor. The lithium serves as coolant for the reactor, the heated lithium is in turn cooled as it gives up its heat to melt the rock. It’s a very efficient process. Nuclear gives us power to spare really–we can go anywhere. It’s safer that way too. In effect we’re really swimming through the rock and leaving a small tunnel behind. The only potential problem we could run into is underground streams and rivers. The water would make it difficult to control the cooling process and we’d be in trouble. But we’ve got ground sonar and a database of satellite info on where the rock veins run so literally, we’re almost bulletproof.”

Gregg: How difficult?

Hayt: Not as much as it used to be. Part of the learning curve was the temperature control. But we’re fifth generation on this now. It would give us problems, but nothing catastrophic. Mainly it would throw off our timing because it would slow us down.

Mary: You could go ..

Hayt nods. Anywhere.

Mike: Well it’s nice we can dig. But what about crew accommodations and all the experiments we’re supposed to run? I’ve got a ton of stuff I’ve got to set up as we’re getting there.

Hayt: Plenty of room. As I said, we’re fifth generation on this. The overall length of the subterrene has tripled over the last several models. We’ll be cozy but not cramped. You’ll all have individual work stations. There’s enough personal space not to feel claustrophobic.

Gregg: You’ve done this before?

Hayt: A few times.

Mike: What’s the ride like? I mean are we gonna be shaken to pieces?

Hayt: Going down can be rough. This time especially as we impact the ocean floor. Going through the initial substrate and getting to the rock will be its own ride. But once we hit the hard rock it’s pretty smooth.

Mike: This time?

Izzy: Going in through water is its own phase we’ve had to address. Never done this maneuver before.

Albrite wretches in the back of the cabin, not yet over his sea sickness. He looks at them apologetically. “Sorry.”

Izzy: “That’ll do it for now. We’ll meet in the hold in twenty minutes and start the fit. We’ve got a lot of work ahead. It goes without saying that we’re inexperienced with each other and not really a team at this point. Some of us have worked together. Some of us haven’t. If you look around you’ll see an ego as big as your own staring back. Get a grip on yourselves and let’s do what we came to do. There’s not much time to get ready.” Izzy picks up his coffee.

Everyone looks at everyone else and one by one file out the door.

Albrite motions to Izzy. “I’m not really up to it yet.”

Izzy: Can’t spare you. Bring a trash can with you, I won’t mind. You’ll be over it soon enough. I waited as long as I could. As I recall, we couldn’t get the funding unless you went. I told you then you wouldn’t like it. It’s not a cruise.

——–

Twenty minutes later they stand in the giant hold of the ship. The outer shell and the inner core sections are suspended from two shipboard cranes covered in canvas. Izzy, winch control in his hand, pushes a button. The canvas is lifted off the shapes to reveal sections of the cylindrical craft.

No windows. No markings. It is elegant brute force in the raw. The burnished steel looks good under the light. Massive tubes in smooth curves wrap around the front and flow toward the back. Grooves and small upraised blades are seen running the length of the pipe.

“Slick.” Mary says quietly in admiration.

Gregg smiles, walks up and feels of the outside of the tubes. The others walk around the other side to have a look.

Izzy: See what happens when you study?

Gregg and Izzy smile at each other broadly.

Gregg: A beautiful, beautiful beast indeed. Inside?

They walk toward the front.

Mike is grinning, staring at it. Mary is running her hand down a curve, smiling.

Hayt punches a code in a small panel he has pulled out. A door moves in slightly, divides in the middle and slides to the sides. Lights come on from inside. A small step slides out and down. Hayt jumps in the forward section.

————————————————-

The Institute:

Henry: What do we have so far?

The artifact lays in its case. Henry is trying not to look at it. He takes off his jacket and throws it over the back of his chair. The images within the artifact are fitted over images of hopeful matches from the database on the monitor screen.

Dmitri: We had several possibilities earlier. No matches.

Henry: Is it the program–the limits or variables?

Dmitri: Too soon to tell.

Henry: What’s it working on now?

Dmitri speaks as he punches in more data. “Babylonian, Accadian and Assyrian symbols and pictograms. How about that kid you mentioned. Any help?”

Henry: “I sent him a hypothetical. We’ll see how he does. Started the paper work on his clearance yesterday. He’s a little pre-occupied right now. His brother is home on leave from Afghanistan.” Henry sits and leans back in his chair. “I think it is writing. But it may predate any symbols we have.”

Dmitri: “What?”

Henry: “It could predate any writing systems to such an extent that it would assure no possible match. Just thinking about how we are searching here.”

Dmitri: “Better idea?”

Henry: “Not yet. But if so it would be the perfect test case of relationship minus context. An encryption with no possibility of knowing what or why it is or who made it or encrypted it. So we would have to find not only the base alphabet but the algorithm as well. And that could prove unknowable unless our methods are at least similar.”

Dmitri: “That is false premise. You cannot prove you do not know something. You cannot prove it such that you do not know specific parts of it. It is an unknown.”

“Why untestable?” Jack walks in and pulls a chair over.

Jack frowns. “It’s useful to be dumb sometimes. I read your report. Why can’t you test it for age?”

Henry: “We can’t test it for age. I said if it pre-dates any writing Jack, given the age of the surrounding ice. We don’t know yet. But it’s very hard to work backward with writing. There are codes even now that haven’t been broken—Linear A for example. Plus it’s made out of pure gold. Pure gold–meaning there are no impurities to test. All age tests depend on a mixed sample–it has a little of one kind of atom, a little of another and so on. Age is determined by comparing relative amounts of one element against another from the same sample. Over time some elements break down into others. The rate of conversion from one to another is predictable. How much of one atom is there can be correlated to how long it took to get there assuming a certain level of its absence to begin with. There is no test for a pure sample–nothing to compare it to. It hasn’t broken down into anything. The most stable isotope of gold is gold-one ninety seven; naturally occurring, what makes up the artifact. It has a half-life of several million years. Without getting into metaphysics, all we can say is it was made less than several million years ago or the plate would not still be pure gold.”

Jack looks at Henry. “I see your point. Sort of. Did you just dodge what Dmitri said?”

Dmitri points to the screens. I linked to database at National Science Foundation. It should go through info in two or three hours–that is next. If we do not get a match between now and then, I will not be sure what to check after that.

Jack nods.”Well!” he says, watching the images flicker on the screen and getting up to leave, “Keep at it!”

Henry: “Why do we even waste time talking to him? It goes in one ear and out the other and if we found anything he’d try to steal it!” He looks at the artifact.

Dmitri: He is important sponsor.

Henry: Who’s on shift at commo?

Dmitri: I don’t know names. All new people over there. That blonde-haired kid.

Henry: Peters. He’s okay. I’m gonna see if we have any word from the station. A couple of hours?

Dmitri: No. I said three or four hours.

Henry: Right.

The characters on the screen silently rotate, compare and change as Henry leaves.

——————————————–

Amos 9:2-4 Though they dig into Sheol, thence shall my hand take them; and though they climb up to the heavens, thence will I bring them down; and though they hide themselves on the top of Carmel, I will search and take them out thence; and though they be hid from my sight in the bottom of the sea, there will I command the serpent, and it shall bite them; and though they go into captivity before their enemies, there will I command the sword, and it shall slay them: and I will set mine eyes upon them for evil, and not for good.

In the Name of Jesus Christ, Amen

Homam

The breeze blows softly, washing the small valley with the light scent of the banyan trees and carrying the sounds of every day life to all with the ears to hear.

Homam sits, contemplating the changes brought about by an influx of young Muslim converts to his village. His friend Abdul was killed last week in rioting over an honor killing. But Homam and his family are okay.

For the moment.

Timing is everything. You know your time, the geist des alters and how to make that spirit pull a plough, you got it made. Knowing when and how to steer left or right of the trouble: that is the thing.

Abdul proved it: everyone lived outside their own religious mind and heart. No matter what they said they believed or how it made them feel, the world revolved around a larger geist than each man’s own system. It was this larger thing that made up the real commerce and it was this larger thing that was in truth les irréductibles : das und die vielen. The smaller economies within it were of no consequence and only served the larger whole even though each imagined itself to be everything.

In the Hindu system Hindus are correct. In the Muslim system the Muslims are correct. In the Christian system the Christians are correct. The Jews are the same. Everyone in an endless game of top-the-bat. But that the bat exists and there is a struggle proves it is only a game within something larger.

It is in the time-outs where you make your money. Homam has always imagined himself selling drinks at an American baseball game to those who say there is no such drink but always give up the cash for it.

He blows out the smoke from his hand rolled cigarette as the music drifts out from inside. The mayor is inside with his wife. The bedsprings creak like an old, metal sign swinging slowly back and forth on rusty hinges: fif-teen rupees, fif-teen rupees, fif-teen rupees…

The mayor doesn’t understand him, how he doesn’t mind having a whore for a wife. The mayor always looks at him as if he is insane even as he forks over the rupees politely when Homam looks in Omar’s direction. Omar is his bouncer; a twenty percenter.

People like to pretend they never peak over the fence after they already did. They like to pretend that drink doesn’t exist. Thus: Omar .

Homam is glad his wife is a whore; knows that it is the prostitutes who are the wisest people on earth. She understood before Abdul that everyone lives outside whatever mind or heart of religion they have. After all, if everybody lives the system they speak, then no body will rent another person’s body for a mental experiment with physical consequences that can’t be had in their own system. There wouldn’t be any homosexuality, adultery or divorce except by the atheist.

Homam knows he is rich because every body wants a peek over their own particular fence. So Abdul was right in his perverse Muslim way: speak peace to the prophet, but understand you live between the prophet and your fellow man’s pride and ignorance. To survive you have to turn his ignorance and pride into your cash. The prophet understands. He made the system.

Homam took anohter drag on the cigarette and blew out the smoke through his nostrils. Definitely. We just live here.

Homam prefers the Americanism of “the other guy” to “fellow man” though. It is so… right there. That the Americans even have such a saying proves they understand. He knows there is no “Allah”, but that the Hindu gods have made the system and run it for whatever peculiarity of gods that made them do such things. But as long as all the gods use the same cash, have the same medium of exchange, even if it is souls and bodies, what difference is there if the other guy thinks he is smarter for saying certain words more often than others? Cash is cash.

Homam. It is the one thing he can never get over, the one thing that doesn’t fit in the whole or in the Hindu.

It is an odd name for a Hindu. His mother had said it was Biblical, though he had no idea why he would be named with a Biblical name. But once again, it only proved that you really have to live outside your own system. Other people make you. His mother had been wise to make him carry around a proof. Whenever he forgot the lesson, there it is in the other guy’s mouth, the other guy’s thoughts of who he is.

The mayor’s son sits out on the porch with him, looking disgusted. A young man, he is full of ideals: still trying to obtain to them and keeping intact all the ones he has already obtained. Prostitutes are beneath him. So are their husbands.

But silence in the the kid’s system is there to be filled with proofs that his system is god. The kid is a new Muslim. The prophet this … great Satan that. Moral perfections just over the next hill. You know.

The kid just doesn’t know when to stop. His kind are the dangerous ones: new converts there to out-perform the older converts.

——-

Homam: Did you hear of the wedding bomb?

Kid: It wasn’t a ‘wedding bomb’. The wedding party was an accident. Islam respects marriage. Besides, it wasn’t even Al Qaeda. It was the Jews.

I didn’t know that.

The prophet, may he be blessed, has instructed us to go after the infidels. Do you realize that doing so is true compassion? That many in the world suffer because they don’t know the prophet? We are holy warriors uniting those who have been lied to with their truth.

And the others?

Like pimps and prostitutes? I say kill them. They know what they do. They have heard of the prophet.

You are a brave young man.

To say that to you? The prophet protects me. Omar is nothing.

But you only use such words as you grew up with. I suppose every prophet is a prisoner to the speech of those to whom he speaks, eh? A prisoner to their will? It is too easy to kill. I say overwhelm me –then I’ll say he’s a prophet.

Be careful. He may give you what you wish for as a bullet.

—————–

The reeds bend softly in the breeze; a bird sighs in the banyan trees. The bedsprings are creaking rapidly now.

Homam smiles: The kid is still in his infancy. He is a fool and doesn’t know it. Homam knows the kids hears the very same creaking sign as Homam, at the very same time as: ”Your wife is a whore and you are a corruptor! You’re wife is whore and you are a corruptor! You’re wife is a whore and you are a corruptor!…. and thinks it evil. The kid has been given so many rupees all his life he knows nothing of how to get them from the other guy and how hard that is.

But in his easy wealth the kid is dangerous. Homam recognizes the signs.

Abdul had told him years ago: there will be times when they get lost in their minds and hearts and forget the larger economy. In those times, they will blame anything evil that happens to them on their stepping out of their own lie of what the world is. They will blame it on you because you live outside all the time and in their mind tempt them to so as well. In those times it is best to take a vacation for a while. Know when the other guy has gone back in his own system for more than a few days. Get out of town. Or kill them first.

His wife knows some things. But she is always blind to those moments of violent clarity. She doesn’t understand the subtleties of timing and cash.

Maybe France. Uruguay?

———————————————————————————–

At sea:

First the ship instead of a plane, which adds weeks to their arrival and delayed them when they needed to be on site yesterday; then the delay at the dock. Now the word is the crew is still too sick to start getting familiar with the equipment.

In the wheel house, steadying himself with his knees against the rail, Izzy looks out over the bow. The ship plows into the next wave. Spray and small flecks of foam shower onto the thick, angled window in front of him. The flow over the glass distorts the sight of the clouds, horizon, white-topped wall of on-rushing water, then the pointed bow of the ship. Melting and blurring, it stretches and drains out the bottom and sides of the window. All of it pours in from the top in reverse as the ship rises. Having grown used to the repetition, it is a timing that beat steadily inside him and a clock by which he waits impatiently to make the day pass.

He stands, finally comfortable with his own sea legs, gripping his wrist just below the bandage. A huge wave throws up more spray than before. It smacks into the glass in front of his face, snapping him back to the present.

He sighs heavily. Waiting is the worst.

“A what?” The Captain sits in his chair behind a small console in the middle of the wheelhouse, holding a handset to his ear.

Izzy turns at the tone of his voice. The commander frowns and points to the deck behind him. They both look down at the deck and see a crewman talking into a handset by the lower hatch, looking toward them and pointing to an upper deck on the far side of the main cargo hold.

Izzy sees nothing at first, then a head and shoulders pop out from behind the open hatch. Two arms grip the thin rail. It isn’t a crewman. “It’s that guy from the day labor agency. What’s his name? John ..Billy ..something like that. Jimmy.”

—–

There is still a ringing in her ears. The nausea has passed. For the first time since coming on board she opens the door leading to the main deck and walks into the sunshine. Mary has finally gotten her sea legs, learning to anticipate the constant rotating, rocking motion of the floor beneath her. She walks over to the rail. Gripping it hard and looking over the horizon, she takes in a long, deep breath.

It feels good to get out of the cabin where all the walls were grey metal and into the open. The wet scent is wonderful as it flows over her a little faster than the speed of the ship slipping into the next wave.

“Eight foot seas.” Izzy says from behind her over the sound of the wind and waves. The beauty and the enormity of the sky and water somehow make it seem necessary to speak louder than usual to be heard.

“I’m sorry?” she says turning.

“We’re in eight foot seas now. Weather report says we’re heading into twenty and thirty foot seas. Maybe worse. Enjoy it while you can.”

He hands her a mug of tea. She gratefully accepts. Drinking the entire contents without stopping, she sighs with satisfaction at the end.

He smiles knowingly. “Hungry?”

“Starved.”

“There’s plenty of chow in the mess. Enjoy the view for a minute. This’ll be a rare site.”

They look toward the horizon as one hump of water after another roll toward them, each handing off to the one behind the reflection of the sun as an orange light. The image is half solid, half melting, flowing in the same spot and whole.

“No birds out this far. We’re definitely at sea.” Izzy leans on the rail as he speaks.

“I’ve never even been on a fishing trip. We took all our vacations in the mountains. One year we went to the desert. But I’ve never been on the ocean.”

“We?”

She hears the attention to detail in his voice and resents it proves she is a widow. Simply saying “I am a widow”, even to herself seems too much work. “My husband and I and our little girl–though not so little any more.”

“Bobby told me about her. Beth Ann? You must be proud.”

“You know Bobby?”

“We’ve drunk from the same bottle a few times.”

“You like him.”

“He’s a great guy–good commander.”

She gives a small laugh. “All you military types are the same. Ask about someone and all you get is: “They wear clothes. They serve his utilitarian function well.”

“Sorry about the way things got started.”

“Did he really say I was the best?”

“That he did.”

A warm breeze washes over them.

“You seemed nervous the first time you came to see me. Why? You don’t seem like the type.”

“I’ve been hearing about you for a couple of years. ‘Mary’s doing this. Mary’s doing that.’ How attractive you were. How smart you were. How he hoped he could set us up after the accident. All that. I needed your expertise and I needed it quick and the rest was baggage to get tripped up over—and we’d never even met. Not my favorite type of situation, you know?”

“It was business.”

“It is business. There’s no room for awkward here. The space will be a little cramped as it is besides the situation with Bobby. There’s no miss here. None.”

“You didn’t want me to come.”

“It wasn’t my decision.” It was a small fudge and that only in his estimation of her system. He had always considered himself a non-religious determinist. “It won’t make any difference, right? You’re the best. The mess is open. The chow is good. We’ve got a lot of work to do. Nobody really knows anybody and we’re not a team yet.”

Mary moved toward the open hatch behind her. “Let’s get to it.”

“We’ve had some excitement since you’ve been asleep.”

“News?”

“No. None of the site. But there is a stowaway.”

“Like in the movies?”

“I suppose so. It was one of the day laborers. He says he just wanted to know what was out here. I don’t know whether to believe him or not.”

————————————————

Henry

Henry speaks into the fading darkness in a voice barely above a whisper: “I think when I grow up, I want to be a tree.”

A warm, soft voice of merriment beside him asks, “What kind of tree would you be?”

He is surprised she is awake. He raises his arm and she snuggles in beside him. “Oh, I’d be a myfruit tree.”

“Myfruit, huh? Would you be delicious?”

He thinks for a moment. “I’d be groovilicious.”

She snuggles in closer to him before asking, “Yummm….would I have to peel you or could I just pop you in my mouth?”

“Who says I’d be for eating? Maybe I’d be a spice–or better as a drink. Maybe they would strip my pulp and make ropes from my fibers. Or beautiful furniture from my wood.”

“People would see that desktop and say “Hey, I see you had a Myfruit tree!”

“I’d be a valuable asset—even dead. Maybe you could make a narcotic from my flowers–if you had the heart to pick one. You could sniff me and see gods.”

“Well I hate to burst your bubble honey, but only the female of the species get to bear fruit.”

“There you go–spice or desktops it is. Cinammon is a kind of bark. Maybe I’d be good with coffee.”

She laughs and kisses him on the mouth. “I love you–no matter what those other voices say.”

—-

“I’d loose my leaves in winter. But I’d be hardy to a hundred below.” he says, grabbing some coffee and kissing her on his way out. “Even volcanic ash and nuclear winter wouldn’t kill me. But I guess I could be cut down.” The door closes behind him suddenly and a little louder than he intended. He smiles and shrugged as he turns toward the car.

She watches him walk out to the car and wave goodbye, wondering what is going on.

He never discusses work.

She has given up asking about it long ago. But now as she watches him backing out of the drive she wonders what could have brought out that small exchange. It isn’t that it isn’t in him to be that way or have those thoughts; but he would never have said them.

Forty minutes later Henry sits in his office. Having finished the paperwork to get the young grad student on board the project, he sits staring at the still-rotating characters on the screen.

“Any luck?” It is Jack Wallace, head of the aerospace arm of Crenshaw Humming, one of the largest sponsors of the research underway in the Antarctic. His company built and share the facilities in which the Astrobiology Institute work and have constructed a large portion of the experiments that were to have run in the underground Antarctic lab. Jack is well known as the prince of profit who inherited the company from his father, likes to talk techie but knows next to nothing of actual scientific value.

Dmitri smiles at the thought of Henry’s former description of Jack: “He pronounces the word ‘dendrite’ perfectly.” Dmitri had replied, “Everybody has niche.”

Jack sees Dmitri’s smile. “What?”

They generally avoid each other. But the plate has intrigued Jack as well. There is a general truce on.

“Nothing yet. Dmitri has an idea. We’ll see how it goes.”

“Keep me posted.”

“Sure.” Henry nods and watches Jack walk away.

“Any news on the site?” Henry asks Dmitri.

“Nothing. Still nothing.”

“It’s gonna be a long day.”

Jack shakes hands with several of the staff and waves to Henry as he gets on the elevator. Beside him in the elevator his assistant says, “Mr. Wallace, I don’t think Dr. Fielding likes you. I’m not sure he can be trusted.”

“He’s a thinker–good one. He’s sees me as a necessary evil. We understand each other.”

“The second crew is still at sea. Everything is on schedule.”

Jack nods and patiently waits to reach the top. There is only waiting now. Everything that can be done has been done.

————————————————————————-

1Corinthians 12:12-27 For even as the body is one and has many members, but all the members of the body, being many, are one body, so also is the Christ. For also in the power of one Spirit *we* have all been baptised into one body, whether Jews or Greeks, whether bondmen or free, and have all been given to drink of one Spirit. For also the body is not one member but many. If the foot say, Because I am not a hand I am not of the body, is it on account of this not indeed of the body? And if the ear say, Because I am not an eye I am not of the body, is it on account of this not indeed of the body? If the whole body were an eye, where the hearing? if all hearing, where the smelling? But now God has set the members, each one of them in the body, according as it has pleased him . But if all were one member, where the body? But now the members are many, and the body one. The eye cannot say to the hand, I have not need of thee; or again, the head to the feet, I have not need of you. But much rather, the members of the body which seem to be weaker are necessary; and those parts of the body which we esteem to be the more void of honour, these we clothe with more abundant honour; and our uncomely parts have more abundant comeliness; but our comely parts have not need. But God has tempered the body together, having given more abundant honour to the part that lacked; that there might be no division in the body, but that the members might have the same concern one for another. And if one member suffer, all the members suffer with it ; and if one member be glorified, all the members rejoice with it . Now *ye* are Christ’s body, and members in particular.

In the Name of Jesus Christ, Amen

The Institute:

A handwritten signature by George Bush Sr. and ‘Congratulations, Henry!’ in red ink over a group shot of men smiling on a glacier face and pointing to a small, dark object embedded in the ice hangs on the wall by his desk. The small brass plate beneath the picture reads “Antarctica, charcoal meteorite, 1991.” He bought the frame and wrote the inscription to be engraved himself.

Next to the photo is a list of the six questions of Astrobiology, printed on plain computer paper in Times New Roman and stuck on the small bulletin board over his desk. Other papers and other lists stick out from behind the same pinhead.

A small bookshelf to the right contains back copies of Astrobiology Magazine, a worn copy of Plato’s Philosophy, a Bible, one of the first paperback copies of The Gulag Archipelago to go into print and a hardbound book named “The Oxford Book of Exile”. Text books in a smaller glass case shine with use underneath his desk in their own cubicle. Reference books here and there proclaim the subjects of his most recent projects.

Two pictures of his wife sit to one side beside the monitor. One is a photo from twenty two years ago when they were dating. She is frowning in the little blue jump suit. The other is recent, with a little grey at her temples; glasses; a look of depth and seriousness. Next to the photos is a tiny, plastic case with a meteor cut in half and the surface polished to reveal the layers and impurities. The top of the plastic case has a magnifying lens built in to show the details.

On his desk is a note that he needs to send his request for telescope time on the new SIM telescope in by no later than six o’clock Monday. It isn’t scheduled to be deployed until 2011.

Henry sits holding the artifact in his hand and staring at the old photo of his wife. The artifact is approximately three by two inches, one inch thick and heavy for its size.

Behind him at his own desk in the large cubicle they share, Dmitri is bringing up a screenshot of rotating symbols. Various symbols in various combinations from modern and ancient alphabets are being compared to three dimensional representations of the swirls and loops of the artifact at two hundred terabits per second.

“Yes, I know. I’m not disputing you. But if we are not certain of larger context in which to put it, it makes no sense. Isn’t that what you mean?” Dmitri has the habit of rephrasing what Henry says within his own argument and speaking it back it to him translated into Dmitri-speak, which inevitably makes Dmitri appear to be correct and Henry wrong.

They have come to a point after many years where they can dispute and on rare occasions yell at each other. It has become a game of chess and sometimes poker both as entertainment and work related brain storming. They sometimes get lost in it beyond any relevance to what is at hand.

Henry puts down the artifact, picks up his eight ball filled with philosophy quotes and shakes it. Into the window floats up “He was so learned that he could name a horse in nine languages; so ignorant that he bought a cow to ride on.”

“Your Benjamin Franklin was not astrophysicist. And what does that have to do with anything we are doing here? You wander sometime.”

Henry puts down his eight ball and sits staring at the small, rectangular artifact on his desk.

“Patience. This is only beginning.” Dmitri says as if Henry has replied and in the affirmative. “We will find the larger picture. And it is not as if clock is counting down and we are running out of time. This could go down as one of unsolved questions of history. It could be next Linear A or Phaistos Disk.”

“I understand the argument, Dmitri. But this is different. The material isn’t clay or stone. And this was under the Antarctic.”

Dmitri has asserted that there is something called context and words are summations of complex concepts and symbols that have to be interpreted within the interrelationships in which they had been written or in this case constructed, to understand their meaning.

Henry is familiar with the standard argument Dmitri is trying to apply to the artifact. But he doesn’t believe it. He sits back and turns to look Dmitri in the eye. “It’s like saying you have to understand the family before you can understand their kids, the family isn’t around anymore and you have to just make up what you think they might have been like. But not everything is the same. Not everything is related like that. You walk by a guy in the grocery store and he’s really thinking about his wife’s birthday and you think he’s thinking about dinner because he happens to be standing in front of the steaks. That’s the purpose on that moment for that guy–for you to figure out what he’s doing. So you think: Steak ergo dinner, just to watch yourself be smart. But nothing can telegraph what this thing is. It just is. We could find a new use for it that has nothing to do with what it really is—or was. How will we know the difference between our new use and its true function? That’s what I want to know. Then I’ll know what it is.”

On the first reading of the spectrogram they hadn’t agreed. But recalibrating and retesting only confirmed the first results: the artifact was pure gold.

Refining gold to complete purity has only been accomplished within the last twenty years. It still holds unexplored possibilities that promise to revolutionize the electronics industry.

Henry saw pure gold for the first time several years ago when he had walked down front after a lecture to see, what has since been named crystaline gold, in a small glass case. Then, as now, he had been surprised to see that it was as clear as colorless glass.

He picks it up. The artifact lays in his hand as he breathes on it again and watches the fog outline the depth and the strange characters. They haven’t been worked into the surface. The characters are smoothly incorporated from the surface and inside the plate with depressions and looping swirls, but in such a way as to make three dimensions seem a poverty in which they have been captivated, like a sentence that became material and froze in place. The artifact is air and gold and hard to tell which ends where with the naked eye. The only thing familiar about it is that it is solid and that the characters are so arranged as to create the exact corners of a rectangle.

Instantly obsessed, he had insisted on appointing Dmitri and himself as part of the investigating team. Having fought his way into administration and management, Henry is usually content to read the reports and write critiques.

The fact of the small artifact’s composition suggests hoax. But the circumstances under which it has been found and the age of the ice make that impossible. He turns it over and holds it off at an angle to look at the characters again in the light.

“Do pictograms need punctuation?” Henry asks abruptly.

“I don’t know.”

“Know anybody that knows anything about ancient languages? Maybe somebody over at NSA?”

Dmitri says nothing for a moment. He watches Henry’s fascination with it over the top of his glasses. Then: “No. You already ask me that.”

“I sponsored a kid from Alabama this year at Cal Tech. He’s a grad student doing his thesis on Bioinformatics and Computational Biology, math whiz that he is. This could be just the thing for him.”

“What about getting him a clearance?”

“They got Chinese nationals working in Los Alamos. If they can get a clearance, who can’t?”

Dmitri gives a humorless laugh. “They checked on my great-grandparents back in Russia. I almost didn’t make it because my grandmother attended a Communist Party meeting–once! Now, who knows?”

“It can’t hurt to try, right?”

A young man from Communications walks by, frowns and shakes his head.

“Still no news from the site.”

Henry stands up and rubs his eyes. “I’m going home. I haven’t gotten a decent night sleep since this thing got started.” He grabs his jacket. “Who signs those things these days?”

“It goes through Jack.”

Henry groans. “Of course.”

“He is not as bad as some.”

“He’s a thief in a suit that knows when to smile. And since when does a civilian sign off on those things? Should I know something?” He sighs. “See you tomorrow–and don’t solve it without me.”

Dmitri stands, reaching for his own jacket. “He told me other day he is civilian plus, whatever that means. I’ll walk out with you.” He taps a code into the keyboard. The screens fall blank while the computations run.

Up top the weather has changed. Ominous, distant thunders roll in accompanied by the first edge of rain.

Henry pulls out of the parking lot as the lightening begins, exhausted. He drives home to the squeak and whump of his wipers against the water, fidgeting with the radio.

———————————-

At sea–

“… Kryleeenko en Zahh Peyaat Lay-et. Los Cinco Años.”

” Qué dijo?”

” él dice eso , eh.. las cortes son contemporáneamente el creador de la ley ..eh, .. y una arma política!”

“¿y los americanos?”

“¡piense que son contra comunista mientras que hacen igual!”

“ha ha ha ha ha haa!”

Warbling static combines with theme music to signal the end of the broadcast from somewhere in South America about something. The crewman smiles at the humor of the announcers, imagining the joke to be good one to get such laughter.

He pushes the search/scan button and finds another station. It has more static than the first and seems to fade in and out. Listening carefully to pick out each individual sound, he turns his head and narrows his eyes in concentration.

“Whatcha’ got there?” asks another crewman passing by.

“I got this last leave.” he says.

“I can see it’s a radio. I mean, what are you listenin’ to?”

“Oh, I don’t know–yet. I can’t understand a word. Everybody says I should learn Spanish or some language other than English. I just haven’t gotten to it yet.”

“Then what’s the point? The static is bad enough. If you can’t understand the words …?”

The first crewman adjusts the dials on the tone and beat frequency dials in an attempt to bring the station in clearer. “Oh, I guess it makes me feel more international or something–you know, more open minded. Did you know the German word for ‘the’ is ‘die’? Ain’t that weird? I wonder how many times a day they say die and really mean the.”

The next station has morse code in the background. It combines with music from another station that is fading into it.

“I knew that.” The other crewman nods. “Open minded, huh? I guess that’s important. That Norwegian? Dutch?” He looks down the corridor and sees an officer coming, says, “Well, gotta go!” and disappears.

“Yeah, see you later.” the young man with the radio replies absently, his attention focused on the digital display. He hits the scan button again. The numbers on the display seemed to vibrate in place until another signal is detected. It is nothing but a silent strain on the air void of any sound. He tries again. This time he gets an Italian station.

The officer goes by.

“Hey Brian! Hey..” the other crewman is back. “Did you see that thing in the hold? Man is it big!”

“Yeah, I saw it loaded. It’s huge!” Brian said as he turns down the receiver. “I heard it was a recovered UFO from a crash site out in Arizona–you know, they been havin’ those fires there? I heard this thing set off a forest fire that’s still burnin’.”

“That’s what I heard too. But it didn’t look damaged or anything. Odd shape for a UFO, huh? It’s cigar shaped and smooth on one end and these pipe things wrapped around the other. Everybody is being really quiet about it.”

“We could be takin’ it to a secret base somewhere to reverse engineer it.”

“Wow.”

“Yeah.”

They fall silent for a moment, thinking over the whole possible situation.

“Where they got you?” Brian asks the other crewman.

He points down the passageway. “They got me helpin’ out in the infirmary for the past two days. Man, those people are sick. I ain’t never seen anybody that sick! I was sick on my first time out. But not like that. That good lookin’ lady? Man, I feel sorry for her. She’s been in and out of here pretty regular. She just wants something to make her sleep. But the Doc won’t give her anything. He say’s he’s got orders from that guy the C.O.’s always talkin’ to. She’ll just have to stick it out. Another day or so and it should break for her–those other people too.”

“Well it hasn’t broken for me yet.” Mary says from behind him in a weak voice. She stands by the open hatchway, with one hand on the other side of the corridor and one hand on the door. Closing her eyes and swallowing, she grips the handle hard to stop from swaying.

“Oh! I..uh, I mean..” Begins the crewman, turning quickly. His ears turn scarlet.

“Just get me something to knock me out for twenty four hours. Please!”

“Ma’am they’ll know. I can’t…”

“Well it’s not as if you’ll lose.. ” she swallows and closes her eyes for a second, “your job is it?”

The young man softens and tries to smile. “No ma’am. I guess not. C’mon before anybody sees.”

He leads her to the infirmary two doors down and gives her several tablets. Looking around, he fills a small paper cup with water. “Don’t tell anybody I gave this to you!”

“I won’t.” she says as she drinks the pills back and leans against the wall.

“You need some help gettin’ to your cabin? You look awful.”

“No, I’ll be alright now.” she replies weakly and stumbles back toward the stairs.

He watches her climb unsteadily.

“She’ll be alright, man. What’d you give her?” Brian asks, putting away his radio.

“Two vitamins.”

“A placebo? Man you’re tough.”

“Doc’s orders. He said to wait ’til they pressed me and give ‘em the vitamin C tabs. It can’t hurt ‘em except to give them a little acid in their stomach. If they got anything else it would only prolong bein’ sick. But you can’t tell ‘em that in the middle of it.”

Brian looks up at the other crewman. “Busted!” he says with a smile.

“She’s too old for me anyway. You on now?”

“Yeah. I go on duty in about ten minutes. The chief chewed my ass for bein’ late the other day. I gotta get there five minutes early today ‘or else’.”

“Bummer.”

“Yeah. See you later.” Brian calls as he starts down the passageway. “And don’t touch my radio!”

——-

In a small cubbyhole of the engine room, Jimmy leans over the thin pipe and vomits again. He lays back against the bulkhead slowly; holding his stomach; catching his breath. Unsure of how long he has been here, the darkness has long since become oppressive. Time seems to have stood still. He is getting worse and worse. Who knew about sea-sickness?

Even though he hasn’t eaten in days he still dry-heaves. His mouth has an awful taste in it. He can see and smell the spatters of bile down the front of his sweatshirt and on his jeans and has ceased to care.

There had been no previous thought of staying aboard. But suddenly, in a rush of excitement and for no reason he could think on the spot, he had leapt over a pile of boxes after they were on their way out. Crawling under countless pipes and railings and sneaking through one door after another, he had made his way down and down until he found a room where any inadvertent noise he might make would be covered by the engine. Finding a spot he could stretch out in he had lain there, waiting for sounds of pursuit, sweating and panting; listening to the steady, diesel hum of the engine until the sound became his thought and he had slept.

His chosen spot has been a good one: next to a hot water pipe. He lays just close enough to it to keep warm. The cold of the pacific water has worked its way through the ship’s hull. When he tries to get closer he almost burns himself as the ship rolls unrepentantly. But he manages to keep up a noiseless security except for the sickness.

Wanting to be discovered after they were at sea, he has practiced and thinks to have perfected an explanation. His explanations and his expressions will get him by. But now it appears unlikely he will be found. His hiding place is a good one. He has only seen crewman from a distance. The men have been checking the engines and the freshwater supply with a long wooden pole and have been oblivious of Jimmy’s presence.

Maybe I should have made a noise. Or maybe they know I’m here but just don’t care.

He needs food and water pretty soon. The bottle of water he has stolen out of a cabin has long since run dry. He is afraid to try for another one.

Everything he knows has been left behind in that mad dash over the boxes and into the bottom of the ship. Joe would understand when he didn’t return–wasn’t he always sayin’ how he ought to get out? “This life’s no good Jimmy. You get a shot at gettin’ out you take it-and don’t ever look back!”

What could they do to him? How much trouble was the trouble he could get into?
If nothing else he might even pick up a skill or some connection in the process.
He’d probably have to do some kind of ship work. I’m no freeloader. But I don’t want to work with fish.

“You gotta have faith.” he tells himself as he leans back and holds his stomach. Actually being discovered will be excruciating.

He counts the cash he has again to take his mind off everything else. One hundred and thirty five dollars from the job plus the seven and change he had lifted from the hotdog wagon.

It is a lot of money.

He is afraid they will take it from him. Looking for a place to hide it, he finds a small ventilator shaft in a greasy spot behind one of the massive engines. Slipping off his socks he stuffs the money tightly inside and pushes it way back into the pipe.

He has to show himself.

The thought of it is terrifying. What will they say? What will he say? All his planning and explanations won’t make the fear go away. They will get mad. Maybe they won’t care. He is stuck.

He huddles back in the corner, breathing deeply and letting it out slowly. I should never have done this! I should have left with the others! I’m always pushin’ my luck–I should have let it go and been satisfied with the money!

“Too late now, Jimmy. Too late now. You just gotta do it.” he whispers to himself and breathes deeply to relax. “You just gotta….do it!”

Slowly and painfully he slips out from the pipes and stands up. His back hurts and a muscle spasms in his leg, making him grab a pipe nearby to keep from crying out. He stretches gingerly.

Smoothing out his clothes and fingering his hair back he takes the first few steps. Catching a glimpse of himself in a chrome metal plate as he passes he stopped. He looks terrible.

So much for a first impression.

He makes his way up from one deck to another as quiet as he can, on the alert for anyone. Finally he sees sunlight coming from an open hatch.

He has found a small deck overlooking the main cargo holds and is as high as is possible to go on the ship. The view is breath-taking. The sounds of the waves and water breaking over the bow and washing by the sides is beautiful. Powerful.

He has the best view possible of the ship and the ocean. The ship seems so small in comparison to his image of it when it had been at the dock. It is slowly, gently rolling from side to side and up and down on the open sea. The sky is the bluest he has ever seen. The water is green and darker as it gets deeper; the depth below the color just ..keeps going.

The wind and the water wash his odor away with a cleansing scent of their own. All of it is the most beautiful thing he has ever seen.

Jimmy holds on with both hands to the rail, saying nothing; silent at the serious, physical real. The height is a little scary.

They will see him soon. But that is okay. If he never sees anything again he will remember what he saw now. Joe ain’t never seen anything like this! Wait’ll I tell ‘em all about this!

He sees men walking beneath him. A sudden realization flashes of how those people he hears about, the ones who run out naked at baseball games, must feel just before they are seen.

————————————————————————–

Mark 4:22 For there is nothing hidden which shall not be made manifest; nor does any secret thing take place, but that it should come to light.

In the Name of Jesus Christ, Amen

Seattle
The docks:

Driving with one hand and filling his cup with the other, Izzy brakes as the road begins to curve. The truck illuminates the falling snow in a small tunnel of light against the rough, gravel road and the darkness as the wipers whine and bump back and forth.

Five minutes ago he had begun to think he had made a wrong turn. The woman on the phone had said it was the last building on the point. You can’t miss it.

He decides against calling again, sips the hot coffee carefully and keeps on driving.

A sign ahead appears in the safety orange reflectance of “Dead End” in the haze. The truck bounces roughly from an unseen pot-hole as he turns the corner. The coffee in the cup holder sloshes over the papers in the seat.

Beautiful.

He places both hands on the wheel. The lights pick out a loading dock, a flat-topped, square building with large, dirty windows and small, shell covered parking lot emoty of vehicles. Rust streaks creep up the walls of the building; paint covers the windows; the fog over the harbor water breaks long enough for him to see the water’s edge between the dock and the building. The loading dock to his front is dimly lit by an overhead light fixed to a wire that is swinging in the wind. Shadows in the fog rise and fall at random.

The dock is full of hand tools: shovels of every description, axes, rakes, pry bars, and sledge hammers are piled against the edges of the concrete. Tall, rubber boots in various stages of repair and dirty gloves lay in bunches on the gravel.

There is no one outside.

Light streams out the cracks of the white-washed windows. As he parks he sees a handwritten sign taped to one of the windows as one of the corners flaps in the wind. It reads ‘Day Labor Here’. Another beside it in wide, block letters declares ‘No sleeping on the premises!’ from behind the glass.

Izzy steps out of the truck, bracing himself against the cold and pulling the parka closer around him. He rubs his hands together for warmth.

It is five a.m. and thirteen degrees.

Passing a flower box full of cigarette butts and chysanthamums still showing yellow through the frost, he goes inside. The smell of the damp cold, fish, old shells, sea air, used oil and machinery is immediately replaced by a smell that makes him feel he is too close. Sweat days old, stale cigarette smoke, beer, popurrie, and cleaning supplies hit him with a force that make it difficult not to make a face. The warm draft from the central heating recirculates the same air.

Standing just inside the door, he takes in the room. There is a line of men behind one man who is reaching into a jar. Others are showing the numbers they have drawn to another man who is writing the numbers down. Those who have already drawn and had their numbers recorded are walking toward the chairs. Some are reading newspapers. Some are just sitting, staring at nothing. Some are talking in low, casual tones to each other. Dressed in work clothes under layered, thin coats and heavy boots, a few look up in cautious hope as he appears in the back.

A heavy-set, short girl with curly, brown hair and neatly layered make-up comes out from behind a partition as soon as the men are finished with the numbers. She leans onto the counter facing the men with several papers in her hand and pretends to read while casting serruptitious glances over the whole room. Wearing an oversized, gray sweatshirt with a bright, white turtleneck underneath, her eyeglasses hang from a thin gold chain.

Izzy senses disappointment in the men. There is a shadow behind the partition.

He waits for his job to be annouced, already with a sense of who he wants as he watches the men. The perfume of the girl is a little overwhelming even from the back.

She toys with her hair for a moment, reading the papers, then speaks abruptly: “Okay! Listen up! I gotta job,” she says, pointing at nothing and reading from the first paper, “…with an employer. Handin’ out handbills at the airport. That means you gotta’ have transportation.” She adjusts her gum. “Okay, it also pays six an hour, check at the end of the job.”

“How many guys?” asks one man.

“Uh, says here, ” she squints and put her glasses up to her eyes, “…four! Needs four guys.”

“How many hours?” asks someone else.

She looks again. “Just says all day.”

A number of men raise their hands. As she points to them they answer with a number.

“Fifteen!”

“Twenty-seven.”

“Twelve.”

“Seventeen!”

“Twenty-two.”

“Here!” says a startled voice.

There are several snickers.

“It never stops. That it? Okay..twelve, fifteen, fourteen and seventeen…”

Twenty-two stands up and walks forward. “Damn right it never stops. Nobody said fourteen.”
The girl is surprised, “Whatever.”

The men walk forward to show the numbers they had drawn next to their names. The numbers are scratched off on the big board one by one.

The door opens suddenly behind Izzy. The cold comes in with a blast.

Izzy, who has pushed back his cap and unzipped his parka, shudders.

A breathless, young man, thin with long, greasy hair and carrying an old, green knapsack brushes by Izzy. “‘Scues me there, buddy.” he says without looking back.

“Alright I got one more.” says the woman in a louder voice. “It’s with an employer. Says …six guys, four hours, seven dollars an hour. Over on one twenty-fifth and Madison. Construction clean-up. Cash at the end of the job. Their van will be here in ten minutes.”

“That van ain’t got no heater.” Says a man up front as he sips steaming coffee.

A few raise their hands and the same procedure is repeated.

The young man doesn’t raise his hand but instead says, “Listen everybody! I gotta job–it’s with an employer too! Handin’ out towels in the girls locker room. Pay sucks and the hours aren’t steady. But the view is great!”

The room responded with smiles and a few whistles. Somebody raises a hand.

“Hey, I got another one!” he says, “Need a rocket scientist! Pay is great–but you gotta have your own tools!”

There is laughter. The guy has obviously been there before and they all know him. They laugh easily at the old jokes.

Izzy watches them, thinking they will easily laugh at anything.

“Jimmy you missed the draw!” calls the girl from the front, “You can’t bid on no jobs today.”

“Who cares?!” shoots back the young man as he ties his hair up with a rubber band, “Today is my day! I got faith. You always gotta’ have faith!” He spots Izzy looking at him and knows instantly Baxter isn’t looking for work–he is hiring. Izzy is standing in the back as if he doesn’t want to sit. He is too clean.

“Hey mister. You need a solid citizen for a good day’s work? That’s me!” he says hopefully.

“You’re hired.” Izzy says. To the rest of the room he says, “I need nine more men. No alcohol or drugs…”

There is genuine laughter.

The girl looks through the papers quickly.

“Twelve dollars an hour…”

The laughter subsides.

“…all day, maybe into the night. Loading boxes on a ship. Stacking and net work. The longshoremen will run the cranes, you do the lifting from there. It’ll take a strong back. But meals are provided, all the hot coffee you can drink, overtime over eight and cash at the end of the job.”

Everyone freezes. The numbers are no good for this. Hands fly up as eager faces look toward him.

Izzy picks the men he needs, along with several extra and turns to go.

“Hey, that’s not fair! What about the draw? I got a good number today! I stood in line this mornin’ for an hour! Like to froze my butt…” complains someone from the front. But Izzy is already outside and pointing toward the truck.

The young man follows close on his heels. “Man, I knew today was my day! I said “Jimmy, you gotta try to work today.” But when I knew I was gonna be late I almost didn’t come. I knew it! What’s for lunch?”

“Breakfast first–and whatever you get.” Says Izzy, shaking his head as he climbs in the driver’s side. He motions Jimmy to get in the other side. “What’s the deal with saying the jobs are with an employer?” He watches in the side mirror until all the men have piled in the back, one pulls the flap for the rear compartment and pops the side to let him know they are ready.

Jimmy looks at him as if at an alien, then nods. “Some people–like you? They just call or drive up and need some guys.” He sniffs and rubs his nose, then holds his fingers next to the heater. “They just need what they need on the spot, you know? But the people that got their own business, they hire people all the time. They’re employers. See?”

Izzy nods but says nothing.

Jimmy sniffs and nods again, looking at the interior of the pick up. “These things are like jet cockpits inside, huh? All green and neon gizmo controls.” He frames the dash with his hands like a camera. “Everything in its place! And seems important because its all individually lit from behind. Light and dark places in order. Very exact. Nifty.” He looks at the coffee stain on the upholdstered seat. “If it makes you feel better, you guys usually pay better. This all your heater’s got?”

Izzy contains a smile as he pulls the handle on the gear shift. The smooth action puts the truck in reverse with a small jolt and a deeper sound from the engine, while the back-up lights illuminate the area behind it and the exhaust as white smoke in the cold.

———

They arrive at the ship after a half hour on the road. The longshoremen are standing around impatiently, stamping their feet at the cold.

Everyone is waiting on the cargo to arrive.

Izzy shows the men to the galley with directions on how the loading will proceed, then checks on the rest of the preparations.

Everything is behind schedule. By ten o’clock the subterrene still hasn’t arrived. Izzy pulls out the cell phone again, then replaces it in his pocket when he sees the three oversized tractor trailer rigs rolling down the gravel road toward them and a departing limosuine.

He is halfway down the gangplank before he notices a tall, thin man in sweats and tennis shoes and pulling a rolling duffle behind, crossing the dock between all the loading gear. The man approaches the walk.

“I was told to meet a Mister, uh,..” He parks the baggage and takes a piece of paper out of his pocket. “..Baxter, here?” He looks at Izzy. “Dr. Reynolds said..”

Izzy nods. “You’re the paleobiologist.” He extends his hand; they shake.

“Actually I prefer paleoenvironmentalist–sounds more interdisciplinary.” Mike says, adjusting his politburo glasses as if by instinct and smiling with relief that he is at the right place.

“Whatever. Look, right now is a bad time. Go on up. Dr. Black is in forward cabin number twelve. Your cabin is fourteen, next door. C deck–the next set of steps up once you get to the top of this gangplank. Look to the left as you go, you can’t miss it. Store your personal stuff in the storage lockers on the left. The cabins are on the right. I’ll be with you as soon as we’re loaded and ready. Good?”

Mike repeats, “C-deck. Number fourteen” and moves up the steps.

Izzy calls after him. “Dr. Johnson!”

“Yes?”

“What were you laughing about the other day?”

“I’m sorry?”

“The other day I was up to see Dr. Reynolds and heard you laughing. What was that all about?”

The question always makes Mike uncomfortable. “Oh, I couldn’t explain it now. Never can.” He searches for words but nothing comes. He wants to give Baxter something for asking with no ill intent. “I’m sorry I can’t. Wouldn’t be funny now, I guess.”

Izzy nods and turns back down the gangplank. Regretting having asked he says under his breath, “I didn’t think it was funny.” His attention moves to the loading, which is in the middle of being fouled up. “Don’t use the crane on that! You know it won’t lift it! Open the outer doors. Do I have to do everything? C’mon…!”

——-

Dinner that night is an informal affair. There is a radio playing hip hop in the background, accompanied by the sound of low conversation, dishes and silverware. The smell of coffee, fruit flavored drinks and industrial meatloaf float over the room as crewman and laborers eat with gusto.

At a table near the back of the galley, introductions are underway:

“Crew number two, baby! Nothin’ but the best! Bill Hayt!” I’ll be the dirt devil for the rest of our journey.” A large man in a green jump suit, he grins as he speaks and thrusts his hand out to everyone. “You know–dirt devil–thing that eats dirt? That’s an old mining joke. I’m a mining engineer by trade, geologist by choice!”

Mike watches him warily.

“I can see you’re a quiet one.” Hayt says as he squeezes Mike’s hand mercilessly. “Well, nothin’ wrong with that.”

Mike looks uncomfortable. But he manages to smile, glad to have his hand back in one piece.

“Oh, don’t mind me. Everybody says I’m too friendly. Boistrous!” Hayt enjoys himself. “I’m just an ol’ Missouri farm boy lookin’ for a good time. I have a good time and I like to see the people around me have it as well. And I know we’re gonna have a hell of a time on this one!”

He sits down as he asks Gregg Bilbo, a muscular, young man with close cropped hair, glasses and in a grey sweat shirt, to move over.

“Gotta have elbow room, you know.”

Bilbo smirks as he pours katsup to one side of his fries. “Arr, Matey.” He ignores Hayt’s look as he dips the fries one by one and eats them. An expensive, steel divers watch he wears loose and with the face turned under his wrist flashes as he dips and eats.

Hayt smiles. “Like the flash, huh? Nothin’ wrong with that.”

—-

Izzy ducks under the hatch and into the galley. Bilbo waves to catch his attention. He catches the gesture and nods as he picks up a tray and gets in line.

On his way over Mary notices he shakes hands with several of the crew and checks to make sure they are getting enough to eat. All the men seem to look up to him.

“Everyone met?” Izzy says as he stands by the table.
There are several nods and murmurs. But some lowered heads as well. “Why don’t we move into the cabin at the end of the hall here. I’m pretty sure its just for us.”

Inside, he begins the introductions again.

“This is Bill Hayt in case you’ve missed him so far, ” he says closing the door and pointing to Hayt. “He’s the geologist and mining expert—the guy who’s gonna tell us where to dig. He’ll do most of the driving. But we’ll spell him in shifts.”

“Next to him is Gregg Bilbo. He’s with the National Science Federation. He’ll be in charge of most of the experiments we’ll be running as well as the collection of any data found on site.” Bilbo nods and give a quick smile but says nothing.

“On the other side of him is Dr. Mary Black. She’s a physical anthropologist that will be in charge of whatever we find that’s weird.” A look from Gregg to Hayt stops him. “I mean…” He stops and starts over. “Dr. Black.”

Mary nods.

The man across from Mary looks up expectantly. “Johnathan James Albrite at your service. Call me James.” he says quickly.

“Dr. Albrite will be in charge of any lost ruins we come across. He’s the archeologist.”.

“You obviously don’t see the need for an archeologist. But the discovery of the hand and the plate puts Antarctica in quite a different light than before, eh? What if…”

“Oh, c’mon, doc. It’s never what if but what else with you guys. Let it rest.”

“That sounds fine. But really—what if there is much more down there than we know of? We’ve got a hand and an artifact. Where there is a body there was once a mind. And that artifact and those bones are the only thing there?”

“And in all the reports sent back not even one mention has been made of anything other than what was expected. Until now.” Izzy turns to Mike. “This is Dr. Micheal Johnson. The Astrobiology Institute insisted a paleobiologist come with us. He and Dr. Reynolds are responsible for the now famous recognition of the hand. They’ll be assisting each other as well as various tasks as they come up.”

“A go-for.” Mary looks indignant.

“Everybody is a multi-purpose person, doctor. That’s just the way of it. Everybody is a doctor of something as well except me. I merely have a handful of degrees.”

Mike says hello to everyone; shakes the hands he missed. There are nods all around.

“When will we see this subterrene? I’d like a chance to at least be familiar with it before we go under. And I thought we were flying. What’s with the ship?” Bilbo asks.

“All of you will see it in about four or five days if I figure right. Before that I wouldn’t be able to keep your attention.” Izzy says with a wry smile. “The new subterrene was too big for the C-Five-A. The ship is the best we’ve got.”

——-

Twenty-four hours later an understanding medic is explaining sea sickness to crew number two: “You can take the pills but you’ll still be sick–only not as bad as you would’ve been if you hadn’t taken anything. You can use the patch–it goes behind the ear and you’ll still be sick only not as much as with the pills. If you don’t take anything you’ll be sick as a dog for three to four days and then you’ll be over it. For a trip this long ‘d advise not taking anything and getting over it. If you opt for the pills or the patch you’ll probably be sick to some degree the whole way there. There’s really no way around it. Three percent of first time ocean goers don’t get sick. I’ve heard of them but I have yet to meet one. It’s nothing to be embarrassed about. The cook will have his little joke and serve sushi or spaghetti or some other slimy kind of food. My advice is just to eat saltine crackers and drink water. Even if you don’t feel bad now it’s best not to eat anything unless you’re starving. It’ll only come back up and taste worse the second time. That’s about it.” he says with a sympathetic shrug of his shoulders, “The rest is just endurance and the memory of better times.”

Sleeping as much as possible helps but doesn’t cure the nausea. They grow sicker every day and impatient as the days go by.

——————————————————————————–

Jer 33:3 Call unto me, and I will answer thee, and I will shew thee great and hidden things, which thou knowest not.

In the Name of Jesus Christ, Amen

The Institute
Conference Room:

Mary shifts in the chair as she waits, holding a stack of reports and listening to the others. They have been at it for several hours.

“Some will say twenty thousand, others more. Based on the O-two analysis, it is more than one hundred thousand years old. It is depending on which theory is held and which test is used. But whatever theory or test is used, it is very old ice. This was not displaced by the coring drill from above.” Dmitri is tired.

Izzy checks his watch and slides his chair back. “Let’s take a break.”

Filing silently out of the room, the others find coffee and rest rooms. Some stand in the corridor and stretch. None appear to Mary to have had more than a few hours sleep in the past several days.

Military and civilian coats drape the backs of chairs. The table is littered with legal pads, pens, and coffee mugs.

Izzy looks at Mary. “You’re sure? There can’t be a mistake here.”

She shrugs. “The evidence is in the hand itself.”

“I hope so. You’re next.” He rubs his eyes with both palms. “Need anything? Coffee? Something to eat? Rest room? Sleep?”

She smiles and unloads the stack of reports onto the conference table. “Nothing. And thanks for asking me to do the exam.”

“Don’t thank me yet.”

—–

After the break a man with salt and pepper hair and steady, blue eyes briefly looks over Mary then shifts back to Izzy. He walks to the other end of the long table. “Look Izzy. I know, we all know, you had friends on this. We all did. But we’ve put off telling the commitee for as long as we can. What about the hand? Do we have an I.D.? Yes? Or No?”

The coat on his chair is studded with decorations. Three gold stars are on each blue shoulder. By his tone it is obvious he is tired of the evasions.

Jack Wallace smiles slightly and rolls his pen on his pad at the tone but says nothing.

Izzy stands and motions to Mary. “This is Dr. Mary Black, the independent consultant we called in to work on the hand. She’s here to settle the question of identity.”

Mary distributes the small report folders.

Someone coughs. The soft hum of machinery and air conditioning filter into the silence.

“What we have is the right hand of an adult male.” She clears her throat. “As you know the hand was surrounded by ice, an ice core by what I saw and have heard here. What was surprising was absolutely no signs of frostbite. In fact, as…” she clears her throat again and coughs “Excuse me.”

She searches for a word, “..unusual as it sounds, if the hand had not been severed from the body and hadn’t been found in ice I would expect this individual to still be alive right now. It–the hand, is not frozen in the conventional sense. The cell structure is intact and hasn’t been ruptured due to expansion of fluid. Even now, after the ice–what I would normally take to be the preserving material, has been removed, the hand evidences no sign of decay.”

Wanting to really get to the heart of it but unsure just how far she could use the shorthand of her everyday words she hestitates. “If you will refer to page four of the report, ” she thumbs through hurriedly but when she looks up they are still staring at her. “Uh, you’ll see that the only precedent for this has been found in bacteria or archeae. They’ve been recovered in the Antarctic ice and on thawing have been viable organisms, alive and capable of reproduction just as if they had never been frozen. And this after having spent what is believed to be several hundred thousand years in the ice. Now obviously a man is a much more complex organism than archeae or bacteria…”

“I’m sorry, Dr. ..Black is it? Archeae?” It is a woman to her right. “I thought we were here to find out which…”

“Could you let her finish, please.” Izzy cuts in.

Mary has a sinking feeling she is a pawn between two factions of opposing views on something she doesn’t know exists and that her news is not good for either one of them. Thus: the money will compenstate for the rest.

“Archeae are organisms found living in extremes of environment such as the mineral pools of Yellowstone. They survive, thrive at temperatures in excess of two hundred degrees Celsius. They’ve also been found in deep ocean trenches at temperatures and pressures that had been thought of, before their discovery, as prohibiting life. Before their discovery all life was classed as animal or bacteria. Archeae is the third branch of life that fills environmental niches the others can’t handle. It was a fundamental discovery. I thought the Astrobiology Institute was a leader in that investigation?”

Jack speaks up. “We are doctor. But this group represents several different fields. We’re not all scientist and engineers here.”

“I see. My point is that this hand is in a perfect state of preservation. Too perfect. That observation prompted me to do a more in-depth genetic profile…”

“You compared it to those on file?”

“You’ve got this on file? I wasn’t aware…”

Izzy: “She was given only the barest of details.”

Jack: “Why?”

Mary looks at him curiously and holds up a finger. “Who would I have compared it to? There is no comparison. To put this in perspective, I’ve printed–on page eight, an article by Hayflick. In it…”

“Look, I need a name. We’ve got families to contact. Who was it?!” The three star has reached the end of his patience.

“A name?! I’m an anthropologist. Not a magician. How in the world would I know this man’s name? He’s been there–wherever there is, for over a hundred thousand years or more by your own analysis of the ice.”

Several of the group exchanged looks of disbelief.

“What are you talking about?” The three star looks directly at Mary for the first time.

Mary: “I’ve sat there while you’ve argued over the ice for over two hours. Did I miss something? It isn’t that the ice proves what I say. I don’t need the ice at all. It’s just that you ..just heard the ice was old by your own methods.”

There is silence.

Mary: “Death, in terms of a medically useful vocabulary, can be thought of as an error catastrophe. The theory of error catastrophe was solidified in the sixties by Leonard Hayflick. He postulated, based on his experiments, that outside of accidents the human body died by a build-up of genetic defects—errors, brought about by the multiplication of mutations or dysfunctional genes. In essence, the proportion of healthy DNA that were carrying on normal replication and metabolism–basically sustaining life, turned in favor of mutated or dysfunctional DNA that used the bodies resources yet contributed nothing to life sustaining processes.”

In other words,” she says on seeing confusion on some of their faces, “the bad genetic material outnumbered the good genetic material and the body ceased to function. Increasing incidence of disease, blindness, deafness, skin discoloration, memory loss and wrinkles are merely symptoms of this on-going process.

Dr.Hayflick’s main contribution was to establish how many divisions or replications a given cell could undergo before mutating or becoming dysfunctional. That number turned out to be approximately fifty. Since every division is a two for one split–you get two cells for every one you had before, over the course of a lifetime, a single cell will reproduce itself over one hundred million times successfully. That’s two raised to the fiftieth power, before it effectively ceases to be functional as regards contributing to the maintenance of the overall organism. That number has been called the Hayflick limit and is in essence a limit to the possible longevity of the physical, the human body minus some future miracle. The closer each cell is to that number, the older the individual has become.

Telemeric research has shown..” Again she sees the confusion. “Telomeres are proteins on the end of chromosomes that protect the end of the chromosome from outside infiltration. With each cell division the telomeres become shorter. Over time, that is, around the fiftieth cell division, the telomeres have become too short to protect the chromosome in the next division–the abiltiy of the chromosome to perform its function is impaired and therefore the cell begins to break down. The length of the telomeres is a direct link to cell age. The shorter the telomeres, the older the cell.

By a certain chronological age, a certain number of genetic and cellular errors has accumulated because of the shortening of the telemores. This is a trustworthy measurement of aging. Increasing suceptibility to disease, blindness, weakness, wrinkles– as I’ve said, all of these things are the result of the break down of cell utility.

In every individual there are telomeres in varying lengths depending on the individuals chronological age and the tissue which is sampled. In particular, one would expect to find in say, a six-foot tall individual, a number of accumulated genetic and cellular errors and to find telomeres in varying lengths throughout the body. In other words an individual which has reached a height of six feet has demonstrated a certain number of cellular divisions and the length of the telomeres in their cells should be shortened by an exact amount. This can be determined by testing.”

Three star: “What tests?”

“A colleague of mine, Dr. Michael Johnson and I have been working on a series of tests that demonstrate the present functionality of a range of processes performed by DNA and to measure the length of the telomeres in establishing exact chronological age of necrotic, uh, dead specimens. We have several published papers and..”

Jack: “So these tests are experimental–they have yet to be verified as authentic?”

“They are most definitely authentic. Perhaps you meant standard? We have received favorable peers reviews and no one has been able to dispute our hypothesis or findings.”

“Who is this Dr. Johnson?” Izzy asks, pulling out a pen.

“He is considered one of the top paleobiologist in the country. He’s formed a small company speacializing in genetic and telomeric research and is highly regarded in the field.” She adds, “In a way, you’ve met him already. That was him laughing the other day. He ..does that.”

The others look at Izzy.

He nodds slightly and frowns as he writes.

Three star leans back.

“Now, assuming the hand I examined is that of a normal adult–in fact it is a little larger than any ethnic group I’ve worked with, I should have found not only genetic defects accumulated by the time the individual got big enough to have a hand this size, but I also should have found a variation in length of the telomeres in differing areas of his hand. Bone cells divide at a different rate than muscle, ecetera.” She takes a breath, still reeling from the initial realization.

“Not only does this individual have no genetic errors, the lengths of the sampled telomeres are all the same size. They don’t appear to have shortened at all.”

Jack: “What does that mean?”

“From what we know, based on the telomeres, he hasn’t aged a day since he was born. There is no evidence that his cells have ever divided. Growth is the product or result of cellular division. It’s the working definition of growth. In a certain sense he has never grown–or at least evidences no proof of it beyond perhaps having grown to maturity as we would know it. It’s as if he just…”

Three Star: “Just what?”

“Well, he–he evidences no sign of having grown, yet he is large enough to have that…hand. It’s like he just…was.”

There is silence.

“Was? How?” Dmitri is clicking his pen.

“I have no idea.”

“Regardless of his age or who he was, what you’re telling us is that it wasn’t one of the crew, right?” asks the woman to her right.

Mary looks at Izzy. “What crew? What are you talking about?”

Izzy: “I didn’t tell her.”

The three star stands up, motioning to Izzy to join him outside the room.

—–

Three Star: “That wouldn’t be the same Mary Jo Black that Bobby was always goin’ on about would it?”

Izzy “It is.”

“What the hell did you think you were doing? Of course..!” explodes Three Star in an urgent whisper.

Izzy: “I didn’t tell her anything. She says the hand will bear out everything she has found. The point is it wasn’t one of them! They could still be alive!”

The older man stands frowning: “Izzy, you’ve got stones. I’ll give you that. Bringing in Bobby’s big sister to examine a hand that very likely could have been Bobby’s is cold. I mean.. damn! Cold!”

“If I had used someone from within the Institute–as I was ordered too–I know and you know damn well they would’ve just said what they thought they were supposed to say! Case closed! She’s objective. She’s also the best. Bobby didn’t brag on his sister for nothing. It was an opportunity. I took it. I’d..”

“Yeah, I know! You’d do it again.”

Three star turns to go back in.

“One more thing.” says Izzy. “If she’ll go I want her. The subterrene is ready. She is the best we’ve got on hand.”

“I’ve got guys standing in line for just one shot to go—guys who trained and sacrificed for years just to wait. What do I tell them when they are bumped for someone who isn’t even in the program? You think they’ll..”

“They’ll have to now. We’ll get whatever we need. The hand. The artifact? It’s not just a space venture any more.”

Three star says nothing.

Izzy: “I’ll bring them all back.”

“That’s what Bobby said. You can’t promise that.” Three Star says quietly as they go back in. “Tell her–all of it. Let her decide. Everything has gone wrong since we got started on this thing. Now I’ve got to go and tell the senate committee we’ve still don’t know what is happening.” The older man whispers under his breath as they re-enter the room. “And next time tell her to cut to the chase. Enough with the technical speak.”

——

Izzy sits quietly through the questions and stares at the map hanging on the far wall.

Mary has done her best to answer.

No one seems satisfied with the development. Expecting a confirmation of what they had already been hoping isn’t true, that the crew was dead and unrecoverable, they are momentarily stunned. Now it appears the crew could still be alive near an ice man of reputed immortality who is missing his hand.

The artifact from the hand is unlike anything they have ever seen. It is transparent, like water so clear you can’t say with any certainty how deep it is but only that it has a bottom side because it rests on the table top. Characters or symbols are incised in it, or rather it is made up of characters.

They had all shaken their heads on first seeing it. It isn’t one of theirs.

Jack has been staring at it for some time.

A man reaches out and picks up the case, turning it over and over.

Three Star: “Henry, I suppose you’ll have a report in ..72 hours?”

Henry Fielding nods. “Preliminary.”

Izzy starts out of his thoughts, aware that a question has been directed toward him.

Three star: “I said I think you should tell her, don’t you?”

“I’d just like to say–excuse me for interrupting,” Mary puts in quickly, “I’d just like to say I’d really, really like to see the rest of the body. Nothing like this has ever been found. If..”

“Yes.” Izzy interjects.

“Of course. Sorry.”

Three star: “Dr.Black, just so I can condense your report for a bunch of men and women who don’t know the first thing about anything you just said but who happen to be running the government at present, tell me if I’m right here: you introduced the archea to prove the hand not decaying but still being basically alive after it was separated from the body has an example we already know exists in nature..?”

Mary nods.

“..and the genetic research of Hayflick and your own telemeric research to prove ..what? Immortality? That the owner of this hand just winked into existence as a grown man? You can see my dilemma.”

“The telemeric evidence simply proves he hasn’t aged at all—yet. I wouldn’t go so far as immortality and I’m just stating what the evidence shows. I’m not jumping to fantastic conclusions. I’m just saying what the evidence shows.”

“I can quote you on that?”

Mary nods. “I’m sure somebody will.”

Three star stands up and gathers his papers. “Next time do you think you could be a little more succinct?”

“No one I know of can organize the unknown ahead of time, sir. Except God.”

Three star looks at Izzy and nods approvingly. “You got a live one there.”

—————————–
The Next Day
Mary’s home:

Mary awakes to the radio, staring at the ceiling and listening to the news announcer. Hitting the snooze button she sits up, instinctively reaching for Sam.

Cold sheets are the only answer.

She is still unsure what a widow is and what it means for other people to see her as one. She wonders what will happen to her when she finds out; if it will be a catastrophe, a solution or a healing. She wants to keep thoughts of Sam and move past them simultaneously, use them as a catalyst for better things and forever cement them with the future. Having to go through it in front of other people makes her nervous. They seem to imply there is a right way to go about everything but never speak the rules. He is still a force in her, a rest and a beautiful storm that has only subsided on his death.

The events of the day before return and she falls back into the pillow. The radio goes off again fifteen minutes later. She turns it off and rises to start the coffee.

She thinks of the look on Izzy’s face as the meeting had broken up. There is a lot of Bobby in Izzy: not suspicion, but an understanding of civilian, or non-combatant simplicity; an aloofness born of adversity in things the public never sees.

The doorbell chimes.

Mary tightens her robe as she walks to the front door. Looking out the peep hole, she frowns and opens the door.

It is Izzy.

Mary motions him in and walks toward the kitchen. “I got the check.”

“Yeah, I know.” He closes the door and follows her. “You’re report was unexpected.”

“I gathered as much. What crew were they talking about?”

He takes out an envelope. Inside is a contract he spreads on the table. “Confidentiality agreement.”

“A little late after the fact isn’t it?”

“It concerns not only what you found but what I’m about to tell you.”

“What does it say?”

“You go to jail if you talk about it.” He holds out the pen.

“What if I don’t care about jail?”

“I think you do. And more.”

She signs. “What’s left after immortality?”

“That either. We’re working toward space colonization. Other programs do space travel—craft, engines, etc. We do habitates in extreme conditions. Human endurance, that type of thing.”

Mary nods.

“The habitats in deserts were fairly easily constructed. Water habitats were a bit more challenging. Microgravity is studied on the space shuttle. The two extremes we that were left were fire and ice.

The funding was limited so..” He rubs his neck.

“Coffee?”

“Absolutely..the Galileo space probe sent back images of the surface of Europa. It showed what was apparently icy slush which implied liquid water which implied there might be some sort of microlife such as bacteria.. Also about that time a project received funding to penetrate Lake Vostok in Antarctica and take water samples. Lake Vostok, as you are probably aware is a freshwater lake beneath two miles of ice in inland Antarctica.

We found it in seventy three and later mapped it by radar and satrad imagery in ninety six. It’s been sealed from all outside influence for an estimated three to five hundred thousand years. It is of interest for the promise of what such a unique and untouched ecosystem might hold and what it might tell us about Europa. There was an immediate analogy made between Europa and Lake Vostok–the ice won over the fire. It was thought that joint projects in Antarctica on site and Europa by way of satellites would be more efficient and borrow off each others accomplishments to speed up perfection of the habitat technology.”

“Did you work this out on the way over here?” She sets the coffee in front of him.

“Don’t stop me now.” He smiles and takes a sip of the coffee.
“An experimental habitat was slowly built five miles under the Antarctic ice–that’s three miles into the land mass and living rock itself. It was almost complete. The work was going well until September 25th–four days ago.

At eleven minutes past three in the afternoon on the twenty fifth an earthquake that measured eight point one on the Richter scale hit the site— an epicenter just off the coast of the Bellany islands. That was over four hundred miles away from the site. But almost immediately things began to deteriorate.

We got reports from the team on the site that they were having communications problems. We checked from our end and found everything normal–tried to calm them down but they became more and more erratic on the radio. The video link went down several times. They reported some strange physical symptoms–nose bleeds, nausea—claimed several of their faces were sunburnt.

We suspected the quake had intensified some symptoms of Seasonal Effective Disorder. It’s a..”

“Manifestation of the effects of natural sunlight depravation for extended periods of time. How long had they been down there?” Mary asks.

“That’s classified. Suffice to say they were routinely checked.

We ordered them to the surface. They refused.” He is still surprised and shocked as if he has just realized their refusal is real. “I suppose it comes down to a matter of trust. You have to understand, if something like this happened, we had to have positive control of the escape vehicle to assure they made it out. From the point of view of rescue, having a team five miles down is the technical equivalent of having them on another planet. But we couldn’t make them get in the vehicle.

We thought it would be safe there. Antarctica is the least siesmically active continent on earth. But we’ve lost all contact.”

Mary sits silently waiting. He is stalling.

“There are five to ten ice coring rigs operating in the interior of Antarctica at any one time. It was good cover. We sent a team to core a path directly above the habitat. Our subterrene wasn’t ready. We thought that if we could contact them somehow, at least let them know we were looking for them it would help. Nothing. Then two days ago they broke through the rock and hit ice again–that hand came up in the ice core. We thought..”

“It was one of the crew? I see–but no way does a modern human have genetics that good, or rather in such good shape. No way that was one of them.” says Mary. “I’m sorry this happened but…”

“The commander is Robert Smith.”

It is a name that seems to be familiar to her but different than she is used to hearing it. “My brother Bobby?”

“Yes.” he says quietly.

“But he’s a Marine. Crenshaw Humming is a private company working with NASA.”

He waits for the explosion.

“You gave me a hand that could have been my own brother’s as if it was some–!”

“Some what? A strangers hand? There are more people and more at stake than just your own feelings. Bobby always bragged about his big sister being the best anthropologist in the world. I needed an independent analysis–I got it–and the truth. I’d do it again. When you calm down you’ll see that.”

She is angry and doesn’t know what to say. Finally she manages, “You thought I’d blow it if I knew.”

“I just made sure you didn’t. I got the truth. Now I’m here to ask you—do you want to go? They want you. Keeps you quiet and gives us your expertise.”

Mary looks at him carefully. “On the rescue?”

“Yeah. As part of the medical staff. And to find out what this thing is we found. Now that we know they could still be alive and that there is something else down there, we’ve got all the funds we need.”

She pulls the robe tighter. “I get the impression not many people say no to you.”

“It’s a small world and a smaller circle of trust.”

————————————————————————-

Job 28:5-7 As for the earth, out of it cometh bread, and underneath it is turned up as by fire; The stones of it are the place of sapphires, and it hath dust of gold. It is a path no bird of prey knoweth, and the vulture’s eye hath not seen it…

In the Name of Jesus Christ, Amen