The Antarcticans (18 page)

“Are you doing surgery to correct these brain abnormalities? What kind of treatment are you giving him?” Gavin expressed concern.

“In a way yes, but likely not how you think about surgery. There are no knives or cutting and stitching. The experimental treatment shows the patient images, which convince the brain that certain images aren’t real and display subtle cues, which can serve as tests for the patient to differentiate reality from fantasy. We then teach him or her how to use the tests subconsciously to weed out fact from fiction.” She pulled up another set of images.

“But it’s not working, right?” Gavin asked.

“I’m afraid not. Joshua is so attached to one of his internal personalities that we can’t find a test to get him to believe at a subconscious level that the personality isn’t real.”

An image of a Margie appeared on the screen. She was sitting in a circle with the Samson twins; a wicked-looking man with pointy teeth and smoke rising from his leathery scaled skin; a tall skinny Caucasian man with a green Mohawk and multiple piercings, rings, and tattoos who was smoking a cigarette; and three gray human shapes that lacked faces or defining features.

“What’s that?” Gavin looked horrified.

“These are the personalities we’ve been able to decipher from Joshua so far. Our technology allows us to reconstruct images he’s producing based on the mapping of electrical currents and neuron activity in his brain. It’s possible there are more, but these are the main players. We’ve been successful at temporarily quarantining all but one of them from Joshua’s brain.”

“Let me guess. That one there.” Gavin pointed to Margie.

“Exactly. Can I ask why you picked her?”

“It resembles a caricature of his grandmother,” he said.

“Ah…” Dr. Cristofari looked away from the screen and to Joshua. “Mr. Pennings, I’m at the end of my science. I need your help now.” She stared into Gavin’s eyes, waiting for a response.

Gavin shook his head. “Me? What can I do? I barely understand what you’re talking about.”

“I can put you inside Joshua’s mind with him. I can transform you into one of his personalities. You’ll have to convince him to let go of Margie. If he holds on to her, I’ll never be able to section off that part of his brain and close it down. She’s a conduit that continues to allow the other personalities to come through. And it’s getting worse. He’s safe here because we have him restrained and sedated, but if the personalities battle, it’ll be a war that will tear Joshua’s mind and body apart.” Dr. Cristofari looked concerned. She whipped her auburn ponytail around and looked toward the wall. Gavin thought he saw her eyes watering.

“You’re talking about these personalities as if they’re people, invaders, something outside of my son. Isn’t it possible they’re demons?” he asked.

“Call them what you like, demons, evil jinns, maybe Satan himself. To me they’re a physical structure of his brain gone awry,”

“You don’t have a faith, Doctor?”

She let out a frustrated sigh. “That’s a complicated question and really has little to do with treating your son. I suggest we focus on him now.” Her annoyance with Gavin was beginning to show. “When are you available to go through the preparation? We’ll need at least a day to do that, potentially two.”

“I want to help Joshua get better. I want that more than anything. But does this pose a risk to him? I can’t imagine what you have to do to put me inside his mind.” He crossed his arms.

“The procedure isn’t difficult. It isn’t even experimental. There’s very little risk to you,” Dr. Cristofari replied.

“I’m not concerned about
me
. I’m concerned about Joshua. What risk is there to him?”

“The risk of doing nothing is far, far greater than anything this technology can do to him. From what I understand, this is your last stop in looking for solutions.”

“I have some other ideas if this doesn’t work, a few people he hasn’t talked to yet. I’ve got a whole congregation praying for him as well. You never know what God can do.” He smiled warmly.

“Mr. Pennings, are you going to help your son or not? While Joshua’s under no obligation to stay here or receive any treatment whatsoever, my professional opinion is that this is the best course of therapy for him.” Her face started to get red.

“No offense, but you said the same thing when we first came aboard the ship, and you were convinced that a little of your…reprogramming”—he put his fingers in the air to simulate quotation marks—“was all he needed. And we see where that got us.”

Dr. Cristofari threw her hands up in the air. “I’m done with this conversation. When you make a decision, you know where to find me.” She stormed out of Joshua’s room and down the corridor, mumbling about how stubborn nonscientists could be.

As Gavin took Joshua’s hand again and prayed with him, he broke down in tears. He pulled up a chair beside his bed and spent the night in the room with him, falling asleep while holding his hand. When he woke up, the room looked the same; the lighting was the same. Being inside the belly of the
Dragon
was like being in a Las Vegas casino—he never knew what time it was because there wasn’t any outside light, and clocks were scarce. He needed to think just for a day about what it meant to be inside his son’s head. He went to the ship’s gym for a workout then got himself ready and rang Dr. Sagona to see if she had time to see him. It was late morning, and she said she was free.

Her office sat on one of the upper decks, and its walls were covered in black wooden drawers. There were two large tables with dim green lights hanging over them from long cords from the ceiling. Each table had some other specialized lights and equipment Gavin didn’t recognize. Her back was to him, since her desk faced the floor-to-ceiling windows that looked out over the ocean.

She didn’t turn around when he came in. “Isn’t it grand?” she asked.

“What’s that?” Gavin asked.

“The view of course. I’m stunned every time I walk in here.”

“Yes, it’s…” He looked out over the ocean. “…quite impressive. You must be an important part of the operation.”

“I’m an agent of the Vatican. On secondment here.” Dr. Sagona gently closed the leather-bound book on her desk then picked it up and carried it to a cabinet in the wall. She pushed a button next to the cabinet, and the drawer opened. A puff of chilled air escaped the cabinet as it opened. It reminded Gavin of the drawers at the mortuary where dead bodies were kept. “Lucifer has a collection of rare religious texts,” she said. “Until I came here, I wasn’t aware they existed. His collection is unrivaled in the world. These drawers preserve the originals perfectly. Depending on the paper and ink that was used, we can select the best temperature and humidity to maintain the copies for as long as possible.”

“Why use the originals? Why not just scan them then look at them on a computer?”

She smiled to herself, as if she’d heard this question many times. She pressed the button again, and the drawer disappeared into the wall. “I thought you said you were a man of the Word?”

Gavin nodded. “Yes, I do consider myself a man who follows God’s word.” He leaned on one of the islands that were covered in thick marble.

“I see. In the original texts, it isn’t simply the written words that are important to understanding the meaning of the texts, since everything is contextual. We lose some of that nuance in the excessive, chattering age we live in. Everyone is texting, e-mailing, scanning—it’s an endless barrage of inputs and outputs that everyone can produce and no one understands. But the pieces we understand most in the midst of all this noise are those for which we have context. And while we don’t always recognize the contextual aspects of our instant communication, they’re there.

“This is no different in our historical work. But the context is what often is missing when we examine the past. We tend to read history with twenty-first-century eyes. We believe everything makes perfect sense to us. But if we step back and imagine someone reading our writings a century from now or, in the case of most of these books, two to three thousand years from now…well, emoticons and ‘How R U?’” She traced an
R
and a
U
in the air. “Their meaning would be lost. So the words we can read over and over again, even understanding their literal meaning, and we’ll still have an incomplete picture. You see, the words
live
in these books. They’re part of the page, and locked within those pages, within the molecules of ink, are the historical clues to what was happening in that time. The dictionary meaning of the words only goes so far. To understand the breath of these words, I need to stand over the original texts, breathe in the millennia of time, and feel what the writers were trying to say.” Her eyes were closed, and she was breathing deeply.

“Seems almost like a spiritual experience for you,” Gavin offered.

“Very much so. I think you understand what I’m saying.” She exhaled, adjusted her tortoiseshell glasses on the bridge of her nose, then looked up at him. “Have you ever seen any of the original Gospels?” she asked.

Gavin shook his head. “I wasn’t aware the originals were around. I learned in seminary that the best copies were made at least three hundred years after the originals were written.” He was looking out at the ocean again, thinking about how far it was to Antarctica from where they sat in the world right now.

“That’s what I thought as well, until I came on board. We have the original four that made it into the Bible, but there are hundreds of Gospels that were written at that time. Apparently someone in Lucifer’s employ made it to Egypt long before archeologists got their hands on the Dead Sea Scrolls.”

“I don’t know what to say. There must be some speculation here, no? Or doubt that maybe these are just copies, made to look like the originals? I mean, I’d think the whole religious community would want to get their hands on them.”

“Which is exactly why we’ve kept them quiet.” She leaned against the island and pointed her hands out.

“So why tell
me
?”

“Maybe Lucifer has big plans for you. All I know is that he told me you were authorized, and he even encouraged me to share the information we keep on board.”

“Lucifer has been collecting old religious writings since before the 1940s?” Gavin said to himself, rolling the idea over in his head. “Why?”

“He’s been at this awhile. The Vatican, of course, has an interest in them, so here I am. Would you like to see some of the archives?” Dr. Sagona politely ignored his confusion.

“Well, yeah, I’d love to. What do you have?”

“I can show you the Gospel of Thomas. We have the original.”

“I’d rather not. How about one of the real Gospels?” he asked.

“Well, they’re all real. Did you have one in particular you wanted to see?” She stood up from her chair, walked over to a different drawer, pressed the “open” button, and waited for the drawer to slide out.

Gavin joined her and peered into the drawer. In thick Lucite cases were four texts written on papyrus in a language he couldn’t read. He gazed into the ink on the papyrus, imaging John, Luke, Matthew, and Mark writing out each letter carefully, with the Holy Spirit guiding their hands. “How do you know these are originals?” Gavin asked Dr. Sagona.

“Good question. You have time to do a dual PhD in religious history and ancient languages then study the topic for forty-five years?” She laughed. “It’s rather difficult to explain to someone who isn’t in our discipline how we go about authenticating documents, but—”

Gavin interrupted her. “I actually am in your discipline. I’m a pastor, and I have a divinity degree.”

“Yes, I believe that’s not the training I was referring to.” She put on a pair of white gloves, picked up the Gospel of Matthew, and brought it to one of the tables. She laid out each sheet of papyrus in front of him.

“Can I touch them?” Gavin asked. “I’ve never been so close to God before.” He was reaching out to the documents. His hands were sweating, and his heart fluttered like it had on the day he was ordained—a mix of power, awe, and excitement.

Dr. Sagona grabbed his hand and pushed it away. “You can never touch the documents, and you certainly can’t touch them without gloves on. No one has ever handled these with their bare hands. The chemistry of your hands would destroy these documents.” Her voice was stern. “Do you see that there?” She was pointing to an almost imperceptible white fiber that looked like it had been pressed into the paper. “That’s someone’s hair, someone who was present during the writing of the Gospel.”

“How do you know that?”

“I’m not a biologist, but there’s a test that can measure the age of DNA. The person this hair belongs to dates to about sixty CE. This is exactly when this Gospel was written. But our real assurance is in the ink that’s on the hair. It’s the same ink that was used to write the text.”

Dr. Sagona gathered the papers and fastidiously put them back into the drawer. “Are there any other books you’d like to see? We have the originals from most of the world’s religions. I have the Quran that Mohammed recited.”

“Why are you showing me all this?” Gavin asked.

“Because Lucifer thought you might be interested in it, and so did I. Were we wrong?”

“No, it’s mind-blowing. I can’t believe some of the things you’re showing me. Yes, I’ll look at anything you have.”