The Watchers

by Kaitlyn O'Connor

  Giddy with excitement but trying very hard to act like a professional, Maddie snatched the phone Claire held out with shaking hands. “Great! I have a friend at NASA …. Well, actually, he’s a friend of Robert’s. But he’s been working really closely with a group that’s trying to create a 3D map of the universe. I’m going to see what he thinks about these.”

  Claire was sorry she didn’t have any close friends or acquaintances with that kind of credentials, but their father was bound to have connections. “I’ll get some out to dad … if you’re ok with that?”

  “Great idea! We can depend on him to be discrete!” She frowned. “But it won’t hurt to message him and remind him we’ve just found it and discretion would be best at this point.”

  Nodding, Claire took a couple of pictures of the solar system she and Maddie had been studying and then began to move around the huge room in the opposite direction from Maddie. She’d worked her way across almost a third of the ‘universe’ when there was a loud noise and everything abruptly went black.

  “Ok,” Madelyn said, her voice echoing eerily through the darkness, “did anybody check the damn generator for fuel?”

  The response was an uncomfortable silence. “I’ll go check!” one of her students finally responded—very likely the one who’d forgotten to check the fuel level to start with.

  “Stay put! I’ll check. I’m closer to the door and this place is a minefield now.”

  Claire had tuned out most of the discussion after the first question, however, because when she’d turned toward the sound of Madelyn’s voice, she’d spotted something no one had noticed before. “Maddie! Look!”

  She didn’t actually have to give Madelyn directions on where to look. Once the lights went out, the ceiling and floor began to glow, slowly getting brighter and brighter as tiny pinpricks of light beamed into the room from almost every direction, spotlighting the strange object resting on the pedestal in the center of the room and then redirected from the object toward various points on the ceiling. “What in the world …?” Maddie broke off, obviously too awed to continue her speculation.

  It was almost as if the object was absorbing the sunlight beaming to it through the tiny holes and using it as power for the laser lights it was projecting around the room.

  “Hey!” one of the students commented. “This design on the floor reminds me ….”

  “Shit! Sorry! Atlantis! It looks like the city design Plato described—a circle within a circle ….”

  “That’s nothing but a story! Never existed, and if we’re right about the age of this place it would predate Atlantis, even if it had existed!”

  And maybe it had and everybody was wrong about when it had existed, Claire thought, feeling a little faint, because the design on the floor looked a lot like the design she’d seen beside the entrance arch of the lost city in Florida—and like the design on the back of the gold piece she’d found.

  In the dim light, Claire and Maddie exchanged a stunned look. “Stay put!” Madelyn said after a long moment and then they heard her and saw her shadowy figure picking her way cautiously toward the door. A few minutes later she passed through the entrance and disappeared.

  The students that had phones with lights pulled them out and turned the lights toward the device that had just used lasers to map courses across the known universe.

  Well, clearly known to them—the makers—anyway.

  Claire, at least, was convinced that that was what she’d just witnessed.

  They were standing in a map room designed and built before most of mankind had settled to building even villages with huts.

  She had a bad feeling this was what they weren’t supposed to discover—the children of man—concrete evidence that aliens had lived on Earth thousands of years earlier, maybe even designed mankind using alien genetic research!

  That thought gave her pause and she considered it for a few moments before dismissing it.

  Maybe the genetic research was pure imagination, but the rest made perfect sense when one considered that there was nothing that had been found previously to indicate that mankind had advanced enough to engineer or construct a building this complex so long ago.

  As soon as the generator started up again and the lights, after blinking a few times, steadied, pretty much everyone in the room moved toward the device in the center. Madelyn, trailing everybody else since she’d gone out to refuel the generator, shooed them off.

  When everyone had reluctantly moved far enough away that she could speak low without concern that the others might overhear, Madelyn fixed Claire with a questioning look. “What do you think?”

  Claire considered for a moment before she spoke, but this was Maddie. She could be honest without concern that her sister would be overly critical. “I think I’m not a rocket scientist or an astronomer, but that looked like a star map to me—as in chart—as in directions from one system to another—which we don’t have now and couldn’t possibly have had ten to twenty thousand years ago. I’d like to think we’d just found a Boeing 747 in a caveman’s temple, proof that everything we thought we knew about human development was wrong and we’d actually been amazingly advanced at least once before in our history.

  “But what I really think is that maybe we—meaning humans—didn’t have anything to do with this at all. Or maybe primitive human slaves built it, but they certainly didn’t design the building or make this device—which is like a computer ….”

  Madelyn frowned. “They did find that computer in the Mediterranean that they think is Greek in origins ….”

  “And that was amazing,” Claire agreed, “but not anywhere near this old and it was mechanical. This thing seems to run on sunlight. And if that’s true then it was designed and built to utilize power no one during this era should have had any inkling of.”

  “But we’re not really going to know that until we study it more.”

  Claire shrugged. “True. But you asked me what I thought.”

  Madelyn studied her a moment. “If you hadn’t met that alien, what would you have thought?”

  Claire considered it. “That we’d found a Boeing 747 in a caveman’s temple, proving that mankind had advanced much further in the distant past than we’ve previously given them credit for.”

  Madelyn nodded. “So let’s not jump to conclusions? Let’s try to pretend you didn’t meet an alien and we have no idea life outside of Earth exists, making everything found here a product of man.”

  Claire wasn’t certain she could, but this was Maddie’s show anyway. She thought if she just kept her mouth shut and didn’t try to influence her sister Madelyn would come up with the right answers.

  The decision was made to leave the device exactly where they’d found it for the time being since no one knew if it would actually work at all, or work correctly, if it was moved and they wanted to thoroughly document its function before they removed it for further study.

  Having sent the workers out to continue with the excavations and set the students to work documenting and photographing everything, Claire and Madelyn moved to the very outside walls of the structure to see if there were any corridors leading off the main room. They found several alcoves that looked as if they must have housed statuary at some point, although they were empty now and, directly opposite the entrance, the corridor they’d been looking for.

  Madelyn left Claire and went to collect a couple of workers with portable lights. They followed the same procedure as before, shoving the lights inside so that they could trigger any traps that might be present and/or determine if the structure was sound enough to risk entering.

  There was one notable difference.

  Claire nearly fainted when they’d shoved the lights far enough inside to illuminate a life sized statue of an angel. For a split second, she thought it was Dante. Even as logic reared its head in dispute of that gut reaction, she realized this one really did appear to be a statue.

  What were the odds, though, that two cities half a
world apart—two ancient lost cities—would have a ‘statue’ so similar?

  “Kind of reminds you of him, doesn’t it?”

  Claire’s heart was leaping against her chest wall like something trying to escape, and she was still tempted to lie and pretend she didn’t know what Madelyn was suggesting. Of course, Maddie hadn’t seen Dante at all. She was only reacting to Claire’s reaction, which must have been very telling. “It’s different,” she mumbled.

  Madelyn studied her. “Are you that afraid of him?”

  Until Madelyn had voiced the question out loud Claire hadn’t really considered that possibility—or in fact how she felt about Dante at all.

  She’d actually been trying really hard not to think about how she felt about him.

  “I’m not sure I’m afraid of him at all.” She hadn’t told her sister that she’d had sex with Dante. She wasn’t sure why until that moment when she discovered she still didn’t want to share.

  It wasn’t because she was ashamed of what had happened or because she was afraid of Dante or because it was something ‘bad’ she wanted to put out of her mind. Because even though she’d accused him of having non-consensual sex with her, she knew as well as Dante did that she’d wanted it. She might not have wanted it before he’d started, but she hadn’t been immune to him even then. And there was no doubt in her mind that he’d very successfully convinced her she did want the sex once he’d kissed her and touched her.

  She didn’t feel violated. She hadn’t then.

  And she still didn’t want to share that with her sister because she knew Madelyn would think she was out of her mind if she told her that she was more attracted to Dante than she’d ever been drawn to any man in her life!

  If Dante actually had been a man, she thought Maddie would be deliriously happy for her, maybe even a little envious. As it stood, Maddie would want to check her in to the nearest mental hospital.

  Beyond that, though, it felt too … special to share lurid details like she might have if she’d had a ‘good time’ with a man she had no interest in on an emotional level.

  She discovered Madelyn was studying the statue through narrowed eyes. “I didn’t get a look at your alien,” she commented, “but it certainly looks like your description. What’s different?”

  Claire cleared her throat. “This one’s naked for one thing.”

  Madelyn grinned. “I hadn’t noticed.”

  To Claire’s disappointment it did appear to be a statue on closer examination despite the fact that it seemed amazingly lifelike. When she’d nerved herself to touch it, she discovered that it felt as cold and unyielding as stone.

  Not especially smooth, she decided when she’d lightly run a hand along one forearm, but she supposed the accumulation of ages of dust and other foreign matter could account for that.

  “Interesting phallus,” Madelyn remarked close to her ear, nearly making her jump out of her skin.

  Claire felt her face heat. She’d thought Maddie was examining the room for other ‘treasures’ and wouldn’t notice her interest in the statue. “I hadn’t noticed.”

  “Liar, liar, pants on fire!” Madelyn murmured with amusement.

  Claire bit her lip, struggling with the urge to smile. “Ok, so I had noticed,” she whispered. “I just didn’t want to get caught examining it by the students.”

  Madelyn handed her a brush. “Why don’t you clean it? As long as you’re examining it anyway, I mean.”

  “Very funny,” Claire muttered irritably.

  In the next instant, though, her heart skipped a beat when she heard Madelyn suck in a sharp, gasping breath. “Oh my god! Claire! Scrolls! There must be hundreds here!”

  Distracted, Claire joined her sister. “Where?” she asked blankly.

  “In the containers!”

  Claire frowned. “The clay pots? They’re sealed. How do you know they have scrolls in them?”

  “Well … uh … they look just like the ones that held the Dead Sea scrolls … and I can see scrolls were in those broken pots …,” she said defensively, pointing to several laying in a heap on the floor.

  Shaking her head, Claire left Maddie to study her find—hopefully scrolls—and went back to examine her own—the angel statue. She studied the brush in her hand a moment and then looked at the statue speculatively. Despite the difference in facial features, it looked amazingly like Dante in many ways. It was of similar height and proportions and although not posed just as she recalled he had been, it was clearly an ‘action’ pose, as if he’d been in the midst of battle when he’d been frozen. It was so lifelike it almost seemed to breathe, made her heart skip several beats.

  Struggling to dismiss her overactive imagination, she moved around the statue, studying the amazing details that had gone into the wings. Every ‘feather’ had been meticulously placed and defined and they certainly seemed massive enough to support the massive being they were attached to. Oddly, though, the wings seemed to sprout from a second knuckle in the shoulder joint rather than the shoulder blades.

  Not that she’d ever been particularly fascinated with Angel statuary but it seemed to her that they were generally depicted with the wings sprouting from the shoulder blades.

  Was that difference because whoever had sculpted this one had actually seen one rather than creating from imagination?

  Or was the angel statue here because the angels had built this structure and maybe he was a leader or teacher or something of that nature? It certainly didn’t seem likely that it was anything of religious significance given what they’d found in the other room.

  Especially since it predated Christianity, as far as they could determine, by thousands of years.

  It actually seemed very out of place, now that she considered it, and she thought she must have sensed that ‘doesn’t fit’ aspect right away and that was part of her fascination with it.

  She frowned, trying to recall if Dante’s wings grew from his shoulder joints or the blades along his back but discovered that was a detail she hadn’t really noticed.

  Not surprisingly since she’d been in a chaotic state each time she’d seen him in his angel form.

  After glancing around to make sure everyone else who’d come inside was focused on the find of the century rather than her, she moved around to the front again. Satisfied that no one seemed to be paying much attention to her, she trained her flashlight oh-so-casually to illuminate that ‘interesting phallus’ Madelyn had pointed out.

  Lifting the brush ‘prop’ Madelyn had given her, she lightly dusted at the belly area while she studied it, trying to figure out why it seemed ‘different’ beyond the fact that it was huge for a penis—especially for one attached to a statue.

  Maybe this statue was supposed to have something to do with fertility? Fertility gods, as she recalled, tended to have monstrous phalluses—to emphasis their purpose, she supposed. This one didn’t look particularly smooth, however, didn’t look like a normal cock enlarged to abnormal proportions.

  She peered closer.

  Just as with the wings, the cock was amazingly detailed—right down to bulging veins, and a knob-like tip that was notably larger than the shaft it was attached to.

  Unfortunately, she wasn’t familiar enough with human ‘instruments’ to know if this particular feature was very human-like or not very.

  She was fairly certain, though, that the ridges along the circumference weren’t at all human.

  Was that supposed to be a natural part of his penis? Or some sort of contraption attached to it, she wondered? Leaning closer still, she tucked the brush under one arm absently and ran one finger along the spiraling ridge.

  The cock … moved.

  Claire leapt back so quickly she tripped over her own feet and sprawled out.

  Madelyn, who’d been on the point of returning to the main room to check the progress of her students, froze in the doorway, her mouth open in an o of surprise.

  * * * *

  Disorientation wasn’t uncommo
n when one was summoned, but the bewilderment Galen experienced upon emerging from stasis went beyond anything in his previous experience.

  He was surrounded by strangely dressed beings rushing around in a manner that suggested the chaos of panic and yet he didn’t detect any of the wild emotions that generally accompanied that state.

  Moreover, there was a human female kneeling before him, examining his cock with one curious finger. He couldn’t actually feel her touch since full sensation had yet to return, but he could see her touch and that was enough to jack his heart rate up several notches.

  He tried to ignore the returning sensations that accompanied an awakening—the painful pins and needles of awakening nerves, tried to focus on grasping why he’d been awakened at what appeared to be an extremely inopportune moment, but he couldn’t get his mind off of the woman at his feet or her hand—finger—which was carefully tracing the ridge that encircled the circumference of his cock.

  Inevitably, given the fact that he was no longer frozen in stasis, he moved. When he did, she leapt back as if scalded, sucking in a sharp, piercing breath of surprise, and sprawled out, alerting everyone else in the receiving chamber. They whipped toward him and froze, eyes wide, mouths sagging open in startled ohs.

  Deciding that, mayhap, this was why he was awakened at this precise moment, Galen frowned thunderously, spread his wings in a threatening manner, and lifted his staff. “Why have you awakened the god of …,” he bellowed. Wait, which fucking god was he supposed to be?

  They don’t understand that language and very few of them believe in gods anymore, one of the overlords said dryly.

  Well, that’s oh so fucking helpful, Galen growled!

  His first indication that he’d responded to the communication aloud was the reaction of the humans. They’d frozen at his first bellow. When he snarled the second stream of words, they screamed almost as one and began to scramble in every direction so that they fell over one another. Finally, however, most of them managed to vacate the chamber.

  Two women, who looked similar enough to be related, remained—the one who’d been stroking his penis when he woke and another who’d been near the door and appeared to be frozen there.