You have to choose as a voter between trusting to the natural stability
of gold and the natural stability of the honesty and intelligence of the
members of the Government. And, with due
respect for these gentlemen, I advise you, as long as the Capitalist system
lasts, to vote for gold. George Bernard
Shaw
“What the hell did those guys
know?” Sam Noble said to himself a few weeks after the army reunion and his
ass-chewing at work. “If I wanted to
write a book, I’d write one, and on my terms and when I goddamn-well felt like
it! True, I was getting long in the tooth and my mental faculties weren’t
exactly what they once were – and that’s not really saying much – so if I’m
going to do it, now’s the time. And
shit, I’ve read hundreds of books and seen hundreds of movies and I just know I
could do better than some of those so-called experts who wrote such shit.”
Archie Jefferson wouldn’t let it go after that raucous reunion Wednesday
night party and kept it up all that weekend being a real pain in the ass, “Hey
Sam, what about all that spooky shit you’re always talking about!” and it went
on and on, baiting him in front of his army buddies. Archie was right though, I did like all the
lost-civilization-mystery bullshit, those stories about the lost continent of
Atlantis, visitors from other planets who left their seed here eons ago, and how
mankind evolved as a result.
Sam first got hooked way back in 1969 when he was finishing up his
two-year associate degree in English literature from Mohlenburg Community
College on the GI Bill, and had read a book for a course which simply awed him
– Chariots of the Gods, written by a
Swiss hotel clerk by the name of Erich von Däniken.
After von Däniken established a new genre, hundreds more authors and
books followed telling of how Atlantis was originally located in the Andes, or
in the Caribbean, or in a dozen other places around the world – in the
mountains, deep inside a jungle buried under vegetation and rubble, or
underneath the seas.
There were countless books and articles on the Egyptian pyramids,
Schliemann’s lost treasures of Troy, myths of Mayan gold, myths of Inca gold,
Machu Picchu, the many lost cities associated with the folklore of El Dorado,
the mysteries of the Amazon, and the ground drawings of Nasca.
Then came the genre surrounding the mysteries of the Knights Templar,
the secret meanings contained in the Old Testament, the search for the lost Ark
of the Covenant, the true story of Jesus Christ, secret codes contained in
paintings by ancient masters, and how the Catholic Church and religion in
general secretly conspired to dominate the world. Sam loved these fantastic stories too and
read every new book that came out on this variety of subjects.
Sam admired most three authors amongst the many whose work he had read:
Louis L’Amour for his stories of carefree times and western adventures; James
Michener for his meticulousness of historical research in the setting of his
epic novels; and Tom Clancy for the military “techno-thriller” themes with an
underpinning of patriotism and belief in America and the good that it stood
for. He decided to take heed of Archie’s
shout out at the reunion concerning gold and introduce his hero Duke Mitchum at
the same time, and so that’s what he did starting with his first two chapters.
After all, he knew a little about gold mining from the garimpeiro experience he had in Brazil
a long time ago; he wasn’t exactly starting from scratch. In a couple of years he’d be retiring from
government service so he set as the completion date of his “epic opus” his
sixty-fifth birthday in 2010 if not sooner.
If he hadn’t written it by then, it’d never get written. Sam had jotted down a few notes here and there for sometime but always seemed to have an excuse not to commit further.
#
So finally, after procrastinating his entire adult life to do something
he always promised himself he’d do, he had sat down one evening in late summer
of 2008 after work, at home and after dinner with Nellie, in his tiny den, in
front of his antique IBM Selectric typewriter and composed his thoughts and
then began typing like a demon. It
didn’t matter that some of the characters on the golf-ball were worn
and faded, or that lining up the carbon paper between two sheets of plain white
paper took practice, he was just happy that he had finally begun a journey he
had always wanted to start. And so he wrote those first two chapters.
Sam wanted to begin with a story about Alaska because he had visited
there on several occasions during his government courier service career and was
stunned by its natural beauty, and he had always enjoyed hearing the stories
from his army buddy Pedro Campana about working on the Trans-Alaska Pipeline
and Haul Road construction.
Additionally, he was also able to work in the names of his army buddies
to pay homage. Sam had recalled reading
about a gold mining scam years back that took place in Indonesia somewhere, so
that was a good place for Duke Mitchum to stumble in his career path, and set
off on his road of discovering the meaning of life.
“I mean, here’s a rich kid
only-child with all the benefits and family support he ever needed, never
wanting for anything, so why not let him stumble on hard times like everyone
else,” Sam thought as he began living somewhat vicariously through his own
fictional character. He knew what
poverty felt like growing up, and knew it carried with it a constant feeling of
fear and foreboding that never really left you.
Pretty soon Sam would be sharing a few chapters of his first book with old
Archibald to show him how things just got real, but in the meantime he would
write more about Duke searching for that elusive understanding of life’s true
meaning. And as was the case with
Alaska, Sam would use as vehicles those story subjects that he had read about
or heard about during his own life’s journey, and of course seen in the movies
or on TV.
Sam often felt as he grew older and older, that the one attribute he
wished he had looking back, was the wisdom to recognize the importance of a
very special but fleeting moment in time, at that precise moment it was taking
place and not later when he regretted missing the opportunity – to be able to
savor it, to feel it, to try and hold it back, and bask in its fleeting
radiance. Like those last few moments
with precious Sarah – but you can’t hold on to time; it’s in the air,
you can’t feel it or touch it, and when it’s gone, it’s gone.
If you took photographs or made home movies, at least you had some sort
of record, but time would catch up with their magic as well and they eventually
would also turn to dust. He stopped
wearing his self-winding Bulova, the one his father gave him when he joined the
army, just so he didn’t have to stare constantly at the second hand going
around and around. But if you had the
keen insight to recognize the importance of a fleeting single second, and could
freeze it in your brain, then you could always come back to that moment and
feel satisfaction and comfort in that you knew its importance and took full
advantage of it – it was a golden moment in life.
It was so easy to look back, but so hard to freeze the moment in your
brain – and as the years’ worth of memories faded like old photographs, Sam
wished he had stored up more images in his brain to draw on now of his little girl. If he could capture her
spirit somehow in his book using at least part of it as a metaphor of her life,
then she too would live forever and others could read about her, even after he
and Nellie were long gone from this Earth.
That was the least he could do.
#
“Those dumb bastards, I was drunk, but I wasn’t that drunk,” Archie
thought to himself, referring to the chiding he took at the army reunion party
and the perceived insults he thought were hurled at him, like that offensive wisecrack
about special needs. And none of those
fuckers had visited him when he was in the hospital convalescing from his car accident,
when was it now, over forty years ago.
“They can laugh all they want to, but none of them knew anything about
office machines, especially the king of them all, the photocopier.” Archie had it all figured out and had proven
it a month before the reunion even took place.
Sure, you had your fancy computers, mobile phones, and pagers and all
that bullshit but when the chips were down, without a properly functioning
copier, people at work went nuts. Facsimile machines were already all but
obsolete thanks to scanners, digital imaging, and email. The place he worked at was in the process of
phasing in the new digital photocopiers requiring less maintenance than the
older analog units he had been trained on, but his job was still secure, at
least for the time being.
What if people had to go back to making carbon copies of important documents
like the old days, or use a mimeograph machine, or reproduce everything by hand? And could a new-fangled laser printer
separate, collate, staple, and shoot finished product nice and neat into a
paper tray with the grace and beauty of the old analog Xerox machine? He thought not. Digitization was an abomination!
For Archie, the whole process used in making a routine photocopy was
modern-day alchemy, nothing less than a miracle of science. The drum, that was the key, and the
light-induced conductivity of it that created a latent image of what was being
copied in the form of microscopic electrical charges on the drum’s
surface. To become visible to the naked
eye a specially charged toner had to be used so the image could be transferred
to paper. For the photocopier to work
its magic, the surface of the photoconductive material had to first be coated
with a layer of positively charged ions by the corona wire.
A strong lamp was activated by hitting the “start” button, which then
moved across the inside of the copier and soaked the paper being copied with
light. As the drum rotated and light
reflected off the blank areas of the paper, mirrors reflected the image onto
the drum’s surface. The dark areas of
the original paper absorbed the light, and the corresponding areas on the
drum’s surface that were not illuminated did as well.
In the places where light struck the rotating drum, the energy of the
photons kicked electrons away from the photoconductive atoms – then it was
magic time – the positively charged ions coating the photoconductive layer
attracted the freed electrons. This
marriage of one freed ion and one freed electron produced a neutral particle.
Charged particles remained only in places where light didn’t hit the
drum because it wasn’t reflected from the original i.e. those dark spaces taken
up by the text and/or pictures on the page.
Electrical voltage was applied to the aluminum core of the drum and
since light rendered the selenium conductive, current could flow through the
photoconductive layer while the drum was being illuminated.
#
The electrons released by the atoms were quickly replaced by the
electrons which formed the current flowing through the drum. Then the exposed areas of the drum rotated
past rollers encrusted with beads of toner, and tiny particles of the fine
black powdered ink were pressed against the drum’s surface. The plastic-based toner particles have a
negative charge and are attracted to areas of positive charges that still
remained on the drum’s surface.
Next, the thin corona wire
passed over a sheet of paper so that the paper’s surface became electrically
charged and the area of the drum freshly coated with toner spins into contact
with a positively charged sheet of paper.
Since the electric field surrounding the paper exerted a stronger pull
than the ions coating the drum’s surface, the toner particles stuck to the
paper as the drum passes by. You could
develop old-fashioned photographic film from a camera using a chemical liquid
bath and use this common process to print an image on specially treated
light-sensitive paper, but the photocopier produced a crisp image with only dry
ink, heat, and regular paper – that’s why it was the king of office machinery!
After the image is embedded on the copier paper from the original, the
copy proceeds on through the machine to the fuser that seals the integrity of
the print. The weak adhesion between the
toner particles onto the surface of a sheet of copier paper can be disrupted,
so to fix the toner image in place on the paper’s surface, the entire sheet has
to be shunted through the fuser’s heated rollers, consequently “melting” the
plastic material in the toner and fusing the pigment to the page permanently.
And Archie learned quite by accident that here was where things really
got interesting. After the photocopier’s
rollers ejected the finished copy into the collection tray, supposedly the
machine has already prepared for the next go-round by automatically cleaning
off the drum’s surface and applying a fresh coat of positively charged ions
onto it – at least in theory. In
reality, this was not the case.
He had originally gotten his idea to beat the system a month before the
army reunion when Sam and Nellie helped him celebrate his birthday by visiting the
National Archives, before lunch, to see the refurbished “Charters of Freedom”
display – the building was easily accessible for people in wheelchairs like all
the other public buildings in D.C. – and something caught his eye. Underneath one of the thick glass casings
next to the “Declaration of Independence” was an explanation of how it was
first printed, and how a shadow of the original had been left on the old-timey
printing drum.
#
A Celt by the name of John Dunlap left Northern Ireland alone when he
was only ten years old in 1746 to start life in the New World, and join his
Uncle William who had a printing and publishing business in Philadelphia. Working eight years as an apprentice, he took
over the business when his uncle decided to change careers and become a
Presbyterian Minister. He began a
fledgling weekly newspaper years later he called “The Pennsylvania Packet” and ran articles considered a reliable source of
information by the Continental Congress.
Dunlap even married into a well-to-do family since his new wife was the
great-niece of Benjamin Franklin, who had been commissioned on June 11, 1776
along with Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Roger Sherman, and
Robert Livingston to form a committee to draft a declaration of independence
from England.
The committee then delegated Thomas Jefferson to do the actual writing
and he worked days composing a document.
Eventually, Jefferson created what he called the “original rough draft”
and submitted it to the full committee who made forty-seven alterations, where after
it was submitted to Congress who made thirty-nine additional revisions
(“mutilations” Jefferson called them).
Then on a hot day in early July of 1776, John Dunlap was given a
rush-job by Congress at his shop on 48 High Street to print a “broadside” of
something called a “Declaration of Independence.” Broadsides were single sheets of paper
printed on one side, which served as public announcements or advertisements for
the general public, either posted or read aloud.
They were the television news broadcasts of the day, bringing current
events and important news about battles, deaths, taxes, and politics since
fighting had been going on between American colonists and British occupying
forces for nearly a year. A large
British naval expeditionary force was on its way to New York Harbor’s Staten
Island and people were keen on receiving the latest news from around the
“country.”
Twelve of the thirteen colonies had already reached agreement to declare
the new “states” as a free and independent nation, with only New York still
holding out. Nevertheless, John Hancock
ordered Dunlap to print broadside copies of the Declaration, signed on the
original printer’s engraving by him as President and Charles Thompson as
Secretary. The drum rolled over the
engraving and almost three hundred copies were printed by the evening of July
4; the next morning copies were distributed to members of the Continental
Congress and sent out to major cities throughout the colonies.
Even after the engraving plate cracked, Dunlap was able to run-off an
additional score of his flyers. If the
revolution had failed, Dunlap would have been hung with the rest of the
traitors because at the bottom of each broadside sheet there appeared the
words, “Philadelphia – Printed by John Dunlap.”
On July 9, General George Washington, Commanding General of the
Continental Army, received and read the Dunlap broadside aloud to his cheering
troops, and printers throughout the colonies made even more engraved
copies. Although Dunlap’s was the first
printed copy of the Declaration, the more familiar hand-engrossed historical
version was completed only on August 2nd when fifty-six traitorous secessionists
affixed their signatures to the document.
The new British military headquarters in Staten Island had also seen
Dunlap’s broadside and made plans to squash the futile insurrection once and
for all.
Dunlap was made the first official printer of the United States of
America by an act of Congress and “The Pennsylvania Packet” became the
country’s first daily newspaper. George
Washington chose Captain Dunlap’s First Troop of Philadelphia City Cavalry to
act as his personal bodyguard detachment during the bleak days of Trenton and
Princeton, and the humble Irish printer eventually died a veteran and hero of
his adopted nation.
#
Sam and Nellie had continued the tour because they wanted to see the
other historical documents on display at the Archives such as The Bill of
Rights, The Constitution, the Louisiana Purchase document, the Emancipation
Proclamation, the Social Security Act, FDR’s Day of Infamy speech, Elvis
Presley’s handwritten letter to President Nixon, the Apollo 11 flight plan, and
something called the Zimmerman Telegram.
But Archie hung back to ponder what Dunlap did after the engraver’s
plate cracked – “That sly dog,” Archie thought, “he used the latent image left
on the drum until it just wore out.”
After Sam and Nellie had helped Archie into their car and stowed the
wheelchair in the trunk after touring the exhibit, the conversations had turned
to the big upcoming event, Foxtrot Company’s reunion – which by tradition was
always held in the nation’s capital.
“We’re all set Arch my friend, we’re confirmed at the Best Western in
Rosslyn. All the boys’ll be staying
there, us included, so we can get as drunk as we want and not worry about
driving home. I’ve already told Nellie
I’d be incommunicado the Wednesday we all get in, so Katie bar the door!”
Sam loved Foxtrot Nam reunions and a chance to see his posse from the
old platoon again, and they all knew that this in all likelihood was the last
one anyway. Get-togethers used to be
more frequent but the older they got, the longer time elapsed between reunions
– the last one had been, can it be that long, ten years ago.
The other problem was the economy.
Sam couldn’t remember in his lifetime things being so bad – not even
during the Carter years – and a lot of the guys were having a problem just
affording travel to D.C., let alone paying hotel, food expenses, and the use of
a banquet room for the whole company for the official dinner Thursday night. Thank God he had a government job – it didn’t
pay much, but at least he had a dependable meal ticket. The last time they had the army reunion it
was held at the Key Bridge Marriott, but now that place was way too expensive
for people’s budgets, as was the Holiday Inn just across Lee Highway from the
Marriott.
“So who all’s coming?” Archie replied, still thinking about Dunlap’s
broadside.
“Well, let’s see, there’s Pedro
Campana for sure, Jody Carp, Bobbo Hansen, Little George Young, and I think Stu
Anderson so far. We should get a few other
stragglers later on. Overall, the
company should have about fifty guys show up; some poor bastards even have to
bring their wives.” And with that, both
men laughed heartily.
Then just a few days after the National Archives visit, Archie was asked
to fix a severe paper jam in the old analog photocopier used by the big shots
on the fourth floor of his wheelchair friendly building, the Studebaker
Institute, located on the capital’s Massachusetts Avenue, and decided to try
something new. Partially disassembling
the guts of the copy machine, he disconnected the drum’s automatic
self-cleaning switch, put it back together, made sure it was clear, and hit the
start button.
Sure enough, out rolled a legible photocopy of the last page copied from
the image left on the machine’s drum. It was tagged page 25/25. He
hit start again, and the next to last document page appeared in the tray,
fainter but still legible, page 24/25. Finally, on
the third try the photocopy was barely visible and illegible, presumably page 23/25, but he had proven his theory –
it was indeed possible to lift latent photocopies from the photocopier’s drum
if not cleaned immediately.
Feeling very smug about his “miracle” scientific discovery and how he
had had his way with the complicated piece of machinery, and hearing approaching
footsteps, he quickly reconnected the cleaning switch, put the
immaculate-conception photocopies in his toolbox, left behind a perfectly
functioning photocopier, and retreated to an early lunch in the maintenance
crew’s cafeteria in the basement. Down
there he was by himself and could study the “top secret” documents obtained by
using his cunning expertise. But the
joke was on him.
#
The footnote he read in fine print on the first, most legible page
image he had lifted from the drum, the actual document’s last page, caused him
to break out in a cold sweat: Note: U.S. Government Classified: The unauthorized
reproduction or distribution of this document in whole or in part is illegal
under U.S. Code: Title 50. Infringement
of this law is investigated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and is
punishable by up to ten years in federal prison and fine of $500,000.
Almost
immediately he felt sick to his stomach and knew he screwed up big time – he
had lifted from that damn copier government classified documents, holy
shit! He had no business reading the
words but having read them, he couldn’t unread them, and the more he tried to
forget, the more he actually remembered.
What the hell was Operation GERDA anyway, some sort of gold mining
operation? He had no top secret
clearance, no business handling these documents and if caught, he’d likely be
spending many years in the slammer.
These guys at the Studebaker Institute didn’t fuck around.
The Institute did all kinds of hush-hush consulting work for the federal
government and a lot of what they did was classified top secret. Archie needed to work another few years
before retiring with more than just disability pay from the army and Social
Security, and the last thing he needed was to get his ass in trouble with the Feds,
so he decided to rip up the papers, crumple up the shreds, and throw them away
right then and there so no one could find them.
Having lost his appetite, he threw the remnants of a ham and cheese sandwich,
plastic wrap, banana peels, and an empty can of Dr. Pepper on top of his theft
and scrunched everything down real tight, and shoved the big wad as far into
the trash bin as he could reach. Later
that evening, still scared, his mind and memory couldn’t stop recalling what he
had read, and he wondered what it all meant.
He’d check back in the morning to make sure the trash was picked up and
was on the way to a landfill somewhere.
Archie should have kept his mouth shut about this stunt, not tell
anybody anything, but after all that booze at the army reunion weeks later he had
gotten carried away with the moment and things got really uncool, and so he
yelled out to Sam and the old gang about how life was really about gold and
only gold, which in retrospect, was pretty fucking stupid.
“Still, no one was ever going to put two and two together anyway so what
was the big deal,” he told himself trying to keep calm. At home that evening he thought, “Hell, I
might just may go back and try the same stunt with that photocopier again one
of these days after things cooled down,” and then proceeded to get stoned on
some primo weed.
Archie did not know at the time what he had stumbled upon, did not fully
understand what the “Atlantean Geodesy Memorandum” or Operation GERDA was
about. But he guessed from what little
he read that gold played a major role in something very important, something he
shouldn’t have messed with.
(
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