by Brandt Legg
“It’s not completely impossible. Artificial Intelligence may one day get this far. Maybe time is like a loop; maybe it’s already gotten there once.”
The flowers, moving slowly, remained.
“Rip, if this really is millions of years old, how did it survive, when nothing else of their civilization did?”
“Because they wanted us to find this . . . ” His own answer surprised him. “Don’t you see? They left it for us.”
The flowers multiplied until it looked as if they would crack the Eysen from within and explode out into the dwindling sun of the current day.
“Wait a minute,” Rip began. “Maybe it can tell us what the casing carvings mean.”
The images quickly shifted to thousands of circles, lines, and stacked dashes. The sequence continued impossibly fast. Circles turned to planets and orbits, then to rings in a tree, and back to circles. The rapid display must have shown a million images in a second; it was so dizzying that Gale had to turn away. Rip fought nausea, and continued watching. The image suddenly stopped on a view of casing which had enclosed the Eysen; only now it appeared as if the casings were inside the Eysen. Each carved symbol from the “stone bowls” appeared magnified, and synched with planetary movements.
It took nearly an hour before Rip yelled out, “Cosega, it’s really Cosega!”
“What?” Gale asked.
“This part of the Cosega Sequence not only showed me what the carvings mean- at least some of them- it proves the Cosega Theory. Humans not only lived on earth millions of years ago, but they had an advanced civilization far beyond what our craziest science–fiction writers dream of today.”
“How did the Cosega Sequence tell you all that? What do the carvings mean?”
“They’re a numbering system. Simple really. The dots represent one trip for Earth around the Sun – a year. A single circle is ten years, two circles inside each other are a hundred; three, a thousand, and so on, until the circles with five circles inside, being six, are a million, and nine circles are a billion.”
Gale stared at him, speechless. Finally she whispered, “I can’t believe you figured it out.”
Rip smiled. “I’ve barely scratched the surface. But of this I’m sure, the Cosega Sequence starts more than four point five billion years ago with the very creation of Earth, and follows it through to when the casing and Eysen were made, by humans, more than eleven million years ago!”
“It’s our proof of age?” Gale asked excited. “We know how old the Eysen is.”
“It’s proof of everything.”
Chapter 49
The Eysen was more addictive than ever. The Cosega Sequence continued to provide a tour of the planet’s history that was far different than what science considered truth. Yet Gale and Rip both sensed there was another layer to the Cosega Sequence that might provide even more inconceivable details.
“Looks like we’re about to get a storm,” Gale said.
Rip looked up at the threatening clouds. “Okay, this might be a good time to take a break.” He reluctantly wrapped the Eysen and slid it into his pack.
The winds picked up in a darkening sky. Grinley appeared, along with the first raindrops. “Time for our daily monsoon,” he said. “Usually only lasts forty-five minutes or so. This one looks a bit meaner.”
Gale and Rip followed him inside. They hadn’t eaten since breakfast and asked to use the kitchen. Grinley led them to another side of the house to a room with a full south-facing wall of slanted glass; filled with plants and vegetables growing in the sun. The kitchen was a funky arrangement of handmade cabinets topped with rough stone slabs. Gale unpacked groceries, while Rip started making sandwiches.
“I’m not the questioning type, normally,” Grinley began, “but you two aren’t particularly the criminal type. So maybe –”
“Look, we appreciate you taking us in, but I think not being the questioning type is better for all of us,” Rip said. “Are you hungry?”
Grinley’s face tightened, offended. “You don’t mind taking my shelter. I’m not exactly a boy scout here. If the authorities show up looking for you, I’m likely to suffer as much as you.”
Gale feared he’d be killed. “What Rip so gruffly said, doesn’t begin to express our gratitude. You and your friends have found us in the midst of a truly desperate situation and you’ve saved us.” Her eyes disarmed him as they had so many others.
“We’re on the same side of the heavy-handed law, Gale. In times of trouble, I’ve often found that the ones called criminals are the only ones you can count on. Everyone else has too much to lose.”
Gale smiled and handed him a sandwich.
“I’m sorry, Grinley.” Rip said. “Gale is right. We owe you a great deal and an explanation is the least we can do.”
“Rip didn’t kill that man. He was actually a friend of his,” Gale said.
Grinley nodded.
“You probably read online that I’m an archaeologist. We found something on a dig in Virginia that is very important and threatening to many powerful people. And they don’t mind killing to get it.”
“Do you have it with you?”
Rip didn’t want to answer, but he knew Gale would, and better it come from him. “Yes.”
“Can I see it?”
“Everyone who has seen it, is dead,” Rip said.
“They’ve killed at least four people that we know of already,” Gale added.
“You don’t want to see it,” Rip said.
Grinley stared at him for a long moment. Rip didn’t know if he was going to rob him, shoot him, or kick him out. “Okay. Damn good sandwich.” He nodded to Gale.
They ate and talked about things other than the Eysen and the authorities. Grinley told stories of his decades in Taos, the strange house, and even some tales from prison. Gale and Rip relived various adventures around the world as the rain stormed on for several hours. By the time it stopped, Rip was asleep on the couch, Grinley had vanished into another part of the house, and Gale had jumped back into the Clastier Papers. She wondered about the originals, and the casing, left in the secret room back in Asheville. If the Vatican agents were responsible for killing Topper, surely they had ransacked the place and found the hidden treasures by now.
Rip awoke, thinking back to the first time, as a teen in Asheville, North Carolina, that he’d read Clastier.
Buried deep, a miniature planet spins black within a stone-hard exterior, which once illuminated will forever alter all that is known. We have ridden the movement of lands while great kingdoms filled with dreams; flight and power have risen and fallen over and over. The turmoil of time has left us lost in this grand cycle, not realizing we have been here before, not understanding that we are not the first to start down this path.
This can be found because it is meant to be found. The cost may be large, for even now, opposition is growing against this quest. But it is there; they left it for you. If the search is true one could rip gains, treasures of every form, and all the profound answers from that which is lost.
The words, written almost two hundred years earlier, seemingly meant for him, a version of his name even concealed within The Divination, but he’d always considered that a coincidence. When Gale first read it, she screamed. She was convinced that “rip gains” had been a mistranslation of his name, and wanted to go back to Asheville to get the original to prove it.
The Divination seemed to foretell the discovery of the Eysen. Although long before he found what he was looking for, he had decided that the physical form it took wouldn’t matter; he would know it, when he found it. It may have been those passages that drove Rip to spend his life searching, but the complete Clastier Papers captivated him long before he’d even reached that part.
Chapter 50
Rip couldn’t keep his eyes open and fell back asleep for almost an hour; this time he woke from a dream screaming. “Run, run, run!”
“It’s okay. We’re safe,” Gale said, from a few feet away. �
��We’re in Taos. No one knows where we are.”
“They do,” he said, still agitated. “Oh.” He took an involuntary deep breath. “Was it just a nightmare? Hundreds of people with guns were after us.”
“We’re safe,” she repeated.
“For how long? They’ll keep hunting and they’ll find us.”
“People can stay hidden for years.”
“Not people like us. Not people they want this bad.”
“Clastier will help us.”
Rip pulled himself up. “How?”
“I don’t know. But I believe that’s why we’re here.”
“Did you think we were going to show up in Taos and someone would meet us in the Plaza, and say, ‘Oh, you’re here to see Clastier. He’s waiting for you, right this way.’ Is that something you thought could happen?”
“I don’t know what I thought. But I’ll tell you this. I’m a journalist, I write stories, and they all have a beginning, a middle, and an end. Sometimes the ending takes a while to find. But our story, the one about Clastier and the Eysen, is going to end right here in Taos, where it all began.”
“Why? Why can’t it end in Wichita, or Africa, or the mountains of Virginia, where it really began eleven million years ago?”
“Because Clastier was the first one to write it down.”
“Was he? What about the Crying Man? What about the other faces in the Eysen? What did they have to say? They wrote in their own way, using the only method they could be sure we would understand millions of years later- images!”
“But surely you see the connections, Rip? You are one of the only remaining people who even know about Clastier. You have his papers. You found the Eysen. The Catholic Church has killed to suppress Clastier’s Papers and the Virginia artifacts, The Divinations . . . there are no coincidences.”
“Of course, I know. But I also understand that Clastier is dead.”
“I can’t believe you are saying that. You’re one of the great archaeologists. You’ve spent your whole career communicating with the dead. All those artifacts bring the past alive again. This is no different.” She stood up and grabbed the translated pages. “We need to be where Clastier lived and learned. Taos is like one giant dig site. There are clues here that can help us unravel this mystery. It’s our only hope to survive. I’m a reporter, you’re an archaeologist; we can do this!”
“You’re right,” he said, nodding his head slowly as if he suddenly understood what they needed to do.
“I’m right?”
Rip stood and looked directly into those eyes that he had so often tried to avoid, but just as often had distracted him. He braved the blueness and the depth of them. “Clastier knew about the Eysen. It seems impossible, but somehow he knew.”
Grinley fixed a southwestern style dinner of vegetarian burritos, chips, and salsa with guacamole, green chili stew, and a grilled prickly pear salad. He refused any attempts to help and insisted they tell him more stories of their travels and adventures prior to becoming fugitives.
Grinley had smuggled drugs into and out of Mexico for years in his youth. He still did a substantial business in marijuana sales, but avoided the chemical and refined drugs currently so popular on the streets. Rip found himself genuinely fond of the old guy, and he didn’t often take to people much. He could see Gale also adored Grinley, but she loved everyone. The three of them laughed well past dinner. Gale had never seen Rip so relaxed and human. She could tell that Grinley enjoyed having company and reveled that they were “outlaws.”
“Grinley, can we stay here for a while and study what we found?” Gale asked.
Rip looked at her surprised.
“We’ve managed to lose our pursuers,” she said to both of them. “No one has a clue where we are. We’re about as far off the map as you can get and still be in the US. All we need is a little time to figure it out.”
“Figure out what you found? Or what to do next?” Grinley asked.
“Both.”
“I’ll tell you what. Y’all can stay here a spell. And if it get’s too hot for either of us, I’ll help you get out of the country.”
“Where to?” Rip asked, interested.
“Mexico. From there, almost anywhere you want in Central or South America.”
“Really?” Rip asked. “We’ll never get across the border.”
“Ha! Gettin’ into Mexico is a whole lot easier than gettin’ into the US. There’s routes ‘cross the desert; it won’t be a problem. The farther south you go, the easier it is getting into and out of the smaller countries. I’ve got friends who have disappeared. It’s not as hard as you think.”
“Fate was kind to us, Grinley, delivering us to your door,” Gale said, giving him a hug.
“Fate? I thought it was Tuke I had to blame for this intrusion,” he said with a wink. “Tuke always was good at getting me into trouble. Even in prison, that crumb could find the rattlers in a box of worms. When we were in federal prison in Tucson, he got this guard to . . . ” The story lasted twenty minutes and by the end, Rip’s eyes were heavy and his body exhausted. He was still catching up on sleep.
Gale and Rip shared a room with twin beds. Once alone, they talked quietly. There was a plan now. Grinley could be trusted. The Eysen’s age had been confirmed, their pursuers eluded, and they had a safe place to continue to study the artifacts.
“We even have a back-up plan to leave the country,” Gale said, as she turned out the light. “Let’s get some sleep. I have a feeling great discoveries await us tomorrow.”
A few minutes passed before he answered. “I’m not sure how, but maybe we’ve actually done it. Somehow, surviving the past week, while all that power aligned against us, makes me believe that Clastier was right,” Rip whispered in the darkness.
“About what?”
“Changing the world.”
“He was. We’re going to do it,” Gale said sleepily.
They slept for eight solid hours, not moving, not dreaming, just deep in a slumber that their bodies seemed to sense would have to last them a while. In the days to come, sleep would be rare.
Chapter 51
Tuesday July 18th
Gale and Rip sat in the courtyard, waiting as the sun rose high enough to hit the Eysen. Wrapped in Mexican blankets against the chill of the high desert dawn, sipping tea, they were silent until the Earth part of the Cosega Sequence completed.
“It’s really a computer!” Gale said, as the Eysen clicked through a review of everything it had shown them up until that point. “We have an eleven-million-year-old computer.”
“Can you imagine what it can tell us?” Rip asked. “If we can stay alive long enough to figure out how to use it.”
“They don’t have any idea where we are.” She waved her hand. “This old house is in the middle of dusty-nowhere.”
“I know, but . . . ”
“Don’t worry so much. We’re good.”
“Following some drug smuggling route into Mexico doesn’t sound good to me.”
“Then, when we decide to leave we’ll find some out-of-the-way motel in the Colorado mountains, or we’ll get to Nevada. We can get lost in that wasteland for sure. There are places.”
“And you think we can just disappear and study away?” Rip felt okay the night before, but he’d awakened worried again. “Do you really think they’ll just let us get away?”
“You can only find what you can find. They haven’t caught up to us yet, and now we’ve left no trace. We can do it, Rip.”
“Or we could get to Booker. He could get us anywhere in the world. That man can hide things.”
“It’s not worth the risk. I know you trust him, but there is so much you don’t know about him. Booker was your friend and supporter when he wanted something from you.”
“What did he want?”
“The Eysen.”
“No one knew this thing even existed.”
“Booker knew something. Why would one of the world’s richest men decide t
o sponsor an endless series of archaeological digs?”
“He loves archaeology. He’s interested in the past.”
“Come on.”
“You’re paranoid.”
“I’m a reporter.”
“Then, how did he know?”
“You said there are missing Clastier Papers.”
“That was always the rumor.”
“Maybe Booker has them.”
“And they give details about the Eysen?”
“Maybe. And maybe he wants the Eysen. Imagine the power it might offer. You scoffed when Josh mentioned the Roswell incident back in Virginia. But are you aware that many people believed a UFO crashed in New Mexico in 1947, and that the military used the new-found knowledge to advance the United States’ power through technology used in everything from the moon landing, to the stealth fighters, to computers, and lots of stuff that’s never even been made public.”
“Far-fetched conspiracy.”
“Even if a crashed space ship never happened, the Eysen is real and the Roswell story illustrates my point. If Booker controlled the technology that created a computer this sophisticated, that is able to survive for millions of years . . . ”
“You’re right. I’ve been so caught up in trying to understand it and discover its secrets, that I missed the bigger picture.”
“Yes. If one person controlled this kind of power, he could control the world.”
They sat there in silence, staring at each other and the Eysen, which circled with images of trees, as if waiting for them to return their attention to the work at hand.
“So we study it in hiding, find out all there is to know, and then what? How do we go on protecting it? Sooner or later they’ll find us.”
“They won’t. They can’t fight destiny.” Gale smiled. “Then, when we’re ready, we release it to the world. I can get the National Geographic to do it. The casing, the Eysen, and the Clastier Papers – all of it.”