by J. K. Haugen
Sarah took Johns shirt he had wrapped around the tree root and poured out some of the water onto it. She wiped off the face of the oval wall plate. Almost immediately it began to glow. “Is it a light fixture?” she asked John.
“Maybe,” he replied. He started to use his thumb to rub some of the glass-like surface. “Ouch!” he yelled. John had cut himself on the edge of the oval frame and as he shook his hand in pain, some of his blood splattered on the wall.
Right away they could hear and even feel a loud hum coming from the wall of the cave. One by one each of the oval frames lit up all the way down the hallway. “They almost look like runway lights.” thought John. “Wow!” he said in disbelief. “Did I do that?”
The passageway was completely lit now and John put the box back into his bag. “I must have hit some kind of light switch.” he said.
“Tell me this is not the most incredible thing you have ever seen?” she said to him.
“I’m still having a hard time believing we made it out of the helicopter crash alive,” he answered, “I still feel like I’m dreaming. How is any of this possible?” he added.
“Look at this Johnny,” Sarah said pointing at the wall where John’s blood had landed, “it’s a handprint.”
John took his hand and put it up against the hand shaped imprint on the wall. As his hand pushed against it, all the lights went completely dark. He pushed again, and the passageway lit up again.
“It’s a light switch” he said, completely amazed as he turned the lights on and off, over and over.
“Boys!!” said Sarah with a sigh, shaking her head and rolling her eyes.
Sarah walked down to the next oval and she put her hand up against the hand print and pushed. “Nothing!” she said. “Wonder why it doesn’t work for me?”
“It must have been a mixture of the water and my blood that activated the switch.” said John. “Why would water and blood turn it on?”
“Maybe it’s some kind of security feature?” said Sarah. “Remember, you’re the only one who can read the scrolls so far, maybe it's something in your DNA. Maybe only someone who is a descendant of the White Agodahns can activate the technology.”
“Bloodline.” John mumbled to himself. “Your bloodline and the key of Tamarac will give you entry into the city.”
“What?” asked Sarah.
“Just something the scrolls talked about,” he answered, “that my bloodline and the key would unlock the city. Something like that anyway. I thought it was talking figuratively, but maybe it was meant to be taken more literally.” said John. “Maybe you’re right, maybe DNA is the key to all of this. Like my USB thumb drive on my laptop that has a fingerprint scanner on it. It keeps all of the information locked until the right fingerprint is scanned. Why couldn’t they have done the same thing with DNA?”
“As advanced as all of this technology seems to be so far, I think anything’s possible,” said Sarah, “I mean think about it, how much has our technology advanced in a hundred years? We have gone from horse and buggy and steam engines to flying to the moon and sending autonomous robots to mars. We have gone from candle light to atomic energy. We have even invented computers so small that they fit into your pocket and connect you to the entire world.”
“Yeah,” said John, “It’s pretty incredible how far we’ve come in the last hundred years.”
“Yeah it really is.” she said. “Now imagine how technology has changed in two hundred years or five hundred. If you think about it, five hundred years ago, we still believed the world was flat. As far as we have come and advanced technologically, in only a hundred years, is astonishing and truly amazing. So why then, would we assume that we are smarter than the people that lived a thousand years ago?”
“Because, they didn’t understand things like math and science, like we do.” answered John.
“How do you know that John? Because that’s what you have been told, right? But who do you think invented things like mathematics, or chemistry and astronomy, even physics. There is plenty of proof that the ancients knew quite a bit about all of the sciences in fact.”
“I don’t know about all that,” he said. “That’s kind of a stretch.”
“Why do we believe that we are more inept about the world that we live in, than they would have been?” she asked. “Just think about how many of those one hundred year periods of evolution there has been since this place was created, or since the scrolls were written two hundred and fifty thousand years ago. There is no reason to think that if we can come this far in a hundred years, that another group of people wouldn’t be capable of the same advances.”
“Ok then,” said John, “why don’t we see their buildings or homes or technology? Why don’t we find any evidence that there was any other race of people here before us, or that they were as advanced as we are?”
“First of all, I believe we’re standing right in the middle of it,” she said as she smiled, “and second, I think more evidence of it is in your backpack right now.”
“What do you mean?” asked John.
“Well,” she said, “let’s imagine that something happened to all of the people who are living on the planet today. Like a global catastrophe of some kind, an asteroid or incredibly quick climate change like a drought or flash ice age or whatever the case may be.”
“Okay, I’m with ya.” he said.
“Now, imagine a thousand or two thousand years from now,” she continued, “most of the population is gone. All of our homes and cars and your tablet computer and cell phone would all be dust. Nothing left at all, but bits and pieces that are way too small to tell what they were or if they even ever existed. The only things that might remain would be broken rocks of concrete from the foundations of our buildings.”
“Okay, keep going.” said John
“A hundred thousand years from now a new group of archeologists might dig up a few human bones or some pottery or whatever may have lasted through the millennia after everything else has disappeared. Then they might use what they know of their world to tell stories of how you and I may have lived thousands of years before they were even born. They would believe that we were like cave men, dumb with little or no communication or written history.”
“Wow,” said John, “I never thought of it like that.”
“That’s why we went looking in Greenland in the first place. Dad and I have always believed that a close to perfect record of an ancient world and people would be preserved under the ice if we could just dig down far enough. The point is,” she continued, “if we could have these very short but amazing advances in our evolution and technology then there really is no telling how many other advanced civilizations have lived before us, especially in the millions and hundreds of millions of years that our planet has been floating around the Sun.”
They walked down the hall careful not to touch anything else. The walls were pearl white, almost acrylic looking. They could hear the water running through them like some kind of pipeline or plumbing system. They rounded a curve in the hallway and seemed to come to a dead end.
Sara brushed her hair behind her right ear and pressed it up against the wall in front of them. “The water is loudest right behind here.” she said. She could also hear mechanical sounds coming from behind the wall, a whirling and swooshing sound.
John looked around for something to use to break through the wall. He found instead, something that looked like a control panel. He took the water soaked shirt and wiped the panel.
Just like the hallway lights, it began to glow. He reached out his hand and placed it firmly on the face of the panel and nothing happened. He took out his pocket knife that he had used with the bird and ran the blade swiftly across his palm.
As the wound began to bleed he painted his hand with the blood and again pressed it against the panel. The wall in front of them began to glow, it turned clear like a plate-glass window and a light came on from behind it. “Oh my God,” said Sarah again, “look at that.”
John peered through the glass-like wall. He could see a large room almost as big as an airplane hangar on the other side. There were large see-through pipes. Each of them was a couple of feet around in diameter. They were running in every direction along the sides of the walls.
John could see water rushing through them and all of the pipes seemed to be coming from the same place. It was a large fountain in the center of the room. “It looks just like the wishing well in the mall.” thought John.
At the bottom outside edge of the well, was a small disk-like object that was spinning around and around. They could tell that it was what had been making the whooshing and whirling sound. It looked like some kind of gyroscope traveling along a pre-determined track alongside the edge of the well. “Must be some sort of pump house or turbine room.” said John.
“How do we get inside?” asked Sarah.
John took his hand off of the control panel. As he slid it down the face, he heard two short beeps. He repeated the motion and got the same sound. It sounded like the error sound his computer made when he clicked the wrong button. He waived his hand the other direction up across the face of the panel and the door began to rumble and with one quick movement disappeared into the ceiling.
“I guess, like that!” said John in a proud voice.
They slowly walked through the doorway toward the wishing well. As they entered the large room the door quickly closed behind them. John walked up and approached the well. He reached out his un-injured hand and held it under the running water from the fountain. He then used the water to wash the blood from his other hand. He was shocked and amazed when the wound started to quickly heal right in front of his eyes.
“Sarah, look!” he said, holding his hand up and showing her his now completely healed palm.
“Oh my God Johnny, that’s incredible!” she said.
“Yeah I think there is a lot more to this water then just a heavy mineral content.” he said. “Could this be where the legends of the Fountain of Youth came from? Did we just happen to stumble across something that humanity has looked for since we began recording our own history? Or is there something else going on here?”
John looked down at the well and noticed something familiar on the front side of it. There appeared to be a small credit card sized shape that was etched or engraved into it. He removed the box from his backpack, opened it and pulled the shiny nameplate-like piece out and held it up against the rectangular etching. “It’s the same size and shape!” he yelled to Sarah.
She was at the other end of the large room, looking for a way out that would be faster and easier than jumping into the well and riding to the surface in the water tubes. She walked back over to John. “Yeah, it looks like it fits into the rectangle.” she said.
John took the plate and held it close to the edge of the well, like two magnets, the small plaque seemed to jump from his hands and connect into the box on the side of it.
Immediately it started to glow brighter and brighter, and the whooshing sound started to turn into a loud hum as the gyroscope traveling around the edge of the well began to go faster and faster around the edge.
Suddenly a voice that seemed to surround them began to speak. “Full Power Engaged!” it said, reminding John of a mix between the voice of the Wizard of Oz and the computer voice from the Starship Enterprise.
“Please give commands.” it said.
“Who’s there?” said John loudly. “Who’s speaking?” he called out again.
“Visionlight loading…” answered the voice. “…Personal view initiated.”
A bright light began to glow from one of the tile squares on the floor in front of John and Sarah. As fast as the door had risen into the ceiling, the form of a man appeared to rise from the square tile on the floor right in front of them.
John jumped back raising both hands like some sort of karate master. Sarah laughed at him, as she waved her hand out in front of her. It seemed to go right through the figure as if it were a ghost.
“It’s some kind of hologram or projection.” she said. She was startled only when the man seemed to turn his head and look directly at her.
“Pretty life-like projection.” said John laughing at her expression.
The voice that seemed to be everywhere a minute ago now seemed to come directly from the man in front of them. “I am Ayden.” said the man.
John noticed that this angelic figure was a little bit skinnier and taller than he was. He appeared to be in his late 20’s or early 30’s although his face looked very distinguished as if he were much older. He had long blond wavy hair that fell over his shoulders, his face was clean shaven and his skin was incredibly smooth and pale.
He had eyes that seemed larger and farther apart than they should be and they were shaped like sideways teardrops. They were a light shade of grey and appeared as if they were metallic. When they moved back and forth, John could see waives in them as if they were filled with mercury.
He was wearing a long white robe that went all the way to the floor and in his right hand was a book that would have closely resembled the scrolls if they were all bound together.
“Hi!” said Sarah with an excited voice, “I’m Sarah, and this is Johnny”
“Umm just John!” said John quickly, in a shy tone.
“Hello Sarah and Just John.” Ayden replied.
“No my name is…Ah never mind!” exclaimed John. “Is This Tamarac? Is this the doorway to the city?”
“I am afraid not!” answered Ayden. “We are now standing in the central substation, Delvin-One.”
“Are you the same Ayden who wrote these scrolls?” asked John, holding up the scrolls he had removed from his bag.
“I am a cyntell generated representation of Ayden, last of the White Agodahns.” he explained. “I was left here to offer guidance. Although I am an accurate representation of Ayden, I am not him, and my cyntell core is limited. I am only capable of responses from data that is saved in my core. I do have the ability to learn and I can keep a record for future recall.”
“So… that’s a no then.” said Sarah with a chuckle. “You could’ve just said that.” she added.
“What is the purpose of this substation?” asked John. “And how do we get out of here?”
“Delvin-One is the main substation in the Aquarian grid. It is the central hub for all power and water.” answered Ayden.
“Where does the water come from?” asked Sara
“It comes from the Almatore, close to the center of the planet. The Almatore is where all life on the planet is believed to have begun. The Grid was constructed in the twelfth turon, in the 19th generation and 33rd rotation by the Delvin Compania.”
“What is the Delvin Compania?” asked John.
“The Delvins, were the first Compania to develop technology capable of digging down and reaching the Almatore. In the 98th rotation, in the same generation, the Delvin Compania became the most powerful political entity in our history. They formed alliances with governments from all across our world. Would you like to hear more?” asked Ayden.
“Not now,” said John, “just show us the way out to the surface.”
“I do not have access to a current floor plan.” said Ayden, in a non-emotional tone.
“Well how about access to a non-current one?” Sarah asked impatiently.
“The cyntell’s sensors indicate that all previous points of entry and exit have been blocked.” he answered.
“This is getting us nowhere!” said John with frustration. “Do you have any suggestions at all about how we can get to the surface?” he asked.
“I cannot access that information.” Ayden replied.
“What can you do?” John asked rhetorically.
“I can add my program to your cyntell handheld device.” said Ayden in a smug, almost boastful tone.
“What handheld device?” asked John?
Ayden pointed at the scrolls in John’s hand and then touched the book that was in his own.
“Connecting.” he said. His projected image began to blink and sort of sputter a bit, then completely disappeared as fast as it had appeared.
“Great! Ya broke it!” said Sarah, giving John a light punch to his shoulder and rolling her eyes at him.
“I didn’t do anything.” said John. “Guess we’ll just have to find our own way out.” he said, putting his hands against the walls as if looking for a secret passage.
“I’ve looked all over,” said Sarah. “I can’t find any other tunnels or doors that lead out ’a here.”
John could hear the desperation in her voice. “We’re gonna be okay.” he said touching her hand. “We are safe here for now. Let’s just try and get some rest while we have some shelter and we can try again in a little while.”
“There’s something I don’t understand about all this.” said Sarah.
“Only one thing?” John quickly replied with a hint of sarcasm.
“Very funny Johnny, ha ha. No, not just one. The thing that’s been drive’n me nuts since we crashed, is that I think we landed somewhere in the Mt. Baker National Forest. There must’ve been hunters or campers, or at the very least hikers that have come through these mountains. So how come nobody’s found the aqueduct or this place before now?”
“Well,” said John, “if that’s where we crashed, then I think that the National Forest has something like a million plus acres in it. Something like 1.3 million actually, that’s about 2000 square miles of harsh terrain, heavy forestry and a damn long walk if you ask me,” he said with a smile. “I can’t imagine people from even this century, physically touching every inch of this mountain, maybe even for hundreds of years. There are still thousands of airplane wrecks in the US that have never been found, hundreds probably right here in Washington.”
“Great, thanks for the encouragement.” said Sarah shaking her head, and lightly slapping the palm of her hand to her forehead in dissuasion.
“You asked!” exclaimed John. “But listen, we will make it home, I promise. And I never make a promise I don’t intend to keep.”
She knelt down and kissed him on his cheek, “I know Johnny, thank you.” she said softly.