Entry 031 - The Scintilla are fragments of a door. Pastore has been collecting them for 500 years.

I've been staring at this 500 lire note for hours.

It sat in the footlocker with all the other currency. Japanese occupation script, Korean won, Soviet kopeks, souvenirs from every port my grandfather ever visited.

This one had coordinates penciled on the back.

43°46'17"N 11°15'14"E

Florence Italy. 1967.

His service record says he was in Naples that September. Shore leave for 72hrs. The USS Tawasa was docked for maintenance. Naples is 300 miles south of Florence.

His personal log says this:

September 14, 1967
Took the train north. Three transfers. I don't think anyone followed. If they're watching, they're damn better than I thought. The coordinates match, of course. Via del Proconsolo. The building is still there, five fucking centuries and it's still standing.

After the Subject 17-A incident in 1966, my grandfather went rogue. He used his remaining clearance. His shore leaves. He was hunting something in those files. That trail led to Florence.

The coordinates point to a narrow street near the Duomo. His log describes:

September 14, 1967 (cont)

The plaque says it was the workshop of Alessandrio Pastore, physician and natural philosopher from 1463 to 1521. Restored by a private donation in 1889. No mention of what he found, or the scintilla.

Tucked between two pages of a PHOENIX file was a photocopy of a photocopy, with the text barely legible. It was handwritten Italian from the late 15th century. He'd translated parts of it.

"Trattato della Prima Scintilla" Attributed to Alessandrio Pastore, dated 1487.

This is what I managed to piece together:

In the year of Our Lord 1487, on the feast of St. Catherine, the sky above my workshop fell silent; there was no thunder, and yet I saw the lightning--but it was a light that consumed light. When I emerged, I found the fragment. It was no larger than a man's fist, black as the void between our stars. It was impossibly cold to the touch, and it drank the candlelight. When I brought my lantern near, the flame bent toward it and died. I believed it to be a fallen star, a gift from the heavens. I was merely a fool. Maestro Giuliano, who had been dying of the plague in my care, begged to see it, and so I brought it to his bedside. He then reached for it. And he was gone. His body folded, like a flower closing, until there was nothing but shadow on the sheets, and a fine dust that would not wash away. The shadow remains even now.

My grandfather wrote on it, saying:

First one. La scintilla. 500 years.

And below that:

Pastore did not die in 1521. Dynasty moved to France, 1800s. Geneva now.

A PHOENIX memo dated March 3, 1952, from Dr. Wallace Clark talks about "secondary fragmentation events" with Core 1-H. It talks about how they were breaking it down, creating what they called "slag" which seems like just smaller pieces of scintillas, they say about 2 to 8 centimeters.

It says that 17 fragments were produced and that 14 are in containment. One transferred to "external custody" in February of 1952. Where to, you might be asking? Pastore Foundation, Geneva.

Then I found the French memo my grandfather had clipped to the PHOENIX file.

It was written by Dr. Claude Veyreir on October 12, 1958. He was writing to the Pastore board in Geneva about the "successful transfer" of Core 3-J to their facility. Somewhere called "Le Berceau." I had mentioned this before in earlier posts.

He says the American protocols should be "maintained only as cover."

Veyreir was the director of PHOENIX. The creator of TARTARUS. The man who sent the Incursive Agent through.

And he was writing TO Pastore.

If they've had Core 3-J since 1958, if they've been fragmenting it the way Los Alamos did with Core 1-H, how many pieces do they have now? How many small doors have they already opened? What the fuck happens when they finish building the big one??

My grandpa knew. That's why they sidelined him after Subject 17-A. That's why his files were buried and why I've been running.