by Mark Ellis
As Lakesh spoke, Kane’s expression grew remote, and then his face twisted into something dark and implacable. Tendons and veins stood out on his neck. His eyes blazed, and the atmosphere in the office grew electric with tension. His right hand tensed reflexively, the finger crooking to receive the trigger of a Sin Eater no longer there.
Brigid came to her feet, holding out a restraining hand toward him. “Kane, listen and wait.”
He flung her hand away, not averting his icy gaze from the old man.
She said calmly, “Give him a chance – hear him out at least.”
He slowly turned his eyes to hers, glaring at her, lips drawn back from clenched teeth.
Then the furious fires in his eyes faded. He dropped his fist. Gutturally, he said, “I’ve been threatened one too many times today.”
“He wasn’t threatening you.” She gently touched his arm as though to test that he wouldn’t explode. “Unless it’s the truth that threatens you.”
“Truth?” he repeated. “Everybody I’ve run into lately claims to have a monopoly on it, yet it’s always different Nobody can back up anything with proof. Archons, the Trust, Conception Infinitis. Truth, my ass.”
Lakesh, unperturbed by Kane’s anger, remarked, “A preNukeday Russian novelist, Solzhenitsyn by name, wrote, ‘The simple step of a courageous individual is not to take part in the lie. One word of truth outweighs the world.’ Are you brave enough to take that step?”
“I want proof.”
“I’ll talk first and you will listen. Then you shall have your proof.”
“I’LL try to draw a map of events from the beginning,” Lakesh said, “or at least the beginning as I understand it.
“Human history is intertwined with the activities of the entities we call Archons. It’s an ancient Gnostic term but they were called many things over many centuries—angels, demons, E.T.’s, saucer people, greys. Whatever they actually are, whatever they are called and even where they come from is unimportant at this juncture, although I have my own theories. They have been around long enough on this planet that they consider themselves proper Terrans.
“Beginning at the dawn of human history, the Archons influenced human affairs. The concept of humanity as a slave race, owned by some mysterious power, was expressed thousands of years ago in many of the earliest recorded texts.
“The sinister thread linking all of humankind’s darkest hours leads back to a nonhuman presence that has conspired to control us through political chaos, staged wars, famines, plagues and natural disasters. It is a conspiracy that continues to this day, aided and abetted by willing human allies.
“The Archons have a standard operating procedure, which they have employed since time immemorial—they establish a privileged ruling class dependent upon them, which in turn controls the masses. They apparently created the god-king system in ancient Mesopotamia. The Archons’ manipulation of governments and many religions was all-pervasive.
“Brigid, I’m sure you’re aware of World War II and its horrific excesses. What you haven’t heard about are the secret societies that flourished in Germany prior to the rise of the Nazi Party. From information that I received, these societies, such as the Thule and the Brotherhood of the Black Sun, were in contact with the Archons, whom they referred to as their ‘secret chiefs.’ With the help of their chiefs, the Nazis enjoyed great technical advances, including the prototype of the aircraft known in preNuke times as a flying saucer. You may not be aware that the Nazis came very, very close to conquering the world, spreading the Archons’ fascist views and racist ideas into the international population.
“Despite their superior technology and intellects, the Archons are not invincible or omniscient, as Hitler found out. World War II was not just the defeat of the Third Reich, but a defeat of the Archons, as well. Unfortunately, they took measures to make sure they would never be beaten again. If the Archon Directorate had a written constitution, that would be its first article.
“Now, we reach my own personal experience. I must compress thirty years of my professional life, in order to make it coherent. My first introduction to the Archon Directive, though I didn’t realize it at the time, came in early 1972. As part of my government employment, I was assigned to Dulce, a sleepy little town in northern New Mexico, then populated by only nine hundred people, many of them Jicarilla Apaches.
“Just outside of town is Archuleta Mesa, and buried below that is a six-level research complex, connected to Los Alamos by tube shuttle. The entire installation was primarily devoted to a pair of Conception Infinitis’ projects, Chronoscope and Cerberus. My work was conducted primarily on Level Four, and Chronoscope occupied Level Five. I knew Overproject Excalibur and its genetic engineering subdivisions occupied laboratories on Level Six, and perhaps even a secret Level Seven, but inasmuch as I was a cyberneticist and physicist, my interest in genetics was limited.
“At any rate, my work focused on Cerberus, the teletransducer units, on how to reconcile quantum theory with relativistic Einsteinian physics. The technology in Dulce was not theoretical. The hardware worked, though no one really knew how it worked, and no one wanted to admit where the principles to build the first experimental portal unit originated. After a couple of years, after a few promotions, after a few security-clearance upgrades, I finally did learn.
“The Conception Infinitis researches dated back to World War II, when German scientists were labouring to build what turned out to be purely theoretical secret weapons for the Third Reich. The Germans called their program the Totalitat Konzept. The Allied powers adopted the researches, as well as many of the scientists, and constructed underground bases, primarily in the western U.S., to further the experiments. Dulce, of course, was a main nexus point.
“I was enthralled and delighted with the place, at least for the first few years. The centre was filled with meticulously chosen technicians, and it was a source of great pride to be one of them. Dulce, for all its secrets, its stringent security procedures, was devoted to pure research. We had limitless support and funds. Since I was young and naive, and my one passion was science, I was obsessed with my work, especially since Conception Infinitis was classified Above Top Secret. It was known only to a few very high-ranking military officers and politicians. I doubt even the Presidents who held office during my tenure there were aware of the full ramifications. Obviously, I felt very special.
“As the years wore on, I became the Cerberus overseer. During my rise, I heard a number of whispers, rumours about Dulce and about the other research on different levels. When my security classification was upgraded to MAJIC status, I asked to visit the other divisions, which hitherto had been off limits to me. Instead, an Air Force general handed me a briefing paper and waited for me to read it, hovering nearby with his hand on his side arm and never leaving the room.
“The document was issued from an ultra-secret think tank known as MJ-12. This was the name of a governmental control group, more or less the people who oversaw and approved our work. Rather than answering my request, the document essentially outlined where the source of our technology originated. I learned it was not built on German research at all, but was the result of an alliance between the U.S. government and the Archons.
“Although I spent most of my time in the Dulce installation, I didn’t live in a complete vacuum. Urban legends and conspiracy theories had filtered into the public consciousness to such a degree that even I, in my vanadium-alloy tower, had heard the tales of aliens, greys, mysterious animal mutilations and of Area 51, where captured extra-terrestrial spacecraft were allegedly undergoing back-engineering. As a scientist, I simply discounted just about everything I had heard or read or seen on television. You can imagine my shock when the briefing document confirmed nearly all I had been sneering at for years.
“That revelation was stunning enough, but when the general asked me for my opinion of the paper, my reaction was much
the same as yours, Kane. I said, ‘Prove it.’
“Unfortunately, he did. I wish now, in many ways, he had simply shot me dead on the spot. I was escorted up to Level Three, which I had always assumed to be a maintenance area. There, the general allowed me to peer through a window into a room that held a visiting Archon, or as it was eventually designated an, ‘Ultra-Terrestrial Entity’…a UTE.”
“I was terrified in its presence, even though it could not see me. At first, I told myself it was a cunningly crafted animatronic model, such as those built for amusement parks. But I saw it walk, move, breathe, blink and interact with another human being.
“I was only allowed to observe the creature, the entity, for a minute. The general led me away. He seemed sympathetic to my stunned state, and was patient with my babbled questions. He explained that although the Archons had never allowed a physical examination of themselves, the military had in their possession several bodies taken from spacecraft crashes that had occurred shortly after the war. Evidently, these accidents precipitated modern contact with the entities. Autopsies had been performed on the corpses, and the consensus was that the entities were descended from a reptilian species that had interacted with humans many millennia ago...evidence suggested the parent species was an ancient alien race known as the Annunaki, the pantheon of gods in Sumerian myth.
“Furthermore, the general told me that certain branches of the government had entered into a pact with the Archons, and in the 1950s agreed on an exchange with them for high-tech knowledge, and to allow them the use of underground military bases. He refused to tell me what our side of the trade agreement was to be. He added that if I ever mentioned to anyone what I had just seen and heard, ‘buzzards would be picking my bones out of the desert.’
“Though it was difficult, I focused on my work, trying to forget everything about Archons and trade pacts. My focus bore fruit, and a short time later, we had the first successful long-distance teleportation of a living subject. That success was reproduced many times, improving and modifying the portals. Then within a year of our victory, things began to change in a sinister fashion.
“The Cerberus staff were suddenly under the impositions of a timetable. We had strict schedules to keep, results we had to achieve, strict, non-negotiable deadlines. We were ordered to mass-produce the units, to design them in modular form so they could be shipped and assembled elsewhere. Such a task was arduous, to say the least. The problems with the self-contained fusion generators were almost insurmountable. It all seemed very odd, very insidious.
“At this point, you must understand that while the Conception Infinitis scientists as a whole were working on some remarkable projects, the projects were rarely coordinated. Now, all of them were linked, even those in other bases in other states. For example, the technicians of the Chronoscope used our teletransducer breakthroughs to spin off their own innovations and achieve their own successes.
“You may not be aware that Chronoscope dealt in the mechanics of time travel, forcing temporal breaches in the chronon structure. Without getting too technical or metaphysical, the purpose was to find a way to enter ‘probability gaps’ between one interval of time and another. Inasmuch as Cerberus utilized quantum events to reduce organic and inorganic material to digital information and transmit it through hyperdimensional space, Chronoscope built on that same principle to peep into other time lines and even ‘trawl’ living matter from the past and the future.
“Then something very strange happened. A series of sweeping policy changes came into play, which created something far beyond the scientific ambitions of the Conception Infinitis staff. I learned much later that the changes came about as an edict from the Archon Directive.
“Other government agencies became involved, as well as other countries. In a short time, it appeared as if Conception Infinitis was a deep-cover international cooperative. In the early 2000s a massive, almost frantic stronghold-construction program began. Keep in mind that for many years, especially at the height of the Cold War, underground complexes had been constructed under the Continuity of Government, COG program, as an insurance policy in case of a nuclear war. Many subterranean command posts had been built in the 1950s and 60s, located in different regions of the country.
“With the advent of the Cerberus success, the new installations—the strongholds—were built, linked to each other by portal units. Though the COG facilities and the stronghold scientific enclaves were not part of the same program, there was a suspicious trade-off of design specifications, technology and personnel. Many of the Conception Infinitis’ subdivisions and spin-off researches were relocated to these strongholds. Call Sign Cerberus, obviously, was moved here, to Montana.
“The most ambitious COG facility was code-named ‘the Anthill’ because of its resemblance in layout to an ant colony. It was a vast complex, with underground sewage plants, stores, theatres and even a sports arena. Supplies of foodstuffs, weapons and anything of value were stockpiled, oftentimes in triplicate.
“Because of its size, the Anthill was built inside of Mount Rushmore, using tunnelling and digging machines. The entire mountain was honeycombed with interconnected levels, passageways and chambers. I was told that once construction on the Anthill was completed, the entire Conception Infinitis program would be moved into it. I was expected to move there, too.
“I was very confused, very disoriented by all of these abrupt, almost overnight changes. A severe case of bunker mentality possessed everyone. It was as if they knew something truly terrible was in the offing, and they were grimly determined to weather it by any means necessary. It was a crazed time, a blizzard of sound and fury and near panic that signified very little to me—except a deep dissatisfaction.
“Morale was exceptionally low among the staff of the projects, and though we were forbidden to ever fraternize, because of all the confusion, we took advantage of the holes in security.
“One day, I met with a colleague from Chronoscope, a man named Torrence Silas Burr. Like myself, he was dispirited, demoralized. What he wanted to talk about was a practice he referred to as ‘temporal peeping’, which he called the Jamaisvous Principle. He said his staff had peeped through a gap in the chronon structure into a future date. They discovered that a global holocaust had, for all intents and purposes, obliterated civilization. That news was horrifying enough, but he had more. The discovery had been reported to MJ-12, and rather than take the measures necessary to prevent the destruction, they opted to survive it instead. He assumed that the construction of the strongholds and the frenzied activity of the last few months were due to that report.
“Burr said that further peeping experiments had set up a horrified suspicion in his mind that not only was the holocaust preventable, but it was not supposed to happen. Tampering with Chronoscope had disrupted the chronon structure and triggered a probability wave dysfunction. In layman’s terms, we had created an alternate future scenario for ourselves.
“Assuming Burr could be believed, I realized if the alliance had not been initiated with the Archons, if the Conception Infinitis researches had been left to moulder in old military-intelligence files at the end of the war, the apocalypse would never happen.
“I know how insane it sounds now, especially with all these years of hindsight. Imagine living through it, being informed that doomsday was only a few years away, and that the very people who could prevent it actually welcomed it.
“Why? It took me a while to come up with an answer, at the risk of my position and my life. But I found it below Level Six of the complex, the staging area of Overproject Excalibur.
“It held the genetic labs, where experiments were performed on fish, seals, birds and mice, all altered from their original forms. The Archons had taught the human scientists a lot about genetics, things both useful and dangerous.
“It was when I encountered the humans in cages I realized I had entered a place privately referred to as �
�Nightmare Alley.’ I saw row after row of altered humans, human-Archon genetic blends and embryos kept in cold storage.
“That’s where I first saw mutants, the ghastly prototypes of the creatures later known as Squidoos and Reptilicuses. They were drugged, dazed, some of them cried and begged for help. I was at a complete loss. I couldn’t understand the purpose of such horrific experiments.
“On paper, Overproject Excalibur’s function was to map human genomes to specific chromosomal locations. It was an ambitious project, and should have taken many years. It was obvious that it was either completed or near completion.
“In a stunning revelation, I understood that Overproject Excalibur was creating life-forms to survive in a world devastated by atomic war. It is a field called Pantropic science. Designer mutants, courtesy of the Archon Directive.
“I finally realized why the elite power group and their allies did not fear a coming nuclear holocaust. It was all part of the drive toward a one-world government, brought about by the culling of society’s ‘useless eaters,’ and aided by a technology turned over to a humanity not prepared to handle the consequences.
“When the first cluster of warheads detonated, the Anthill facility had been in operation for some six months, inhabited only by a group of scientists, myself amongst them, and a few privileged politicians and their families.
“Despite all of the precautions, the effects of the world-wide conflagration caused extensive damage to the Anthill. The consequences were far greater than any of the MJ-12 or military tacticians had foreseen. Rather than emerging in ten or so years into a world mercifully free of its parasitical humans, the timetable looked to be closer to a hundred.
“However, even if they managed to outlast the nuclear winter, they couldn’t cure radiation sickness, nor could the provisions be stretched to support all the people for a century. Cryogenic stasis facilities existed in the Anthill, and many people either volunteered or were forced into suspended animation. Others were the subjects of radical surgery, and over a period of decades, they received organ transplants, artificial hearts, prosthetic limbs, and some became true cyborgs, a hybridization of human and machine.