Accidental Gods (15 page)

Chapter 24

Week 3: Thursday

The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes.

—Marcel Proust

The jet landed with only the slightest hint of a bump. Mike wouldn’t have known the exact moment they touched down without the muffled dual squeal of the tires making first contact with the pavement. The jet slowed with more of an airy sound than the whine, rumble, and shake of commercial airliners, and it taxied down the runway.

Mike was still digesting what he had read. Clearly, there was a big leap from some simulation that resulted in the evolution of a simple, single-celled organism to something capable of the written language he had seen.

Jennifer opened the hatch and lowered the stairs. A black Lincoln Town Car waited at the bottom. The driver opened the door, and Mike, still in a daze, settled into the backseat and set his laptop case onto the cream-colored leather next to him. The driver closed Mike’s door, and then Mike felt a bump as his suitcase was put in the trunk and another lighter bump when the trunk was closed. Though Mike couldn’t hear or feel the engine, he figured it had to be running, because he felt the comforting waft of air conditioning.

The driver got in and closed his own door.

“Welcome to Austin, Dr. Wilson,” he said with a smile. “I’m Bob. I’ll be driving you over to IACP.”

The ride passed through downtown with the Frost Bank building’s odd glassy peaks that looked like batwings, the Texas state capital, and the University of Texas’s own mark in the skyline—its landmark tower. The car did not appear to be heading that way.

“Aren’t we going to UT?” Mike asked.

“No, sir. IACP’s offices are to the west of the city. They aren’t on campus anymore; haven’t been for several years.”

So the drive continued through the rolling hill country, steep ravines draped with a billowing blanket of cedar, pecan, and oak. The surroundings were far lusher than Mike had ever imagined existing in Texas.

What seemed only moments later but had to have been at least a half hour, the car stopped at a guardhouse and a gate. The gate was a substantial, double-iron-poled one that looked like only a tank could smash through, and beyond the gate was a larger, more-modern-looking group of buildings than Mike had expected. The landscaping seemed new—no old-growth trees—but pristine.

What the hell?
Mike thought.
I thought this was supposed to be part of the university.

The concertina-wire-topped, twelve-foot-high chain-link fence around the treeless, brushless perimeter made the group of buildings appear more like a military base than an academic research facility.

A minefield,
Mike thought when he glanced at the perimeter again.
That’s what that flat break of land looks like all the way around the outside of the fence.
He snickered.
Yeah, right. Tom’s put in a minefield.

Bob tapped a small panel with his access card, and the gate opened. Then Bob drove them directly toward the tallest building, an eight-story smoked-glass and ash-bricked office building with pleasant, concealing angles that made Mike think of large top-floor, landscaped balconies and rooftop tennis courts. The Town Car swung into the covered circle at the front doors and stopped with Mike’s door only six feet from the building’s double front doors.

Bob immediately got out, circled behind the car, and opened Mike’s door.

“Do you need your larger bag, Dr. Wilson, or should we leave it in back? I’ll be taking you to your hotel after you chat with Dr. Gray.”

“It’s OK to just leave it for now. Thanks.”

Mike grabbed his laptop case and got out.

“I’ll be waiting here when you’re finished, Dr. Wilson.”

“Thanks,” Mike said and stepped toward the building.

Bob opened the glass door for him, and Mike stepped into an opulent lobby with a polished granite tile floor. In the center, the tiles formed the IACP logo.

A well-dressed woman with a clipboard in her left hand walked up to Mike and extended her right hand.

“Hi. You must be Mike. I’m Jules, Thomas’s assistant.”

He shook her hand.

She said, “Please follow me,” and immediately started toward the elevators. “Would you like some water or a drink?” she asked.

“No, I’m fine for now. Thanks.”

Mike stared with awe at the large, plasma-screened monitor mounted high on one wall that depicted roiling lava.

As they waited at the elevators, Jules handed Mike the clipboard, which held but a single page.

“This is a standard NDA,” she said.

He furrowed his brows and blinked.

She said, “A nondisclosure agreement. Pretty standard in the tech world.” She leaned toward him in mock conspiracy, lowering her voice. “We wouldn’t want you telling anyone all the secrets you learn, now would we?”

“OK,” he said and read the document.

The language was intimidating, but he didn’t seem to have anything to lose. And it wasn’t like anything he had seen so far or expected to see could possibly conflict with his own research. And if his guesses about Tom’s work were accurate…His heart beat faster, and his mouth grew dry. If his guesses were right, he could very well be embarking on a linguist’s dream.

He signed the NDA and handed the clipboard back to Jules. The elevator dinged and swung its doors wide. Mike tried to swallow the dry lump that seemed to have lodged itself just behind his epiglottis, and he wished he had asked Jules for a drink after all.

Jules swiped her ID badge across an electronic sensor on the elevator’s button panel and pushed the button for the eighth floor. When the doors opened again, Mike was struck with an even more panoramic view of the rolling green hills, all these dipping deep down toward a single snaking line that had to conceal a creek or small river. At the farthest end of what seemed a shallow valley was the Austin skyline.

The vertical lines that separated the panes of window glass made the scene almost seem like an artist’s series of mural-sized photographs, but the boughs of the nearer trees swayed loosely in a light breeze and two vultures slowly circled far out over the creek.

Jules led Mike through an open set of wooden double doors and a large outer office with a desk adorned with a nameplate that read “Julie Sanderson.” They then passed through another pair of doors in the back of that office and into an office with almost the same panoramic view of the hills, where Thomas stood gazing out over the greenery, his hands clasped behind his back.

Jules left and closed the doors behind her.

Thomas turned and smiled broadly. “Hello, Mike. What’s up? Been a while, huh?”

He stepped forward and reached out for a handshake.

“Wow,” Mike said as they shook hands. “You’re doing well.”

“Yeah. Things are going extraordinarily well. Sit down.” He swept a hand toward the set of chairs and small table in the corner of the office.

“What did you think of the language?” Thomas asked and sat after Mike chose his seat.

“It’s fascinating.” Mike set his laptop case on the floor, leaning it against the side of his chair. “Where did it come from? The simulated universe?”

“We’ll get to that. Do you think you can decipher it?”

“Not very likely, not with only what you’ve sent me, or with nothing but other documents like that.”

“What do you mean? Isn’t that your specialty?”

“Thomas, this isn’t like cracking codes—which, by the way, is not what I do, anyway. But let’s say you are trying to crack codes, say, like the NSA; you can force or finesse a code into revealing itself for two reasons: you can at least guess at what it means, and you understand the underlying language—even then, it can be exceptionally difficult. But in the rare cases where the underlying language is not known, it’s virtually impossible to crack. Take, for example, the United States’ use of Navajo in World War II. The Windtalkers spoke their own language, which they further encoded. This code was never broken, because for the Japanese, there was no foundation—a known language to be used as a base to begin the process of deciphering.”

“Hmm.” Thomas frowned but nodded.

“For a language itself, not codes, even with some guess at the meaning of a particular text, translation is extremely difficult. Without that guess, it’s very nearly impossible.” Mike swept one hand slightly upward and outward, as if lecturing in front of a classroom. “Egyptian hieroglyphics had been studied for a long time before Napoleon’s army discovered the Rosetta Stone in 1799. This stone had Greek, demotic, and hieroglyphic inscriptions each repeating the same message, and even with a direct translation into a language we fully understood, it wasn’t until twenty-three years later that Jean-François Champollion managed to decipher the basics of hieroglyphics.”

“Oh,” Thomas said.

“Yeah.” Mike leaned back. “So it isn’t easy.”

“I see.” Thomas paused. Then he added hopefully, “Well, they didn’t exactly have the computational power and technology that we have.”

“Is this from the simulated universe?” Mike asked again.

“Yes.”

“Hah! I
knew
it.” Mike swallowed. “So it isn’t likely that we have a translation of this text into any Earth language, is there?”

“That would be true.”

“Are the originators of this language human?”

“Very humanlike.”

Mike shook his head. “Even then—we have no way of knowing if the writers conceptualize—if their thought processes are even remotely similar to our own.” He shook his head more vigorously. “No. Impossible, then.”

“I see. What if you could learn it, though?”

“What do you mean, ‘learn it’? How is that different from what I just said?”

Thomas scooted to the edge of his seat. “Surely there are ways to learn a language beyond deciphering. Children learn languages within their first few years. You teach languages to students. It is possible to learn a language with no reference point, right?”

“Well, yes, I suppose.”

“What would it take to learn it?”

“Immersion. It would help to observe children—the young of whatever this is—learning it, like watching a family. Or a classroom. Even then, spoken language and written language can be two distinct—”

“How long would it take? Immersed.”

“A month or two, to learn the basics of a language from scratch. More, if their neurology is significantly disparate. Even Neanderthals’ brains are speculated to have been wired differently than our own.” Mike exhaled heavily through his nose and pressed his fingertips together, approximating the children’s charade of a spider doing pushups on a mirror. “Can I talk to them?”

“No.”

“That would make it harder.” Mike’s spider collapsed onto its belly and then morphed into nothing but clasped hands.

Thomas asked, “Do you want to do it?”

“What do you mean?”

“Come here, work for us, crack this language.”

“It’s not that simple. I’m finally in a tenure-track position.”

“We’ll double your current university…” Thomas smirked. “…salary and guarantee you a job for five years.”

“What’s the catch?”

“Well, I’m glad you asked, because there are a few.” Thomas paused. “First, you’ll have to work a lot harder than you ever have as a professor. Speed is critical on this. But my hope is that if you are as passionate about languages as I think you are that won’t be a problem.”

“I doubt that will be an issue.”

“Second. You won’t be able to publish. For a long time, if ever.”

Mike frowned.

“I carefully control all publications. That paper you read on the plane will be IACP’s first major publication since our initial announcements around the big bang models. As I am sure you are aware, single-celled organisms do not write. As you have implied that you’ve already guessed, our work is now far beyond what that article even hints at.”

Mike swallowed again and nodded. His spider was back. “All right. I can live with that.”

“Third. You can’t even talk about this stuff outside of the office. We must keep it secret until we fully understand what’s going on.”

“Exactly what
is
going on?”

“We’ve got what appears to be an intelligent civilization that we’ve effectively created in a lab—and…” Thomas paused for a moment. “We don’t know what they’re saying.”

“I see how that would be a problem.” Mike laughed.

“We’re not sure how people will react to this. That’s the reason for the secrecy. At some point, we certainly want to talk about it—then you’ll be able to publish, a lot. But for now, we need to stay quiet.”

“I understand.”

“No need to decide right now.” Thomas stood and smiled a broad, warm, God-it’s-great-to-see-you-again smile. “Let’s grab dinner and catch up. Tomorrow, you can see it.”

“Tomorrow.” Mike nodded and breathed heavily. “Wow. Yes.”