Chapter Three – SMAC Supramolecular activation cluster – natural killer cells. Part I – Accept the Mystery "Mysteries abound where most we seek for answers.” – Ray Bradbury.

“Marek will take care of all that when he gets here,” Joel was following Jack around the house as he explored.

They had reached the back of the place, downstairs, and were in a sort of utility room. The difference with the rest of the house was this room was floor to ceiling, along one entire wall, filled with electronics – dead electronics. At least it all seemed switched off from what Joel could see, no lights, no noise, nothing.

Jack turned back towards Joel. “So what’s this room?”

“How the hell should I know?”

“You lived here. So you should know what went on.”

Jack found it odd that on the one hand Joel remembered everything about the house, where his bedroom was, which room Charlie slept in, but he didn’t know what went on here.

“Well I don’t.”

He wondered if he really didn’t know anything about what this place was used for, or if like a load of other stuff, he’d forgotten.

“I don’t understand how you recognised the house as soon as we got inside the front door, but you don’t know shit about what this place is,” Jack told him with some frustration.

“Fuck... that’s how it is. You just have to accept the mystery.”

“Yeah. When does Marek get here?”

“Whenever. I don’t know that either.”

Jack didn’t say anything more, he walked past Joel and out of the room.

□□□□□

“They’ll come looking for the car, you know that?”

Jack was lounging on the huge sofa in the large living room. The rain outside seemed heavier, it was lashing the windows, propelled against the glass by the force of the wind.

“Yeah, but I doubt they’ll be in any hurry. You know how it works. It will just show up as a vehicle off grid, they’ll send a couple of engineers to find it and fix it. It’ll take ages before they do anything.” Joel was at least confident about that. Which meant they were pretty much safe here, and just had to wait until Marek showed up.

“I found this lying around,” Jack held up a folder of papers.

“What’s in it?”

“The title says, - The Neda Project, then it’s got this quote, looks like something about Greek mythology.”

“Very... interesting,” Joel replied somewhat sarcastically.

“Yeah well, you asked.”

He didn’t want to piss Jack off today, he had other plans.

“What’s it say... the quote?”

“Piss off, you’re not interested.”

Jack threw the folder aside, scattering the papers across the sofa, one or two sheets sliding onto the floor. He stood up, turned to leave, gave Joel one of his scowls, and was gone, out the open door towards the kitchen.

Joel gathered up the dropped papers and put them back in the folder, he read the title as he was doing this, and flipped the cover open. The quote on the inside read:

"Lifting her great arm she smote the mountain with her staff; and it was greatly rent in twin for her and poured forth a mighty flood. Therein, O Lord, she cleansed thy body; and swaddled thee, and gave thee to Neda to carry within the Kretan covert, that thou mightst be reared secretly.”

He left the folder on the sofa and followed Jack into the kitchen. Jack was making something to eat.

Coming up behind him, Joel gripped him round the waist, planted a soft kiss on his neck, and looking over his shoulder asked, “What you got there?”

“At least we won’t starve,” Jack told him, pouring a bowl of muesli. “Dried milk powder, muesli, and there’s plenty of other stuff in the cupboards.”

“I always used to eat muesli for breakfast, Charlie hated it, said it was gross and always insisted on Sugar Pops.”

“Well he might have been right, but I didn’t find any Sugar Pops.”

Pouring the milk he’d made up over the bowl of muesli Jack took a mouthful. “It’s okay.”

Joel had moved to stand beside him. “How do you know the quote is Greek?”

“Ha ha, I’m not a complete moron,” Jack grinned at him, sort of pleased with himself for knowing something Joel didn’t.

“Did I ever say you was a moron?”

Jack ignored the question. “Well, did some Greek mythology, Neda is a water goddess. Kind of appropriate for the climate we’re living with.”

Joel moved in closer, stared Jack in the eyes. “You’re full of surprises.”

□□□□□

He was sitting comfortably in one of the armchairs, Jack was sprawled out on the sofa. Much to his glee Jack found the audio system functioned with voice commands. So now they were being entertained by some moody instrumental music by some group or other that he’d never heard of.

The folder Jack found was in his hands and he started to read what was written there.

Dr Ahmed Hassan - National Centre of Meteorology and Seismology, UAE.

We have carried out twelve cloud-seeding operations during the last three days and fifty-eight since the beginning of the year. The heaviest rain was on Sunday, with twenty-four millimetres falling over Al Faqa on the border of Abu Dhabi and Dubai. Long and heavy showers have been reported across the country.

Our goal is now to increase the cloud seeding reaction to promote the ten to thirty percent increase in rainfall towards fifty to sixty percent. We also hope that with the new technology available we can permanently improve operations and stabilise the reaction.

For the moment there are inhibiting factors that prevent all types of clouds from being seeded, and it is only working with the ones that are ready to generate rain. We use hygroscopic salt to level up the amount of moisture to generate more rain. The best season for seeding is between June and August.

Cloud seeding is not an exact science and uncertainty about whether rain can be produced on demand remains. Despite more than sixty years of research, there is a lot to be understood about rain and clouds because of their differing properties.

Joel flicked through the pages, there were reports, loads of figures, tables and graphs. Then he got to the next interesting note. It was Dr Hassan again.

We are now using planes fitted with seeding flares, NCMS pilots fire salt crystals into the clouds to improve condensation and form droplets that could fall as rain. We have filed a patent with the US Patent and Trademark Office for a cloud-seeding technique that involves coating a pure salt crystal with titanium dioxide to improve the condensation process.

Looking at some of the other reports and papers in this folder Joel saw that all this stuff was ancient history. It seemed like this Neda Project took place more than a hundred and fifty years ago. The last note he read, which was hand written by the good doctor himself, he could tell, because he’d seen his annotations on some of the tables, was dated February 17, 2017. It was the most cryptic, but referred back even further, to the beginning of the last century.

Dr Hassan had written:

A certain Charles Hatfield, an American, is credited as being the first person to make it rain on demand using science in 1915, using US$10,000 donated by the city of San Diego, California, to end a severe drought.

Using a secret formula he reportedly produced so much rain that valleys in southern California flooded. Hatfield never shared his secret formula.

Jack was staring across the room from the sofa."Why are you reading all that stuff?”

“It got me hooked, there’s some interesting things in here.”

“There’s some interesting things here too,” Jack was definitely smirking.

“I know that look,” Joel smiled.

“I bet you do, but you better check this out.” Jack’s hand was covering his crotch suggestively.

Joel was out of the armchair, across the room and standing looking down as Jack stretched out his arm. He reached up to Joel, and pulled him down on top of him.

□□□□□

“Wow that’s one of those houses like in the movies,” Charlie said excitedly.

At that same instant the front door opened and Joel appeared. “Charlie, my man?” He called out, and Charlie was off running towards him. Up the wooden steps and onto the veranda, he rushed into Joel’s outstretched arms.

Joel wrapped him in a hug and lifted the little boy off his feet, swinging him around full circle.

“Joel, Joel, it’s super... wow!”

“Well I guess it is kinda different.”

“Kinda... no kidding... it’s, it’s... like in a movie.”

Joel lowered him back to the ground and smiled as his mother came up the steps to join them.

“Hi, mom!

“Joel, I’m glad you made it here. I was worried about you,” she told him.

“No it was okay mom, Madison took care of everything,” Joel kissed his mother on the cheek, squashing Charlie between the two of them. “Let’s go inside.”

“Is he here with you?” his mother asked as they entered the house.

“Yes they both are. The mad uncle and his sidekick”

“Do we share a room Joel,” Charlie interrupted.

“Nope. You’ve got a room all to yourself.”

“Uncle Madison and Joseph are either in his office or in the control room,” Joel told his mother. “Do you want me to take you there?”

“Joel, Joel, take me to see my room,” Charlie pleaded.

“Hold on a minute Charlie.”

“Mom, let Joel show me my room... please... pretty please,” Charlie looked at his mother with his best wide eyed angelic look.

“Yes, alright then, your uncle is no doubt busy.”

His mother having agreed, Charlie was now tugging at Joel’s sleeve, urging him to move towards the magnificent dark wood staircase.

“Why do you call Uncle Madison the mad uncle?” Charlie asked as they started up the stairs. Then before Joel could reply he added, “And what’s the control room?”

“The control room is where Uncle Madison works. It’s full of all his equipment.”

They’d reached the top of the stairs now, and Joel turned to lead Charlie along the corridor.

“And... I call Uncle Madison, the mad uncle, because... Uncle Mad... get it? Mad, Madison.”

“Oh yeah. Which is my room?” Charlie appeared to have lost interest in the answer. He was just too eager to discover his room.

Joel swung the door open. “This one,” he said, and waved Charlie in through the door.