FILE NO. 007

INTERVIEW WITH DR. ROSE FRANKLIN, PH.D., SENIOR SCIENTIST, ENRICO FERMI INSTITUTE

Location: University of Chicago, Chicago, IL

—Could it be the Davis experiment?

—I do not know. Could it? What is the Davis experiment?

—I’m sorry. I’m talking to myself. It has to be argon! I should have thought of that. My father worked at the mine for so long.

—What mine? I know what argon is, but I am obviously missing whatever point you are trying to make.

—In the late sixties, a couple of astrophysicists devised an experiment to collect and count neutrino particles emanating from the sun. I remember reading about it when I was a kid. They built a big pool of dry-cleaning fluid almost five thousand feet belowground to shield it from other solar phenomena and basically just waited for neutrinos to hit it. When a chlorine atom is hit by a neutrino, it turns into a radioactive isotope of argon—argon-37, to be precise. Every once in a while, they would bubble up helium to collect the argon and they were able to count the atoms that were hit. Beautiful science, they took something purely theoretical and managed to turn it into something concrete. They ran this experiment for nearly twenty-five years at the Homestake mine where my father worked, a couple miles from where I fell onto the hand. I’m willing to bet these things react in proximity to the argon.

—I am not a physicist, as you know, but…

—I don’t know anything about you.

—Well, now you know I am not a physicist. In any case, I was thinking that the amount of radioactive material that could travel that distance must be infinitesimal.

—It is. But, however minute the amount may be, it can’t just be a coincidence. The helicopter that crashed in Turkey was collecting air samples to detect signs of nuclear testing. That’s what they would have been looking for, traces of argon-37. The pilot said they flew in some large equipment with them to Turkey. It would have been a MARDS—Movable Argon Detection System—or something like that. In any case, it’s a big machine that can detect argon-37. An underground nuclear reaction will turn the surrounding calcium into just that. It’s a pretty reliable way of detecting a nuclear site. You can’t hide from it. You can’t cheat. Calcium’s everywhere, in sand, in rocks, in people, and some of the argon that a nuclear blast would create will eventually escape into the air, no matter how deep the explosion.

—You implied there are other isotopes of argon. Would it react to any of them or just this one?

—It would have to be just this one. There’s a whole lot of argon-40 in the atmosphere, everywhere, other isotopes as well. But, I agree, it does seem odd that these artifacts would react to something so specific…

—Can you…

—I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to interrupt. I meant to say unless, of course, they were designed that way. It would really be clever if they did that on purpose.

—What do you mean? Who is “they”?

—This might sound a little crazy, but hear me out. Suppose you encountered some civilization that’s too far behind technologically for you to engage in any sort of dialogue with. Anyone capable of building these things would have scared the hell out of people six thousand years ago. They would have been seen as gods, demons, supernatural beings of one kind or another. Now, say you wanted to leave something for them to discover, but only once they had evolved to a certain point.

—How would you measure their evolution?

—You’d want to know when they reached a sufficient understanding of the universe for you to be able to communicate with them in a meaningful way. It would most likely have to be measured technologically. It seems reasonable to assume that most or all species similar to humans would go through more or less the same evolutionary steps. Make fire, invent the wheel, those types of things. Flight might be a good criterion, or spaceflight. If you can look up at the sky, it’s safe to say you’ll eventually try to find a way to get up there, and space-faring species might at least be open to the idea of not being alone in the universe. Unless you were there to observe, you would need a way to detect whatever evolutionary landmark you chose. If you hid these things on a moon, for example, you’d know they’d only be found once they’re able to reach that far.

From where I stand, being able to harness nuclear energy would also be a pretty good criterion. Now—and this is the clever part—if you designed these things to react specifically to argon-37, they could only be discovered once that civilization managed to tap the power of the atom. This is all pure speculation, or course, but if that’s what they did, I’m impressed.

In any case, I think we have to take another look at the panels. We’re going to need a linguist after all.

—I thought you said there was no point?

—That was before I knew about the argon. If that site was built there for us to discover, there has to be something in it that we can figure out. If you were to build a structure, say a temple, for your own people, you’d write things in it that make sense to you. But if you were building that same temple for someone else, you’d want what you write to also mean something to whomever you built it for. There’s just no point in writing a message if you know the person you write it for will never be able to understand it.

—Quite a few established linguists have already looked at the markings and come up with nothing. What makes you think the outcome would be any different this time around?

—I can’t tell you why it would work now. I do have a pretty good idea why it didn’t work the first time around. They were looking for something that wasn’t there.

—And you now know what it is we are looking for?

—I haven’t the faintest idea. But I think that’s a good thing. I think those who looked at it before failed because they knew too many things, or so they thought.

—You will have to be a little less philosophical.

—I’m sorry. Generally speaking, people tend not to question what they’ve been told was true. Scientists are no different; they’ve just been told a lot more things. As a physicist, it would never occur to me to question the four fundamental forces, for example. I take them for granted, like every other thing I learned, and I try to build on that. We always look forward; never look back. But this thing…it’s different. It challenges us. It spits in the face of physics, anthropology, religion. It rewrites history. It dares us to question everything we know about ourselves…about everything. I must sound pretty philosophical again.

—A tad.

—I’d like to try someone not as well trained, some hotshot student maybe, someone who doesn’t need to throw the rule book out the window because he hasn’t read it yet. We need to look at this from a whole new angle. I’ll contact the linguistics department and see if they have someone to suggest.

—It is an interesting concept. You want to find someone who is more or less unqualified because the people that were actually proficient have all failed.

—I wouldn’t quite put it that way, but yes, someone who’s really smart and who’s less encumbered with preconceived notions. It sounds a lot better when I say it.

—It does. I suppose there is little to lose by trying, but you will forgive me if I do not exude enthusiasm. Did you receive the forearm from Turkey?

—Yes, it arrived two days ago. We couldn’t figure out if and how the hand was supposed to attach to it. Both parts have smooth, solid endings, nothing that would resemble a mechanism or a fastener. The end of the forearm is slightly concave, the wrist a bit convex but there’s nothing to hold the pieces together.

—It was my understanding that both pieces were now joined.

—They are. My point is that I have absolutely no idea how it works. We just moved them close to one another to see how they would fit and they were drawn together like magnets. My assistant almost lost a hand. I can’t talk intelligently about how the parts attach except to say it made a very loud, and very cool…swoosh sound…when they did.

—Can you take them apart?

—We haven’t been able to. It’s clear the amount of mechanical force required is more than what we can handle. I didn’t want to risk damaging anything. I’d rather concentrate on finding the other pieces. I can’t wait to see what the rest of the body looks like. We can try to take it apart once we finish building it.

—So you think there are more of these things buried somewhere?

—Oh yes. It’s killing me not to have it all right now. I may be getting ahead of myself, but I can’t see how there wouldn’t be. I could understand these being some sort of monuments or art forms if we had found another hand, a head, even a foot, but a forearm doesn’t seem like something you would build for its own sake. It’s not my area of expertise, but I can’t see a forearm playing a strong part in religious beliefs. And if I read the report correctly, there was no chamber surrounding it in Turkey either; no walls, no markings. It’s much too large to fit in the chamber the hand was found in, so it must have been buried elsewhere on purpose.

—I agree, but they could have built just one arm, in which case, all we could hope for is another piece.

—Maybe. I still think there’s an entire body out there, just waiting to be found.

—I hope time will prove you right. I really do.

—I can tell you that if I were able to build something so magnificent, I wouldn’t stop at an arm.

—Based on what you now know, can you devise a process for detecting the other parts, if they exist?

—If the rest of that body is out there, I’m fairly certain I can come up with a way to find it. I just have to figure out how to make a lot of argon-37 and how to disperse it efficiently. It might take a while to find all the pieces even once we have a method in place.

—How long?

—Impossible to guess. Months. Years? If the body is divided along the major articulations like we’d expect, there should be at least fourteen pieces; three for each arm and leg, that makes twelve, a head and one or several pieces for the torso. I can only hope that piece in Turkey was the exception and that the rest of the body parts are closer to where we found the hand.

If I’m correct, and they want us to find these things, they would have buried the pieces on land, where we can get to them relatively easily. I hope so, because searching the ocean is a completely different story.

I’ll have to request more funding from the NSA. I’m not sure how long this might take, but I’m absolutely certain I can’t do any of it on our budget.

—Forget the NSA. Just tell me what you need.

—Forget the NSA? Remind me whom you’re working for exactly? Wait. Don’t answer that. I’ll send you a list of equipment. We’ll also need a delivery system, possibly an airplane or a helicopter that can fly long distances. We’ll need a crew, I guess, and a team to recover what we find. This part might get complicated. As far as body parts go, what we found were the smallest ones. They’ll only get bigger.

—We have teams that can handle the recovery. I will see about finding you some pilots.

—We’ll also need a bigger room if this works.

—How big?

—Well, if the proportions are normal, or human, he, or she, would be over two hundred feet tall. We’ll need a warehouse even if we lay her on the ground.

—You still believe it is a girl?

—More than ever.