The Voynich Cypher Read Online Free PDF

once she’d found a gas station. At worst, she could have Dante send a car for her. It would be annoying and inconvenient, but sometimes that was how life was.
    She downshifted again, slowing the little car to 60 MPH, then 50, and pulled off at the exit she thought led to a fuel station. She coasted along and glanced to her right – she could make out a service station sign through the olive trees. At least that’s what it looked like – she couldn’t be sure, but she thought it must be. She studied the map on her in-console GPS, looking for the icon that signified a fuel stop. Aha! She was right. There was one an eighth of a mile away.
    Temporarily engrossed with the GPS, by the time Antonia registered the overloaded semi-rig hurtling down the frontage road at her, it was too late to do anything but scream. She instinctively pumped her non-functional brakes, and then, instantly realizing her mistake, tried to accelerate.
    She almost made it.
    Antonia only had a split second before the massive truck rammed sideways into her little roadster, crushing it like a soda can. Her final thoughts were that it was too soon, that it wasn’t fair, and that the precious life inside her would never see the light of day.
    Then everything went black.
     

     
    Steven pulled back into the driveway of his home, his impatience and anxiety at the upcoming meeting with the rare parchment dealer blunted by the physical exertion from his martial arts workout. He checked his watch and realized he only had twenty minutes to prepare for his guest.
    He threw open the front door, tossed his bag onto the entryway hall table and hurried to the bedroom, stripping off his damp top as he went. He grabbed a button-up shirt and a pair of khaki pants from the closet, and cranked the handles on the shower, knowing it would take a couple of minutes for the water to reach a comfortable temperature. The plumbing of the old house had been a continual source of annoyance and was next on their list of items to be redone – they’d been holding off on it because they wanted to be gone when the floors and walls were gutted to replace the ancient pipes. As with most projects in Italy, what should take two weeks would inevitably take two months, so one had to get used to it and become resigned to the reality of the pace of the country.
    Steven stepped under the stream of tepid water and quickly and efficiently rinsed himself clean. He heard the sound of a car moving up the drive as he exited and hurriedly dried off, ran a comb through his hair, and pulled on the shirt and slacks. He was still tucking in his shirt when the front knocker sounded the early arrival of his guest.
    Steven opened the door and greeted the old man, who stood outside the entryway clutching a battered metal toolbox to his chest. Behind him was a new Peugeot sedan with a lanky driver leaning against the front fender, a cigarette dangling from his lips as he scanned a newspaper he’d brought for diversion.
    Steven welcomed the dealer into his study and moved the accumulated books from his large rectangular table, making space to examine the ancient man’s trove. The old man carefully placed the box on one edge of the workspace and opened the top before removing five parchments, each lovingly ensconced in a clear plastic sheath for protection. Steven studied each hand-crafted treasure in turn. All were obviously genuine and very old. The first was a Greek document from approximately 800 A.D., and the following four were from the twelfth and fifteenth centuries. All the documents were written in cyphers, which was why Steven was interested – his collection was exclusively encrypted parchments from the seventeenth century and earlier, with a preponderance of work originating from Italy and England.
    Steven spent a half hour discussing the various parchments with the dealer, all of which had been in his family’s custody for several centuries. The initial asking price was multiples higher than