Nic: From Pacific Northwest Stories and Minnow Beats Whale, it's Tanis. I'm Nic Silver. We're telling the story of Tanis in order every two weeks, so if you're new to Tanis, you should go back and start at the beginning. We'll try not to get too far ahead by the time you get back.
I've been having crazy dreams. For the longest time before I started this podcast, I wasn't able to remember much of anything about my dreams. But now I'm remembering more. Often just fragments or feelings, but once in awhile I'll get the whole picture. Recently I had one of those dreams, one of those full pictures. I was walking down a hallway. It was some kind of military base, maybe. But it felt anachronistic, it was definitely from some other place, or time or... maybe it was just, I dunno.
The hall I walked was busy, bustling with people. I stopped in an intersection where a bunch of people were assembled, waiting for something. An overweight man with extremely bloodshot eyes coughed and glared at a thin man in a black suit. The thin man was smoking a cigarette and stared back at the larger man, absolutely unconcerned. The smell of wet earth and wet dust gave the whole thing a military bunker underground vibe. But, as I turned and started walking further down the hall, I realized that I wasn't underground at all. The long hall had no ceiling. I was outside. Or, at least, the sky was visible.
It looked like night. It must have been overcast because there were no stars. No crickets or frogs or any sound of the natural world at all. The hall eventually opened into a clearing and I found myself alone in the woods. And that's when I realized, or remembered, where I was. I was within the walled area. I knew that the walled area was small, a few miles square. And that it had been getting smaller year by year. I also understood somehow that these walls weren't surrounding Tanis. These walls had been built to keep Tanis out. Within these walls was everything that remained that wasn't Tanis.
In the distance, I could hear a screaming sound from the sky. A deep, metallic grinding whir and rumble. I knew that everything was coming to an end. And that's when I woke up.
Last time, I discovered the third of three keys. The first wasn't actually a proper key, but rather a key-shaped floating boater's keychain that was attached to a strange bit of rock. It was found floating in the back of a toilet in the Lake Quinault Inn in the room a John Doe named Lyle Stevik committed suicide in in 2001. The second key was found hidden inside that floating keychain. A key that led me to a seedy motel in Olympia, Washington where I discovered the third key, hidden in a toilet tank. The third key led me to a post office in Olympia, and we'll be heading there soon. But first, Meerkatnip had some news.
Nic: So with Meerkatnip digging into Nathaniel Carter on her end, I decided to see what I could come up with on mine.
I waded through everything she'd uncovered from the last auction she traced to Nathaniel Carter. It was the usual: some letters, something from Derleth to a young writer, something from Charles Fort to an editor friend, a short story containing an oblique reference to Eld Fen by way of King Wyrm, and a couple of really creepy lithographs of tall thin people sacrificing animals on an altar just outside a cave. Oh, and the tall thin creepy people were wearing bird masks, or had bird heads. The picture was so small it was hard to tell.
There was something in the last lot purchase that I found extremely interesting. Whoever purchased it, and MK told me she'd bet it was Nathaniel Carter, paid an exorbitant amount of money. It was an abandoned first draft of a manuscript by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky, a manuscript that would eventually become a short novel called The Roadside Picnic.
Now, for those of you unfamiliar with Russian literature, in 1971 the Strugatsky brothers published a novel called The Roadside Picnic. A book that has, as its central controlling idea, a zone in the countryside where strange things happen. Mysterious and dangerous artifacts are pulled out of the zone by people willing to risk contamination. These people are called Stalkers. Russian auteur filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky made a film loosely based on The Roadside Picnic called Stalker in 1979.
So Nathaniel Carter was interested in the Strugatsky brothers, Russian writers who wrote about a specific place. A place where strange things happened. A place that sounded a little bit like Tanis. Although, and this isn't really a spoiler alert, it's revealed fairly early on in The Roadside Picnic, everyone agrees and all the evidence points to some kind of alien visitation. A visition where the aliens probably didn't even notice human beings, the way we don't really notice insects during a picnic.
So was Nathaniel Carter interested in the Strugatsky brothers because of Tanis? Or had he become interested in Tanis after 1971 because of an obsession with the work of the Strugatsky brothers? The woods of the Pacific Northwest are a long way from Russia, and, unless the two brothers took a holiday in Seattle pre-1971, which my research indicates probably didn't happen, I feel like Nathaniel Carter probably just wanted that manuscript because it reminded him of the thing he's most interested in. Which, as it happens, is the thing I'm most interested in: Tanis.
So this brings us back to that wooden keychain with the rock. I had no difficulty finding that post office, and the key worked. So what was inside? What did those three mysterious keys finally lead to? Well, they led to four pages of the Voynich manuscript.
(advertisements)
The Voynich manuscript is a handwritten and illustrated codex in a mysterious unknown writing system. It's been carbon dated to very early in the 15th century. The manuscript was named after Wilfrid Voynich, a Polish bookseller who purchased it in 1912.
The manuscript is composed of 240 pages, depending on how you count the folds and layout, and some of the pages are obviously missing. The text is written from left to right, and most of the pages feature images, illustrations, and diagrams. Code breakers, cryptographers, and language experts from all over the world have been unable to ascertain the meaning or origin of the Voynich manuscript. Nobody has been able to break the code.
We don't know the language, we don't know what it is, or why it exists. A script of 20 to 25 characters would account for virtually all of the text outside of a few rare characters, and there is no obvious punctuation. In the bottom margin of one of the pages, the signature of a man named Jakub is now unreadable.
The manuscript can be divided into sections that appear to focus on specific areas of study: herbal, astronomical, biological, cosmological, pharmaceutical, and finally, recipes. Visually, the overall impression is one of pharmacy and alchemy. However, without understanding the text, its purpose continues to evade. Only a few of the plant drawings can be identified with somewhat reasonable certainty, but there are some extremely interesting and confusing subtleties. For example. many of the plant drawings in the herbal section of the manuscript appear to be hybrids. The roots of one species appear to be connected to the leaves or flowers of others. Was this intentional? Or do these drawings represent a kind of... change or mutation?
The biology section includes strange tubes and other seemingly alchemy-related drawings, but they bear little or no resemblance to the alchemical equipment of the period. Statistical analysis of the text reveals patterns very similar to natural languages. It's fairly clear and generally accepted that the Voynich manuscript is compatible with natural languages, and incompatible with random texts.
Unless it's a complete fabrication created in the early 15th century, the Voynich manuscript is most likely a meaningful text in a language intentionally obscured by mapping an alphabet through a cipher or some kind of algorithm. The author wrote the manuscript in code and we just haven't been able to uncover the key to decoding it.
The Voynich manuscript was donated to Yale University's Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library in 1969, where it is catalogued under call number MS408.78.
So. That's a bit of background on the Voynich manuscript. What's interesting about the scans or copies of the four pages I discovered in that post office box, is that one of the pages isn't included in the previously identified 240 pages of the manuscript. I'm going to upload a scanned copy of those pages to the notes section of our website, and I'm going to do everything I can to find out what they were doing there and how they might be connected to Tanis.
Now, Meerkatnip has an update.
Nic: So Nathaniel Carter was looking for Lyle Stevik. This is supported by the flight and car rental information from September 12th. Two separate sources are hard to ignore. It looks like Nathaniel Carter believed Lyle Stevik was a runner. If he was looking for Stevik, why would he kill him or have him killed? There has to be more information out there on Nathaniel Carter. And I know just where to start looking. It's time I forced the issue with Cameron Ellis.
Nic: That didn't go how I expected. Although, I suppose I should expect cryptic surprises where Cameron Ellis is concerned. He claims he's been shielding me, intimating that he's been protecting me somehow, behind the scenes. I didn't ask for any protection, and I don't feel like being in any kind of debt to Cameron Ellis is a good idea for a journalist.
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Nic: So was Nathaniel Carter ripped from the world like some deep web bulletin board poster posits? Cameron Ellis's responses to Nathaniel Carter's name appear to indicate the man is still active. Although, active doing what remains a huge question.
I feel like those three research studies hold the answers, or at least some of the answers that I'm looking for. Cameron Ellis is my only real connection to those studies, and Cameron Ellis wants me to come work for him. I'm wary of course, but I really wanna know what that means. What working for Ellis might entail. He knows so much more about the breach than he's telling me, and he definitely knows more about those research studies than he's letting on. Don't I owe it to this investigation to pursue every lead? Don't I have to go and work for him, if only for a little while, to glean what I can from the experience? To enhance my understanding of what's happening up there? In that remarkable section of the forest?
While I was considering what to do about Cameron Ellis, I received a mysterious phone call.
Nic: Next time we'll take a longer look at the Voynich manuscript, find out what Paul has to say about the Cult of Tanis, and discover what Cameron Ellis has in mind for me, employment-wise, in the area he refers to as the breach.
It's Tanis. I'm Nic Silver. We'll be back again in two weeks. Until then, keep looking.
Tanis is produced by Terry Miles. Produced, mixed, and edited by me, Nic Silver. Executive producers Terry Miles and Paul Bae.
For legal and safety reasons, we've elected to change some names, and leave others out entirely. We don't do this very often, but we're not willing to compromise people's safety for any reason.
Thanks again for listening to Tanis.
I've been having crazy dreams. For the longest time before I started this podcast, I wasn't able to remember much of anything about my dreams. But now I'm remembering more. Often just fragments or feelings, but once in awhile I'll get the whole picture. Recently I had one of those dreams, one of those full pictures. I was walking down a hallway. It was some kind of military base, maybe. But it felt anachronistic, it was definitely from some other place, or time or... maybe it was just, I dunno.
The hall I walked was busy, bustling with people. I stopped in an intersection where a bunch of people were assembled, waiting for something. An overweight man with extremely bloodshot eyes coughed and glared at a thin man in a black suit. The thin man was smoking a cigarette and stared back at the larger man, absolutely unconcerned. The smell of wet earth and wet dust gave the whole thing a military bunker underground vibe. But, as I turned and started walking further down the hall, I realized that I wasn't underground at all. The long hall had no ceiling. I was outside. Or, at least, the sky was visible.
It looked like night. It must have been overcast because there were no stars. No crickets or frogs or any sound of the natural world at all. The hall eventually opened into a clearing and I found myself alone in the woods. And that's when I realized, or remembered, where I was. I was within the walled area. I knew that the walled area was small, a few miles square. And that it had been getting smaller year by year. I also understood somehow that these walls weren't surrounding Tanis. These walls had been built to keep Tanis out. Within these walls was everything that remained that wasn't Tanis.
In the distance, I could hear a screaming sound from the sky. A deep, metallic grinding whir and rumble. I knew that everything was coming to an end. And that's when I woke up.
Last time, I discovered the third of three keys. The first wasn't actually a proper key, but rather a key-shaped floating boater's keychain that was attached to a strange bit of rock. It was found floating in the back of a toilet in the Lake Quinault Inn in the room a John Doe named Lyle Stevik committed suicide in in 2001. The second key was found hidden inside that floating keychain. A key that led me to a seedy motel in Olympia, Washington where I discovered the third key, hidden in a toilet tank. The third key led me to a post office in Olympia, and we'll be heading there soon. But first, Meerkatnip had some news.
- MK: So, what would you like first, Nathaniel Carter or the navigator?
- Nic: Wow, okay. Uh, let's go with the navigator.
- MK: Okay. So I found something related to the old classified ads system these Tanis people were using in the 50s.
- Nic: What did you find?
- MK: Well, there were a few ads that were interesting.
- Nic: Cool. Could you send them to me?
- MK: They're text-only references to the ads themselves, collected by a third party investigating the same thing you are.
- Nic: Okay, uh, Tanis?
- MK: Yup.
- Nic: So how do you know these classifieds weren't just made up by somebody trying to spread rumors or muddy the waters?
- MK: The source appears legit. There's many other ads referenced in the same system, I checked them. They're on the level. It's a major university's brand new search engine, it just came online. I'd trust it.
- Nic: Okay.
- MK: I did manage to dig up a scan of one ad, I'll send that to you right now.
- Nic: Thanks.
- MK: Yup, you bet. Okay so they're all pretty similar. The general idea is that these Eld Fen people have been looking for the navigator for a long time.
- Nic: For... how long?
- MK: As long as the Xanu people have been looking for medicine men or shamans and the Tanis people have been looking for runners and seekers and whatever the fuck else.
- Nic: (chuckling under his breath) Wow. Um...
- MK: The navigator is apparently some kind of super runner, at least that's the sense I get.
- Nic: Okay. Anything else?
- MK: That's it for the navigator, but there was more on Nathaniel Carter.
- Nic: Great.
- MK: Turns out that Nathaniel Carter and the navigator might be connected.
- Nic: How?
- MK: Mmhm. Lyle Stevik.
- Nic: Lyle Stevik?
- MK: Yup, old Levity Elks himself. Yup.
- Nic: (chuckles) Okay, how are they connected?
- MK: Eh, it's loose. I'd go as far as to call it a stretch.
- Nic: Okay...
- MK: On the morning of September 12th, 2001 a man named Nathaniel Carter flew into Seattle.
- Nic: I don't think there were planes flying that day, unless they were military or moving airline crew around. Especially--
- MK: Well the source of this information is... let's just say I have a few contacts above reproach okay? This person is above those people. So like, way up.
- Nic: Okay.
- MK: It happened. Nathaniel Carter flew from JFK to SeaTac on Wednesday, September 12th 2001. He rented a car, and then now this is where it gets interesting.
- Nic: Um, it's already pretty interesting.
- MK: Mmkay well, hang onto your shorts.
- Nic: (chuckling) Okay.
- MK: My contact's research into Nathaniel Carter is government related. The same person who broke the story about certain Saudi Arabians flying out on special flights right after the attacks.
- Nic: Wow.
- MK: Yeah. So everybody in the air for the first two days following the attacks was under intense scrutiny by carefully vetted members of the NSA and the military. But then there were some passengers that didn't show up on their records.
- Nic: Hm.
- MK: But! There was at least one other... unofficial department looking into things as well.
- Nic: Your friend?
- MK: Bingo.
- Nic: And he... or she, discovered Nathaniel Carter's name?
- MK: Yup, that's right.
- Nic: Okay, so how does all this relate to Tanis?
- MK: Well, okay. So when really secret shit like this happens, people in my line of work take notice.
- Nic: Information specialists?
- MK: Right. Information like this is a potential goldmine.
- Nic: Information like what? Like Nathaniel Carter being on a plane?
- MK: Not him specifically, but sales of certain passenger manifests from that day netted millions.
- Nic: That's...
- MK: Mmm. Due to the extreme secrecy involved in the flight Nathaniel Carter was on, my friend had associated records of car rentals, hotels, and other flights.
- Nic: Other flights?
- MK: So Nathaniel Carter got off the plane at SeaTac, got into a rented car which drove at least as far as Aberdeen, and then one interviewee indicates he went up as high as--
- Nic: Amanda Park.
- MK: Now you're getting it.
- Nic: The Lake Quinault Inn.
- MK: No record of him there, I'm afraid.
- Nic: Yeah. That would be too easy.
- MK: He got back on a plane the same night.
- Nic: Really? Are you sure?
- MK: Yeah. He was in early and out late, like red eye style.
- Nic: So Nathaniel Carter might've been up at Amanda Park at the same time as Lyle Stevik?
- MK: Yeah, it's possible.
- Nic: Have you been able to find anything else on Carter? He's... some kind of super scientist, isn't he?
- MK: Mmm, botany I think, and a few other things. But there's really not much anywhere. It's suspicious, but it's not unheard of.
- Nic: Another ghost?
- MK: Mmhm, pretty much. Yeah. Although I was able to find a couple references to him attending a few events. One at Syracuse around 2007, and then another in Seattle the next year.
- Nic: Okay.
- MK: I'll send you some more info once I scrape a few more sites, I'm just looking for a photo.
- Nic: Thanks, I'd really appreciate it.
- MK: Yeah, you got it. (Skype disconnects)
Nic: So with Meerkatnip digging into Nathaniel Carter on her end, I decided to see what I could come up with on mine.
I waded through everything she'd uncovered from the last auction she traced to Nathaniel Carter. It was the usual: some letters, something from Derleth to a young writer, something from Charles Fort to an editor friend, a short story containing an oblique reference to Eld Fen by way of King Wyrm, and a couple of really creepy lithographs of tall thin people sacrificing animals on an altar just outside a cave. Oh, and the tall thin creepy people were wearing bird masks, or had bird heads. The picture was so small it was hard to tell.
There was something in the last lot purchase that I found extremely interesting. Whoever purchased it, and MK told me she'd bet it was Nathaniel Carter, paid an exorbitant amount of money. It was an abandoned first draft of a manuscript by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky, a manuscript that would eventually become a short novel called The Roadside Picnic.
Now, for those of you unfamiliar with Russian literature, in 1971 the Strugatsky brothers published a novel called The Roadside Picnic. A book that has, as its central controlling idea, a zone in the countryside where strange things happen. Mysterious and dangerous artifacts are pulled out of the zone by people willing to risk contamination. These people are called Stalkers. Russian auteur filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky made a film loosely based on The Roadside Picnic called Stalker in 1979.
So Nathaniel Carter was interested in the Strugatsky brothers, Russian writers who wrote about a specific place. A place where strange things happened. A place that sounded a little bit like Tanis. Although, and this isn't really a spoiler alert, it's revealed fairly early on in The Roadside Picnic, everyone agrees and all the evidence points to some kind of alien visitation. A visition where the aliens probably didn't even notice human beings, the way we don't really notice insects during a picnic.
So was Nathaniel Carter interested in the Strugatsky brothers because of Tanis? Or had he become interested in Tanis after 1971 because of an obsession with the work of the Strugatsky brothers? The woods of the Pacific Northwest are a long way from Russia, and, unless the two brothers took a holiday in Seattle pre-1971, which my research indicates probably didn't happen, I feel like Nathaniel Carter probably just wanted that manuscript because it reminded him of the thing he's most interested in. Which, as it happens, is the thing I'm most interested in: Tanis.
So this brings us back to that wooden keychain with the rock. I had no difficulty finding that post office, and the key worked. So what was inside? What did those three mysterious keys finally lead to? Well, they led to four pages of the Voynich manuscript.
(advertisements)
The Voynich manuscript is a handwritten and illustrated codex in a mysterious unknown writing system. It's been carbon dated to very early in the 15th century. The manuscript was named after Wilfrid Voynich, a Polish bookseller who purchased it in 1912.
The manuscript is composed of 240 pages, depending on how you count the folds and layout, and some of the pages are obviously missing. The text is written from left to right, and most of the pages feature images, illustrations, and diagrams. Code breakers, cryptographers, and language experts from all over the world have been unable to ascertain the meaning or origin of the Voynich manuscript. Nobody has been able to break the code.
We don't know the language, we don't know what it is, or why it exists. A script of 20 to 25 characters would account for virtually all of the text outside of a few rare characters, and there is no obvious punctuation. In the bottom margin of one of the pages, the signature of a man named Jakub is now unreadable.
The manuscript can be divided into sections that appear to focus on specific areas of study: herbal, astronomical, biological, cosmological, pharmaceutical, and finally, recipes. Visually, the overall impression is one of pharmacy and alchemy. However, without understanding the text, its purpose continues to evade. Only a few of the plant drawings can be identified with somewhat reasonable certainty, but there are some extremely interesting and confusing subtleties. For example. many of the plant drawings in the herbal section of the manuscript appear to be hybrids. The roots of one species appear to be connected to the leaves or flowers of others. Was this intentional? Or do these drawings represent a kind of... change or mutation?
The biology section includes strange tubes and other seemingly alchemy-related drawings, but they bear little or no resemblance to the alchemical equipment of the period. Statistical analysis of the text reveals patterns very similar to natural languages. It's fairly clear and generally accepted that the Voynich manuscript is compatible with natural languages, and incompatible with random texts.
Unless it's a complete fabrication created in the early 15th century, the Voynich manuscript is most likely a meaningful text in a language intentionally obscured by mapping an alphabet through a cipher or some kind of algorithm. The author wrote the manuscript in code and we just haven't been able to uncover the key to decoding it.
The Voynich manuscript was donated to Yale University's Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library in 1969, where it is catalogued under call number MS408.78.
So. That's a bit of background on the Voynich manuscript. What's interesting about the scans or copies of the four pages I discovered in that post office box, is that one of the pages isn't included in the previously identified 240 pages of the manuscript. I'm going to upload a scanned copy of those pages to the notes section of our website, and I'm going to do everything I can to find out what they were doing there and how they might be connected to Tanis.
Now, Meerkatnip has an update.
- MK: Okay Nic, what would you like to discuss first, Raywood or Nathaniel Carter?
- Nic: Uh okay. Let's go with Raywood.
- MK: Okay. So recent satellite images show a military presences in the area and I've been able to independently confirm this on the ground.
- Nic: Um, what do you mean?
- MK: I mean there are people there, living there. In Raywood.
- Nic: What people?
- MK: Private contractors, I would guess. With some branch of the military holding their contracts.
- Nic: What are they doing there?
- MK: Well, see the interesting thing is that the force is just small enough to stay off the radar, but effective enough to prevent any and all entry into the area.
- Nic: So it's, what? Walled off?
- MK: Fenced, mostly.
- Nic: Okay, wow. Um. And what about that guy? The guy from episode 108? He lives there?
- MK: Marcus Dempsey?
- Nic: Right, Marcus Dempsey yeah.
- MK: I didn't hear anything, but I would guess he's either still there working for the new boss or he's elsewhere.
- Nic: Okay. How hard would it be for you to find out what's going on up there?
- MK: Well I tried.
- Nic: And no luck?
- MK: (takes a deep breath in) Uh, I can try again yeah, but I'm not sure it's gonna help. It might be a bit more expensive than usual also...
- Nic: I understand, okay.
- MK: So Nathaniel Carter?
- Nic: Okay, what's up with Nathaniel Carter?
- MK: Turns out there's a whole bunch of deep web stuff on Lyle Stevik, and some of it's gonna sound familiar.
- Nic: How familiar?
- MK: (sighs) Well, somebody was looking for Lyle pret-ty seriously.
- Nic: What do you mean?
- MK: Well whoever was looking for him, they were the same people who shut down Silk Road. And they were way high up in more than a few government agencies.
- Nic: Wow.
- MK: Yeah, they're serious. And there's something else.
- Nic: What? What is it?
- MK: I found a reference buried in an image file, like a coded text message.
- Nic: What... what did it say?
- MK: You're gonna love this.
- Nic: Okay, Wha-- (chuckles) What...
- MK: (long drawn out pause) Oh, I'm building the tension.
- Nic: (laughing) Okay!
- MK: You ready?
- Nic: I'm ready!
- MK: You're sure?
- Nic: Yup.
- MK: Okay, it read: "Lyle Stevik. Tanis. Runner. Contact" and then there was a bunch of numbers.
- Nic: What kind of numbers?
- MK: Uh, it was a substitution cipher, a book code actually. You know that thing where like, the book is the key?
- Nic: Yeah, I've heard of it. Um, are you sure?
- MK: I am positive.
- Nic: Okay, so what did the numbers mean?
- MK: Don't you wanna know how they cracked it?
- Nic: ...I'm assuming they used a book.
- MK: Right, but aside from the bible, with all of the books in the world and no clues, how do you think they did it?
- Nic: I have no idea.
- MK: They figured that if this person was smart, what book would they use to send a message to a hacker?
- Nic: Lyle Stevik was a hacker?
- MK: Mm, I don't think so, but he was working through an intermediary.
- Nic: He was?
- MK: That's what they say.
- Nic: Okay. So what was the book?
- MK: ...You wanna take a guess?
- Nic: (chuckles) Uh, um, no?
- MK: Okay well where's the fun in that?
- Nic: Okay. Umm... Snow Crash?
- MK: (surprised laugh) You know that actually wasn't a bad guess?
- Nic: Thanks.
- MK: Like, not bad at all.
- Nic: Okay. Thank you!
- MK: But wrong. You're wrong. It was the 1971 version of the Anarchist Cookbook.
- Nic: Okay. So what was the message?
- MK: It was a name and an IP address.
- Nic: Nathaniel Carter.
- MK: Bingo.
- Nic: And the IP address?
- MK: I checked. There's nothing there, but this message was pre-Y2K, so. You know. Things change out there in The Webs.
- Nic: Yeah. Right. Um. Okay, well thanks.
- MK: You are welcome. Ciao. (Skype disconnects)
Nic: So Nathaniel Carter was looking for Lyle Stevik. This is supported by the flight and car rental information from September 12th. Two separate sources are hard to ignore. It looks like Nathaniel Carter believed Lyle Stevik was a runner. If he was looking for Stevik, why would he kill him or have him killed? There has to be more information out there on Nathaniel Carter. And I know just where to start looking. It's time I forced the issue with Cameron Ellis.
- Nic: So... are you okay to talk? ...Is this...?
- Cameron: This line is secure, go ahead.
- Nic: Okay well, first of all, thank you so much for calling back.
- Cameron: You didn't leave me much of a choice, Nic.
- Nic: I need to know why Nathaniel Carter was looking for Lyle Stevik. Do you think... he had him killed? I know that sounds crazy, but.
- Cameron: Nathaniel Carter was looking for the man you're calling Lyle Stevik because he... believed Stevik could help him navigate the breach.
- Nic: A runner.
- Cameron: What you're calling a runner, yes.
- Nic: (long pause) What do you know about Nathaniel Carter?
- Cameron: Nathaniel Carter was involved in a... supervisory capacity in the 2009 research study into the breach. He was also involved in the 2015 study, although I have no idea in what capacity he was working there. It's mainly just speculation and rumor at this point.
- Nic: So what does he do exactly?
- Cameron: He's a scientist, or he was. Botany mainly. Although I believe he studied biochemistry as well.
- Nic: And what was his involvement in the 2009 study?
- Cameron: Nate Carter was kind of a... hero character to some. Sort of a Indiana Jones on the cutting edge of brand new science and dangerous field work. To others, he was a madman, a twisted Joseph Goebbels figure bent on destroying whomever or whatever it took to twist the world to fit his vision.
- Nic: Wow, that's... quite a range.
- Cameron: Yes it is.
- Nic: So I'm guessing based on your cryptic warnings that you belive Nathaniel Carter falls a bit closer to Goebbels than Indiana Jones?
- Cameron: It's not that simple.
- Nic: It never is with this thing.
- Cameron: Nathaniel Carter is dangerous. He's been working behind the scenes for decades.
- Nic: Behind the scenes on what?
- Cameron: I'm not sure.
- Nic: On Tanis, uh, the breach?
- Cameron: That's part of it, yes.
- Nic: Okay so how can I get in touch with him? With Nathaniel Carter?
- Cameron: You can't. You don't.
- Nic: Well there has to be some method of contact.
- Cameron: Nic, I'd like to ask you to leave this conversation out of your broadcast.
- Nic: Podcast.
- Cameron: Right.
- Nic: Why would you like me to leave it out?
- Cameron: (long pause) I've been working to keep certain... interested parties away from you. I'm not sure I'm going to be able to keep that up if you continue this line of investigation.
- Nic: I didn't ask you to do anything like that.
- Cameron: No.
- Nic: So, I'll ask you one more time. How do I get in touch with Nathaniel Carter?
- Cameron: Goodbye, Nic.
Nic: That didn't go how I expected. Although, I suppose I should expect cryptic surprises where Cameron Ellis is concerned. He claims he's been shielding me, intimating that he's been protecting me somehow, behind the scenes. I didn't ask for any protection, and I don't feel like being in any kind of debt to Cameron Ellis is a good idea for a journalist.
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- (phone ringing)
- MK: Hey.
- Nic: It's Nic.
- MK: Yup, I know.
- Nic: Caller ID?
- MK: Suure... yup, let's say caller ID.
- Nic: (laughing) Okay. Um, your email was mysterious, so--
- MK: Well I found something.
- Nic: Right, that's what it said in your message.
- MK: I figure you wanna discuss it on air or whatever.
- Nic: I do, thank you, yes.
- MK: No problem.
- Nic: So what is it?
- MK: Nathaniel Carter.
- Nic: Great, what about him?
- MK: He went nuts.
- Nic: ...Okay. Um.
- MK: Apparently he's been off the grid for a long time, recluse style. Chatter on a couple corporate espionage bulletin boards from the period referenced Carter in passing, but then there were a couple of posters who... well, here's a couple quotes.
- Nic: Okay.
- MK: The first one reads "Nathaniel Carter is gone. He's been ripped from this world."
- Nic: Wow.
- MK: Yeah. And then the second one is even more weird. It reads (clears throat) "Carter must have found the navigator. He's somewhere else now. He's found it. The other place."
- Nic: The other place?
- MK: Yeah. The other posts indicate that nobody has a physical location or any proper contact information for this guy from the fall of... 2009 until he pops up again briefly in 2015.
- Nic: The other research study.
- MK: Yeah.
- Nic: Okay, anything else?
- MK: Well, it isn't much, but it is pretty crazy.
- Nic: Okay.
- MK: According to the CFO of a Parzavala subsidiary last active around 2010, Nathaniel Carter quit suddenly and abandoned all of his shares in exchange for one small subsidiary of that original subsidiary. There's a lot of corporations.
- Nic: Sounds like it.
- MK: The company he ended up receiving had no assets but one.
- Nic: The industrial complex?
- MK: Yup.
- Nic: Well, that's something.
- MK: Yeah, if you say so. The place was pretty abandoned, you know, so I've heard.
- Nic: So you heard, right. Uh, there was no sign of any recent inhabitants, right?
- MK: Not on the first two floors.
- Nic: There were more floors?
- MK: As far as the blueprints filed with the city indicate, it's a two floor structure.
- Nic: But...?
- MK: But the elevator crew file their construction plans with a different department of the city.
- Nic: And?
- MK: And according to the elevator construction permits and plans there is a another floor.
- Nic: A basement beneath the basement?
- MK: (gasps sarcastically) Exactly!
- Nic: Wha, okay um. That's, uh, wow. Is there anything else?
- MK: No, that's all I got.
- Nic: Um that, that's a lot. Thank you.
- MK: Oh you're welcome. (Skype disconnects)
Nic: So was Nathaniel Carter ripped from the world like some deep web bulletin board poster posits? Cameron Ellis's responses to Nathaniel Carter's name appear to indicate the man is still active. Although, active doing what remains a huge question.
I feel like those three research studies hold the answers, or at least some of the answers that I'm looking for. Cameron Ellis is my only real connection to those studies, and Cameron Ellis wants me to come work for him. I'm wary of course, but I really wanna know what that means. What working for Ellis might entail. He knows so much more about the breach than he's telling me, and he definitely knows more about those research studies than he's letting on. Don't I owe it to this investigation to pursue every lead? Don't I have to go and work for him, if only for a little while, to glean what I can from the experience? To enhance my understanding of what's happening up there? In that remarkable section of the forest?
While I was considering what to do about Cameron Ellis, I received a mysterious phone call.
- Man: I'd like to discuss with you your search for the navigator. I'd also like to apologize for the group you've been referring to as the Cult of Tanis. They've been disciplined, and would like to offer their sincere apologies. See, we're not a cult, we're a religious organization. My name is Paul and you can reach me at 206-(beeped out). Thank you. Goodbye.
Nic: Next time we'll take a longer look at the Voynich manuscript, find out what Paul has to say about the Cult of Tanis, and discover what Cameron Ellis has in mind for me, employment-wise, in the area he refers to as the breach.
It's Tanis. I'm Nic Silver. We'll be back again in two weeks. Until then, keep looking.
Tanis is produced by Terry Miles. Produced, mixed, and edited by me, Nic Silver. Executive producers Terry Miles and Paul Bae.
For legal and safety reasons, we've elected to change some names, and leave others out entirely. We don't do this very often, but we're not willing to compromise people's safety for any reason.
Thanks again for listening to Tanis.