The Soul of the Matter

by Bruce Buff

  Their room was small, just big enough for separate beds.

  Finished dressing after a quick shower, Trish said, “You know, being with you is exhausting. No rest. Dangerous situations. Always being in motion from one adrenaline rush to another. Nothing grounding you. Bad eating habits. It’s impossible to tell if you are running toward or away from something. No wonder you’ve had all the troubles that you’ve had.”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Dan replied, refusing to acknowledge the truth of her words.

  “That is exactly my point. You have no clue,” Trish replied, exasperation in her voice.

  “And you’ve got everything nailed down so well that you got stuck traveling with me?”

  “I thought it would help Ava, though you continue to give me reasons to doubt that.”

  Before Dan could answer, his cell phone vibrated. He had set it up to receive messages posted to Stephen’s blog in response to a message he had posted about Stephen’s death. Quickly, Dan read, Life is a journey with few guides. We are left to tour the past beneath the present while Discovering the future by ourselves. Without a good lens, everything is distant and fuzzy.

  It was signed Bill S-30.

  With a rush of excitement, Dan reached for his tablet.

  “What’s going on?” Trish asked.

  Dan handed her the phone, saying, “I not sure about the whole message, but I hope a heretical astronomer is trying to find me.”

  “Ah. I see. Because Galileo invented the telescope to see distant things. The telescope is the lens.” Trish said after reading it. She lowered herself down and sat on the edge of a bed, looking down at the screen.

  “That makes sense. Now we just have to figure out what the rest of it means.”

  “Maybe he knows we’re in Seattle.”

  “The only way the could know that is through someone at the Discovery Institute.” Dan thought about the implications of that for a moment. “That’s probably why they typed ‘Discovering’ with a capital D, ” Dan said. “To let us know.”

  Trish looked up from the screen. “But then wouldn’t they just meet us there?”

  “Maybe they thought it was too dangerous. ”

  “Then the rest of the message would be telling us when and where to meet,” Trish said.

  He thought for a moment about that before he answered, “Obviously, if we’re right about the rest of the message, it has to be somewhere in Seattle.” Now they just had to figure that out.

  “But why post this message in such a public place? Couldn’t someone else read the message and intercept us?” Trish said. “Wasn’t there a more private way to contact you?”

  “Not in a way that couldn’t be traced. And anyone seeing this would have to know where we are to be able to figure the message out, and then they would have to be able to get to wherever we’re going very quickly to do anything about it. Now, presuming Galileo is in Seattle, where could he be telling us to meet?”

  “It’s a city,” Trish said. “There are hundreds of places to meet.”

  Dan moved over to the window and pushed aside the curtain. “He used the words guide and tour, right?”

  Trish looked down at the screen and nodded. “ ‘Life is a journey with few guides. We are left to tour the past beneath the present while Discovering the future by ourselves.’ ”

  ”Search on Seattle, tour, guide, past, present, and Bill,” Dan suggested. He turned back around and let the curtain fall closed.

  She entered the terms on the tablet and searched. “That’s fast and definite. There’s a bunch of hits on Bill Speidel’s Underground Tour of Seattle. It’s only a few blocks from the Discovery Institute.”

  “Which means Bill S-30 is probably a half hour before our meeting time at the Discovery Institute.”

  “Isn’t this all too obvious to anyone after us, or Galileo?”

  “Only if someone is nearby, knows the message was just posted, and knows when we are meeting at the Discovery Institute. All together, highly unlikely. And given we didn’t prearrange any form of communication, it would have to be a message we could decipher quickly enough to get there in time.”

  “What if it’s a trap?”

  “Unless someone else knows Stephen told me about Galileo, that’s also highly unlikely. But we’ll be careful anyway.”

  “If we’re right, our rendezvous with Galileo is less than twenty minutes from now. Let’s go,” Trish commanded.

  Dan shook his head. “Stay here for a half hour, then meet me at the Discovery Institute.”

  “You keep trying to go things alone. Forget it. I’m coming with you,” Trish said. She started toward the door.

  “You’re not trained for this. Things get messy in the field,” Dan said matter-of-factly, shuddering, thinking of the Sarasovs.

  “Messy? Is that what you call what you did behind an analyst’s desk?”

  “I was in field operations before I became an intelligence analyst.”

  “And that turned out so well that you became an analyst?”

  “Whatever deficiencies I might have had, that you really don’t know anything about, don’t translate into capabilities for you. You’re not coming.”

  Trish faced off against Dan, took both his hands in hers, looked into his eyes, and said, “This isn’t about you or me. We’ll both do whatever enhances Ava’s chances and us together does that. Now let’s go. We’ll have to walk fast.”

  Trish grabbed Dan’s right elbow and pulled him outside.

  He liked the sound of “us together” and wanted it to mean something to her, too.

  Chapter 56

  As they approached the tour location, near Pioneer Square, Dan handed his tablet to Trish and said, “Look at this.”

  On the screen was a map of the area around them. “See these,” Dan said, pointing to small icons of cameras with gray-shaded regions projecting out from them. “They mark every security camera around here, along with their corresponding field of vision. The flashing ones are programmable, and I can send commands to shift their direction or shut them off. For now, all we need to do is follow this zigzag path and we’ll be outside the view of the cameras. This gives us the means to enter and exit without images of our faces being run through automated facial recognition programs. Of course, some day everything will be in the field of vision, and with social media databases having already tagged every face—”

  “Stop,” Trish said. “You mean to tell me that right now, government surveillance programs are using facial recognition to track my every movement and put it in a database somewhere?”

  “When you’re in range of a camera with high enough resolution networked to the internet, they could be doing that. So could Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, and so on. A retailer could be sending images to them and, with the technology and photos they already have, social media could send the name of the person back, along with a whole lot of other information. For a fee, of course. And all without violating their latest privacy agreement, which they retain the right to revise to their advantage at any time.”

  “And you helped develop these types of capabilities?” Trish said with indignation.

  “For international, not domestic, purposes.”

  “You’d better not get caught tapping into this stuff. That wouldn’t be too helpful to us right now,” Trish said.

  “I installed trip wires that will let me know if anyone is on to me.”

  “I don’t know whether to be reassured or frightened by you.”

  “You know all too well what to think about me,” Dan said, once again revealing more truth than he had intended. Though they had only been together a short while, and it had to be more his imagination than reality, Dan felt like whenever Trish focused her gaze on him, something new was being revealed to her. It did not bring him comfort. There was too much that
wasn’t the way it should be, and he didn’t want others, especially her, to know it.

  “I like it better when you’re questioning yourself. It makes me think you’re being properly cautious,” Trish replied.

  “Around you, I’m always cautious.”

  “Keep it that way,” Trish said, handing the tablet back to Dan.

  “We’ll be there in a few blocks.”

  • • •

  “Buy your tickets to Bill Speidel’s Underground Tour. See Seattle as it once was,” the tour guide barked as Dan and Trish approached. They stepped inside the old building that served as the tour starting point, and Dan purchased two tickets.

  The large room looked like it had once been a saloon. Rows of benches faced a bar that still dispensed alcoholic beverages for those who wanted one after the tour.

  About two dozen tourists were scattered across the benches. They were a mix of older couples, parents in their early forties with teen children, and twentysomething singles. Given the early summer cool weather, most wore long sleeves or light jackets. Standing near the bar was a woman in her early sixties, Dan guessed, with brown hair fading into gray, a friendly demeanor, and animated facial expressions. After a few minutes, she walked to the bar, faced the rows of people, and announced that she was their tour guide. Then she began telling them about Seattle’s founding.

  Dan was anxious. As best as he could tell, there was no Galileo here. And there was not much time. He’d gleaned from reading the brochure about the tour that they were going to explore remants of the old city of Seattle, now residing under the current city. Entering a confined underground space could be a trap. Once the introduction was over, they began descending steps to a level below, entering corridors underneath the present-day sidewalks. He half listened to the tour guide explain that Seattle had once been built in marshland and on steep hills that rose from them. That became a big problem as the city grew. A fire in the late 1800s burned everything in the low areas to the ground. Shop owners rushed to rebuild before the city could elevate the area. Later, ten-foot-high walls were built along the streets, the space in between filled in, and new roads paved above. What once had been ground-level storefronts became abandoned space as second floors were now at the new street level. Hollow spaces under the present-day sidewalks provided the walkways through which the past was toured beneath the present.

  Dan didn’t see any sign of Galileo. He followed the tour group, watching Trish carefully. There were lots of partial walls and doorways behind which someone could be lurking. After passing one recessed doorway, a man stepped out of the shadows.

  Turning quickly, arms positioned for action, Dan stepped in front of Trish and faced the man. They were thirty feet behind the back of the tour group and hidden from their view. In the dim light, they sized each other up.

  The man was average height, slightly pudgy, with rumpled clothes and wild, graying hair. He hardly looked like a threat. But when he moved his hand toward his coat pocket, Dan sprang forward, grabbed the arm, twisted it behind the man’s back, and spun him a half turn, pinning him against the wall.

  “There’s no need for that. I’m the person Stephen called Galileo. In my right pocket is an envelope with a medical analysis of Ava in it and a USB thumb drive. I’m here to help us carry out Stephen’s wishes, to finish his work.”

  “How can I be sure of that? Who are you?” Dan replied as he took the envelope and handed it to Trish.

  “My name is Sam Abrams. Until a few months ago, I worked at The Broad Institute, researching the human genome. Before that, I worked at HBC. Like Stephen, I’ve seen God’s handwriting,” he answered.

  Looking at the bedraggled, frightened man in front of him, hearing the phrase Sam had said, Dan felt the odds were strong that Sam and Stephen’s Galileo were one and the same.

  “Octavio Romanov said you disappeared. What happened to you?”

  “Outside Stephen, I couldn’t trust anyone, though if we hadn’t been able to find each other, I was considering seeking Romanov’s assistance.”

  Meanwhile, Trish had opened the envelope and started reading. She exclaimed, “It’s the same analysis of Ava’s genome that I have!”

  “We need to keep up with the group in front of us but keep out of earshot,” said the skittish Sam Abrams. “Dreadful powers are aligning against us, and they have eyes everywhere.”

  At the words, shadows seemed to shift shape, and a chill passed over Dan, leaving him questioning his state of mind once again.

  Without waiting for a response, Sam hurried after the tour with Dan and Trish in tow.

  Dan whispered, “What was your relationship to Stephen and his work?”

  “I was one of his first hires at HBC. When Stephen realized something extra was encoded in DNA, he had me leave HBC and join The Broad Institute. They’re an endowed collaboration between Harvard and MIT that researches genomics. They have fantastic connections to all genome-related research. He thought it would be good to leverage their resources while splitting us up to avoid detection and reduce risk.”

  Trish looked quizzically at Dan when Sam said “encoded in DNA,” then said to Sam, “You make it sound like he found more than genome information.”

  Both Dan and Sam shot Trish a look that said Don’t say anything more.

  Cautiously, recognizing he’d have to explain what he had withheld from Trish, Dan asked, “Why the cryptic name? Why didn’t Stephen tell me about you?”

  “He wanted to protect those around him by minimizing what and who they knew. He described it as each person being a spoke in the wheel. I focused on the biology side of things, including medical treatments,” Sam said with a knowing look toward Trish. “Last December, right after Stephen’s big breakthrough and Alex’s death, we became aware of activity that made us very nervous, so I went into hiding. When Stephen died, I followed a plan that we had prearranged, came here, and waited for a safe way to contact you. I better have done a good enough job,” Sam said solemnly.

  “How did you know we were here?” Trish asked.

  “I knew who Stephen had reached out to, thought you might think to reach out to them, too, and had a friend at the Discovery Institute keep an eye out for you. I wanted to meet in an out-of-the-way, but still public, place to make sure who you were, so I picked this.”

  Anxious to know, Dan cut to the chase and asked, “Do you have access to Stephen’s work?”

  “Together we will, but not here. We are going to see it all for the first time together. No more solo acts,” Sam said. “Stephen gave me a security-protected thumb drive. There are buttons on it for entering codes. Once I enter the code I have, a prompt will appear asking for information only you can provide. Once you do that, we’ll both have the other codes needed to access the information Stephen stored on your network.”

  Dan was frustrated. He wanted to unlock the encryption and see now, with his own eyes, what Stephen had claimed was scientific proof for the origin and meaning of human existence. He also didn’t like sharing it with Sam, though he thought that Sam would probably be a good guide through Stephen’s work. Still, Dan would find a way to control it. Too much was at stake.

  “Yes, from here on out, we all have to be on the same page,” Trish asserted, looking at Dan with an expression that reflected her displeasure with Dan for keeping things from her.

  “Then let’s go. We’ll skip the Discovery Institute,” Dan said.

  “No. Go there. You may hear things that could turn out to be useful. And we should separate before regrouping to make sure none of us were followed,” Sam said.

  “Yes, let’s do that,” Trish said.

  “Here is my motel key and the address,” Dan said to Sam. “Meet us there in an hour. But first, turn off the location services of your phone, especially GPS, then power it down. Don’t carry anything that can be tracked electronically.”

 
“After traveling cross-country by bus, staying in odd hotels, always being on the lookout, using prepaid phones, and all the other precautions I’ve taken, I ought to be safe now,” Sam said in voice that sounded as though he was trying to convince himself.

  “Do it anyway,” Dan said, thinking of all that had already happened.

  With that, the man who had gone by the name Galileo dropped back out of sight.

  As Dan and Trish left the tour and headed toward the Discovery Institute, Dan questioned whether they’d find friend or foe there.

  • • •

  Sam got out of the taxi a few blocks from the motel. He decided to walk the rest of the way, ducking in and out of shops and alleys, finally walking beneath a row of trees. Emerging into the open, he saw one of the few old-style motels left. After ascending the exterior stairs, he walked along the external walkway toward the room number printed on the sleeve that held the room key. As he approached the room, an attractive woman, with long black hair, approached from the other direction and said in what seemed like a slight eastern European accent, “Could you show me how the key works? I can’t get into my room.”

  Chapter 57

  So this is the place that causes such consternation and wrath,” Trish said as they arrived at a two-story, block-long, sandstone building. An exercise club occupied the first floor and the Discovery Institute spanned the level above it.

  After being buzzed in, Dan and Trish proceeded through a glass entranceway, then walked up a flight of stairs to the second floor.

  “This place is further proof of the power of words and the importance of ideas. The people on the second floor are leaders in the intelligent design movement, proponents of the belief that the actions of an intelligent agent were required to explain human existence, in fact of many features of living things. This makes them the villain of the mainstream science community, which accuses them of hiding a religious agenda in the guise of science,” Dan told her. As he explained the institute to Trish, he realized that his quest for truth was leading him to be more open and less judgmental of those also on the quest, whatever the answers turned out to be. One thing was for certain; Dan no longer saw it as an open-and-shut case in favor of materialistic Darwinism.