The Alien Artifact 7

by V Bertolaccini

  After he recalled the next set of stairs he was sure he could find the toilet somewhere! Yet the place was far larger than he had estimated, as he had not properly seen it at the outside.

  Eventually he found stairs, which looked as they were for the staff, and he followed the instructions and turned left and he became worried about being lost and ruining the night wandering around there, and perhaps collapsing in a drunken mess and spending the night there, and he lost his temper, and saw a distant figure like the usherette away along a corridor and shouted at her calling her an old hag.

  Eventually he found his way back to the stairs, which he confirmed were the same ones, and he followed her instructions and turned left but got lost again and arrived at a dark place, just below the roof of the building, and realized it was where the staff did the toilet and he managed to relieve himself in complete darkness as he listened to the audience roaring away in the distance below, and realized that they were cheering a famous performer and rushed back to the stairs, the show, and to his seat!

  When he arrived back he was tired and breathless and could not believe that they never had a proper toilet available.

  The others hardly noticed him and seemed far more excited and louder than when he had left, and he was disappointed at missing the action, and he started asking them what had happened.

  “You missed the best bit!” Simpson announced, laughing cheerfully, watching the now empty stage, imaging what had happened was still there.

  Cameron finally had to ask him what he had missed and sat wondering what could have happened and if he should come back the next night to watch it.

  Simpson downed his drink, and to his horror told him, “While you were away some guy did the toilet all over the orchestra from somewhere up on the roof!”

  Chapter 12

  The Treasure Hunt

  Cameron could hardly believe the events of the past weeks as they were astounding and the fact that they were once again on the trail of the treasure and had returned to the well.

  The last shreds of sunlight vanished beneath the wood, below the horizon, with a deep black night engulfing them, and Cameron studied his surroundings trying to see what he was doing in the darkness and fitted the harness on, getting ready to go down the well, and a car raced passed on Floors Road and its bright headlights illuminated the whole wood and them, showing him how easy it was to see them.

  The well had been covered over with something else and the four of them had uncovered it! It was now like they were doing something they should not but all they were doing was climbing down an old well and looking for something and he despised the darkness there as he was sure a bad accident could occur. He had already had some accidents there already!

  In the well the darkness would be the same with the torches!

  Why did they insist that there was something there? Why did they insist he had been the main person that had thought there had been evidence? It was an incredible situation! He was trying to argue that there was nothing there and he had been the one they insisted had the evidence and had convinced them that there was something buried away there, and they still refused to say anything and back up what had happened.

  The wood looked different somehow, even though the darkness altered it greatly, and he was sure someone had altered something else there for some reason, but he was determined and it made little difference.

  He considered their search for the lion and tried to search for it in the dark landscape, realizing that lions did come out at night, and was amazed that his senses started increasing, which he was sure was his body gaining heightened awareness to the potential dangers, but he started hearing and seeing things more powerfully than he had ever done before, and could recall, even though he had lost a lot of memory, and he saw a rabbit at a great distance away as though his sight had been magnified like binoculars.

  It was also as though he could see in infrared and he watched the rabbit move from hiding place to hiding place, and wondered why they were still even at the location and he was sure that once the army moved they would no longer want to search there for it and that they were on their final attempts at searching.

  Fogler was determined in finding what was there and he was going down with him, instead of Simpson, and Cameron put on a harness and they lowered him into the well.

  As he went down air currents made strange sounds and he wondered if it was the normal sound of them, and he was hearing it in its real form, and he was sure he heard an insect scurrying along a piece of rock, and he listened to Fogler breathing below, now at the bottom of the well, and he sounded annoyed at what he found there and he watched him moving about trying to check things, as though doing it before he arrived below.

  He wondered what was happening to him, and how far his hearing could alter, and if it could alter him into something else, and he wondered if it was a sixth or something else involved as he had seen the rabbit in what appeared as a different form of light.

  The sounds were amazing and the others above started to notice his peculiar reactions, and mentioned it.

  He even wondered what would happen if they remained the way they were, and what the effects would do to him, and he listened to how mind-bending they were! Fogler’s breathing came screaming up through the shaft like a dangerous fury that stunned him, and no matter how he tried to shake it off and contemplate how it could happen it never altered or formed a stable normal recognition and he started not listening, and forcing his hearing to return to normal again.

  Clouds of powdered dirt came up from below, swirling through the beams of light in gusts of air, and he felt heat from the air and smelt burning and realized that Fogler was now lighting a fire below for some reason and he tried to see why.

  He was using pieces of branches and twigs that were covering the area below and Cameron considered if he was getting rid of them to clean away the mess or using the fire for some reason.

  He soon realized that it was both and that he was using it to see properly around him in the darkness below, and he considered if his torch batteries were going flat and if they would only have one torch later on.

  He was sure the well was actually built hundreds of years ago and wondered if there had been no water above at the time, and why it had been made. Perhaps they had not owned any land with water and had to use their own water source.

  He wondered if it was the well’s builders that had put the treasure there, if it existed! There was little on what was there and why they were there. They insisted he was the one that had the information and they expected him to recall what was happening, but what the hell was it and he could not imagine recalling anything. If only he could meet someone or something that he had known that would remind him.

  When he landed beside Fogler at the bottom of the well he suddenly he recalled the map and he watched Fogler absorbed with the fire and searching to fully notice him!

  He recalled all the faint lines on the map, and scribbles, and was sure it was a map but everything was too dim and incomprehensive, but he was starting to think it could have been a form of treasure map! He was sure it was a map of the area and that an mark on it was where they were digging and he or the person that it had belonged to had traced the well to there, and had uncovered the well beneath the ground in the wood.

  He had kept trying to read the writing on it, and had been so unsuccessful that he had not even realized one word on the thing, and he was starting to think it was in another language or an old language used by the person that had made it.

  He had considered having it dated to get who had written it, but he was not sure how to go about doing it yet and was unsure if their dating was accurate, and could give him the wrong time and be off by many years.

  Fogler’s plan was clearly to search where they had not looked or properly looked, and Simpson had given him his information.

  Cameron soon became more interested in the fire and keeping it going, especially for its bright light and warmth it gave out,
and he wondered again what had happened to all the water at the bottom of the well and realized that the underground water supply was either gone or buried below all the mud and boulders.

  He suddenly wondered if the treasure was behind any of the bricks making the surrounding well wall going around him and he started to examine them in detail and even though most had been removed and fitted back in place he was surprised that one part of the wall was covered in a thick layer of dried muck and when he pulled chunks of it away he eventually found a black slab embedded in the dried muck, and that it looked like some form of shiny black stone, measuring a foot by half a foot, and it interested him greatly and he wondered why they had not properly searched the whole wall, and what amazed him most was its accurate flatness and shape, as all the other boulders were chiseled rocks.

  It was perfectly manufactured and he could not realize how it had gotten there, as none of them had believed the makers of the well had manufactured it less than hundreds of years ago.

  The find soon grasped Fogler’s attention and he eventually threw his tool down and rushed over.

  Fogler grasped at it furiously, making him wonder what he was doing! He looked really angry at something and he was sure he now thought it was just a perfect brick, as it seemed too heavy to be hollow!

  When he uncovered all the muck from it he saw his point and that it looked like it had been put there by someone else, and Fogler washed it with some water he had!

  To their surprise it was a corroded metal box, and had not been part of the wall. Cameron was sure it had been on the ground and at one point water had flooded the well and it and the muck had become embedded on the wall.

  He recalled the well wall when he had first been there and that the muck had also been on the other sides of the wall and that it had been cleaned away on the other walls by Simpson.

  Fogler started banging the side of the box against a boulder on the ground and he found their was a hollow sound after all and they both realized it was really something, and Fogler shouted up to the others and gave them a description of what they had found and they started climbing down the rope to see it, and while they waited for their arrival they checked it and tried opening it, and Cameron found a keyhole and proved the metal box was locked.

  Clouds of powdered dirt and stones came crashing down and also swirled about through the well in the torch beams as the two soldiers raced down on the rope, and Cameron held the ropes and allowed them to move down better and wondered if they had made a mistake in giving them the impression that it definitely was something, wondering what the outcome of it all would be, and he considered seeing a specialist on memory loss and its causes.

  Cameron watched them come down and land on the ground and he was amazed that Fogler was already trying to smash open the metal box with different objects, and they all examined it and him at work, and when he stopped and allowed them to see it properly Simpson picked up a hammer and chisel and smashed the top off the box with one blow, and they stood with their mouths open as it opened to reveal muck and stones, and Simpson put a newspaper over the ground and emptied the box and they rummaged through it and found nothing but dried muck and pieces of smashed glass.

  Chapter 13

  The NASA Investigation

  Early the next morning they were taken to where the crash site was, to investigate what was there for the army, where they met officials and scientists from NASA and the US military, and they were to help answer their unanswered questions.

  They were carrying out examinations on what they could find, and removing samples of everything, and had clearly been there some time, as their equipment was all over the site and their large tents surrounded the area.

  What astounded Cameron was that they had clearly found things and a major find and their activity was immense, and they seemed disappointed that it was located there!

  What the hell could it be? Was it a highly confidential airplane, weapon, or rocket, and why were they so interested in getting so much information about it. They clearly were not going to let anything go!

  The faces on the other soldiers with Cameron were considerable and surprising and he knew something was happening!

  Malone could not believe the amount of attention there and made many unsuccessful attempts trying to investigate things and question them.

  It was incredible! It was like being beside something of immense size that was hidden behind something! He could almost feel the gravity off it! Like an immense mountain hidden away behind trees in a wood he could not get what was there and just got scraps of information. Yet he knew they would eventually let something go and that they only had to wait. Malone was getting desperate for answers and was clearly running through ideas to get them, and he could sense it.

  The heat from what had crashed there had been immense and had more of an effect on them than he had realized! It seemed to go far further than any of them had imagined! Things were far different than damage from normal energy sources and they all looked closely in detail for why.

  “What’s going on!” he finally asked an aged scientist, at the edge of the action, and he eyed Cameron up, and studied his face with some astonishment and amusement for some seconds.

  “Well! For starters there was originally a massive energy surge detected here from a satellite? They are still investigating all the information!”

  “What interest has NASA in it?”

  He listened to Cameron’s voice with some surprise and he considered what they had realized.

  “A piece of metal was recently discovered here too, and it was analyzed and is thought to be part of a rocket!”

  “One of your military rockets crashed here?”

  “Wrong! Not ours! They still haven’t detected where it came from! We were brought in to investigate the incident! I’m not fully sure what we’re investigating now!”

  “Who else could have such a rocket?” Cameron asked, confused, considering it. “Could it have been a spy rocket?”

  “A spy rocket!” he gasped back. “Well, it sure as hell isn’t ours! They did a search and investigation of other countries and nobody claimed it!”

  “So it’s a new form of rocket?”

  The scientists laughed at him, with a peculiar expression.

  Cameron went over to where Malone was questioning a leading scientist, where he was sure he was getting some proper information.

  Cameron was sure it had to be one of their rockets, and an experimental rocket or projectile. Yet if it was theirs why were they discovering things that they never knew existed? Yet it could have been a more secretive project that they had not known about, or it belonged to Russia!

  “But we do not fully know what it was!” the scientist moaned to Malone, answering something he has asked earlier.

  “So why such an interest in it?” Malone asked.

  “Interest in it?” he gasped. “Haven’t you heard, that they shot it down ... A powerful military laser shot down the undefined object! They screwed up on where its remains went, and they did not want the story to get out ... It is still confidential! If it had turned out to have belonged to a major country there would have been problems!”

  “So you shot down an undefined object in space, with some form of weapon system, and it came crashing down here!”

  The scientist stared up through a hole in the above trees, where it had to have come through, and at the above sky.

  “So who did it belong to?” Cameron moaned, trying to get some answers to what they were talking about. “You’ve come up with all the abnormalities of the find here and none of it matches another country’s rocket or spacecraft ...!”

  Malone looked at Cameron annoyed, but with pleasure when he saw that the scientist reacted as he wanted.

  “It’s an unidentified flying object!” he replied firmly.

  “Of what origins?” Cameron asked swiftly, before anyone else said anything, and the scientist looked closely at Cameron’s face with some surprise.

&
nbsp; “Of alien origins!” he replied, and his face went blank, as he stood controlling his emotions.

  Malone stood gasping, with his mouth wide open, finally realizing what he was missing!

  “You’ve detected and shot down an alien encounter?”

  “We don’t actually fully know its origins in the universe! It appeared, and our weapon systems detected it and destroyed it!”

  “Appeared from where?”

  “We don’t know! It seemed to emerge in space, accelerating out at an incredible velocity ... For the moment it’ll be classed as an undefined space vehicle!”

  Cameron and Malone realized something simultaneously and that if it was of alien origins that they might have declared war on another world, with a far more advanced species!

  Chapter 14

  The Bar

  People kept buying Cameron drinks in the bar and he could barely even stand, and he was amazed the three soldiers had talked locals into it and he thought he would never make it back to the camp.

  The newspapers one of the soldiers brought in were astonishing and he did not know what to think of the crash, and if he believed it were aliens that were behind it! He was sure that they were covering up what had happened! Why had they told him anyhow? They all seemed to doubt what had happened in different degrees!

  He carefully read the accounts in two newspapers and was surprised that they claimed that they had the definite story and that a giant spy satellite had come crashing down into the wood, and might have been shot down by one of their advanced fighter planes by accident.

  After some thought he thought they had shot down something thinking it belonged to someone such as Russia, but he no longer thought it was of alien origins and was some form of advanced technology that was part of some confidential project.