The Flint Knappers - Chapter 5

I'm still half asleep. I want to catch a few more hours but I know the alarm clock is going off any minute. I set it for a reason so I go ahead and put my feet on the floor and enjoy a stretch to get the blood pumping. The old mechanical bell alarm starts it's clanging as I cross the room to turn it off. Looking in the mirror it's obvious I had a late night. This meet today is important. Time to get a move on Miss Astrid Weber, PhD...

After a quick shower I head out on my bike. My hair is still wet and it's a little cold outside. The first snow of the year could come today. This was always a lovely time of year in Northern Virginia. I hope to be able to head over to the Blue Ridge and spend some time at the cabin. So much depends on the outcome of this meeting today with Vijay and Katherine. I've got a lot of detail to brief them on so it's best that we are getting an early start. As I hit the bike trail on the way out of my place I can see traffic is already backing up. I love riding the electric bicycle I built. There are bike trails all over the area and I can get there in half the time as in a car! I just smile as I pass the bumper to bumper parade.

I reach the office of "GridIron Custom Data Solutions" at the same time Vijay is arriving in a taxi. It will be so nice to see him again. We're both meeting Katherine in her office. She's the founder and CEO of GridIron. They have made a fortune in data mining. When you say that these days most people think of crypto but that's not it. They do image analysis to find natural gas deposits. Modern day wildcatters apparently pay a fortune for that kind of intel. Katherine is a consummate business woman and brilliant CEO but her real secret is her understanding of the tech. She built the first cluster they had back before it was cool. The computing power she has at her disposal has been instrumental in the modeling I needed for our research.

Katherine welcomed us into her office and we settled in around the lounge area with the corner view. The warmth of the office in contrast to the outside temperature reminds me again of the approaching winter. The coffee smells great. She always gets the good stuff from the organic market.

I started my presentation with what would be the most obvious question. "Any change of status on the beacon?" There was still no word but the window was still wide open. It had only been four months since Newman made the jump. You've got to give the guy some time. Just surviving alone will be a small miracle. He knows we'll be here with our ear to the ground.

We estimated a year to get all the pieces together but Newman S. Smith seems to have a knack for beating the odds. He always did well in the timed trials. If he has survived he will find a way to forge the beacon. My part of all this is to stay focused on my job of deciphering the puzzle on this side. If Newman does his part and builds the beacon I'm sure the information he sends will be a help.

Another topic of interest in the meeting was those shadowy creeps "The Watchers". I know they're key to this whole thing but I just don't accept the premise of their benevolence blindly. They placed a network of QE anchor points on Earth and countless other planets long before the emergence of homo sapiens. When we (humans)came along they taught us how to build the beacons which are a key component of how the messages get transferred. Newman had figured out that the "Iron Pillar of Delhi" was one such beacon. Vijay told him about some of it's interesting properties and Newman became immediately curious. They traveled there to take a closer look and in that trip made a series of important discoveries. The metallurgy displayed in this work is simply amazing. The builders used a very special combination of trace minerals and phosphorous to imbue it with some amazing properties. Not least of which was it never rusts.

Newman knew that the beacon had to be built to last so he spent four years learning how to replicate this ancient wonder. For reasons we don't fully understand the beacon has to last a long time relative to where it's built. The probability of the message transference is somehow related to this.

After the meeting wrapped up I rode my bike back home along the same trail. The clouds are looking gray and hanging just above the tree tops. It could turn to snow if the temperatures keep dropping. It reminds me of the day Newman and I went to Newgrange. It looked like this now, with the same sad clouds. I hope he's ok. I think I would know it if he wasn't and I'm not really worried.

After a few minutes of a nice ride I grabbed a bagel and my third cup of coffee for the day and headed upstairs to my office to check messages. There was something from Edward in Ireland and he seemed quite beside himself with the news. He had found something interesting in the data from the experiment with Newman and it had led him to a new location. There was a stone there that he said I was going to want to take a closer look at. I will be on the next flight out of Dulles.

I was really excited about what we might find. Newman and I had worked out the protocols years in advance and so far this was a fit for what I should be looking for. A simple test was all that would be needed to find out if it was our beacon.

Most lab geeks would need fifty thousand dollars in equipment to test for the conditions. But I....we...are flint knappers and whatever we do must be achievable under primitive conditions. Today we will perform our tests with an old magnetic compass to determine if there could be an iron plate embedded in this big rock.

As I pass the compass slowly just above the large flat surface in the center of the rock I begin to mark with chalk the places where it seems to diverge. I stick to the protocol and map methodically in a grid pattern until a clear outline has emerged. It is exactly the dimensions we are expecting and I feel a rush of relief as I realize this is it. I'm smiling uncontrollably as I tell the others it's time to get the rest of the tools. We have to break the tablets free from the stone first and then we will be able to examine the message.

Newman always loved to tell a good story. I can't wait to see what he has to say.

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To be continued...
Read Chapter 1
Read Chapter 2
Read Chapter 3
Read Chapter 4

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Title image provided by pixabay user: kalhh