Ancient Echoes

CHAPTER 13



FRUSTRATED BY HER scientists’ lack of progress, Jennifer Vandenburg decided to look at some alchemical documents herself. How difficult could they be?

She quickly found out. Nicolas Flamel had couched everything he said in religious terms. To the medieval mind, his comments may have meant something, but not in modern times. How should one interpret:



...let him ask of himself, why the figure of St. Paul is on the right hand, in the place where the custom is to paint St. Peter? And on the other side that of St. Peter, in the place of the figure of St. Paul? Why the figure of St. Paul is clothed in colours white and yellow, and that of Peter in yellow and red?



Who the hell knew? Or cared? Flamel’s writings were useless! She didn’t have the background to understand. And anyway, to put alchemy into practice she needed the text Flamel had used—The Book of Abraham the Jew. Only with it could the secret of alchemy be revealed. And it was in Idaho.

She got up and paced as she pondered all she'd learned over the past few months about alchemy. The reason her attention turned toward such a bizarre subject was nearly as remarkable as the subject itself.

She came upon it through reading some of the personal papers, faxes, and emails of the founder of Phaylor-Laine Pharmaceuticals, Calvin Phaylor. After she replaced him upon his "retirement" by the board of trustees, she became curious about what had led to, essentially, a firing. Whispered rumors said Phaylor had lost his mind. She decided to see if his papers reflected that or if the board had, in fact, staged a coup. If so, she needed to be wary about them doing it again...to her.

Calvin Phaylor’s interest in alchemy shocked her. No wonder the board thought him mad! She went through Phaylor’s notes, emails, travel vouchers, and all other material she could find, surprised at how Phaylor saw PLP as his personal money machine, and at the amount of personal information stored on the company servers. She doubted he realized the company’s computers backed up everything, including private materials.

The more Jennifer learned about the history of alchemy, however, the more convinced she became that there really might be something to it. All the men initiated into its arcana weren't gullible fools, and throughout history many people believed in its power, including most of the outstanding minds of their time—men such as Roger Bacon, Sir Isaac Newton, Carl Jung, and Leonardo da Vinci. To be fair, she ought to include the bad with the good—Adolf Hitler.

If they believed in alchemy, why couldn't she?

The alchemist would create a philosopher's stone and somehow end up with gold. The common man perceived alchemy as a sort of ATM for Krugerrands.

But the master alchemist, the true believer, did not stop there.

From pure gold, the alchemist produced the "pill of transformation," a means for man to achieve his ultimate self, his perfect self—a man who would not die but live forever in immortal splendor.

That was the alchemist's ultimate goal.

The ultimate goal of Calvin Phaylor.

And now, the ultimate goal of Jennifer Vandenburg. Stopping a person from aging would allow her daughter to live. She could not, would not, fail.