Michael blinked.

Something didn't seem quite right.

The sunlight still streamed through the windows of the upper floor room in Thompson Hall in which he and his family had been discussing the events of the past couple of days and the meaning of the strange symbols on the cryptex they had received from the record store just a few hours earlier.  His wife and kids stood around him, staring at him with expressions ranging from bemusement and wonder to outright boredom.  Michael looked down at the piece of paper he still held in his hands.  A prominently written letter K stared back at him.  He felt at a loss for words.

"Honey?" Bev asked.  "Honey, are you all right?"

"Hmm?  Oh, um, yeah," Michael replied, still feeling a little uncertain of himself.  The K on the paper still stared up at him.  "What was I... what was I just saying?"

"You were telling us about the symbols on the cryptex," his son Jeff replied, "and how two of them joined together...

"Oh... oh, yeah," Michael replied.  "Yeah..."

"Honey," his wife asked again, "are you sure you're okay?"  She walked over to him and placed the back of her hand against his forehead.  "Hmm.  You don't feel like you have a fever."

"No, no," her husband replied, his head seeming to clear a bit.  "It's just that... I don't know..."

"What, Daddy?" Katherine asked.

"Well," Michael started, "I suddenly have the funniest feeling of... missing time."

"'Missing time?'" his son Michael asked.  "What's that?"

"It's like when some people say they've been abducted by aliens," his father answered.  "They'll say they were or out driving or something when this bright light comes upon them and then suddenly they find themselves back in their cars as if nothing happened but their clock shows that they've been gone for hours... time they can't account for.  Missing time."

"Oh, yeah," Graham said enthusiastically.  "I saw something about UFO abductions on the Discovery Channel and they were talking about that."

"You didn't see any flash of light just now, did you?"  Bev asked, a worried look on her face.  "You don't feel dizzy, do you?  You've been under some pressure the past few days and seeing a flash of light or dizziness can be a symptom of something going on in the brain."

"No, no," her husband replied, trying to reassure her.  "No flashes of light, no dizziness or anything like that.  It's just that... well... I know that we've all been here together in this room ever since we got back from the record store earlier today and we've been talking about the symbols and the K and all, but... I have the strangest sensation that... months have passed in the blink of an eye, maybe even a year, since I drew these symbols on the paper, as if we were all somehow flash-frozen in time and only just now has time suddenly started up again."

His family looked around at one another, quizzical looks on their faces.

"Right, Dad," Jeff said, laughing.

"Maybe you need a nap, Daddy," Emily added.

"Maybe so," her father replied, looking toward the bed.  "Maybe the pressure is getting to me after all."

"Wait, Dad," Jeff interjected.  "What about the last symbol on the cryptex, the upward pointing arrow thing?"

"Hmm?" he replied.  "Oh... oh, yeah, the last symbol," Michael said, his mind starting to come back into focus.  He sat back down at the table, took a few deep breaths, and then picked up the pen and placed its tip to the paper.  "The 'upward pointing arrow thing,' as you so eloquently put it..."

"Honey," his wife said, interrupting him, "don't you think you ought to lie down for a little while, like Emily said, before getting back into this?"

"No, no, I'm okay," he replied.  "Really.  Besides, focusing my mind might help to get rid of that funny feeling I had."

"Well, okay," Bev said, still a little uncertain.

"Now," Michael said, turning back to the paper before him and shaking his head to clear his thoughts, "the 'upward pointing arrow thing'...

...as Jeff called it is actually the alphabetical partner of the Sacred K that I drew earlier.  It follows after the Sacred K in the alphabet, like this," he said, drawing the symbols side by side.

"Daddy!" Emily cried out, laughing.  "The letter 'L' follows 'K' in the alphabet.  That's not an 'L.'"

"It is in Greek," Michael replied.  "In Greek the 'K' is called kappa and the 'upward arrow' that follows it is called lambda.  It's the equivalent of our English letter 'L.'  The kappa and the lambda together form the heart of what in Greek is known as the Holy Fivefold String."

"'Holy Fivefold String'?" Graham exclaimed, laughing.  "That sounds like something Robin would say to Batman!"

"Joke all you want," his father replied.  "The very silliness of the term was deliberately chosen so as to hide its very serious meaning in plain view.  This way only those in the know would be in the know, and everyone else would think it was just nonsense, so that, seeing, they would not see, and hearing, they would not hear, lest..."

"Okay, Dad, we get it," younger Michael broke in.  "So what's this 'holy string' anyway?"

"It's a string of consecutive letters in the Greek alphabet," his father replied, writing the letters large on the paper and the names of each beneath them.

"There," Michael said, pointing to the page.  "See with what large letters I am writing to you with my own hand."

"What?" Katherine asked, mystified.

"Sorry," her dad replied.  "New Testament joke.  Anyway, as you can see, the Greek letters theta, iota, kappa, lambda and mu form what is called the Holy Fivefold String."

"Honey," Bev asked, arching an eyebrow, "is this for real or are you just making it all up as you go along?"

"Oh, no, it's for real," he replied, "but it's a secret."

"Well, I've never heard of it," his son Michael said.

"Because it's a secret," his father answered.  "In fact, the secret of the Holy Fivefold String is so secretly secret that no one outside the secretly secreted secret upper echelons of the People of the Southwind has ever heard of it.  You could do a Google search on the Internet for the phrase 'Holy Fivefold String' and turn up absolutely nothing.  That's how secretly its secret has been secreted."

Michael's wife and kids exchanged dubious glances among themselves, wondering if perhaps their father's "missing time" was a symptom of something more serious after all.

"Oh, come on, guys," Michael finally said.  "Look.  You know those 'fish' stickers you sometimes see on car bumpers and trunk lids, with the Greek word ichthus inside the body of the fish?"

"'Ick-thoos'?" Katherine piped up.

"Well," younger Michael said, "I didn't know what they said or meant, but I've seen 'em around."

"Yeah, me too," Emily chimed in.

"Well, the word ichthus means 'fish' in English," their father replied, "and it's been used as a Christian symbol almost since the beginning of the church.  The word in Greek is spelled like this," he added, writing the letters I-C-Q-U-S on the paper.  "Iota-chi-theta-upsilon-sigma.  The iota is the first letter of the Greek word Iesous, 'Jesus,' the chi is the first letter of Christos, 'Christ,' theta is the first letter of the word theos, 'God,' upsilon is the first letter of uios, 'Son,' and sigma is the first letter of soter, 'Savior.'  Taken this way, the word ichthus becomes a code for 'Jesus-Christ-God-Son-Savior.'"

"Cool!" Katherine exclaimed.  "All those times I've seen that on cars and I never knew what it meant!"

"If that's true," Graham piped up, laughing, "then what do those other stickers that say DARWIN mean?"

Michael playfully stuck out his tongue at his youngest son as the other kids laughed.  "Ha-ha.  How very naturally selective of you," he chided.  "Getting back to the Holy Fivefold String that I wrote out for you a minute ago," he resumed, pointing back to the Greek letters Q-I-K-L-M on the paper, "it works the same way as the word ichthus.  Here.  As in ichthus, theta here is the first letter of the Greek word theos, which means 'God,' and iota is the first letter of the name Iesous, 'Jesus.'  Now, the kappa is the first letter of kurios, which means 'Lord'.  Lambda is the first letter of the word logos, which means 'Word,' and finally mu is the first letter of Messias, which, of course, means 'Messiah.'"

"Hey, Dad!" his son Michael spoke up.  "Maybe those five Greek letters for 'fish' or this 'Fivefold String' of yours are the key to opening the cryptex!"

"I wondered about that myself," his father replied.  "But the letters on the five dials of the cryptex are Roman, not Greek."

"Roman?" Bev asked.  "I thought they were English."

"The English language uses the Roman alphabet, as do French, Spanish, Italian and other Indo-European languages.  Greek is also an Indo-European language, but it uses its own alphabet," Michael said.  "Now, regarding the dials on the cryptex, the letters are from the Roman alphabet, not the Greek, and there isn't a perfect one-to-one correspondence between the two alphabets.  For example, the five-letter Greek word I-C-Q-U-S works out to seven Roman letters, i-ch-th-u-s.  Likewise, the Holy Fivefold String, while not forming an actual word in Greek, works out to six Roman letters, th-i-k-l-m.  So while the letters in Greek look like they might work at first, transliterated into Roman letters they don't quite fit."

"Oh," his son said.

"Be that as it may," Bev said, "if I'm understanding you right, Honey, just like those fish stickers with the Greek word ichthus, this string of five letters in Greek is a kind of coded witness to the gospel."

"Right," Michael replied.  "Taken together, theta-iota-kappa-lambda-mu on its surface means 'God-Jesus-Lord-Word-Messiah.'  The Holy Fivefold String."

"And the kappa-lambda coupling, made from the three symbols on the cryptex, is at its heart," Jeff added.

"Right," his father said.

"But there's something I still don't understand," Bev said, frowning.  "I can see why Christians in general might place significance upon this 'string' of yours, but why would the People of the Southwind care about it?  It doesn't have anything to do with Kansas."

"Ah, but it does," Michael replied.  "Remember, I told you earlier that the People of the Southwind guard a great secret, the secret of the Holy Grail itself.  And while the Holy Fivefold String does represent 'God-Jesus-Lord-Word-Messiah' on its surface, for the People of the Southwind it carries a far deeper meaning, the heart of which is found in the kappa-lambda coupling made from the symbols on the cryptex."

"But why would they care about a couple of Greek letters?" younger Michael asked.

"They don't," his dad replied.  "At least not in Greek.  But what's the English equivalent of kappa and lambda?"

"The letters 'K' and 'L,' Graham answered.

"And what possible significance do you think the letters 'K-L' have for the People of the Southwind?" Michael asked leadingly, arching his eyebrows.

"Ooh!" Jeff exclaimed.  "Kerry Livgren!"

"'P.S.,'" his father said slyly, "'Find Kerry Livgren.'"