The Missing Marlins

Yesterday, Rome and Rei were looking for the final three sarcophagi. They had found 105 and needed to find the final three. They were trying to account for 108 total. They decided to make their final push into the bowels of the large cave behind The Cathedral to see what they could see.

The only reason this section is important, besides whittling down the number of Darwin candidates, is that I got stuck thinking of names for the occupants of the sarcophagi and I happened to be watching the Phillies play the Marlins when I was writing it so I just grabbed some of the players and slapped them into their coffins:

     The three beings walked across the length of the cave to the entrance to the catacombs. Off to the side, standing upright, were five sarcophagi; three gray and two white. Rei approached the closest gray one. The nameplate said, “Stanton, G.” Rei peered into the faceplate. The remains of the occupant were still in there. A sizeable crack had caused the rehydration fluid to sublimate out and the vacuum of space had mummified the person inside. It was just a pile of skin, bones and jerky, barely revealing the fact that the remains were once human.
     Rei pulled back and turned to Rome and MINIMCOM. “That does it,” he said. “Not including Keller’s, we’ve seen all 108 of the grays. And we know that 105 of that group survived plus Keller for a total of 106 alive.”
     “And MINIMCOM and Junior transported 104. So we are only looking for two people?” Rome asked with a smile. Somehow, that number seemed much more manageable.
     “As far as I can tell,” Rei said. “MINIMCOM, let’s start a list of people who we know the bombers couldn’t be.”
     “There’s Captain Keller and Bonnie,” Rome offered.
     “Yeah, sure,” Rei said. “Plus Stanton here and Pierre and Wright over there.” Rei pointed to the other cracked sarcophagi. He held up his hand and counted on his fingers. “And we know Ionelli and Greer went. I can probably rattle off about ten or twenty more but…” His shoulders slumped.
     “But what?” Rome asked.
     “Even though we know how many we are looking for, there’s still going to be a huge gap on who else to eliminate.” Suddenly, he snapped his fingers. “MINIMCOM, between you and Junior, do you think you could identify who you transported.”
     “I would be able to tell you the ones I carried. I suspect Junior would be able to do so as well. But you sent him to Earth, remember?”
     “Oh, yeah,” Rei said. “So we’re back to square one.”

Actually David Wright played for the Mets and Juan Pierre ended up on the Phillies. Maybe I misled you a little bit.

Nonetheless, Rei is wrong. They are not quite back to square one. They know how many people they are looking for. Now they just need to figure out who the two missing individuals are.