Prime (Chess Team Adventure, #0.5)

“Life from lifelessness,” Sasha said, not looking away. “They found the source; the Elixir of Life.”


“I guess you could call it that,” Parker said. “It wasn’t a magical power like the Philosopher’s Stone, but a combination of being in the right place and triggering the right frequency.”

King shook his head in confusion. “Back up. Life from lifelessness? What does that mean?”

“One thing science has never been able to adequately explain, is where life came from. All life on Earth—every single living thing down to the tiniest microbe—comes from a living parent organism. If the theory of evolution is true, then all life probably traces back to one single organism—an amoeba or something—that got the process started, but no one can explain how that happened. Scientists have been able to create conditions where amino acids and protein molecules will naturally occur, but they’ve never been able to make the final leap—to bring them to life.”

“You’re saying that Bacon and al-Tusi found a way to do that? With…what? Crystals and music? Sounds pretty New Age to me.”

Parker however nodded enthusiastically. “It’s not so farfetched. There have been all kinds of studies to show that music can influence plant health. It happens at a molecular level. The crystals weren’t even important. It was the music, or rather the specific harmonic frequencies that produced the effect. Al-Tusi built his pipe organ so that they could pin down exactly which musical notes did what.”

“Is it possible that their experiments were just creating some kind of funky mutations in the plants that were already there?”

“Maybe. Even that would be a pretty significant discovery for the time, but they tried to control for all the variables, and they were convinced that they were actually giving life to inanimate matter.”

“Okay, let’s say I believe all that. What’s Rainer’s angle?” King turned his gaze to Sasha. “You were with him. Did you get a sense of what he wants from all of this?”

Sasha’s eyes remained riveted on the screen, as if the information there was far more interesting than anything King had to say. She clicked to the next page, her eyes moving back and forth as she read.

“Black Death,” she said finally. “The plague. Guo Kan, the Chinese general who fought with Mongols, got his hands on an al-Tusi’s urghan. His experiments with it created the organism responsible for the Black Death outbreak in the fourteenth century.”

“That’s exactly why Bacon and al-Tusi encoded the manuscript,” Parker added. “It’s a how-to manual for creating new kinds of life. They were afraid of what might happen if it fell into the wrong hands.”

“I thought that could happen only at that one special place, the prime location.”

Parker shrugged. “The effect is most pronounced at the source. They weren’t able to replicate their experiments when they left the area. But maybe there are other places on Earth with the same properties. Or maybe it just takes longer to see results; the Black Death didn’t show up until several decades after Guo’s death.”

King pondered this possibility for a moment then switched gears. “Does the book say what’s so special about this ‘Prime’ place?”

“Bacon speculated that it might be some kind of confluence of Earth energy. He had only a vague understanding of what that meant, but we know there are invisible rivers of geo-magnetic energy called Telluric currents that run through the whole planet. Crystals—like the ones he was using—align themselves magnetically. Maybe that provided the extra boost needed to start life.”

Sasha shook her head. “The Prime is important because it is the original source. Every living thing on Earth is mathematically connected to it.”

There was a hint of mania in her voice, and King knew he had to tread carefully. He had no idea what she was talking about, but Parker was nodding. At least it makes sense to someone, he thought. “So, bottom line, if the wrong person goes to this Prime place and plays the wrong song, all hell breaks loose, and that’s a bad thing. Do Rainer and company know all this?”

Sasha appeared to consider for a moment. “I don’t think so. That wasn’t the direction they were going. But they understand that the urghan is the key to deciphering the manuscript.”

King’s hand moved to his pocket where he’d stashed al-Tusi’s parchment. It was the only one of its kind, aside from the digital copy he’d sent to Parker.

The Voynich manuscript…the Prime location…the origin of life on Earth—none of that was really important. What mattered was that Rainer needed the information on that parchment, and King knew the rogue Delta operator would move Heaven and Earth to get it.

When he came for it, King and Chess Team would be waiting.





FORTY-FIVE