The Final Journal

The Final Journal

By Damon Nomad

          Parker sat at his desk typing away on his laptop as he worked on his most recent research project. A knock at the door jarred him. Too soon for the pizza. He opened the door to find a dark-haired, shortish fellow with black frame horned rim glasses that kind of screamed nerd. Parker shrugged, expecting him to speak. "Hello? You knocked."
          "I'm sorry." He paused a moment. "Is this the right place?"
          Parker chuckled. "Right place for what?"
          "The vacant room for a postdoc. You're a post-doctoral researcher?"
          Parker smiled. "Yeah, come in. I don't look the part? I'm Parker Savoy."
          The man shuffled in as he studied the large den with a sofa, easy chairs, large-screen television, and two nice-sized desks. "Kind of look like a football player or actor. Tall guy with blond hair." He snorted a laugh. "Sorry, I don't have much of a filter. Eli Musgrave. Oceanography."

          ***
          Nearly a year later, Parker was cooking dinner when Eli came through the door. "I'm doing tacos, got plenty."
          Eli went to his desk and tossed his backpack on the floor. He sat down and took his glasses off. "Not hungry." He laid his head on his desk.
          Parker finished at the stove. "What's wrong?" He moved closer to the desk.
          Eli sat up. "My research funding has been cut. No warning. I won't have money for rent and food until I can get a new project assignment. Could take a few months."
          Parker shrugged. "No problem. I'll cover you."
          Eli nearly shouted as he stood up, "Just like that."
          Parker came a step closer, glaring at Eli. "What's your problem? I'm offering to help you out."
          "You must be making about the same as me. How can you just cover my rent and food without even batting an eye." He paused for a moment. "You doing something illegal? Doctorate in botany. Growing something on the side?"
          "Watch it, Elijah. What's eating at you?"
          Eli sat back down. "Sorry. We've been roommates for a year now and I thought we would be friends. I don't know anything about you."
          Parker sat on the chair at his desk. "We are friends. I'm just a private person. What do you want to know?"
          "How about family? You've never said anything about them. You've met my mother and father. My brother stayed with us for a week. I don't know who you really are."
          Parker rubbed his chin. "Let's eat first. My family history involves a curious story."
          After dinner, Eli sat in an easy chair and Parker took a spot on the sofa. Parker exhaled slowly. "Where to start? Okay, you've heard of Spectrum Chemicals."
          "Sure."
          "It was founded by my great-grandfather on my father's side. Both my parents are dead, I'll come back to them. I'm an only child. There is a blind trust from my great-grandfather and I'm the only beneficiary. I get an annual payment. I've got more money than I need or want. I don't want people to know that I'm wealthy. But that's not the only reason for my secretive nature. That starts with my grandfather's story, Horatio Savoy. He was a polymath and had doctorates in mathematics, biology, and chemistry before he was twenty-five. He did research funded by his father for several years. Nobody knew what he was working on. Then he organized an expedition."
          "An expedition?"
          "A huge ship with a construction crew of thirty men set off for a remote island several hundred miles east of the Marquesas. Do you know where they are?"
          "Sure. South Pacific north of French Polynesia. What was the purpose of the expedition?"
          "It's a mystery. Nobody knows what they were doing or the location of the island. They launched from San Diego in 1965 when my father was five years old. Six years later, the entire crew was lost in a storm on the return voyage. My grandfather stayed behind alone on the island. The last message from him was by radio to my grandmother a few years later. "He said, 'I found it.' Then the radio went dead."
          Eli stood up. "He never returned?" He gestured at Parker. "Surely people searched for him."
          "He was an only child and his parents were both dead by then. My grandmother was consumed by grief. He was a loner, had no close friends, and my father was their only child. There have been newspaper and magazine articles written about his disappearance. All with the same theme. He was an eccentric, wealthy, and selfish man who was building a lavish private estate for his family on a remote island. Nobody cared to look, except for my dad." His lips curled into a thin smile. "He wanted to prove the stories wrong. My grandmother told my dad that his father was a good man that was trying to do something good. He would tell her what it was when he knew it would work. Then they would go public about the island. My father was a civil engineer and a clever guy. He spent all of his free time researching the mystery. He found out about some wreckage from the ship that washed up on a few islands. He studied the ocean currents." He went quiet for a few moments. "My mother said it was an obsession. They got a divorce when I was six. Three years later, he died in the South Pacific while searching for my grandfather. My mother died from a stroke when I was in graduate school." He shrugged. "That's my story."
          Eli paced the floor. "Those maps and charts on your wall. Your father's? Can I see them, up close?"
          Parker stood up. "They were his. You can take a look."
          Eli followed along to Parker's bedroom. Eli traced his finger along a line drawn on the largest map. "This is brilliant work, but he used 1990s data for ocean currents. The South Pacific Gyre isn't constant, he should have used data from when the ship went down. What year was that?"
          "Hmm . . . 1971."
          Eli tapped on the map. "The island is going to be over here in this area, about two hundred miles northeast of where your father was looking. I can get the current data, set up a computer model, and find the island on a satellite picture." He spun around. "You have money. Summer break is coming up." He pushed his glasses up the ridge of his nose. "Let's find out what your grandfather was doing."
          ***
          Months later, Parker wiped his brow with a bandana and laid his backpack on the ground. He sat down using the pack as a backrest. He laid the map out on the ground. "This is hopeless. Fifty square miles of uninhabited rugged mountains and thick forest. We've been going at this for three weeks now; we haven't even covered ten percent. The boat will be back in another week. We need to try something different."
          Eli laid his backpack down. "I know this is the island." He took a long swig of water. "This is more difficult than what it looked like on paper." He wiped a bead of sweat from his forehead as his glasses hung from a lanyard. He gestured at a small waterfall nearby. "This place is a challenge, but magnificent." He slumped back against the pack and closed his eyes. "I'm out of ideas."
          Parker took a slow drink of water. "It is beautiful. There must be hundreds or thousands of unknown plant species here." They were both quiet for several minutes. Parker tapped on a spot on the map. "A day's walk to the highest peak; it looks over this entire valley. The satellite photographs showed a few bald spots around the summit."
          Eli opened one eye. "Study the valley with binoculars. That will be the best we can do with the time we have."
          Three days later, they were sitting on a large flat boulder as the sun was setting. Eli slowly scanned a corner of the valley with binoculars. "Nothing." He shook his head. "Two more days and we need to head back to the coastline for the boat pick up."
          Parker stared at the ground and then glanced back at the valley. "Reflection!" He jumped up. "Hand me the binocs. Get the map." He looked through the rugged field glasses and then put a finger on the map. "Must be something right there."
          Eli marked the spot. "We can be there by noon tomorrow."
          Late the next morning, they saw hints of a thinning in the canopy. Minutes later they came to a clearing that still had tall tree cover. A steel and glass three-story building filled most of the area. Beside it, were three small Quonset huts. Eli pointed at a sign on the front of the building. "Savoy Research Center." He smiled shaking his head as they walked toward the building.
          Parker led the way inside. "Storm must have brought this huge tree down on this corner. They both were silent as they gazed at the large room. It was an airy three-story space with glass-paned arched windows reaching up to the ceiling on the far wall. Plants had made their way inside along the floor and up the walls and ceiling near the damaged corner. Two walls were covered floor to ceiling with full bookshelves, walkways, and ladders. Sunlight was pouring in and filled the space with a soft light. Most of the furniture had been pushed to the back. There was a single desk near the middle of the room, like an altar in a sunlit church. Parker mumbled, "What a majestic space."
          They instinctively wandered over to the desk. There was a worn leather journal, with the year 2011 written on the front. Parker's heart raced as he picked it up. He opened it up and studied it for a few moments. "He was isolating and studying compounds from plants as cures for cancer and multiple sclerosis. This is way over my head." He slowly paged through the journal. "Talks about a laboratory in the back of this building."
          Eli stared at the book. "He kept working all that time. That's amazing."
          Parker sighed. "That was eleven years ago. He would have been seventy-six years old." He tapped on the book. "This must be his last journal, probably more in the laboratory." Parker waved the book in the air. "We should find the others." His voice cracked, "See if we can find his remains."
          "I'm not dead, yet." There was a quiet chuckle from behind them. "It's not my last journal. Left that one in here by mistake."
          They both spun around and stared in silence.
          The elderly man crept closer and touched them. His voice quivered as tears rolled down his cheeks, "You're real. How did you find me?" He squeezed Parker's arm. "You look a bit like my son. The eyes. Any chance we're related?"
          Parker nearly whispered. "I'm your grandson. We have a lot to discuss."
          They reminisced in one of the Quonset huts until late into the evening. Parker and Eli told Horatio Savoy about the last fifty years of the outside world. Grandpa Savoy explained his research and how he used some of his discoveries to help him survive in good health. Parker took a sip of homemade wine. "What happened on the last call to grandma."
          "I had found the first key molecular component from one of the plant extracts that day. I got excited when I radioed your grandmother. I jumped up when I said I found it. I was ready to tell her what I was working on. But I pulled the radio off the shelf. Three of the vacuum tubes were broken. No way to repair them."
          Two days later, the three were on a boat back to civilization with boxes of research journals that they would share with the world.

          Word Count 1995
          Prompt: Write a story from a photograph.