12.21 (40 page)

The fact that they’d gone to Guatemala on their own and found the cure for Thane’s disease had shaken up the CDC; Director Kanuth had resigned his post. Cavanagh was the heir apparent, but rumors circulated that the president intended to offer it to Stanton. He wouldn’t accept, and Chel knew she was a big part of why. She wasn’t leaving here anytime soon, and if they did eventually return to the States, it would be together.

Stanton reached into the bassinet to offer Sama a finger, and the little girl lit up. Chel almost never let her out of her sight. She and Stanton
had spent many nights in her wood-and-thatch house, feeding the baby bits of tortilla beside the hearth, until she fell asleep, after which they’d taken full advantage of their privacy.

“Thought you weren’t back till next week,” Chel said. “Is everything okay?”

Stanton pulled the printout from his pocket and gave it to her.

Chel stopped reading. Somewhere in the far reaches of this jungle, Victor was trying to make amends. Even in his absence, he’d become a kind of mythical figure among the Believers. Many on the new fringe considered his anti-city, anti-technology writings prophetic.

“He’s giving the codex back to you,” Stanton said.

There were no easy answers for what had happened—certainly not for how the legacy of her people had ended up in Chel’s hands. Whatever recalculations Victor might have made, who was to say some version of his 2012 predictions hadn’t already come true, and they were now living in the world he’d dreamed?

Sama giggled, and Chel stared into her little girl’s eyes.

It didn’t really matter anymore.

Chel was surrounded by the people she loved. And she was home.

She handed the article to her mother. Ha’ana took a quick glance and crumpled it up. “Come to Grandma, child,” she said, picking up Sama from the bassinet. “We have more important things to worry about, don’t we?”

W
HEN I FIRST ENCOUNTERED PRIONS (PRONOUNCED “PREEONS”) IN
medical school, I became fascinated by these tiny proteins that had baffled scientists for fifty years. They served no apparent function in the brain, violated the central dogma of molecular biology stating that reproduction could only happen through the transfer of DNA or RNA, and caused incurable diseases, including mad cow.

As I read everything I could about prions, I learned that more than 150 people had died as a result of consuming infected beef during the mad cow epidemic, and that some scientists believe many more Britons have been exposed and millions more may still get sick. In my reading, I soon came upon another disease prions caused: fatal familial insomnia (FFI). While the disease primarily affects families in Italy and Germany, several new “sporadic” cases are discovered every year in other parts of the world, including Central America.

After learning that “kuru,” the first known cluster of prion disease, was found in the South Fore people of Papua New Guinea, and was transmitted through the practice of ritual cannibalism, the idea for
12.21
took shape.

THE STORY OF HOW
the date 12/21/12 became so important in the eyes of millions of people, and assumed the place it has in the cultural consciousness, is still a mystery to me. Beginning in the mid-1970s, new-age writers speculated that the end of the Maya Long Count would represent a major day for human civilization, ushering in a global shift in consciousness. Through “visionaries” like José Argüelles and Terence McKenna, 12/21/12 was linked to astrology, environmental causes, new-age mysticism, spiritual “synchronization,” and growing skepticism about the role of technology in human lives.

But this belief in the importance of the ancient calendar turn took some very strange forms as it spread. Some adherents began to associate it with doomsday theories, claiming that 12/21 would lead to astronomical alignments, collisions with other planets and stars, and reversal of the earth’s magnetic poles. In recent years, groups of believers have left their homes and built vast compounds—in the jungles of Mexico, in the mountains of the Himalayas—in which to try to survive the apocalypse they believe is coming.

Still, I have found no evidence that the ancient Maya themselves believed the turn of the thirteenth cycle was any different from their other important calendar turns, all of which they feared and revered. The Long Count is actually a base-twenty calendar, and continues on for another 2,700 years. The original mention of the importance of the end of the thirteenth cycle, which the inscription written at Tortuguero, Mexico, reinforces, comes from the
Popol Vuh
. There it is written that the last Long Count ended at the completion of its thirteenth cycle, and this has led some to believe that the current one will as well.

DESPITE THE WIDESPREAD
popularization of the word, even among scholars, the abandonment of water-deprived cities in the lowlands at the end of the first millennium was likely not a civilization-wide Maya
“collapse.” Over a period of several centuries, at the end of the classic era, cities that had once flourished were slowly abandoned for smaller villages and more fertile ground.

Still, since the nineteenth century, when explorers rediscovered abandoned ruins buried deep in the overgrown jungles of Honduras and Guatemala, theories have circulated about what led the Maya to leave their incredible metropolises, never to return. Pollen samples from the Copán Valley and El Petén, locations of some of the largest ancient settlements, indicate that they were almost completely devoid of human life by the middle of the thirteenth century, after centuries of obsolescence.

Most Mayanists now agree that overpopulation, drought, and destructive farming practices leading to deforestation were major contributors to the dwindling population. Other possibilities are more hotly contested. Recently, scholars like Jared Diamond have argued that ongoing violence between the Maya cities was a major factor, and pointed out that fighting reached a peak in the period leading up to the end of the classic.

Evidence for cannibalism among the Maya is controversial and limited. But at the ruins of late classic Tikal, Mayanist Peter Harrison discovered a cooking pit beneath an ancient house that contained human bones with charring and tooth marks. It seems likely that if cannibalism did take place in the lowlands, it was not a significant cultural practice, but rather happened only in times of desperation, when other food supplies were exhausted.

There is no evidence that the Maya suffered from a transmissible prion disease.

NEW MAYA RUINS
are regularly discovered near indigenous villages: In the 1980s, the ruins of a massive city were discovered at Oxpemul, Mexico, less than fifty miles from a highly populated area. More recently, archaeologists discovered a site at Holtun, Guatemala, where more than a
hundred classic Maya buildings were buried in a jungle that had been traversed for centuries.

One of the greatest concentrations of scarlet macaws in Central America migrates from eastern Guatemala to the Red Bank, in the Stann Creek district of Belize. It was along this path that I invented Chel’s village of Kiaqix, as well as Paktul’s great, lost city, Kanuataba.

Without Ian Caldwell, I would never have become a writer. For thirty years, he has inspired me with his creativity, imagination, and fraternity. He helped me conceive of
12
.
21
, and gave endlessly of his time and genius on every draft.

Jennifer Joel is the glue and tape and safety pins that hold my kludge of a professional life together. There is no better agent in the business, no more sympathetic ear in difficult times, and no more loyal friend.

A decade ago, Susan Kamil at the Dial Press gave me something like the opposite of VFI, pulling me into a dream that I still haven’t woken up from. Her dedication is unparalleled, and every author should be lucky enough to be tortured by her red pen. No one spent more time laboring over every aspect of
12.21
than Noah Eaker—he’ll likely give me notes on these acknowledgments after the fact. His brilliant editorial guidance and sense of humor were tremendous assets, despite his believing that because I live in Los Angeles I wouldn’t know “Something is rotten in the state of Denmark” came from
Hamlet
.

Many thanks go, too, to Dana Isaacson, who gave invaluable creative advice and pushed me to focus on the 2012 phenomenon, and to the other professionals who made the book possible: Daisy Meyrick, Jonny Geller, Clay Ezell, Sam Nicholson, Katie Sigelman, Niki Castle, Karen
Fink, Theresa Zoro, Erika Greber, Hannah Elnan, Evan Camfield, Kevin Snow, Will Staehle, and Paolo Pepe.

Researching this book, I had the opportunity to consult with giants in the fields of Mayanism and medicine, and without their counsel, this book wouldn’t have been possible: Peter Harrison, Brad Schaefer, Robert Sharer, Mark Van Stone, Andy Barnett, and T. J. Kelleher.

I am awed by and incredibly grateful to my father, Jim Thomason, who suffered through so many drafts of this book, gave me insightful feedback and support, and has been a light in the darkness for so many over the last eighteen months. My stepmother, Lan Thomason, is a study in survival, and her immigrant story was an inspiration as I wrote. My stepfather, Ron Feldman, has more fortitude than anyone I know, and I will always be grateful for the unwavering dedication he has shown to my mother. Thank you as well to the rest of my family—Hyacinth and Lois Rubin, Bob, Dianne and the Michigan Thomasons, the Katzs, Hoangs, Dangs, Blounts, Nassers, Fishers, and the amazing Cavanaghs.

More than any project I’ve been involved with, this one took a village. Some of the friends below read so many drafts that they can probably complain about it in fluent Mayan. Others helped me in immeasurable ways: Sam Shaw, Michael Olson, Samuel Baum, Laura Dave, Scott Brown, Nick Simonds, Josh Singer, Jose Llana, Jordanna Brodsky, Joanna and Ken and Phyllis Sletten, Amy Cooper, Mark Lafferty, Andrew Paquin, John and Irina Lester, Sabah Ashraf, Katy Heiden, Adam Hootnick, the Checchi family, David and Bob Kanuth, Jac Woods, Dahvi Waller, Derek Jones, the Bakals, Nancy Lainer, Ines Kuperschmidt, all the collective Kiskers, Sarah Shetter, Joe and Susan Geraci, Jon and Sharon Stein, Claudia Garzel, Nat and Maureen Pastor, Lila Byock, Wil Pinkney, Erik Rose, Dana Settle, Kate McLean, Joe Cohen, Jamie Mandelbaum, David Hoang, Larry Wasserman and Maria Wich-Vila, Sam and Amanda Brown, Olivier and Radhika Delfosse, and Jillian Fitzgerald, whose art appears throughout the novel.

Lastly I would like to thank Michael Fisher—reader, old friend, the best brother-in-law I could hope for—who gave me no choice but to sit down and actually write the book by making a bet that ended up rendering me temporarily unable to walk.