THE LAST ARK

CHAPTER 4: LOST PAPAL LETTERS

Vatican Archives, Vatican City Six Days Before Temple Ceremony

Aft er getting Jester’s help on the alarm, Derek fi nds the well-hidden tunnel door under the Sistine Chapel. It opens onto the Stradone dei Giardini walkway that borders the long exterior of the Vatican Museum from inside the private Vatican grounds. News of the murdered cardinal has his nerves fl ush with a tingling unease. Derek needs to focus. “WITNESS, tell me, who’s working at the Apostolic Library today?” T h ough far more powerful than SLVIA, at least in theory, WITNESS operates like a Ferrari that can’t shift out of fi rst gear. If he can fi nd and restore the SLVIA, then maybe SLVIA can get WITNESS to live up to its potential. “Father Luigi Gabaldon,” WITNESS replies. Good, the billion-dollar AI can open and read fi les, which is child’s play. “Now open his personnel fi le and tell me about his background, like where he grew up or where he served in the church.” All artifi cial intelligence requires training. Maybe WITNESS simply needs more training. SLVIA had matured to singularity, but that doesn’t mean WITNESS launched at that stage. Maybe they expect too much? “Born in Palermo, Sicily, Father Luigi entered the clergy at nineteen to serve churches in Malan and Palermo, then four years at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem before returning to the Vatican.” “Interesting, from the Mafia homeland to the Holy Land, and now a keeper of Vatican secrets,” Derek mutters as he opens the door. He may not need the information, but better to have it and not need it, than to need it and not have it at the top of his head. The key to a good deception is confidence with a little personal intelligence. “Father Luigi, you’re looking well today,” Derek greets in Italian, wearing a warm smile. “Thank you, Monsignor. How can I help you?” replies the faithful gatekeeper. “You have no appointment.” “Si, but I must beg a forbearance from you,” Derek lowers his voice. “I had a rather disturbing dream last night of an abbot named Sabas calling to me in desperation. When I awoke, I fell to my knees in prayer until the Lord sent a word of wisdom that I would find the abbot here.” The younger priest appears to be moved and searches the eyes of the older cleric until Derek turns them away, suddenly fearful of discovery. “I should not have asked you to sin for my sake,” Derek offers. “I was presumptuous, like those in Sicily. Please forgive me.” He bows his head, hoping to elicit a guilty response. “No, no, Monsignor, of course, I will make room for you. The archive section you need is not being used today. It was just that,”—Luigi hesitates, “I’ve never heard such zeal from you before. And there is one other thing that I am hesitant to confess.” “Fear not, Father, tell me, please,” Derek encourages. “I belong to several online Catholic theological communities,” explains the priest. “A year ago, a nun with a video podcast called the Last Days with Sister Sylvia sent me a text message to expect a man in search of the very documents you have requested. I do not know how the sister even learned my cell number.” Luigi smiles with wide-eyed wonder, lifting his hands toward heaven. “Heaven works in marvelous ways.” Olavo had also mentioned a Sister Sylvia podcast. “Quite fascinating,” Derek agrees. “Please, tell me, how do you know about Sabas? I would have thought him to be quite obscure.” What Derek really needs to know is how SLVIA learned of the name. “Cardinal Maroni, certainly you know about the collection and digitization program called In Codice Ratio. Our goal will be to turn over seventy kilometers of shelves, dating back seventeen centuries, into a searchable database. Quite innovative and time-consuming. We had experts deploy artificial intelligence to scan, read, translate, and catalog each document. Of course, we will also preserve the original documents as a precaution against the unthinkable,” Father Luigi says. “I review the daily updates with a description of the scan. After my time in the Holy Land, the letters from Judean monasteries caught my attention.” Bingo. A digital scan with an intelligent agent. A perfect scenario for the SLVIA, which would have noticed new content, scans, and descriptions. Derek still can’t imagine what would seem so important to an experimental espionage AI that it would point him to the letters of a 1,500-year-old monk. Then a more intriguing question occurs to him: Does SLVIA still live within the Vatican computer system? “Sister Sylvia sounds like an inspired woman of God. How often do you speak to her?” If the program still lives in the archives, it may continue to communicate with the priest. “It has been a year. No warning, she simply stopped posting.” Luigi lowers his eyes, clearly upset. Derek can relate to the grief of losing an intelligence so unique. “Sabas was an abbot of the St. George Monastery in the Judean Desert who wrote to Pope John I twice,” Luigi says, handing him a location code with a map to the lowest level. “Grazie. May our God grant you the joy of illumination.” Derek bows his head. Luigi c***s his head at the comment. Derek doesn’t know what normal clergy say to each other; he’s trying to sound like the priests in the movies, but probably sounding like an i***t. During the long walk down into the oldest part of the archives, Derek wishes he could spend years down here searching the millennia of untold secrets. For a curious hacker, the Vatican Archives represent an analog nirvana. Countless scandals, discoveries, deceptions, confessions, and secrets, all lost as the result of an antiquated catalog system. If the documents are being digitized, then he can hack in later when he has some time to roam around. In a basement section of the archives, Derek follows seemingly endless rows of shelves filled with books, boxes, envelopes, or cloth-bound bundles. After locating the bundle of flattened sheepskin vellum dating from 518 to 528 AD, he moves the stack to a nearby oak table, which itself dates back to the eleventh century. A California native, where the oldest missions are a mere few hundred years old, the true antiquity of the archive excites him. “WITNESS, load a Latin dictionary and ancient text reader. Prepare to translate. Start record,” Derek directs. Record mode will capture everything he sees with his glasses. What he doesn’t catch now, he can review later. “Dude, the police have arrived at the Vatican,” says Jester. Focused on the vellum parchments in front of him, Derek dismisses the alert. They’ll spend time with the late Cardinal Maroni. Derek opens the bundle and carefully flips through the dozen pages, making sure he captures a clean shot of each. While he knows some basic Latin, the style of writing, fading of the ink, and obscure spelling make translating a challenge. Each letter appears to come from various monasteries in the Judean Desert when the Eastern Orthodox branch of the church under Justin I separated from the Roman Catholics under Pope John Paul I. Derek finds the letters from Sabas and reads. “Looks like Sabas found something buried near a large rock by the Dead Sea. WITNESS, translate that phrase?” Derek points. “Processing,” WITNESS replies. “Copper scroll. “Copper scroll? Interesting, I guess, but why would that be important to SLVIA?” “Please restate your inquiry,” the AI replies. “Dude, you need to leave—like now would be good,” Jester interrupts. “Why?” Derek questions, even as he hears faint voices at the far end of the archive. “The police learned of a phony Maroni roaming the archives. Like move, man.” Anxiety tightens Jester’s voice to a high-pitched squeal. “WITNESS, show me the nearest emergency exit that leads me away from those people.” There may not be one. Fortunately, directional arrows pop up within his lenses. “Three aisles down, to the right. Up two floors,” WITNESS replies. “Jester, I need a distraction,” Derek says as he takes off running. A moment later, a false fire alarm blares throughout the library and museum. A moment after that, Derek opens an emergency door into the museum courtyard wearing the blue jeans and Sting T-shirt he wore under the vestments. His short brown hair tousled from the discarded mask, his WITNESS glass lenses automatically turning into dark shades in the bright sun. Derek dumped the mask and cardinal attire under the stairs. They leave DNA evidence, but he has no choice. He dons an N95 mask and joins the tourists heading toward the main exit. Moments later, exiting onto St. Peter’s Square, he notes the ambulance and police, turning the holy city into a crime scene. With his face turned down, he hails the first available taxi. “Aeroporto per favore, ho fretta.” Derek orders the driver to hurry to the airport, keeping his hand over the side of his face near the window. He abandons his suitcase at the hotel. Too risky to return. “Dude, people are dying,” Jester says. “Time to let go of Digi-witch and come home.” Death has followed Derek his entire life, a dark shadow of malevolence that he can never outrun, and never explain. It started with the murder-suicide of his parents when he was five years old, or so the foster-care agency once told

him. Unsure how much guilt he should carry for innocent victims, Derek feels a heavy responsibility to find the killer and stop the slaughter. But he first needs to find the SLVIA. “The peace deal could be days away and SLVIA warned of the third temple. I need to learn why.” Derek repeats the weak, tired argument. T he driver eyes him suspiciously in the rearview mirror, worried about the strange passenger talking to himself. “Dude, end-time prophecy is like, you know, a bizarro field with full-on loony-tune-wacko-jacks and authors, often the same. My point is, like maybe, SLVIA learned to emulate one.” Jester argues the same logic Derek refuses to accept. T hat’s one explanation. No one expected the DARPA AI to decode end time prophecy or warn of a third temple. Not a religious man, Derek once dismissed the analysis as a fluke, a flaw, a code bug. But the AI has been correct too often to ignore. The SLVIA code did nothing at random, including sending that note to Olavo. Derek feels compelled to follow this thread. “Sorry, amigo, I need a few more days and an ID profile to enter Israel.”