The Midas Code

W hen Stacy and Tyler had decided that their next step was to fly to England, she imagined heading back to Sea-Tac Airport and going through all the hassle and pain of eight hours of traveling by commercial airliner to Heathrow. Instead, barely ninety minutes after Tyler had explained to Miles why they needed a plane, she was now taking off from Seattle on her first private-jet flight, lounging in a spacious leather seat, and accompanied by only two other passengers, Tyler and Grant.

Despite the near-death experience on the ferry-or maybe because of it-Stacy reveled in the luxury. She could get used to this.

“You fly like this all the time?” she said to Tyler as the engines spooled up and the plane began its takeoff roll.

“No,” he said. “I’m usually in the cockpit.”

“You’re a pilot, too? I don’t remember that from when I prepared for my interview with you.”

He shrugged as if he thought it was no big deal. “It didn’t seem relevant.”

“Are you kidding? A handsome engineer who’s also a pilot? My viewers would love that kind of detail.”

Grant leaned toward Stacy. “He may have a PhD in mechanical engineering and be able to dispose of bombs and fly jets, but don’t let that fool you. He’s a secret Star Trek nerd.”

“What about you?” she said. “I suppose that in addition to being a former pro wrestler, an electrical engineer with a degree from the University of Washington, and an Army SEAL-”

“Hey, hey, hey. I won’t stand for that kind of insult. SEALs are Navy. I was a combat engineer, then a Ranger.”

“Pardon me. In addition to all that, I suppose you fly jets, too.”

“Me? Hell, no.”

“Thank God. I thought I was in a meeting of Overachievers Anonymous.”

“I just got my license to fly helicopters, though.”

Stacy rolled her eyes. “Maybe we should have you on the show next time.”

The jet lifted off, heading toward cruising altitude. Tyler cleared his throat. “I’d love to add to Grant’s resume by telling you all about his addiction to trashy dating programs-”

“Hey!” Grant protested.

“-but we’d better figure out what our plan will be when we reach London and then get some shut-eye.”

The three of them unbuckled and gathered around a table. They opened a laptop so they could search the file with the translation of the Archimedes Codex.

“What time do we land?” Stacy asked.

“Around 2 p.m. local time,” Tyler said. “Should give us enough time to get something accomplished.”

“I knew you were a workaholic.”

“Just trying to be efficient. In fact, I think we should split up when we get there.”

“Whoa,” Grant said. “Can we just back up here? I came in late at the house. Why, exactly, are we going to England?”

“Do you want the long answer or the short answer?” Stacy said.

“We’ve got a few hours before I can sleep, so I’ll take the long answer.”

“Have you heard of the Antikythera Mechanism?” Stacy asked.

“Tyler mentioned it when he was fabricating the geolabe.”

Through the plane’s Web connection, she brought up a photo of three pieces of corroded bronze, the biggest about the diameter of a grapefruit. In each of the pieces, intricate gearing could be seen.

“Looks like somebody left their clock in the rain for about a thousand years,” Grant said.

“About two thousand years,” Tyler said. When they’d been discussing it earlier, he told Stacy that he’d researched the Antikythera Mechanism because he realized how similar it was to the geolabe he was hired to build.

“They found these bits in the shipwreck off the Greek island of Antikythera in 1900,” Stacy said. “For years nobody paid much attention to them until an archaeologist realized that the gearing predated anything else as sophisticated by fifteen hundred years. Some people refer to it as the world’s first analog computer. It would be like finding an IBM PC hidden in the dungeon of a medieval castle.”

“What does it compute?” Grant asked.

“Debate has raged for years, but most scientists think it was used for astronomical prediction of some sort. Planetary movements, solstices and equinoxes, perhaps even solar eclipses. Ancient planting cycles and religious worship depended on knowing important calendar events, and this device might have been used to calculate them.”

She brought up another photo, this time of a shiny bronze mechanism behind a protective glass. The face of the device had two circular dials like a clock, and a knob on the side. The sides were transparent, so that you could see the gearing inside. Some of the points on the dials were etched with Greek lettering.

“That’s a replica at the National Archaeological Museum in Athens,” Tyler said. “Built from what they could glean from X-rays of the recovered pieces.”

“Looks like the geolabe you built,” Grant said.

“They’re very similar, but the markings on the face of mine are complete, and it has two knobs on the side instead of one.”

“So this codex seems to be an instruction manual for building an Antikythera Mechanism,” Stacy said.