* * * * *
Foundry didn’t wait up for his old uncle to keep up with him. By the time Mortimer arrived back in the library Foundry was already on the ladder looking through the numerous volumes on the thick wooden shelves.
Mortimer shook his head disparagingly. “You don’t even know what you are looking for.”
“So tell me.”
“I fear I’ve upset you. Come down and let’s talk.”
“No. You said the book would help. Let’s find this infernal book of yours.”
“It’s not my book. It is yours now that your father has passed.”
“Well then let’s find MY infernal book.” Foundry searched aimlessly on the shelves at his eye level. “So what am I looking for Uncle?”
“It’s a book with a gold spine.”
“A gold spine? That should be easy to spot.” Foundry twisted his torso right and then left scanning the shelves looking for the volume that should have stuck out like a sore thumb sitting amongst all the drably colored spines on display. “Are you sure it is even in the library. Maybe Dad…”
Foundry stopped mid-sentence as he spotted the book lying on its side on the otherwise empty shelf across the room. Foundry shimmied down the ladder and slid it along the railing to the open shelf. He quickly climbed the ladder while his uncle looked on, grabbing the book from the shelf. The book glimmered in the low light of the room. Its spine was covered in a gold leaf treatment and with a single swipe of the fingers it glistened in the light.
“That’s it Foundry! You’ve found it!”
Foundry climbed back down the ladder staring at the book as he made his descent. The book appeared to be very old. The front cover bore the title of the volume, Aequatio Vero.
He handed the book to Mortimer. “Okay. So this will help?”
Mortimer took the book from Foundry. He opened the cover and leafed through the first few pages. He stopped to pull his reading glasses out of the breast pocket of his suit coat. He continued leafing through the book until he found the passage in the book he wanted to reference. He motioned for Foundry to join him as he headed to the reading table at the end of the library. The men pulled two chairs together and sat at the table looking at the book lying open on the table. Mortimer read silently to himself at first.
“What is this book uncle Mort?”
Mortimer looked up at Foundry over the tops of his lenses. Holding his place he flipped to the very back of the book. Inside the back cover was a piece of white paper board, a card of some sort, with something scribbled on the corner. He picked it up flipping it over to glance at the other side. Foundry could not see the other side of the card from his vantage point. Mort set it face down inside the book where he held his place in the book and flipped it closed.
“Foundry, what distinguishing characteristic have you noted about me throughout the time we’ve known each other?”
“I don’t know… you’re bald?”
Mortimer smiled. “How old do you think I am?”
“I know that you are eighty-two.”
“Eighty-two. Well I think that’s right. And how would you say I look for a man in his early eighties.”
“Good. Great! A picture of health.”
“Why thank you Foundry, that’s very kind of you to say. But do I look better or worse than I did say…ten years ago when I turned seventy-two?”
Foundry looked at his uncle unsure where he was leading. “I don’t know uncle Mort. It’s hard to say. I suppose you look about the same.”
“Yes, okay so how about ten years before that, when I was sixty-two. How healthy did I look then?”
Foundry was getting more uncomfortable as the truth he had always ignored began staring him in the face. He laughed uncomfortably as he tried to appease the old man. “Again, that was so long ago. You’ve always seemed fairly old to me. But you look great. You hardly look a day over sixty.”
Mortimer flipped the book back open. “I’ve lived with your family your entire life Foundry. I’ve been an integral part in your day to day routines. I’ve been there for all the important events. Have you ever noticed the one thing missing from the picture?”
Foundry realized exactly the point his uncle was not so subtly alluding to. “You’re not in any family photos.”
“Ah ha. So you have noticed.”
“Yes, but you were always snapping the photos.”
“Yes, that is true. But, tell me, is there one photo of me in this household, the place I’ve called my home for the past forty plus years? Just one?”
“No.” Foundry looked down in shame as if he were a child being admonished. “Not that I’ve seen.”
Mortimer opened the book up and removed the white card from the pages sliding it over to Foundry face down. Foundry could see the writing on the bottom corner of the back of the card which he could now tell was the back of a photograph. It read “Foundry – 1985”, the year he was born. He slowly flipped the photo over to find a picture of himself being held by his Uncle Mortimer, a man who appeared to be not a day over sixty.
“How is this possible?” Foundry stared at the photo in his hand.
“It’s possible because that’s just the way it is.”
“No, that’s not an answer. I want to know how it is that my uncle doesn’t look a day older today than he does in a picture taken forty years ago.”
“I already told you Foundry, I’m not really your uncle.”
Foundry sat silently for a moment digesting that fact. What seemed so absurd five minutes earlier was now the only reasonable fact he understood about the man he knew as Uncle Mort.
“So if you’re not my uncle then who are you?”
“That’s not the question you need to be asking Foundry.”
“What other question should I possibly be asking given that photo?”
Mortimer slid the book over in front of Foundry. “The question you should be asking is who are you?”
Foundry glanced down at the open text in front of him. It was written in Latin. He looked back over at Mortimer sliding the book away. “What am I supposed to do with this? I can’t read Latin.”
“Look again Foundry. Look at the words on the page.”
Foundry pulled the book back and stared at the text on the page. After a moment the words came to him. He began reading.
"And It shall come to pass during the reign of the house of Rex that all in his kingdom shall prosper greatly and laud him as a new deity. Many will claim their state as the true Utopia. All shall seem well and good and whole, a land without sin."
"And the house of Rex shall rule with a gentle hand, but lo the transgressions of a benign ruler will begin to surface. Those forsaken by the rulers of the kingdom will rise up to be heard. The wailing of women and children and the cries of men who cannot feed them will quickly be put out like a small coal escaping from the hearth. Their tribulations will ring silently for many years."
Mortimer motioned for Foundry to skip down towards the end of the passage he was reading. Foundry obliged.
"For every man there is a woman. Each day is followed by night. The universe is vast but it is nothing more than a set of simple equations. There is the house of Rex, the ruling class. Then there is the house of Alesius who has but one single purpose, to balance the equation."
"There shall come to be a descendent of the house of Alesius who shall make his name known, and it will strike fear in all those who hear it. For his judgment will know no limit and shall spare no soul, and he will cast darkness across the land, and the house of Rex shall fall.”
Foundry pushed the text away. “What does that mean?”
“I think you know what it means Foundry. You are the chosen descendent of the house of Alesius.”
“That’s crazy. There’s no Alesius in my family. I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Foundry was upset and confused by the passage he read.
“D
on’t take things too literally Foundry. You are from the house of Alesius as far as this book is concerned. This is your destiny.”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa. Hold on before we fire up the destiny train. I am not going to rein terror on all the land.”
“But you must realize Foundry, it is not up to you to decide.”
“Nope. I’m not buying it. I’m just another guy. This is crazy. You’re crazy.”
“You’re certainly not just another guy. You’re one of the most influential figures of our time. And if I’m the one who’s crazy then please explain how you were just able to read Latin.”
Foundry stared at Mortimer then at the open text lying on the table in front of him. The words on the page mocked him silently in a language considered dead for hundreds of years.
“You’re playing mind games with me Mort. Something is going on here and I’m going to figure it out.”
Mortimer rolled his eyes and sighed. “I can see this is going to take a little time for you to digest.”
Foundry chuckled loudly. “You think? Uncle Mort… You can’t just… How am I…” Foundry found himself at a loss for words.
“You may continue to call me uncle if you like. After all, I do still think of you as my nephew, but as I said earlier I’m not really your uncle. Perhaps if you let that one belief go first it will help ease your mind as you ponder your newfound purpose.”
“Good Lord. You are unbelievable. Ponder my new purpose? First, I don’t really know what that all means despite what you say I know. Second, I didn’t work my tail off the last twenty years to throw it all away in the prime of my life because some crazy old book said I need to cast darkness across the land. And third, who the heck is Rex? I don’t know any Rex.”
Foundry spoke rapidly at first in his highly agitated state but slowly calmed himself. “And fourth, I don’t know how you look the same age now as you did forty years ago, but that’s one thing. Playing a part in that sick book is something totally different.”
“Are you finished rambling?”
“Yeah!” Foundry slowly calmed himself. “Maybe.”
“May I interject? I think I can offer some perspective to help ease your burden.”
“Fine. Let’s hear it.” Foundry sat back down in the chair at the table.
“You have spent your entire adult life building your father’s empire beyond anyone’s wildest dreams. He accomplished great things while at the helm of his company but you truly took it to a new level. Foundry, you made McDermott Industries into the fortune-fifty company it is today.”
“Yes, Mort. Your point?”
“What would you say was the defining moment for McDermott Industries in the past twenty years if not in its entire history?”
“You know as well as most freshman business majors.”
“Yes, I do know. The development of talminomium. The hyper-conductor. The backbone of modern computing. Able to conduct the same level of voltage in a single chain of atoms as a microfiber of gold, 45,000 times its size.”
“Yes Uncle Mort. Thanks for the reprisal of our opening tag line in every prospectus we’ve published in the past ten years.”
“Oh, but it is true. Very true and very impressive and it all came about because of you. Your drive made the discovery of a new element possible. You lead the team that made it the industry standard for all electronic micro-circuitry. You increased computing power one thousand fold when technologists were beginning to think we had just about reached our maximum capacity.”
“Yes, Uncle. But what does that have to do with the gold book?”
“Everything. Let me ask you who do you think Rex might be?”
“I’ve no idea. Are you Rex?”
Mortimer chuckled. “That would be a bit ironic wouldn’t it? No, no. I’m not Rex. Actually Rex isn’t necessarily a man, not this time at least.”
“This time? What does that mean?”
“The equation in the book is a constant cycle. The power, the success of the house of Rex builds over time then the house of Alesius intervenes and resets the equation. This has happened dozens of times before. The British Empire and George Washington, The Roman Empire and Attila the Hun, even the United States of America and Osama Bin Laden.”
“Wait, wait. You’re comparing Osama Bin Laden to George Washington.”
“He was a lot more like Attila the Hun and Osama Bin Laden than you think. Do you think Great Britain thought much of him?”
“So I’m going to join the ranks of the most notorious terrorist of the century?”
“That is a question of perception. That is to be seen.”
“I won’t have any part in this.” Foundry stood to leave the library. He’d had enough of his uncle’s crazy babbling.
“Leave if you want, but you can’t change what is already in motion. It’s too late. You can’t fight your own destiny.”
“I don’t believe in destiny.” Foundry pushed in his chair.
“It’s your past that has betrayed you as much as your future.”
Foundry stopped. “I’m going to be sorry I asked, but what do you mean by that?”
“Your entire life has been moving you in this direction to this point. The actions of your past are irreversible and therefore your fate is as certain as this table and this chair.”
“That makes no sense.”
“Talminomium.”
Foundry shook his head. “Even less sense now.”
“It’s an infant among all the known elements of the world.”
“Yes. We created it. It’s the last man made element to be created.”
“And it exploded like wildfire thanks to your aggressive marketing, R&D, production… you made it the quintessential building block of our modern day technological infrastructure.”
“Again with the McDermott prospectus bullet points.”
“You were so bent on dominating the market you failed to recognize the inherent risk involved in expanding the deployment of such a fragile substance so rapidly.”
“Inherent danger? Fragile substance?”
“Did you ever stop to consider the impact of the failure of talminomium?”
“Failure! NOW you’re being ridiculous.”
“Am I? You just admitted it was an infant in the grand scheme of the periodic table. Yet you think its limited time on this earth is sufficient proof of the sustainability of the substance.”
“Yes, in fact I do.”
“Did you ever consider the effect of radiation on your precious engineered atom?”
“Mortimer. Of course we tested it. It showed no signs of deterioration in any of the tests, including radiation.”
“Did you test it using solar radiation?”
“Are you kidding? Solar radiation is the most prominent form of radiation. We bathe in it every day. You couldn’t shield a substance from solar radiation if you tried.”
“Normal levels yes. But solar flares? Did you ever think to emulate radiation from solar flares?”
“Again, solar flares are regular occurrences. The same principal applies.”
“But not all solar flares are equal. I put it to you that one day a solar flare of size and volatility not commonly seen but maybe once every twenty to twenty-five years will reach the surface of the planet, decimating your precious atom and in doing so bringing society to its knees.”
“That is highly speculative. I have no reason to believe that would be the case. How would an old man like…”
“An old man like me? Perhaps there is another line of questioning you need to pursue. One you started with but never finished.”
“Fair enough. How do you fit into the equation? And how do you seemingly not age?”
“I am from the house of Gabriel. My job is to help make sure you fulfill your destiny.”
“Gabriel? What? Like the arch angel Gabriel?”
“So you’ve heard of him?”
/> Foundry’s defiant expression melted as he realized that he might be hearing the truth about his life’s work. He had aggressively pushed talminomium into the marketplace, into technology, into the fabric of modern society. If it did fail on a global scale it would cripple the entire world. It would be larger than catastrophic. It would change the landscape of mankind, forever.
It all began to make more sense as he played it through his mind. What-ifs became accepted fact. He was part of a master plan to reset the equation, to balance the power. Rex was technology. It was the crutch that society now relied on so heavily, and it was about to be yanked away. And there was nothing he could do to stop it.
* * * * *
Everyone gathered in the old chapel on the corner of the McDermott estate. It had been erected by his father a few years before Foundry’s birth. It served as a place for worship services in the small community surrounding the large estate. It was located in the heart of Novus, the small community that embraced age old technology under the guidance of Foundry McDermott. His final project was to construct a foothold free of talminomium that could foster the rebirth of modern technology once the precious element that he had worked so hard to engrain into modern society failed. He named it Novus, the new beginning.
Novus had everything a thriving young community could want; plenty of jobs at three new manufacturing plants, community services, shopping centers, utility services for gas, oil, electricity and water. They even had their own movie theatre. The only thing Novus lacked was talminomium.
Foundry had acquired antiquated manufacturing equipment to construct talminomium free circuit boards and computer chips. Of course their products were obsolete outside the city limits of Novus. It was soon evident that the community would never be able to sustain itself without the deep coffers of Foundry McDermott. The money he made from selling off McDermott Industries was sizable but the success of his miracle element made it impossible for Novus to compete with the outside world. Within ten years of its birth the small utopian community dwindled to a ghost town.
Foundry spent his remaining years as a notorious recluse and an avid solar weather buff. He kept his eye on daily solar activity recording all spikes measured by the national weather service. The big one, as Foundry called it, never happened over the last forty years of his life.
In attendance at his funeral was a very old Miss Valentine, the closest Mr. McDermott had to a family member at the time of his death. She was the only employee that had remained on staff all those years after that fateful day when Uncle Mortimer disappeared along with the gold spine book.
It was a small service, but well attended. A gentleman that slipped into the back just before the service began caught the eye of Miss Valentine. He looked strangely familiar but she couldn’t quite place him. At the end of the service he approached her and offered his condolences. At close proximity she was certain she recognized him, but still couldn’t place the name. She held onto his hand for a moment and then it clicked. Her eyes widened and she smiled, ready to embrace the man before she came to her senses. It wasn’t possible. She had to be mistaken.
“I’m sorry but you strike an uncanny resemblance to someone I once knew a very long time ago. I didn’t catch your name.”
“I’m sorry, how terribly rude of me. David… David Alesius. I’m terribly sorry for your loss.”
That name didn’t strike a chord at all. Besides the man she remembered must have been dead for several years. This man was a good ten years younger than her. He couldn’t have been a day over sixty.
* * * * *
Photographic
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When Juni Little uncovers the mystery behind a sudden outbreak of violent killings on the outskirts of his home town, he struggles to convince the authorities of the danger lurking in the woods, while the true threat walks among those he trusts the most.
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