Lost Scrolls of the Holy Beclay (Special Edition) (J. K. Haugen's Lost Scrolls Series Book 1)

by J. K. Haugen

  “Ok…I guess.” said Sarah, “God I hope you’re right about this.”

  They each sat down into the water and got into position. The water didn’t seem cold to John, in fact it was really pretty nice. “Ready?” he asked.

  “Not really,” said Sarah squeezing John as hard as she could. “Ok… ok ready to go!” she yelled. They both leaned back and John let go of the tubule’s wall.

  He was hoping to himself that they had picked the right tube. That it not only would be a short trip, but that his hunch about the water was correct, “This is one time I really want to be a know-it-all.” he thought.

  As their faces were submerged Sarah fought the impulse to plug her nose as she did every time she swam underwater as a kid. She wasn’t about to let go of John and take the chance that she might lose him.

  John reached down with both arms and wrapped them tight around her legs. He could feel the force of the water pushing them faster and faster. “We must be moving upwards of a hundred miles per hour.” he thought.

  They zoomed through the tubes, left and right sometimes seeming to go around in circles. Then up and back down again. He could feel himself getting lighter. They were traveling so fast that their bodies were no longer touching the bottom of the tube. It was like they were floating.

  Soon they began to lose all sense of direction and the feel of gravity itself. It almost felt like they were standing still and that it was the tube that was moving by them. John let go of Sarah’s legs and turned his body over so he could see her. The trip was taking a long time. He didn’t know now, if they would be able to last much longer under the water. It seemed like this crazy wild river’s ride would never end. All he thought of doing was looking into her eyes one last time before the end came.

  She looked back at him and her eyes seemed to glow along with the sides of the tube, and she was smiling back at him. As if to tell him that there was no place on earth she would rather be. She reached out her hand and touched his face and her eyes began to close for what seemed to be the last time.

  John began to panic, as he felt his lungs beginning to burn. He began to use his hands and feet, flailing his body about wildly and slamming them up against the sides of the tubes franticly trying to find a way out. He was kicking the sides with his feet but the harder he pushed the more his body would just spin around in the water.

  He could not get any leverage to bust through the side. As he exhausted any energy he may have had left, beating on the glass-like surface, his body began to relax and his mind started to wonder. He finally gave up fighting and came to the realization that this really was the end.

  He couldn’t hold his breath any longer and felt himself getting tired and starting to lose consciousness. He exhaled every last molecule of air he had left in his lungs. He was praying that when his body automatically inhaled, that his death would come quickly. He hoped that he would just go to sleep and then that would be that.

  He was so tired of fighting. As his eyes began to close he could feel his arms relax and begin to float back above his head. Just then he felt a hand grabbing onto his and squeezing. It startled John and he gasped. His lungs filled with water. He turned his body over and looked. It was Sarah, and she was alive! He couldn’t believe it, he had just watched her die, and now, she was about to watch him die. “Breathe!” she yelled at him, “Breathe…you can breathe!!”

  John’s eyes opened wide and he took a deep breath. His lungs stopped burning and he coughed a little and began to breathe normally as if they were on the surface. He could feel the water begin running through his veins. His entire body began feeling exuberant and energized. He felt the cold liquid enter each and every one of his muscles. When it reached his heart he felt a rush of energy move through his entire body with every heartbeat.

  “Oh my God, I feel great!” he said, laughing out loud. “Woohoo! Wow I can’t believe we’re alive.” he yelled back, with an amazed look on his face. He was still squeezing Sarah’s hand “You need to know something,” he said in a serious voice, “I…”

  “I know,” she said interrupting, “me too!”

  They both looked at each other for a while laughing, then John began to look around. With all the commotion and confusion going on, he had almost completely forgot that they were still zooming along inside a water tunnel at hundreds of mile per hour.

  “Why can we talk? Why can we hear each other?” he said out loud.

  “I’m not sure.” answered Sarah. “It’s not like talking under water in a swimming pool that’s for sure, but I think the bigger question is…why can we breathe?”

  “Maybe this isn’t water at all.” he said, waving his hand out in front of him. “Sure feels like water though.”

  Just then they felt themselves begin to slow down. Their bodies began to touch down again on the bottom face of the tubule. John turned over onto his back and reached around to hold onto Sarah’s legs. “I think this is it” he said to her, “I think were about to get off this ride! Hold On!!!” he yelled.

  Just as quickly as the words fell from his lips, the tunnel opened up and they were flung into a large open space. The feelings of peace and comfort John had felt quickly became panic as he once again felt the full force of gravity.

  He could not control his body as he fell and he was whipped about from one side to the other. They both were in some kind of large cylinder like structure. “Maybe it’s a storage tank of some kind.” he thought.

  The water level began to go down, along with the two of them. It began to spin as if it were some kind of whirlwind. Around and round they went, like being swallowed by the drain of a giant bathtub. Until finally… Boom! …they both touched down with a thud onto the bottom of the tank. The rest of the water quickly drained away through a tiny whole in the floor and they were no longer submerged.

  They began to cough and spit until all the water was completely expelled from their lungs and they were breathing air once again. “Best water slide…Ever!!” said Sarah jokingly. “Can we do it again?”

  John coughed again and shook his head no, as he stood bent over at the waist holding his stomach. “That was so not fun!” he replied. “Did we make it to the surface?” he asked, trying to peer through the glass-like walls of the holding tank.

  “I’m not sure where we are.” she answered.

  John noticed another control panel on the wall of the tank he reached out his right hand and ran it up along the face. There was a sound of escaping gas, like the sound a bus makes as it stops. “Psssss!” a hatch quickly appeared and opened in front of them.

  John let Sarah go first this time, and then quickly followed her out of the tank. As she stepped out onto the floor, lights began to illuminate the room. It was almost as if they were at a stop on the elevated tram in downtown Seattle John thought to himself. “Next stop…Space Needle.” he said aloud with a smile.

  There were railings and turn style like gates and a path that led to a small stairway. The walls were again white and smooth like the walls of the substation had been. There seemed to be pictures on the walls of people doing everyday things. They looked like advertisements of some kind. Only, John couldn’t read the headings or any other text on them. The words didn’t seem to change or translate like the CHD or Ayden could.

  He could see in them, what looked like people shopping and roller skating, even families sitting down for dinner. However, every person in the pictures, even the children, closely resembled Ayden. They weren’t quite human in appearance, but they looked like regular people’s lives depicted in the ads.

  “Incredible,” said John touching his hair and then his clothes, “we’re completely dry! You’d never even know we just took a ride down the Super Loopty-Loop Wild Rivers ride.” he said laughing.

  “This place just keeps getting better and better as we go along!” said Sarah.

  She was walking towards the staircase and as she got closer, she noticed that they weren’t stairs at all. They were more like individ
ual platforms that were floating in place or hovering. She stepped on a platform and almost lost her balance as they all began to move together like a floating escalator.

  “Whoooa!!!” she said laughing. “This is great Johnny, you gotta try it!”

  “I don’t know,” he said, “I think I’ve had enough flying to last me a lifetime, thanks anyway though. Maybe you should quit play’n around. We don’t know where these things go, and I don’t want to lose ya.”

  “Come on Johnny? It’s safe…and fun.” she said. “Look they each have some sort of force field or something like that anyway. It holds you up on your step so you don’t fall.”

  She reached out her hand in front of her, and looking like a mime in an invisible box, she leaned forward. John gasped and quickly leaped to try to catch her fall. Only… she didn’t fall she just looked like she was leaning up against a wall. “Ya see Johnny,” she said laughing at him, “perfectly safe? Come on before I find a way out and leave you down here.”

  “It’s pretty dark up there, and how do you know you can close the field and get off that thing?” John asked, with a bit of fear in his voice.

  “Oh Gee-Wiz Scooby! Do ya need me to fix ya a snack?” she said teasing him.

  “Ha ha,” he said, “ok, I see how ya are, I’m coming.” John watched a few of the platforms rise from the floor. He was trying to find the rhythm of their movement so he could step onto one without falling back off.

  He took a step and was suddenly pulled up into the air, his hands held out for balance, “This is pretty fun!” he thought to himself, but he wasn’t gonna tell Sarah, especially after she had been such a brat to him. As their steps arrived at the top, the force fields dropped and allowed the two of them to safely and easily step off of the platforms.

  “Aden?” John asked aloud, “Are you ok?”

  “Personal view initiated” came the familiar voice from his backpack.

  “Hello,” said Ayden, as his projection appeared in front of them, “How can I help you?”

  “Do you know where we are?” asked John looking around. “Are we close to the surface?”

  “I’m afraid not.” said Ayden.

  “I’M AFRAID NOT!” said Sarah in a low and mocking voice. “Gosh I wish you’d quit say’n that!” she added.

  “I believe we are in the main Delvin transfer station.” said Ayden. “We are close to the Almatore, about 14 malay below the surface.”

  “I don’t understand.” said John. “How far is a malay? And why can we understand each other, but there are still some words that you say, that I just don’t get?”

  “My language was almost never spoken out loud and so there are words that your language just does not have a translation for, I have made as close of a translation as possible for our words, to your spoken sound.”

  “Then how did you communicate?” John asked inquisitively. “Only with writing?”

  “No,” said Ayden with a smile. “We did start out using oral language. However, our minds had evolved over millennia. We came to understand that all people and life in general, are connected in a deep way. We call it Almitay or (Life Wind). Over time using the Almitay, my people developed communication to each other mostly through thought. Not just with each other, but with all Agodah’s creations.”

  “Then why does the CHD have voice commands?” asked John.

  “We used some of the words from our language to access basic functions.” Ayden replied. “However, I added our entire vocabulary to the unit you hold in your hand. I had no way of knowing if the one who found it would be evolved enough to use the Almitay. It was more probable that your people would still have spoken language. So I added it to the CHD’s programming to be sure you could activate it, if the written text was no longer legible.”

  “Okay,” said John. “That makes sense, I guess.”

  “To answer your first question,” continued Ayden, “a Mala is around one thousand, eight hundred paces. And Malay is the plural form of that word.”

  “About a mile then.” said John.

  “We’re 14 miles beneath the surface?” asked Sarah in a frantic voice. “Oh my God, John, we went the wrong way!”

  “Do not worry you can continue on through the city, and it will lead you back out to the surface.” said Ayden with assurance. “You need to find the pages I have left for you first.”

  “What?” John asked. “You knew that that tube would lead us down here didn’t you?”

  “I did not know,” said Ayden, “however, I had hoped that it would.”

  “Shut him off John!” yelled Sarah. “We can’t trust him. I don’t think he’s told us everything.”

  “It’s not a (him) Sarah, it’s a computer,” said John, “but I will turn it off until we figure out exactly what to do with it. End personal view!” he said with clear irritation in his voice, and then Ayden quickly disappeared. “Ok let’s go find a place to sit down and make some kind of plan.” he said.

  They walked a little farther until they came to a doorway leading into what looked like a shopping mall promenade. They seemed to be on the second level of the mall and John noticed a section that was a little like a food court or restaurant. “Let’s sit down over there.” he said, pointing to one of the tables in the corner of the court.

  As they sat down, Sarah looked around in amazement, “Wow, isn’t this someth’n?” she asked, shaking her head.

  “Hey, look at this.” said John looking at the table top in front of them. “It’s some kind of monitor.” There was a screen built directly into the table. It looked to John like it was actually the entire table top.

  There wasn’t any buttons, but again, John knew exactly what to do. He took his hand and laid his palm across the screen. Right away the screen lit up. Images of the outside world were playing on the screen. But neither he nor Sarah could hear anything.

  “Is that the news?” asked Sarah in disbelief. “How is that possible?”

  “Yeah I think so,” answered John, “but I can’t hear anything.”

  “Then turn it up silly.” she said back.

  “I’d like to, ya see the volume anywhere?” he shot back snidely.

  “Accessing audio!” said Ayden’s voice coming from the CHD, “Connecting…”

  “What’s going on Ayden?” asked John. “I turned you off, how did you turn back on by yourself?”

  “You simply turned off personal view.” said Ayden. “My program will always remain in listening mode until needed.”

  “Great,” said Sarah, “you mean we will never be able to talk without you hearing us?”

  “I’m afra…”

  “Yeah we know! I’m afraid not!” interrupted Sarah.

  Within a few seconds they could hear a new voice coming from the CHD. It was the news anchor who was talking on the monitor, “In other news, The Whitehouse said today…”

  “Ayden, what the hell is going on?” asked John again. “How are we getting our news stations all the way down here on your TV?”

  “These sitting locations are tied into the main Delvin Cyntell Communication System or (DCCS). The system picks up any and all radio and light communication signals around the planet, through satellites in orbit.” said Ayden. “And then, it projects those signals to every workstation monitor, like the one you are now sitting at. The signal is also transmitted to all living quarters in the city for personal viewing.” he added.

  “Can you give me more volume?” asked John. “I can’t quite hear it.”

  The volume rose and John began to hear the reporter’s voice more clearly…

  “…A large earthquake has been reported in Virginia today. It shook buildings and left thousands without power in most of Washington DC. It was felt all the way here in New York City, and as far away as Canada, officials say.

  With other large earthquakes in recent months in Japan, Chili, Australia, New Zealand and elsewhere the USGS and the Whitehouse have issued a statement denying any connection between the quakes.
Stating that hundreds of earthquakes happen every day throughout the world and that there is no need for panic.

  A USGS spokeswoman, Christine Newhouse, said that the USGS and other scientists have been keeping a close eye on the larger than average movements of the continental plates shifting, and have determined that they indeed are not any more notable than the movements recorded in the 1980’s.

  There were no immediate deaths reported however North Carolina, Virginia and New York are now preparing for a visit from Hurricane Irene to hit land fall in the next day or so. Irene is now a category 3 hurricane and has had sustained winds of more than 115 MHP. Most east coast cities and much of the coastal regions of New York have been asked to prepare for evacuations…”

  “Holy smoke, evacuating parts of New York!” said John. “That’s millions of people, I’ve never heard of anything like that before, have you?” he said, looking up at Sarah.

  “No never,” she answered, “that’s crazy, but what’s even stranger is that reporter acting like it’s just another normal day, just another storm coming.”

  “It was the same way this summer when we had over two hundred tornado’s touchdown in one week.” said John. “This whole year has brought record breaking storms and earthquakes and it’s like nobody seems to be asking any questions about why all this is happening and all happening together within a few months of each other.”

  “Well, the government’s telling everybody that it’s no big deal and not to worry, so it must not be anything too bad or they would be telling everybody to get prepared, right?” she asked.

  “I don’t know, would they?” John said in a soft voice. “What about all the uprisings around the world, because of corrupt leaders and food shortages, and unemployment?” he continued. “The world economy is about to burst and they haven’t asked us to stock up on supplies, or get prepared in any way for that kind of thing coming to the United States. They said it would never spread from the Middle East over to Europe, but now the whole world seems to be on fire. And yet the government and our media act like it’s just another day in the neighborhood.”