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    This Is Not a Hoax
    This Is Not a Hoax
    This Is Not a Hoax
    Ebook72 pages1 hour

    This Is Not a Hoax

    By Stephen Sparrow

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    About this ebook

    A diverse group of scientists who receive a strange message via their computer screens meet to discuss their concerns at a lake in Italy. They are joined by an accomplished linguist and an unusual artist. It turns out to be to the advantage of all but none of them understands how or why. The explanations they are given are very difficult to believe.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherStephen Sparrow
    Release dateAug 22, 2016
    ISBN9781370908097
    This Is Not a Hoax
    Author

    Stephen Sparrow

    Stephen Sparrow is a retired businessman living in Christchurch New Zealand. In addition to writing, his other interests include ornithology, botany, gardening , hiking, photography and angling. He is married with five adult children. He is thankful for the influence of Dante Alighieri, Sigrid Undset and Flannery O’Connor – story tellers who fought always against moral relativism. He was born in 1942 and at present is engaged in writing a prequel to Rahnuk.

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      Book preview

      This Is Not a Hoax - Stephen Sparrow

      This Is Not a Hoax

      By Stephen Sparrow

      Copyright 2016 Stephen Sparrow

      Smashwords Edition

      Cover design: Matt Sparrow

      This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favourite ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

      Contents

      Chapter 1 - At the Laboratory

      Chapter 2 - The Italian Lake

      Chapter 3 - The Restaurant in Wandsworth

      Chapter 4 - Three Years Later

      About Stephen Sparrow

      Chapter 1

      At the Laboratory

      Dr Jacqueline Moore FRS liked a certain amount of routine and her early morning at the laboratory was one of the times when routine became an obsession. When she unlocked her office door she would scan the space and her eyes would alight on specific areas. First was the left-hand side of the shelf above her desk, and the leftmost book was the one that held her attention. A prized possession for a number of reasons. Firstly, for her the most important book ever written; The Origin of Species by Natural Selection, secondly given to her by her father on her eighteenth birthday and thirdly a first edition and thus very valuable. The esteem in which her father held her and his intimate knowledge of what would please her was reflected in this amazing present. She had read the book from cover to cover a number of times, it was her almost invariable habit to read a page or two every morning before doing anything else. This morning was no exception; she took the book very carefully from the shelf and opened it at the paper bookmark she had left the previous day. As she read the carefully constructed sentences she could see, in the back of her mind, Charles Darwin sitting in his study at Downe House surrounded by the artefacts of years of research producing the work that would fire the imagination of generations of biologists. She had visited Downe House several times just to absorb the atmosphere that had been lovingly preserved. She envied not the apparent chaos in which Darwin worked but the tranquil view of the garden. Her own office had no window; in fact office was rather a grand term for the cramped and airless cubbyhole tacked on the the end of the lab. Though small it was neat and artfully arranged.

      With great care she repositioned the bookmark and returned the book to its proper place and she glanced at the other four books along side it. The Life of Vertebrates by JZ Young was next; not a first edition this time, but dear to her, it was a book she purchased in her first year at University and signed by the great man when he revisited his old faculty at University College as Emeritus professor. Then a not so valuable first edition; The Blind Watchmaker again signed by the author. She liked Dawkin's ideas she just wished he wasn't so strident. He is so unlike the next author; Sir Peter Medawar, a complete gentleman, Nobel Prize winner, also an ex professor of her college and cricket lover. He had also signed his book for her, Advice to a Young Scientist. The last book on the shelf was one that had been habitually replaced as a new edition became available, so it didn't have the same sort of place in her affections, essential though it was as a point of reference; she couldn't even remember the names of all the authors but the title was Molecular Biology of the Cell.

      Her eyes then passed to the right hand side of the shelf where six volumes of her laboratory note books stood, six blue hard-backed A4's each labelled on the spine with her name and the dates in white pen. They represented the last two years’ work. Twenty other volumes exactly the same except for the dates sat in a locked cupboard to the right of her desk. She had started the volumes as a post doc and saw no reason to change the format. The difference in recent volumes was the hand writing on the left hand side of the opened double pages. For the last five years she had entrusted the data entry to Vince and she had just signed and dated each set of results in her own blue penned hand. The right hand page was reserved for thoughts and ideas in a somewhat random fashion, mostly her's but occasionally some of Vince's. These were always in pencil as they had no QA significance and contrasted with the neat black penned results in tables and columns on the left; many of

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