The Thrones of Eden 3 (Eden)

by Rick Jones

  Demir seemed to reel in the shock, his eyes growing detached and unfocused, his surroundings wavering as if seeing the world through a curtain veil of a waterfall. Images became warped and twisted in a funhouse sort of way. And the Sentinel appeared more pronounced in his vision. It looked taller, wider, its teeth more pointed in a feral way. But Demir knew that his mind was playing chaos with his sight.

  The humming of the energy sphere grew louder as he backed up to its position. He could feel its power grazing against his skin as prickles of electrical charges, his entire backside now awash with the pins-and-needles effect.

  The Sentinel could see that the man was wasted as he continued to bleed out. So it moved slowly forward relishing the moment of the potential kill.

  It raised its halberd and readied it for a horizontal strike, wanting to cleave the much smaller man at the midsection—to see the man evenly parted.

  Demir saw the Sentinel raise the weapon, knew what it wanted to do to him on some subliminal level.

  Come on, he thought. One good swing of the axe.

  Demir dropped his knife, the action telling the Sentinel that he was ready.

  With an arcing and level strike, the blade came around in a perfect semi-circle as a blinding revolution—swift and clean.

  But it didn’t strike Demir as he ducked beneath its cut.

  The curve of the axe-head struck the sphere, the edge of the blade piercing and slicing through the orb with ease. Immediately blue charges of lightning began to emanate from the globe and discharge to all corners of the chamber, the endpoints of the bolts striking and destroying everything they touched. The impact points of the lightning strikes took out chunks of stone walls and smashed divots into the floor.

  And then the sphere began to go crazy and unmanageable. The pearlescent light grew to indescribable colors that were dark and harsh and caustic looking. The air became charged with the smell of electricity as the bolts extended to the furthest reaches of the room, annihilating anything in its circumferential path, including the ceiling, floor and walls.

  Chunks of stone and composite went airborne, the destruction beginning to weaken the structure as the lighting strikes assailed the area without mercy.

  Alnitak was falling.

  The Sentinel dropped the lightning rod of the halberd and immediately realized its folly. In its dire to commit to the kill of the humankind it had become careless. And in doing so, Alnitak was crumbling like a house of cards in the course of a strong wind.

  Blue bolts shot out from the sphere that was shrinking by the inches, its energy becoming depleted.

  And then a lightning charge whose bolt was as thick as a fire hose struck the Sentinel. The punch of the strike was so hard and so violent that the Sentinel was obliterated as its body exploded outward in a splash of red and white and gray, the bits and pieces of its remains no larger than silver dollars.

  Demir backed up along the floor as the tips and points of the electric bolts scored all around him, tearing up chunks of floor.

  One bolt struck a point between his legs, missing his groin by inches. Other bolts struck similarly close—so close that he could feel the heat of their strikes graze his skin.

  When he looked up he noted that the sphere was beginning to glow and dim with the unsteady beat of an ailing heart. Its color was sickening—dark and rancid. And with every beat, with every discharge of lightning, the sphere was growing smaller.

  Demir could only smile as the sphere finally sent out its final burst, a blinding light that suddenly expanded like a supernova on the cusp of its finality, and went off in the ultimate explosion.

  Demir was no more.

  #

  The amniotic fluid within the stasis bins of the Second Generation began to bubble and boil, the temperature increasing to a magnificent level of heat.

  The eyes of thousands opened in unison, all in panic as the fluid within the chamber began to boil strips of flesh from bone, the heat driving the beings to frenzy as they clawed at the sides of their chambers. Some pulled out their tubing, causing them to drown within moments as burning liquid scalded their lungs.

  Flesh began to peel off, eyes imploded within sockets, and their bodies stewed as they floated in boiling fluid. Within less than two minutes the Second Generation was entirely gone, their life forces depleted.

  And then the world began to disintegrate as the temple of Alnitak began to cave and crumble.

  #

  The floor beneath them rippled like the crest of a wave and the walls shuddered. Suddenly chips of stone and chunks of black silica began to fall from walls that were fracturing, the fissures racing quickly along the floor, ceiling and walls in record time.

  They all heard the explosion. But no one knew that Alnitak was exhaling its final breath.

  Alyssa fell to the floor as Savage and Hillary lost their balance.

  “What happened?” she asked.

  Savage’s answer was to hold his hand out to aid her back to her feet. So she took it. And having been driven by the notion to survive, the remaining three ran up the incline toward the temple’s cap.

  “And what do we do when we get to the top?” Hillary asked Savage. “We’re still buried beneath the desert floor!”

  The walls behind them began to enfold and crumble. And the floors began to break and rise upward as if something from underneath was trying to punch through to the surface.

  They ran.

  But the decimation of Alnitak was catching up.

  “Run faster!” yelled Savage. “We need to run FASTER!”

  The composite of the floor began to buckle and rise as the concussive waves from the explosion below forced the floor in upheaval. Splinters and spikes of flooring shot up like pongee sticks, sharp and wicked. One pike missed Hillary by inches. Another, however, grazed Alyssa and sliced her elbow, tearing a four-inch rip along her flesh.

  “FASTER!”

  Ancient stones bearing cuneiform writings cracked, crumbled and fell forward, the stones beginning to clutter their pathway topside.

  We’re not going to make it, Hillary thought. We’re not.

  And then the floor rose and settled—the sudden pitching dropping everyone to their knees.

  Then the roof caved in.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR

  Above Ground, Tent City

  For several hours the people and the media had been watching streamers of smoke rise from the landscape above Mintaka, the raging fires within the temple fueled by the natural oil and oxygen that ran through the architectural tunnels.

  Smoke rises. And the black smoke could be seen from miles in every direction, bringing countless speculations from the media as to what was going on inside the second temple west of Eden.

  Then the earth began to shake, the ground undulating beneath their feet as the tents threatened to buckle against their tethering poles and ropes.

  A few kilometers to the east of the smoke streamers, the dusty landscape appeared to heave and pitch as desert sand blew skyward, ejecting rock and granules in boiling plumes. The ground rippled beneath their feet, the concentric waves of the blast expanding outward with seismic activity that could be measured more than 30 miles away.

  The plain bubbled and rose. And then it imploded, sinking into the earth and leaving behind a massive crater.

  People began to run to the sight.

  #

  When John Hillary opened his eyes he saw a sky that was the color of desert sand. The sun could barely penetrate the floating veil of dust as plumes rolled in slow eddies as he raised a clawed hand upward at the obscured rind of the sun.

  Beside him rocks began to stir. And a hand rose from beneath the depths of debris, reaching, with the rest of the body remaining underneath.

  Hillary reached over and began to rake his fingers furiously at the rock and sand. In moments he was able to uncover the crown of a head, and then a face.

  In a long intake of air John Savage filled his lungs, cloying them with dust, dirt
and wonderful oxygen. After going into an extensive coughing jag to clear his airways, Savage pulled himself free from the dirt.

  Missing, however, was Alyssa.

  She was nowhere to be seen.

  #

  In a small space wedged between two large stones, Alyssa Moore came to.

  The world was impenetrably dark. Yet she knew she was trapped somewhere beneath the earth.

  She reached her hands out and felt the boulders that pinched her into a gap that was no larger than the width of her hips, a very tight squeeze. Above her was a slab of stone that was so flat and smooth that it appeared to have been carved rather than a natural formation. And when she touched it the stone tilted. It was not locked in like the other stones. Dust and dirt began to sift downward the moment the stone shifted, eliciting a bark from her throat. It was like the sands of an hourglass filling the bottom bell.

  She began to pound at the sides, at the walls of stone as panic began to brew.

  She tried to move her legs, only to realize that they were pinched beneath rock and black silica.

  With the flats of her palm she slapped at the surrounding walls and the tilted slab above her, her attempts futile as desert sand rained harder into her makeshift tomb.

  “Help me! Somebody, please HELP ME!”

  The level was steadily creeping up on her, having reached the height of her breasts.

  “SOMEBODY—”

  #

  “—help me.”

  It was distant and hollow. But Savage clearly heard her voice. She was to the right of him, but buried.

  “Help . . . me.”

  Savage’s cloaked body of dust quickly galvanized into action as he moved toward the source. “Alyssa!”

  “John . . . the sand . . .”

  And then her voice disappeared.

  “ALYSSA!”

  John searched diligently until he saw the telltale signs of her soon-to-be crypt. A swirling vortex of sand was moving in a clockwise motion, telling Savage that it was sinking into open space underneath. “Hillary, over here!”

  The two began to dig as one, each man using their clawed hands as their fingers scraped against sharpened stones that ripped open wounds. Neither man was deterred. Neither man gave up or surrendered their quest. And both men would see this through to the end no matter the outcome.

  “Alyssa . . . speak to me!”

  Silence.

  Savage moved as a machine, quick and steady, as he bit back the pain of his damaged hands. Please, God, no! Not when we came so far!

  Hillary struck pay dirt first. There was a slab of stone angled downward. But between the wedge-shaped open he could see Alyssa’s hand rising limply from beneath a cairn of sand and rock. “She’s over here!” he yelled.

  John joined his side. And with team effort they carefully removed the stone slab.

  For a long moment Savage could only stare at the hand that rose out of the earth, at the way it seemed to have beckoned for help a moment before falling lifeless.

  They forced back the sand as traces of blood from open wounds fell and clotted against the sand. When they unmasked her by removing the sand from her face and from her nose and mouth, they could see that she was not breathing.

  Dear God, no!

  Hillary continued to dig, removing the sand from her chest as Savage began to slip into the throes of loss and agony.

  A dark wave swept through him like no other, something that was so painfully cold that it was like an arctic blast snuffing out the flame of a candle and leaving behind the coldest, darkest void imaginable. It had emptied the man within the beat of a heart the moment he realized that Alyssa Moore was dead.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE

  She did not see a tunnel of bright light. Nor did she see the world of Loving Spirits.

  But she did hear voices.

  They sounded hollow and distant. And they spoke in tongues that were not her own.

  Her heart had stopped beating for nearly two minutes. But it was by the aid of John Savage who dragged her from darkness with mouth-to-mouth resuscitation and brought her to the light beneath a desert sun.

  For a long moment she coughed and hacked while her lungs simultaneously responded by sucking in air that had been lost to her, the sounds coming in rasps and horrible wheezes.

  Then her eyes began to focus, her pupils beginning to contract and fixate until they settled along the face of John Savage. His features were dust laden and marred by tear streaks that ran along his cheeks, the man smiling, the void now gone and the flame once again alight.

  “Alyssa?” To her ears his voice sounded far off.

  She smiled weakly.

  Then she raised her fingers softly to his cheeks and against the tear-stained trails. “Were you crying?”

  John reared back slightly and drew a forearm across his dusty face, cleaning it. “No . . . of course not.”

  Her smiled blossomed. “You liar.” Her hand fell gently against her side, the woman too weak to hold it up any longer. “You’re not as tough as you think you are, are you?”

  Savage quickly turned to Hillary, who was smiling.

  “What?” Savage asked him. “I wasn’t crying.”

  Hillary nodded. “OK. Whatever.”

  “I wasn’t.”

  At that moment shadows appeared at the crater’s rim, images of people from Tent City who were silhouetted against a clearing sky and flourishing sun.

  The dust was beginning to settle.

  But it would take better than two hours to extricate Alyssa from the crater since her legs had been pinned and broken beneath stones that once served to protect the halls of Alnitak.

  And what had been the cradle of the Second Generation was nothing more than rubble—the kings and queens of a new age gone.

  And the thrones of Eden were no more.

  EPILOGUE

  Kahramanmaras Sutcu Imam University Hospital

  Southeast Turkey

  “This is the second time you’ve been here in the last year. You must like this place,” said Savage, who smiled down at Alyssa as she lay in bed with both legs in casts that were elevated by wires and pulleys. “Doctor says you’ll be fine in a few months. And after therapy you’ll be at one-hundred percent with no loss or function in either leg.”

  As naturally beautiful as Alyssa Moore was, she looked less than appreciable in appearance as she lay in bed. Her face was nicked and band-aided, and the hairs on her head were in wild twists. Her lips remained scaly and chapped with open nicks from dryness. “That’s nice,” she said. But there was a certain distance to her tone, a detachment.

  John Savage reached forward and grabbed her hand. “Why didn’t you tell me about the baby?” he asked her.

  She enfolded her hands over his. “I just wanted to be sure,” she told him. “I didn’t want to go by the results of a test kit.”

  “Well you are. And the baby’s fine.”

  She smiled. It was a quick flash before it disappeared.

  Then: “What?” he asked.

  “You saw the images in Alnitak,” she told him. “You saw why we have been a colossal failure as a race of beings.”

  “The threat is gone, Alyssa.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “What do you mean?”

  She hesitated for a brief moment before speaking. “Do you remember when I asked it ‘how’ we would end?”

  “Yeah, and it played the same loop over again—a malfunction that simply responded by voice command.”

  “What if that wasn’t the case?” she told him. “What if it was the answer?”

  Savage cocked his head, not grasping the meaning of what she was conveying.

  “What if the answer was somehow—in some way—telling us that mankind will eventually destroy itself in the end. And that something will happen between the equinoxes in the year 2021, when the Mintaka calendar ends, either by warfare—nuclear, chemical or otherwise—or by some other means. But in the end we would be responsible for
our own demise and just another scene to be added to what we saw play out in Alnitak.”

  He patted her hand. “It was aged technology that had a hitch. That’s all it was. It was a malfunction that was looping and showing the same events over and over again.”

  “No,” she stated with conviction. “We have been an abysmal failure as a race and those things inside Alnitak were just waiting to rise when we expired.”

  “They’re gone, Alyssa. Every single one of them. There is no Second Generation. The pyramid imploded and there’s nothing left except Mintaka, which is burning.” There was a slight hesitation on his part, and then forlornly: “Eden is gone.”

  She turned her eyes ceilingward. “I can’t buy that,” she said. “Something is going to happen in less than ten years in which man will erase himself from this planet.” She shifted her eyes to Savage, who looked at her with endearment. “There were only—what, a few thousand of Second Generations inside Alnitak?”

  “Roughly.”

  “That wouldn’t be enough of a genetic pool of diversity to sustain life for any length of time—almost like inbreeding after a while, don’t you think?”

  “I’m not getting your point.”

  “Lack of diversity,” she said. “There wouldn’t be enough of a genetic difference in the gene pool to further a strong stock of humankind over time. After a while the genetic structure and makeup would be the same, causing the inbreeding effect that would ultimately reduce strength and stability in a living structure, causing eventual deformities and widespread disease. Ask Hillary. He’ll tell you the same thing.”

  “I doubt Hillary can answer since he took the first train out of Ankara. I think he’s had enough adventure for awhile.”

  “You don’t understand,” she told him urgency. “Eden was not meant to be found, agreed?”

  Savage nodded.

  “Only by the determination of my father did he find something that had been buried for millenniums.” Her eyes widened. “Don’t you see,” she told him. “Eden was a satellite station harboring one set of this new breed of humankind. One . . . set! The diversity will come in time because there are other satellite stations out there with the Second Generation waiting in hibernation. The diversity is there. It’s just scattered throughout the planet, each station hidden.”