Lemuria

by Burt Clinchandhill

  “That’s great. You can tell me later on the plane. I came by to tell you to pack up your things. We’re leaving tonight.”

  “Where are we going?” Jennifer asked.

  “You’ll see,” Mulder replied. “We have a long flight ahead of us, so plenty of time to catch up on test results.” He looked at his watch. “You have two hours before the helicopter picks us up,” he said as he walked out.

  “Do you know where we’re going?” Jennifer asked Dr. Ahlström.

  “I have no idea. There are plenty of sites around the world left to visit.”

  Jennifer thought for a long moment. “Can you do me a favor?”

  “What is it?”

  “I want to go for a walk, alone, one more time and visit the Arca Domas and take some pictures. Do you mind vouching for me, should anyone ask? I’ll be back soon.”

  “Not a problem. Take your time. I’ll see you in a while.”

  “Thank you.” Jennifer looked left and right as she stepped out of the tent, and when she was sure no one saw her, she disappeared into the woods.

  Chapter 25 – Autism, Asperger’s and ADHD

  New Haven, CT, The Present

  At the corner of Prospect and Edwards Streets, tucked away deep in the Farnam Memorial Gardens, was Yale’s Leitner Family Observatory and Planetarium.

  The oldest observatory in the U.S. now has two permanently mounted telescopes. The oldest, mounted in the east dome, was purchased by Yale in 1882 to study Venus’s journey across the face of the sun that year. Today, the refurbished telescope is used for observing planets and stars. The west dome houses a more modern computer-controlled, reflecting telescope.

  The permanent exposition in the main building houses a display of Yale’s rich history of astronomy. It was here that Stiles and Loomis watched the return of Haley’s Comet in 1835, looking through their five-inch Dollond refractor—an instrument now on display in the exposition.

  On the park bench in front of the building, Bishop looked at his watch, waiting for Father Lamberto De Cremonese, who asked to meet him there. He was already ten minutes late.

  “I’m sorry I’m late,” De Cremonese, dressed in jeans and sweater, called out as he approached Bishop from the main building.

  Bishop frowned, expecting a man dressed in a cassock or soutane.

  “I get that a lot.” De Cremonese shook Bishop’s hand. “But today I’m a scientist and a little less of a Jesuit priest. Lamberto De Cremonese,” he introduced himself.

  “Matthew Bishop.”

  “Matthew, may I call you Matthew?”

  “Of course.”

  “Matthew, a pleasure to meet you. Please call me Lamberto. Great place here, isn’t it?”

  Bishop looked around and nodded. “It sure is.”

  “Did you know this observatory dates back to 1828, when a man named Sheldon Clark donated twelve hundred U.S. dollars to buy a Dollond refracting telescope? It may not sound like a lot of money but adjusted for inflation, it would be $24,418 today. And, no, I don’t have a built-in calculator.” He smiled, sitting down next to Bishop. “I just gave a guest lecture to a group of first-year astronomy students on the history of astronomy in the U.S., and the combination of religion and science.”

  “You should have told me. I would have attended,” Bishop said sincerely.

  “Maybe next time. On the plane here, I read your work on the philosophical implications of proving evolution. On another day, I would love to discuss some of the finer points.”

  “No problem,” Bishop responded. “You wanted to meet in person to discuss the picture I sent to your office?”

  “Indeed, I did. But first, would you mind telling me who the young woman is to you? I looked her up and saw she recently obtained her doctorate here at Yale. Was she a student of yours?”

  “She attended some of my classes but was never an official student of mine. I did help her with her dissertation, and a few years back with a more personal matter regarding her family. We became close in the father-daughter sense, and I’m very worried about her disappearance. I talked to her mother this morning, who’s also worried sick. We are used to her disappearing for a while, but she always contacted her mother after a few days from some God-forsaken country far away. No offense.”

  “None taken,” De Cremonese assured Bishop. “But this time, not a word, I understand?”

  “Not for over four months. She hasn’t called or responded to calls. It seems her phone has been off all this time, which I don’t have to tell you is quite extraordinary for a young person these days.”

  De Cremonese smiled. “It sure is.”

  “But you called me. Do you know Jennifer?”

  “Well, not really. A colleague of mine showed me the picture, and it took me a while, but then it hit me where I recognized the young lady from.”

  Bishop shifted to the edge of the park bench.

  “I met her only once, briefly. About four months ago, I visited the Logynous Laboratory a few blocks away from here, at the corner of Prospect and Canal Street. You heard of it?”

  “Sure. Who hasn’t? The one building on campus not in any way related to the university, owned by the eccentric billionaire Eldin Mulder. The man with the quantum computer.”

  “Among a lot of other high-tech adventures,” De Cremonese added. “That’s the one. I had a meeting with him, and that’s where I briefly met Jennifer in the hallway on the way out. I even gave her my business card.”

  “Wait,” Bishop interrupted. “That was four months ago?”

  De Cremonese nodded. “It was.”

  “But she wasn’t missing at that time. I thought you saw her when she was missing.”

  “I didn’t say or meant to imply that. But please, let me explain. That day I had a meeting with Mr. Mulder on his request. He wanted to talk to me about some endeavors of his and how I would feel the people, and the church, for that matter, would respond to them, once they went public.”

  “What kind of endeavors?” Bishop asked.

  “Well, therein lies a problem, because I can’t tell you. Mr. Mulder urged me to listen to him in the form of a confession, so I couldn’t reveal anything I heard.”

  “Is that normal business?”

  “It’s not unheard of. It’s kind of like how companies with trade secrets do it through NDAs. Well, you can see confession as sort of a non-disclosure agreement.”

  “You said you met her on the way out and gave her your business card. Why did you do that?”

  “Well, and I’m pushing the boundaries of confession here. In my conversation with Mulder, he pointed out he had a meeting with Jennifer Porter afterward and was going to ask her to work with him. That was why I gave her my business card. She saw I was a priest, so I guess I tried to give her sort of a way out or someone to talk to, should she want to after the conversation with Mulder.”

  “And did she?”

  “Did she what?” De Cremonese asked.

  “Contact you?

  “No. In a way, you did, for her.”

  Bishop zoned out for a long moment.

  “Are you okay?” De Cremonese asked.

  “Sorry. I’m fine. I just remembered Jennifer’s mother saying something about a work offer from Eldin Mulder. She said Jennifer had turned him down. Can I see one of your business cards?”

  “Sure.” He took one from his pocket and gave it to Bishop.

  Bishop smiled, nodding, as he examined the card.

  “You had a picture of your finding?” De Cremonese asked.

  “Oh, yes. I’m sorry.” Bishop took out his phone, worked the screen, and gave it to De Cremonese with the picture on it of the carved statue from the Arca Domas, and held the business card on top of it.

  De Cremonese looked at it carefully, and with two fingers, he zoomed in and out of it a couple of times, changing his view from the phone to the business card. “So, she did contact me,” he concluded.

  “In a way,” Bishop added.

  �
��And what’s this?” De Cremonese pointed to the carvings next to the logo of the Specola Vaticana.

  “That’s her message to me. It’s the logo of the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. It’s a silly thing between us. That’s how I knew it was a message for me, saying she was there.”

  “I recognize it now that you say it.” De Cremonese smiled. “Where’s there?”

  “Surprisingly, on the other side of the world. A place called Arca Domas on the Indonesian island of Java.”

  “That doesn’t surprise me at all,” De Cremonese responded.

  Bishop frowned and tilted his head.

  “I’m sorry....” De Cremonese said.

  “But you can’t tell me.” Bishop finished De Cremonese’s sentence. “Well, what can you tell me?”

  “Nothing specific from the meeting, but I’m wondering, how did you get to those, um, Arca Domos, you called it?”

  “Arca Domas. To make a long story short, a collaboration of two government agencies who were researching the disappearance of untouched and isolated ancient human tribes contacted me. They’d tried to get in contact with Jennifer as a linguistic anthropologist, and when they couldn’t reach her, they contacted me. One of the officials is an old friend of mine. Eventually, we went on a search for the lost tribes and Jennifer. At a certain point, the trail led to the Arca Domas. It seems Jennifer was all over the world at those tribes’ locations, leaving clues behind about being there.”

  “You say she’s been taken against her will?” De Cremonese asked.

  “It sure seems like that. Otherwise, why wouldn’t she make contact?”

  “That’s true. I must say, the whole thing worried me even more after I met with Mulder.”

  “What happened?” Bishop asked.

  “I got a call from a woman who introduced herself as Amie Coleman. She claimed she was Mulder’s personal assistant and had overheard our conversation. She had concerns about Mulder’s well-being should he continue the way he did. And please don’t ask me what that way was.”

  “I wasn’t going to.”

  “Anyway, she said she wanted to meet me, and we arranged a meeting that same day at a nearby café. I waited for over an hour, but she never showed.”

  “You never spoke to her again?” Bishop asked.

  “No. And now she has also disappeared, kidnapped by the Young Earth Movement.” De Cremonese stroke his beard.

  “I saw it on the news. Any thoughts about that? Do you know that organization?” Bishop asked.

  “Not really. But I know enough about similar organizations to know they were never into any form of real violence. It doesn’t seem to add up. But anyway, about two weeks ago, when I was in my home in Rome, I received a message from a colleague of mine to come to the observatory at Castel Gandolfo. He showed me two objects in the night sky, detected by the nightshift in our observatory here in the U.S. They were coming from Earth and heading for an unknown destination.”

  “Rockets with satellites?” Bishop suggested.

  “Of course, that was my first suggestion, but that night there were no known launches, and the trajectory seemed off for a satellite launch. Anyway, later that day, I traveled to our observatory here in Arizona, where together with another colleague, we researched the possibilities. The only thing we could come up with was that the two rockets are on their way to Mars for what could be a test in terraforming the planet.”

  “But terraforming Mars is decades away, if at all possible.”

  “Maybe.” De Cremonese rubbed his beard again. “We have strong suspicions that someone just might have skipped a few decades.”

  “Any idea where the rockets came from?”

  “Not exactly. We found a latitude of almost zero, so that’s on top of the equator, but that still leaves a possible fourteen countries and twenty-nine thousand miles to cover.”

  “And you think Mulder has something to do with it?”

  “That’s hard to say, but we know he’s been keen on Mars and is someone who has the financial means for it. We checked, but officially he doesn’t own anything on the equator. Of course, that doesn’t necessarily mean anything.”

  “Did you ask him?” Bishop asked.

  “Who, Mulder?”

  Bishop nodded.

  “I met with him a few days ago at the Logynous headquarters. I wanted to confront him with everything, but it didn’t come to that.”

  “What happened?”

  “Well, Mulder’s what happened. You probably know the man from TV or Twitter, where he seems to be an intelligent and reasonable figure. But, like most people with power I’ve met, they can be selfish, self-centered and, frankly, often show mild signs of autism.”

  Bishop grinned.

  “What is it?” De Cremonese asked.

  “Well, it’s a bit off-topic, but you read some of my work on human evolution. There’s an ever-growing scientific community that believes that autism, or sometimes more specific, Asperger syndrome, isn’t a form of illness or other kind of problem in humanity. They believe that it could possibly be the next natural step in human evolution. The same goes for ADHD. You know one in every fifty-nine people in the United States are affected by a form of autism? There’s an unofficial long list of famous U.S. scientists, entrepreneurs and celebrity Americans that show mild to medium signs of Asperger syndrome. So, who knows? But, sorry, what happened when you met the man again?”

  “Evolution is a strange and debatable thing.” De Cremonese smiled. “But about my meeting. I didn’t feel the man was up for a confrontation, and I was afraid that if I were to confront him, I could lose him as a contact, possibly forever. He might even go into hiding.”

  “I’m really starting to wonder what he told you in confession.”

  De Cremonese shrugged. “In any case, he described himself as being a eugenic, and when I debated the benevolence of describing oneself as a eugenic, he got angry with me. The discussion ended with me telling him about Amie contacting me and expressing her worries about him. I guess the same way that I did.”

  “And that was it?”

  “That was it. I tried to contact Mulder again to ask about Amie, but his office said he was out of the country. They did tell me there was no news about Amie.”

  “So, what do you make of all this?” Bishop asked.

  “I’m not sure,” De Cremonese replied. “But I have a strong feeling that somehow, in fact, it’s all connected to human evolution. Your missing tribes, the rockets, and the disappearance of Jennifer and Amie. Let me ask you this. In your work, ‘The Philosophical Implications of Proving Evolution,’ you concluded that human evolution could not be proven by using modern science computers. In fact, you claimed you had your doubts that we would ever be capable of developing computers powerful enough to prove it.”

  “I did,” Bishop confirmed reluctantly, wondering where De Cremonese was heading.

  “I believe you also stated that should it ever become possible to prove human evolution, mankind would open the door to manipulating and speeding it up—evolution, I mean.”

  Bishop nodded.

  “So, what would happen if you had a supercomputer, let’s say, like Eldin Mulder’s Occidium One—a quantum computer—and used it for exactly that purpose? The use of proving human evolution. Could that now be more successful than you were ten years ago?”

  Bishop rubbed his face with both hands. “I think it’s time you and I, together, try to get in contact with Mulder and find out.”

  “I think that’s a good idea,” De Cremonese replied.

  Chapter 26 –The Paperless Office

  Granite Bay, CA

  “I hope you don’t mind,” Bishop apologized from behind the wheel of the rented white Jeep Wrangler Sahara. “I shared all our information with my comrades at the NSA, NRO and my best friend, Walker Monroe, who helped me find you.”

  “You trust them?” De Cremonese asked.

  Bishop thought for a moment. “Yeah, I think I do. I mean, Walk
er and I go way, way back, Iggy is a bit different and I haven’t seen Lindsey for ages, but yeah, I trust them. And besides that, what have we got to hide?”

  “You never know with those government organizations. I always feel there’s a story behind the story.”

  Bishop nodded. “Are you sure we’re on the right track?”

  “That’s a good question,” De Cremonese replied, taking out his phone and placing it into the grip on the dashboard. “Open Lea,” he called out.

  On the screen, the blonde lady appeared. “How can I help you?” the artificial young woman asked.

  “Hi, Lea,” De Cremonese replied. “Do you remember me?”

  “Of course, I recognize you,” she said, looking to her right, where De Cremonese sat behind the wheel. “I helped you last week on your way to the Logynous headquarters. And I see you brought a friend.” Her face turned left, she blinked and then fell silent for a short moment. “Is that you, Professor Bishop—Matthew Bishop?”

  Bishop looked at De Cremonese and smiled. “That’s nifty. Yes, it’s me. Have we met before?”

  “No. But you have an easily recognizable face.”

  “Internet and social media,” De Cremonese pointed out.

  “Amazing. This is definitely the most incredible piece of AI I’ve ever seen,” Bishop replied.

  “Thank you,” Lea answered.

  “Truly incredible,” he repeated.

  “Is there something I can do for you, Father?” she asked.

  “Yes, there is,” De Cremonese answered. “I’m on my way to the Logynous headquarters again with my friend, and we’re wondering if we’re still on the right road?”

  “Ah, let me see.” She blinked a few times. “You are on Park Road about two point three miles from the Logynous headquarters. Keep right, and keep your current speed, and you should arrive in approximately three minutes. I do not see an appointment with any of the staff members here. Can I announce your arrival to someone?”

  “Um,” De Cremonese stammered. “We’re here to surprise Eldin Mulder, so we rather you didn’t announce us. If you don’t mind.”