Threshold

by Robinson, Jeremy

“What’s odd about it? They’ve been apart for what, ten years? And now they have a few days in a hotel. I’m telling you, they’re going to get a lot of use of the ‘Do not disturb’ sign.”

  King let out a laugh. “Thank you, Lew. You have just managed to overshadow all the awful things I’ve seen with something worse.”

  “Any leads on Fiona?”

  “We just missed her in Rome.”

  “You’ll get her back.”

  King had no reply. His confidence waned with every new discovery.

  “Take care, King.”

  “Copy that.”

  King hung up the phone and thought about his family. He was eager to see his parents again. To catch up. To re-form lost bonds and heal old wounds. More than anything, he wanted his parents to meet Fiona. Together again, they could use a grandchild to dote on, and Fiona, missing her grandmother deeply, could use a pair of caring grandparents in her life. It would do them all good, even King.

  But first he had to find Fiona and bring her home.

  He turned toward the window. The blue waves below grew larger as the plane descended for a landing at Ben Gurion International Airport.

  FORTY

  Haifa, Israel

  THE HOUR AND a half drive from the Tel Aviv airport to Technion was quiet and uneventful. Views of the Mediterranean were spectacular during the long coastal trip. And Haifa turned out to be the kind of quiet, café-filled town that college students adored. The only hiccup was that King had to leave his weapon behind; even the mighty Hercules had to submit to customs when leaving the ultra-secure airport. Alexander drove a black Mercedes that had been waiting for him in an airport garage. He maneuvered through the streets and highways like a local. King remembered the ancient man’s tale of meeting Jesus and realized he had likely made this trip several times in the past, perhaps on horseback, or even in sandals. The man might be just as comfortable anywhere in the world.

  As King began to think about what he would do with twenty-five hundred years of life, they pulled into a campus parking spot and stopped. The campus was a sea of white buildings and green trees. But there wasn’t a student in sight. Like zombies to a shopping mall, most of the student body had been drawn to a science symposium being hosted on the other side of campus.

  King noted Alexander’s familiarity with the campus and commented, “You’ve been here before?”

  “I’ve taken classes actually,” he replied.

  “With Davidson?”

  “He would have been a child when I attended.” He opened the front door of the tall white building that had five long windows stretching the full length of its facade. He held the door for King, allowing him to enter first. A receptionist greeted the pair as they entered.

  Alexander approached her with a smile, showing her a faculty I.D. card that had been waiting for him in the Mercedes’s glove compartment. She read the card, which identified him as a professor from the medical department. “I’m looking for Professor Davidson,” he said in Hebrew.

  She returned his smile and pointed him toward the elevator. “Fifth floor. Turn right off the elevator. Second door on the left.”

  “Thank you,” he replied.

  Thirty seconds later they exited onto the fifth floor and headed for Davidson’s open door. The man’s voice filtered out as he spoke on the phone, his back to the door. King knocked twice and then entered, followed by Alexander, who closed the door behind him.

  Amzi Davidson, who wore a bright yellow button-down shirt rolled to his elbows, held up a finger indicating he’d be right with them. The office was sparse. A small desk, a bookcase on either side of the door, and two metal-framed chairs were the only furniture. A large window looked out over the campus and provided a clear view of a modern art sculpture that looked like a metallic obelisk. The two other walls in the room held giant whiteboards. Multicolored notes in Hebrew, equations, and drawings filled both boards, which were stained gray from being erased over and over without actually being washed.

  Davidson hung up the phone and spun around with a smile. His gray eyes, shrunk by the thick, black-rimmed glasses he wore, were excited. But the genuine smile on his face fell when he saw them. He squinted at them. “You’re not from the medical department,” he said in Hebrew.

  “No, we’re not,” Alexander replied, also in Hebrew. “May we continue in English for my friend?”

  Davidson glanced at King. “Sure,” he said in perfect English, his face brightening. “Are you with the press?”

  “Afraid not,” King said.

  The man soured. “Then what’s this about?”

  Alexander took a seat and cut right to the heart of the matter. “Golems.”

  Davidson leaned back slowly. A pen appeared in his hand and went to his mouth. “What’s the application? Is this for a theory?”

  “Real-world application,” Alexander replied.

  Davidson plucked the pen from his mouth. “Well, I’m afraid that while the written word is powerful, it is not that powerful. It cannot grant life.”

  “What about the spoken word?” King asked.

  A grin came to Davidson’s face. “So you are seeking the opinion of a physicist and an ex-rabbi?”

  King’s and Alexander’s silence answered the question. Davidson looked at his watch. “Very well. I have a few minutes. I must warn you, however, to not expect two diverging theories. My research in religion and science have come to the same conclusion.”

  “That’s why we’re here,” Alexander said.

  “Then let’s start at the beginning. The big-bang theory attempts to answer how the universe was first formed, but it doesn’t answer the bigger question: Why does the universe exist? Because of this, it’s a hollow mathematical model. It assumes everything came from nothing, ex nihilo, and states that the universe had a beginning. But there is another option: the universe has always existed.”

  He stood and erased a portion of the whiteboard, marring his yellow sleeve. He wrote out an equation: 0 = 0 + 0 + 0 + 0 + 0 …

  “This is the mathematical statement that shows the big bang is impossible. The sum of nothing, is nothing!”

  He erased some of the plus signs and added minus: 0 = 0 − 0 + 0 − 0 + 0 − 0. “This is the Null Axiom, developed by Terence Witt, which states that the difference of nothing is nothing, meaning everything is made of nothing. Thus, the universe never had a beginning because it is nothing, which is also limitless and timeless.”

  Davidson checked his watch. “Limitless also describes my thoughts on the matter and I need to speak at the symposium in an hour, so rather than blather on about nonexpansion, cosmic microwaves, decaying photons, or eternal equilibrium, I’ll cut right to the theological meat of the matter.

  “Null physics mathematically describes the speaking of the reality into existence. In the same way the press spins a story by changing the context of facts, the nonreal is made real by the words of a creator spinning the context of limitless nothingness and telling a story.”

  King rolled his head from side to side. “So … if God”—he made air quotations with his fingers—“spoke existence into being, what language did He speak?”

  Davidson burst into laughter. When he saw neither of his guests sharing in the moment, he stopped. “You’re serious? The language of God?”

  “Quite,” Alexander said.

  The pen reentered Davidson’s mouth. “Some have speculated that DNA is the language of God. It has a coding system—an alphabet if you will—rules of spelling and grammar as well as meaning and purpose. In many ways it resembles computer code. And ninety-seven percent of it is considered junk, meaning we have yet to figure out what it says. It also obeys Zipf’s law, which simply shows that when words from a document, say a novel, are graphed by the number of times they appear in a book, from most popular to least popular, you get a straight line. DNA broken up into words and listed by popularity align perfectly with Zipf’s law. Shazam, it’s a language!”

  “But we can’t spe
ak the language of DNA,” King said. “We can’t verbalize it.”

  “In your case, you don’t have to. It’s already present, but if your speech spins the context…” His eyes brightened. “Researchers at the Hado Institute Australia have shown how words can affect the physical world. Spoken words create vibrations. Each word has its own unique resonance—its own pattern of vibration. They spoke different words, both positive and negative, to water before freezing it, transforming it into its crystalline state. Water exposed to the words ‘angel,’ ‘beautiful,’ and ‘life’ formed dazzling, symmetrical crystals. Water exposed to words such as ‘dirty,’ ‘devil,’ and ‘death’ became malformed, cracked, and burst, almost like something had exploded from within.

  “A sound wave is, in essence, a disturbance moving through a medium, shifting energy from a starting point to an ending point. And where there is energy, there is information. We detect sound waves through our ears, which transfers the information to our brain, where it is translated into sound. But there is more information in sound than our brains can decipher.”

  “If sounds are affecting the physical world around us, why are we not noticing?” King asked.

  “We are limited by what we can sense. In the same way that our ears cannot hear the information conveyed in every sound, our other senses might miss the results. Take steganography for instance.”

  King nodded. He was familiar with the use of steganography in military applications. World War II microdots, Morse code in fabric patterns, and sign language hidden in photographs had all been used in military history. In more modern applications, terrorists had used the technology to communicate through coded message board avatars.

  Davidson opened his laptop, tapped the keys, and brought up a Web site. He showed them a photo on the screen.

  “Though this looks like an ordinary photo of an oceanside park, it is much more. By adjusting the pixels minutely, you can encode text or other photos within an image and it is imperceptible to the human eye. Decoded, this picture reads…”

  He clicked on the image, which opened a page of text:

  Science! true daughter of Old Time thou art!

  Who alterest all things with thy peering eyes.

  Why preyest thou thus upon the poet’s heart,

  Vulture, whose wings are dull realities?

  “Poe,” Alexander said. “Part of his sonnet to science. Cute.”

  Davidson waggled his finger. “Perhaps even more applicable to your query is the spectrogram.”

  King sat up straighter. Much of what the professor had said either sounded like bunk, or he already knew. But spectrograms were new to him and he suspected the man was about to uncover a nugget of truth.

  “As I mentioned before, sound carries more information than the human ear can perceive. A spectrograph is a visual representation of a sound wave. Most times it’s innocuous, but images, and messages, can be coded into sounds and, in theory, into words. There is a video online…” Davidson spun the laptop around, showing them a YouTube video titled “Alien Abduction Caught Live on Ustream.”

  King winced, fearing Davidson was a crackpot.

  The facial expression didn’t go unnoticed. “Have no fear, this is just an example of clever marketing.” He played the video, which showed two men talking about aliens and abductions before one of them moved to the kitchen where a star chart, and an alien in the window, awaited. What followed was a creatively made abduction scene featuring bright lights and a wavering, high-pitched sound.

  “That sound you hear is much more than a simple noise. It is an image.” Davidson quickly located a file online, downloaded it, and opened up a small software package. He ran the sound through the software and an image of several vertical and horizontal lines was shown. He zoomed in on a portion so the lines could be more easily seen.

  The lines meant nothing to King, but Alexander figured it out. “Binary. Tall lines represent the number one. Short lines … zero. Or vice versa.”

  “Exactly right,” Davidson said. “Within the sound is a binary code, which translates into English. A Web site I believe, which leads to another site. All part of an alternate-reality game.”

  Davidson stood and erased the equations he’d written on the whiteboard. He picked up a red pen and wrote as he spoke. “So we have deduced that, one, there is much more information in sound that we can perceive. Two, sound is capable of altering the physical world, implying that said extra information exists. And three, ninety-seven percent of DNA is a mystery to us. Who’s to say the right DNA, carried as information in a sound wave and applied to the physical world, couldn’t affect life in the nonliving? Of course, if this were used to create a golem there would be other concerns.”

  “Such as?” King asked, trying not to sound over interested.

  “Traditionally, a golem created for less than noble purposes will become more and more evil each time it kills. But the dark energy that consumes the golem remains with its creator, even after its destruction. Any subsequent golems created will be corrupted as well. It’s said that golem masters often die with black hearts, their bodies and souls corrupted. It’s all hearsay of course; you know how it is with history.”

  Alexander wore a funny grin. “I do.”

  “Perhaps the stories are a warning,” Davidson said, “to not use the life imbuing language?”

  King and Alexander glanced at each other. Given what they knew, it seemed a likely scenario.

  Davidson saw the look they shared. He sat up straight. “You’ve discovered this language, haven’t you?”

  “No,” King said.

  “We’re just researching the idea,” Alexander added quickly.

  “For a movie.”

  This last statement totally deflated Davidson’s excitement. He was about to ask them to leave when King’s phone rang. He answered the phone, “I’m here.”

  “We found Ridley,” Duncan said on the other end.

  “Where?”

  “London. Security camera caught a glimpse of him at Heathrow Airport.”

  “Was Fiona with him?”

  “She’s not in the shot, but that doesn’t mean—”

  “I know. And it doesn’t matter. We’re going to London.”

  “I have every available resource tracking him. Call me when you land.”

  “Will do.” King hung up the phone and looked at Alexander. “He’s in London.”

  Both men stood. Alexander opened the door to leave. Davidson stopped them with a clearing of his throat. “Who’s in London?”

  “Brad Pitt. Thanks for your help,” King said, then exited the room.

  The professor, who now wore a broad smile, said, “If you see the press on your way down, send them up.”

  King stopped and leaned back into the office. Something about Davidson expecting press coverage put him on edge. “You never did mention why the press was coming to see you today.”

  “I published my theory. Null physics and the Spoken Creation. Technion put out a press release yesterday. I’m giving a speech on the topic in”—he looked at his watch, his eyes widening—“forty-five minutes.”

  King tensed. If Davidson had made his theory public and Ridley discovered it, he would instantly see where the research would eventually lead. He had already wiped out every ancient language that might be used to reproduce the so-called language of God. But if modern science were to uncover the language again by studying the effects of sound on the environment, then …

  Davidson saw King’s sour expression. “What? What’s wrong?”

  “I’m afraid you may have painted a very large target on your—”

  Movement outside the large office window caught King’s attention. The metal obelisk that had been standing outside was hurtling toward the office like a spear.

  “Get down!” King shouted, diving for the professor.

  A second later the obelisk crashed through the window with the force of a wrecking ball.

  FORTY-ONE

 
Washington, D.C.

  TOM DUNCAN SAT behind the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office. His suit coat hung over the back of his chair, his sleeves were rolled up, and his tie dangled loosely. He looked like any other hardworking president, except for the fact that he was leaning back in the chair, staring blankly at the ceiling. For all the power his office granted him, he found himself momentarily immobilized. As the eyes of the world watched his every act outside the rounded walls of the Oval Office, scrutinized every word, every inflection of his voice, every facial expression—looking for a flaw—inaction became the safest course of conduct. With the wolves circling and out for blood, anything he did might make them attack.

  What made this hard for Duncan was that he was also a wolf. As a former Army Ranger he excelled when in the movement. As president he applied his energy to the challenges faced by the country, and as Deep Blue, he focused his military mind on the Chess Team’s missions. But now he could only monitor and advise. A deeper involvement could expose and endanger the team. The Chess Team was hidden but not buried, not black. There had been no reason to hide their existence from the government he ran. But now …

  The time for a new direction, a new plan, was upon him.

  Hard choices and big changes needed to be made.

  So he retreated to his office, cleared his mind of the media, of Marrs, and searched for solutions.

  Before he could focus his thoughts, the phone on his desk rang. Its digital chime didn’t get a chance to finish as Duncan sat up and hit the speakerphone button. The White House switchboard had been given strict instructions to allow calls from a very short list of people through, each with a unique ring. This one belonged to Dominick Boucher.

  “What’ve you got?”

  “I’m faxing it over now.”

  The full-color fax machine behind the desk blinked as the incoming file transferred.

  “Is this about Ridley?”

  “Yes sir,” Boucher said. “Two major developments. He rented a gold Peugeot 307 Cabriolet from Europcar at Heathrow. Europcar GPS chips all their cars and we tracked it to Wiltshire County.”