Code to Extinction

by Christopher Cartwright

  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 him 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 s
omewhere.

  “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.”

  “But Prometheus was a god!” Billie pointed out.

  “Exactly, and since he was immortal, his dreadful wounds healed themselves every evening, only to be opened up again the next day by Aquila. After many years Prometheus was saved by Hercules, who agreed with his kind deed to mankind. Using his bow and arrow, he killed Aquila, who was then placed by Zeus to soar in the heavens.”

  “Nice story.” Billie smiled. “Any idea what any of it has to do with the Sacred Stones or finding the four remaining temples?”

  “No. Prometheus was trying to save the human race from suffering. The ancient Master Builders were trying to save the human race from extinction. I don’t know. We’ll ask the astronomer when we see him tomorrow.”

  Billie said, “All right. We’ll go from there.”

  “Was there something else?” Sam asked.

  Distracted, Billie looked at the Aquila constellation. “What?”

  “Before. When I walked in, you said you had something extraordinary to show me and that you’d tell me all about it afterward.”

  Billie smiled. “This stone weighs precisely eight pounds.”

  “Exactly?”

  “Well, technically, it would have if the five missing sapphires were still in there.”

  Sam sighed. “And that’s interesting, because?”

  “Everything the ancient Master Builders did was precise. There are no accidents.”

  A wry smile of incredulity crossed Sam’s face. “You think they pre-planned the exact weight of the stone tablet?”

  Billie nodded. “I don’t think it – I’m certain they did. Don’t you want to know what eight pounds relates to?”

  “All right. What does eight pounds correlate with?”

  “It’s the precise distance between each of these sapphires when depicted on a world map!”

  Sam glanced at the map in front of him. “All of them are identical?”

  “Yes.”

  Sam smiled, still unsure if she was playing some sort of joke on him and unaccustomed to Billie overlooking clear errors of mathematics. “You think there’s only eight miles between each of these temples, spread out evenly around the world?”

  “Not eight miles, eight hundred.”

  Sam met her hardened gaze. “Okay. If the distance was eight hundred miles and not eight, why make the stone eight pounds?”

  “Because it’s too hard to carry an eight-hundred-pound stone.”

  “I can buy that argument, but I still don’t understand where you came up with the number eight hundred? Especially given, as you said, the Master Builders knew a thing or two about precision.”

  Billie handed him a magnifying glass and pointed to the upper right-hand corner. “Have a look for yourself.”

  He knew better than to judge Billie’s ability on face value. He stared at the horse made from pure obsidian. Its rider was carrying a set of scales carved from solid gold, which represented the changing value of barley during the reign of Famine. Written on the side of the scale in numbers barely visible with the magnifying glass, was the number one hundred. It indicated that during the reign of Famine, the value of barley would be inflated by a factor of one hundred.

  Sam grinned. “Eight pounds inflated by a factor of a hundred equals eight hundred.”

  “The same number of miles between each of the temples,” Billie said, matching his smile. “That means once we work out where some of the temples are, we can use this number to calculate the rough location of the subsequent temples around the world.”

  “That’s great!” Sam ran his eyes across the equations Billie had scribbled on the side of the map. “But we don’t even know for certain what method of measuring weight the Master Builders used, so the eight pounds couldn’t possibly be correct.”

  Billie raised her eyebrow. “You think the Master Builders accidentally made this stone tablet precisely eight pounds?”

  “It’s unlikely, but less likely than the theory they used the same measurement of weight as we do today.”

  “That’s not true.”

  “Really?” He turned to Elise, “Is she right?”

  Elise nodded. “The grain was the earliest unit of mass and is the smallest unit in the apothecary, avoirdupois, Tower, and troy systems. The early unit was a grain of wheat or barleycorn used to weigh the precious metals silver and gold. Larger units preserved in stone standards were developed that were used as both units of mass and of monetary currency. The pound was derived from the mina used by ancient civilizations dating back to four thousand years B.C.”

  Billie said, “So it’s possible the Master Builders were working on the same units of measurement as we are today.”

  “Only in the U.S. The rest of the world is on the metric system, and would have used kilograms, not pounds.”

  She shrugged. “It doesn’t matter. I know I’m right.”

  “How?” Sam shook his head. “We don’t even know what the Master Builders used to measure distance. I’m guessing it wasn’t the mile.”

  “Because 800 miles equals 281600 cubits.”

  “Go on…”

  “As you know, the Egyptian cubit was the earliest known unit of measurement used by ancient people to measure length, dating back to the third century B.C. The cubit was the length of the forearm from the elbow to the tip of the middle finger. The Royal Cubit, which was a standard cubit enhanced by an extra palm—thus 7 palms or 28 digits long—was used in constructing buildings and monuments and in surveying in ancient Egypt. The inch, foot, and yard evolved from these units through a complicated transformation not yet fully understood. Some believe they evolved from cubic measures; others believe they were simple proportions or multiples of the cubit. In whichever case, the Greeks and Romans inherited the foot from the Egyptians.”

  “Go on!”

  “There are 3520 cubits to the mile, which means we’re dealing with a distance of 800 miles between each temple.”

  “That can’t be right,” Sam protested.

  “It’s right,” Billie said, emphatically.

  “No, it isn’t. Let’s take the temple at the distance between the Pyramid of Giza and the one that sunk in the Mediterranean Sea as a reference point. You would agree that if all the distance between each of the temples is equal, then all we need to do is work out the distance between any two temples closest to each other to determine the distance?”

  “Sure.”

  “The distance between the Great Pyramid of Giza and the submerged temple in the Mediterranean Sea is 1152 miles. I know, because I looked it up when we first examined the stone tablet and noted that there was an even spacing between each of the sapphires.”

  “That’s right,” Billie agreed, undeterred.

  “But if 3520 cubits make a mile, then 281600 cubits is nowhere ne
ar 1152 miles.”

  “No. It’s 800 miles”

  Sam ran his palms through his thick hair. “But you said you were certain you were right?”

  “I am.”

  “How?”

  “Because ancient Master Builders didn’t work on a base ten system.”

  “Of course, they worked on a duodecimal base of twelve.”

  “Yes. And would you like to guess what 800 in base twelve converts to?”

  Sam grinned. “Let me guess, 1152.”

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Sam considered the revelation that Billie had discovered.

  “If this is right, you know what this means?”

  Billie said, “We map out the known temples to work out the rest of the map?”

  Sam nodded. “It also means that the stone wasn’t the original map.”

  “It’s not,” Billie agreed. “I’ve already checked.”

  “How old is it?”

  “I carbon dated the ivory horse representing the Conqueror. It’s roughly four hundred years old.”

  “About the time the previous stone was damaged and one of the remaining Master Builders made a replica, working the weight out in base ten, but continuing to calculate the distance using base twelve.” He was genuinely impressed. “Remarkable that you worked it out.”

  “I got lucky, and Elise helped. You’re the one with a lifetime of maritime experience and searching for hidden treasure under your belt, so now what do we do?” Billie asked.

  “Map out every known temple and see if Elise can run a computer program to fill in the gaps, by inserting the distance of 1152 miles between each one. Also, see if you can find out anything else on the constellation of Aquila. In the meantime, my attendance has been formally requested by the Secretary of Defense.”

  “What does she want?” Billie asked.

  “She didn’t say. She’s probably just found out we borrowed the Sikorsky Black Hawk experimental stealth helicopter without her permission, and now she wants to know why.”

  “What are you going to tell her?”

  “The truth.”

  “But the note you and Tom found attached to the Göbekli Tepe Death Stone specifically warned you that she was being watched, and that it was imperative we don’t tell her the ancient astronomer stone still exists?”