The Alien Orb

by V Bertolaccini

  “That’s very interesting” Mitchell answered firmly.

  Mitchell began talking to someone on his communicator, and asked Merton, “What form does this multidimensional take in this dimension, and as a whole through dimensions? And what do you call it, if you had to give it some form of identification?”

  “I am not sure I can answer all that yet – as it is through dimensions – and our equipment has not been adapted for that yet – and has different energy states in them all. It is more an entity! We have not fully realized what it is! It is in what is like the depths of space, at the most different region from our environment as it can get. So I doubt I can properly compare it at the moment! We have so little, and know so little about its identity ...”

  “And they may not fully believe you?” Mitchell moaned, as he listened to the response from the military control center. “And they want to know if we can properly back up the claims you made already?”

  “Exactly! They will need to know everything that they can about it – as they will need to destroy it!”

  “We need as much as possible in detecting it and capturing it – if we cannot destroy it! And they can throw it back out there in space or something, where it belongs!”

  Chapter 25

  The Treasure Expedition

  Bryson and Pendleton arrived at a room at the virtually unexplored ground floor, without anyone seeing them going there. It was where the bottom of the second tunnel was, and came to an end, which Pendleton occasionally gasped at.

  Bryson still could not believe that they were still coming across highly potential unexplored spots, where the treasure could be buried away.

  After a great deal of thought and information from the scans of the tunnel Bryson started realizing that William Randall could have buried it at the bottom of the tunnel, with the thing in it to scare away anyone going there. Pendleton’s memory had returned and he insisted that the other two treasure hunters with him had insisted that it was there and that it was buried away at the bottom.

  The room was an ordinary castle room, which had clearly not been entered by anyone for a long time by the webs covering it everywhere, and he also noticed that no footprints were on the dust on the carpet.

  Bryson could not get why the others never thought the treasure had been there on the ground floor, and neither could Pendleton.

  The tunnel had been there at the exact location they had traced it to, and Pendleton was sure that they would have found the treasure there and he was sure that they had only entered the tunnel at the top floor as it had looked the best place!

  The wall grabbed their attention as its thickness was the same as the other rooms the tunnels were in.

  The archaeologists had given up scanning walls and had found nothing with it. Their scans were not good and their scans of the other tunnel had shown little! Their equipment needed to be improved!

  Bryson repeatedly thumped his hand hard against the wall, intensely listening for anything, while he slowly moved across it.

  Bryson easily located the tunnel behind the wall but instead of finding the boulders at the spot he discovered something larger, and peeled away the wallpaper with Pendleton until they revealed what looked like a solid block of stone, the size of a doorway, surrounded by castle boulders.

  Bryson stood amazed at how he and so many others could have missed such a thing! How could they have found the tunnel in the library and not even bothered going to the bottom of it? It even made him gasp as he wondered if they had avoided going there for a reason? The thing up there was hideous, even if they were now thinking of it as a normal life form trying to escape from its confines, and having advanced intelligence.

  He was sure the ancient historical castle had many hidden secrets and treasures buried away and wondered if they might find anything else there.

  At first he thought that he would have to force the slab in or destroy it completely but when he pushed it he saw it was a door, made of stone, and he carefully shifted the awkward mass of stone in, in stages, into the wall, as Pendleton stayed ready to help.

  They were both obsessed and Bryson had to push it further with all his weight and strength, as it became stuck with dirt and stone around its edges, and his clambering resumed until he had it out of the way and they could enter the tunnel.

  His eyes occasionally fell on the mess under him with little interest! The thick layer of stone and dust fragments were scattered across the ground and he started brushing it away with his shoe to see what was below, and found more castle stones!

  He turned on his light and looked further, and he wondered if the scientists working above would detect their presence there, with amusement.

  Bryson was sure that the thing above only reacted to things at certain distances, but he was unsure about them being below it!

  Yet why did it not work through the walls? He had been in the rooms behind the wall with the other scientists and nothing occurred there!

  He turned the light upwards and examined the tunnel going upwards. What was it? What was there? He had put together everything that they had found and he now could barely believe most of it! Was there something else there hiding itself?

  He shone the powerful light straight up the tunnel, where he saw the tunnel going up to the castle roof, and as his sight adjusted to it he saw nothing and started to wonder what it was built for?

  Yet it seemed too large to be a chimney and there was no trace of soot or anything that would surely be there, even if they had it cleaned. Although there was the chance that nobody had really used it and that any marks were hidden now.

  His breathing echoed into it, and its coldness made clouds of steam come out of his mouth going up into it.

  Suddenly sounds started emerging above and he wondered if he had activated it!

  They started sounding mind-bending and started screaming through the shaft until they had a fury that stunned him, with some sounding like screams and others like wailing spirits, and he wondered if there were other dangers there at the bottom that were not at the top? Could the thing come down and escape? And get them outside the tunnel?

  Clouds of powdered dirt and stone fell about at different points around boulders above as though the tunnel were being shaken by an earthquake. Dust swirled through his beam of light as he wondered where the treasure would be buried away? And he sheltered it going into his eyes.

  He imagined Pendleton and the other two treasure hunters there years before, during the Second World War, hanging on their ropes, just over the disturbance, which he tried to locate.

  He watched what was happening carefully, which he had not been able to do when he had been in the other tunnel on the steps, surrounded in darkness, or when he was above sticking his head in the tunnel, and he wondered how dangerous it really was and if he was going to be killed by it.

  He lost his balance and grabbed hold of part of a castle boulder he was resting against behind him and it came away in his hand, and he glimpsed its dark shape and felt it wondering what it was, and he finally shined the light over it and saw something that resembled a piece of wood from the building of the castle.

  He then realized some sounds were now not emerging from lower down than they had been and he saw that something was coming downwards, and he thought that he heard one emerge just above him and he listened intensely with confusion.

  Sounds were manifesting everywhere as though there were invisible unidentifiable things surrounding there, and strange glowing and swirling forces seemed to form in the blackness.

  While he tried to see what was going on at an area he noticed that light was moving downwards and he fixed his eyes onto a strange orb of light floating down, and it all swiftly vanished, and he stood wondering what had happened to it all?

  Bryson turned sensing something was in the room and saw William standing blankly staring at him, beside Pendleton, and Bryson walked into the room and shut the stone doorway, blocking the entrance to the tunnel, and saw William and Pendl
eton staring at the thing that he had in his hand, which he had thought had been a discarded piece wood from the building of the castle, and he realized that it was an ancient book.

  Chapter 26

  The Diary

  The page that the alien had given Bryson, when it had died in the wood, fitted into the diary and confirmed it was authentic!

  When he started reading it William’s appearance at the tunnel haunted his thoughts, making him wonder why he was there? What had the entity put him there for?

  It was as though he should not be there! He could not tell them or explain how he knew they had been there at the tunnel. Only that he had to go there, and Bryson was amazed at the way the thing in the tunnel had vanished when he had appeared.

  What was the connection? If the thing there had made him, what did it want him to do? It clearly took control of him at times and used him to do things!

  The ancient book was incredible and he had known it was something by the way William had reacted and had waited for him to read it, and Bryson had been more than fascinated when he had read it and found it was William Randall’s diary! He had actually found William Randall’s diary! It had been left upright in a gap in the wall, where it had resembled part of the wall, with a withered cover that resembled a dirt covered stone.

  It felt like he had been waiting all his life to find it and that everything else had been the build up to it. What it contained he could not even guess, and he guarded it greatly, and he did not want to show it to anyone until he had ruthlessly checked it.

  He soon realized that it was not a normal diary and that it had strange things scribbled through it, with a quill pen, and he conjured up images of his ancestor wearing ancient clothes at a desk writing it.

  The more he read it the more important it became and the less he thought of his ancestor writing it, and it even gave him details of the hidden treasure.

  There was no doubt about it the book explained occurrences at the castle, and he wondered what his thoughts of the castle had been at that time in history.

  At times it was like the whole castle was something else – created for some function that he could not even imagine – which went beyond his understanding.

  As he read it he repeatedly wondered what the people in the past would have given for the book that he had in front of him, and what the aliens, who had built the tunnels in the wood, would have given for it?

  He recalled all the accounts and things that he had heard!

  What had been the truth about the stories that had said something had happened that had killed them all? So if it had been true what had happened and how had the entity ended up in the tunnel and in the other tunnel? Why had it not moved away into the other dimensions? What was keeping it there? Surely there had to be something there that they were missing? Perhaps it was disguised as something or was hidden away? Such advanced technology could achieve virtually anything and it could be something that he had not even considered possible?

  He had always wanted to explore and discover something new of value and greatness, and even be remembered in history!

  What interested and alarmed them was why it was hidden in such a place and had created such occurrences? What was it they were dealing with anyway? Why was it in such a far out place?

  Something of unfathomable unidentifiable supernatural nature sounded as though it were there trapped in some form of magnetic or energy field, trapped and trying to free itself from something, ultimately escaping to another location of liberty, and he imagining some form of spirit trapped there for centuries.

  Bryson again started to realize the implications of the find and that they might check what was there someday, and that he better start finding information about it.

  The book started by stating facts that were given in the accounts that Bryson had read and that the origins of the entity had occurred in 1620 when fishermen at a fishing village had witnessed its materialization, and that it had appeared over the morning mist over the sea as a bright light of immense magnitude, and that everybody that had witnessed it had realized that it had been something of great power and intelligence, and that they had seen it landing and that they had followed it to where it had crashed.

  William Randall had thought he had seen everything until he had been shown it by the fishermen and it had fascinated him, and though he had been a scientist of that time he believed in forms of magic and witchcraft, especially after his encounter with the first transcendent and its artifact at the first castle, and the entity had powers going beyond anything he had seen.

  Something had damaged it before it had crashed and it had continually altered, and had been made of energy, and altered from something and had been trying to adapt to something and had been trapped in something invisible to them.

  At one point they had believed it would vanish completely from existence but it had been later perceived that it had entered some form of damaged or dormant state, surely exhausted of energy from either its extraordinary manifestation, impact with the world, or it not having existed in their form of existence.

  The original transcendent at the first castle had died before he had taken it to the castle, where it had slowly altered into something that they could not understand, and they had tried to use its magic.

  They had found some ways of communicating with it when it had created the second William Randall and they had used it to build the second castle with its powers.

  Through the second William Randall they had learned that it had traced the original transcendent and artifact there into this universe, and it had occasionally attempted to mimic it and make contact with it and analyze it. It had been unable to repair itself and had been trapped and could not fully achieve its objective and fully understand.

  At the second castle they had tried to use it for magical purposes, and it had foreseen some future occurrences, but had unsuccessfully tried to accumulate its powers to use themselves.

  They had used it to create castle defenses when they had been threatened with annihilation by an army, which they had not been able to do properly, and had improvised and as a result of it had turned the castle into what it was, which had killed all of the people there, except William Randall who had been at the other castle when it had happened, and he had found out about it later when he had gone there, and it had entered a dormant state.

  The second William Randall had been killed there and they had put him in the tomb at the second castle.

  They had not been able to deactivate it and had split it into two parts to weaken its powers and they had put them into the two ventilation shafts.

  Bryson finished the diary realizing that it had left the deadliest menace in the world at the castle and he tried to work out how they could possibly approach it without being killed, to return it to where it had originated!

  Chapter 27

  The Voyage Beyond the Cosmos

  For a moment Bryson sensed a weird sensation as though something had happened and something else was going to happen!

  The scientists were calibrating their equipment in the room at the second tunnel and Bryson watched them gasp, and even Mitchell stood dazed, as they realized what was going to happen. It was absurdly dangerous beyond anything that Bryson could realize and he had not heard of anything like it being done before.

  William had been found to be able to communicate properly with the entity in the second tunnel at a close distance, and they had used it locate the two parts of the entity in the ventilation shafts, which had been discovered to be solid matter.

  They had used William to stop it from attacking or throwing them into gateways going beyond the universe and they found that they were small black slabs like shiny black stone, measuring three feet by three feet with a thickness of half a foot, which were fitted above the entrances into the tunnels, disguised as the castle stones there.

  It had surprised Bryson that William Randall had persuaded the entity to make itself into solid matter! Bryson had been able t
o touch them without being killed or thrown out of space and time into some other world, and the scientists found a way of joining them together by using the entity and William and it had formed into a rectangle black alien artifact identical to the rectangle transparent black shape that he had visualized in the second tunnel, when it had tried to make contact with him.

  They had found ways to increase the communications between William and the entity by using specially designed equipment, connected to the alien artifact.

  William was in a seat where he had objects covering his head connected to equipment that monitored him and his thoughts and transmitted his thoughts to the alien artifact.

  Bryson realized that they had been correct in informing the entity that the other transcendent and its alien artifact at the other castle no longer existed, which it had been stuck there trying to make contact with, and it had told them that it had detected it was. It had been designed to meet it and destroy it if it was a danger to it or its creators – and it had been unable to do it as it had been damaged by having its energy source damaged, which had happened so fast that it had not realized what had happened.

  They had all watched it activating their equipment – which they had taught William how to use and how it worked.

  All the scientists had stood back as it burst into life – using massive amounts of energy fed to it through attached cables – with the sheer energy making the castle about them vibrate and lurch!

  Even though it was a great deal of energy to them it was little to the entity – but enough to allow it to do what they had told it to do – and to open a gateway through time to itself before it had entered this universe, just before it had made its appearance on this world where it had failed to get enough energy.