Theo sighed and patted the younger on the back. "It’s alright. When I first proposed the black hole theory, people wouldn't just walk out. They laughed themselves red in the face. Boy, will they be quiet when the first one is confirmed discovered."
"I know your black hole theory will be proven, Theo. It is brilliant."
"Well . . . enough about that. I’m always happy to see you, but I know when you need to talk to the old man. Take a walk with me."
The both of them walked to the grassy plains that surrounded Theo's home. He liked the wide-open spaces like this. Theodore said in his earlier writings that his solitude helped him really study the world and how it worked. He wrote once that the ability to truly embrace stillness was the mark of a noble intellect. "Pop, you've never steered me wrong. I’ve made some remarkable achievements on my own. Scientists like me are rock stars now. I was really the first one aside from you that became famous for what I did. People are taking science seriously for the first time . . . ever. When you first came to me with this idea about a mass extinction, even I was skeptical. When I started looking at the evidence, it is so overwhelmingly clear. It is the only hypothesis that fits. I just wish I could make everybody see it like I do. You know . . . when this theory is proven, I’ll become the renowned scientist. I’ll go down in the books for good. You could have had all this and you gave it to me. You are brilliant, Theo. You’ve guided me to things that would have made you a million times more famous. You helped me figure out how a person can synthesize plutonium and release energies once thought to be impossible, you sparked the idea of the antibiotic to me, you personally proposed to me your schematics for this 'transistor radio' idea that could change the world when we build a prototype. You gave me so much that you deserve credit for. Why didn't you come forward with this idea on your own?"
"Because I am an old man now, son. I want to enjoy what years I have left here at home, writing my books and looking at Saturn through my favorite telescope. This is your time. You do the hard work anyway. You have the resources to take a simple notion of mine and explode it onto the scene of mankind's consciousness. I’m too old to be running around, digging up tombs and staying up all night in laboratories. Too old for all that mess. I can prove this mass-extinction happened and I’m confident you will too. Trick is to convince everyone else."
"Yeah, right. Only two billion people on this planet to convince.”
“And your point? We’ve done it before. Imagine the ancient world and what their scientists had to go through to be heard. It is theorized that there used to be over seven billion people on this rock.”
“I just hate how people blindly accept the timeline. This is not backed up by not only geology, but the fossil record. It fills in the gap with everything. This unnatural near-extinction twenty-five million years ago needs to be proven. We human beings were almost wiped off the face of this earth and I have to know why. This can even help me prove that the ice age happened due to some kind of runaway greenhouse effect around the same time. Maybe some kind of o-zone depletion or something. We know for certain that the ozone layer astronomers recently discovered has spots in it that are repairing themselves. These spots are not from the planet’s creation. At the rate we know it is healing itself, it would have been finished already. The damage caused goes exactly back to my proposed timeframe, Pop. This has to be due to some kind of rapid damage done to it by ancient man. But what about before all that? Before humans. Just think . . . massive land animals, huge reptiles and flying creatures that ruled the earth before us. I must sound like I have been reading too much science fiction, huh?"
"They said the same thing when Einstein started out . . ." the old man mumbled with the slightest of smiles.
"Who's Einstein?" Daniel said.
The old man closed his mouth quickly, seemingly catching himself from something. "Nobody. Forget it. Listen . . ." Theodore stopped and faced his young friend. They stood together in the middle of the field among the tall, swaying grass. The pale yellow sun shone brightly overhead, bathing them in its assuring warmth. Another beautiful, sunny day. "Did you know that ancient humans may have had automobiles?" Theo said.
"Gimme a break, where did you hear that?" Daniel said, laughing.
The old man shrugged it off with a smile, as if he wasn't going to dignify anyone with a response. There was a look in his eye, a crook in his smile that seemed so out-of place. Whenever he talked history, especially of the ancients, he spoke like he already knew. Like none of this was theory at all. "That island you live on off of the east coast . . . you know there used to be a city there?"
"Where I live? Now who is sounding nuts? That place is farmland as far as the eye can see, you old bat."
"Nope. Manhattan used to be a vast, sprawling city with buildings that were so tall, they touched the sky." Daniel looked at his best friend and mentor as he said it. He had such a brightness in his eyes and Daniel noticed it. He didn't look like he was simply telling a story. He looked like a man reminiscing.
"You got that twinkle goin' on again. You always talk like you've been there or something."
"Yeah . . ." the old man said. He sounded slightly strange for a moment. Almost sad.
"Manhattan is a myth, Pop. Just a bunch of stories passed down by theologians. My little sister knows more science than they do."
"Perhaps you're right," Theodore said. "No way to prove it anyway. At least not for quite awhile. Keep with it, son. All those things I helped you with . . . I have never led you astray. You will be fine."
"I always wondered how you got all these ideas. It’s like you pull them out of some mental catalogue of things the world needs. Remember when you made that call to Abnerdeen Corporation about that . . . what did you call it again?”
“Television,” Theo said.
“Yeah, that’s right. Can’t wait to see that one. When I was a kid, I would read about you all the time. I used to imagine that you have some secret library in your head. I was always bashful to ask you where all of your brilliant theories came from."
"Oh . . . here and there." Theodore smiled and put his arm around the young man. Walking back to the small home on the horizon, the old man started whistling. Daniel wasn't aware they had walked that far from the house. They walked together until they almost neared Theodore's house in silence. No man said anything until they could both nearly touch the front door. "Want to come inside for some tea? Haven't seen you in a dog’s age."
"I can't, Theo. I gotta go. Why don’t you come back to the center with me for awhile? You can be a lot of help there. It won’t take much to get your feet wet again."
"I told ya, boy. I am too old to be running around labs and things like that," the great man chuckled and cleared his throat.
"You're not too old for it, Pop."
"Trust me, Danny . . . I am much older than I look."
They walked around the house and Daniel went inside to use the phone and have a cab pick him up. Theodore was in the kitchen, making himself a pot of tea on the stove. Daniel called the cab company and hung up. Walking into the kitchen, he saw that the old man wasn't in there. "Pop?"
"Come out to the shed, bud! I have something I wanna show you!"
Daniel walked out of the back door and took the short walk to the shed. Theodore sure got around well for someone that had to have been pushing eighty. He was in the large, furnished garage. It looked like a little apartment in there. It was drywalled and carpeted with its own heat and one of those portable air conditioning units that just hit the market. Damn thing even had a bathroom. Daniel had only seen it when the old man was having it built. The last time he saw 'the shed,' (which was nearly half the size of the one-bedroom house) it was just a wooden skeleton.
Professor Copeland stared in awe. The walls were completely covered, floor to ceiling, in old books. These were the ancient texts the old man had in storage for so long. Daniel had only heard about his collection from other admirers. Some colleagues in the field said it didn’t
even exist. Copeland had known this man for twenty years and had never seen it. He'd asked about the collection a couple times, but Theo was so modest. He would always say, 'yeah, I have a few books.' This was a hell of a lot more than a few. "Oh, my God . . . they weren't shitting about your collection, were they?"
"Nope. Not at all. Just got these out of a very special storage facility made for me years ago so I could keep them preserved properly," Theo said as he took a seat at the far wall behind a large oak desk. A strange mechanical device was attached to the wall behind his chair. It looked like two large tubes side by side that hissed every few seconds. Every time it did, Daniel's ears popped. He had never seen anything like that before, but it was probably one of Theo's pet projects. The machine, no doubt used to air seal or protect the room, looked so strange and new to him, but seemed old at the same time . . . like finding a sportscar inside Noah's Ark.
"I can't believe I'm in this room. This collection of written material is something anyone would love to see even for just a second. I know guys who would kill to see this room. How old are some of these?" Daniel asked as he scanned the wall-to-wall shelves.
"Some just a few. Some books are a few hundred years old. I have some papers, scrolls and the like sealed in lock boxes that date back up to nearly two thousand years. Then there are a couple that are . . . much older than that."
"Too bad the written word is only about eight to ten thousand years old. I wish we could go back to the beginning. This library is so impressive," Daniel said, walking the perimeter wall and running his hand smoothly across the old spines. He grabbed one off the shelf and gently held it in front of him. He had never seen a bound book so old before. The leather around the outside was nearly worn away by God knew how long it had been handled by people. Daniel opened the book carefully and flipped one page. The copyright on it . . . it was gone. It had been rubbed away. The rest of the page looked fine and actually quite well-preserved, but the date was gone. Daniel put that one back on the shelf and grabbed another, gently turning it to the copyright page. Again, just the date was missing. He looked up at the old man seated at his desk. He smiled and raised his eyebrows in an impressed manner. That smile would have looked condescending if Daniel didn't know him as well as he did. Daniel walked across to the other wall, to where the books looked even older than the ones he had just handled. Picking it up and turning it to the copyright page . . . his eye caught it immediately. The date. Gone. It wasn't just missing on any of the books. It was rubbed out. On each, it appeared as though the ink had been smeared purposefully. The young professor stood with the open book in his hands and thumbed through it. Books didn't look like this anymore. It was exquisite. Just to see how things were printed back then . . . beautiful. Looking at a random page, Daniel read it with a wonder in his heart he rarely felt.
I see a beautiful city and a brilliant people rising from this abyss. I see the lives for which I lay down my life, peaceful, useful, prosperous and happy. I see that I hold a sanctuary in their hearts, and in the hearts of their descendants, generations hence. It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known.
"A Tale of Two Cities . . ." Daniel said, closing the book and examining the writing on the spine. "Charles Dickens. Hmm . . . never heard of him. When was this book written? Is this one of the older ones in here?"
"It has been around awhile . . . the oldest?" Theo chuckled. "Not by a longshot. Come out back with me. I want to show you something." Daniel placed the book back on the shelf and followed his friend out the same door he came in. It hissed shut behind them and locked on its own.
“Did that just lock by itse . . .”
“Come on,” Theo interrupted. He never interrupted people. Something was so strange about that room . . . how that thing against the wall was something that had to be new. One cannot just buy something like that at a store, but it looked so used. Almost as old as those ancient books. Locks don’t just turn on by themselves, either.
What the hell is he working on?
Theodore stopped at the old greenhouse. Daniel remembered this place very well. Pop had built it when he first bought the house. Beautiful plants were in there that don’t or can’t grow on the East coast at all. Plamara plants from Hawaii, banana trees, any kind of rare and colorful flower one can imagine. Theodore had a room in the one-acre greenhouse with just lilacs in it. That was it. Just a room full of lilacs. It smelled like heaven in there. Daniel remembered being young and studying in that greenhouse. His entire apprenticeship was spent in that huge Fiberglas and plastic building. Sometimes, after the long days of school and personal tutoring, Daniel Copeland would sleep in the rose room. The lilacs were his favorite, but he loved the smell so much that he couldn’t sleep. How many days were spent in that old greenhouse . . . working, studying, having a few beers and just kicking back . . . talking about women and the fraternity conquests they’d made in their first years earning the doctorate. Those were the best times of Daniel’s life. An entire lifetime was spent in that one-acre square building. It seemed that way to him, at least. For him, this was the most sacred place on planet Earth.
“Wow . . . haven’t been in here for a long time,” Daniel Copeland said as his best friend and mentor grabbed a key hanging around his neck and used it to open the thick metal door. The legendary Professor Theodore Cunningham opened it and immediately a very strange smell wafted into Daniel’s nostrils. The place didn’t smell the same. Gone was the aroma of everything from small orange trees, blackberry bushes, roses of every color and exotic plants from all over the world . . . the smell he eagerly anticipated. That scent of boyhood. The scent of carefree days and the expansion of knowledge, when a man already a legend in science traded the entire platinum years of his retirement to help a young boy in the community simply because his mother asked. What replaced those feelings and senses he wanted to feel . . . no . . . needed to feel . . . was something so shockingly different. It had such a musty smell to it now, like a swamp baking in the hottest of summer heat. It wafted out of the open door as if a giant mouth had blown on them. It was enough to make Daniel’s eyes water.
“Good God, that smells horrible,” he said, rubbing at his eyes. The air coming out of there was extremely humid. He knew that just standing in there for a few moments was enough for someone to break a sweat. “What the hell are you doing in here? Raising skunks or something?”
“Come inside.”
Daniel walked in. It was a little easier to breathe in here, though it was extremely humid. Just as he thought, he could already feel flushed. This room was at least one hundred degrees and one hundred percent humid . . . like a dense forest with a blocked canopy. The whole greenhouse was filled with rows upon rows of one plant now. They stood about eight feet tall; really lanky stalks that branched out in three or four bulbs about the size of footballs. A couple of the bulbs were open like hands folded out. Along the edges of the soft, pink pads inside the open bulbs were tendrils and sensitive hairs that swayed lightly in the breeze.
“Venus Flytraps . . .” Daniel said in awe. “I have never even read about carnivorous plants this massive. Did you engineer these somehow?”
“I know you are busy,” Theodore said, completely disregarding his former student’s question. He walked to one of the huge plants and reached into the soil at his feet. He carefully moved his hand around under the dirt and removed two large seeds about the size of bottle caps. Theo looked at them for a moment, smiled and walked them to a large metal bin at the corner. It was about the size of one of those old steamer trunks. Opening a hinged lid at the top of the wooden box, Theo tossed in the two seeds. The box was filled to the top. As Daniel broke his gaze at the almost alien-like plants stretching out before him, he noticed more boxes along the far wall. There was one every five feet or so. All the way down. All filled with seeds. “I know you are busy . . . but I have something that may be of interest to your health and medicine research
lab. I was wondering if you could bring something to their attention for me.”
“Sure, Pop, what is it?”
“Ever since DNA became the science of the day, I have been doing extensive research on these. They are from an island in the Far East. A kind of dense forested area at the base of what used to be a mountain. The locals there had passed on stories that this particular plant had magical properties. They believed that the remote part of that forest was sacred and fearing the wrath of an angry god, they closed it up and refused anyone entry. A long time ago, I heard someone tried to burn the forest down, but some of these plants survived. I managed to get one of the bulbs. These things yield an amazing amount of seeds and can survive without the stalks. I looked into it and with the limited equipment I have here, I found something. The extract of the plant seems to have a reversing effect on wrinkles. Without being able to do more tests in a proper lab, I am stuck.” Theodore walked up to one of the strange plants nearest him and yanked off one of the bulbs. It snapped with a dry crunch, leaking a bright green fluid onto the ground. Theodore reached behind one of the wooden seed boxes and grabbed a large porcelain pot filled with rich dirt. Putting the bulb inside, he handed it to Daniel. Not a squeamish man by any means, Professor Copeland was scared to touch it. He had no idea why. The thing was just so strange. It had a weight to it . . . not a physical weight, but some kind of peculiarity that hung to it. Darin was frightened to put his hands near the bulb; expecting it to jump out of the pot and take his hand off.
“I don’t like this thing, Theodore. I want out of this room. Let’s get out of here.”
“What’s wrong, Danny? You look . . . uncomfortable.” Theodore leaned in close to his young friend and handed him the potted bulb. Daniel took it with clammy hands and stumbled toward the door. Theodore spoke to the young professor slowly, making no effort to grant exit out of the room. In fact, the look in his eyes was almost menacing. Theo moved his body in front of the door and blocked it, leaning inches away from Daniel’s face. Daniel’s head swam. He hardly noticed. His vision was getting spotty. All he could hear was the old voice. “I need you to bring it to the guys in the medicinal research area. I need their help seeing what the plant’s extract could do human DNA. I believe we have a breakthrough here. I need this done, old friend. Can you do this for me?”
The Zombie Letters Page 28
