by Brandt Legg
Sixteen
After six frustrating days of wandering around France in search of any leads on what might have happened to Nostradamus’s Eysen, Rip, Gale, and Cira retreated back to Paris.
While their daughter slept in the other room, Rip and Gale reviewed gigs of data on Europe in the early 1500s. That’s when Rip saw it.
“Look at this!” he said, swiveling his screen so Gale could see.
Gale studied the image for a few seconds before she gasped, then turned to Rip and shared a look they’d exchanged countless times in the years they’d been working on the Eysen.
“Do you know what this means?” he asked as he turned back to the image filling the screen.
“It means we’ve found the seventh recipient.” Gale smiled a ‘we just won the lottery’ smile. Number seven was a big deal. They had been stuck at number six for a long time. Crying Man had made it clear the Cosegans had inserted nine spheres into Rip’s time, which could include the prior ten thousand years. Finding them had proven almost impossible. They need them all but were almost out of time. Their partner, Savina, was running down a good lead in Egypt, but she had attracted the attention of their rivals.
Rip looked again at the painting staring back at them from the large monitor. It depicted the most famous face in the world.
“How could we have missed this?” Rip asked, frustration and elation blending evenly in his tone.
“It’s been hiding in plain sight all this time,” she said chewing on a hunk of baguette smeared with olive tapenade.
Rip pulled up another window in a different screen. “Even though we know, this doesn’t necessarily mean number seven is going to just drop into our laps.”
“We know where to begin. We know where it started.” She handed him a slab of covered bread.
“But we knew that before.”
“We didn’t have proof until now.”
As soon as her words settled and registered, they both went silent, realizing the impact of their discovery. They looked back at the painting on the screen, at the face of Jesus staring back at them. The irony and impact of his presence in their hunt for the nine Eysens was almost too much to accept. Their eyes went again to the object in the great man’s hand.
“Even though we suspected,” Rip began, “it’s truly unbelievable.”
“Yet I’m looking at it,” Gale said, staring at the painting, taking in its otherworldly glow. “I’m looking, but it’s very hard to believe.”
They clinked glasses filled with Pellegrino and lemon slices. The recently discovered painting, entitled “Salvator Mundi”, painted by Leonardo da Vinci, depicted Jesus Christ holding a glass orb.
“It means Jesus really had an Eysen.”
Rip nodded. Another silence followed, and then a worried expression crossed his face. “Wait a minute, if you think about it, what if we have it wrong? What if it wasn’t Jesus’s Eysen, but it was da Vinci’s?”
“Why would da Vinci paint it?”
“I don’t know, but it’s not as though he lived in the time of Jesus. He lived fifteen hundred years after Christ’s crucifixion.”
“So…?”
“So why did he put it in his hand?”
“He wouldn’t have painted it unless he knew,” Gale said.
“Maybe.”
“Do you think he had writings?”
Rip said nothing for a moment, lost in deep thought. “I don’t think he had writings, I think da Vinci had an Eysen.”
“Maybe they both did,” Gale suggested.
“He still would have had to know about Jesus’.”
“He saw Jesus had an Eysen in his own Eysen. Maybe the Eysen showed him an image of Jesus holding one, so he saw him use it.”
“Then why didn’t we see it in our Eysen?” Rip asked.
“I don’t know, but we need all nine to make the connections . . . they all do something different.”
“Still, what if it was Leonardo’s Eysen, and he just projected it? Assumed that Jesus had his own Eysen or wished that he had one? That would change things.”
“So we either have Jesus having an Eysen and not Leonardo, or Leonardo having one and not Jesus, or…”
There was a pause, then Gale smiled suddenly.
“They each had their own,” she said. “Or da Vinci had the Eysen that belonged to Jesus.”
Rip laughed. “Wouldn’t that be something. Although I prefer they each had one, because that would mean we’ve identified the original recipients of seven and eight, and we only have one more to go.”
“We have to find them first.”
Salvator Mundi by Leonardo da Vinci
He nodded. “They are two of the most influential people in world history. How could they not have had an Eysen—both of them.”
“You realize the implications?” Gale said. “There are a lot of people who are not going to be happy with our theory that Jesus had an Eysen.”
“Why? What difference would it make?”
“They might think it takes away some of his greatness, that maybe his connection with, and/or to God, maybe it was to the universe instead.”
“Won’t be the first time we’ve been accused of casting a different light on Christianity.”
“Maybe, but this time is different. This time we’re not talking about biblical prophecies, or the laws of the Catholic Church, this time we’re taking on the core of everything.”
“I’m sorry if people’s faith isn’t strong enough to believe the story, however they want to believe it. If they want to think Jesus is the son of God, or Jesus is God himself, if Jesus never had an Eysen, whatever, that’s up to them. Belief should always be about whatever their faith tells them, whatever feels true in their heart. I can’t be concerned if I say or do something that contradicts their beliefs. Who am I against their faith? They should ignore me.”
Suddenly a window blew open and rain and torrential wind blew their gathered papers all over the place.
“Good luck with that,” Gale told him as they ran around shutting the window and gathering their papers.
“If something I write or say weakens their faith, then their faith wasn’t that strong to begin with. What’s with this storm?”
“You don’t understand the fanatics.” She looked to the window. “I don’t know, but it’s already dying down.”
“The storm or the fanatics?”
“Both, I hope.”
He shook his head. “I have to proceed. We need those nine Eysens. If Jesus, Leonardo da Vinci, the Pope, or God himself had one of them, we need to know what happened to it, where it is, and get it back into the alignment of the others before the Foundation, or anyone else, gets one.”
“I know,” Gale said, and then asked the question that had weighed heavily on both of them for more than a year. “Why hasn’t the Crying Man come back to talk to us again? He could tell us where they went. What could’ve happened to him?”
“That’s why we can’t waste a moment,” Rip said. “His absence proves that the end has already begun.”
Seventeen
As the footsteps passed, Trynn began breathing again.
“I think it was just a romantic couple out late.” Ovan winked. “Guardians never laugh.”
“Have you been able to figure it out?” Trynn asked, jumping back to the point of their meeting.
“It’s exceedingly difficult. All I have are the shards and the scraps.”
“We’re lucky to have those,” Trynn said, speaking of the remnants of older Eysens that had been ordered destroyed by The Circle. “If it hadn’t been for . . . ” Trynn paused, not wanting to utter the name of the person who had collected the scraps and hidden them until Trynn could safely collect them.
“It took a long time to get them back in any kind of order.” Ovan kept stretching his hands, rubbing them, manipulating them farther than any Cosegan could. His double jointed hands were legendary among his scientific colleagues, but made Trynn queasy to watch.
> “I know, I know. But if I could just work on the master sphere, this would all go so much faster.”
Trynn had made the decision not to let Ovan know the whereabouts of the master sphere. If he was ever found out or caught, Ovan would have to tell all he knew. It was too big a risk, even if it meant delays in the project. Trynn only nodded and indicated for Ovan to continue.
“I was able to patch together a string.” He paused and waited for Trynn's reaction.
“Really?” Trynn said, genuinely impressed.
“Yes.”
Trynn smiled. He loved and revered Ovan. “I always knew you were a little bit of a wizard yourself.”
“Once the string went through, I could see more than just instants. I got days, twice I could see close to a full week at one time.” Ovan had never before been able to get more than just small flashes of events through the fragments he had, making his job incredibly difficult, but by somehow figuring out a way to amplify the power of the single shards, it meant longer durations could be seen.
“And what did you find?” Trynn asked, looking back at the light from the walkway once again.
“I think I discovered our next candidate. Even by our standards, this one is quite something.”
“How close?” Trynn asked.
Ovan immediately knew that Trynn was asking how many years away this candidate was from the Nostradamus Eysen insertion. “Seventy years earlier.” Ovan sounded a little worried, as if this were too close.
However, Trynn put him at ease. “That’s far enough.” He paused to think for a minute. “Yes, I’m sure I can make that work.”
“Good,” Ovan said, sounding relieved. “Because this one isn’t just smart, he is in a perfect position. And there’s something else . . . ”
“What?” Trynn asked, anticipating the answer might be something they had been searching for, but dared not hope for.
“He is a descendant.”
Trynn stared at the old man, wanting to cry, feeling like he might laugh. He took a deep breath, as if trying to taste the truth of it. “Are you certain?”
“Yes. This one is a direct descendant of the Etherens.”
“Ovan, you may have just saved us,” Trynn said. They both knew he wasn’t just talking about them personally, he meant all the Cosegans, all of humanity, everything.
“I hope so,” Ovan said. “I think if we can get the Eysen there, and our candidate can figure out how to use it, he will be suitable to take the necessary steps. But you’ll have to see how it looks in the master sphere. How soon will you be able to do it?”
“I’d go right now, if it was safe,” he said, checking the walkway again.
“But it’s not.”
“Tomorrow, first light. Nothing is as important as this.”
“But the risks? So close to the Imaze launch, how can you be so sure the guardians won’t find you?”
“There are ways,” Trynn said. “And we still have some friends left.”
“Good then,” Ovan said, sounding satisfied. “Where are we on the clock?” He reached into his pocket, retrieved a small piece of root, and put it in his mouth.
Trynn thought of the constantly changing Terminus clock and checked his strandband, a kind of Cosegan command center; three bands, each the thickness of angel hair pasta, one gold, another metal not known to modern man, and one a rare interplanetary crystal. Inserted into all three was energy thread, technology that would baffle the future inhabitants of Silicon Valley. Continuous streams of data could be retrieved and projected through it. In this case, it retrieved the Terminus clock from a linked algorithm.
Time remaining until the Terminus Doom: 17 days
“Seventeen.”
Ovan scowled while chewing. “I’ll get to work on the next one.”
“Next one?” Trynn asked. “There can’t be a next one. I’ll be lucky to get this Eysen in place. We have no time, there isn’t enough globotite. This candidate has to be the last.”
“But we can’t take that chance,” Ovan said. “What if we have another Nostradamus, another disaster?”
“We won’t.”
“I’ll get working, just in case.”
Trynn wasn’t sure it was worth risking Ovan to find another candidate they’d never be able to use, but he also wasn’t sure it was worth risking not having another candidate in the impossible chance that they needed one. “Okay, do whatever you think is best.”
They heard another noise.
Once it passed, Trynn whispered the critical question. “Tell me the name of the candidate. Who gets the next Eysen?”
“He is called Leonardo da Vinci.”
Eighteen
After the late night meeting with Ovan, Trynn arrived at his lab the following morning later than usual. The entire enclosed facility was almost a mile long, and nearly as wide. Thousands of different types of light filled the space in various states and intensities. Cosegans had harvested, filtered, and learned to manipulate sunlight, other starlight, moonlight, lightning, fire light, and countless other forms of light-energy. Through the use of mirrors and other reflective surfaces, shadows, and a million artificial means, they had, for hundreds of thousands of years, created an entire world based on the power of light.
Inside a twenty thousand square foot command section, several of Trynn's top assistants were busy cataloging aspects of a recent skyway energy project he’d been leading. They had been surprised at the instruction waiting for them to essentially halt progress on the skyway and inventory the process. However, it all made sense to them when a unit of guardians burst into the lab. The staff realized once again that Trynn sometimes seemed to possess prophetic powers. Although some of the scientists were not willing to speculate beyond the fortunate timing of his many coincidental events, they were still happy to not have the delicate energy work they would have been otherwise involved in disrupted by the intrusion.
“Please move away from your stations,” demanded the guardian known as Tracer. “Quickly!”
The staff and Trynn did as they were told, since refusing a guardian’s command would be met with harsh penalties, possibly as severe as banishment.
Tracer projected a hologram of a person from his strandband. It could have been Trynn’s translucent, identical twin.
“We have a match,” Tracer said, pointing to Trynn. Immediately, two other guardians moved toward the composed, radiant, serious Cosegan as if he were a dangerous fugitive. They had been here before, and could have recognized him on site. However, some Cosegans had the ability to transform their identities, something forbidden by The Circle, therefore the guardians were required to verify.
“We have nothing to hide,” Trynn said.
“I’m sure you don’t,” Tracer responded politely. “We prefer to be certain.”
The two guardians stood on either side of him as thirty others searched the large room with laser-scanners and other equipment, some of which Trynn had helped invent.
Trynn smiled to himself, knowing there were ways to beat the scanners, but he hadn’t risked it. Safer to be innocent, he thought. Or at least appear that way.
While the guardians wasted his time, he reflected on how it had come to this. The Cosegan society had evolved into a kind of technological Utopia, with new technologies being created at a furious rate. For millennia, a kind of high-tech arms race had existed, which had spurred The Circle’s cautious plight to root out, or make obsolete, any invention being used for nefarious purposes. Yet it had been that same utopian drive that had created the current dilemma, and brought about the conditions leading to the Terminus Doom.
“We have some questions,” Tracer said, bringing him back from the frustrating history he often relived.
“Send them,” Trynn said. An instant later, they were projecting from his wristband. Standard, non-subversion queries. He moved his fingers in the air and efficiently filled in the blanks.
Tracer nodded at the responses, all blue light compliant.
Trynn looked at the man’s infer-gun, a laser weapon capable of inflicting death or merely stunning, depending on the setting. They were highly accurate at close range, but not made for distance. In those cases, guardians would employ a screamer-gun, which was a lethal laser rifle, named for the loud sound it made when fired.
“We’re a non-violent society,” Trynn said, motioning to Tracer’s infer-gun.
“This aims to keep it that way,” he said, patting the polished, charcoal-colored weapon a little larger than a .44 Magnum.
It was true, guardians were there to keep the peace, and it was extremely rare that weapons were ever used. Trynn remembered the last time someone had been shot. If he hadn’t been a young boy at the time, he might have recognized the incident as foreshadowing his own fate. But the guardians were usually unarmed. Most Cosegans had never seen a weapon in real life. The Arc had chosen to send the guardians armed today, as a clear message to Trynn: “Do not cross The Circle.”
Nineteen
“Allegedly, Leonardo painted the portrait of Jesus for King Louis XII of France,” Gale said, reading from her computer tablet. “Something about the King’s consort, Anne of Brittany. I guess she was especially religious.”
“Why is it called ‘Salvator Mundi’?”
“It translates to Savior of the World.”
“That’s appropriate,” Rip said. “When was it painted?”
“Let’s see . . . apparently, it was likely commissioned just after the conquests of Milan and Genoa. Experts say it was probably completed sometime between 1499 and 1510, with most agreeing closer to 1500.”
“How old would the master have been? Is there more tapenade?”
“Yes, on the counter, get me one too. Da Vinci was born in 1452, so between age forty-seven and fifty-eight.”
“His death?” He handed her more bread and popped some rolled up endive into her mouth, then kissed her.
“Age sixty-seven in 1519. By then he was living in France, under the sponsorship of the king.”