Pandora's Temple

by Jon Land

  “Suffice it to say we are dealing with something unprecedented here. The fate of this oil rig aside, I’d prefer to focus on the ramifications of what it means for your work, our work.”

  “This was not random, then,” Bol started. “You made sure this rig was drilling in the area where you had determined dark matter mostly likely to be.”

  “A theory, gentlemen,” Roy told them, “and nothing more. I started to suspect the possibility after reading the latest research on the earth’s core, which, it turns out, is radiating far more heat and energy than previously believed. Existing models for its structure and true composition suddenly needed to be rethought and the only thing scientists could agree on was that something was going on with regard to the release of thermal energy that none of them could explain. I was especially struck by a quote from Dr. Dario Alfè from the University College London in the New York Times to the effect there might be something going on down there, and some force present, no one has ever considered before.”

  “Dark matter,” said Whitcomb.

  Roy nodded. “I’ve had other exploration crews searching the seas for a possible breakthrough ever since, for over a year now. The difference here was the depth achieved. As for the location, its choice was based on seismic readings that indicated the area beneath the seafloor to be soft and sediment based, thus far more likely to contain pockets that extended up from the very core of the planet. Theoretically, as you know, the weight of dark matter makes it most likely to settle at the lowest point.”

  “Actually,” corrected Bol, rubbing the bridge of his nose with a single finger, “there is no proof that dark matter has any weight at all.”

  “An assumption, then,” Roy conceded. He felt himself growing frustrated with the lack of deference these men paid him. He was used to dominating his foes in business and used to being treated as such. But these weren’t businessmen and, as scientists, they held knowledge as power more than money. “And another reasonably accepted assumption is that dark matter is highly pressurized, meaning it will follow the flow to any venting.”

  “As in a high-powered drill piercing a pocket in the earth’s crust,” noted Bol.

  “I am to understand, then,” picked up Whitcomb as caustically as he could manage, “that your experiments continued, in spite of our warnings to the contrary about the potential unintended consequences.”

  “Specifically,” elaborated Bol, “that finding and isolating dark matter is nothing compared to containing it. In point of fact, Mr. Roy, we have just recently managed to trap all of several hundred antihydrogen atoms, the first step to figuring out how to contain dark matter.”

  “Mr. Roy,” Whitcomb started, but Bol wasn’t finished yet, interrupting him.

  “What happened to this oil rig exactly?”

  “Why don’t you tell me, Doctor?” followed Roy.

  “I can’t; nobody can. Because nobody knows what the release of anything more than a few molecules of dark matter coming into contact with normal matter would do. Nobody knows because it’s never happened, at least not since the world was created.”

  “It has now,” said Sebastian Roy, rising and moving to the back of his chair. He grasped it tightly, displaying his impatience. “And I summoned you here to discuss the next steps, not rehash the old ones.”

  Whitcomb could only shake his head. “I don’t think you understand. The big bang released in a single moment more energy than the collective world has ever known. Each time particles of dark matter are released, that big bang is replicated in a minute form. The antihydrogen atoms Dr. Bol’s team has managed to isolate and contain are to be the basis of replicating that event in the controlled environment we’ve created at CERN.”

  Bol was nodding along with Whitcomb’s words. “Releasing dark matter without the necessary safety protocols in place would be . . .”

  “Would be what, Doctor Bol?” Roy challenged.

  “It goes back to containment,” Bol explained. “Your oil rig witnessed firsthand the effects of releasing dark matter within an uncontrolled environment.”

  “Fine,” said Roy, squeezing the back of his chair, “and what if such a controlled environment, a means of containment, existed?”

  The scientists again gazed at each other.

  “I don’t believe I heard you correctly,” said Bol.

  “Yes, you did. The means to contain, to store dark matter already exists; we just have to find it.”

  “Find what?”

  “Pandora’s box.”

  “It was actually a jar,” Roy continued after the collective shock of the two scientists before him had worn off. “Calling it Pandora’s box was the result of a mistaken translation that has endured through the ages. Large, though, perhaps even as big as a man.”

  “You summoned us here because of a myth?” asked a visibly perturbed Whitcomb.

  “I imagine many said the same thing about Nicolaus Otto and Karl Benz when they developed the internal combustion engine on different tracks a decade apart. The principles for a horse and buggy world were equally incredible in 1880, maybe even more so.”

  “Mr. Roy,” said Bol, rising to his feet, “Pandora’s box doesn’t exist.”

  “If you’re referring to a mythological artifact that contained all the evil in the world eventually to be released once opened, you are of course correct. I’m speaking of something else entirely.”

  Whitcomb joined Bol on his feet. “All the same, we’re physicists, not archaeologists or historians. This isn’t what we do.”

  “And I need physicists on-site once we find what we are looking for. Your expertise will be crucial in assuring that lesser minds don’t make a potentially catastrophic mistake.”

  “Mr. Roy,” said Bol, “with all due respect, our work at CERN is reaching a critical stage. You should let us get back there immediately.”

  “With all due respect,” added Whitcomb, “I insist. This fantasy has gone on long enough.”

  Roy took no offense at the remark, showed no reaction at all. “With all due respect, when was the last time either of you spoke with your families?”

  Bol stiffened. Whitcomb’s knees nearly buckled.

  “Not in the past twenty-four hours obviously,” Roy continued when neither man responded, “since both your families have been in my custody since then. And if you ever want to see them again, you’ll join my teams searching for Pandora’s jar off Greece right now.”

  CHAPTER 44

  New Orleans

  “So who was it that sent you to the Mediterranean five years ago?” Folsom asked.

  “Who do you think? They’re all just names to me. I don’t pay much attention to which uniform or three-letter department is paying my freight. They say jump, I say I like being high,” Captain Seven said with a twinkle in his eye. “Started with me reading some recently uncovered lost works of the Greek historian Herodotus, containing the truth behind something that might not have been a myth or legend after all.”

  “Herodotus wrote about dark matter?”

  “Not exactly, B-rat; more like the only place I’m pretty certain it can be found and what I was looking for in the Med: Pandora’s Temple.”

  Greece, 1672 B.C.

  “Your king has a job for you, Pathos Verdes.”

  Verdes knelt on the hard gravel floor before the king’s messenger, his knees already aching from the strain he would never let show on his features. He squinted from the afternoon sun streaming in through the open door and wall slats, edges of the light casting the messenger’s face in what looked like a halo.

  Verdes had dismissed his wife, who was pregnant with their first child, from the modest hut in which they lived. Verdes saw no reason to live exorbitantly in spite of his reputation as the greatest builder of his time. Although humble, he’d built his own home in the lee of a hillside to provide ample shade in the warm summer months like these, leaving the king’s messenger comfortable on the bench seat fashioned out of clay. Beyond that there were o
nly straw mats on which to sleep and shelves formed of laced-together branches to store their meager possessions. Verdes had fashioned the plates, bowls, and cups out of wood, coating them in a fine resin of tree sap as his father had shown him. So, too, his home was the lone structure built to feature open slots carved into the walls, constructed to allow the breeze to pass through in the warm season and then be filled in with a combination of moss, clay, and stones when the weather turned cold.

  “There is a weapon greater than any ever known to gods or mortal man,” the messenger continued. The light sifting through the open slots caught his face in splotches, making it seem formless—more mask than flesh. But Verdes shook off the illusion. “This weapon has the power to control the world or destroy it, to kill even a god. As the greatest builder of our time, your king orders you to construct a temple capable of containing this weapon so it remains protected from mortal hands. You must be sure to build this temple so no mortal can ever reach it, apart from man where it will remain for all time.”

  Pathos Verdes felt the rough canvas stitching of the shapeless robe he wore over his undergarments digging into his legs. Those undergarments were made of a rolled combination of tree bark and dried fig leaves, stitched by his wife thanks to her own considerable talents. He was humbled by such a royal visit under escort to his home, but overwhelmed at the same time. He had met the king once before when both were younger men. Verdes had served as apprentice on the build of the royal palace until the king ordered the master builder executed when they fell behind schedule, and Verdes volunteered to take his place.

  “Such an undertaking,” he told the messenger, “would take vast reserves of funds, men, and materials, not to mention ages. Unlimited reserves, with all respect to my king, and I am not a man of such means.”

  “All your needs will be met. Understand, Pathos Verdes, that your king would never have commissioned such a project if not with the gods’ blessing. And so that blessing will be yours. And know that you will be rewarded with the gratitude of the gods in the afterlife for your service.”

  The messenger rose from the wooden bench, Verdes rising with him and bowing reverently. “Tell my king his temple will be built. But your name, I seem to have forgotten it.”

  “Hermes.”

  Once the messenger had taken his leave, Verdes set his mind to consideration of building the largest structure ever known to mortal man. It commanded his days, bringing him to large tapestries of papyrus where he drew out his plans for each phase of the temple—every layer and level, including the vast materials needed to bring the grand vision to fruition, often drawn from dreams the previous night. The task was daunting, terrifying in scope even when tempered by the assurances of the king’s messenger that all his needs would be provided for.

  Any doubts Pathos Verdes may have harbored were erased when his wife summoned him weeks into his planning. Lying before the entrance to his home was a wooden chest. Verdes opened it under the rays of the sun and was blinded by the glow off the thousands of gold pieces contained inside—the very bounty required to retain the men and acquire the materials to build the temple to the king’s grand specifications. He knew such an undertaking mandated a site reasonably close to water, in this case the shores near the meeting point of the Mediterranean and Aegean Seas, so the vast stores of wood, limestone, marble, bronze, and terra-cotta could be transported from ports the known world over. Similarly, though, the messenger had explicitly ordered Verdes to make sure the temple could be rendered safe from mortal intrusion. That made for a seemingly impossible contradiction to resolve.

  Still, Verdes held fast to his faith, seeing it rewarded when a vast storm laid waste to the coastline, followed by a severe drought that reduced the lush countryside to a wasteland, a desert traveled only by lost souls where death awaited in the relentless heat. Legends quickly spread of those who strayed into this desert being set upon by inhuman creatures who served as centurions to deny approach to those not deemed worthy, their ravaged remains found by others with the good sense to turn back. This as shiploads of materials began to arrive, along with the men required to utilize them. Neither Verdes nor his workers ever encountered any of these monsters themselves, but they hardly ever left the area of the temple’s ongoing construction. Verdes’s wife gave birth to their first son the day the first stone was laid and his second three years later just as the initial column was raised into place.

  The ensuing years passed with Verdes living on less and less sleep, descending into a madness he neither understood nor resisted. From that madness came the solutions to architectural problems never encountered or solved by mortal man before. As one month, and then year, drew into the next, the great gleaming temple rose from the desert toward the sky and Zeus himself.

  The death of his first son barely registered with him, but the passing of his second plunged Pathos Verdes into an even deeper fit of madness that left him questioning his faith in the very gods he had relied upon. Even so, that did not diminish his resolve to complete his task, knowing as the end neared not how many years had fled until he caught a glance of his aged reflection in a shiny piece of bronze. He hardly recognized the face that looked back at him, but his eyes still worked well enough to follow his drawings and lay the buttressed roof into place, supported by the heaviest pilasters mortal man had ever known. He imagined this must be what Zeus’s temple on Mount Olympus looked like, rejoicing in how his king would be pleased with the result of his efforts and labor.

  Upon completion, the temple stood sixty feet at its highest point, the top of a marble dome inlaid with real gold that made it shine and shimmer beneath the sun. From even a modest distance, the temple appeared to be golden everywhere, an illusion Pathos Verdes fostered by constructing it to best seize the light of the day. The majestic entry doors stood twenty feet in height out of respect for the gods who alone would be invited to pass through them. Beyond these, jutting out to the sides and layered atop beveled columns, were twin, multileveled appendages that looked like wings attached seamlessly to the dome.

  Pathos Verdes had begun the process by modeling the temple after palaces of legend, those he had never laid eyes upon himself but heard described by scribes and tellers of tales from ages past. But his vision of finely etched narrowing layers topped by a majestic dome was more than an amalgamation of his accumulated knowledge. He could not say exactly from where the design ideas had sprung, nor why exactly he had decided to build the grand façade to the scale of giants and the gods themselves, with doors fashioned from polished stone no man could open on his own.

  No mortal man anyway.

  Inside its vast octagonal walls, Verdes had laid floors of marble speckled with bronze dust and added pillars that connected the multitiered levels contained beneath the dome. The walls and grand stairs were fashioned of limestone pulled from quarries as far away as ships could sail. Verdes set crews of workers to polish the limestone to a bright hue under both sun and moon before it was set into place inside. His sculptors, meanwhile, were busy fashioning marble life-sized statues of the gods drawn from strange visions that had come to the builder on the few nights when he found sleep. This temple was as much homage to them as anything. It gave Pathos Verdes pause long enough to dapple his cheeks with tears, until the warmth of accomplishment was lost in the messenger’s final instruction to him:

  Any mortal with knowledge of the temple must take that secret to his grave.

  Any rejoicing he might have done or pleasure he may have felt was lost to that. Verdes ordered his foremen to kill the final workmen who’d survived the ordeal of the build and then poisoned those same foremen during a feast to celebrate the project’s completion. That night, he and his wife slept inside the temple walls upon its marble floor, awaking to the sight of a large jar centered beneath the nave. The jar was ivory colored and rose to heights nearly that of a man. Pathos Verdes had long been gifted with the ability to identify the composition of an object by sight, but this jar was smoother than any s
urface he had ever known while giving off no reflection whatsoever. Similarly, the jar appeared to be seamless, as if it had been poured out instead of fashioned or molded.

  Just like the great temple Verdes had finally completed.

  He approached the jar reverently and touched the surface, pulling his fingers back immediately. The jar had felt fiery hot and icy cold at the same time. Still his fingers bore no wound or mark. Some form of markings covered the jar’s oblong center, symbols like none he’d ever seen before and could not decipher. Verdes stood there and recalled the messenger’s instructions to him so many years ago:

  “There is a weapon greater than any ever known to gods or mortal man. This weapon has the power to control the world. Or destroy it, to kill even a god. As the greatest builder of our time, your king orders you, Pathos Verdes, to construct a temple capable of containing this weapon so it remains protected from mortal hands.”

  And now, with the temple complete, this jar must contain that very weapon.

  Verdes felt his eyes mist with tears, too awestruck to wield a hand to wipe them. In that rare moment of sanity, he fully grasped the scope of his accomplishment and the rewards to be visited upon him for his labor.

  Any mortal with knowledge of the temple must take that secret to his grave.

  He drew his wife in close against him and plunged a knife deep into her back as he held her. He felt the last of her life ebb away and then eased her body into the crypt he had prepared in anticipation of that moment.

  And in that moment, his final depths of madness yielded the name of the grand temple. The gods, whose bidding he had so faithfully done, wished the temple to be christened after the first woman known to man: Pandora.

  Pandora’s Temple.

  CHAPTER 45

  New Orleans

  “Named for Pandora herself, dudes,” Captain Seven continued, “a woman Zeus ordered Hephaestus to fashion out of clay, or some shit like that, to punish mankind for Prometheus stealing fire from the gods. According to the myth, she was entrusted with a jar and told never to open it. But curiosity got the better of the bitch, so off came the lid and out flew all the evils of mankind, unleashed on the world. Then she seals it again, leaving only hope inside, so the equation never got balanced. At some point the jar got mistranslated as a box, but you get the point.”