Black Rain

“Is it hot?” Moore asked.

“Warm,” the man said, “but the heat is the least of its manifestations.”

Moore wanted answers. “So where is the power going?”

“Most of it is being channeled into an electromagnetic pulse,” the scientist said, then pointed to the walls around them. “That’s why we had to bring it down here and line this room with lead.”

The glowing stone sat in front of them. Clean and polished now; it was almost invisible from the right angle. Unlike the Martin’s crystals, it contained no inclusions or scratches. To the naked eye, at least, it appeared devoid of any internal structures at all. And yet, the white glow had to come from somewhere, as did the heat and the power.

At this point, the researchers had only just begun to study it, but Moore expected they’d find similar properties to the Martin’s crystals, including the microscopic lines, nano-tubes and other, even more exotic designs.

It was machinery, Moore knew, but it looked like art. There was something mesmerizing about it, almost hypnotic. The longer he stared, the more certain he became that he could actually see the fluctuating pulse the men were talking about. It was rhythmic, harmonic.

“Does it always do that?” Moore asked.

The scientist nodded. “That’s the pulse,” he said. “The pattern is extremely complex with rapid fluctuations. But it is a pattern and it repeats itself over and over.”

Moore stared. He could see it, sense it.

The researcher gazed at him, studying his face. “You know what it is,” he guessed.

The data had not yet been disclosed to him, but Moore had a feeling about it. “Yes,” he said gravely. “I think I do.”

The two men exchanged glances. “Well, you should know,” the scientist said, “that we believe you’re right.”

“A signal of some kind,” Moore said. “A message.”

The man nodded. “As I told you, it repeats itself, over and over, identical and unchanging,” he said. “Except for …”

Moore looked into the man’s eyes. “Except for what?”

“For one minor change,” the man explained reluctantly, “one we didn’t notice until we separated out the various phases of the signal.”

“What kind of change?”

The man flicked on a computer screen that displayed what looked like a sound chart, a digital representation of this complex signal, with thousands of peaks and valleys. With a click of the mouse, the chart began scrolling to the left. It moved that way for seventeen seconds and then froze. A second color began to overlay it. The peaks and valleys were identical, matching exactly as the screen scrolled along. Except for the very last one, which, in the new color, was of a slightly lesser magnitude. Moore watched as the third iteration of the signal reduced the last bar once again.

“It’s counting down to something,” Moore said, guessing at the significance of what he was seeing.

“Each new version of the pulse is fractionally shorter than the one previous to it,” the scientist said.

“Have you calculated the duration?”

The scientist nodded. “If we’re right, the signal will reach a zero state sometime on December 21, 2012.”

Moore knew that date. The end of the Mayan calendar.

“We don’t know what it means,” the researcher added. “But considering the power this thing is generating, we are concerned.”

The man offered nothing further, except a grim face and a tightly clenched jaw. Moore felt his own concern beginning to build.

He turned his attention back to the softly pulsing stone. Try as he might, he could not take his eyes off it, or strike down the sense of awe it filled him with, or shake away the feeling that the destinies of a great many people would be affected by what was found in that stone.

AUTHOR’S NOTE

As a writer, reaching the end of a novel is something of a goal in itself. As a reader, I find that same point to be only the beginning of a journey. Whether it’s the Knights Templar, quantum mechanics or the cloning of dinosaur DNA, the best works of fiction have always made me want to know more.

In case this book has had that effect, I offer the following.

The Mayan Civilization

The main premise of the book, that a branch of the Mayan race existed in the Amazon, is of course fiction. There is no evidence of any Mayan presence that far south. As Professor McCarter comments early in the book: “The Maya in the Amazon? I don’t think so.” The choice to set the story there was a literary one, done for the purpose of separation, both to separate the Chollokwan as far as possible from the classic Mayan civilization and to separate the NRI team as far as possible from the modern civilization we all live in.

On the other hand, the legends quoted in the book are based on the Mayan manuscript Popul Vuh. This incredible work tells the Mayan creation story, the manner in which the world and humankind were constructed and the efforts of two heroes to make that world safe. It contains incredible imagery, fascinating adventures and a worldview both widely divergent from and surprisingly similar to our own.

There were probably many written versions of the Popul Vuh in the days prior to the conquistadors. Unfortunately, the mass burning of Mayan books stole from history not only any hieroglyphic copy of the Popul Vuh, but presumably thousands of other texts, charts and works of brilliance.

It’s a tremendous shame that we know so little about this once sprawling and multifaceted civilization, and a greater shame that members of the clergy were responsible for much of the destruction. And yet it was a clergyman who gave us the Popul Vuh as we know it today. Father Francisco Ximenez transcribed the text between 1701 and 1703, either from an earlier document or from listening to an oral recitation. Father Ximenez wrote his version in both the Quiche language and Spanish. The document he wrote still exists and resides at the Newberry Library in Chicago.

In the years since, there have been many translations of the Popol Vuh. Three that I found interesting were Book of the People: Popul Vuh, the 1954 translation by Delia Goetz and Sylvanus Griswold Morley, which is a clear, concise read; Popol Vuh: The Sacred Book of the Maya, a 2003 translation by Allen J. Christenson that includes a wealth of background information and even explanations of how specific terms and concepts were derived; and Dennis Tedlock’s translation in book form, The Popol Vuh: The Mayan Book of the Dawn of Life and the Glories of Gods and Kings, which is less like reading than like having the story told to you by someone who watched it all unfold. I urge anyone interested in this part of history to pick up a copy.

Fusion Power

As we begin to move through the new century, we remain heavily dependent on fuels discovered during the prior two, a situation not so different from being stuck using an abacus and a quill pen. But what will replace them? Can fusion actually become a legitimate power source? I guess we will have to wait and see. The big project, as described in this book, is the ITER, which is being funded jointly by most of the G-20 nations. While ITER has been translated as “the way,” the acronym actually stands for International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor. It’s a truly massive experiment, weighing 23,000 tons and standing a hundred feet tall. You can learn more at the official ITER website: http://www.iter.org.

As for cold fusion, it remains a mystery. In some ways the concept has become a scientific vampire, continuously rising from the dead. After being written off as a hoax in 1989, it made a comeback in the 1990s as