Ladbroke Grove, London
All eyes were drilled on the chemist’s hands as he pressed the page into the liquid solution, forcing it down with his latex-gloved fingers so that it was fully submerged in the clear bath.
‘We expose it to this first solution for twenty seconds,’ he noted, his partner keeping his eyes on the second-hand of the room’s wall-mounted clock. His voice was timid, but with the conviction that came from having plunged past the point of no return, it gradually gained strength. ‘The Book insists the exposure time is critical.’
The brethren continued to eye the manuscript as he held it beneath the surface of the solution, though it underwent no visible change during the tense wait. When his partner announced ‘Now’, the man lifted the manuscript from the first tray and swiftly plunged it into the second, again ensuring its complete submersion.
Marcianus was enrapt. Though the scholars from whom he had stolen it believed the manuscript to date either from the fifteenth or the sixteenth century, he knew that it had been crafted on the afternoon of July 14th, 1755, at the hands of the great alchemist and Knower, Mario Terageste – the same man who had written the Book – in a small workshop in northern Italy. He knew that it had then been hidden by a cluster of adherents outside of Montelaguardia, near Perugia, and its location safeguarded for nearly two centuries, until it was discovered in 1942. It had since passed through the hands of three caretakers before being acquired by Lady Catherine of Endsleigh, remaining in her well-secured collection ever since, until a carefully spun negotiation with the Catholic University of America had produced a sale. That sale had yielded the first point of vulnerability in the manuscript’s safekeeping in over two decades, and Marcianus had seen his opportunity to act.
‘It stays in this second bath for forty seconds.’ Marcianus, together with his brethren, counted each passing second with anxious anticipation. At first, the document seemed to undergo no change, but from the fifteen-second mark he noticed that the ink seemed to be getting lighter.
Lighter.
‘It’s fading,’ he remarked, an outstretched finger pointing to the lightening text. Whatever chemical reaction was causing the change, it escalated quickly. By the time the forty seconds were up, the writing of the eighteenth-century scribe had completely vanished.
The ancient page was entirely bare.
Marcianus felt a heady wonder, potent almost to the degree of nausea. He had always known, always believed, that what had been promised by the Elect of past generations was true; he had never doubted that their instructions were authentic and would lead to the new and final revelations. But to see the ancient document change, to know the map was coming, was no less thrilling for its being so long expected. Every decision, thought, act and expectation of his life was being validated, here and now.
‘Now the final solution.’ The chemist lifted the page from the second tray and deposited it in the third. ‘The Book says it must stay in this solution for at least two minutes.’
Marcianus found the wait all but impossible. Pushing aside the chemist, he moved to the table edge in front of the third tray, looking down directly on the document. The blank page seemed to tease him in its emptiness, daring him to doubt or disbelieve.
The Great Leader had no intention of doing either.
‘There,’ he gasped a moment later, losing all but a touch of his usual composure. ‘Look!’ The other four men pressed in around him and every eye locked in on the waterlogged page.
On its surface, dimly at first but with increasing clarity at each passing second, a new series of inked lines began to appear. First a long, almost straight line alongside a far less geometric counterpart. Then a third and a fourth, and soon the page was covered in the kinds of irregular lines and shapes that conveyed the imperfections of natural geography. Labels began to appear, written in a script similar to that which had formerly covered the whole page, though in a different, far more ancient language.
‘We have it,’ Marcianus pronounced as the page continued to take on its new form. ‘The ancient map is ours at last.’