Alien Genesis

3. Trees, Gold, and LSD-3

Turning to Carla, “Is this boring you to tears?”

“No, I’m fascinated.”

Winking at her, he continued enthusiastically, “Thank you for humoring an old sailor. So, to produce one ton per year ancient Egyptians had to be smelting gold from ore. This fact raises all kinds of confounding questions. In its alluvial state gold nuggets or flakes are pretty obvious, but gold in ore sediments doesn’t really resemble those eye-catching baubles.

“Did some hunter stub his toe on a rock, pick it up and say to himself, ‘Hmmm, this rock has gold in it.’ He coupled this remarkable observation with an epiphany that he could crumble the rock by setting it in a fire. He could then pound the crumbled rock in a stone mortar until it was reduced to pea-size gravel. Next, using millstones he could crush the gravel to the consistency of flour, then rub the powder on an inclined board, pouring water over it all the while. The crushed stone matter would wash away leaving gold powder adhering to the wood. Finally, he’d build a 1900 degree fire, melt the powder and pour the liquefied gold into molds made of God only knows what. That would be quite a remarkable set of insights, wouldn’t you say?”

“Perhaps a bit too remarkable,” I replied.

“Exactly! Downright preposterous! And that’s why the question is not just why gold, but also how.”

“And I suppose you’re going to answer these questions,” Carla suggested.

“I can, but it’s going to take a good deal of your time. It would be better to think of this conversation, as well as that stuff about intelligent design, as a tease.”

I chuckled, “So intelligent design was yesterday’s tease, and you saved the really believable stuff for today.”

By now we’d made a complete circuit and had returned to the hacienda. With a warm smile, the admiral waggled his index finger at us, turned, strode across the veranda and entered the front door. Class was over and we’d been dismissed.

We spent the next few days wandering around the farm, engaging in stimulating conversations, and savoring the delicious cuisine. On our sixth night I asked Carla, “So, what do you think?”

She replied, “I think the admiral probably has the most arresting eyes I’ve ever seen—I’m not sure if it’s the bright green or the rings of gold flecks.”

“Aww, come on…”

She laughed, “Okay, I think if the admiral and Frank are trying to sell us on the idea of coming to work for them, it’s an exceedingly soft sale. Perhaps they’ve decided we’re not a good fit and they’re just too polite to tell us to go home.”

During the previous evenings’ dinners we had been joined by various combinations of neighbors and dignitaries, scientists and economists. On this night, the dinner table was set for only four. We arrived just as Frank walked in with the one martini he allowed the admiral each evening.

“Ah, just in time,” Admiral Cortell declared as we entered. “Perhaps this will be a two martini night.”

“Probably not,” Frank responded drolly as he pulled out a chair for Carla.

“Well, you can’t blame a guy for trying—or so they say.”

The conversation was affable and stimulating, but it seemed something of great consequence was not being said. Quite abruptly Frank turned to the admiral and said, “I think it’s time we talk turkey.”

Without missing a beat Cortell pivoted to face us, “Here’s the thing—I’m an old man. I have carried an extraordinary cache of knowledge in my head most of my life. I couldn’t share this knowledge with anyone other than Frank here—and many years later my daughter. For over six decades I’ve made extensive notes and recorded hundreds of hours of what we might call recollections. I’ve come to believe it would be unforgivable for me to take these memories with me to the grave, but I have neither the skills nor enough years left to marshal a coherent narrative of this incredible tale.”

Raising a hand and waving it slightly, he added, “Now I use the word memories loosely. Let me explain.

“When I was a young man, just a few months after returning from service in the Korean War, I became quite ill. It began with a fever, muscle pain, and then an excruciating headache. Rayleen and I were living near the Naval Base in Charleston, South Carolina. I’d been too ill to go to work for a couple days. I was walking back to our bed after using the bathroom when I collapsed in a heap at the bedroom door. Rayleen called the base clinic, and they sent an ambulance.” Chuckling softly, “I was a bit more muscled-up back in the day and Rayleen was just a slip of a girl. There’s no way she could’ve dragged me to our car by herself.

“By the time we arrived at the local hospital, I’d slipped into a coma. Within hours the medical director had called my father in Annapolis with a grim diagnosis. I had contracted eastern equine encephalitis. The medical staff were extremely worried because back then almost one in four people who were infected died from complications of the virus. To make the prognosis even worse, an encephalitis coma almost always resulted in severe brain damage.

“As you know, it takes resources to access high quality medical care. That was true in 1954 and no less so today. Fortunately for me, my family had resources, namely friends in high places.

“Dad had been the commander of a battleship escort group in the North Atlantic during World War II. On one of his voyages across the Atlantic, a man named Leonard Scheele was aboard his ship. Colonel Scheele was a medical doctor en route to take command of the Medical Department of the Army in the African theater. Dad and Dr. Scheele became friends on that voyage. As fate would have it, in 1948 Dr. Scheele was appointed Surgeon General of the United States. I’ve never known what strings were pulled, but within twelve hours I was loaded on a military med-evac aircraft and flown to Rochester, Minnesota. Have you folks ever been to the Mayo Clinic?”

“Yes, in fact we were there just a few years ago in their GI Clinic,” Carla replied.

“What did you think?” the admiral asked.

“The place is astounding. I was having some serious complications related to my rheumatoid arthritis. After months of daily nausea they nailed the diagnosis and got me back on my feet.”

“So you know,” Cortell continued, “if you’re seriously ill, Mayo is the place to go. And that was the case back in 1954 too. I have no recollection of any of this and can only tell you what Rayleen told me. She, a doctor, and a nurse flew with me from Charleston. The medical staff were expecting us and immediately began trying to reduce the brain swelling that they assumed was serious, reduce my fever which they knew was dangerously high, hydrate, and nourish me. I don’t know exactly what treatments were prescribed. What I do know is that I didn’t awaken from the coma as quickly as they’d have liked.

“Now the electroencephalogram was not an altogether new technology, but it was not as ubiquitous or advanced as it is today. The Mayo neurology clinic probably had the most sophisticated equipment and qualified personnel on earth at that time. Yet from the moment they hooked me up to the electrodes the neurologists were stumped by my brain activity.

“As I understand it, they expected to see a particular pattern of theta and delta waves, perhaps even some alpha and mu waves depending on the depth of my coma. They would have been relieved with that EEG pattern as it would have indicated I was perhaps minimally conscious.

“Instead, what they found was a brain running four-minute miles. Hours of beta and gamma waves were interspersed with periods of alpha. Occasionally it would appear that my brain had gone to sleep for a couple of hours with the EEG recording only delta and theta waves. This caused quite a stir all the way from Mayo Clinic to the Surgeon General’s office.”

“You weren’t really in a coma at all,” I observed.

“I don’t think there is a medical term that describes my state of consciousness during those eleven weeks,” the admiral replied.

“Eleven weeks!” Carla exclaimed.

“Yes. My brain was running in overdrive, but I didn’t wake-up and do not recall hearing any conversations around me for eleven weeks. Then one day, and I remember this as if it happened an hour ago, I opened my eyes and saw a nurse marking the paper on the clipboard at the foot of my bed. I said, ‘Good morning. What’s your name?’ She shrieked, threw the clipboard up in the air and bolted out the door. She ran down the hall squealing.” With a falsetto voice Admiral Cortell mimicked the nurse, “He’s awake, he’s awake, he’s awake! Get the doctor! Call Mrs. Cortell! He’s awake!”

The admiral’s affectations were so amusing Carla and I burst out laughing. Even Frank, who no doubt had heard the story numerous times, let loose a throaty chuckle.

“Now I’d say that moment of mirth calls for a second martini, wouldn’t you?” The admiral held the empty glass by its stem and shook it in Frank’s direction. Frank rolled his eyes, snatched the glass from Cortell’s hand, and strode into the kitchen. “Yes, just so. I thought we might be able to prevail upon the always vigilant and ever so conservative Mr. Williams tonight.”

“So what happened then?” Carla asked.

“Ah, everyone was either laughing or crying or both. The room was crowded with staff who were soon joined by Rayleen and a couple of friends. I was poked and prodded; my temperature and blood pressure were taken dozens of times. They looked at my toenails and massaged my feet. They made me demonstrate my grip strength and looked down my throat. They looked in my ears and up my bum. Looking back I suppose I was more amused than confused at the time.

“Soon it ceased to be funny. It’s hard work getting your strength back after lying prone for so long. Extensive physical therapy was required in order to regain the youthful vigor that had, to some extent, defined me prior to the illness. But the physical challenges turned out to be trifling compared to the emotional issues.

“Incrementally I had a growing awareness of thoughts that didn’t make sense and recollections I couldn’t place. I mentioned this to Rayleen and my doctor one morning. The doctor explained it was not unusual for people emerging from a coma to have thought disorders.

“At that time, our understanding of coma was still quite rudimentary. My doctor suggested perhaps I was just remembering dreams. Given how alert and articulate I was, he assured us I’d likely have a complete recovery. In other words, ‘don’t worry about these odd thoughts, they’ll pass.’

“Rayleen and I were naturally relieved by his assurances. From that moment Rayleen became a rock of strength and the voice of reason. Perhaps that’s why I was never able to tell her the whole unreasonable truth. The story I’m going to tell you was a secret that haunted our fifty-two year marriage. It nagged at me and vexed me in ways I cannot even now come to terms with. I tell myself if she is watching down on me, she understands and has forgiven my deception. I tell myself that, but I can only hope it is so. I suppose my feelings of guilt and ambivalence are because the deception implied I didn’t trust her with the truth.” The admiral’s voice cracked, “…and for that, I haven’t been able to forgive myself.”

Frank had just returned with the martinis. He reached over and gripped Cortell’s forearm, squeezing it reassuringly. We sat quietly for a couple of minutes waiting for the admiral to continue. “Perhaps because of that guilt I decided to tell our daughter, Kelsey, after Rayleen was gone.” With a snort he added, “And she’s been kind enough to be a skeptic without being a denier.