The Apocalypse Calendar

Copyright © 2013 by Emile A. Pessagno, Jr.

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All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the written prior permission of the author.

ISBN: 978-1-935204-89-3

This novel is dedicated to my wife, Alice, who provided me with the encouragement to write this novel and who has stood at my side during good times and bad.

At sunrise in the Canyon of the Río Vinasco, west of Veracruz, a cacophony of sound arises from the jungle. Howler monkeys screech, flocks of squawking parrots fly overhead, and every living thing awakens as dense fog begins to lift over the canopy of tropical vegetation. The sounds at the bottom of the canyon at sunrise are deafening.

The Sierra Madre Oriental, northwest of Veracruz, arises from a narrow coastal plain and rolling foothills to the east like a giant green wall. The Canyon of the Río Vinasco is over two and a half thousand feet deep. The village of Huayacocotla sits along its northern rim in a pine forest like those in the Sierra Nevada of California or at high elevations along practically every mountain range in Western North America. A windy trail leading from the village to the canyon bottom extends from the temperate climatic zone at Huayacocotla to the tropics at the canyon floor. At daybreak along the trail, small Nahuatl Indian women, preparing to start their family’s first meal, carry huge bundles of firewood on the top of their heads and scurry along with children, who carry containers of sloshing water. Indians who live in the canyon speak their own distinct dialect and often cannot speak Spanish or even understand the language of Indians in adjoining mountain valleys. They are very wary of any strangers who cross their path. As one descends the trail to the bottom of the canyon, he feels as if he were traveling backward in time from the present to sometime in the distant past.

Strange things happen in the Canyon of the Río Vinasco. In 1983, a large helicopter owned by the Mexican power company crashed for no apparent reason. Gringos who attempted to study the geology and wildlife of the canyon mysteriously disappeared.

At sunset, a mysterious green glow arises from a cave on the canyon floor and extends two-thirds of the way up the canyon wall. The Nahuatl Indians are afraid to visit the cave because they believe it is the entrance to their spirit world.

It was a blustery winter day
in January. A blue norther had rapidly changed the weather in North Central Texas from a comfortable seventy degrees to twenty degrees in four hours. Sleet mixed with snow pounded the windshield of Dr. Frank Miller’s pickup truck as he rushed to make his five o'clock Tuesday workshop in graduate geology at the Texas Institute for Scientific Research. Dr. Miller always enjoyed his graduate workshops at TISR. His students could ask the damndest thought-provoking questions that kept him on his toes.

As Dr. Miller unlocked his office door, dragging his usual black briefcase full of heavy books, the phone rang. He guessed that it was probably Professor George Costello at Amarillo Tech; George had the habit of always calling him while he was trying to prepare for a class. Instead, it was a call from Harvey Meyers at the National Science Foundation, informing him that the NSF had funded Dr. Miller’s research proposal dealing with the geology of the Sierra Madre Oriental. There had been a hard battle to obtain the NSF grant. Cranky reviewers and the NSF Geology Panel had turned it down the first time around.

Dr. Meyers told Miller that he would receive two hundred and fifty thousand dollars over a period of three years. Unfortunately, as was usually the case, TISR claimed sixty-five percent of these funds for overhead. The remainder of the funds could be used for Dr. Miller’s research.

Miller exclaimed, “Thank God!” as he hung up the phone. By now it was almost time for his class to start, and he dragged a pile of books and a globe into the classroom, which was conveniently located near his office. Miller was a formidable character in appearance; he was well over six feet tall, with a Roman nose and a bushy mustache that matched his light brown hair. His eyes were nearly amber in color and seemed penetrating enough to stare through his students’ skulls. Some of his students suggested that he was part cougar.

There were eight students in Dr. Miller’s class. A few students were already present in the classroom still eating the remains of take-out food from the Student Center. The classroom smelled like hamburgers and French fries. At five o'clock, Miller closed the door to the classroom. As usual, one of the students, Gary, had not arrived. The students suggested that Miller lock the door so Gary would have to knock in order to come in.

Miller’s workshops were quite informal. He said, “Our discussion topic for today is the breakup of the supercontinent, Pangea. I would like you to think about the titanic forces that were at work in the interior of the earth.”

Miller’s discourse ended abruptly as Gary burst into the room carrying a backpack and talking to someone on his cell phone. Miller said, “Damn it, Gary! Would you get off the phone and sit down?” He patiently tried to brief Gary on the workshop topic and what he had talked about so far.

About this time Gary received another call, which he said was from his mother. The other students laughed because they knew it was from one of his flaky girlfriends. Miller said, “Gary, would you turn that damn thing off? I will never finish what I have to say if you keep interrupting.”

When the class was over, Frank discovered that he had received a second call from Harvey Meyers at NSF requesting that he cut his budget by fifty thousand dollars. Although this was disappointing news, Miller was so happy to get funding of any sort that he wasn’t very upset. The budget revisions would have to wait until Monday.

He decided to call his wife, Jane, about the good news from NSF. He said, “Let’s go out to dinner and celebrate. I’ll let you decide where to go.”

Jane said, “Frank, the weather is so bad that I think we should have dinner at home. You know how I feel about driving in the sleet and snow. I’ll take a rain check on the dinner celebration. By the way, you still owe me a dinner for my birthday.” Jane’s birthday was on December 21.

Frank said, “Do you realize that in 2012, the Apocalypse is supposed to occur on your birthday? At least, this is what some students of the Mayan Calendar say. I don’t believe in this sort of crap—but it would make one hell of a birthday celebration for you. If you have to go, you might as well go out in style! You would certainly have a lot of company.”

Jane replied, “Well, if that’s the case, we’d better live it up! My birthday is so close to Christmas that I always get screwed anyway. Even the Apocalypse would be an improvement.”

In addition to teaching several classes
, Miller spent most of the following week revising the budget of his NSF grant. He had been through this exercise many times before. He spent time on Monday with his assistant, Jack, trying to figure out the best way to cut the budget without endangering the actual research project.

Reducing salaries was always the first step. He reduced his own summer salary and that of his coprincipal investigator, Dr. Arturo Gomez, from two months to one month. In addition, he reduced the number of research assistants included in the budget from three to two. Cutting salaries greatly reduced the sixty-percent overhead taken out by the Texas Institute for Scientific Research. Unfortunately, it also reduced support for graduate students needed by the Department of Geology. Although TISR was supported to some degree by private funds, most of its funding came from the state of Texas. For the department to support itself on state money, it virtually had to justify its existence by the number of students enrolled in each of its classes. As a result, it was important to try to attract as many students as possible.

It turned out that one graduate student was worth about five undergraduate students in terms of state “brownie points.” It was also important to obtain enough research assistantship money to support students during the summer months. Graduate students as well as faculty were on nine-month appointments by the state. Funds were needed not only for their summer salary, but also to support their field research in geology. Often this research was on the west coast of the United States or in a foreign land. Miller had students who had field projects as far away as the Persian Gulf, Argentina, and Tibet. No funds were available from the state to support the cost of graduate student research. The students were either supported by grant funds from industry and the federal government, or by meager grants from various geological societies.

After struggling with his assistant, Jack, all week to prepare a revised budget, Miller carted it off to TISR’s Office of Sponsored Projects to submit to NSF. Jack was upset because grant support for his salary was also cut. He fussed and fumed about it and threatened to quit, but he finally calmed down when the geology department head came up with the rest of his salary from state funds.

Miller briefly prepared for his weekly Friday workshop in geology. He had allowed about forty-five minutes for this purpose. He set up slide projectors and overhead projectors and erased the blackboard, which was never cleaned by the cleaning crew. One by one, the students arrived in the class, some with their usual French fries and hamburgers. Gary was late. This was a routine that Miller and his students had now become used to. As Miller started to speak, Gary burst through the door and the class got started.

Miller said, “We’ll continue with our discussion from last Friday about the breakup of the supercontinent Pangea.”

After a lengthy discussion about Pangea, one of his students, George, said, “Professor Miller, I have a little question. I’ve read about continental drifting and looked at the globe here in the classroom. How can you fit North America and South America up against Eurasia and Africa? Mexico seems to be in the way.”

“George, your ‘little question’ is a giant one. It is actually related to the research grant that I just received from the National Science Foundation.

Professor Arturo Gomez and I will be examining the rocks of east-central Mexico to come up with some answers to the question that you just posed. In the meantime, I would like all of you to read about the San Andreas Fault in California. I also would like you to look into a report by Jones and others on displaced geologic terranes.”