Ark (13 page)

Now that the ark and the tabernacle were in place the computer began to render it in full color, then the ground appeared, and finally a desert landscape with stark distant mountains completed the scene. The computer flashed a warning sign in bold red letters that filled the screen:
“START – MICROWAVE RADIATION.”
They disappeared as abruptly as they appeared. Nothing happened. Then another message flashed in red: “
BEGIN FREQUENCY SWEEP
.”

Jim held his breath. On the monitor, microwaves were displayed as a wide yellow beam with dark bands sweeping through it. The virtual beam stayed in a fixed position aiming into the tabernacle at an angle from above. Small white letters in the corner of the screen showed the angle to be 25°. Slowly the angle rose toward 90°.

When the beam reached 56° a light switched on, exactly where Jim expected it. “Above the Mercy Seat and between the two cherubim,” he mumbled in awe as the glowing orb above the ark brightened. The beam continued to increase its angle until it reached a 90° vertical position, but the glowing light never faded. The beam held that position for a few seconds before beginning to lower. When it got to the 45° position Jim expected the glow to stop, but it did not, nor did its effect on the ark when the beam reached its lowest point, horizontal to the ground.

“That’s weird,” said Jim. “The ark started glowing when the beam got to about 60 degrees.”

“Fifty-six degrees,” said Gene. “It’s the same every time. I watched it run at Columbia more than ten times. It was always the same. It’s like the effect on the ark sustains itself somehow.”

“I don’t understand,” said Jim.

Gene explained that the experiment was set up to shift frequencies near the meter bandwidth until a reaction occurred. Then the simulation would test other variables, angles of activation and such.

“Did you vary the signal strength?” asked Dan.

“Not while the program is running. For the test we needed to simplify the variables. We are assuming a power of one megawatt.”

“Isn’t that a lot of power?” asked Jim.

“Relative to what?” asked Dan. “To God?”

Jim scratched his head and looked back at the screen. “Can you run the program again, only zooming in on details?”

“Now that it’s been through the Crays you can do what you want,” said Earl. “They have it all stored away.”

Jim told Earl that he wanted to see the ark in operation in close up and from different angles. “Can you do that?”

Earl grinned and tapped the keyboard. He hummed a tune as his fingers danced across the console. Jim recognized it as
Spirit in the Sky
. He smiled and wondered if Earl was getting his own joke. Before he could ask, his eyes were arrested by something on the screen. It showed a view of the ark as only Aaron, the high priest, might have seen it, hidden mysteriously, flickering behind a veil. The curtain did not bear the cherubim motifs described in the Bible. It was only a scrim or fog that diffused the light pouring out from between the twin angelic parabola that covered the Mercy Seat.

Dan looked around at everyone. “Isn’t this fuckin’ incredible?”

“Maybe you should watch your language,” Jim whispered.

“Yeah, maybe I should,” said Dan. He wasn’t smiling.

“Can you slow down the action? Can we follow the pulses?” asked Gene.

Without a word Mr. Megabyte hit a few more keys. The bands of dark waves that flowed along the beam slowed but did not reveal to Gene what he wanted to see. He shook his head. “That’s odd,” he said, “I wonder ...”

Everyone looked at Gene. “What?” said Jim and Earl simultaneously.

“Well, I kind of expected to see waves being emitted from the ark, too,” Gene offered. “Like the waves going in. But there aren’t any. Why? Is that a problem with the simulation or a real prediction, I wonder?”

Except for the whirring of the Crays the room fell silent. Jim looked at Dan. “Any ideas?”

“Sure. Well, I think so,” said Dan. “The thing has converted microwaves to other forms of energy: heat, photons, maybe electrical and magnetic energy too.”

“Like a laser?” asked Earl.

“More like a maser,” replied Dan.

“Maser? What’s that?” asked Jim.

“Stands for ‘microwaves amplified by the stimulated emission of radiation,’” said Gene. “Coherent microwaves instead of light.”

“A microwave laser,” Dan added, watching the screen in awe.

#

It seemed inevitable that everyone should go back to Jim’s house to think things over.

As they said goodbye to Earl, Jim wondered what effect the experience might have had on him.

They picked up the car at the garage on Thirty-fourth Street. No one had very much to say until they got to the car. “Do you think Mr. Megabyte will be Mr. Blabbermouth?” asked Jim as he headed the station wagon toward the Schuylkill Expressway.

“I’ll deal with him through a friend. So, Jim,” said Gene, changing the subject, “What did you think of the simulation?”

“I keep telling myself that it was a simulation,” said Jim, “but I wish I hadn’t held back. I’m dying of curiosity and I’ll probably never get the chance to test it.”

“What’s that?” said Gene.

“I wanted them to up the amplitude and the power in a burst,” said Jim.

“To show us what?” asked Dan from the back seat.

“If it could have roasted anything in the courtyard, like the Bible says it did.”

“It did?”

“Read your Bible,” said Jim. “The ark did a lot more than that.”

“I never heard that,” said Dan.

Jim nodded. “Well, not to get on a rant here, but since I started studying the Old Testament I’ve come to realize that very few people have ever heard that.”

“Most people don’t have any reason to pay attention to the story,” observed Gene. “Christians focus on the New Testament while the Hebrews focus on the rituals and the law without considering the details. Religion puts a kind of veil over all that information. When you’re born and raised with it, you generally don’t question it.”

“Yes, but it’s right there in the story,” said Jim. “It tells us that the ark killed 25,000 people. They were burnt to a crisp. It describes the ark being used in battle with fire or lightning bolts shooting out of it. A devout Israelite lost his life by touching the ark when all he did was to stop it from falling to the ground. Touch the ark and you’re dead. It also tells how the Israelites carried the ark across the Jordan River. This was after they’d carried the thing around for forty years. The Jordan was flooding at the time, but as soon as the priests carrying the ark stepped into the water the river receded and they crossed into their promised land.”

“You’re talking about the parting of the Red Sea, I think,” said Dan.

“No,” said Jim, “that was before the ark was ever built; when they were crossing the Red Sea or the Reed Sea after the Exodus from Egypt.”

“I never heard about the parting of the Jordan River,” said Dan.

Gene Henson had been listening quietly. “He’s right, Dan,” he said. “All those details are in the Bible, spread out throughout the three books of Moses. Fact is, they carried the ark around with them for a long time. Like Jim says, forty years.

“I guess that’s what impressed me when I first looked into this thing with Jim, the fact that at least two generations of people grew up and lived with the ark as they toted it and all their stuff around in the desert for forty years. When you think about it, you come to realize that there were thousands of witnesses to all the events described. The way I see it, Dan, there are only two possible views of this story. Either you buy it or you don’t. That means it’s either a complete fabrication or the plain truth.”

“Couldn’t it be somewhere in between?” asked Dan. “I mean isn’t that where the truth generally lies, in the gray areas?”

“Not here,” said Jim. “I have to agree with Gene. There were all those witnesses. It even says that when Moses came down from the mountain the first time, he’d apparently convinced God that the elders needed proof. So the book says that a whole bunch of them met with God face to face, in a tent at the foot of the mountain. These were the tribal elders. If it is true it’s analogous to God visiting the White House or the U.N.”

Dan looked out the window, shaking his head. “That’s if the story is true.”

“Getting back to the simulation for a minute,” said Gene. “What I wanted to ask you, Jim, is why you didn’t have Earl try your pulse experiment?”

“At first I didn’t think of it,” answered Jim. “Then I began to wonder what Mr. Megabyte was making of all this. If we revealed the ark as a potential weapon; well, I just don’t know Mr. Megabyte well enough to trust him.”

“Earl’s no dummy,” said Gene. “He’d figure it out if he hasn’t already.”

“No need to rub his nose in it, though,” said Jim. “What’s he going to do with the info? Just forget it? I couldn’t and neither could you.”

Gene seemed disturbed by Jim’s distrust of Earl. “Like I said, I’ll talk to him.”

Jim frowned and bit his lip. “No, I’d just let it go.”

Dan touched Jim’s arm. “What about all that data stored in Penn’s computers?” he asked. “What if Earl shows it to other people?”

“Like who?” asked Gene.

Dan shrugged his shoulders and sat back in his seat.

“This is no reflection on you, Gene,” said Jim. “It’s not like I’m insulting a buddy of yours, is it? I don’t know why I don’t trust him. Call it a feeling. It was just the way he acted. Like a flake. Who knows what he might say and who knows who his friends are?”

For a minute Gene said nothing. Then he reached in his shirt pocket and pulled out a pack of cigarettes. “Mind if I light up?”

“Not at all,” said Jim. “You smoke?”

Gene looked back at Dan. “Is this going to bother you?”

“Just open a window a little,” said Dan.

They pulled off the expressway onto City Avenue, where the traffic became thick and frenzied. A SEPTA bus nearly forced them into oncoming traffic, evoking some vicious commentary from Jim. “Fucking City Avenue!” he bellowed. “Twenty years out of date. Half the traffic in Philly travels it and there’s a stop light every tenth of a mile!”

Little more was said about the ark until that evening when Lou and Claire came over.

Kas had roasted a large turkey for dinner, hoping that the leftovers would hold them for lunches into the week, but when she realized the full number of guests that were staying for dinner she wondered if one bird would last the evening.

“Dinner for seven,” said Kas. “And no notice. Great!”

#

When Jim got home Kas said that John Wilcox had called and left a message on their answering machine. It was there when she and Stephie had gotten back from church.

“He called twice since then,” she told Gene.

While Gene called John, Jim was drafted into making a salad for dinner. Dan volunteered to help slice up the vegetables.

“Where’s Lou and Claire?” asked Jim. He looked out the kitchen window and saw them having a game of catch with Woolsey and Stephanie.

Kas asked Jim how the computer thing went.

“While you were in one kind of church, it’s like we were in another,” said Dan jokingly.

Kas gave Dan a strange look, as though he’d spoken in a foreign tongue. “You were in a church? I thought you said something about the ...”

Jim laughed. “No,” he said. “Dan means that we were watching a simulation of the ark, and we talked about it all the way home; the Old Testament and the ark.”

“Oh, I see,” said Kas with an embarrassed grin. “So what happened? Did it work?”

“It did,” said Jim. “It’s just now starting to sink in. I should be jumping up and down.”

“Tell me,” said Kas.

Jim found it difficult to sum up what he’d seen at the university. He fumbled for a while with his layman’s description of the simulation until Dan raised a stalk of celery like a flag. “You’re trying too hard, Jim,” he said. “It worked, Kas. Plain and simple. It worked like we thought it would.”

“What does that mean?” she asked. “This is important, isn’t it?”

“I’m not sure what it means, Kas,” said Jim.

Kas had been preparing turkey gravy for dinner. She stopped stirring the pan and stared at Jim. “Does that mean that it’s going to be built?”

“I’m not sure of that either,” said Jim. “It was one of the most exciting things I’ve ever seen. The ark turned radio waves into pure energy.”

“But radio waves are already pure energy,” Kas said. “I use a microwave oven every day. That’s what you discovered?”

“The ark produced a different type of energy. Light and heat,” said Dan. “I think that the ark could also store up energy. Like a battery.”

“Nobody knows this?” asked Kas, wide-eyed.

“They will soon, I think,” said Jim.

Lou suddenly burst into the kitchen, red-faced and puffing. “Nice dog, Jim,” he said. Then the smell of the turkey hit his nose. “Mmmmmm,” he said, moving menacingly toward the bird steaming in the center of the kitchen table, “I believe I’ll have this portion. What are all the rest of you having?”

Kas slapped Lou’s hand as he reached for the turkey. “Back off, Lou,” she said. “You’re acting like that dog!”

Lou sulked away from the table. “She hates me, Jim,” he said mournfully.

“She’s got her reasons, I guess,” said Jim, laughing.

Kas ignored them and went back to stirring the gravy.

Claire had stayed in the backyard smoking a cigarette and watching Stephie play with the dog. Finally they came in, laughing. Spring had finally come to Havertown and everyone felt good. The nagging question of the ark seemed to get blown away on the warm floral breeze that persisted well into the evening.

After dinner Jim got the lawn furniture out of the garage and they sat out under the stars. The full moon and the fresh scent of night blooming flowers promised that summer was nearly upon them.

Since Dan had to get up early for his job interview, he went to sleep in the guest room. Gene opted to stay overnight rather than drive back to the city.

Jim never told Lou about the computer simulation, and Lou didn’t ask.

#

It was a different story Monday. Lou arrived at the Raftworks full of questions.