The Oracle Philon

by Gerald J Kubicki

  Dr. Darby interrupted. “We discovered that both the supremacists and the radical Islamists are conducting experiments to learn how to control the device. The terrorists can’t aim or control theirs, but the supremacists are not having problems with starting or using the Switch.”

  “At least we have discovered how to monitor their activity,” General Stone noted.

  “That’s true, general,” Dr. Darby agreed. “We also know that at least one of the groups, the jihadists, have planted listening and recording devices in the Pit. We know this because they conduct the same experiments almost immediately after we do,” Dr. Darby interjected. “We’re sure that they are attempting to learn from us. We need to stop them from testing their devices,” she said as she pounded her fists together.”

  “The biggest problem is that the earth’s magnetic field is becoming increasingly weaker and more uncontrollable every time someone uses it. If it were to become too weak, solar winds and cosmic rays could blow it away and the earth would become barren like Mars,” General Stone added.

  “So where do you think Philon learned about the magnetic field and how use it?” Malcolm asked. “I mean, what if someone else discovers the same thing?”

  “Actually, that is a good question, especially since most of the area he would have traveled is currently a haven for Jihadist activity,” Kaley said thoughtfully. “Lisa, can you enlighten us about that?”

  “Well, the only vortex that Philon would have had access to is the Algerian Megalith. All the others would have been unknown to people in the Mediterranean basin at that time. I do remember that he did mention in his writing that he traveled to the city of Carthage to study their famous seaport defenses.”

  “I think that we are on to something,” Malcolm said brightly. “The city is not far from the vortex.

  “But wait,” Lisa shouted and put up her hand “I just remembered, Philon noted that he traveled along a well-known path through an empty desert to reach a small tell that was a trading center at the edge of a huge forest. I think he meant jungle, but had never seen one before to make comparisons.”

  “What’s a tell?” Kaley quickly asked as she looked up from the computer screen she was working on.

  “A tell is a mound built up over flat earth from many generations of habitation. The mound is actually made up of discharge or waste from the people who lived there over hundreds of years.”

  “Are you talking about Timbuktu, the legendary trade town in central Africa?” General Stone inquired.

  “Well, the actual trade center of Timbuktu came later, but there has been a trade center there for as long as people could walk,” Lisa responded.

  “Bingo,” Kaley shouted. I’ve found the route that Philon would have taken from Carthage to Timbuktu. It passes right through the length of the Algerian Megalith.”

  “Put it up on the big screen,” General Stone ordered.

  When Kaley pressed the button, Dr. Darby immediately uttered concern and put her hand to her throat. “My God. The trade route goes directly through the town of Adrar, Algeria.”

  “So?” Malcolm asked.

  “The town had a significant event just yesterday,” the doctor explained. “Animals, people and anything living seemed to lose their sense of direction and died from dehydration. There were over a hundred deaths reported. This is too much of a coincidence. It had to be someone using a Switch.”

  “Can you access a satellite image of the area?” General Stone quickly asked. Dr. Darby attacked her keyboard. She split the front screen and a satellite picture appeared on the right.

  “What’s that?” Malcolm exclaimed and pointed at the left corner of the satellite image. Dr. Darby concentrated on the object that Malcolm had pointed to and soon a large colorful circle that looked like an eye filled the screen.

  “My God, I can’t believe it!” Professor Lange suddenly uttered. She immediately began pounding her keyboard.

  “What is it Lisa?” the general asked.

  “I’ve seen this eye in a drawing by Philon,” she said. “But I never knew that it was a place nor did I recognize the significance.”

  “What’s the significance?” the general asked as he leaned forward in his chair as he concentrated.

  “I’m pretty sure that the eye was where Philon discovered the key to making the magnetic field bend,” Lisa replied in an excited voice.

  “It could unlock everything,” Malcolm agreed.

  “Kaley can you look up what the eye is called and anything else you can find?” Professor Lange suddenly spat out.

  “I’m not your slave. Do it yourself,” she fired back being her normal obnoxious self.

  “I’m accessing my cloud and pulling down my notes from the treatise,” Professor Lange explained. “Can you help, please?” she begged.

  “Okay, I’ll do it,” Kaley said with resignation.

  Everyone waited tensely while the two beautiful blonds studied their computers.

  “It’s called the ‘Richat Structure’,” Kaley soon told everyone. “It’s sometimes called the ‘Eye of the Sahara’. Here is what I found on it.” Kaley pressed a button and the screen filled with content from a computer search.

  “Damnit,” Lisa uttered and pounded the table with her fist. “My translation is wrong. The translator misread the word Sahara in Philon’s writings. He read it as summer. So the Eye of the Summer made no sense to me, but now it does.”

  “It appears to be a natural feature to me,” Malcolm said. “But it is a little creepy.”

  “According to this post, many scientists believe it was created by a meteorite hitting the earth, but recently other scientists are claiming that it’s caused by erosion of the plateau and is the very top of a rock dome,” Kaley read from the screen.

  “So then, why aren’t there more of these in the world?” Malcolm the skeptic asked.

  “It’s twenty-five miles across,” Kaley told everyone. “It’s not like anyone could miss something that size. Especially since it looks exactly like an eye.”

  “I’ve got it,” Lisa screamed out. “Philon wrote that he visited the Eye of the Sahara on a side trip. He didn’t mention that it was from the Timbuktu trail. He claims that when he got to the eye, all the iron products he carried and wore suddenly pulled him physically to the center of the eye. He became very concerned and shed anything that pulled him in that direction. The items all flew through the air and attached themselves to a big rock in the center of the eye.”

  “I’m guessing that it was a meteorite. He probably didn’t know that meteorites are magnetic,” General Stone reasoned.

  “That’s probably true,” Lisa agreed and continued. “He knew that there was such a thing as magnetism because he studied the teachings of Aristotle, who credits a seventh century B.C. thinker as having discovered it. But the strength of this magnetism was beyond his understanding.”

  “Then what happened?” Malcolm implored Lisa.

  “Philon cut off a piece of the rock and continued on his journey, thinking that he could someday find a use for the rock as an offensive or defensive weapon. He noticed that as he left the desert, the strength of the magnet diminished.”

  “It was because he left the vortex,” General Stone explained and pounded the table.

  “Correct,” Lisa said approvingly. “According to his writings, he started work on a device, the Switch, while still traveling. He wanted to find out if he could influence the magnetic pull of the meteorite he found. So he used mathematics to develop formulas and eventually the Switch. I believe he did all that while in Timbuktu.”

  “Why do you say that?” Kaley asked.

  “Because at first he couldn’t get it to work, but he writes that on his way back from a trip, it suddenly worked.”

  “How did he know that it worked?” Kaley asked cynically.

  “Because he made it rain in the desert,” Lisa replied. “The way he explains it was that he and a companion stopped and went to work the device because
they could feel the increased strength of the magnetic pull. This time it worked.”

  So what was the key?” Kaley inquired.

  “He credits the success to the addition of his companion,” Lisa explained.

  “Why?” Kaley persisted.

  “He claims that his companion was clairvoyant and was able to see the coordinates to bend the magnetic lines to form a storm cloud and deliver rain.”

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  “Wait a minute,” Malcolm interrupted. “Are you telling me that all this mess can be blamed on paranormal activity?”

  “Well, in a way, you are correct,” Dr. Darby spoke up. “But the ability to turn on and control the Switch is dependent on several factors.”

  “So how does it work?” Malcolm challenged the doctor.

  “Okay,” she responded. “I’ll tell you. First of all the device must be inside a vortex to work. So you just can’t fire it off anyplace you want.

  “What’s the device look like?” Malcolm asked as he continued to badger the doctor.

  Dr. Darby remained patient. She pressed some keys on her computer and an image appeared on the screen. “As you can see it is rounded and formed by brackets on the outside.”

  “It looks like a soccer ball without the covering,” Kaley the athlete pointed out.

  “Yes, that is a good description,” Dr. Darby noted. “And you can see it’s open in the middle with structural beams to give it strength. The meteorite is placed in the bracket in the middle. Additional beams are added on the outside to form antennas which are used to point in the directions that the formula calculations indicate.”

  “What’s it made of?” Malcolm blurted out.

  “We don’t have the original,” Dr. Darby replied sadly. “We built the one we use here from bronze as it was a metal that Philon had available to him during the time period when he lived.”

  “Okay,” Malcolm recapped. “So you need to be inside a vortex, have a complete Switch device and a meteorite. What else?”

  “As I told you, you also need someone with paranormal abilities to make it work properly. You know, just like all of you have.”

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  A distinguished looking man opened a solid wooden door and walked into the former library in his huge aging mansion. He lived in Kenilworth, Illinois, an exclusive suburb of Chicago. His name was Hans Keidel. He had combed-back silvery-gray hair, movie-star facial features that were sculptured by doctors who used an immense fortune provided by Keidel’s ancestors to restructure his looks. He also had a strongly toned body from intense workouts. But his most dominating feature was the attitude of a fanatic. He was a senior ruling-member of the Effort.

  The old library now looked more like a startup company in the computer age than a bastion of knowledge. His three sons occupied the room and were anything but neat. Candy and food wrappers, empty bottles of water and a layer of dust covered the floor.

  Hans proceeded to a bar in the back of the room and refilled his snifter with Brandy. He needed the drink to steady himself. A lot of bad things had happened in the last two days since his sons had returned from Africa. They had left the rest of the expedition to forge ahead to the site and they returned to Chicago. He thought about their conversation.

  ***

  “We had to test it,” his oldest son Kasper proclaimed as an excuse and flapped his arms. “We were there to find more meteorites, weren’t we? Isn’t that why you sent us to the desert? Well we found one.”

  “We successfully tested the meteorite and the Switch on some useless Muslims we found in the area. What’s wrong with that?” the second oldest son named Lothar added. He was the biggest and strongest of the three brothers. He stood six foot and four inches tall. He was also the most fanatical.

  “We didn’t think that anyone would notice the loss of some trash in the middle of the godforsaken desert,” Lars the youngest, but brightest, added. “We just made a cloud over the desert. We didn’t think that anyone would notice.”

  “It was against my orders,” Hans bellowed back. “You were told to not make any contact with any of the natives.” But Hans knew his sons were very strong headed and had the need for glory in their minds. Glory they would receive once they succeed in their mission.

  ***

  The problems began when the thirty-year olds decided to see if the meteorite they found lying in the open desert would work in the Switch they carried. They were part of a ten man expedition team that was sent to the remote Sahara desert to collect more meteorites to make more Switch devices. The Effort had plans for twelve Switch devices, one for each of the vortices.

  The brothers told their men to continue on their journey to the Eye of the Sahara. The three brothers told the Keidel family financed search team that they would catch up with them later and that they would keep one of the three vehicles.

  Unfortunately, later that day the three Keidel men were spotted setting off the Switch device near the small desert town of Adrar, Algeria.

  They couldn’t believe it when over a hundred people died while the weather system ran its course. But unbeknownst to them, the blue eyed and blond men were being watched by several members of the radical Islamic gang called the Clue. The jihadists realized the potential of the device and tracked the brothers all the way back to their home in northwestern Chicago. They then requested a raid on the compound.

  Eventually, the head of the Clue in America, who was located in Dearborn, Michigan, sent a team of twenty jihadists to steal the device and to kill anyone in their way. What they didn’t know was the Hans Keidel and his sons lived in a modern day fortress and could fight back. The property was lined with sensors and detection devices. The family had time to arm themselves and call in help.

  A battle ensued at the family home as the jihadists breeched the compound. But help arrived in time and all but three of the terrorists were killed. The three that managed to get away absconded with the Keidel’s codex and a device. They headed to Florida and an escape route using a newly opened Cuban tourist tour. But they didn’t make it there and wound up dying in a sinkhole in an abandoned Winn Dixie supermarket parking lot about a hundred miles from their destination.

  The brothers had completed the hunt by putting bullets in the heads of the jihadists and then using their own Switch created a sinkhole to bury them. They knew they were at the edge of the Bermuda Triangle. They thought the sinkhole was a great way to destroy any evidence. But they didn’t understand and underestimated Kaley Wells athleticism and the abilities of the MAD team. They thought they had destroyed the bag filled with information about the effort and the Switch. When Kaley found the bag, the local bikers who were on site reported it. They were Effort members. The bikers were told to follow the rescuers.

  ***

  “Have we heard back from the team we sent to Dearborn, Michigan?” The elderly Keidel demanded.

  “Mission accomplished,” Lothar responded. “Those new police uniforms completely fooled the stupid jihadists. They’re all dead now.”

  “Did we find another Switch?”

  “No sir,” Lothar said. “But it appears that the jihadist cell had frequent communications with a location in Karachi. I’m betting that the head guy is there, maybe the second Switch too.”

  Hans Keidel pondered this information for a minute and then ordered some action. “Send in a team undercover, I want to know if the Switch is there.”

  “It will be done,” Lothar all but screamed to his father as he had already turned and left the room. Only he wasn’t quite sure how Aryans would fit into the hub of the Arab world.

  ***

  As Hans Keidel roamed through his huge mansion, he thought about how things were going to be when he was in charge. He knew his opportunity was there for the taking. He wasn’t going to let it slip through his fingers.

  He entered his private bedroom and stopped in front of a picture of his father, Anton Keidel. The stern old man stared back at his son defiantly. He wa
s tall and handsome, with the mandatory scar on his face from the African campaign. In the picture, he was dressed in a Nazi uniform and highly polished jack boots. Hans knew that his father was special and the line had continued with him. He also knew that his sons were not. He needed to put them in power before his time was up. He was going to use the Switch device to make sure it happened. It was his destiny, his legacy, his gift to the world. Hitler had failed, but the Keidel family would not. Their future would be glorious, just like their past history.

  In early1945, then Colonel Anton Keidel was sent to Antarctica on a secret mission. He was told to collect all the special artifacts and the money that had been stored there. In 1938, the Nazis had found a thermal layer of warm water rivers and caves under the ice and built an underground bunker. It was where they then built a secret military base named “Swabia”. But Germany was losing the war and the items stored in Antarctica needed to be saved.

  Colonel Keidel’s mission was to bring everything to America and await further instructions. The only instruction he ever received was the name of the head of the Effort in America.

  Colonel Keidel knew that the Effort was started by Adolf Hitler to develop a home-grown neo-Nazi organization in America which would eventually take over the United States politically — if not by force. Germany had provided an immense amount of wealth to kick start the mission. Keidel’s position in the Effort would be “Keeper of the Artifacts”. When he died he passed the title to his son.

  The son, Hans Keidel, was told by his father that the artifacts were very special and pointed out that the United States sent an entire invasion fleet under the name of “Operation High Jump” to Antarctica to destroy the base in 1946. Hans was five years old then.