Discovery

by Douglas E Roff

  “OK and who exactly do I make my case to? You? Complete waste of time. I’ll start packing now.” She started again for the door, steam rising from the top of her head. Her temper could equal Adam’s and her fury no less toxic than his.

  Adam responded quietly, ratcheting down the thick tension, “Alright, make your case to my Dad. You know you want to anyway. If he gives this thing legs, we’ll figure out the next steps.

  “And Bitsie.”

  “Yes Adam.”

  “You need to get laid.”

  Bitsie smiled, “And you need to stop being such a douche bag.”

  Tony smiled knowing neither suggestion/insult was going to happen, at least not in the foreseeable future.

  ***

  Adam left in a rush, perturbed with the exchange and considering whether he should even attempt to drive downtown that night. Normally he would call Hannah and have her explain in real terms the events that had just taken place but that didn’t seem particularly feasible now. How did all this get so out of hand so fast anyway?

  All he could presently think of was somehow getting home. He wasn’t going to drive tonight but he was in a furious mood.

  So, he booked a room at the River Run Hotel. He called his friend Andy, the concierge at a boutique hotel downtown and asked if he still had any ‘Kush’ left. He did, so Portland, a city he knew well and loved very much, took him into her loving embrace and bade him sleep and dream in peace, free from all worry or care.

  Chapter 30

  “Look, Adam, I’m sorry to burst your bubble but you know she’s right,” Edward said.

  “And you believe this fantasy? Some new undiscovered beast is roaming the earth? It’s ridiculous and you know it.” Adam was no stranger to conflict with his father but never over something as far-fetched and silly as this. Adam wanted to waste no more time on trivialities and expected more support from his Dad.

  “No, I don’t totally believe anything we have found one way or the other but that isn’t what Bitsie’s saying. What she is saying, and I agree with her on this point, is that you now have an apparently long historical record which is possibly two or three millennia in duration that couldn’t have been faked recently. That’s anomalous and therefore merits some amount of scientific inquiry on our part. Nothing more, nothing less.”

  “Which means what, exactly?” Adam was familiar with the rise in his own temper even as it was rising. Still, he knew himself incapable of doing much about it, especially when confronting his father.

  “Which means she is just doing her job. You lost your temper for the billionth time and are being an angry petulant child as usual.” Edward’s tone, and his choice of vocabulary, didn’t help ease the tension that always seemed to surround their working relationship.

  “Not the point, Dad. And, by the way, you can also be a huge gaping asshole on occasion. I mean how long have you been waiting to share your thoughts? Weeks? Longer?”

  “Had to be said. Like ripping off the band aid. Better to get it over with now and then move on.”

  “Then please, Dad, get to your point.” Edward was the only person on the planet who could evoke Adam’s anger and temper that fast or that completely.

  “OK, point one, don’t be mad at Bitsie for calling me. This is my area of expertise, not yours. Again, she’s only doing her job and you weren’t listening to her. Point two, it’s probably fake and we haven’t analyzed it properly, or there are a million other legitimate explanations we haven’t thought of yet. But the evidence, if true, would be ... well, remarkable, to say the least. Even if there is a tiny, tiny one-in-a-million chance that this is real, it shouldn’t be ignored. It needs to be followed up. That, son, is science. Belief without proof is just dogma.”

  Edward hardly even looked up at his son and continued his work almost as if Adam wasn’t there. This only added fuel to the fire that was Adam’s temper and mood.

  Adam continued, not wanting to lose the argument - again - to his father. “And if the United States government finds out during Congressional oversight hearings that I wasted time, money and resources trying to find Bigfoot, what do you think is going to happen then?”

  “You’d probably be humiliated; your family would likely disown you and you’d be lucky if you ever got laid again. Hannah would certainly be out of the question at that point. But let me say this: it is no worse than the petty insults and humiliations thrown at scientists every day by politicians more interested in getting re-elected by their ignorant and under informed constituencies than following the actual scientific evidence wherever it leads.”

  “Besides, it’s our stuff now. We paid Berg his dollar and he signed off. We can do what we want with it. Uploading it is in our discretion.”

  Edward looked up at his son, then continued, “The oversight committee isn’t your problem anyway. Let’s be non-scientific for a moment and posit that Bitsie’s discovery has legs. Who do you tell, and what do you tell them? Do you tell Congress that you have discovered a heretofore ancient species of predators that we know nothing about, that has lived on this planet longer than we have, that lives among us right now and about which no other independent historical or archeological record that has ever been produced? The implications are staggering.”

  “What implications? I don’t follow.” Adam was no less irritated but feeling calmer.

  “Think for a moment what chaos would result, not just here but around the world, if an alien showed up one day on a White House tour asking, ‘to be taken to your leader’. My God, just the religious ramifications alone could shake the country to its very foundations. Maybe the world. Now substitute, I don’t know, let’s say blood sucking, chameleon-like, prehistoric creatures transforming into ... us. Might that be a problem for some? Cause some panicked reaction? Ya think?”

  “If it’s a fact, it’s a fact. I don’t see the problem.” This was computer/scientist Adam talking. Data was data to him. The implications of that data weren’t his problem nor any of his concern.

  “If Bitsie’s right, you certainly will. And sooner than you can possibly imagine.”

  Adam went quiet, feeling angry, betrayed and hurt. Again. Hannah won’t talk to him; Bitsie and Tony think he’s a douche and his father just called him an angry petulant child. Plus, he was wrong, and he knew it, and was too prideful to admit what he needed to do next: apologize, make it right and then get on with it.

  “What do you suggest then?” Adam asked, still seething but in control of his hair trigger temper.

  Edward replied, “Have you digitized the collection yet?”

  “No. A few items for sure but there are six forty-foot seagoing containers of dusty old shit. It will take some time to process.”

  “Send it up here. All of it. Including the fragile stuff that hasn’t gone out and get the stuff you sent out to Documents Reconstruction in the City back ASAP. We’ll do the work here and keep it quiet. Once in Canada, it’ll be safer.”

  “I was thinking about returning everything to that guy who called me. The fake lawyer. We don’t need this stuff now, do we?” Adam was calm and getting calmer.

  But Edward had no intention of releasing the Library in the six containers at present. That might be done later, even though it was ostensibly the Institute that owned the Library now, not DataLab Acquisitions, LLC.

  And what Adam also didn’t know was that the Library was now actually owned by Edward, through a family trust. Edward had switched the paperwork and substituted a family entity for the Institute when the FBI was trying to get rid of the evidence of the fiasco in Tucson.

  “Yes, we do,” said Edward, firmly. “We need this stuff. We need all originals and the documentary evidence for the C-14 testing. It’s our only real proof. The digitized information is insufficient evidence of age or authenticity.”

  “Then you should find out the real name of the chap who called me and call him yourself. Should be an interesting conversation.” Edward igno
red the “attitude” embedded in the comment.

  “You’re going to help then?” Edward was hopeful his son would but also knew that, that path might be slower and more crooked. Adam had a way of making people beg for his help. It was annoying.

  “Of course, and so will Rod, Cindy, Mom and Pops. Just like the old days. I think a family confab is in order, don’t you?” Edward knew this was not an offer to help, just another avenue for Adam to go around Edward by going to family just prove himself right. This was an old Adam trick and one Edward had long ago grown tired of.

  Adam was delighted with himself and with the result. While he was not completely happy with his Dad for interjecting himself into his, Adam’s, business, he was expecting support from the rest of his family in proving his father both wrong and foolish.

  Edward was always trying to fix things, Adam thought, most of which weren’t actually broken. But this was him showing the world that this silliness was Dad’s thing, and if his Dad put his imprimatur on the result, Adam would feel no heat or any negative repercussions.

  It could still be useful having the old man around even if he made Adam crazy.

  Chapter 31

  The confab took place two weeks later at Mom and Pop’s house. Adam did his best to describe what Bitsie had found in the Library, as even he was now calling it. Everyone was there including Cindy, who usually didn’t attend the “nerd conventions”, especially when Adam and Edward were warring. However, this time Edward had asked her to attend as her financial expertise would be as important as any other input given that night.

  Adam began, “The collection of documents purports to extend back as far as early Greek times, around 700 BCE. There were also graphic representations of pre-Greek era tablets and cuneiform from various ancient peoples, as well as tablets written in other dead languages. In summary, they claim to tell a fantastic story of a people who have existed in this world long before the appearance of homo sapiens on this planet.

  “We estimate there to be about two hundred thirty thousand books, manuscripts, diaries, hand drawings and miscellaneous manuscripts in the collection, which have been nicely summarized and catalogued in a Master Index. The index is written in English while a high percentage of the other documents are in early and archaic forms of Aramaic, at least that’s what we think at present. Could be wrong but we should know more soon. In addition, Beneviste wrote a personal diary, also in English, and something he calls the Book of Gensarii which is a compendium of the source documents, at least according to the author.”

  Cindy asked, “Is that book in English?”

  “Yes, in part. The summaries preceding each chapter in the Book are in English, as are all the chapter headings. In fact, there are several languages represented along with this other unknown dialect. Or dialects. None, however, are modern versions of common languages. So, we must translate old English or German or Spanish to modern English. As well, we then must translate the ancient Aramaic dialect into English. Plus, there are many other languages represented. So, a multi-step and time-consuming process. We think we can translate all the documents written in these lingos once we have established some sort of baseline alphabet.”

  “How certain are you that the dialect is an archaic form of Aramaic?” asked Maria.

  “Not certain at all. The characters of this alphabet seem to be like written Aramaic but not completely so. Either it’s a derivation of Aramaic, or possibly, Aramaic is a derivation of it. Both appear possible at this juncture. In addition, there isn’t just one form of Aramaic and one written alphabet. That would be too easy. Remember that Aramaic and its written forms have existed for over three thousand years and in many different places and cultures.”

  “So?” Asked Cindy.

  “So, that means we cannot be sure right now just how many different and distinct oral and written forms of Aramaic, there were over that long period of time. Could well be hundreds. Maybe more. We’ll need experts and possibly a lot of them. The work will go faster if we can digitize everything we do know from the experts, such as dictionaries and previous translations, and then run the Library against all those known sources. Not an easy task. And it will be very expensive. And did I mention time consuming?”

  Adam continued, “There is one particular dialect that has never yet been recorded in any public document we can find. And by ‘we’, I now include the linguists and language historians who we have sent samples to. They all agree that the form of language we know as Aramaic has evolved over time, just like English and that translating a specific document would be more feasible if we knew the country, culture and time frame when it was originally produced. Even better, it would be not only feasible but easy if a key existed that translated the object language into any other known language.”

  “So, for this dialect, we need a cipher. Or a decoder ring,” said Rod, chuckling.

  Edward answered more soberly, “We had hoped that the chapter headings and summaries in the Book would give us more direct clues. The odd thing, if security was the objective, was that the chapter summaries that precede each chapter in the Book were written in standard modern English. So, there was no real effort made to definitively hide the contents of the Book or, for that matter, any of the source documents.”

  Maria again asked, “What do you think that means?”

  Edward replied, “Oddly, I think it means the author, this Beneviste guy, wanted this Library to be discovered. I think he did all this work so this collection and everything in it would be preserved for posterity. Whose posterity, I don’t know. But it seems to me he wanted to make sure this knowledge wasn’t lost.”

  Rod asked, “What knowledge are we talking about? What’s in this Library anyway?”

  Edward interrupted Adam to answer, “The Book apparently details the entire history, philosophy, cultural identity and sociology of his people from prehistory to the modern era. The Book also describes other “libraries” scattered around the globe which are repositories of important source documents and histories of his people. The locations of these libraries are identified by a series of numbers, a simple binary code, which we believe may correspond to GPS locations. We have tentatively identified each location by country, nearest city or other geographical markers.”

  “Other geographical markers?” Pops was curious too and directed the question to Adam.

  Adam said, “The seven locations aren’t in any large modern cities but in historical population centers. One is even in the shallows of the Mediterranean off the coast of Egypt. We may have these GPS coordinates wrong, or they may also be in a code of some kind. Or maybe these coordinates are exactly where these libraries were located at one time but not presently. One can only assume security is one of the many possible reasons for this obfuscation. These locations aren’t completely random though. Far from it. They do exhibit an apparent global geographical balance and all locations except a couple were once historically important population centers.”

  “Historical? What do you mean?” Cindy was confused.

  “I mean that the locations roughly correspond to existing nearby population centers today. Towns or cities, but not major international centers like London, or Cairo or Beijing. But in ancient times all were once important centers of commerce and therefore historically significant. Two, though, correspond to no known ancient population centers.”

  Edward asked, “Where are they?”

  “East Africa, at Koobi Fora, in Kenya. And the Grand Canyon in Arizona.”

  “Koobi Fora? Isn’t that Dr. Leakey’s site?” That was odd, thought Edward. “Significant?”

  “Yes, Leakey’s site. Significant? Perhaps but only if you believe any of this malarkey. Could just as easily be well crafted historical fiction if you ask me.” Adam was still convinced of nothing.

  Edward’s immediate reaction, trying to think like an ancient or a modern with something important to hide, was that the GPS coordinates took you to a location where the a
ctual locations of the libraries would be revealed. Go to the coordinates and find directions. Or a map. Or something.

  Edward asked Adam, “When were these centers of commerce historically important? Except the Grand Canyon, that is?”

  “Interesting that you should ask, Dad. Roughly from the Greek through the Roman eras, inclusive. A period of about twelve hundred years.”

  Edward thought this fact was significant but didn’t yet know what that significance was. He would keep this speculation to himself for later reference.

  Edward then said to Adam, but for everyone’s benefit, “With two hundred thirty thousand books and documents, over eleven million pages and demonstrably arcane but very real language dialects, I don’t think this was just made up. Or a hoax. I think in this case, where there’s smoke, there’s fire. Most forgers don’t go to that much trouble. They do their best work one document at a time, and in small numbers. Plus, they forge rare documents, not grocery lists and boring diaries of life in nineteenth century Kansas. There’s just too much of everything not to take this seriously.”

  Edward was a forensic archeologist and had seen many fakes and forgeries in his life; some very good. All were a single page or a few pages of well-crafted counterfeits. And all those fakes purported to have some historical significance which made them rare and potentially valuable. This was a collection of the exceedingly ordinary, at best, and the fantastical, at worst.

  “We move on then. The book details the history of these people from an ancient oral tradition into the modern written record. That’s about a third or so of the total pages in the Book, with the balance reserved for what you could call essays on various topics. I won’t detail them here; you should read and evaluate the summaries for yourselves. But, in general, most of the essays appear to be lessons on who these people are, their values and relationship to the rest of the planet, broadly speaking. But I caution you that what we know for certain is only what we can glean from the chapter summaries. The core of the text of each chapter remains untranslated and are in the archaic language we think might be Aramaic.”