The key was the AHM manuscripts and the ancient symbols spread out across our world.
Professor Abelson was right, it wasn’t a cipher. It was a code.
Now I would have irrefutable proof.
I had a car full of books when I got back home. I yelled at Mase to come help me.
“I figured it out, Mase,” I said when he came out and grabbed a bag of books. “I think that I have figured out how to decode the Voynich Manuscripts.”
He stopped mid-lift.
“Justin.” He looked at me.
I nodded my head.
“You know what it says? In that book? You know what’s written in there?”
“Not yet. But I think I have the code to decipher it. It’s the AHM manuscript. You know how it was written in three different languages?”
“Yeah.”
“That’s the code. When the languages change, it correlates to a symbol. Symbols that our ancestors from Mars marked on the ground so people could see them from the air. They left those same marking on their temples, and in caves. They left the ‘key’ to figure it out everywhere.”
“You mean the monkeys and spiders in wherever that place is in Peru?”
“Nazca.”
“So what? We have to go to Peru and read the symbols?”
“No. Get the books. Let’s go in the house.”
This time I wasn’t going straight to my study, lock myself in and become Howard Hughes. Instead I called everybody and told them to come help me. I called all seven of my siblings and put them on standby. And I called Addie. She said she was on her way. She’d talk to Jack, but she knew he had to work.
But not too long after I hung up from her, Jack called and said he knew a couple cryptologists if I needed help. I laughed, and told him I thought I would be okay, but until I figured it out, “Mums the word.”
He said, “That’s my job. Keeping secrets.”
He also told me that at first he was very concerned about what I was trying to do. That he thought it might breach the protocols of national security. But after he learned more, he said, I convinced him that the world needed to know its history and how knowing couldn’t hurt anyone. He said I made a believer out of him. Then he said, “Now go make a believer out of everyone else.”
So, that’s what I prepared to do. I gathered up all my tools. Sean’s program that I used to translate the AHM Manuscripts, that searched and replaced words as I translated, wasn’t going to work here because the same words weren’t present throughout. Some appeared in certain places, or uniquely on a few pages. There were very few words repeated. And the words that appeared next to illustrations weren’t repeated.
At least they didn’t appear to be.
There were captions by the pictures of the plants. I had A good way to decode was to figure out the proper nouns. The plant names worked so I had Claire and Mase go through and copy down, the best they could, the letters that I thought was the name of every plant.
Some of the longer sections of the manuscript were broken into paragraphs that had symbols at the beginning of them. I knew now that each symbol signified a change. The change was related to a change in language in the AHM Manuscripts. I knew from the hundred times I had read over it that there were only about 30 different glyphs, or individual marks.
What others had noticed, but no one knew what to do with, was the distribution of letters within words. There were some characters that occurred only at the beginning of a word, some at the end, and some in the middle. Those characters were the names of the spider, monkey, lizard and other symbols on all of the structures around the world that I had believed meant something to the Ancients. And those symbols told me which language.
So the small symbols at the beginning of the line told me to change the language. The characters told me what language, another one told me to stop that language. If there was no symbol at the beginning of the line, I kept the same language.
But, like before, I spent every waking moment working on the translation, and every minute of sleep dreaming about the translations. I even took a sabbatical so I could work on them.
“Nothing is hidden to the trained eye.” My mentor, Dr. Margulies’ words got me through.
When I had translated the AHM Manuscripts, it took me three months. Even with all the help, this translation was a chore. I worked so hard. Sometimes it seemed as if the code wasn’t working, but then I found it was only because I had done something wrong.
It took me eight months and nineteen days to decode the Voynich Manuscript. I gained ten pounds, and I really believed my hair had gotten thinner. It definitely had gotten grayer. But I did it. I decoded something that no one else could.
I felt so good.
Addie had come from Baltimore and we were all at my house. My seven brothers and sisters, Addie, Jack, me and Mase, and Nikhil Chandra.
I finally decided I like him. He turned out to be a good guy.
I couldn’t believe what had transpired over the past year, and I shared that with my family. I swore everyone to secrecy and made them promise that if I turned up missing they would all come and look for me.
We were in the backyard having a bar-b-que. Mase came from inside the house where he had been making his special sauce.
“You got a certified letter.”
“Yeah, who from?”
“I don’t know. It’s postmarked San Diego, California.”
I opened the letter, read it, and had to go and sit down.
“What is it?” Greg came over and sat next to me.
“It’s a letter for me to come to San Diego and meet with the Chairman of the Bilderberg Group.”
“You’ve got to be kidding,” he said. “Let me see that letter.”
Chapter Sixty-Two
Present Day
Lockheed Martin, in Littleton, Colorado, launched their MAVEN mission in November 2013. MAVEN, an acronym for Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN, is the first spacecraft dedicated to surveying the air around Mars. The exploration is to analyze and understand the role that the loss of atmospheric gas to space had in changing Mars’ climate. The information gathered on this mission, scientists out at the University of California at Berkeley believed, would help determine when, and for how long, water could have been stable on the planet. It would determine whether there could have been life on Mars.
Yeah, that was impressive, but what if they could send a manned flight to Mars, I thought.
I could help them do that.
I was sitting on the back step, right outside my study, absentmindedly watering my flowers. The sweet smell of spring and its gentle breezes made me smile. Added to that was my excitement about what I was planning to do. I guess I should say we were planning to do.
Nikhil had told me that he had resources that he could share with me. I was beginning to like that he always said “we.” And even though I still hadn’t met any of his secretive people, I felt like part of the group.
So, I knew the knowledge of the Ancients. Ancient myths weren’t myths any more. At least not to me. I chuckled to myself. Still no fountain of youth, though.
I had worried so about doing everything. About finding the truth. About being able to decipher it once I had it. And always I had that dilemma of sharing my knowledge with the world. First hiding it in a book of fiction. Then when I tried to write a book that was academic, all was lost in a fire. I guess not all of it, Addie still had eight copies, and I had two, my proof copy and Hannah Abelson’s copy. And of course there’s the manuscript sitting on my computer.
I was going to try and get it published again. I found that thought quite amusing. Probably not a lot of publishing companies would want to publish a book about people coming from Mars.
But Nikhil’s “resources” were going to change all that. I was going to be able to construct the proof I needed.
I walked over and shut off the water, unscrewed the hose from the spigot and dragged it back to the shed to put it up.
&nbs
p; The Voynich Manuscript had all the “formulas,” as it were (others that had looked at the book, without being able to decipher it, had called them recipes), on their technology, their advanced knowledge. I, of course, could only decipher the words. I hadn’t the faintest idea of what any of the formulas meant. But I figured someone who worked in that field would be able to understand it.
The first someone I tested my hypothesis on was Claire.
Again, her medical degree, I hoped, would help me. I showed her what I recognized as the “biology” part of the manuscript. And she told me what she made of it.
“It’s genetics,” she said.
The Ancestors had been able to isolate genes that caused diseases and completely eradicate them. I asked her was she able to use my translated words, words that weren’t the same words we use now, to follow how they did it. I held my breath, but she didn’t take long to answer.
“Yes,” she said. “This right here,” she pointed at a part of my translation. “Is the description of alleles and the location of the one, in particular, that they are writing about. This,” she said, “would identify it to anyone who understood genetics.”
She read a little more and pointed, “This right here. It describes the double helix of DNA.”
“Even without me translating the word ‘helix?’”
“Yep.”
She said it was just like a journal article. The writer is able to explain the loci in words. Otherwise, she said, everyone would always have to be together to know what anyone was talking about. They would have to be able to point at what was under the microscope and say, ‘See, there it is.’ That would not be feasible. Descriptions of the parts of the human body, and their location, no matter how microscopic, have to be able to be rendered in words.
“I suspect,” she said, “that that would be true for whichever discipline they gave information about.”
“So, based on this,” I said, “you could isolate the gene to eradicate whatever disease this indicates in my translation?”
“Yes, I could,” she said. “As long as their DNA matched ours.”
“That’s the basis of my argument, Claire. It always has been. The people from Mars have the same DNA as us.”
“Looks like we’ll soon find out, huh?”
I checked Claire off my list.
The next someone was Alexander Winterman.
Leaving the shed, I pulled the sleeves up on my hot pink blouse, wiped the sweat off my forehead, and stood with my hand on my hips.
Yep. Alex Winterman was going to give me the proof I needed to make the world believe. A spaceship. He didn’t know that yet, and even after he gave me the answers I was looking for, I still wouldn’t tell him. He was a name that Nikhil had given to me, and I was going to make good use of him.
Dr. Winterman had a B.S. in Aerospace Engineering from Penn State, a M.S. and Ph.D. in Aeronautical and Astronautical Engineering, from Stanford and Princeton, respectively.
He worked at the Lockheed Martin facility in Littleton, and it couldn’t be anything but luck that Nikhil knew him. When I looked him up, I found that he worked as a research scientist, and had published three books and over two hundred and fifty technical papers in journals. He was a fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, and he had helped to design several space crafts, including the one used on the MAVEN mission. He was perfect.
I brushed my hands together and walked back in through the French doors to my study and sat at my desk. Grabbing my notebook of the translations, I flipped through it.
Dr. Winterman would understand just what all this meant and how to construct a spacecraft that could take man out among the stars. Just like Claire had been able to do with the medical part of it.
When I talked to him he spoke very highly of Nikhil and said that he’d be happy to speak with me.
Twisting the curls in my hair, I wondered what Nikhil had said to him about me.
The phone call I made to him was brief. I told him I had something I needed him to look over. I wanted him to tell me if it meant anything, and if so, what. I told him I’d fax it over to him. But, I’d said, since I’d be out his way in about a week, I’d stop by, if it was okay with him, and speak with him in person about his findings.
Somewhere, in the back of my mind, even after Claire’s reassurance, I still thought maybe I didn’t decode the manuscript correctly. Heck, how could I have done something that others found impossible? Little ole’ me.
But if I had really decoded it, and it was possible to build a spaceship, cure a disease, or do any of the other things that were written in that book with the otherworldly writing, then I could use that as my proof. That’s the only way people would believe me. Because people could easily say that I made up what I said I found in the Voynich Manuscript.
And true enough, it would be easy to try and pull a hoax if I didn’t have proof. No one could prove that what I said was written in the book really wasn’t, since no one else could decipher it. It would just be me - crazy, depression-proned, retired archaeologist me - telling the world what was in there with nothing to back me up.
But if I had a working spaceship . . .
That would be a different story.
My appointment with Bruce Cook of the Bilderberg group in San Diego was next week. I pulled open the desk drawer and took out the airline tickets I had printed off the Internet for me and Mase. I was going to have to change the route back home.
We had decided to make a trip out of it, leave Tuesday, visit friends in San Diego who owned an olive grove, and hang out with them on their five-acre farm. Then, on Friday, we’d meet with Mr. Cook, and fly home afterwards. Instead, now on our way home, we were now going to stop in Littleton, Colorado, and see Dr. Winterman about getting a real-life “Enterprise NC-1701” ready for take-off.
Chapter Sixty-Three
I had originally hoped that The Bilderberg Group was possibly comprised of the descendants of the Watchers. Not the original Watchers. Not the ones who were here on Earth when we still lived on Mars, who watched the experiments. But the descendants of the people who came here and then left signs. (I probably should have given them a different name.) Maybe they were the Saboteurs, but definitely the people whom Nikhil was talking about when we were in Italy.
I was sitting in One America Plaza, on the 14th floor, waiting to see Bruce Cook, U.S. Senator, and Chairman of the Bilderberg Group. This was his home office, and it was quite nice. Too nice for a senator. It looked like a whole lot of money went into decorating it.
There were expensive paintings on every wall. A staircase in the middle of the lobby, glass and chrome were everywhere, and the lush tan-colored leather sofas were as soft as butter. And there were two large television monitors with Don Lemon’s face and CNN’s moniker plastered across the screens.
Glad I wore a suit.
Could this be the place where the people who knew what I knew about man’s origins had their meetings?
From Nikhil I had learned that there were two factions of people. The ones that wanted the knowledge to be told when the right time came, like Father Realini. And then there was a group that didn’t want the knowledge known, ever, like Father Realini’s Rector, or whatever his title was. Nikhil wasn’t sure if any of those people were left. But, I think he thought if there were, I could find that out from the Bilderberg Group. At least that’s what I’m thinking, since he left their name on the back of his business card.
I just didn’t know what group of people the Bilderberg Group fell into. I knew they had the power players of the world in their group. But was their motivation, their main purpose, to keep us from acquiring the knowledge, or was it to help us realize our full capabilities? Or maybe they knew nothing about it at all.
I was starting to lean toward the first option because people with power usually become drunk with it. They might start out with good intentions, but rarely does it last. All you have to do is look at our history. Everyone’s always tr
ying to conquer and take over the world. Plus, if they were Nikhil’s people, the good guys, he wouldn’t have told me to check them out. He told me that his faction didn’t want to be made known until proof was presented.
When I first contacted the Bilderberg Group, it was because I thought they could read the Voynich Manuscript. Then after I’d deciphered it, I had forgotten that I had written to them until I got that certified letter. Then I realized that I didn’t even need them anymore.
But wouldn’t it be great, I mused, if the Bilderberg Group were the Watchers. That my meeting with Senator Cook would lead me to meet people who had first-hand knowledge of the things I’d learned from the AHM manuscripts. But I also realized that if they were those people, Nikhil wouldn’t have warned me against them.
Back to thinking they’re the bad guys.
Mase waited for me downstairs. He decided not to come up with me because he said he didn’t want to be in the way. Not Greg. It took a week of arguing for him to concede to not coming. He wanted to sit right in on the meeting with me. It would have been nice to have him along. He definitely would have loved this place, and he knew how to ask questions to get the right answers.
I didn’t want to begrudge him anything, since he had been so supportive of me as of late. But with him in the room, I wouldn’t have gotten a word in. He wouldn’t be happy with the questions I’d ask. He would have just made me more nervous and flustered. I was happy to sit here, by myself, and wait to speak with Senator Cook.
Until, that is, his assistant called me back to his office.
I didn’t think I was going to be able to get up off that couch in the lobby. My knees buckled, and my stomach was bubbling and cramping. I thought I wouldn’t even make it into his office. I needed a restroom. Bad.
“Right this way, Dr. Dickerson,” his assistant said, directing me down a long hallway. There were pictures of the San Diego coastline, the U. S. Capital, the White House, and flowers, everywhere. Live flowers, pictures of flowers, flower arrangements. And people, the hallway was like a highway. All busy, talking in hush tones and throwing me fake smiles. We ended up at a big, ornate wooden door.
Irrefutable Proof: Mars Origin I Series Book II Page 25
