by Reilly, Jim
Taylor was equally uneasy around Cameron, as she was just as attracted to him. She was hesitant to let her feelings known to him because she was trying to understand them herself. She wasn’t sure if the feelings were natural or a result of Cameron’s saving her life back at her home. In any case, she told him, “It couldn’t be helped. I was just at the wrong place at the right time. Actually, if you think about it, I’m very fortunate. If I hadn’t been to work late, I wouldn’t have had to be in the loading dock area during the bombing. Also, if you hadn’t been at my apartment in time, I might’ve been killed.” Taylor stopped talking for a second or two, then continued, “By the way, I should have said this before: Thank you for saving my life.”
“No, thank you for being there for me at Babylon Corp. If you hadn’t been there, there’s no telling what would have happened to me.”
Again this exchange was followed by another awkward silence for about a minute until they both looked at each other and began to laugh. Their levity was interrupted by a voice that said, “What have I missed?”
“Leonardo, he hasn’t arrived yet,” Cameron told a just awakened Leonardo. Taylor quickly got up to fetch more coffee. Disappointed his connection with Taylor was at the moment broken, he quickly gained focus, “The bus should be here just after sunrise. We should get everyone up and ready to go.”
Looking into the distance, as his eyes focused, Leonardo pointed out, “I can see a bus approaching from the south.”
In the few minutes it took for the bus to reach the tourist drop-off, Leonardo woke his people and they all fed on the old military rations as Cameron eyed the approaching bus. When the early tourists arrived, one individual stayed behind at the bus station.
Looking out the transport as he ate, Leonardo asked, “Is this our guy?”
Frustrated as he tried to use his scanner, Cameron said, “We’re too far for my scanner to do a face recognition application, however, judging by his clothes and the way he wears them, he looks like a field anthropologist.”
Taylor back with more coffee asked, “How can you tell?”
“Both my parents are anthropologists and many of their friends are as well. So are my brother and sister. James Connor’s father, a mentor to my dad, was a frequent visitor to my house. These people are all alike; they wear tan outfits with lots of pockets. That’s not the most telling clue though. It’s the fact that the clothes always look dirty and dusty. Even in this day of self-cleaning clothes, these people somehow keep their clothes dirty at all times. I always thought they thought it was a badge of honor. I don’t know why. So when I tell you that’s an anthropologist, trust me, it’s an anthropologist.”
Cameron and the others left the transport and walked in the direction of the lone individual still standing at the bus station. When they met, Cameron asked, “Dr. Lewis?”
“Yes,” he replied. “You must be David Cho’s kid. I recognize the family resemblance.”
Cameron confirmed to Dr. Lewis who he was and introduced the others in his company. The anthropologist was also an American based former Rabbi who left the religious way of life his parents pushed him toward, to become a field anthropologist specializing in ancient Roman-Greco peoples. He told them he preferred to be called Ken.
“Very well,” Ken said after introductions. On the way up the hill to the ruins he said, “Please let me show you around so you have a better understanding of Pergamon. It’s a Greek acropolis or hilltop city. The Greeks loved for their properties to be seen for miles. As such, they would adorn the hilltop city with majestic buildings and shrines to their gods. Over there,” and he pointed to his right, “was a temple constructed for the worship of Athena. There was also a library built that rivals none in ancient times but for the Library at Alexandria in Egypt. The amphitheater on the side of the hill is the steepest in the world and can hold up to ten thousand people. Then there’s the site of the Altar of Zeus. The structure, of course, is not here as it is an exhibit in a German museum.”
Cameron interrupted Ken, “Is that what is referred to as the Throne of Satan?”
“It’s not for sure,” Ken said. “Nevertheless, many scholars believe that is what John of Patmos was talking about when he wrote the Book of Revelations. Pergamon in the late first century had an early Christian community. Those in the early Christian community were angered by the martyrdom of one of its own, thus it was reflected in the Book of Revelations. If that is what you came for, the Throne of Satan, I can assure you it is not here. Either it’s the museum piece or a piece of legend we’re talking about.”
Cameron said, “As my father explained, we’re looking for a low frequency signal or energy signature. It has similar properties as the Ancient Visitors’ Ethiopian transmission. He was able to pin down the source as coming from the old ruins here at Pergamon.”
“Cameron, I’m glad you brought that up. Since speaking to your dad, I was up all night in my hotel and continuing at the bus station in Izmir studying data going back fifty years. Now the signal has been detected going back that far. It was always dismissed as a false signal due to its randomness.”
“What do you mean randomness?”
“Meaning it doesn’t come from one particular place here at Pergamon. It is arbitrarily recorded at different spots all within a mile radius of Pergamon as if it moves from one place to another. That’s why it was always dismissed because we always thought it was a false reading.”
Leonardo then asked, “Where is the last place it was recorded?”
“Funny you should ask,” Ken replied. “About two days ago the signal moved. We will see it just over the hill when we reach the top. It’s about two hundred and fifty meters to the north.”
Cameron turned to Leonardo and asked, “I don’t suppose we have digging equipment on the transport?”
Leonardo was about to answer as they neared the top of the hill, but Taylor spoke first, “I don’t think you need equipment, because someone is already here digging away.”
Cameron and the others ducked for cover. When he was able to peer over the embankment he hid behind, Cameron couldn’t believe what and who he saw. About two hundred and fifty meters away, just off the perimeter of the grounds of an ancient archeological site, large equipment was brought in for a dig. There were, by his count, six enhanced men performing the dig, while Will Davis and Lily Gordon, the personal assistant of Babylon Corporation’s Cassandra Romano, looked as if they were supervising.
Cameron whispered to the team, “It can’t be a coincidence they’re here. Something must be up.”
“Whatever it is, we need to find out what they’re doing,” whispered Leonardo. “I doubt they’re up to something good.”
“We have no choice but to find out what they are up to and hopefully capture them in the act,” Cameron told them. “Let’s wait about two hours until the sun is higher and beating down on them and they’ll be tired of digging. We’ll come from the east with the sun in their face and hopefully we’ll surprise them.”
*****
31st Century.
Steven was beside himself as he paced back and forth below the ancient ruins of the hilltop Acropolis of Pergamon. Right next to him pacing as well was Hailey, who told Steven, “You’re right; we should drop what we’re doing and join Marcus. Really, what’s the point of us being here? D’Shawn’s gone and if the final battle has begun, we shouldn’t be on a field trip. I say we meet up with Marcus.”
“I wholeheartedly agree,” stated Steven while mourning his friend D’Shawn. “I can’t be snooping around here for the faint signal that might be affecting the UM ingredient, let alone looking for some Throne of Satan. That’s probably just a legend, and no more than that. Hailey, I’m with you. Let’s go join the fight. They surely need our help. From Marcus’s last communication, they met the enemy on the beach, and they couldn’t sustain a battle there. At the moment, he’s taken the survivors and retreated east toward hilltop ruins at a place called Megiddo.”
Haile
y added, “There are reports on the Grid of security people from around the world coming to join Marcus. They are acquiring any weapons they can get their hands on and joining the fight.”
“That’s what we should do,” proclaimed Steven.
It was then that Father Willie spoke up, “Please don’t abandon your quest. You need to be on the trail of Satan for he is the agitator here. If you can cut the head off the snake, the rest will die.”
“Even if we do stay to fight Satan, Father,” Steven considered, “what chances do we have anyway? Throughout history, no one has ever defeated Satan. Show me in a history book where that was the case.”
After taking a deep breath, Father Willie explained, “The battle with Satan happens every single day. Whether you’re a King or President, or a low paid street cleaner, there is a battle that happens within us. The two sides are good and evil. Satan is no more than that little voice in our heads that tempts us to do things we might not normally do. For whatever reason, may it be anger, despair, or just worldliness; many of us are weak to those whispers.”
Feeling frustrated, Steven asked him, “How do we stop that voice in our head? Satan got to me at that barn on the dairy farm in the virtual meeting room, and I felt helpless. What weapon do we have to stop that?”
“The answer to both questions, my son, is the same: Good defeats evil. The answer is easy, but the application is the hard part. Throughout history mankind has done despicable acts upon one another, whether killing to take another’s land or possessions or cheating someone out of a spouse or money. What it comes down to is which whisper in our mind do we listen to, good or evil? We are human, thus we are weak, and some of us fall directly into the trap of evil. It is there in our minds, if we do lean toward evil that is the real Throne of Satan. The only way to defeat Satan on his throne is with good.”
“All right, Father, I’m only giving us thirty minutes here,” Steven said. “If we don’t find anything, then we join the fight. Hailey, call up the James Connor program and have him scan the area for anything Ancient Visitor like.”
“Please do,” said the priest. “I, too, feel the pressure of the final conflict. It was communicated to my headset that a mysterious Islamic cleric has now joined Kaiden and the others on the Temple Mount. I don’t know his name, and he has worked from behind the scenes keeping the Islamic community together after the fall of the Followers of Divinity. For the last thirty years he has instructed the religious needy, fed the hungry, and governed the community. His followers believe he is the Madhi or the one who will rid the world of evil. With him now there, every religious leader has joined Kaiden. So, I appreciate the thirty minute reprieve.”
The enhanced woman wasted little time and activated the program. She instructed James as to the criteria needed.
While James was scanning and Father Willie went off to pray, Steven, figuring this was the end, believed he had nothing to lose and blurted out to Hailey, “Could we go out? I mean, could we see each other? No, that sounds stupid. What I am trying to say is--”
Hailey cut off a stumbling and bumbling Steven, “You mean go out on a date?”
So not to say anything else stupid, he nodded his head, yes.
“I’d be happy to,” said the smiling, almost giggling woman. “I wish, though, we had more time because I’d bring you home to Nebraska where I grew up. Just like you, I’m from a farm community. It’s not like any farm from your time. We have multi-level farming facilities whose levels stack up to almost the clouds with every farmed product you can imagine. There I learned the simple life of a farmer. It is there I would have liked to have brought you, not so much to see the techniques in farming, but to meet the people, my people. You would have learned all about me there.”
“We have a little time until James finishes his scan, please tell me. I’d like to hear.”
“Hailey, I am finished with my analysis and you should find this interesting,” James proclaimed.
“Please enlighten us,” she told him.
James went on to tell them, “There is most certainly an Ancient Visitor ship buried beneath the ground.”
Steven asked, “Why hasn’t this been discovered by now? We can’t be the first to find it, can we?”
James explained, “To answer the first question, the craft in the ground randomly moves from one location to another. It transports, if you will, the small ship from one location to another, while transporting the dirt and rock to the location it just left. The move from one location to another is only one hundred meters at a time, the extent of their capability. The Ancient Visitors used this technology because they would sometimes leave crafts on planets for long periods of time and wanted to avoid contact with local people during long hibernations.”
“It makes sense,” Steven concurred.
“As for if this has ever been detected before, the answer is yes. About nine hundred and seventy years ago which is about thirty years after you, Steven were abducted. An anthropologist, named Ken Lewis was the lone survivor of a massacre here at this site where nine people died and four went missing. In the report, which was retrieved from a deleted United Nations Security Group file I found in a recycle bin, it indicates he came across the signal. He was helping an investigation by Cameron Richards, AKA, Cameron Cho, son of Jennifer La Mont-Cho and David Cho. They were good friends of mine. Anyway, he too was looking for an Ancient Visitor craft.”
Hailey asked, “Did they find anything?”
“After the massacre, investigators found digging equipment was used, but the entrance dug into the side of the hill just led to more rock and stone,” James added.
Steven figured, “If as you say, the craft moves from place to place, then it could have moved by the time the authorities looked to see what the digging led to.” Steven thought for a few seconds then turned to Father Willie, “We need to stay here to see what is so important that they needed to keep this hidden underground for so long.”
“You might find out soon enough what’s so important in the ground,” James said. “An Ancient Visitor ship along with escorts is heading in this direction as we speak.”
“Okay then,” Steven said. “I guess we don’t have to go to the battle; the battle will come to us. Let’s take cover and determine their intent, then strike.”
As the ship arrived, it hovered over an area west of Steven, Hailey, and Father Willie. As it floated in the air, about thirty feet high, a reddish beam of light was aimed at the side of the hill. The beam disintegrated sand and rock as it drilled into the ground.
As they were hiding, Hailey asked James, “Can you tell us about the ship and its passengers?”
“I’d be happy to, Hailey. This particular craft is what you’d consider the royal barge. It has the capacity for thirty passengers along with the Ancient Visitor leader, Belial.”
“Father, you may be right on track,” Steven noted. “We do have an opportunity to cut the head off the snake. Let’s make a plan on how we are going to battle the beings in that craft while taking out Belial and Satan.”
While Steven and Hailey determined a course of action, Father Willie stood by their side and prayed and prayed.
*****
21st Century.
Standing in a dark alley, Johnny waited patiently. It was hot, but his cooling clothes kept his body at a comfortable temperature as he stood in the dark. Then he heard a whistle and did as he was instructed to do: take his baseball cap off and immediately put it back on. Then a shadowy figure raced toward him from across the street in the industrial section of Singapore.
She almost barreled into him as she came around the corner and then whispered to him, “Our people are in place around the building.” Angelis then informed Johnny, as she hid in the shadows, “Anything that goes on there we’ll find out. We’ll scan everything that comes in and out of there. If this is the place, we’ll know soon enough.”
“It better be,” said Johnny. “The first two places were duds. This, our last suspected
site, better be it. We’re running out of options. If this isn’t it, it’s back to the drawing board.”
“If it is the new site for manufacturing the UM ingredient, I’m surprised they picked such a populous and beautiful city as Singapore,” Angelis said. “The Brazil site and the other two sites we checked out were more remote and, I thought, more likely to hide their manufacturing.”
“It’s my experience as a police officer that sometimes you can hide right out in the open,” Johnny told her. “There were lots of cases where suspects would change their name, color their hair, and change their eye color, only to move right down the block. You’d think they’d hide in the woods in an abandoned cabin. No, they knew that was the first place we’d check. Instead, they walked among us, had families, and joined the PTA. So as far as these guys go, being out in the open in a major city is a perfect hiding place.”
Agreeing, Angelis added, “I suppose, but--”
“Hold on Angelis,” Johnny said as he peered around the corner toward the entrance of the unlabeled manufacturing facility. “There is a caravan of three unmarked vehicles approaching. Who would be coming this time of the night, I wonder?”
Angelis then signaled to one of their people, Alfred, their technology expert, to use his equipment to spy on them to see who the visitors were. Johnny, even in the dimly lit street, recognized one of the individuals entering the facility. It was none other than Inspector General Sanchez.
Johnny looked over to Angelis and expressed, “I was hoping it wouldn’t come to this, but it gives us a chance to catch him in the act, I suppose.”