Soul Identity Read online

  “Thales advised the Lydian general Croesus, who was embroiled in a five year war with the Medes. Thales predicted an eclipse of the sun, and he told Croesus to plan for a battle. When the eclipse darkened the day, the Medes and Lydians spontaneously put down their weapons and made peace.”

  “Good news for Thales,” I said.

  “Yes, and even better news for Psychen Euporos,” Archie said. “With the war over, we flourished. Thales had a motto—sophotaton chronos aneuriskei gar panta—which means time is wisest because it discovers everything. We still live by that motto—we mark the time and aid the discoveries by keeping the soul lines intact.”

  If nothing else, the concept was fascinating.

  Archie handed me the next card, and I saw man with shoulder-length hair, wearing a white robe and sandals. Underneath it said “Cyrus the Great, circa 550 BCE.”

  He continued his tale. “Over the next thirty-five years, Croesus sided with the Medes and together they fought the Persians, until they lost to Cyrus the Great. Cyrus spared Miletus and gave it favorable terms, mainly because he and most of the Mede and Persian nobles became members of Psychen Euporos.”

  I was getting overloaded with history. “When do we get to the overseers?” I asked.

  “Only one more card,” he said. “Thales died in 543, leaving behind a solid set of Greek and Persian members. The organization was wealthy, and many people had deposited riches for their future selves.” He paused. “But when Thales died, Psychen Euporos floundered. The priests kept care of the images and the investments, but the organization lacked a leader.”

  I thought about this. “Without somebody driving a vision, no organization lasts for very long,” I said.

  “That is correct,” he said. “We drifted while Persia grew. Cyrus captured Babylon in 539, and a generation later Darius married Cyrus’s daughter and became the King of Kings.” He handed me another card, this one with a man with a long beard and a gold cap on his head. It was labeled “Darius the Great, 522 BCE.”

  The other side of the card showed a map labeled “Persian Empire.” It extended from Egypt to Romania in the west to the India-Pakistan border in the east.

  “Darius and his court joined Psychen Euporos and invested heavily in their own soul lines,” Archie said. “He uprooted the priests and moved us east to Babylon, and there we stayed until Alexander the Great came through two hundred years later.”

  “Was Darius an overseer?” I asked.

  “No, although he was a great financier and organizer, he was too busy running his vast empire. However, Darius did create the institution of the overseers.” Archie smiled. “The best part about having a King of Kings as a member was that we had a chance to find some matching identities.”

  “How’s that?” I asked.

  “Remember the original eye images?”

  “The ones Thales brought with the Egyptian priests?”

  “Correct. Darius had the priests train thousands of mystics how to read soul identities. He sent these mystics out with copies of the original images to the far reaches of his empire and charged them to search for matches.”

  I tried to picture how Darius had all the millions of people in his empire read. “It must have been a massive undertaking,” I said.

  Archie nodded. “The mystics spent nine years. Altogether they uncovered thirty-five matched identities and sent the people to Babylon.” He spread the remaining cards onto the desk, and I saw pictures of farmers, fishermen, and philosophers, old men, young women, and even a baby.

  “They were forcibly sent,” he said. “Darius put them in school to learn Persian and Greek, then castrated the men and plucked the hair out of the women’s heads.”

  I winced. “Why would he do that?”

  “To focus them on the organization, and to keep them docile and out of the harems. They became our first overseers. Their job was to administer and guide the organization for all time.”

  I shuffled through the cards on the table. The women in the images had hair—maybe they wore wigs. “So the first overseers were the people whose soul identities matched the ones from the ancient Egyptian paintings,” I said.

  “That is correct, Scott. I am a proud member of the soul line of one of those original overseers, a young woman from Scythia.” He plucked one of the cards off the desk and handed it to me.

  I stared at the current head of this twenty-six hundred year old organization—a man who believed he was the reincarnation of an ancient Egyptian and a Scythian woman whose picture I held in my hand. “Bob told me he had an eight person soul line,” I said. “How long is yours?”

  “Not very long, I am afraid. I am only the fourth member in my line. Either we missed finding my predecessors along the way, or I have a wandering soul.” He put the card back on the table. “The last member lived over two thousand years ago. I caused quite a stir when my dormant overseer line was recovered.”

  “Does that happen often?”

  He shook his head. “The recoveries are usually well distributed. Each of the thirty-five overseer soul lines has been recovered several times.”

  But none recently, according to the chart he had shown me in his office.

  “I think I’m following,” I said. I tapped the table. “But we didn’t come into this itty bitty room so you could tell me this story. We could have done that in your office. How long does it take to bring up your soul line collection?”

  Archie looked at his watch. “It should only be a few more minutes. It would have been faster if I had thought to warn them of my visit.” He gathered up the cards, put the rubber band back around them, and slipped them into his pocket.

  “What happened to the mystics?” I asked.

  “They became our recruiters and soul seekers. We pay commissions to those who bring in new members and find soul matches.”

  Something clicked. “Like Madame Flora,” I said.

  He nodded.

  Madame Flora did tell me that her family had been involved with the organization for a long time. But was every mystic involved? I shook my head. “Are you telling me that all the palmists and fortune tellers in the world are Soul Identity employees?”

  “Good heavens, no. We do not hire them as employees.”

  Not quite an answer to my question, but I let it slide.

  Archie continued. “More interesting than the mystics are the numbers of priests and psychologists who send us recruits.”

  How could he possibly expect me to believe in the existence of this vast and secret network? “This sounds too big,” I said.

  “Soul Identity has millions of active members, most of whom keep very quiet about their involvement.”

  Now why would they keep their membership a secret? I scratched my head. “If it really is so big, somebody’s gotta be talking about it.”

  He looked at me. “We tell our members that only harm comes from sharing with outsiders.”

  Good point. Whose children would understand Dad leaving his fortune to himself? And who would invite scrutiny into an inheritance they received based on something in their eyes?

  A white door set flush in the back of the room slid open, and a young man dressed in a dark green uniform wheeled in a small service cart. “Your soul line collection, sir.” He held out a clipboard, which Archie signed. “I’ll leave you alone,” the young man said. “Take your card from the wall when ready to go, and I’ll come back and return your collection to the vaults.”

  We watched him shut the door on his way out.

  “I have not rummaged through my soul line collection for a good while,” Archie said. He leaned over the cart, closed his eyes, and inhaled deeply, holding it in for a few seconds before exhaling.

  “Checking for mold?” I asked.

  “To be completely candid, maybe I am hoping for a little extra connection with my previous selves.”

  I nodded. “There seems to be a bit more spirituality involved than you like to admit, isn’t there?”

 
Archie looked away for a moment. “When you dig through the layers and reach the core of our innermost desires,” he said, “we all want to connect with the supernatural. We all want what we do to matter. Being connected in a soul line, knowing that you are the current link in the chain between the past and the future, makes you part of something so significant that it feels sacred and even holy.”

  I was feeling uncomfortable. The idea of people believing in actual bridges between themselves and those living centuries before and after them intrigued me. And the ways that Archie and Bob expressed their faith in these bridges both fascinated and moved me. But at the same time, I was intruding on their private and deep-set convictions, encouraging them to share with me while not sharing my own thoughts.

  “Archie, I want to tell you something before we go any further.”

  He looked at me for a minute. “You are about to tell me that you do not believe in all this silly stuff,” he said.

  Right on. “I was going to try to say it nicely, but yeah, that’s the gist of it.”

  He nodded. “Your skepticism is exactly what I am counting on. A believer will never be able to find and root out the treachery in our organization.”

  Now I was curious. “And how were you so sure that I wouldn’t believe?”

  His eyes twinkled. “When you sent me the eye images of the bluefish, I knew I was dealing with the real thing—a true skeptic. Welcome aboard, Scott.”

  “Wait—you knew it was a bluefish?”

  “Of course,” he said. “We have been looking at eyes for almost twenty-six hundred years. Our researchers have conducted many studies to determine if we can spot identities in other species.”

  “And can you?”

  “No, we cannot. Only humans have soul identities.”

  “If you can’t spot the identity, how did you know it was a bluefish?”

  “Besides humans, all animals within each species share a single identity,” he said. “You sent us an identity with four small triangles, arranged at one, three, seven, and nine o’clock—a Chesapeake Bay bluefish.”

  That did match with what I saw with my own program.

  I pointed at the cart. “What do you have in there? Let’s give my non-belief a real run for its money.”

  He chuckled and lifted out a flat wooden box. “My soul line proof papers.” He opened it up and carefully pulled out four large sheets of paper sealed inside clear and rigid plastic covers. He handed me the first sheet. “This one has my eyes and my identity.”

  I looked at the sheet. It was about fifteen inches square. I saw two colored photographs of Archie’s irises, each six inches in diameter. There were pencil lines radiating from each photo like the points on a compass.

  “This was done with a black and white photographic reader,” Archie said. “Our seeker then hand colored the images. It took thirty minutes to read each of my eyes. This was a step up from the previous approach, which took an hour to draw each iris.”

  I held the drawing up in front of Archie. “They do look like your eyes.” The vibrant blues, yellows, and grays matched perfectly. I laid the sheet onto the table and pointed at the bottom circle. “What’s this?”

  “My soul identity. After the images of the eyes are accurate and complete, the seeker records the differences in the shapes and colors between the two images and puts them in the circle underneath.”

  I examined the identity, which seemed to be calculated on only a portion of the eye. “You only use the middle band of the iris?”

  He nodded. “Depending on the light, the pupil can obscure the inner third, and the eyelids sometimes hide the outer third. The middle band gives enough unique data for the calculation.”

  “And these fifty or so circles, diamonds, swirls, and triangles are what made you an overseer?”

  “They are. Let me show you the other sheets, and it will make sense.” Archie slid the next sheet in front of me.

  I looked at the iris images on top. “This person had dark brown eyes, and it’s a painting, though pretty faded. Who is it?”

  “Liu Shing. The previous overseer in my soul line. He lived in China twenty-one hundred years ago.” He pointed at the right hand image. “It is not the color that counts, but the difference. Watch.” He reached under the table and flipped a switch, causing the tabletop to light up. “If I line up the bottom circles on our light table, you will see what I mean.”

  He lined up the plastic sheets, and I saw that the identity images matched up perfectly.

  Then I got it. The chances of two people sharing fifty or more same-shape and identical-location marks were astronomically slim. These guys were really onto something here.

  I looked up and nodded. “Now I’m impressed.”

  He laid the next sheet on top of the other two. “I am not done. This was the first overseer under Darius, the girl from Scythia whose picture I showed you.”

  Her soul identity matched the other two.

  “And this,” he put the last sheet on top, “is the original Egyptian painting, person unknown.”

  I looked at the composite image made by overlaying the four bottom circles. There was no question; the images and their locations on the four sheets of paper matched perfectly.

  Archie stared at me. “You’re not convinced, are you?”

  “Not yet.”

  He nodded. “Let us go back to my office.” He put the sheets back in the box and the box back in the cart. Then he pulled the smart card from the wall. We waited until the delivery person came and rolled away the cart.

  Back in his office, Archie settled into his leather chair. “You were not convinced,” he said.

  I had been thinking about this as we walked back. “The technology is fine,” I said, “but I have questions on the process. Let’s start with the match. I don’t know if the seekers did the reading blindly, or if they had a target identity and they were forcing a match.”

  “Our seekers learn to construct a rough identity in their minds,” he said. “They may check this against our catalog of long lost matches—these have the biggest rewards—and if they think they have a hit, they perform a full reading.”

  I nodded. “How do you protect against fraud?”

  “Our rules force every match to be validated by our match committee.”

  That was a good start. Now to test its limits. “What’s stopping a reader from building a fake set of eyes that matches a well known identity?” I asked.

  He smiled. “The match committee validation compares the eyes of the person with the iris images. No fake eyes are allowed.”

  I nodded. “How big is this match committee?”

  “Three members. All three must be in agreement for the match to count.”

  I thought about this. “If I wanted to get a false match done, I’d have to make sure the seeker and all three members of the match committee were in on it. Four people would need to work together to fake a match.”

  “That’s correct.” He smiled. “We have a good system.”

  Not so fast, partner. I pointed at him. “But think about this—it only takes a single person to invalidate a match.”

  Archie seemed disturbed by that suggestion. “Do you think that has been happening?”

  I shrugged. “We have lots of areas to explore before we start making conclusions. For instance, how do you know for sure that the eye images actually belong to the person you ascribe them to?”

  “Because the match committee validates the images against the real eyes.”

  “But how do you know that the person is who he says he is?”

  He paused, then shook his head. “I guess we really don’t know for sure.”

  I had lots of work to do here.

  “Archie,” I said, “at first blush, it seems you have a system that works when all the players are honest and trustworthy. Like the way the Internet worked in the early days.”

  He frowned. “What does the Internet have to do with Soul Identity?”

  “As
it connected more people and organizations, the value of its data increased, and the trustworthiness of that data decreased. The result? Lots of security problems. Lots of theft. Lots of anonymous bad people wreaking havoc on an innocent system.”

  “Then they should shut the Internet down.”

  “That’s one solution, I guess,” I said. “It’s pretty drastic, though. That same Internet enables great advances, saves money, and enriches lives. What happens is that the Internet evolves over time. It keeps up with its changing environment.”

  Archie shook his head. “We do not evolve. We use the same overseer rules that Darius established in Babylon. Other than updates in the way we perform readings, little has changed in the way we provide oversight.”

  Hadn’t these guys heard the expression “evolve or die?”

  “I definitely have my work cut out for me,” I said.

  “You do. Remember your real goal is to find and stop the bad people before they break us. Security improvements are good, but they are not the priority.”

  I thought about the best place for me to start. “You brought me in to audit your security policies around your new Internet launch,” I said. “Why don’t I start by examining the new system? Chances are the bad guys are all over it.”

  “Good idea,” He picked up his yellow telephone. “Brian, please ask Val to come to my office.” He hung up the phone. “Val runs the new system development. She is visiting us this week to make sure we have the right equipment in place. She can tell you all about it and answer any questions you may have.”

  “Great,” I said. “It’s five o’clock now. How late do you guys work?”

  “Val works until the wee hours of the morning.”

  They were paying me around the clock, so who was I to complain?

  I needed to know how much he wanted me to share with his staff. “Archie, how open can I be about what I’m doing here?”

  He clasped his hands together. “I have informed my staff that you are here to audit the Internet programs. I also told them that you will be looking for potential security breaches.”