The 13th Enumeration (39 page)

“Numbers 29:13! Numbers—really?”

He read the verse carefully:

And ye shall offer a burnt offering, a sacrifice made by fire, of a sweet savour unto YHWH; 13 young bullocks, 2 rams, and 14 lambs of the first year; they shall be without blemish.

David shook his head in amazement and not a little awe. And all this took place in the seventh month. Carefully, he wrote out the number of the sacrifices for the seven days of the feast in a table format on his piece of paper.

             
For the first day of the feast there were 13 + 2 +14 for a total of 29 sacrifices. The bullock sacrifices were in descending order or one less every day for seven days.

Zane had made a point that the biblical religious calendar was based on the cycle of the moon. The early Israelites watched the waxing light for thirteen or fourteen days and then watched it wane for thirteen or fourteen more days. The total lunar cycle was 29.53 days long. David looked at the first seven numbers of pi again. Then he wrote the numbers in reverse, separating them into three groups:

295 14 13

His hand shaking slightly in excitement, he whispered. “Is it possible? The first
seven
numbers of pi.” Were they a key?

Next he wrote out the first fifty digits of pi on a piece of paper. Carefully, he circled each seven. The first seven was in the thirteenth decimal place. The second seven was in the twenty-ninth decimal place, and it fell between the two and nine, no less. The third seven was in the thirty-ninth decimal place—three times thirteen. David shook his head in amazement. Had the Creator hidden proof of the Messiah’s identity in pi?

3.141592
653589
7
932384626433832
7
950288419
7
1693993751
0

All thought of sleep had evaporated. He was too excited to even think about sleep right now. David opened his door and saw Zane sleeping on the couch. Well, he wouldn’t wake him. They could talk about it in the morning. David closed the door and sat back down at the desk. If the Creator had hidden the Messiah factors in pi, might there be other mathematical hints as well? What about prime numbers or the Fibonacci sequence?

The Fibonacci sequence was clearly evident throughout nature. Some of the best examples of it were the spiral arrangement of the seeds in a sunflower or the nautilus shell.

David wrote out the Fibonacci sequence. Each number added to the one proceeding it.

1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8,
13
, 21, 34, 55, 89

There it was again, David thought—the numbers seven and thirteen. Thirteen was the seventh number in the sequence. Next, David wrote out the prime numbers.

Prime numbers, natural numbers greater than one that had no positive divisors other than one and the prime number itself, had long fascinated mathematicians. David wrote out the prime numbers he could remember:

2, 3, 5,
7
, 11,
13
, 17, 19, 21, 23, 29, 31 37,
41
, 43, 47, 53

David circled seven and thirteen in the prime list. Seven was the fourth prime, and thirteen was the sixth. David counted the primes up to forty-one and found that forty-one was the thirteenth prime number. He turned his thoughts back to the inscription in the cave and the list in Matthew 1. It was clear that Matthew had intended to represent forty-one total names, and thirteen of those were in the last column of names on the list. Now it looked as if there was much more to the list of Matthew than scholars had ever realized.

For fun, David added up the sum of the prime numbers to thirteen. He came up with forty-one. So forty-one was the thirteenth prime number, and forty-one was also the sum of all primes up to and including thirteen.

David thought about it for a few minutes and then, out of curiosity, added one back into the prime list. With one included, thirteen became the seventh prime number, and forty-one became the fourteenth. He understood the reasoning as to why mathematicians excluded one from the prime list, but looking at what he had discovered sure made him wonder about that classification.

For the next two hours, David scribbled notes on his paper. Finally, he set the pencil down and rubbed his eyes. He needed to get a few hours of sleep before work tomorrow even if he didn’t feel like it right now. He found himself overwhelmed. Was he just imagining this, or was there really a connection between the biblical evidence for the Messiah, pi, primes, and the Fibonacci sequence? Was what he had found tonight the fingerprint of YHWH? David took one last look at his notes and then lay back down and turned out the lights.

The first seven digits of pi reversed give you 295 14 1
3
The first occurrence of 7 is in the 13
th
decimal place
The second occurrence of 7 is at the 29
th
decimal place and it sits between 2-7-
9
The third occurrence of 7 is at the 39
th
decimal place (3 x 13)
The first occurrence of 13 is in the 29
th
(10 block of pi)
The sum of the first 13 decimal digits is 65 or (5 x 13
)
The sum of the first 26 decimal digits is 126 or (3 x 6 x 7
)
The sum of the first 39 decimal digits is 191 or 43
rd
prime. 43 is the 14
th
prime.
First occurrence of 295 or 2953 is at the 113
th
– (10 block of pi)
The sum of 1 to 13 is 91 (7 x 13)
13 is the 7
th
number in a Fibonacci sequence
33 is the sum of the Fibonacci sequence to 13
233 is the 13
th
number in a Fibonacci sequence (233 = 3 x 17) (17 is the 7
th
prime)
377 is the 14
th
number in a Fibonacci sequence (377 = 13 x 29)
609 is the sum of a Fibonacci sequence up to the 13
th
iteration (609 = 3 x 7 x 29)
986 is the sum of a Fibonacci sequence up to the 14
th
iteration (986 = 2 x 17 x 29) (17 is the 7
th
prime)
13 is the 6
th
prime number
41 is the 13
th
prime number
(If 1 was considered a prime number, 13 would be the 7
th
prime and 41 would be the 14
th
prime.)
43 is the 14
th
prime number
The sum of all prime numbers to 13 is 41, or 42 if 1 was still included (42 = 6 x 7)

The sum of primes to 29 is 129 (129 = 3 x 43) 43=14
th
prim
e
,
or 130 if 1 was still included (130 = 13 x 10
)
The sum of primes up to 41 is 238 (238 = 2 x 7 x 17
)
,

or 239 if 1 was still included (239 = 52
nd
prime, 52 = 4 x 13)
The sum of primes to 43 is 281 (281 = 42
nd
prime) (42 = 6 x 7),
or 282 if 1 was still included (282 = 2 x 3 x 47)

It was a long time before David fell asleep.

Chapter 80

Dubai, United Arab Emirates

Darius stayed at the factory that night. He knew the streets of Dubai would soon become a war zone of deranged people trying to kill each other while the ones who could still think clearly tried to flee. Rumors of an epidemic had already begun to spread throughout the city. These rumors only added to the precipitous fall of AQES stock. In Chicago the previous day it had fallen 19.5 percent. In the past few days, it had fallen almost 50 percent from its high. He was sure that some of those who had loaned him money with AQES stock as collateral were thinking about jumping out a window right now.

He couldn’t help but smile. AQES, the stock everyone wanted to own, the stock which for almost an entire year had done nothing but climb, was now crashing. He had finally told the switchboard operator to tell everyone who called for him that he was not available. By the end of today, Darius knew, AQES would for all intents and purposes be worthless. A pyramid of debt and promises built upon an incredible invention. Trillions of dollars evaporated into an electronic world of ones and zeros.

Darius smiled in satisfaction, thinking about the pain he was causing those he had sworn vengeance on. He doubted a single one of them was sleeping well tonight. He looked at his watch—just six more hours until he left. His final acts of preparation consisted of loading his entire collection of personal files onto a 500GB removable hard drive, which he placed in his pocket, and then sending an e-mail to the account his brother had given him at the beginning of all this, giving him the details of his arrival in Iran. Next, Darius texted all employees of AES and told them that he wanted them to go home and stay there until they recovered.

Two hours later, the sprawling Aquarius Elemental Solutions facility was deserted.

Finally, at
one
p.m., Darius left the administration building and walked down to the pier behind the main assembly building. Inside the large building at the end of the pier was his thirty-five-million-dollar yacht. He walked past it, reached down, and removed the rope holding a dilapidated one-engine speedboat to the pier. He fired up the engine and pushed a remote on the console to open the door to his boathouse. Darius gunned the engine of the speedboat and left the coast of Dubai behind. Three miles away, he dialed a number on his cell phone and watched as the coastline where his factory stood exploded in brilliant flashes of orange and yellow light. As the miles of ocean slipped behind the hull, Darius periodically looked back at the columns of black smoke billowing behind him.

* * *

Anton woke the next morning and decided to take a ride down to the post office. On his way out, he noticed the hotel lobby was deserted except for a few employees who didn’t seem very happy to be there. Two of them looked extremely ill, in fact. Handing the valet his ticket for the rental car, he waited for two minutes. Anton noted very few cars on the normally busy streets. After his car arrived, he programmed the GPS device for the post office and followed the directions it gave. As he drove along the deserted streets, the only people he saw outside were acting abnormally. One woman just walked in a small circle. Two men stood flat-footed and beating each other with wooden poles.

At the post office, he found the facility empty. The doors were locked, and no one was around. Parking in the lot, he pulled out his location device and found his package was in fact there. Putting his locator away, he turned the car around and headed back to the hotel.

The way back was even more surreal. The people he saw were acting as deranged as a B-rated horror movie. He was by nature a violent person, but what he saw was homicidal insanity on a very different level. His unease growing, Anton returned to the hotel, leaving his car with the valet. He walked up to the front desk and asked the attendant, “Do you know why the post office in town is closed?”

“Sir, most facilities in the city are closing early today. Everyone seems to be getting sick. No one knows what it is. They say all government buildings and nonessential facilities will be closed at five p.m. today until further notice.”

Anton looked at his watch. It was nine a.m. With the post office closed, there was no way for him to track the package, and he sure as hell did not want to be trapped in Dubai. Hurrying up to his room, he grabbed his bag and headed for the airport. He reached the airport at ten and found all but one flight booked. The flight was bound for New Delhi, and he was glad to have it, even going in the opposite direction from where he’d intended.

After getting through security, he boarded with just a few minutes to spare. As they were taxiing, he noticed there was only one other airplane on the runway. That was close, he thought. Whatever was going on back in Dubai, he didn’t want anything to do with it.

After takeoff, the plane circled and headed for New Delhi. His unease dissipating now that he was in the air, his frustration at not finding his quarry took its place. His bloodlust had been thwarted and his time wasted. He was in a foul mood.