---

Professor Timothy Merriman followed the two armed soldiers down yet another unmarked hallway, the third since the dark hood was removed from Merriman’s head.

Two hours earlier the soldiers had arrived at Professor Merriman’s home in a black van with darkened windows and no license plates. They made some overtures about Merriman’s presence being “requested”, but didn’t go into more detail, nor answer Merriman’s questions. They just stood at his front door, in armed silence, until Merriman nodded meekly and put on his shoes. He was still in his night clothes.

The trip had been bumpy and without bathroom breaks. Merriman had an enlarged prostate. This was a terrible combination.

“Gentlemen,” Professor Merriman said matter of factly as they marched him down the hall, “if you don’t walk me to the nearest toilet then I will be meeting whoever you work for covered in my own piss.”

The two soldiers turned to Merriman, then back to each other briefly, before doubling back and making the next left. Merriman almost broke into a run when he saw the men’s room sign. He was so relieved he almost didn’t mind when one soldier came in with him to stand guard.

At the urinal for some time, Merriman tried to make small talk with his captor. “So, any idea what this is about?”

The soldier didn’t even turn to look at him, just stared into one of the empty stalls.

Merriman raised his eyebrows, “quite the chatterbox. You ought to calm down, you talk too much.”

After what felt like an eternity of peeing Merriman’s bladder was finally empty. Substantially more relaxed, he allowed the soldiers to escort him to his final destination.

Stepping through two steel swinging doors, the group of three walked into an all white concrete room, with white painted cinder block walls. The only furniture was a large steel table surrounded by several steel chairs and three long, bright halogen bulbs suspended from the ceiling. There were no cameras that Merriman could see.

The two guards took up posts at the single entrance, one inside the room and one outside in the hallway. Saying nothing, they left Merriman standing inside, confused and in his pajamas.

Eventually Merriman chose a seat. He picked the one facing the door, as he felt it was the most tactically sound, although what he intended to do with that meager tactical advantage was beyond him. Already he felt his bladder beginning to fill again and cursed his proclivity for late night caffeinated teas.

Luckily, he did not have to wait long. Only a minute later the double doors swung open and a tall man, with a serious demeanor and close cropped gray hair, walked in wearing green military fatigues which looked as tired as the man himself. Merriman recognized Commander Christopher Pell from the news, although he never looked this terrible on TV.

Close behind Commander Pell was a much smaller man, his uniform crisp and unwrinkled. The smaller man carried a plain looking black attache handcuffed to his right wrist. Merriman couldn’t help but wonder if they weren’t the nuclear codes, although why they would bring such a thing to a late night meeting with a linguist was a mystery.

Commander Pell took a seat in front of Merriman, and the man with the brief case sat in a chair on the far side of the table. For a moment Commander Pell seemed to be assessing Merriman, and the two men sat in silence.

Pell spoke first. “Professor, I apologize for having inconvenienced you.” Pell’s voice was scratchy around the edges, like a well worn record. Merriman noted the heavy bags under his eyes. “Thank you for agreeing to come.”

Merriman couldn’t help but laugh at that. “I didn’t realize I had a choice.”

“You had a choice,” Pell gestured with his thumb towards the guard inside the room, “but they had orders. Based on your condition, I’d say you chose correctly.”

Merriman did not appreciate the ‘state police’ tone of this conversation. “Is that what things have come to now? Would you like me to give you some names too? Sign some confessions?”

Pell rubbed his temple with the knuckles of his forefingers, “Professor, this is a matter of national security.”

“Ah, that old classic. It seems to me we ought to be considering matters of global security these days. I doubt the Titan thinks much about our sovereign borders.”

Pell raised his voice, his frustration palpable. “Spare me your common enemy bullshit. I brought you here because of your work decoding The Signal. If you’d rather go home and wait for doomsday, then by all means, go ahead.”

Merriman took a deep breath. When he pointedly did not stand up, Pell nodded at the man with the attache.

The small, serious man stood up and walked over beside Commander Pell. Carefully he placed the attache onto the steel table, brought a key from out his coat pocket and unlocked the handcuff, detaching it from the attache handle. As the young man sat down, Pell slid the attache in front of himself and input a long code into an electronic keypad. As all this happened, the Commander spoke.

“We have obtained a highly sensitive document of unknown origins. We believe this document to be related to events surrounding The Signal. Our internal efforts to decode the document have not been fruitful.”

The keypad beeped once and the lock on the briefcase clicked open. Carefully, Pell opened the lid and turned the briefcase toward Professor Merriman.

Inside of the case, stablized in its center by metal borders, was a moderately thick manuscript, printed on modern white paper and bound with a three ring hole punch. It looked like the textbooks Merriman saw some students use, photocopied in their entirety from the University library. On the cover of The Book was a color picture of a male figure in profile, perhaps in the Ancient Egyptian style, as well as some characters which Merriman did not recognize at all.

Merriman raised an eyebrow. “What am I looking at?”

Pell wished he knew the answer to that question, or any of the myriad questions he knew the professor would have as the days went on. But, at this point in time, there was only one honest answer Pell could give. “We have no idea. But we need you to translate it.”

“May I?” Merriman gestured toward the manuscript lightly and reached down for it with Pell’s consent. The stack of loosely bound papers was held in place by four thin metal barriers screwed into the body of the attache. Merriman gently placed one finger under a ring and another under top right corner and lifted The Book up. It slid out of its tight confines with satisfying ease. It was not an old book, in fact it was a fairly cheap reprinting, and Merriman had no doubt there were several more physical copies and dozens of digital backups. Yet he still felt compelled to treat each page carefully, as though it were a fine antique. With undeserving care Merriman flipped open the first page and was immediately confronted with a wall of inscrutable text, written in indecipherable characters, covering the entire page from top to bottom. The style of the characters was similar, in broad strokes, to those on the cover, but Merriman did not recognize them.

“What language is this?”

Pell cleared his throat and gestured for a glass of water. “We don’t know. But we think it may be related to the Signal.”

“So a precursor to Demotic Egyptian perhaps.” It was not a question. Merriman had spoken to himself, already beginning to consider the puzzle. He started to turn through the pages, scanning the characters at a glance. “Where did you get this?”

“That information is classified.”

Merriman looked up from The Book, straight at Pell. “So you want me to translate a secret book, from an unknown language, of unknown authorship, into English?”

Pell nodded. “Yes.”

“OK,” Merriman said, flipping through more pages, his voice taking on the methodical, almost rhythmic quality only heard when his brain was going full speed towards a clear purpose. “I’ll need to put together a team, probably the same people who worked on the Signal. It won’t be easy, especially having lost Professor Mahman in Cairo, but using his notes we can probab…”

“No team.” Pell interrupted, “This is highly classified. You’ll have access to limited DOD resources, but no outside actors.” One of the two soldiers returned with a glass of water and Pell sipped it gratefully. “We have to maintain as small a footprint on this as possible.”

This dragged Merriman out of his reverie. “You want me to do this alone?”

Pell shook his head, “not entirely alone, we may be able to get you some internal assistance. We just can’t involve outside resources.”

“Oh,” Merriman pointed a sarcastic finger at the silent soldier standing ram rod straight at the door, “does he have a PHD in historical linguistics? I’d never have guessed it based on his obvious abhorrence for the spoken word.” Deadly serious, Merriman continued. “I need specialists for this – two dozen linguists could write theses on a book like this and still not come to any definitive conclusions. This isn’t the kind of work one does alone.”

Pell gritted his teeth. He knew this was an impossible task, but it was Pell’s Hail Mary. The President wanted to go straight toward a military solution to the Russian problem. It was Pell who convinced him to delay, Pell who secreted the leaked copy of The Book from NSA headquarters, and Pell alone who had requested Professor Merriman’s presence here in this room. As far as the rest of the United States Government was concerned, this Book did not even exist. “You have six months.”

Merriman couldn’t help it, the laugh came totally unbidden. Just one loud, rueful ‘Hah’, almost as if he’d been slapped hard across the face. With a shake of his head, Merriman stood to leave. “This has been very interesting Commander. I appreciate your considering me, but I’m afraid what you want cannot be done. May I go?”

Pell looked Merriman dead in the eye. Of course the professor could not go. He was now among less than 100 people in the entire world, fewer than 20 in the United States, who knew that this book even existed. Professor Merriman would not be returning to his home until either The Book was translated or World War III began. By Pell’s estimation, given current global tensions, the latter possibility was about 6 months away, at most.

“Think on it, professor.”

Pell got up, and walked out of the room without another word. The small man picked up the empty attache and followed him, and then the guard inside the room followed suit. Merriman just watched in momentary confusion, realizing too late what was happening. With a solid metal report, the locks on the double doors were slammed shut, and the interview room became Professor Merriman’s ersatz prison cell.

In the center of the steel table, alone and open to a random page of impenetrable text, The Book waited patiently.

---

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