by B. C. CHASE
When they slipped into the back seat of a taxi, Layla asked the driver, “Do you speak English?”
In English, he said, “No,” and shook his head.
“Good,” she said. Then, in Arabic, she instructed him to take them to the Cairo Museum.
As they rode in the taxi, Layla slipped some documents out of a briefcase and got down to business. It was a chilly day in Cairo, but fortunately it wasn't too chilly for the windows to be open: the driver's odor was foul.
The KV55 tomb was discovered in 1907 in the same area of the Valley of the Kings as the Ramesses II, Tutankhamen and other notorious pharaohs' tombs. The mummy inside KV55 had never been successfully identified, however. Several possibilities for an identity were put forward, but there had never been any way to conclusively decide who it was.
When DNA analysis was finally performed on it as well as a number of mummies found in nearby KV35, some supposed facts were presented by the Ministry. First was that KV55 was Akhenaten, the pharaoh famous for introducing worship of a single god, Aten, to the Egyptians. This religion lasted only as long as Akhenaten did, but there was a great deal of mystery surrounding what happened to his notoriously beautiful wife Nefertiti. Some said that she ruled after Akhenaten died. Some said that another person from the family, “Smenkhare” perhaps, had seized the throne. Everyone agreed, however, that Tutankhamen ruled after this brief period of uncertainty.
Layla showed him the Ministry's version of Tutankhamen's family line:
Amenhotep III and Tiy bore Akhenaten who then fathered Tutankhamun with Nefertiti (his cousin).
She had reasoned that, given obvious allele generational jumps, the DNA showed that the stillborn fetuses could not have been maternally grandfathered by the KV55 mummy, which the Ministry proposed was Akhenaten. (An allele was an alternative form—by mutation—of a gene located in a certain place on a certain chromosome.)
She showed him her own version of the family tree:
Amenhotep III and the mummy known as the “elder lady” in tomb KV35 had borne Akhenaten who then, with Nefertiti (his cousin), bore the mummy known as the “younger lady” in KV35. Smenkhare, who very likely was the KV55 mummy, fathered Tutankhamen through this “younger lady.”
If Layla's version was accurate, it would mean that the Akhenaten mummy was still missing. Since virtually every record of his existence was defaced, destroyed, or disassembled by subsequent Pharaohs, this was not surprising.
At least, Doctor Katz wasn't surprised. That is, he wasn't until she dropped the bombshell.
“I asked you to come, Doctor Katz, because you are the only one I trust,” she said.
“I hope I am worthy of it. You said you've made a very big discovery and I had to come down here right away.”
“Yes.”
“So what was this discovery?”
“Akhenaten's mummy is in the museum basement. It was there all along.”
He just stared at her, dumbfounded.
She said, “He was hidden. They didn't want anyone to see him.”
“Why?”
“The same reason all the Pharaohs tried to erase his memory.”
“What reason is that?”
“Look at these pictures. See if you notice anything strange.”
She showed him a series of paintings of Akhenaten and his family, and a photograph of one small statue.
“I've seen all these before,” Doctor Katz said. “You mean besides his feminine shape? Nothing looks strange to me.”
“The strange thing is that Akhenaten is huge. Look how much taller he is than Nefertiti, even when they are seated. And look at this little statue of Akhenaten with his daughter on his lap. That's not his daughter at all. That's his wife.”
Doctor Katz reexamined the images. He protested, “But Pharaohs are usually pictured taller than those around them in ancient Egyptian art.”
“Yes, but not this much taller. And look at this, even his chief general Horemheb,” she pulled out another image.
“Layla,” he chided. “You must know that this kind of artwork is not necessarily proportionate.”
She rolled her eyes so quickly it was barely discernible, “Yes, but look at him. If this was proportionate, he would be three to four meters tall at least! This isn't a simple exaggeration. This is a representation of fact.”
“So you're saying he was a giant?”
“No, he was more than just a giant,” she said emphatically.
“What do you mean?”
“I'll show you his mummy. You can see for yourself.”
Antarctica
The drilling station had a tower that was almost ninety feet tall. It was at the center of the giant dome, 250 feet in diameter and a hundred feet high. Nearby were giant storage tanks and a huge piles of ice. A power station near the rim of the dome generated the electricity which powered the thermal drill (and everything else).
With this drill they had bored a tunnel twenty-six inches wide—a mere nine inches wider than the average man, and two miles long. They had sealed the water at the bottom with a pressurizing chamber. And, long before the drilling was done, they had built five titanium submersibles that, at least in theory, met all the qualifications of the mission.
Now, Doctor Ming-Zhen was trapped in one, and he was descending down the shaft whether he wanted to or not.
“Four thousand feet,” the voice of a controller came over the speakers in the submersible.
When he tilted his head, which he could only do by straining because of the brace, Doctor Ming-Zhen could just barely see the shaft going all the way up to the dark opening where camera flashes were still erupting. In a few minutes, this last glimpse of civilization would vanish. The light from the surface that glowed through the white snow wall was diminishing quickly the lower he went, but there was also a change in its composition. It was becoming more opaque and had a bluish hue that grew deeper with the descent.
“Six thousand feet.”
Doctor Ming-Zhen knew that the lake far below him had fifty times the amount of oxygen in today's waters, something which would be consistent with what was known about prehistoric earth's atmosphere. This seemed to be yet another indicator of the lake's ancient age.
“Eight thousand feet.”
DNA, though not prehistoric, was already proven to be abundant in the lake, and that's what Doctor Ming-Zhen was really after. One of the reasons he had chosen the Antarctic as opposed to the Arctic was that no nation had any effectual claim on the place. Finder’s keepers.
“Ten thousand feet.”
As he reached a depth at which there was no light, he switched on the exterior lights. The height of the tunnel was shockingly dramatic now that it was illuminated from the inside.
“Twelve thousand feet.”
Finally, the submersible came to a stop with a slight bounce as the steel cable vacillated taut. From below he heard the grinding sound of what he knew to be the pressurizing chamber opening. When that stopped, the submarine gradually lowered into the chamber and outside the bubble he could see only metal. There was a clamping sound as the hooks at the ends of the Y-split on the cable were released.
“I am in the chamber. Prepare for radio silence,” he said.
“See you on the other side,” Doctor Toskovic's voice came over the speakers.
He watched as the cable spun around on its way out the pressurizing chamber and up the tunnel. He felt very much alone as the concave hatch twisted shut above him.
He hit a button to begin the sanitizing process. To ensure no contaminants made it into the lake from the submarines, they were self-cleaning. First, jets of boiling hot water were released to soak the outer skin, followed by a chemical bath. This process took only five minutes.
At the last minute, he remembered the stick of gum he had brought and slipped it into his mouth. Chewing rapidly, he waited for the five thousand pounds per square inch of water pressure.
With a loud grating noise and a blast, the water shot in
from below, blasting his round viewport with a violent spray. He could hear very tiny creaks as the vessel was gradually fully subjected to the force of the lake water. A sudden sharp pain jolted his inner ears: he chewed harder until they popped.
Finally, the pressure was equalized and the door on the side slowly opened. He engaged the propulsion and the craft slowly slid to the side and out of the chamber. Once fully in the water, he allowed the top of the sub to lower so he was laying horizontal.
The water was black. The circumferential exterior lights illuminated a slowly swirling cloud of white specs that stretched out for about twenty or thirty feet in a cloud, but beyond that was total and overpowering blackness.
He pushed a button to capture a water sample in one of the twenty small storage compartments. As he peered at the white dots as they brushed up against the bubble, he could see with his naked eye what they were: near-microscopic shrimp, and they were moving. With tiny arms and tails, they were sifting through the water, though their movement was certainly more at the mercy of the currents than of their own volition.
He could scarcely breathe, he was so mystified. There is a living biology here. Before he came to Antarctica, he assumed that if there had been anything alive down here, it would have been some single-celled bacteria. Certainly not crustaceans.
He knew that, on the earth above, brine shrimp like these were at the bottom of a very long and very large food chain. But, doubtless, there could be nothing larger than these tiny shrimp in these conditions....
Almost with a sense of foreboding, he gazed farther out into the darkness, as far as the lights shone. What else might be beyond in the black unknown? He desperately wished he could communicate to the surface, but of course that was impossible.
He knew Doctor Toskovic's submersible would be coming, so he decided to pilot his farther away from the chamber to avoid any collision. The whir of the electric motors was somehow comforting as he maneuvered down and out into the deep. On a screen underneath the glass, a pinging dot showed the location of the pressurizing chamber moving off from the center.
In this darkness he would certainly have no way of knowing where the exit was if the beacon failed.
He grew alarmed as he noticed the beacon moving faster than it should have been. Looking out the bubble, he could see that he was not really moving independently of the shrimp, but that they were all heading in the same direction in the same current. He quickly reversed the propulsion. This slowed his vessel somewhat, with the shrimp rushing on past—but it only worked momentarily. Before he could even think, the craft swung around and he could sense that he was traveling at a great rate of speed. Extremely anxious, he fumbled with the joysticks to try to escape the current, but this only succeeded in causing the submarine to spiral wildly. The beacon drifted away from center ever more swiftly and his heart began to pound in his chest as he felt both a panic overcoming him as well as an onslaught of claustrophobia.
In desperation, he cried out, “Command! Can you hear me?” But of course his suppressed logical mind knew that they could not. He was in the grip of total terror, and he was hurling into the abyss.
PART TWO
8.1.2014
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Characters
Name
Role
Abael Fiedler
White House Chief of Staff
Adriaan Holt
Ranger, Out of Africa, Paradeisia (formerly a PH in Tanzania)
Amélie Babineaux
Senior Vice President, Legal Affairs, Preseption Logic Corporation
Andrews
Scientist at Paradeisia
Aubrey Vela
Waitress at International House of Bacon, becomes Henry Potters Executive Assistant
Bao Ming-Zhen
Wife of Zhou Ming-Zhen
Chao
Student of paleoanthropology at China Academy of Sciences
Chiang-gong
Pastor in Taiwan, Mei-xing's husband
Cynthia Peterson
Mother of Wesley Peterson
Donte
Li Ming-Zhen's boyfriend
Doctor Charles Stoneham
Director, Special Projects, Preseption Logic Corporation
Doctor David Katz
Head of Middle Eastern and African History at Tel Aviv University
Doctor Fatima Kamil
Chief Biologic Scientist, Egyptian Ministry of Antiquity
Doctor Gary Riley
Neuroscientist at Cognitive Lifescience Corporation, husband of Stacy Riley
Doctor Guy Giordano
Chief Scientist, USAMRIID in Ft. Detrick
Doctor Kenneth Angel
Obstetrician/Gynecologist. Wesley and Sienna Peterson's fertility doctor
Doctor Ivan Toskovic
Head of Chinese Antarctic drilling operation at Lake Vostok
Doctor John Burwell
Pathologist at St. Joseph's Medical Center, Towson, Maryland
Doctor Karen Harigold
Secretary of the United States Department of Health and Human Services
Doctor Matthew Martin
Cambridge University professor of biology
Doctor James Pearce
Head of Paradeisia Hospital
Doctor Phillip Compton
Director of the Centers for Disease Control
Doctor Richard Kingsley
OBGYN at St. Joseph's Medical Center, Towson, Maryland
Doctor Viktor Kaufmann
Chief Scientist, IntraWorld Capital Corporation
Doctor Zhou Ming-Zhen
Head of Department of Paleontology and Paleoanthropology of China Academy of Sciences
Donald
Senior Systems Administrator, Preseption Logic Corporation
Erika
Preseption handler, Preseption Logic Corporation
Fitzgerald Ignatius Jinkins
Founder/Creator, IntraWorld Capital and Paradeisia
General Fox
Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Henry Potter
CEO, IntraWorld Capital
Jarred Kessler
Special Agent, Federal Bureau of Investigation
Jeffery Riley
Son of Gary and Stacy Riley, two years old
Jia Ling
Student of paleontology at China Academy of Sciences
Kelle
Seeks revenge for death of husband and children
Kwame Aidoo
Secretary General of the United Nations
Lady Shrewsbury
Financier of IntraWorld Capital, Duchess of Shrewsbury
Lakeisha Franklin
Vice President, Legal Affairs, and Chief Counsel IntraWorld Capital
Layla Fayed
Student of Archeology, emphasis Historical Genetics, Cairo University
Li Ming-Zhen
Daughter of Zhou Ming-Zhen and Bao Ming-Zhen
Lisa Ching
United States Secretary of Agriculture
Lorraine
Flight attendant for Henry Potter
Maggie
Corporate Secretary for Henry Potter
Marco Gonzales
Vice President, Health and Security, IntraWorld Capital
Mei-xing
Chiang-gong's wife
Miranda
IT project management office director, best friend of Stacey Riley
Honorable Paul Hager
Former Canadian Minister of National Defense
President Baraq Basra
President of the United States
Sai Chu
Chief Financial
Officer, TransWorld Capital
Sarah Rodriguez
Technician at St. Joseph's Medical Center, Towson, Maryland
Scott Nimitz
Operations Supervisor, Paradeisia
Sienna Peterson
Back office processor, wife of Wesley Peterson
Stacy Riley
Wife of Gary Riley
Todd Humphries
Special Agent, Federal Bureau of Investigation
Tom Chastain
Owner of a charter aircraft company, member of Gary's church
Tony Bridges
Director of Operations, Paradeisia
Trey Wiggins
Captain, Manassas Police Department
Wesley Peterson
School teacher, husband of Sienna Peterson
Yue Zhang
Xiàozhăng (Head) of the China Academy of Sciences
* * *
[1] A paleoanthropologist specializes in fossilized hominids.
[2] A holotype is an original and sole specimen.
[3] A scapula is a shoulder blade, coracoids are bones connected to the scapulae in front of the ribs.
