by Gentry Race
“Cut the shit, Arthur,” Fox said. “What happened to the ARTIFEX?
“We seemed to have found land,” Arthur said.
“And why the hell are you heading to the Yucatan?” Fox asked.
Arthur cleared his throat, but was interrupted by another board member who seemed like he was two days away from having an enema.
“You were supposed to be in Bimini right now,” the disappointed board member said. Her lips were pursed tighter than a dolphin’s asshole. “The Bimini road, in the Bahamas, has shown extensive evidence of the iridium we need to construct your damn nanites.”
“Easy, Victoria,” another executive said, turning his own monitor toward her on a swivel mount. Arthur couldn’t help but notice her wild hair standing straight up on her head. “The underwater Bimini Road was the most promising source, but was still limited. Let’s hear him out.”
Arthur appreciated the sound mind of the scientific advisor, Rebecca Chellis in contrast to Arrand Fox’s brash demeanor. Chellis was a large part of why Arthur was picked to plan this expedition. When she saw Arthur’s breakthrough in particle physics and the creation of White Matter in the particle accelerator, she had him promoted to lead engineer. She had always loved to call it the ‘stem cell of the universe’.
“Please, ladies and gentlemen,” Arthur said, waving both of his hands in the air to calm the bickering. “Allow me to explain.”
Fox, Victoria, and Chellis waited while Arthur danced his hands around like a composer would stimulating the nanites that composed the room to voxelize on his command. He carefully eyed the mechanical vambrace on his arm, watching the white matter levels deplete. The cogs and wheels on his mechanical vambrace turned efficiently, initiating the next set of instructions.
“When I discovered white matter, we needed an ore with the right kind of heat retention. Iridium has proven to be the best known source, but what if there was something better, something stronger?”
“Go on,” Fox said, intrigued.
“Legend of an unbreakable metal has been told for centuries,” Arthur said, “King Arthur’s Excalibur, Charlemagne’s Joyeuse and the list goes on. I think I found that source of a material. You might have heard of it… Orichalcum.”
“From Atlantis?” Chellis said.
“Yes, but first I want you to think back to the precursor to chemistry that originally theorized about the prime material,” Arthur said.
“Alchemy,” Chellis said.
Arthur smiled and said, “That is right. And what craft still exists today that you could say still incorporates such symbolism?”
Everyone was silent.
“Freemasonry,” he supplied.
The wall of the room began to ripple. Composed of nanites itself, the wall’s small, rippling waves turned to larger swells, and color started to appear. A white stone could be seen. Pillars were carved with symbols unfolding outlines in front of stained-glass windows and large archways.
The accented crosses with Jesus Christ hanging from them alerted one of the executives.
“A church?”
“Not just any church,” Arthur said. “But the Rosslyn Chapel in Roslin, Scotland.”
“How are you doing this?” Victoria asked. “The detail. Is this a 3D rendering?”
“Actually,” Arthur said with a pause, teasing their curiosity. “It’s a live, real-time scan.”
“Scan?” Chellis repeated. “How are you getting it?”
Arthur smiled and had a small, flying drone with four propellers voxelize in the center of the room. As it flew forward, Arthur guided them making sure not to disturb the intricately carved pillars, hand- cut by the Freemason sculptors of old.
“I have five drones at Rosslyn Chapel right now,” Arthur said, controlling the demo drone with his arm bistable. “I am flying the one in the center, and the other four keep an equal distance out, scanning the data into a feed that is projected here.”
“Brilliant,” Chellis said. “But why?”
“Let me show you.”
Arthur guided the drone forward. It climbed into the musky air, to what was the most decorated part of the building, known as The Lady Chapel. The masonry detail was as stunning as it was carefully crafted.
The Lady Chapel was fifteen feet high, seven and a half feet deep, and extended the whole thirty-five-foot width of the chapel. It was divided into compartments, and ribs from all four corners of the compartments rose to meet at a central point, where a decorative stone hung down. The Rosslyn arches had a distinct feature: small sandstone cubes that protruded at regular intervals, like teeth. There were 213 cubes in all, 17 or 18 per arch. Each one bearing a geometric pattern—a diamond or a rosette.
“These carved cubes that protrude from the arches of the Lady Chapel reveal ‘the great work’ or magnum opus that alchemists were trying to answer,” Arthur said. “The squaring of the circle was a popular phrase back then and can even be seen in Leonardo Divinici’s Vitruvian Man. In this case here, it’s the cubing of the sphere.”
“Divinci?” Fox asked with smug face.
“Hear me out,” Arthur said patiently. “Each one of these cubes is unique, carved with individual symbols made up of lines and dots. Multiple theories suggest that these may represent keys to a secret code.”
The executives seemed unamused, save for Chellis.
The drone then passed over many small faces with vines sprouting from their mouths.
“Dubbed the Green Men,” Arthur continued. “There are over one hundred of them here.”
“What do they represent?” Victoria asked.
“Some say aliens,” Chellis offered.
“Rosslyn is renowned for its many carvings of the Green Man, historically a pagan figure. Personally, I believe them to be just stories of ancient creatures, but you can’t deny the message,” Arthur said. “The vines sprouting from their mouths represent nature’s growth and fertility, illustrating the unity between humankind and nature. A unity this corporation seeks as well for Annulus.”
“What the hell does this have to do with your crash site?” Fox asked.
The drone turned its attention to the shafts of colored light being thrown into the dusty chapel. Surrounding the ornate stained-glass window, carved into the stone, were what looked Indian corn or maize and four leaf clovers.
“And now to answer your question, Mr.Fox,” Arthur said smugly. “The presence of these plant carvings in the chapel raises many questions. Not only is maize an exotic plant, but it originates from North America, a country traditionally thought to have been discovered by Columbus in 1492, almost fifty years after Rosslyn Chapel was built.”
“So they beat Columbus,” Victoria said.
“Not only did they beat Columbus,” Arthur said. “But I think they found something special and brought it back with them.”
“What did they bring back?” Chellis asked.
The drone changed direction and flew just high enough now not to disturb the bishops walking about.
The room dimmed, and the walls became void of any detail.
“Have you heard of The Fisher King?” Arthur asked, flashing his owlish eyes. “The Sword in the Stone?”
“Jesus, Arthur,” Fox balked. “Fucking fairy tales now?”
“Ah, but, sir,” Arthur explained, “as with all myths and legends, there is a seed of truth in these tales, and it lies with a man named Galgano Guitdotti.”
“Who?” Victoria asked.
“Galgano Guidotti,” Arthur repeated. “A canonized saint who was said to have two distinct visions of the archangel Michael. Those of us familiar with scripture know that Saint Michael the archangel had three tasks: his first was to lead the Army of God and heaven's forces in their triumph over the powers of Hell. For his second task, Michael was to act as the angel of death, carrying the souls of all the deceased to heaven. In his third role, he weighed the souls in his perfectly balanced scales. For this reason, he is often depicted holding scales, but that’s not all
he holds.”
“Holy shit, Arthur. Spare us the Sunday school lesson,” Fox said.
Arthur ignored his snarky comment and continued, “In his other hand, he carries a sword. Saint Michael’s sword. The same sword given to Galgano.”
The executives tried to hide their curiosity, but Arthur could smell the ideas forming in their imaginations.
“Now, convinced that this was a sign of God, Galgano decided to plant a cross,” he continued. “Since he had no way to make one out of wood, he planted the end of his sword. The sword is said to have immediately become one with the ground so that nobody could remove it. One story says that he was told in one of his visions to renounce material things. Stating that this would be as hard as splitting a rock, he decided to make his point by attempting to plunge his sword into one. The story goes on to say that the ‘stone yielded like butter’.”
“Yes, this is the legend of the Sword in the Stone,” Chellis said. “But what of it?”
“I believe that Saint Michael’s sword was not actually given to Galgano, but made for him.”
“By who?” Chellis asked.
“Well, a domed church was built over his purported tomb, where pilgrims came in large numbers and miracles were claimed to have happened,” Arthur explained. “In that year, Cistercian monks took over Montesiepi at the request of Hugh, the bishop of Volterra, but most of Galgano's monks scattered throughout Tuscany, and became Augustinian hermits. By 1220, a large Cistercian monastery was built below Galgano's hermitage: they then claimed him as a Cistercian saint. Later we came to find out that Cistercians were the main force of technological diffusion in fields such as agriculture, hydraulic engineering, and… metalurgy.”
“How is that connected with Rosslyn Chapel?” Chellis asked.
“Through Friair Richard Hay,” Arthur said. “Almost everything we know about Rosslyn Chapel and the owners of the Rosslyn Chapel, the Sinclair family, goes back to the historical records written down by Friar Richard Augustine Hay. His connection to Rosslyn is key here.”
“I don’t get it,” Victoria said.
Arthur smiled kindly at his remark. “You know the pre-Columban expeditions that took place?”
“Yes,” they all agreed.
“When Hay brought that sword to Rosslyn, he brought the truth with it. The Freemasons have encrypted the truth through symbology in their stonework. The metal comes from the Yucatan. The carvings in Rosslyn show the origin.”
“Do you have any actual scientific data that supports this?” Fox asked.
Arthur swung his hands outward, and on the table was a map of the Yucatan Peninsula, colored in bright green, red, and blue. The red zone indicated a large, unfinished, circular area stretching over the land and into the Gulf of Mexico.
“What’s that circle?” Chellis asked.
“This is the gravitational anomaly I have discovered,” Arthur said. “Here, the crust is more dense, emitting more gravitational pull.”
“Amazing,” Chellis said, his eyes scanning the information. After a moment, he frowned at something he noticed. “What are those dots on the land just outside of the circle?”
“Well, the Yucatan have no rivers because of its geology. Those are sinkholes, or cenotes. They are all over the region except for within the circle. The cenotes cease to exist because of what happened to the geology sixty five million years ago.”
“Extinction event,” Chellis said, now looking at Fox.
“Atlantis is here. We have a found a set of concentric islands, and orichalcum could be the answer we need for constructing Annulus.” Arthur said. “Ladies and gentlemen, science and fantasy has shown us the way.”
Shafts of red light poked through the dense jungle. A fire undulated black smoke into the crimson setting sun as Elizabeth threw slabs of freshly printed meat over hot coals. After some time, the crew settled into their respective positions, minding their normal daily tasks. Arthur could feel that Liz was annoyed with hers, as cooking was not her passion, and she had drawn the short straw of the deal and had to prepare the meals.
The woman had three PhDs, for god’s sake. One in chemistry, one in matter compiling for protein synthesis, and the other, the one she was working on under Arthur, was in the private sector of physical geology. However, in desperate times like these, it was up to every man and woman to do their part.
The captain and Arthur sat together near the fire, discussing their next steps. Arthur could tell Captain Ellis was upset; he had a disdainful look about him. He hadn’t been a fan of Arthur’s since their initial meeting… It was as if he got off on disliking the man’s presence.
Arthur simply ignored the man’s ill feelings, and let him exude his shitty persona.
“What happened to my ship?” asked the captain.
“I can’t grasp it just yet,” Arthur admitted. “A process is obstructing the nanites from sufficiently converting the white matter into its proper constituent element.”
“Proper what?” the captain barked. “Stop with the fancy talk.”
“The bots can’t 3D print,” Arthur stated plainly.
The crewmen snickered. Arthur watched the flames of the fire flicker across each one’s face as they couldn’t help to bicker about the crash that had happened.
“It’s the Devil’s Triangle!” one crewman interjected.
“No, it’s aliens!” said another.
The other crewmen laughed out loud at his response.
“How far are we, Arthur?” the captain asked, more calmly now.
“I know where we are,” Arthur said, stirring the coals with a stick. “And what we see are peak rings.”
“Peak rings?” the captain repeated.
Arthur turned his wrist, revealing the mechanical-like personal assistant device clasping his forearm. He typed into the vambrace, prompting a projection of a small, fist-sized, hologram bound by an asthetic of spinning cogs and springs. His father would have been proud. It showed the cross section of a giant impact crater under the ocean. He controlled the hologram by moving his hands around one another, evoking a scrubbing of reversal in a timeline.
Arthur explained, “An asteroid is suspected to have hit Earth around sixty-five million years ago, at this very location.”
An indicator showed the time period in eons below a display of the original continent, still covered in sea. As Arthur let it play, a mountainous asteroid blazed into Earth’s atmosphere and smashed the submerged terrain into oblivion. Ripples in the rock formed a hot, craggy liquid, homogenizing the properties into a syrupy goo. The sediment cooled in a series of rings, leaving islands in concentric formations.
“It rippled the surface making these islands. These are the peak rings.”
“What the hell are they doing out of the water?” the captain demanded. “They are supposed to be at least twelve miles down.”
“Yes,” Arthur surmised. “But the world is getting colder. Ever since we introduced the nanites into the environment to clean up the water and air, human carbon dioxide output has decreased. A glacial period is now upon us.”
“Thank the lucky stars the ice sheets haven’t reached the gulf, Captain,” Liz interjected.
“Thankfully, yes,” Arthur agreed, nodding his head, and then he zoomed into one of the peak rings and pointed to its sloping surface, which terminated at a point highlighted in red.
“You see, this is where the iridium concentrate is and where we were supposed to set up the rig,” Arthur explained. “We are just northeast of it now, on what appears to be a string of concentric islands.”
“Those islands are three miles from our original drilling site,” the captain wailed. “Arthur, you’d better be right about this new location. We are far from the destination target, and now I have a whopping hole in the middle of my ship. We need answers before the rest of the fleet comes.”
“You can start surveying for iridium until they do,” Arthur said. “Until then, I need to find out why the hull breached the way it did.
An investigation must be conducted.”
He watched the captain search his thoughts for a solution. Arthur decided he would have to approach the conversation carefully if he were to investigate on why his nanites were not voxelizing. This wasn’t the first time Arthur had let his investigations outweigh the risks, but it was necessary to find the truth. No matter the consequences.
“Do we have enough white matter to conduct such an investigation?” Elizabeth asked. “You only have so much material to compile with.”
Arthur smiled at her, noticing how lovely she looked tonight, and then said, “The white matter reserves we have will be plenty for our needs in the investigation.”
He turned his attention back to the man sharing firelight with him. The captain sat back, ripped off a piece of freshly voxelized meat, and chewed on it. The sight of him eating so ravenously put Arthur on edge. As did the fact that the captain took so long to respond to his proposal.
“Fine,” Captain Ellis agreed, swallowing his bolus of food. “I will allow you to investigate. We will survey in the morning. Maybe we can start drilling come daybreak.”
3
Earth
That night was cool when Arthur stepped out to get a breath of fresh air. Elizabeth was just across the way, nestled in her private tent that had been nano printed from the reserve of white matter they had left. A small LED light within the shelter cast her hair and body in fine silhouette as she laid down.
She was young and beautiful, but she was his colleague. Arthur was determined to respect that relationship. However, some devilish thoughts about Elizabeth throwing herself at him did wander through his head. It was thoughts like these that made him feel lonely and kept him up at night. Well, these thoughts and the fact he had to piss.
The air was brisk compared to the balminess of the day. Arthur sidestepped his tent and walked a few feet away, edging himself into some brush. A few quick unsnaps, and he was free for the island to receive his contribution to the soil’s nutrition. He often liked to think about the urea, chloride, sodium, potassium, creatinine and other dissolved ions, the inorganic and organic compounds that composed his urine. He was simply completing the water cycle when he pissed outside like a bear in the woods.