Luke correctly figured that they just wanted something to boast about to their friends and coworkers, so he told them, as politely as he knew how, to kiss that idea good-bye. And he issued a threat, thinly veiled as humor: if they ever brought up the subject of IQ tests again, he’d start doing serious drugs and begin dating a thirty-year-old lap- dancing pickpocket named Bubbles. It worked. Luke’s parents never mentioned the subject again.
By the time he graduated, Luke was rated the most accomplished student in the school. Two of his papers on biological variation had been published in respected scientific journals, and he was subsequently made valedictorian for his class—an honor he would have preferred to dispense with, as he hated public speaking above all else.
Even before his graduation, four universities had approached Luke. Each vied for his consideration with offers of scholarships and living allowances. This news thrilled his parents, who were already financially stretched to the limit by a daughter at Prince-ton who seemed to be majoring in expensive tastes.
Luke at last decided to take advantage of his parents’ connections, and appreciatively accepted a generous offer to attend Stanford. It was only thirty minutes from his home, so he wouldn’t lose touch with his friends, or his parents’ refrigerator and laundry room. Stanford was also close enough to the Pacific to allow him to surf whenever he could find the time. Happily, Luke’s girlfriend, another compulsive A student named Rosie Hall, had also been accepted at Stanford, so life would continue much as it had, or at least that was what Luke wished to believe.
During his freshman year, Luke once again floundered. Not in his grades, but in his course choices. His counselor noted that Luke’s schedule included French, astronomy, chemistry, biology, and a broad introduction to engineering. He had also elected to assume extra courses in geology, anthropology, and, of all things, South American history. Luke’s counselor pointedly suggested that he was spread too thin for his freshman year. And though his grades were excellent, his counselor believed the stress of carrying such a weighty course load would ultimately prove detrimental to his health. He’d seen other gifted students literally wither under the pressure of their ambitions, and he told Luke to slow down. After all, he had years to focus his interests and find himself. Even Mrs. Entwhistle, who had made a point of staying in touch with her most gifted pupil, warned Luke against pushing himself too hard in his first two years. She laughed and said there was still plenty of time to kill himself in postgraduate school.
Perhaps it was his love of surfing and the ocean that finally turned Luke’s interests toward marine sciences, but his choice was certainly buttressed by all the great Cousteau documentaries he had loved as a boy. So at the beginning of his junior year at Stanford he decided to focus all his efforts toward degrees in marine biology, maritime engineering, and world maritime history, the last being a subject he elected for the sake of pure distraction.
Luke had shown so much promise in his work that in 2008, at the beginning of his senior year, he was invited to study marine biology and related subjects at the prestigious Hopkins Marine Life Observatory in Monterey.
Like his parents, Luke had always loved Monterey. His folks had taken him to see the Monterey Bay Aquarium when he was fourteen, and it was all they could do to drag him out of the building when it closed for the night. He had returned every time they came to Monterey for the weekend, and at one point he’d even been introduced to the aquarium director, Julie Packard. Luke told her that he wanted to work for the aquarium one day, and Ms. Packard indulged him by saying that he should come back after he had finished college, and she would see that he got his wish.
LUKE’S MOM HELPED HIM FIND a small but decent apartment high up on David Avenue. Its best feature, as far as Luke was concerned, was that it had an unobstructed view of the bay from the living room window. With the help of his war-surplus Russian binoculars, Luke could just make out the surfing conditions at Lover’s Point when he got up in the morning. He also enjoyed being able to coast his bike downhill all the way to Hopkins. Getting back up David was another matter, and Luke soon developed a set of calves like steel springs.
Using his attendance at Hopkins as an introduction, Luke went back to Julie Packard, and asked for a part-time job to help cover his expenses. She remembered him from years before and, having perused his exceptional academic record from Stanford, was pleased to be able to keep her promise, even though he hadn’t yet graduated.
Luke was offered a job in the aquarium’s complex and extensive water treatment facilities, which he rather enjoyed because he got to work with qualified scientists and engineers and not the general public. It was also just a skip and a jump from Hopkins, which cut down on travel time.
The best part of being in Monterey was its proximity to Stanford, so Luke’s girlfriend, Rosie, could drive down to see him every other weekend, class work and exams permitting. And since they text-messaged each other at least eight times a day, their separation was easier to bear than might be expected. Happily, Luke’s father was footing the phone bills, and doing so without complaint.
Then, one bleak and foggy day, Luke’s hydrology professor asked some of his students to help him clear out the old storage vault. This room had been a catchall for at least twenty years. Among a vast assortment of oddities, it housed scores of old specimen jars containing long-dead marine exhibits, and crates of antiquated and disused laboratory paraphernalia. But by far the greatest clutter consisted of boxes and boxes of papers that had evidently never been sorted or cataloged or thrown out. The job of sorting and organizing the chaos paid little or no money, but it did put Luke in the position to go rummaging around in Hopkins’s attic.
Old attics stacked with long-forgotten mementos had always sparked Luke’s fertile imagination. His first taste of an attic safari came as a childhood adventure while visiting his grandmother’s old Victorian house in Watsonville. Thus, long after his fellow students had lost interest in the job and found excuses to quit, Luke continued on sorting through the trash, most of which was destined for the Dumpster. And then, one Sunday morning in April, Luke came across something that would completely change his life.
Under a stack of old cardboard file boxes at the back of the vault, Luke discovered a small, antique-looking, leather-bound trunk stamped with the name of Dr. Charles H. Gilbert. It was very like the trunk he’d found and explored in his grandmother’s attic. That one had contained hundreds of old photographs that his grandfather, an enthusiastic if somewhat untutored shutterbug, had taken over the years and stored away before his death. Luke’s grandmother had totally forgotten about the trunk, and Luke and his grandmother had spent many happy hours going through the photographs. She seemed to bloom again as she recalled every detail depicted in each picture. It had inspired Luke to rummage further, and he went on to also discover a large mahogany case of very fine English silver flatware that his grandmother had been given as a wedding present sixty-six years before. Being a modest creature at heart, she had never found occasion to use it, preferring her mother’s simple flatware pattern instead. However, when Luke’s grandmother decided to sell the silver at auction with Butterfield & Butterfield, she was stunned to find that it had gone out the door for $7,800. Far more than she had ever imagined it was worth. With this youthful experience to inspire him, Luke took to rummaging with a passion. Show him a cluttered attic, and he was off to the races.
The leather trunk Luke discovered in the Hopkins vault made him think that perhaps he was at least onto something interesting once more, but he was disappointed at what he found. The bulk of the contents appeared to be the property of a long-departed Hopkins professor. It consisted mostly of old scholastic papers, numerous notebooks, and scientific journals. There was also a box of fading antique photographs that included several labeled pictures of Hopkins when it was just a plain, wooden, two-story building perched on Lover’s Point. There were even
