by Aer-ki Jyr
Inception
1
December 27, 2022
“Watch where you’re stepping!” Dr. Travis yelped as he crunched a delicate green stalk beneath his boot.
“Whoops,” her escort said, stepping back into the thin Antarctic snowpack.
She knelt down next to the tiny plant he’d smashed into the hard, frozen ground and glared up at him. “I don’t believe you!”
“Sorry…” Eric said, overemphasizing the word. “It’s not like it’s the only one here.”
“There shouldn’t be anything here,” Kimberly reminded him. “So would you please try and avoid killing anything else?”
“It’s grass,” he argued. “Stepping on it doesn’t kill it.”
“Santa grass,” she corrected him, standing up and looking around. There were small tufts of the hardy green plants spread around the windswept area that only four weeks ago had revealed itself to Pegasus’s orbital satellites…a tiny point of green in the center of Antarctica’s bone white mass.
“I can’t believe you’re calling it that,” the Antarctic guide, also an employee of the multi-national Pegasus Corporation, reiterated from an earlier discussion. “We’re at the South Pole.”
“Until the planet’s magnetic field flips again,” the Dr. noted, kneeling down next to another tuft and only half paying attention to him as she clipped off a tiny sample of the needle-like leaf. “I find the name appropriate…besides, Davis said I could name any new species I found, so the name sticks whether you like it or not.”
“Seems unscientific if you ask me,” he commented, walking around behind her as he did a quick scan of the area. Nothing but flat, barren terrain save for this odd little patch of sprinkled green.
“I didn’t,” Kimberly pointed out, moving onto a thicker cluster of the Santa grass further inside the perimeter. “There’s no reason for you to be here. I can handle myself in the field, so feel free to head back to base whenever you like.”
“Believe me, I wish I didn’t have to keep babysitting your cranky ass, but it’s Pegasus procedure that all scientists in the field…”
“…be escorted by region specific personnel,” she finished for him. “I’m familiar with protocol. If you want to head on back early I won’t say anything.”
Eric smiled humorlessly. “Not happening, Doctor. Wouldn’t look good on my record if you got lost out here…or worse.”
“This isn’t my first trip to the Antarctic,” she reminded him, moving on to yet another tuft of grass and adding more clippings to her collection vial.
“Then you should be more wary of…” Eric said, suddenly stumbling forward. He caught his balance in a few awkward steps, the last of which landed squarely in the middle of a large cluster of grass.
“Are you really that clumsy!” she yelled, pitting him with another razor-sharp glare.
Frowning, he ignored her and walked back over to where he’d stumbled. There was a two inch depression where his boot had sunk into the ‘hard’ ground.
“That’s not right,” the guide said, pressing the toe of his boot next to the mark experimentally. The ground gave way as well, soft to the touch. “The ground should be frozen.”
“Step aside,” Kimberly urged, suddenly curious. She pulled off her thin glove and touched the light brown soil with her fingertips. She pulled back, brushed off the dirt on her pant-leg, and put her glove back on. “I’d hesitate to say it’s warm, but there’s definitely a heat source underneath. The ground is moist beneath the surface.”
“Wait a second,” Eric said, gently nudging her aside. “I tripped on something hard.”
The guide kicked the tip of his boot into the imprint, resulting with a hard ‘thud’ on impact. He repeated twice more, then dragged his toe sideways, revealing some type of rock beneath.
“Stop!” she said, eyes gleaming. “Step back.”
Eric pulled his boot away as Kimberly knelt down next to the sloppy excavation. She brushed aside the top layer of dirt with her hands, ignoring the mess it made on her gloves. Within a moment she had the edge of the stone visible…a perfect 90 degree angle running laterally.
Eric knelt down beside her. “That’s manmade.”
“Thank you for pointing out the obvious,” she snipped, but her attention was on the artifact. This didn’t make any sense.
“I don’t recognize the material,” Eric said, ignoring the banter, “and it’s perfectly smooth. Must be something recent. Let me see if I can dig it out…unless you have any objections?”
“Go ahead,” she said, standing up and taking a step back.
Eric pulled a small shovel out of his pack and went to work on the stone. The dirt pulled away easily, as it was all soft beneath the half inch of snow that covered the otherwise frozen ground. Below the surface the stone extended down more than a foot, and continued laterally for more than a meter.
“Stop,” Dr. Travis said after several minutes of watching him dig. “It’s too big.”
“You think?” he said sarcastically, brushing off the half meter wide top that he’d cleared. The stone was a dark green, almost black, and clashed violently with naturalistic motif of snow, dirt, and Santa grass.
Kimberly’s face went blank as Eric shuffled his feet and accidentally kicked a bit of snow onto the stone…where the tiny flakes disappeared as they melted.
“What?” Eric asked, glancing down at his feet where her eye line indicated.
The Dr. pulled off her dirty glove and touched the stone surface with her bare hand, then glanced up at Eric. “It’s warm.”
The guide frowned and pulled off his own glove, placing his hand next to hers on the smooth, dirty surface. His eyes widened in confirmation.
“We have to call this in,” he said firmly.
“You think?” she said mockingly.
“Do you know what it is?” he asked in all seriousness.
“No, I don’t,” she admitted. “But I know it shouldn’t be in the Antarctic.”
Eric stood up and pulled off his pack, digging out a small locator beacon and attaching it to an expandable tripod which he planted firmly into the soft ground next to the stone. He activated the navigational beacon and checked it against his Pegasus issue GPS wristband.
“Alright, let’s go,” he said, offering his hand and pulling Dr. Travis to her feet. “We should be able to get an initial excavation team back here tomorrow morning.”
“Hold on a second,” she said, digging out a small camera. Kimberly took several shots of the ‘rock’ up close, then stepped back and added more from a wider perspective.
“Step next to it,” she urged Eric. “I need a size comparison.”
The guide walked over to the stone and knelt down beside where he had been digging.
“Alright,” she said after adding another two shots. “Now we can go.”
2
5 months later…
Sean Davis cinched his belt tighter as the helicopter lifted off from Pegasus’s main Antarctic base and began its 150 kilometer journey out to the dig site. The winds buffeted them around a bit, the first prelude to a storm front rolling in, but the pilot had little difficulty getting them into the air and on their way. The CEO and owner of Pegasus Corporation glanced out the window of the cramped chopper as the icy, barren landscape passed beneath them, his mind elsewhere.
Sitting across from him Eric Shoball touched his earpiece as an incoming transmission gave him an update on the dig site, which he’d been tasked with overseeing since the discovery. He glanced over at Davis.
“They’ve finished the widening.”
“Half a meter?”
Eric nodded. “Just before they ran
out of drill bits.”
“Impressive,” Davis mewed.
“You don’t know the half of it,” Eric understated.
“Your team knows to wait, I presume?”
“No one’s going in before we arrive,” Eric assured him.
“How long?”
Eric glanced outside unnecessarily as he thought. “Given the tailwind, I’d say an hour at most.”
Davis nodded and returned his gaze to the snow covered landscape passing by outside the window. One more hour…then Human history would make an abrupt change in direction. For the better, he hoped.
The Pegasus helicopter landed on a small, makeshift pad next to a cluster of tents, ostensibly a makeshift camp and research site…but that was just cover for the real project that lay beneath the white camouflaged dome that covered the dig site half a kilometer to the east. Eric led the CEO out of the chopper and onto the back of a small four wheeler that had been extended as a three-seater.
After strapping his boss on Eric drove them across the barren landscape, swerving sideways microscopically to hit a small tuft of Santa grass that lay just outside the dome. A few meters later he slowed to a creep and drove underneath the white fabric of the largely flat dome that was hiding their excavation from satellite surveillance. Thus far the ruse had worked, and they’d been allowed to work on the recovery project with anonymity.
Underneath the canopy lay several piles of dirt, the nearest of which had a large chunk eaten out of it. Pegasus personnel had slowly been hauling the dirt away, one backpack full at a time, back to base where it could be disposed of discretely. With the blanket white snow cover, any local spreading measures would be easily visible.
In the center of the six mounds stood the top of a metallic catwalk disappearing below ground. As Davis followed Eric to the entry railing he caught his first glimpse of the top of the subsurface structure.
“Amazing,” he said under his breath as he paused to look over the smooth green/black stone. One corner of it had been excavated, but it clearly stretched much farther out than the acre-wide area that they’d uncovered. Less than a meter away from the catwalk, the top of the structure seemed to draw his hand towards it. Kneeling down and reaching through the railing bars, Davis brushed his fingertips along the edge.
“It is warm,” he commented, studying the strange material.
“A lot more so below,” Eric said, waiting patiently. “You’ll want to leave your parka here.”
Davis pried his eyes away from the artifact and stood up, noticing that Eric had already shed his winter weather gear. He did likewise, handing his hat to a nearby worker. His parka he reluctantly unzipped and discarded as well, but a few steps down the catwalk stairs and a wall of warm air hit him.
“Are you sure there are no geothermal vents?”
“Not that we can find,” Eric answered as they descended down into the hole they’d painstakingly excavated around the edge of the massive artifact. “The heat appears to be originating solely from the stone.”
“Have you determined a size or shape?”
“I can give you a ball park estimate…the stone continues to defy conventional scans. All our equipment says it’s not there, even the seismogram. However, we have been able to get some hits on the rocks around the structure. It’s sketchy, but I’d have to guess this thing is bigger than any structure on Earth.”
Davis reached ahead and grabbed his shoulder, prompting him to stop. “Say again?”
Eric frowned. “We can’t say for sure, and I hate to speculate, but it appears to be a massive pyramid, extending well below the bedrock. If you look down you can see it jut out…”
Davis looked over the edge of the railing and saw what he meant. Three flights down and the catwalk extended laterally before disappearing into the sidewall of dirt. Beneath the metallic grate he could clearly see another flat top of green/black stone.
“Best guess…” Davis reiterated.
“At least a mile wide, maybe a lot more. We really can’t tell without digging the whole thing out.”
“Unfortunately that’s not an option,” the Pegasus CEO said as the pair continued walking down. “We can’t let anyone else know of this, so we have to work with as small a team as possible. Looks like you’ve found your assignment for the next decade.”
“Hey, as long as the pay is good,” Eric offered sarcastically.
“Doubled, as of now.”
The other man’s eyes narrowed. “You are serious about this…”
“Very,” Davis confirmed as they reached the bottom of the stairs. A long tunnel into the dirt wall lay before them, running on top of the second level of the pyramid. “If this gets out, we’ll lose all access and possibly start World War III in the process. We have to keep this a secret.”
“What exactly do you think we’ve got?” Eric asked as they entered the tunnel.
“Two possibilities as I see it. One…this is evidence of technology far exceeding ours possessed by our ancestors. Why we lost it, who knows? We’ve had evidence of technological dark ages before, though nothing ever on this level recorded.”
“What’s option two?”
“Evidence of technology far exceeding ours possessed by someone else,” he answered ominously as the end of the tunnel came into sight.
Eric’s face flickered with light as they passed under staggered flood lamps attached to the ceiling at regular intervals. “You’re talking about aliens?”
“Do you have any other possibilities to offer?” Davis asked, half serious.
“Elves,” Eric answered deadpan.
Davis raised an eyebrow.
“You’re asking the wrong person,” the guide explained. “I deal with the here and now. History is a mystery to me.”
“It has a special interest to me…”
Eric studied his face as they took to a second set of stairs going down even further. “I get the feeling this isn’t the first…unusual thing you’ve found.”
Davis glanced at him approvingly. “There have been a few unexplained archeological discoveries that have come to my attention, and I’ll admit, I’ve been actively searching for others…but nothing even remotely comparable with this.”
“What about this stone?”
“I’ve never heard of anything like this. All of the unusual things were cultural, not technological, but I always suspected there was something more behind it all.”
When they reached the bottom of the stairs they emerged into a much larger cavern. The top of the pyramid had been cleared off for about the size of a football field with support struts and panels covering the two story high ceiling.
Davis stepped off the catwalk and onto the surface of the pyramid. Strangely it felt almost soft beneath his feet.
“It’s an illusion,” Eric informed him. He’d felt the same thing when he’d first walked across the mysterious stone. “Trust me, it’s the hardest stuff I’ve ever come across. Case in point,” he said, gesturing to a heap of damaged drill bits to their left.
“The laser had no effect?”
“Damn stuff soaks up energy like a sponge. We couldn’t even make it hot to the touch. Two seconds after the laser shuts off, it’s the same temperature as the rest…78.2 degrees Fahrenheit.”
“You said none of the scanners worked?”
“Completely useless. I have a feeling the stone is absorbing the signal.”
“How did you find the door?”
“Look down.”
Davis frowned and looked at the surface of the pyramid beneath him. It was dirty, with many footprints crisscrossing in multiple directions, but underneath the grime were faint grooves.
“Led us right to it,” Eric explained, “though we didn’t know for sure until we did a thorough examination of the surface. The door seams are nearly invisible, thinner than a sheet of paper.”
The pair followed the intricate scrollwork across the pyramid surface until it intersected with four other ‘lines’ which combined into
a single, short river of markings that dead ended against the wall…a wall that now sported a narrow hole in the center that led to a dark interior.
Off to the side the expedition team was standing by, six men in all, one of which handed Eric an equipment pack and sidearm. Davis noticed that the rest of the team was equally armed.
The guide noticed his boss’s glance. “I’ve watched far too many movies to even think about going in there unarmed. Could be all manner of creepy things.”
“Where’s my pack?”
“We’ll carry everything we need. You don’t have to worry about it,” Liam said, standing a full head taller than Davis and twice his mass.
“I may have recently hit the half century mark, but I’m not an invalid,” he argued. “Get me a duplicate pack.”
Liam nodded, offering no argument, and retreated to an equipment bench filled with all sorts of gear set up against the far wall.
“And a sidearm,” he added, turning to look at Eric. “If we’re going to run into a hoard of zombies I want to be prepared.”
“Sam, get the man a weapon.”
A blonde-headed man in full gear smiled and detached his own hip holster and tossed it to Eric, then went to grab a second for himself.
Eric graciously handed it to Davis. “Remember to shoot for the head.”
Davis accepted it with a rueful smile and attached the belt around his narrow waist. “I presume no one has gone in yet?”
Eric glanced to the others.
“None yet, as per your orders, sir,” Liam said, returning with a generic pack of equipment. “Spare mags in the left pouch.”
“Thank you,” the CEO said, accepting the pack and snugging the straps to match his dimensions.
Sam returned with a new sidearm and several two meter long glowrods, one of which he tossed to Eric.
The lead guide thumbed on the activation switch and the entire length of the rod lit up with a bright orange glow. “With your permission?”
“Proceed,” Davis allowed, motioning to the man with the pre-requested camera gear. “Make sure you get every second from entry to exit.”