Elizabeth switched her briefcase to under her left arm as she took the paper bag from Dr. Nagashima and slid her right hand into the scanner.
“Dr. Merrill, has Jason spoken to you about the Junite Exatron System?”
“Jessie? He mentioned some random fluctuations in some of the readouts. Do you think it’s a problem, Yosh?”
Dr. Nagashima slipped his hand into the scanner as she removed hers and walked to the opening door.
“No, doctor. It does not appear to be a problem. All data functions are cross-checked hourly and seem to be exact.”
The pop of the inside door, with the lights coming up, started them into the lab, with Elizabeth going towards the lounge’s refrigerator, but she stopped when Dr. Nagashima continued.
“But it also does not appear to be random.”
Elizabeth had learned to understand Yosh’s methods. When he was on to something in his work or had made some tangential discovery, he never gave information that might bias his findings to another scientist.
“Anything more you can tell me, Yosh?”
“I ran tests on the complete system yesterday and can only tell you the anomalies in the readouts are factual and must be taken at face value. I have not included anything more until I spoke to you.”
“I’ll take it from here. Thank you.”
For Dr. Nagashima not to let his curiosity led him in this, meant only one thing. The road he suspected was there concerned Mark. Without her ever having to say it to the staff or make specific regulations concerning him, everyone in Beachlab section of the AORI knew that Mark and all information and discoveries about him were to be handled by her and her alone. When Staci started to formulate her wet string theory, because Mark was the only way she could gather empirical evidence to prove it, she brought it to Elizabeth for the go ahead. This problem that was not a problem with Jessie puzzled her, however. These were merely readouts from the security mode of the computer, not any work that was being done in which Mark was involved.
Jessie took all the vital signs along with a lot of the scientific data of each of the nine people in Beachlab as they entered and left the lab daily. It was a system devised to insure absolute security. In essence, each person leaving for the day left a new human password unique to that moment in time. It contained what they had for breakfast and lunch, what cologne or perfume they wore, and what residue lingered on them from the work they were involved in that day, among thousands of other data bits. It broke everything down into its elemental particles weighed it, logged it. The next day the reading was done on them with Jessie computing almost to the single atom the changes that could possibly occur within that finite amount of time. And only the same person, a few hours older, could reenter.
A minute later in her office, Elizabeth finished the last piece of octopus as she waited for Jason to come in with all his data. That flavor, this early in the morning, always reminded her of the Imperial Hotel in Tokyo long ago. Each morning for a week she and Dr Yoshioka Nagashima, the brilliant young phenom of the Nagao Oceanographic Institute, would sit and have breakfast, (she, the traditional Japanese and he, pancakes swimming in maple syrup) while she tried everything to convince him to come to the US and work with her.
He was newly married and his wife was right out of an Utamaro print. Alabaster skin, hair (Elizabeth had never seen it down, but it had to fall well below her waist) in dark clouds held with wooden pins and always the traditional kimono and obi. Her family’s history went unbroken for over nine centuries and for all that time not one member had ever left the country. He said she was so set on not leaving Japan that he could never accept the new position being offered. So for six days Elizabeth would slide an envelope across the polished cherry-wood table next to his plate. He would not seem to notice the action or the large white hotel stationary. She would then excuse herself to go freshen up. Upon her quick return, the logo-encrusted envelope would be gone. She knew never to talk directly about the money being offered. This way he could look at the figures while she was gone. Each time she returned, he would launch into a discussion about some scientific thing or another, and she would know she had failed again. For six mornings she waited three minutes in the ladies’ room, the envelope disappeared, and her knowledge about his work increased. He didn’t know just how much Elizabeth wanted him and his inductive genius at AORI.
At a farewell dinner on her last night in Tokyo with Yosh and his beautiful bride, in a private tatami room of a grand old restaurant, she happened to slip in a toast, that it was too bad they could not come to America, because she was looking forward to building a beautiful traditional Japanese country house for them. At the click of the porcelain sake cups, she took note of the quick look of “Why didn’t you tell me?” Kyoko gave her husband.
Elizabeth’s message light was blinking by the bed when she returned to the hotel, and three weeks later she was at the LA airport welcoming her new coworker and his wife to California.
The sound on the window as he entered and “Knock! Knock!” brought Elizabeth back to the present as Jason slid into the chair at the end of the long conference table. The eleven other plush leather chairs were neatly arranged around it. Each one in front of the recessed monitor screen and the mahogany insert that, when pushed, would rotate to reveal a keyboard. Elizabeth rose from her desk, circled around it, and came to the chair next to Jason’s pile of CDs.
“Here is everything for the last ten years, Doc. I put it in two separate files. One from before and one from after the installation of the new Pentium XII but readings are pretty much the same.”
She knew when she asked him, upon arriving, to retrieve this information he would be fast and thorough.
“Thank you, Jason. Explain to me quickly what you found, okay?”
“Sure.” Jason picked up one of the CDs from the stack and inserted it into the receiver as a large monitor rose from the table.
“Just as an example, here is the last one from yesterday when I came back into the lab with Mark before four o’clock.”
Elizabeth got up, came around her desk, and joined him at the large conference table. His finger traced one of the many lines as it fed out along the monitor from left to right. He continued, “You know, between the palm sweep and ready room, we get a ton of info. Everything from body temp to respiration rates and from chemical reads to plain ol’ body weight.”
“Yes, I know and a few of us think maybe the body weight thing is going a step too far.”
“Oh, come on, Doc. You look great. You’re in really good shape for a… I mean your body…I’d sure… You don’t look…” Elizabeth decided to let him off the hook before he had a complete meltdown.
“Don’t worry, Jason. I’ll take that as a compliment and you still have your job. The readout?”
“Sure.” His voice was a little higher in pitch than when he came in “Well, here I am, up here. See how the line goes straight across? Right from the night before when I left…to here where I came in with Mark.”
“Yes?”
“Well here is Mark’s readout down here.” He reset the disc again. She followed his finger to the bottom half of the page and could see the difference as he explained
“These lines are for the carbon dating that is taken from the palm scan. One microscopic flake is analyzed to get a sequence reading from one day to the next. And look!” The specific line of Jason’s chart was completely straight without any deviation. The line for Mark, however, right at the date change vertical marker on the screen, had a small bump in it. She now knew what Yosh must have felt, and the little bump in her heartbeat made her take a moment before she spoke.
“Continue.”
“Well, that’s just it. I mean Jessie is programmed to make the time allowance for when people clock out and back in. She gets her time reading from the government’s atomic clock in Boulder, marries it to her findings, and verifies c
onsistency. And boom! Like clockwork. Except for Mark that is.”
“What exactly does the bump in Mark’s line mean, Jason?” She hoped her voice sounded different than it did in her mind. This information, if correct, could change all their lives.
“I don’t know. I only program these things and tweak ‘em now and then, but basically sometimes, and only sometimes, there are lags, chronologically speaking, in Mark’s carbon dating from one day to the next.”
“Could the clock reading be the problem?”
“Dr. Merrill, that government ticker, as you know, is accurate to one second every two million years. And Jessie is directly connected to it.”
“That’s very interesting, Jason. Thank you. I’ll study it.”
“But it’s not consistent, Doc. And I can’t find a pattern at all.”
Elizabeth stood there for awhile trying to return Jason’s “tell me what you think of all this” look with her most enigmatic expression. After a beat, she ejected the disc and held it in her hand.
“Leave all this with me, and I’ll see what I can make of it. Thanks again.”
“Sure.” Jason pushed his chair back, his tennis shoes squeaking on the polished wood floor. “You know, maybe it’s…”
Staring at the disc she was holding and trying not to sound too dismissive, she simply said, “Thank you, Jason.”
After he left, she returned to her desk, holding the shiny round disc to her stomach as if the answer would magically jump from it and still the queasiness she was starting to feel. She wandered the small universe of her office for awhile but ended up back at her desk, slowly sank into the chair, leaned back, and stared at the recessed lighting above her. Knowing she was avoiding the obvious, she swung back to the desk, reached for the phone pad, and punched in a sequence.
“Yes, Dr. Merrill.”
“Janice, would you retrieve all of Mark’s Class II project records for the last…oh six or seven years. I only want the time logs for his ocean work. Just inter-office them to my computer here, okay?”
“I’ll have them to you in a minute, Dr. Merrill.”
Elizabeth leaned her chair back and stared at the ceiling. She could feel the whispery thump in her ear of each heartbeat and started to count off the seconds until the bell sound on the computer would tell her that her concept of the world had changed.
Mark had gotten up well before dawn and had spent the entire morning in the ocean. For several hours he had swam around and tended the exotic gardens he had accumulated off the shore of his home. Still struggling with the events of the previous night, he had gone out to the deeper water. His favorite spot had become a large rock outcropping over the undersea canyon, about sixty miles west of the coastline. The light of the sun was dimmed to just a faint glow at this depth, and the current farther south and west brought fresh new information to all his senses. He would curl up in a sitting position in a small indentation above the blackness and spend timeless hours inside his thoughts. Even though no new answers came to him, it was time well spent. Feeling the energy of the sea, he returned to land.
It was almost 11:00 a.m. before Mark entered the lab from the ready room and was immediately intercepted by Staci.
“Mr. Harris…”
“Mark, please.” He smiled and, without breaking stride, continued on to Elizabeth’s office.
“Oh yes, I’m sorry…Mr. Mark…Sorry I, mean.” Staci, having trouble in Mark’s presence, both walking and talking, grabbed his arm and Mark stopped and tuned to her.
“Oh, I’m sorry, Mr…M…Mark, does that still hurt?” She immediately released her grip on his arm where she had imbedded the knife the day before.
“It never really hurt, and you need not think about it anymore. It was an accident.” Mark smiled, turned, and continued towards the office.
“Mark!”
He turned to Staci again with a small smile at her aggressive tone and her success at finally dropping the mister.
“Yes, Staci. May I be of assistance?”
She stepped quickly to him and offered the bound AORI notebook she had been carrying.
“This is a summation of the work, so far that is, on the wet string project.”
“Thank you. I will study it tonight.”
“It also has, at the back, a list of further experiments I would like to do. They may seem a little strange when you see them. They aren’t really lab work like the others. They’re more…” She stopped and looked around the lab as if to find the encouragement for what she was about to say from the wires, beakers, and banks of equipment. “They are actually more in the realm of psychic or extrasensory studies.” After finally getting that out, the floodgates opened. “You see, Mark, with the tests so far, I…we have proven that you have simultaneously experienced stimuli I administered to water environments, plants, and…and sea life outside your immediate area. Not only that, but also you, and I submit, eventually everyone can not just feel the experience of our environment, but…like you calculate accurately and scientifically what the effects are and also…like you…make causes that greatly influence, not only the immediate environment but reach far out into the world and…”
“Dr. Torelli!”
The voice of Dr. Merrill halted Staci mid-rapture, and Elizabeth’s rare use of her surname left no doubt in the young scientist’s mind that a two-person conference was to follow.
“Why don’t we let Mark read your report, and after I have looked it over, we can decide on the next course of events.”
There was no mistaking it. The Dr. Torelli and the tone of voice were a complete reprimand in one sentence. She thought, what was I thinking, and why didn’t I just take this to Dr. Merrill? And a bunch of other excuses she knew Jason would call lame. So instead of offering any of them she turned completely to the doctor, whom was still standing by the open door, and meekly responded, “Yes, certainly.”
Elizabeth easily shifted her gaze to Mark.
“We can go over that later, together, if you like, Mark. Oh, and, Staci, could I speak to you in my office for a minute?”
Elizabeth shifted her weight to the side and indicated the way into her office. Staci could only spin again to Mark and look at him blankly.
“Thank you, Staci. I look forward to reading your report.” Mark looked at her as she stood there staring at him in silence. For a moment, it appeared she had not only forgotten what she was about to do but perhaps even where or who she was.
“Dr Torelli!”
Staci turned to find Elizabeth standing by her open office door.
“Yes, coming. Thank you, Mr. Harris. Coming.”
She spun from him and directly into Jason who was walking to his desk. The collision knocked the digital camera he was adjusting out of his hands. Mark quickly bent and caught the camera before it hit the floor as Staci and Jason echoed “sorry” and “that’s okay.”
Staci walked to Dr. Merrill’s door as Jason stepped to where Mark was examining the camera. The side of the digital recorder was open, and Mark had put his finger inside and removed the small data card.
“Oh, thank you, Mark. For some reason it’s on the blink. I just hope I haven’t lost all the stuff I shot yesterday.” Jason reached to take the camera back.
“No, Jason, everything appears to be fine, including,” Mark paused for a moment, with the two fingers of his right hand slowly moving along the small terminals of the card, “the two young women you recorded in the car next to you on your way home.”
Jason’s hands froze in mid air. The many things he wanted to ask hung somewhere in his brain and he just stared at Mark.
“I think it is dangerous to record while you are driving, don’t you?”
“Yes…I…How could you tell? It’s not even on.” Now the floodgates were open. “How do you know it was on my way home?”
Before he could go further,
Mark clicked closed the opening on the side. “Jason, some time ago, I found that when I touch the information gathering devices in things such as this I perceive what you would call a readout of the information it contains. I can only assume the silicone, or other of the elements, has some fluid qualities comparable with water and are therefore accessible to me.” Mark placed the camera in Jason’s hands, which were still hovering in front of him. “I knew the time from the readout in the memory storage, and the sunlight was on the young ladies’ faces so you were going south. And I could read the highway marker as the car went past it.”
Mark turned in time to see Elizabeth looking at him through the window of her office, and he smiled and turned towards his own office.
“By the way, Jason.” Mark spoke over his shoulder as he approached his door. “The driver was especially attractive.”
Jason numbly turned and, staring at the equipment in his hand, walked into the lab.
“Please, Staci, sit down.”
Elizabeth closed the door and stood there with her hand still on the knob as she watched Mark speak for a moment with Jason. Mark then smiled at her through the glass and turned into his own office.
“Dr. Merrill, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to bypass you with my test results. It’s just that I saw Mr. Harris when he came in.”
“You can call him Mark.”
“Yes, of course. I’m sorry. It’s just that I saw…”
By now Elizabeth had circled around to the chair behind her desk and was smiling kindly at her young protégé.
“Staci, don’t worry. I understand completely.” When she saw Staci relax a little and ease back from the edge of her chair, she continued, “I have followed your progress very closely over the last few months as you know. I was impressed enough with your Ph.D dissertation to invite you here and, up to and including the present moment, you have never let me down.” She could tell by the strange look on the young woman’s face that she was completely at a loss as to why she had been summoned.
“Staci, when I first founded the AORI it was essentially Mark, Doctors Raggit and Lucca, and myself. Our work centered on oceanic research and our results could always be interpreted by the outside world, meaning Gasten and the board, as great discoveries made by good, even brilliant scientists.” She saw Staci relax even more. “I have one test I use whenever we are close to finding something that will eventually go public.” Elizabeth smiled now at the young lady, took a quick glance at Mark’s closed door, and then let her eyes wander over the complex the AORI had become. “It’s sort of like I visualize that cartoon game. Except that I call it ‘Where’s Mark?’” Staci’s evaporating smile and widening eyes told Elizabeth she had lost her a little. “I try to see the entire project being scrutinized by other scientists, the press, and even the general public. If I can see something that could only have come from Mark’s involvement, using his special abilities…in other words if I can “Find Mark” that changes the format of what we release or I drop the project completely… No matter how important it may be. Do you understand?”
Man from Atlantis Page 5