Lovers of Babel (20 page)

My
words obviously pricked the doctor, because he stopped walking and stood completely still for a while with his back facing me.

“What I wrote in that book is ancient history. The ideas and concepts were no longer relevant. I was just a young and impressionable researcher like you who wanted to make a difference. Truth is, that book is irrelevant
,” the doctor wasn’t convincing me.

“I don’t believe you. That book started a war. I need to know what’s in it. Please, Dr. Stein, just tell me where I can
find German Leon.”

He
turned and looked at me with a forlorn expression.

“I don’t know where to find him. The last I heard, he made it
Underground. In the old world he lived in London, but that could’ve changed after we moved Underground.”

I
nodded pensively.

“
Amias, whatever you’re thinking of doing with that book, just stop. You’re opening up a can of worms. You have no idea what you’re getting yourself into,” he urged me.

“Oh, but I do. I know exactly what I’m doing, but I can promise you that no one
else will know about it.”

I
walked to the door and put my hand on the knob looking back at the doctor.

“You’ve read the entire Book of Wisdom haven’t you?”

He dropped his gaze.

             
“Did it change your life like the others, doctor?”

Then, he
simply walked back to his desk and sat down with his head bowed.

I
left his office with a new lead: German Leon could be alive and living in Underground London. I took this new information with me on the lightning rail back to Washington that same day.

             
Once I got back to Washington I started more extensive research into the history of the Leons. According to the information I gathered about German, he was a medical researcher who stopped researching after ten years to focus more on his wife and kids. Also, his reputation in the medical community had taken a beating when he was caught conducting experiments to cure cancer using only organic substances. There was an unspoken rule amongst doctors to keep all research within the confines of synthetic science in order to maximize profit. In other words, cancer would never be cured because if it were to be cured doctors and insurance companies would make less money. Chemotherapy was the product and cancer was the consumer.  German thought this was unethical and could no longer practice medicine with a clear conscience.

I
discovered that the Leon family was very wealthy. This confirmed what Dr. Stein said about German Leon making it Underground.  After Alex realized his last Book of Wisdom was losing government backing, he sold the book to the C.I.A. for an undisclosed amount of money. According to his family history, after this exchange, Alex immediately retired and moved his family to one of the richest neighborhoods in Dubai. It was said that Alex kept the original copy of the Book of Wisdom somewhere secret.  Some conspiracy theorists think that Alex gave his copy to his grandson while on his deathbed and that grandson passed it down as a family heirloom.

I
had plenty of information about German’s grandfather, but not enough to tell him whether German was still alive. And if he was, that didn’t mean he would have the book. After all, he never met his great great great grandfather. The chance of a family heirloom surviving the destruction of the world was unlikely. Still, that book contained such power that it seemed indestructible. I need to find German to get closer to finding the Book of Wisdom, but how do I find a needle in a hay stack?

The Underground is
one third of how large the world was before the apocalypse. All seven continents still had a piece of land, but it was Underground and the population in each continent was significantly smaller than the former world. I know that before the apocalypse, in order to enter the Underground, you had to be a citizen of that particular country. Although the system in the Underground changed to a one world type of structure, before the apocalypse no one could cross a territory unless they had a proper VISA and were citizens. German was from the UK and before the apocalypse he resided in London, England. If he was able to purchase a spot underground he would’ve entered there and possibly stayed. I just booked a round-trip ticket on the lightning rail to Europe, destination: Underground London, England.

September 20, 2134.
Clink Hotel. Underground London, England –
I want to make sure I journal about each and every detail of my quest for the Book of Wisdom. The train ride here was much more enjoyable than the one to Ohio. Inside it looked like a modern subway with LED monitors on the back of every chair equipped with cordless head phones that were placed just inside the ear lobe. The interior was pure white and the seats were fire red. The lightning rails are always full of people traveling to different parts of the Underground. It is the fastest way to travel and it’s also the most comfortable. Depending on how long the journey is there are small individual rooms for passengers who want to nap in private. The longest journey is eight hours and that’s from one end of the Underground to the other. There are no windows because the train travels inside a very narrow tunnel. There are twenty trains in the Underground that travel from country to country and to states in between. Throughout the city streets there is always the low murmur of the train speeding by through the tunnel. I’ve always loved this mode of transportation.

I
arrived in London at night across the street from the glowing Westminster Abbey. The streets are lit with fire lamps like the ones before electricity. This is the part of town where everything has a vintage London feel and there are red telephone booths on almost every corner for the sake of nostalgia. I checked into the Clink Hotel just a few blocks up the cobblestone street. When I got to my room I immediately started looking for German Leon in the digital residential pages. There were only two names that showed up in the whole of London. I cancelled out the one who was listed as 60 years old since my research calculated his age to be somewhere in his early 30s.

The residence was ten miles away in the small ocean town called Brookshire.
Tomorrow I will take a trolley to see Mr. Leon who has a wife and two kids, one of whom is mildly autistic. From what I’ve researched about him, he loves his son deeply and for the past two years since his birth he has slaved day and night trying to find a cure for his son’s autism.

The next night –
In the break of day, I could see the brick house from a distance and was reluctant to knock on a complete stranger’s door in the middle of the day to discuss his great great grandfather who had been dead for over a century. I needed to collect my thoughts. I began to rehearse what I was going to say to Mr. Leon when suddenly a tall man was running toward me with a limp two-year-old cradled in his arms. Following him was a frantic woman dressed in a lab coat with her hair in a bun. I jumped out of the way and watched them as they ran toward the brick house that I was preparing to approach. I realized it was the Leon family and ran after them to try and help in some way. This was the perfect way to break the ice.

“Sir!?
I’m a doctor. Is there any way I can help?” I asked as I stepped inside their home. “I saw you running and it looks like an emergency…”

“Oh yes please. My son is autistic and struggles with epilepsy, but he hasn’t had a seizure in years. We were just on our way back from picking up my wife from the factory when he collapsed in the middle of the street!”

“Here, let me push his head back and raise his chin so that his airway is clear.”

With one
hand on the boy’s ginger head I placed my other hand into the boy’s mouth and pulled out his tongue.

“This is so he doesn’t choke. Now, grab some ice and place it on his head to bri
ng his temperature down.” I said to the wife.

German’s son stopped convulsing and his body released the tension.

“He’ll need plenty of water to rehydrate. It seems that dehydration caused him to go into a seizure, but it looks like he’ll recover easy since the episode was short. From now on he should drink plenty of water throughout the day,” I advised.

“Thank you so much for your help,
Mr…”

“
Amias. You can call me Amias since this is a slightly informal meeting.”

“Okay,
Amias. I am German Leon and this is my wife Sarah and our son Dominic. I have a daughter who is in school now. I had previously worked in the medical field for almost 10 years, but for some reason I freeze up when it comes to treating my own flesh and blood. Tell me, how on earth did you happen to be on this street at such an opportune time?” German asked insistently. 

I searched my brain for the best answer. I needed him to trust me. Even though I helped his son I needed to ease my w
ay into the topic of his great grandfather and the Book of Wisdom.

“Well, um, I’m in town for research from the states and I was ta
king a stroll along the countryside and happened upon your street by accident. You’ve got quite a pair of legs on you Mr. Leon. You must be a runner,” I added to divert the subject.

“Oh call me German please. Well, I ran cross country in school
, but I think it was my parental instincts kicking in.”

“Like the woman from the old age w
ho lifted a car off of her baby. It’s funny what the human body can do in times of distress.”

“That’s right.
Can I get you an
ErgoChill 
from the fridge? Or perhaps whiskey to take the edge off?”

German’s wife was still tending to her son on the couch.

“A whiskey sounds good. Thanks!”

As German walked to the kitchen
I asked Sarah if I could look around their home.

“Your family is very eclectic I see.”

“Oh please give yourself a nice tour.  I would show you around myself but,” she pointed at her son.

“Don’t worry about it. I’m
quite the scavenger.”

I’ve never been one for humor, but I wanted to lighten the mood
.

I made my
way into the din where there were wooden floors and floral furniture. The room hadn’t the slightest hint of modernity which made me hopeful that German would find use for an ancient text. I looked around inspecting everything. Then I noticed a deformed looking cactus plant inside a glass case sitting on an end table. I thought it was strange to incase a plant, but I chocked it up to terrible interior decorating skills. There was a brick fireplace to the left of the cluttered room and on the mantel were twenty different pictures and collectibles. The pictures were of various vacations and school photos that the family had taken over the years. There was one old photograph that stood out from the rest. It was of a man who looked to be in his mid-twenties holding a cell phone. I picked it up for a closer look.

“Oh, I see you’ve found my great
great great grandfather,” German remarked startling me.

I nearly jumped out of my skin, but I kept my composure quite well.

“This is your grandfather? I guess I should’ve realized he was an ancestor seeing as how he’s holding a 21
st
century cellular device. Those things haven’t been used since the turn of the century.”

I grabbed
the whiskey from German’s hand.

“Yes you’re right about that. Things have changed a lot since then.”

“So, what was his name if you don’t mind me asking?”

I hope
d I didn’t sound too interested.

German paused.

“His name was Alex and he was a preacher.”

Bingo. I was closer to my
goal, but needed a convincing transition into the Book of Wisdom topic.

I sensed that German noticed I
was preoccupied with the photo.

“So, what type of research did you come here to do?”

My mind went into overdrive.

“Oh, well I’m a mind sciences researcher and I’m writing a report on the progression of the human mind from the 21
st
century to now. I came here because there’s a science library with a lot of rare material I could use.”

“H
ow interesting.”

I gulped the
whiskey.

“Um, by chance, your great
great great grandfather wouldn’t happen to be Alex Leon the Evangelical pastor would it?”

“Yes. Although he wasn’t exactly well known,”
he answered skeptically.

“Oh of course he was! At least among the religious community he was. He caused a revolution in the theology community when he claimed to have the last copy of The Book of Wisdom. A famous psychological researcher even wrote a dissertation using his book some decades later.”

“Yes well the subject was taboo, but my grandfather was fearless.”

German pushed back his glasses and looked to be in thought.

“That book was more than taboo. It caused an all-out war in the streets. People were changed after reading that book. Imagine what would’ve happened to society if he wasn’t forced to give the book to the CIA It’s hard to believe that some
thing so monumental is vanished.”