Billie took the wand, shined it over the stone tablet, and gasped.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Small markings and lines of purple luminescence lit up across the ancient stone.
Someone had used ink made of fluorite to make notes and markings throughout the stone. Billie glanced at the sapphires. Most of the blue precious gems had been visibly crossed out with the strange purple ink. Her eyes stopped at the four unmarked sapphires. Next to each one, was a symbol for one of the four horsemen of the apocalypse, followed by their respective Greek letters – identical to the ones she’d seen on the MRI scans of the stones hidden inside the Göbekli Tepe Death Stone.
It made her think about the Sacred Stones – the name Sam had started using for the four stones still locked inside the Göbekli Tepe Death Stone. It begged the question, what was so special about these stones? And were they supposed to be taken to each of these four temples? Billie thought about it for a moment. She still didn’t have a clue where any of those temples belonged. When she’d first studied the stone tablet, she was certain it was an obvious map of the world. But since then, she’d discovered that none of the sapphires led to any temples. There was no benefit knowing that the sacred stones needed to be taken to specific ancient temples, if she had no way of finding the temples.
She put the thought out of her mind and continued studying the stone tablet. A line had been formed between ten sapphires, which looked like stars imbedded in the jet-black lignite. Without the lines, the gems appeared to be placed at random, but now stood out as a constellation of a bird. Although which constellation, she had no idea. Inside that set of ten stars were the four unmarked sapphires.
Billie smiled. She was making progress.
It was slow, but it was movement. The new revelation said to her, find the constellation and you’ll find the four temples where the sacred stones need to be laid to rest. She continued searching. In her right hand she held the black light wand, and in her left hand, a magnifying glass.
There were fifteen new meridian lines that ran vertically and horizontally throughout the stone. Each line was only slightly off the previous line that had been etched into the stone. She sighed. What the hell did that mean? Had someone decided to move the shape of the earth?
She took several photographs of the stone, and made full-size prints on A4 paper. She then walked upstairs to Elise’s office.
Inside, Elise was working at tracking down the man who had attacked Sam.
Without preamble, Billie said, “You have a photographic memory. Tell me you were paying attention in school when you were introduced to geography!”
“Technically, it’s considered eidetic, but yeah, my memory’s good, and I studied geography at school. What do you want to know?”
“How many meridian and parallel lines are there in total?”
Elise answered without hesitation. “Three hundred and sixty, but most standard maps have fifteen.”
“Are you sure?”
“We just agreed I have an eidetic memory, didn’t we?” Elise looked up at her, with those intense purple eyes. “Yes, I’m sure. Why? What are you trying to work out?”
Billie placed a full-size print of the stone tablet on the table next to Elise. Its background was colored black as the night’s sky. The image of twenty-two blue stones speckled the paper, and there were five empty spots roughly the same size. Fifteen fine lines, marked in red to emphasize their visibility, ran lengthways and vertically. The Greek symbols for Theta, Sigma, Phi, and Omega were etched in gold, with one at each corner. Below each of those were four horses, intricately carved out of stone or ivory to represent the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.
“When Sam and I looked at this, we were certain it matched a standard world map. All we had to do was work out the locations these stones correlate with, and we find the temples.”
Elise ran her eyes across the paper. “Okay, so what’s the problem?”
“No matter which way I looked at it, none of these stones seemed to match any corresponding locations with temples.”
“Are you certain?”
Billie nodded. “Most of them are in the ocean somewhere.”
“They might be submerged temples, like the one Sam and Tom found in the Gulf of Mexico?”
“No. I could have believed that for one or two of them, but not all of them.” She looked at Elise. “I need to understand more about how latitude and longitude work. I’ve placed this next to a world-globe map and tried to estimate where each of these blue stars correlate to.”
“And?”
“None of them seemed to correlate to anything. But then I ran the stone tablet under a black light. It revealed that someone had made notes using purple ink of fluorite. All of the sapphires were crossed out, except these four.” Billie pointed to the four sapphires at the center of the constellation of a bird. “These are the only unmarked sapphires left. My guess is this constellation might lead us to the four temples.”
Elise smiled. “Astronomy’s not really my strong point.”
“It’s all right. We’re seeing the astronomer who’s examining the Göbekli Tepe Death Stone tomorrow afternoon. I’ll talk to him about how we can locate the constellation, and more importantly, where it could be viewed from.”
“So, what do you want to know?”
Billie placed a second A4 piece of paper on the table in front of Elise. This one had been shot under natural light. “What do you see?”
Elise studied the two images. “With the exception of the missing purple phosphorescent marks, they’re identical.”
“Is that all that’s different?”
Elise ran her eyes across the two images again. Her lips formed a curious smile, revealing a set of evenly spaced, white teeth. “The meridian lines have shifted.”
“Exactly!” Billie held her breath. “I was hoping you could tell me why?”
“There’s a number of reasons the person who marked this might have changed the placement of the meridian lines.”
Billie raised her left eyebrow, slightly. “Really?”
“Yes. But the most likely reason is simply that the meridians have moved over time.”
“The shape of earth moves?” Billie was incredulous.
“Sure it does. Not much, but over thousands of years, there’s definitely likely to be some sort of change.”
“Based on the new position of the meridian lines, can you recalculate the location of each of these four sapphires?”
“That, I can do.” Elise took the piece of paper and placed it in the scanner. “What I can do is superimpose this on an identical scaled world map on my computer, using my Global Information System software. Then I can tell you precisely where each of those dots correlate to.”
“That would be perfect, thanks.”
Elise waited as the image uploaded, pointing to a saved document that displayed a visual map of the earth over a rectangular image. Although it looked like any other map you’d find in a geometry classroom, it was an advanced Global Information System, based on software developed for the US military, with the ability to change the scale constantly and zoom into any given location, like Google Earth.
Elise pointed to the outline of the image on her laptop, and said, “Graticules are lines showing parallels of latitude and meridians of longitude for the earth, like a grid map. Latitude is a geographic coordinate that specifies the north–south position of a point on the Earth's surface. Latitude is an angle which ranges from 0° at the Equator to 90° at the poles. Lines of constant latitude, or parallels, run east–west as circles parallel to the equator.”
The scanned document opened on her laptop. She copied the image and then attached it to her map program by superimposing the image of the stone tablet over the world map. The red grid lines, representing fifteen lines of longitude and latitude of the stone, lined up identically between the two maps.
“What do you think?” Billie asked.
“Well, if it’s not a map of th
e earth, I don’t know what it is.” Elise pointed at the prime meridian. “Did you know that the term meridian comes from the Latin word meridies, meaning, midday?”
Billie sighed. She didn’t know and didn’t care.
Elise continued. “The sun crosses a given meridian midway between the times of sunrise and sunset at that meridian. The same Latin stem gives rise to the terms a.m. meaning ante meridiem and p.m. meaning post meridiem, used to disambiguate hours of the day when utilizing the 12-hour clock.”
“That’s really fascinating, Elise… but I’m kind of pressured for time.”
“What do you want to know?”
Billie pointed to the four sapphires that hadn’t been crossed out. “What’s at these locations?”
Elise ran her eyes across the map. “Nothing.”
“Nothing what?”
“I’d need to study a similar map with maritime landmarks and bathymetric imagery of the ocean floor to tell you specifically, but already I can tell you they’re not the locations of any temples we’re looking for.”
“Why?”
“Because if they were, they would all be under water.”
“All of them?” Billie asked.
Elise stared at the four unmarked stars. “Possibly not this one. It might just hug the coastline.”
“Why?” Billie looked at the third empty marker. “Where on earth does this one correlate to?”
“The western edge of Big Island, Hawaii.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Sam stepped into the main computer labs on board the Maria Helena. Billie and Elise were staring at the projection wall, where a series of maritime and bathymetric maps depicting the water around Big Island, Hawaii were displayed.
Elise acknowledge his presence with a curt nod, but her eyes remained fixed on the projection.
Billie looked up, and met his eye. “I hear you had an eventful day at the Great Blue Hole?”
“Yeah, you could say something like that. But I lost my attacker, which means we’re back to square one regarding who knows the truth about the Göbekli Tepe Death Stone.” Sam looked at the map of the stone tablet superimposed on the maritime maps. “Tell me you found something on your end.”
“I’ve found plenty of things. This seemingly simple stone is riddled with puzzles and mysteries. But very few answers. Every door I open leads to another three directions.”
“Did you find the locations of the missing temples?”
“No.”
Sam raised his eyebrow. “What have you found?”
“Where do you want me to start?”
Sam shrugged. “The beginning I suppose.”
“The tablet itself is smaller than an A4 piece of paper, with the following dimensions: 11.69 by 7.225 inches, making it a Golden Rectangle.”
Sam’s eyes narrowed. “A what?”
“A Golden Rectangle is a rectangle whose side lengths are in the Golden Ratio of Phi – which is sometimes referred to as the Divine Proportion, is 1.618 – followed by a whole bunch of numbers that only Elise would bother to remember.”
Sam glanced across at Elise.
She nodded and said, “You want them?”
“No thanks.” Then, to Billie he said, “In English, without the calculations, how is a Golden Rectangle any different from every other four-sided shape with straight sides where all interior angles are at ninety degrees?”
Billie smiled as though she was enjoying this. It wasn’t very often she was in a position to teach Sam Reilly something, and she was going to make him pay for it.
She drew a simple square. “Here’s a standard square.”
Sam nodded, but remained silent. He asked the question, now he was going to have to listen to the answer.
Billie drew a line from the midpoint of one side of the square to an opposite corner, and then used that line as the radius to draw an arc that defined the total height of the rectangle. She increased the length of the original square to meet the tip of the arc, thus making a rectangle. Billie smiled triumphantly. “That’s a Golden Rectangle.”
“Really?” Sam wasn’t impressed.
“A distinctive feature of this shape is that when a square section is removed, the remainder is another golden rectangle. That is, with the same aspect ratio as the first. Square removal can be repeated infinitely, in which case corresponding corners of the squares form an infinite sequence of points on the golden spiral, the unique logarithmic spiral with this property.”
He watched the imaginary sequence unfold. It was interesting, but he wasn’t convinced the Master Builders considered it when they’d built the map. He eyes fixed on the real stone tablet. “Billie, it’s a rectangle… don’t you think you might just be over thinking this one?”
Billie shrugged. “Not just any rectangle. A Golden Rectangle, using Devine Proportions, that are aesthetically pleasing in nature and in science at a mathematical level.”
“My credit card looks just like that.”
“And why do you think the banks designed them in that shape?” Billie asked.
Sam shrugged. “It’s not because that’s the shape of my wallet?”
“No.”
“You know who made the Golden Number popular?”
“No… who?” Sam thought about it for a minute. “Wait… I do remember something about this… go on, who?”
“Leonardo da Vinci. He applied the Golden Number to art. Some say that’s why it was considered so perfect.”
“Oh yeah, da Vinci, that’s right…”
“Who were you thinking of?”
“Dan Brown… in that popular book of his.”
“Really?” Billie said. “I once thought you had an IQ off the charts?”
“It’s on the charts – just. People just think I’m smart because I fill my world with people like you and Elise, who answer all my questions.” He sighed. “All right. Let’s assume you’re right about the stone tablet being an intentional Golden Ratio.”
“I am right,” Billie said, emphatically.
“Sure. Now what? How does it help us find where we’re heading?”
“It doesn’t. But what it does tell us is that the Master Builders were very specific about the dimensions of this tablet.”
“What else have you found?” Sam glanced at the sheets of astronomy notes, with dozens of constellations, scattered along the table. “What’s the story with these?”
“Those are kind of a dead-end at the moment. We’re looking for the four temples that might just hold the key to saving the human race.”
Sam grinned. “In the stars?”
“No. I found a series of markings on the stone tablet, written in fluorite.”
“Really?” Sam was intrigued. “Visible only under a black light?”
“Exactly.”
“What did they show?”
“That the shape of the earth has changed slightly since the tablet was first put together, for one thing. We found the meridian lines had shifted, slightly.”
“And now?”
“They still don’t show where to locate the ancient temples.” She pulled out the A4 piece of paper with the UV highlighted image of the stone tablet. “I had Elise do her thing where she blended the old and the new map with a current precision map of the world and it spat out virtually the same answers – the stone by itself doesn’t indicate where the temples are.”
“Okay, what did the phosphorescent writing tell you?”
“Every temple – assuming the sapphires represent ancient temples at all – has been crossed out, with the exception of these four.” Billie looked up at him with a raised brow. “See the pattern?”
“Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, four Sacred Stones buried inside the Göbekli Tepe Death Stone, four remaining temples… I get it… the ancient Master Builders had a thing for the number four.”
“I guess, something like that.”
“What’s the story with the constellations?” Sam asked.
Billie handed h
im the A4 piece of paper with the image of the stone tablet underneath the black light. The image was focused on the sapphires all joined together. “I don’t know yet. But someone obviously thinks this constellation of a giant arrowhead means something. We haven’t found it yet, but we were hoping to be able to work backward once we found the constellation.”
Sam looked at the image. “That’s not an arrowhead.”
“Then what is it?” Billie asked.
Sam grinned. “It’s an eagle, and the constellation’s name is Aquila.”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Sam felt his heart race. They were finally getting somewhere.
“Aquila is a constellation on the celestial equator. Its name is Latin for Eagle and represents the bird that carried Zeus and Jupiter's thunderbolts in ancient Greek mythology.” Sam pointed to the biggest star, defining the head of the eagle. “Its brightest star, Altair, is one vertex of the Summer Triangle asterism. The constellation is best seen in the northern summer, as it is located along the Milky Way and can be used for navigation.”
“What’s its story in Greek mythology?”
“Aquila was the pet eagle of Zeus.” Sam made a theatrical sigh and then said, “Like all pets, it was kind and loving to its master, but could be exceedingly vengeful to those who upset its master, as Prometheus discovered.”
“Who?”
“Prometheus, one of the last of the Titan gods, who became an advisor to Zeus. He was protective of the human race, and seeing how they suffered because they had no fire, he stole a ray from the Sun, which he smuggled down to earth in a hollow stem. Zeus did not believe that man was worthy of such a gift and was furious that Prometheus had acted without his permission. The well-meaning Titan was chained to the side of a mountain, stripped of his garments, and was continually attacked by Aquila.”
The Sam Reilly Collection Volume 3 Page 63
