Old Earth (20 page)

“A sketch of what you felt in the cave.”

Now, with McCauley’s handwritten scribbling, the pyramid had indeed taken shape, but with far greater impact. Not just a pyramid, but a pyramid of numbers. Very familiar numbers.

• • •

BAKERSFIELD, CA
THE NEXT DAY

The introduction at the door had been cordial and quick. Greene, actually awake at mid-day, invited the two paleontologists into his home. He was in his early thirties, about two hundred pounds, five-eight, with short military length black hair, and an open moon face. This was not the look of a conspiracy theorist or whatever McCauley had imagined a conspiracy theorist to be.

His mid-century house was another thing. It was lacking in all amenities. If there was furniture to be found, it was under boxes that lined every hallway, the living and dining rooms, and, McCauley presumed, the bedrooms and bathrooms.

“So nice of you to come all this way,” Greene said as he led them through his maze. “You have to understand I get the weirdest calls from people all over the world. That’s why my phone message sounds the way it does.” Greene was positively apologetic. “It’s designed to discourage people. Most I don’t even answer. I mean, who would want to talk to
them
?”

Greene’s stock went up in McCauley’s estimation. “I understand. We have some of the same in our world.”

“
The Lost World
,” Greene declared.

“Excuse me?” Katrina was confused.

“
The Lost World
. One of the classic dinosaur movies.”

She still didn’t get the reference.

“Michael Rennie, you know, he played Klaatu in
The Day the Earth Stood Still.
Claude Rains, Fernando Lamas. David Hedison. And,” he turned to McCauley, “my heart be still, a very hot and young Jill St. John.”

McCauley nodded yes, though Greene wasn’t sure if it was because of the reference to Jill St. John or the movie. So he went on…and on.

“1960, based on Arthur Conan Doyle’s novel. He also wrote Sherlock Holmes.”

Katrina was trying to keep up, but it was difficult.

“Explorers investigate a mysterious mountain in Venezuela. They get past the cannibals, only to have to contend with man-eating plants and then giant spiders. But it’s the dinosaurs that make it so cool. Well, not dinosaurs in any sense you know. The budget was so low that the director, Irwin Allen, used lizards instead of models or stop motion.
The Lost World—
you should see if sometime.”

“Matter of fact, I have,” McCauley volunteered. “And the 1920s original. The effects are actually better. And there’s
Lost Continent
from the ’50s, but that’s not even worth talking about.”

“Well, I guess I’ve met my match. Sorry. Sometimes I get wound up pretty tightly.”

Quinn McCauley smiled. He just bonded with Robert Greene and they hadn’t even gotten to the reason for the visit. “Not a problem.”

“How about coffee?”

“Sure,” McCauley replied.

“Tea?” Alpert asked.

“Got both.” He led them through the obstacle course he called home on the way to the kitchen. While the water was heating, they chatted about more dinosaur films. With their drinks in hand, Greene took them into his office which contained three computers and blacked out windows.

“Welcome to World Headquarters. Doesn’t look like much.”

Alpert agreed. “Definitely not.”

Greene laughed. “Doesn’t need to. The picture I use on my website is a fake created in photoshop. It’s my dream office.”

“I thought you’re all about the truth?”

“Oh, I am, Dr. McCauley. Read the small print. It’s just below the photo. A disclaimer with the warning, even pictures lie.”

“Very cool,” McCauley said.

Katrina kicked him.

“What’s that for?”

“I thought you wanted me to be your reality check.”

“Ah, good cop, bad cop?” Greene said picking up on the exchange.

“Simply trying to keep skepticism in tow,” she added.

“Well, if it’s any consolation,” Greene continued, “that’s what I’m all about. Information is king. That’s what I request from the government. That’s what I deliver online. No speculation. Documents, records, transcripts. All facts, or at the very least, what isn’t blacked out on the way for public consumption. Once in hand, I give it the contextual wrapping. Then, I plug it into appropriate webisodes, video links, podcasts I’ve appeared on, and my Internet radio show. Impressive, huh?”

McCauley had to agree. “Before I talked with you I thought it was primarily going to be paranormal stuff. But hell, when I looked at your site, you’ve got more on Iraq, Vietnam, and Voting Rights issues than UFOs and ghosts.”

“Thank you, Dr. McCauley. I take that as high praise. You’re not quite accurate on the balance, but I’ll accept the compliment. Now to your questions. I need a little more than what you gave me on the phone. Bullet points will do for a start. Actually, depending upon whether the government is involved, less is even best. Okay?”

“Okay.”

McCauley looked for a place where they could settle. Greene removed two storage boxes from a couch opposite his desk. He stacked them higher atop others. “Sit, sit. What can you tell me?”

“In general terms, we’re camped at one of Montana’s richest dinosaur locations. But after nearly halfway through our time, our work wasn’t leading to anything out of the ordinary. Not that it necessarily ever does. But I don’t want my students to get too bored, especially early on. So I checked out a valley with a deeper geological footprint by a few million years. Before moving everyone down, I spotted something up a cliff.”

Greene listened intently.

“On its own, it wasn’t unusual, but I was curious. I climbed up about thirty feet and found an entrance to a cave.”

“Getting interesting now.”

“Well, as you can imagine it was dark.”

“Caves are.”

“And I realized I needed help and supplies.”

“What kind of supplies?”

“Lights, extension cords, a generator. I pulled the team together. We bought out a hardware store, hooked things up, and started to explore…” McCauley glanced over to Dr. Alpert for approval.
So far, so good.
“…fairly far in.”

“And…?”

“And we saw Native American petroglyphs. Not at all unusual for the Sioux and their immediate relatives. But the drawings didn’t document their tribal life. They depicted a specific route through the cave.”

“To where?” Greene logically asked.

Suddenly, McCauley wished he’d said less. “I don’t know, it’s hard to say.”

“Try.”

“Well, the cave drawings were like maps through corridors and halls. At the end was a wall or maybe a door.”

“Sounds religious. Doors often represent openings to other experiences; spiritual worlds beyond their dominion.”

“Well, it was more than that,” McCauley offered.

“Oh?”

“A specific wall, but very hard to describe.”

“Go on.” Greene leaned into the conversation.

“A wall. Definitely a wall. Smooth and metallic—”

“Interesting.”

“…That reflected no light. The blackest black imaginable. It literally absorbed all the light from our lamps.”

Greene picked up on the word lamps. “Lamps, not flashlights?”

“Right. The electrical was unreliable, so we switched to portable lamps. The most curious thing is the black itself. One of my students went online and found a company that developed a similar substance?”

“Similar, not this particular one?” Greene asked.

“Not the same. At least we don’t think so.” McCauley did not elaborate. “But its properties could also soak up all light.”

McCauley waited for a response. After a long pause he prompted Greene for one. “Well?”

“Cool.”

“Cool? That’s the best you’ve got?” he complained.

“I’m sorry. But it is cool. It’s also got me stymied. Tell me more.”

They did. McCauley and Alpert explained how they cut away more rock and felt around the polished surface.

“We took pictures, but of course, you can’t really see anything,” McCauley explained. He shared some of the photos. Greene saw what he meant. There was the rock, then nothing; as if he was peering into a black hole.

“And this,” he taped the black area, “was behind the rocks?”

“Yes, buried,” McCauley answered.

“What else?”

McCauley had told Alpert that he didn’t know whether he’d show Greene the pyramid design. Now he wondered if he should. He tipped his head to his backpack. Alpert read his doubt and spread her hands apart, indicating her own uncertainty.

“Okay, what’s going on doctors?”

“We’re deciding,” Alpert said.

“I suggest you get your act together otherwise I can’t help you. You probably think I’m some crackpot; but the truth is, I may be able to point you in the right direction. That’s assuming you want to go there. But unless you come clean… .”

“There is more,” McCauley interrupted. “After we chipped away at the rock,” he pointed to the photograph, “we found a section of the wall that had some indentations; dimples grouped, then separated. They formed a pattern.”

He reached into his backpack and handed Greene the page he’d shown Alpert on the plane.

“This. The numbers are mine, but they represent individual groups of indentations we felt.”

At first, Robert Greene only saw the pyramid shape. Then he focused on the order of things.

He recognized it that could have gone on far longer. But what was there was more than enough.

“You see it?” McCauley asked.

“Of course I do. It’s a prime pyramid.”

Thirty-one

“This was on the metal wall buried
behind
the rock?” Greene asked.

“Yes,” McCauley said. “Any thoughts?”

“I’d love to see it myself.”

“Other than that.”

“Well, I’m fascinated by a couple of things. First of all, the black composite.” Greene now admitted that he’d also read about
vanta
, which stood for vertically aligned carbon nanotube arrays. But as far as he knew, it was a substance so far only grown on sheets of aluminum foil, not manufactured into solid metal walls.

“I’d say you stumbled onto a secret facility.”

“But the petroglyphs?”

“Well, Dr. McCauley, that does argue against that notion, unless they were put there to throw someone.”

“If that’s the case, it worked!” Katrina noted.

“What else?” McCauley asked.

“Back to the prime pyramid. Now, I’m no mathematician, but it was a favorite subject of mine. I’ve got respect for numbers. And it’s been said that primes are virtually the atoms of arithmetic. The basic tool that we’re using to reach across the galaxies; a universal language for the entire universe. It’s the code that gives sense to the things we otherwise don’t understand. Besides, they fascinate the hell out of me.

“Take the pyramid itself. The magic is in each row, starting with the first. The number one— the first prime number. Like the other primes, it has no positive divisors other than one and itself. Same for 3, 5, 7, 11, 13, 17, 19, 23, on and up to a number that hasn’t even been calculated yet.”

“But not all the numbers in the pyramid are primes,” Katrina said.

“That’s the beauty of the thing,” Greene continued. “But they work to make primes. Any two numbers next to each other on any row add up to a prime. Perfection itself. So perfect, it’s found in nature.”

“How so?” she wondered.

“Many. My favorite example are the cicadas.”

“The what?”

“Oh, right, you’re British. They’re bugs that are pretty much indigenous to North America, much less so in England. They have a life cycle where they emerge every thirteen years or seventeen years. In between,
nada
. Then, and only then, on that schedule, those noisy little buggers take over. Thirteen and seventeen are both indivisible and that very fact gives cicadas a leg up on their predators which might appear in six year cycles. They win mathematically.”

“Incredible.” McCauley was impressed.

“Incredible when you consider they cracked an evolutionary code that must go back millions of years. They evolved through primes. It became their key to survival.”

“So back to the prime pyramid. Who put it there?” McCauley said.

“I have no idea. But let me give you something else to think about.”

Quinn and Katrina were completely engaged.

Greene turned to his computer and typed in Arecibo. Dozens of references came up. Greene clicked on the radio telescope in Puerto Rico.

“Now I can really talk more authoritatively about this.” He began to explain, concluding with an astonishing experiment. “They’re sending messages to other galaxies from here. How are they doing it?” Greene asked rhetorically.

“Prime numbers?”

“Precisely, Dr. McCauley. Radioing primes that, if and when received, may be arranged in a vertical column to create a picture. Like the rudimentary computer images on those Nano Pets that were the rage with kids years ago.”

Greene clicked on the actual image of the Arecibo transmission. It depicted the atomic numbers of hydrogen, carbon, nitrogen, oxygen and phosphorous, the basic constructs of life on Earth. It included DNA information, a block image of a human with the approximate height, a layout of our solar system and most importantly the position of Earth. “It’s the human race in prime numbers for all the universe to see. The announcement of
here we are
.”

“Here we are,” McCauley repeated.

“Yes,” Greene said. “Here we are. Now how about I share some pretty wacked stories with you?”

"About prime numbers?” Dr. Alpert asked.

“Put that question aside for now
.
”

“Okay.”

“You’ll find them on my website. Clearly, you don’t have to believe all of it or, for that matter, any of it. But too often we assume we know everything there is to know.”

“I don’t necessarily agree,” Katrina said. She smiled at McCauley. He understood.

“Well good, because it would be pretty small-minded if we did. Every day science invents new tools and then discovers old stuff that’s been around since the dawn of time. We just didn’t have the means to see it. Forwards and backwards. It doesn’t matter which direction we look. There’s always the unknown.”