The Hidden Code

by P. J. Hoover

  I don’t love the fact that some man I only knew as a child seems to hate me. It makes me feel like the suspect of a crime I didn’t commit.

  I reach for Ethan’s phone, but he pulls it out of my reach.

  “Fine,” I say. “Let’s just say you’re right. Better yet, let’s just put that aside for the moment. What does this thing even say? What is it really?”

  “It’s part of a puzzle,” Ethan says. “From what my dad’s said about it, there are three pieces: the one my parents have in our apartment, the one at Amino Corp, and the one you have.”

  I shake my head although my mind immediately goes to the rubbing I found. “We don’t have an artifact.”

  Ethan twists up his lips. “Yeah, right. I’ve seen a picture of your parents holding it.”

  “Really?” I’ve scoured all the old photos of my parents and never seen them holding an artifact.

  “Yeah, really. In an old photo album my parents have.”

  “We don’t have an artifact.”

  “You’re lying.”

  “I’m not.”

  “She’s not,” Uncle Randall says, walking from the greenhouses out to the back where Ethan and I stand. “It’s true. They used to have the artifact. A piece of the Deluge Segment. You’re right about that, Ethan. But they hid it shortly before your brother Caden died, and I have no idea where. I thought it was in South America, but I’ve been there for the last week, tracking down clues, and came up empty. It originally came from India, from the Indus River Valley, so that’s next on my list.”

  So South America is where Uncle Randall ran off to. But why had the letter from Mom triggered him to do that?

  “Why would they hide it in the first place?” I ask. The rubbing seems to taunt me from where I have it hidden under Sonic’s cage.

  Uncle Randall puts his hand out for Ethan’s phone, and Ethan actually hands it over. Uncle Randall studies it, zooming in on the symbols and letters almost like a book that only he can read. After a couple minutes, he looks up.

  “I’m pretty sure lunch is ready,” Uncle Randall says. “Why don’t we talk about it while we eat?”

  I don’t know what Madeline told Chef Lilly about our visitor, but she’s gone all out on lunch, preparing the makings for lettuce wraps, both vegetarian and with steak.

  “No, we don’t normally have lunch like this,” I say to Ethan before he can make some judgmental comment. I gathered from his downtown apartment that his family has money enough to live comfortably, but nothing like us.

  “I wasn’t judging.” He actually seems sincere. Maybe he’s not a complete jerk like his first impression had led me to believe. Well, and his second impression, too.

  I’m one bite into my lettuce wrap when Lucas walks in.

  I stand to greet him, but he’s not looking at me. His eyes are locked on Ethan. And Ethan’s eyes are locked on him.

  “Hey, Lucas,” I say because the room has immediately gotten chilly.

  Uncle Randall stands and shakes Lucas’s hand, finally getting his attention.

  “Who’s your guest?” Lucas asks once I’m able to give him a hug hello.

  Ethan stands also, so that we’re all four now standing awkwardly around the lunch table.

  “Ethan Oliver,” Ethan says, extending his hand.

  Lucas’s eyes widen. He recognizes the name.

  “I’m Lucas O’Keeffe.”

  “My best friend,” I add, trying to break the tension.

  Thankfully Chef Lilly picks that moment to walk in with a plate for Lucas and with dessert: freshly made carrot juice, scones, and fruit tarts.

  “Perfect timing,” Lucas says, and then we all sit back down.

  If I thought the conversation was awkward before, that was nothing compared to now. Lucas proceeds to grill Ethan on everything from where he goes to school, if he plays sports, and what he had for dinner last night. Okay, the last one isn’t true, but it feels that way as the conversation keeps droning on. And with every word, all I want to do is get on to the real topic of conversation.

  “About the Deluge Segment,” I say to Uncle Randall when he starts on his third fruit tart. “If my mom and dad had an artifact, why did they hide it?”

  Uncle Randall spears a giant strawberry with his fork and shoves it in his mouth. He waits until he’s finished chewing to answer. “Because they thought it was too dangerous.”

  “The Deluge Segment is dangerous?” I say, picking at a scone.

  “Not by itself,” Uncle Randall says. “But it’s part of a bigger picture, something that could be more dangerous than anything Earth has ever known.”

  “What bigger picture?” Ethan says. “My parents never told me anything about that. All they said was that Hannah’s parents ruined everything. That Caden is dead because of them.”

  “That’s not true,” I say. “And we’re not talking about that right now, remember?”

  Ethan glares at me but lets it go for now.

  “Yeah, well all of a sudden, my dad’s all interested in it again,” Ethan says. “He keeps talking about trying to get a picture of the third piece. So I called Harvard to find out who it had been sold to after I saw it in the lecture the other day. That’s what I was doing at Amino Corp. I was going to get the picture. But when I got home, I found out that he already had a picture of the Amino Corp piece. It wasn’t the third piece he was looking for. Your piece was.”

  That clears up the mystery of who called Harvard asking about the Deluge Segment.

  Uncle Randall’s face pales. “So your father doesn’t have all three pieces?”

  Ethan shakes his head. “No. Only two. Why does it matter anyway? What is the Deluge Segment?”

  Uncle Randall blows out a long breath almost in relief. “It’s a promise of hope. And very likely a map, too.”

  “A map to what?” I ask. In this moment a spark ignites inside me. A hope of what this could be. An explanation as to why Uncle Randall ran off to South America looking for it.

  Uncle Randall’s tart sits unfinished in front of him as he stands. “Let’s go to my office.”

  We follow him to his office. From inside his briefcase, he pulls out the sketch that I’d seen the other night and lays it out on his desk, pushing other stacks of papers out of the way to do so. It shows three pieces, all the same size, in a row.

  “The Deluge Segment is made up of three pieces,” he says, pointing at each one. “All different, and yet all part of the same instruction manual.”

  Ethan leans close. “The symbols look really familiar. Like this one means power, right?”

  “You can read them?” I ask. I’ve seen similar markings before but certainly can’t decode them.

  Ethan’s face reddens, almost like he’s embarrassed. “Kind of. I’ve been studying languages for years. They look like stuff I’ve seen before.”

  Uncle Randall traces his finger in a circle around the outside of one of the pieces. “The ones around the edges I can read. I spent years decoding them. And you’re right about the symbol. Together, these tell of a great power. A power to change the world.”

  “What power?” Lucas asks.

  Uncle Randall reaches to the bookshelf on the wall behind his desk and pulls down a thick leather book. The spine is cracked, so only three letters of the title remain visible: IBL.

  He sets it on top of his sketch and flips it open, to a picture of the Tree of Life. It’s a Bible, an old one by the looks of it. He turns a handful more pages until he stops and holds it out so Lucas, Ethan, and I can see the picture on the page.

  “You recognize this?” Uncle Randall says.

  “Noah’s Ark,” I say. It doesn’t take a Bible scholar to recognize Noah’s Ark.

  “You remember the story?” Uncle Randall says.

  “I know the story,” Lucas says. “God told Noah that there was going to be a flood that was going to wipe out life on Earth. He told Noah to build this giant boat and to collect two of every animal so he could save all th
e different types of animals. Then the flood came, wiping out life as we know it on Earth. But the Ark was okay, and when the flood was over, Noah released all the animals who went off and repopulated the animal world. Then Noah and his family repopulated the human world. The end.”

  “Glad you listened in Sunday school,” Uncle Randall says.

  Lucas shrugs. “My parents would be proud. Anyway, it’s hard to miss the story of Noah’s Ark, even when you’re falling asleep.”

  Being fascinated by genetics and evolution, I always found the story to be complete baloney. Every animal on Earth fit in the boat? All the people on Earth are descendants of Noah? That means, if we look at all the species on Earth today, over five thousand species of mammals alone were placed on that ship. It’s completely unrealistic. And let’s not forget about birds and insects and how all these animals were fed and kept calm.

  “You guys don’t believe the story, do you?” I ask. Surely Ethan can’t. His parents are geneticists. And I guess I’ve never really asked Lucas.

  “No way,” Lucas says. “But don’t you dare tell my parents.”

  “What about you?” I ask Ethan.

  He shakes his head. “It always felt a little farfetched.”

  “And yet,” Uncle Randall says, holding up a finger to stop our words. “We know something happened. Nearly every civilization on Earth has a flood story. In Sumer, Ziudsura survived the flood. In Mesopotamia it was Utnapishtim. In Greece it was Deucalion, the son of Prometheus. In India it was Manu. The list goes on. And with so many stories, as with the physical evidence, things like the level of the Black Sea rising and evidence of an ancient tsunami in Africa and Asia, it is hard to dispute that the earth was flooded. That much of life could have been wiped out. And yet somehow, that life was rebuilt.”

  “So you believe in Noah’s Ark,” I say.

  “Not in an exact sense,” Uncle Randall says. “But when I was working with your parents on this, I spent a long time trying to understand the Deluge Segment. We had the piece here as long as I was alive, and I used to try to translate it when I was younger. Then we found the second piece, in Peru. I thought that’s all there was to it. But that’s when Amino Corp hired me to consult for them. They had the third piece, and that’s when the answers really came together. It was a linguistic scholar’s dream. I spent months consulting old tablets and scrolls, interpreting every symbol that I could. Hardest work I’ve ever done. It was a full year before I made even the slightest breakthrough.”

  Uncle Randall pushes the Bible aside and points at one specific symbol on each of the three sketches. It’s the same symbol.

  “This right here is what really gave it away. The entire world opened up. And that’s when I stopped working for Amino Corp.”

  “What is the symbol?” Ethan says. “I’ve seen it on our piece at home. I even asked my dad about it a couple times, but he always said that he didn’t know.”

  “Oh, he knew,” Uncle Randall said. “It was the symbol that hooked both of your parents. They were geneticists, and this changed everything.”

  I close my eyes so my brain can try to figure it out. It’s a twisting symbol almost like an infinity sign except not connected at either end.

  “What does it mean?” Ethan says.

  “It’s a symbol that refers to genetics. To the creation of life from the primordial soup. To DNA if you will.”

  That’s why the symbol looks familiar. It’s like a double helix DNA symbol.

  “That’s ridiculous,” I say. “DNA wasn’t even a thing until the mid-nineteen hundreds. There is no way that one of the oldest artifacts in existence talks about DNA.”

  Uncle Randall snaps his fingers, like I’ve nailed the point he’s trying to make. “Exactly! That’s why it stood out. The idea of life being created wasn’t new. And the recipe for that life had to be somewhere. That’s all DNA really is. A recipe for every living creature. It wasn’t called DNA, but the idea was the same. It used to be understood. It was encoded. At least according to this artifact.”

  He pauses as he lets this sink in. I look to Lucas and Ethan. Ethan is completely engrossed in what Uncle Randall’s saying, but Lucas seems fixed on the sketches.

  Uncle Randall continues. “After I made the breakthrough, I was able to translate large portions of the segment.” He taps one of the drawings. “My sketch doesn’t do it justice, but the lines along here speak of an artifact, created by God, given to a protector before the Great Flood. It refers to the artifact as the Code of Enoch.”

  “Enoch was one of Noah’s ancestors,” Lucas says. “I learned that in Sunday school, too.”

  “Right,” Uncle Randall says. “Father of Methuselah. Great-grandfather of Noah. Rumored to have lived for nearly four hundred years, which is nothing when you look at how long his offspring allegedly lived. Methuselah was said to have lived to nine hundred sixty-nine. Noah to nine hundred fifty. Many in the line after the Code of Enoch was delivered were said to have had extended lives, as if they had some secret. Something that was keeping them alive.”

  “Okay, so God gives Enoch some code,” I say. “What does it do? Make people live forever? Like a fountain of youth?”

  He continues to trace his finger along the sketch, almost as if he is reading it right now, translating it, though his eyes seem far away, like he’s remembering a different time. “God delivered the Code of Enoch, and it was passed down to Noah who took it on the Ark with him. As to whether there were any more animals on the Ark than what Noah and his family needed to survive is irrelevant because when the flood was over, when the water receded, Noah used the Code of Enoch to recreate life on Earth.”

  “What are you saying?” I ask. My mind is spinning, and I don’t want to jump to any conclusions.

  “I’m saying that the Code of Enoch contained all the genetic information for every species on Earth. Every single recipe. Plants. Animals. Insects. Humans. Bacteria. It was all there, in the Code, along with instructions for how to use it, for how to make the power of the Code come to life. Noah used it to recreate the world, and then he hid it away. The Deluge Segment talks about being a map. Once the Code of Enoch was hidden, Noah instructed his family to hide the map so that no one would ever find him or the Code.”

  “So this really is a map?” Lucas asks.

  “That’s what we believed,” Uncle Randall says. “But if it is, I was never able to fully decode it.”

  “But if the Code of Enoch really has the power to create life, why would it need to be hidden away?” Ethan asks.

  “The Code of Enoch has the power to create life. It also has the power to cure diseases.”

  “Why my parents wanted it,” Ethan says.

  “Exactly,” Uncle Randall says.

  “Why is that bad then?” Ethan says. “Something like this could have saved Caden’s life.”

  Uncle Randall nods, “True. We all wanted to find it, at least until we truly understood it. Then we realized how dangerous it was.”

  “But—” Ethan starts.

  Uncle Randall puts up a hand. “It also contains the power to create diseases. To destroy species. To eliminate life on Earth as we know it. It’s a power too treacherous to contain. And so Noah took the Code of Enoch and hid it away, and it has never been seen since.”

  “You never got close to reading the map?” Lucas asks.

  “Close?” Uncle Randall says. “Sort of. One of my colleagues was also researching the Code. We traveled across the world to visit with him. But after talking to him, we all agreed—all of us—that we couldn’t pursue the Code anymore. That it was too dangerous. So we destroyed the copies that we had and pretended that it didn’t exist. And that was the end of that.”

  “Until Caden got sick,” Ethan says.

  Uncle Randall nods. “Until your brother got sick. Your parents wanted to find the Code of Enoch. They wanted to use it to cure your brother. Hannah’s parents almost gave in. But then …”

  His voice trails off, even thou
gh there must be more to the story.

  “Then what?” I don’t know my parents, but helping their best friend’s sick kid seems like a pretty worthy cause.

  Uncle Randall looks to Ethan. “Then Ethan’s father threatened them.”

  Ethan’s face holds steady, but I can’t imagine what’s running through his mind.

  “With what?” I ask, hardly in a whisper.

  “He said that if they didn’t help, he would tell Amino Corp everything. As you can imagine, a company like Amino Corp being in possession of this kind of artifact could change the world, and not only for the better. It was a risk that your parents were not willing to take, even if it meant that Caden would die.”

  Ethan balls his fists up. “They should have helped.”

  Uncle Randall fixes his eyes on Ethan. “Should they have? Should they really?”

  Ethan doesn’t say anything.

  “Regardless, the time for that judgment has passed. That’s when Hannah’s parents told me that they were going to hide their piece of the map, and then they disappeared. Now I know, from the letter, that they went to destroy the Code itself. I never heard from them after that.”

  “So this map … it leads to my parents,” I say, more certain about this than I have ever been about anything. “That’s why you don’t think they’re dead. You think they found it. You think they’re still alive.”

  Uncle Randall rubs his forehead with his hand. “I don’t know what to think. I think maybe they weren’t able to destroy it. But without the third piece, we have no way of tracking them.”

  I take a deep breath. This is it.

  “If you had the third piece, would you go after them?” I ask Uncle Randall.

  He fixes his eyes on me. “Absolutely.”

  I step back from the desk. “Wait here.”

  I try not to run as I make my way to my lab, but my heart pounds in my chest. This is it. I have the final piece of the puzzle. With shaking hands, I grab the rubbing from under Sonic’s habitat and run back to Uncle Randall’s office. I’m completely out of breath when I get there.