Algorithm - Book 1 - The Medallion

Chapter 4

Chapter 4

The early evening sun cast deep shadows across Main Street, Maplewood. Tall maple and elm trees lining the road threw a shifting zebra pattern across Adam's car. The drive from PA to his hometown took only two hours, but it felt like ages. His mind's eye relentlessly reran the day's events. He had dropped off Linda at her car and promised to call her later. 

A late night series of analyses of a mysterious medallion revealed an almost incomprehensible complexity buried within the enigma. The archeological ramifications of such a find could be colossal. The analyses were carried out on a networked computer system, so, to a paranoiac mind, someone could have been observing the data collection. Adam didn't think of himself as paranoiac.

Did I see someone in the laboratory hallway just before the explosion?

The explosion destroyed all the data acquired that night. It was an explosion that should not have happened, since there was no flammable gas stored in the lab. Adam was glad he still had the photos.

Who was rifling through the remains of the laboratory? What were they looking for?

All of this could simply be coincidental, but not to Adam. His skin prickled as he realized just how significant the medallion could be, and that someone else may know that as well. Scientific deductions had their limits, since such reasoning required hard facts. Intuition, on the other hand, was prone to fill in the voids between, and it was intuition that drove Adam to New Jersey, to Maplewood, and to Dr. Ben Wujciak's home.

Why he decided to go see Dr. Wujciak wasn't entirely clear in his mind.

Why would Wujciak send me information about a gold necklace found in a lump of coal back in 1891?  Why send it to me now? 

The doctor had retired from practice several years ago. His home office was still in the same place, located on a quiet residential street behind Columbia High, a regional high school serving several surrounding communities. Adam parked his car on a nearby cross street, and walked over to the house. Incredibly, the place looked the same as he had remembered it nearly twenty years ago. Time's passage, so relentless in modernizing the surrounding neighborhood with new office buildings, had made a major detour to avoid the doctor's unassuming little one-family house. A recessed porch drew him up faded gray wooden steps. A rectangular patch of brighter paint over the door betrayed the former location of an office shingle. Adam pressed the doorbell, eliciting a muffled two-tone chime from within. After waiting a minute or so, he pressed the doorbell again, but to no avail. No one seemed to be in. Noticing a mail slot at the bottom of the front door, he stooped over, propped open the hinged flap and peered into the foyer. He spotted a small but dismaying pile of mail on the floor.

The doctor seems to be out … maybe for quite a while. I should have called before making the trip.

Disappointed, he walked down the short flight of wooden steps thinking about what he would do next. He was heading back to his car when he noticed the garage in back. It was a one-car affair separated from the house, and the folding door was down. He walked back along the gravel driveway and peeked in through one of the square windows. There was a car in the garage, a VW Beetle, and someone was seated on the driver's side.