EarthUnder (The Meteorite Chronicles Book 1) (20 page)

Chapter Ten

Gary’s Lab

A
s we traveled once again through the Void, we were flying towards the Pacific islands of Hawaii. I told Mina that we must find Gary at his home rather than meeting him at the lab. Now we were going to be trying to exercise stealth and keep our location unknown. Frankfurt never happened after Vienna, but we hoped it would work as a diversion. Somehow, the Teranor always knew where we were going next. It would be difficult convincing Gary of what we were trying to accomplish, but easy to shock him into listening after he looked at our small treasure from space. An intense researcher, Gary came from a practical application background and he was actively working to find evidence of life elsewhere in the Universe, so he already had an open mind. What was going to be difficult for him was to have someone like me simply hand it to him. Still, once he saw a thin section of this piece, he would willingly fire the shot heard ’round the world. Once his announcement was made, fervor will rise up from the ranks of research scientists that we are not alone, and from there our process would begin.

This would be only the first step of many, but an announcement like this coming from a most reliable source would turn the heads of many if not most political leaders, and then the trend would take on a life of its own. Eventually, a reveal would have to take place, but that would be a long way off, if we could wait that long. Earth’s condition is at a precipice and the planet needs saving immediately. Actually, no, Mankind needs saving; the Earth will survive no matter what but Man will be scoured from the surface as will the Terans. Our brain bone meteorite shall be the seed of new life on Earth, a chance for us all to begin again by changing the direction of our destructive endeavors.

Reaching for the priceless treasure, I felt it still there in my pocket. When we meet with Gary we would have him cut it in two, one for the university lab and one for him to work with in his private lab at home. I had visited his home many times in past years. When times were tough and grant money had dried up, Gary built a small but fairly complete geophysics laboratory in his garage, where he could continue his research if things ever ended at the university. It turned out to be extremely handy for weekends and for friends who needed lab time but had run out of grant funds. These guys had been sharing grant money for years to keep each other employed, and whenever one person had landed big dollars, it was time for payback or else make contributions to the communal “secret lab” in Gary’s garage. This was where we needed to land. Gary would take us in earnest and he would expedite the effort, based on my personal request.

Soon we arrived under the island, where we could see the classic active volcanos, their towers of magma rising from floor to ceiling in the Void. The thought occurred that once humans understood the existence of EarthUnder, everyone would want to see this. Ghosting, we stepped out of the Vug and walked up to Gary’s door. It was late night and the hope was that our potential host would not be pulling an all-nighter at the university. I couldn’t help feeling increased apprehension with the memories in mind of that last time I rode in a Vug. It used to be that I saw snakes and scorpions everywhere; now it’s Catchkills. The wait at Gary’s door felt like an eternity. Sure enough, he came to the door, wide-eyed and yelling, reached out to give his usual hug, and begged us, “come in.” After introducing Jasmina to Gary, I began to explain our surprise visit. We sat in the dining room while Gary made tea.

“Gary,” I started, “we have brought you a small fragment of a very unusual meteorite. Our hope is that you can take a quick look at it. I can’t tell you what we have gone through to get this specimen into your hands.”

Gary leaped into action, grabbing a microscope and lugging it into the house to set up on the dining room table. I took the meteorite out of my pocket and set it on a napkin next to the base of the microscope. He sat at the microscope and began to adjust the focus and zoom on the scope. Gary pulled gloves from his pocket and set the specimen on the stage of the microscope. His reaction to the view through the eyepieces was immediate and ecstatic, “What have you got here? Look at the frothy fusion crust on this baby!” he mused. “Wow, the matrix of this specimen is very weird! I have never seen anything like this,” Gary went on; “What do you think this is?”

“Oh, we know what it is, but we need you to confirm it,” I explained. I had to continue on to warn him of the danger of working on this specimen. “Gary, a number of very bad individuals are after us to keep this specimen from being revealed. The road thus far has been a hazardous journey trying to lead the dogs off our trail in order to arrive here untethered by pursuers. We need to get the word out to the scientific community of just what this material is. It’s my feeling that you are the right man for the job. For now you will really need to keep this material to yourself, and all of your work should be done here at home and under cover. The bad guys will stop at nothing to halt our effort to present this stone to the world.”

Gary interrupted, “Eww, I like this, very cloak and dagger.”

I replied with, “Man, you have absolutely no idea! Also, Gary, may we stay here with you? Someone needs to keep an eye out while you’re buried in the lab.”

“Ok,” said Gary, now with just a slight glint of scowl on his face; “Wow, man, this sounds like pretty serious stuff.”

“Well, you take a good look at the specimen and then you tell me how important all of this might be,” I replied.

Gary talked about how puzzling the stone appeared to be. He told us that he had been looking for something exciting to work on and that he was well rested and inspired to stay up that night and begin the work. “Bryce, you and Jasmina can cut the specimen while I prep a slide for the Scanning Electron Microscope. I just got in a new automatic polishing unit that will give us a half-micron finish lickity-split. Then we’ll carbon coat the slide and put it in the SEM; after that we’ll begin to know what we are looking at. This is going to be really fun. Thank you, Bryce and Jasmina, for bringing excitement into my life!”

I countered rather wryly, “Don’t thank us yet, old buddy.”

Gary is a long-time friend and one of the most enthusiastic people I have ever known. He is a jolly old soul who loves what he does with a passion. Gary is not tall, but he is extremely fit and brims with excess energy. He enjoys a challenge and he lives life to the fullest. He is a brilliant scientist, a bright, shining academic celebrity. When he jumps into a project he becomes a research pit-bull; he goes for the throat and will not let go until he achieves his goal. He’s a fun-loving friend who loves living where there are so many activities to participate in. His most important trait: Gary is extremely open minded when it comes to the modern-day space race of trying to be the first to find concrete evidence of life elsewhere in the universe. This is my ace in the hole. I am counting on Gary finding his holy grail in our new stone. And when he does, he is the ideal guy to get the word out and to have it accepted as scientific fact.

Mina was listening to my thoughts and I could see she was pleased with my confidence in Gary’s idiosyncrasies.

Soon we were hard at work doing our duties in the secret laboratory of one of the planet’s greatest meteoriticists. The diamond blade of the trim saw cut through the specimen like our Vug through the Gray. Gary had asked that we cut the long way and try to cut through part of the fusion crust. He wanted to see a cross section of the glass formed by fusion during the fall. Gary seemed interested in how thick the crust was, and he wanted to see the bubbles in the crust. Then after the curing agent did its job, which took no time at all since the batch was mixed “hot,” it was time to cut the thin section. This was Gary’s responsibility since it is easy to break the glass slide. So Gary made the cut, which was perfect, and then he hooked it up in the new sequential polishing unit.

We stood there listening to the polisher run through the series of grits. There was a unique mechanical hum that changed tone as each grit pressed into the slide. In a surprisingly short time we were moving on to the carbon coater. From there the finished slide was mounted into the SEM. A thin section can take six months to have made. This night was a dream come to life. Our premier scientist/host sat down at the huge computer monitor connected to the SEM as we stood behind and watched over his shoulder. Gary’s reaction was an unusually extended silence. Time dragged by as Gary pored over our treasure and moved back to look several times at the smoked glass fusion crust and then back to the porous matrix. After a long pause Gary pushed his wheeled chair back from the work center and continued looking at the final view for some time longer before he turned around, still sitting in his chair, and looked up at us standing there, but he said nothing. The expression on his face told everything, a painful expression of angst melded with a look of finality and closure. We said nothing but Mina and I were talking to each other with quiet thought.

After a long and somewhat painful silence filled with looks of dubious questioning and doubt, the first words from Gary came out like a scolding in grade school, “Bryce, what have you and your cohort done?” We stood silent and waited for Gary to elaborate. Nothing came forth, as though we needed to drag a reaction out of him. Finally Gary exploded with his classic enthusiasm and asked again what we had done here. I had to ask him to clarify. “Bryce, this is not a meteorite. This is a bone fragment.” Gary exclaimed, “My basic education was biology before I specialized in meteoritics, and that education dictates that this is a fragment of bone.”

“Yes,” I agreed with his assessment, “but it is a bone from space that fell as a meteorite and has the fusion crust to prove it.”

“I know this,” retorted Gary. He continued, “Bryce, you and Jasmina have changed history.”

“Yeah, Gary, but this piece of bone is literally billions of years old and it comes from another planet that I can tell you all about in future days. For now, the less you know the better to protect you from harm. There are those who do not wish this information to get out there. Mina and I have entrusted you with knowledge that we have not been able to share with anyone else. From now on we will do all we can to protect you, but you will be in danger. One of the most important issues is that you keep silent until you have good evidence and then release all the information you can to as many colleagues as possible. Once the public learns of this first discovery, we will begin the process of revealing more information to the population of the planet. The biggest concern is that our pursuers will work hard to sabotage our efforts.

“Gary, you will need to open that wonderful mind of yours to let this in. What you have here is a piece of bone from Mina’s people’s world far away and long ago. Just like the silicon wafer in your computer has memory stored in it, this fragment of ancient bone stores the thoughts, memories, and history of her people and the days on her world. There’s more to tell you, but for now you should do what you can to convince yourself of its authenticity using the technology at your disposal. We would like to remain here while you do the probe work. We’ll stay out of your way and do all we can to assist you. Our desire is to protect you from approach by those who wish to stop us. We also feel that the initial release of data should not be tagged with your name; let people digest the information for some time before you validate it with your research notes.”

I could hear Gary’s thoughts; he was in total agreement. Right now all he wanted was the chance to be first to do the identification of our specimen. His enthusiasm was barely contained. He was already firing up a stage on the microprobe to analyze the specimen. As the probe was charging, Gary started to speak loudly from across his laboratory. He told us that any announcements he would make, he would send out as a blast notice to every member of the Meteoritical Society.

Gary surmised in his own unique style, “People are going to freak when they read about this! You’re right, Bryce; this will be the shot heard ’round the world!” We all settled in for a night of black tea and hours of probe work. This really felt like it was going to work. We got here without a hitch and got Gary to buy off on the project with limited time spent convincing him of our plan. Now we needed enough data to convince others that our researcher had not lost his marbles.

While I helped our resident genius set up the probe, Mina walked around the house inside and out to secure the property by generating a shield of her energy over the house and garage. Our resident genius began to look like the proverbial wizard as he worked the keyboard and watched the three screens splayed out before him. After he stared at the screens for a time Gary looked at me beyond the screens and asked, “Bryce, do you know how old the material really is?”

“Yep, Gary, I know, pretty cool, eh?”

Gary and I enjoyed a shared smile as we both realized together the importance of our work here tonight. In a heartbeat we were changing the direction of the world after billions of years of formation and millions of years of evolution. And it would all get its chance beginning here in a garage lab in Paradise. Two worlds would eventually join to be one and everything was going to change.

Later I would tell Gary about the forces of evil that had come to the Earth to stop the Terans. I didn’t want to tell him too much; it was of primary importance that he remained on task. A bark of unfettered enthusiasm blew out of his throat as he laughed and screamed at the ceiling as if to call out a cheer to the stars above. His mood changed from that of a focused scientist to one of a child on Christmas morning. For Gary every bit of data was an unopened gift with colorful wrapping, and he was tearing away the paper as fast as a child at the base of the glistening tree. This was validating a lifetime of wondering and laboring on the questions: Are we all there is? and Where do we come from? Telling him what I had already seen was going to blow his mind. I couldn’t wait to show him in person.

Mina walked back into the lab and settled in next to us in view of the computer screens. Gary shot a piercing glance in Mina’s direction; it seemed a look of question and doubt. I know Gary well, he questions everything. His inclination to ask the hard question is one of many reasons why he is respected in the community and why we came here. My gut told me that this would be our best chance for a solid start, and of course the garage lab was a huge motivator. No doubt that the look was based on the data we were getting from the specimen, which was showing ages well beyond the formation of our protoplanetary disc. The thing is that the rocks don’t lie. I got up from the workstation and moved over to Jasmina. We sat on the sofa and began to talk in silence.

“Mina,” I started, “would it be possible to take Gary for a ride in the Vug, maybe even to the Void?”

Jasmina squirmed in her seat as she thought about my words. Her reply was abrupt: “I had expected this.”

She told me that she had asked the Elders about this while I was mending from the Catchkill. The Elders had agreed that this would eventually come to pass and therefore it was going to be acceptable to begin this process with key people at first. I told Mina that my thinking was that we might need to do more to protect Gary than just leaving him here after word got out about his data. She could feel my concern and told me that there was no need to ask. Mina understood the vulnerability of an unsuspecting human to the Teranor. It was easy to assume that Gary would willingly accept an invitation to see the underworld of New Tera. I could hardly wait for him to experience the Vug. Mina then informed me that she had moved the Vug to the entryway just inside the front door. Gary’s probe was an older unit, but it was dedicated and had only the one work station, so the data was proprietary. He announced that tonight’s data would be ready to print and email at close to 6 a.m., which was in just one hour.

Gary rubbed his hands together briskly to get the blood flowing after all of the hours at the keyboard giving commands to the probe. We could tell by his movements and mood that he was pleased, if not puzzled, by the results of his initial probe inquiry. He trotted off to the kitchen, grabbed a bottle of papaya juice, and returned with glasses for each of us. We toasted to a successful night’s run and we started the morning with a shot of the nectar.

As we waited for the computer to produce the data needed to broadcast throughout the meteorite community, we sat at the table listening to the birds outside calling up the dawning sun.

It’s one of those things that many ignore or take for granted, but it has always struck me odd that birds around the world sing their lungs out each morning and every night. Countless mornings I have awakened before dawn and lay in bed to listen to the birds greet the day. At night in the summer the robins sit on the crest of my roof and sing to the setting sun. In Canada the loons perform this same ritual as the mated pairs slowly ply the territorial waters of their home lakes. Dawn and sunset their haunting call echoes through the arboreal, wilderness forest. Here in Paradise the birds are loud and raucous and scream their songs as if each day is a party.

I asked Gary if he would like to take a little trip to another world; he lit up like the birds outside and jumped up from the table to dance around in what must be a local victory dance. He whooped and jumped twirling in the air as if he had just found buried treasure. He stopped mid-leap and asked, “how and…and…and when?”

I replied, “It’s called a Vug, and right after we shoot the data off to everyone.”

Suddenly a feeling of urgency washed over me. Mina noticed my mood change as I glanced nervously at my watch. I grabbed her by the wrist and pulled her towards the house, telling Gary we’d be back in a few minutes.

Gary replied, “No problem,” a tone of acceptant patience in his voice. Gary was busy at the controls of his work station and he knew where we were headed. Gary had ended many all-night work sessions with this same climb.

I raced to lead Mina to a place she had never been to see a thing she had likely never seen. We climbed flights of stairs past spare rooms and bedrooms to a door at the top of the last step. I turned the lock, swung open the heavy, oversized door, and out onto the lanai we stepped. Gary had built this “widow’s walk” around the peak of his home’s roof for times like this. From his rooftop one could watch the sun rise out of the Pacific at dawn and hiss its final glimmering rays back into the ocean each evening.

The sunrise would be bloodied by the refraction of light through a haze of vog hanging in the island air. Vog is a combination of the words volcanic, smog, and fog, and it is a local form of air pollution caused by the reaction of volcanic gases and particles with moisture, oxygen, and sunlight. Long before our first glimpse of the sun’s boiling body, the sky began to turn a rainbow of colored illumination: midnight blue overhead to the faintest pale yellow that floated on the ocean horizon intensified in a morph of radiant color. Spouting whales blew puffs of disappearing mist into the panorama of constant change. The nervous surface of sea water blended a reflection of the sky into a rugged pallid twin. The changing view washed the memory of each color away as the next tone replaced the last.

Our eyes watered from a reluctance to blink for fear of missing an instant of the spectacle before us. The view was framed by the lush, green vegetation and dew-soaked cliffs of this island habitat. As the sun began to reveal itself from behind the watery screen, its rays instantly found our faces, and the cool night air was dried and heated before it touched our skin. We closed our eyes and stood there hand in hand, facing the arrival of today’s solar cycle. We could almost feel our skin sizzle like frying bacon in the island sun as the rays of light burned through our dusty planet’s atmosphere. After the globe rose fully into the morning air it reached a low-lying ceiling of mist and volcanic ash hanging just above the horizon, and the sun changed into a red burning bubble of blinding light obscured by the mist. For a time everything reflected a hue of the sun’s morning glow. Mina leaned against my side as I wrapped my arm around her. Our minds morphed together in a collocation of memories recalling countless mornings, watching the day begin in a silent roar of planets orbiting around our sun.