by Alten-Steve
Jones shakes his head and races to the elevator.
Foletta sits in the security lounge, returning to his laptop and his application for the directorship vacancy in Ontario, Canada. The salary is far less than he’s earning in Miami, but the cost of living in Ontario is lower, and severing his ties with Pierre Borgia is necessary for his own mental health.
He continues working on the application for another fifteen minutes, when he hears the rumble.
Foletta saves the file, then walks to the alcove and the fire ladder leading up to the roof. He contemplates the climb, then pulls himself up one rung at a time as the rumbling grows louder.
The painful impact of his right shoulder against the metal hatch forces open the exit. He climbs onto the roof, gazing east.
The seven-story building is far too low and inland to view the Atlantic Ocean, but something large is definitely approaching. His eyes lock onto a high-rise blocking his sight-line, his pulse pounding, the reverberations registering in his bones.
He winces as the high-rise collapses surreally before him, revealing a horizon of surging ocean. He refuses to move, not even when the first concrete-laced droplets of sea strike him in the face, nor when the megatsunami bashes through the streets, foaming as it reaches the asylum, searching for a way in.
It finds nothing.
Foletta smiles as the five-story surge makes an island of his rooftop sanctuary, affording him the best view in Miami.
And then, like a slowly bursting dam, the aged cinder-block structure crumbles along its eastern face and the rooftop fragments, the Atlantic Ocean swallowing the facility beneath him.
Nazca, Peru
The dense brown volcanic cloud blanketing the once-cobalt-blue sky has turned into a raging river of mud, sweeping the hot air balloon and its four frightened occupants to the northeast at a terrifying 125 knots.
“It’s the Rapture,” Beck yells, crossing himself.
“It’s the caldera,” Kurtz counters. “No trumpets, no Jesus riding on a white steed, just a lot of snow and ice and mass starvation.”
“Ain’t no caldera causing this wind! This is Revelation!”
The Pacific Ocean beckons beyond the plateau, offering certain death. Spotting the mountaintop, Mick shuts off the flame, collapsing the envelope. Dominique cries out as the balloon drops into a steep descent. The basket skims the mountain’s western face, bounces across the summit, then abruptly smashes into the side of a boulder with a bone-jarring jolt, flinging its startled occupants across the jagged crest.
Within seconds, hurricane winds sweep the partially deflated balloon high into the air. For several minutes it spirals out of control, until the wind shear snatches it, driving it into the raging Pacific whitecaps.
Dominique is on her knees. She is battered and bruised, but her attention is focused on a monolithic carving etched into the western face of the mountain.
Mick crawls over, shouting to be heard over the gale. “You okay?”
“What is that?”
“Trident of Paracas. Traces back to Viracocha. Come on, I saw a cave to the east, we can take shelter!” He drags her to her feet, leading Dominique and the two guards to the dark void, partially concealed behind boulders.
Kurtz shakes his head. “You three go on in, I’m a bit claustrophobic.”
Beck nods. “I’ll stay out here with the little guy.”
Kurtz waits until Dominique and Mick are inside the cave before conversing. “I was able to reach the Situation Room,” he yells above the atmospheric roar. “There’s some kind of vortex poised over the North Pole, drawing all this ash into space.”
“You think it’s HAARP?”
“Let’s hope so. I sent POTUS a photo I took of that alien spacecraft.”
“Think he’ll believe it?”
“Hell, I don’t believe it and I saw the damn thing. But he needs to be aware, just in case the object sucking up the atmosphere isn’t one of ours.”
Mick and Dominique enter the cave—a seven-foot-high tunnel of rock that twists and disappears into darkness.
“Mick, that trident … I’ve seen it before. Sam drew it on his cell wall. What do you think it means?”
“I don’t know, but as my father used to say, there are no coincidences. Let’s see where this cave leads.”
They follow the tunnel of rock into the darkness, the cave becoming a twisting, rapidly descending cavern, its geology lit by a soft blue hue coming from somewhere below.
“Mick, where’s that light coming from?”
“Let’s find out. Take my hand, it gets pretty steep.”
He takes the lead, the thirty-degree slope forcing him to crouch into deep side-steps, the rock beneath his boots offering a natural traction.
“Dom, listen! Do you hear that?”
“The rush of air?”
“No. Something deeper … like a generator switching on.”
The cavern continues spiraling downward, funneling them deeper into the mountain until the path abruptly levels out and they are standing before an immense object—a twelve-foot-high rectangular frame of highly polished metal.
Centering the object, glowing in neon-blue light, is the symbol of the Trident of Paracas.
“Mick?”
“I can’t be sure, but I think … it’s the Balam.”
“How can that be? You told me Jacob and I left on the Balam back in 2032.”
“Manny looped time, maybe the Balam did, too?”
“How do we get inside?”
“We possess the twins’ genetics; let’s try telepathy. Hold my hand, then close your eyes. On three, imagine the passage opening. One … two—”
The portal slides open, beckoning them inside.
Dominique shrugs. “Sorry. Jumped the gun.”
They enter a dimly lit corridor, the floor, walls, and thirty-foot arched ceiling composed of a highly polished, translucent-black polymer. The confines are warm, the only light coming from the obsidian panels’ luminescent blue glow.
Mick pauses to press his face against the dark glass, attempting to peer inside. “I think something is behind these walls, but the glass is so tinted, I can’t see a damn thing.” He turns to Dominique, who gives him a terrified look. “You okay?”
“Okay?” She grins nervously, her lower lip quivering. “No, I don’t think I’ve been okay since the day I met you.”
He takes her hand. “Don’t be scared. This vessel belongs to our son.”
“Mick, we don’t have a son. Another Michael and Dominique in another lifetime had twin sons. You and me? Never happened. Nor will it ever happen. Not because I don’t like you,” she wipes back tears, “but because I don’t think we’re going to survive the day.”
He moves in close, hugging her to his chest. “We’ll survive.”
“How do you know?”
“I know because I’m standing in a starship that’s probably more powerful than anything else in the galaxy. I know because the bloodlines of a superior race of humans run through our veins. Most of all, I know because I have faith.”
She holds him tightly. Then she looks up into his ebony eyes, leans in, and kisses him.
36
We know nothing at all. All our knowledge is but the knowledge of schoolchildren. The real nature of things we shall never know.
Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.
—ATTRIBUTED TO ALBERT EINSTEIN
Phobos
Discovered in 1877, the celestial object dubbed Phobos is seven times larger than the Red Planet’s other moon, Deimos, and revolves so close to Mars that it actually orbits faster than the planet can rotate. This unusual characteristic, combined with its unique surface density, led astrophysicists to postulate that Phobos was neither a moon nor asteroid but a hollow iron sphere.
A white haze obscures Immanuel Gabriel’s vision, and then it absorbs him, its particles dancing across his flesh and deep into his muscles and bone marrow. His body trembles; as if th
e mist has penetrated every cell in his body, stretching the spaces between every proton, neutron, and electron in his body—
—the effect culminating in the sudden sensation of gravity literally pulling his collection of molecules through the atomic structure of the extraterrestrial vessel—his atoms having separated just enough to allow him to slip into the cold vastness of space, only he cannot feel the cold, merely the rush of vertigo as he is squeezed inside the rocky metallic surface of Phobos.
Immanuel doubles over in agony as the microscopic gaps between his cells shrink back to their original size, the bizarre feeling causing him to tingle and itch.
Then he realizes it is not his flesh that is itching, it is a thin luminescent dermal film encasing his entire body like a second skin, warming and protecting him while allowing him to breathe.
He looks around, his suit’s light revealing a metal interior scorched long ago from what appears to have been a flash fire.
Immanuel recalls his brother’s words, delivered outside the cave of Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai. “Our parents never died. Their collective consciousness remains trapped.”
“Trapped? Where? Jake, where are they trapped?”
“On Phobos … Our parents were taken aboard a Guardian transport before the sun went supernova. The transport entered the wormhole, followed by the Balam. The wormhole deposited both vessels far into the past. Phobos isn’t a moon, it’s all that remains of the Guardian’s transport vessel. Our parents are held inside, their consciousness trapped in cryogenic stasis.”
Guided by the glow coming from his protective second skin, Immanuel Gabriel moves through an access corridor where he comes across evidence of a mortal breach in the ship’s hull. The craterlike indentation, as large as a three-story building, has been sealed, but not before the asteroid impact caused a tremendous explosion, venting the interior of the transport ship.
The corridor leads to the top section of a massive acrylic dome, covered in dust. Brushing away debris, Manny peers through the top of the glass—a vast particle chamber, one of dozens that service a photonic reactor—an antimatter power plant generating hundreds of trillions of photons, each traveling at the speed of light. These avalanches of potential energy remain separated from their matter counterparts by collection chambers made up of powerful electromagnetic rotational fields.
For several minutes Manny simply stares, mesmerized by the swirling emerald-green vortices of antimatter, the power hub of the ship.
Continuing on, he enters a massive cathedral-like chamber as large as three Superdomes. Set in countless levels and rows like alien dominoes are eight-foot-high pods—tens of thousands of them. Most of the containers are shattered and empty, their contents having been sucked out into space by the breach in the ship’s hull.
Manny approaches a row of containers that appear intact. He rubs at the frosted glass of one pod, revealing the lifeless remains of a tall being, its body naked and frozen, its skull hairless and elongated.
Post-humans. The genetic donors of the Hunahpu.
The thought is projected into his mind so quickly it startles him.
Mick?
He follows the perceived direction of the buzzing sensation in his skull, crossing a walkway to an immense vaultlike door. The panel lights are glowing with power.
He drags open the vault door and enters a small lab, his senses bombarded by “ghosts” of thought-energy being projected from the spherical chamber’s walls.
He listens as his mother asks, What is this place? He is about to respond when he hears a second female voice, the two engaged in a conversation that had occurred eons ago in this very chamber.
Dominique, this vault is a secured sensory pod, its power source and life-support systems independent of the rest of the ship. Its walls create white noise which serves to shield its occupants from telepathic communication—in essence, rendering it a quiet zone.
Manny looks around. At the center of the chamber are two cryogenic pods. Myriad hoses and wires run from each machine into the floor, linking the pods to one another.
The power source blinks active. Manny rubs the frosted glass of the pod on the right, revealing a body inside. “My God.”
Michael Gabriel is unconscious and naked, sealed in an amberlike wax. Star-shaped electrodes are melded to points along his scalp, crown, forehead, solar plexus, heart, sacrum, and feet.
His mother is sealed in an identical pod on the left.
More ghostlike thoughts are purged from the chamber.
Why is Mick in there? What are you doing to him?
The experience of fighting off the Abomination for so long has damaged One Hunahpu’s mind. The only way to restore his sanity is to rebuild his memories. The post-human’s technology gives us the ability to manipulate Michael’s mind, to place him into soothing, safe, virtual environments that will allow us to nurture him back to sanity. But the therapy requires a hands-on guide, someone who knows One Hunahpu intimately … someone he trusts. The therapy will not only heal his damaged mind, it will allow the two of you to be together. Once inside the pod, you will not be able to distinguish your shared virtual existence from the real world.
Manny stares at the two pods holding his parents. “Lying bastards. They sealed you up in their cryogenic goo and left you for God knows how long.”
One hundred twenty-seven million years.
“Dad? How—?”
Your mother and I were joined in a virtual never-ending reality, our consciousness programming its own immortality and fulfillment. Like the Balam, this starship is controlled by an artificial intelligence designed to serve our bloodline. Over the eons, our fused consciousness was able to effect repairs and maintain the vessel’s antimatter chamber to prevent the ship’s orbit from decaying. Unable to perish, our souls remain anchored to our bodies, which can never be revived. Allow us to move on, Immanuel. Release us from this purgatory.
“How?”
Shut down the power source to our pods. End our existence in the physical world so our souls can move on.
“I will. I’ll do it. But first I need your help. Julius told me that only One Hunahpu could prevent the strangelet from consuming the Earth.”
The black hole that threatens Earth is a conduit to the eleventh dimension—Xibalba Be, the dark road descending into Xibalba … Hell. The passage can only be sealed from within the Underworld itself. Julius suspected I was One Hunahpu, believing I could seal the strangelet from Xibalba based on his interpretation of the Mayan Popol Vuh’s creation story. When I entered the serpent’s wormhole in my time, I became One Hunahpu, and was trapped in Xibalba by Lilith’s son. In that cause-and-effect off-ramp of existence, your brother, Jacob, freed me. Trapped in this endless state of bridled consciousness, I can no longer access the eleventh dimension. I am no longer One Hunahpu.
“Then Earth is doomed. As you said, I’m not worthy enough to save it.”
Immanuel, the test of existence is not a test of perfection, it is a test of transformation.
“You were imprisoned in Xibalba; Jake was defeated. If the two of you failed in Hell, what chance do I have? Hello? Dammit, answer me!”
Filled with rage, Manny grabs hold of the power couplings linked to his parents’ chambers and violently rips the hoses from the control panels—severing the connection.
The panel lights go dark.
The chamber shudders.
Manny’s hair stands on end, the room suddenly charged with electromagnetic particles as the unleashed souls of his mother and father encircle him, causing the flesh beneath his false skin to spark.
His mother’s voice lingers in his ear. You were chosen for this mission, Manny. Figure out why.
Gravity tugs on his being with the force of several Gs, expanding his atomic structure even as it yanks him through space and back inside the extraterrestrial vessel. Doubled over in pain, he never feels the light-speed acceleration until the Fastwalker reenters Earth’s atmosphere. Charged with electricity, the high-spe
ed conveyor of volcanic ash short circuits the E.T.’s engines.
Spinning out of control, the vessel plunges toward a flat desert terrain before regaining enough of its antigravity propulsion to pull out of the dive. The belly of the extraterrestrial ship skims sand and rock before crash-landing upon its intended landing zone—
—Area 51.
37
I, at any rate, am convinced that He [God] does not play dice.
—ALBERT EINSTEIN,
LETTER TO MAX BORN,
DECEMBER 4, 1926
Aboard the Balam
Nazca, peru
In the corridor of a starship that predates their own existence, a naked man and woman caught in a loop of space-time join as one, doing their part to conceive the first generation of an advanced race who may one day build the very starship they now inhabit.
The act of copulation over, Mick rests his weight on his elbows, staring into the eyes of his predestined soul mate. “So beautiful …”
Her eyes closed in a state of bliss, Dominique smiles, clenching her legs tighter around the small of his back. “Admit it—this whole Doomsday thing … it was just an excuse to get me in bed.”
“The first time I saw you … I knew you were the one—the one I’d spend eternity with.”
She opens her eyes and notices his irises radiating azure blue. “Mick, your eyes!”
“Yours too.” He rolls off of her, his mind racing.
“What’s happening to us?”
“Our Hunahpu genes are active.” He pulls on his pants.
“Where are you going?”
“To the command center. If I’m right, we now have control of the ship.”
She dresses quickly, following him into an onion-shaped control room, its domed ceiling three stories high. Mick stands in the center of the chamber. Closes his eyes …
A neon-blue beam illuminates the top of his skull. Seconds later, the onyx glass panels light up like a Christmas tree, the floor reverberating beneath their feet as the Balam’s power plant activates for the first time since dinosaurs roamed the Earth.