I was sitting in the command center with Corporal Julian Hatcher, had filled one notebook, and was well into my second. Fascinated, I watched Prisoner Alpha study her physics book. She’d already worked her way through nearly a third of it, her behavior almost manic. She’d crammed four legal pads with scribbles, diagrams, and symbols. Her hours-old breakfast lay half-eaten on its paper plate.
The changes in her galvanic skin response, breathing, blood pressure, and heart rate each time something came together for her didn’t follow the patterns of autism or savant syndrome. I was observing the satisfaction and elation of discovery more common to a scientist with a Type A personality—the kind struggling to solve some problem, and then watching the final walls crumble before her.
These are the patterns expected from a healthy, integrated, and intelligent brain. She is not mentally ill.
How, then, did I account for her total lack of functional skills in our world?
Alpha ran anxious hands through her honey-yellow hair and studied the open page before her. Those vibrant blue eyes reflected churning internal thoughts. On the wall above her, the television remained ignored as it blathered on about the day’s news.
“Maybe we should have given her a calculator,” Corporal Hatcher noted where he slouched in his duty chair.
“She has mastered the mathematics,” I agreed. “The amazing thing is how fast she can figure with that curious ideographic code of hers. She double-checks our math against her symbols as if to prove something to herself.”
“We agree,” Dr. Cyrus Evans’ voice could be heard in my earpiece. Grantham Barracks was streaming Alpha’s image to several of General Grazier’s outside experts, and Cyrus had been on the Prisoner Alpha team since the beginning. That we had a “team” demonstrated Alpha’s high profile with the DOD and DHS.
“All right, Cyrus. If you can get the general to sign off on it, we’ll provide her with a calculator. Preferably one that broadcasts every single operation she performs on it.”
“I’m passing that to the general now, Ryan.”
Alpha seemed to have made a breakthrough. She smiled, bent her head, and began scribbling. She stopped to flip back a couple of pages in the text and checked something, then proceeded to write furiously on her tablet. For all the world, her posture, expression, and intent reminded me of a college student anxiously prepping for exams.
At that instant she froze like a deer in the headlights. Her head jerked up. As if in amazement, she vaulted from the desk, knocking the physics text and her legal pad to the floor. She ran to the television, staring in disbelief at CNN.
“What is that?” I asked. “Corporal, can you turn it up?”
Cyrus was asking, “Ryan? What’s she doing?”
The camera panned sideways under Hatcher’s skilled fingers; the television image resolved where Alpha stood transfixed, eyes wide, mouth slightly agape.
We could hear the announcer’s voice: “The tomb, subject of a bitter firefight between looters and Egyptian forces, has now been opened to the media for one brief tour.”
“Sancti sputi!” Alpha cried. “Certum est?”
I started from my chair. Prisoner Alpha never showed emotion. She might have been some fairy-tale queen the way she maintained and cultivated her dominating presence. All that was gone as I watched the woman’s stunned disbelief—her expression a terrible mix of hope, grief, and exultation.
“And now, for the first time in centuries, the interior of the tomb is again viewed by human eyes.”
As the TV image panned across the antechamber, Alpha’s mouth was opening and closing like a suffocating fish. She whispered, “Ipso diffidentio. In culpa meo, Fluvium. In culpa . . . in culpa . . .” she repeated sadly, and a tear slipped down her cheek. She reached out with reverent fingers and lightly stroked the television screen.
“What damned language is that?” Cyrus demanded. “What’s she seeing there? What does it mean?”
“My God,” Hatcher whispered. “She’s fucking come alive!”
“What is this show?” My own heart was pounding. “It’s CNN, get on it. Some kind of tomb. Where? Egypt?”
“On it, sir.”
My attention was torn between Alpha’s remarkable display and the fuzzier image on the television.
And then, as the image panned the interior burial chamber, it fixed on one wall, where, to my absolute amazement, Alpha’s code was displayed. I saw the familiar dots, bars, and symbols rendered in color. Through the monitor I could feel Alpha’s explosive amazement. The camera focused on what looked like a diagram, or schematic.
“Kiiiaaaahh!” Alpha screamed, her eyes wide, her hands pressed against the television screen. “Palma!” she cried. Then, again, “Palma!”
The image vanished, followed by a car insurance commercial.
Alpha howled her frustration, banging her fist against the screen. “Plus! Ego execror! Plus!” Then, as the commercial continued to run, she turned on her heel, racing back to fumble on the floor for her legal pad. The world forgotten, she began frantically scribbling on the tablet with her Sharpie.
“What did we just see?” Cyrus repeated in my earbud.
“I’m not sure. But did you see that image on CNN?”
“Not clearly.”
“It’s Alpha’s code. It was carved and painted on that tomb wall. That schematic really set her off.”
“Don’t worry, Ryan. We’re on it on this end. We’ll have you copies of every image made of that tomb within an hour.”
I chuckled almost gleefully.
“But, Ryan? What the hell does it mean?” Cyrus asked, sounding baffled.
“Beats the hell out of me.” I fingered my chin as Alpha frantically scribbled in her tablet. “But somehow the explanation of who that woman is seems to be linked to a centuries-old Egyptian tomb.” I whistled softly and added, “Go figure.”