“Let’s go out,” said Scott.
Richard turned pale. “You’re not going to leave me alone here, are you?” he asked nervously.
“No, of course not. You’re coming with us.”
“No way! I can’t even think about going out there! I already told you that I can’t swim!”
“Calm down, you don’t need to.”
The arms of the submarine were activated and with military precision, Will lifted the polyurethane box which was resting in the basket that the vessel had bolted to one of its sides. He carefully placed it on the seabed and pressed a red button fitted to the upper face.
Richard was not prepared for what happened next. The four sides opened simultaneously, revealing inside a luminescent metal object which had just been activated. A bright light blinded them momentarily and a small vibration gripped the vessel for a few seconds. From the inspection ports, Richard could see how the object was generating a beam of energy which moved around until it formed a perfect circumference with a 1300 feet radius. He immediately remembered what he had seen in Area 51. It was a real live application of force fields through the creation of an electromagnetic dome under the sea.
“Fuck!”
The two Marines couldn’t manage to raise more than a slight smile.
“Is it safe?” he asked, stuttering in fear.
Scott frowned again, it seemed as if the paleographer’s skepticism was starting to make him uncomfortable.
“Of course,” replied Will. “The project was started in Area 51 with the aim of creating force fields around their planes so as to protect troops in combat. However, we’ve given it a more innovative twist, fine tuning it until we achieved what you can see now. We’ve tried it out on no fewer than seven occasions, all of them a success.”
“Fuck!” he said again, caught between conflicting emotions. One the one hand he was impressed, on the other terrified.
“Let’s get out of here! We have an hour before everything comes crashing down.”
Chapter 75
The force field had created a perfect dome which could withstand all the water above it as if by magic, leaving a giant bubble of oxygen on the ocean floor. The machine managed to maintain a constant temperature inside, nothing like that which the water must have had at that time. The compartment opened and a gust of fresh air blew in through the cabin door, surprising Richard even more. Scott handed them an intercom that went around the ear as if they were wireless headphones and which would allow Alexandra to communicate with them at all times and remain aware of their position.
The first one to step onto the seabed was Scott, followed by Will. They were not wearing any kind of special clothing, not even the thermal suit that was in the back of the submarine. They stamped hard on the surface and found it to be stable and not at all slippery, contrary to what they had expected. Richard put on his coat and followed them with extreme caution, feeling a certain sense of terror when he eventually stepped outside.
Despite the submarine’s eight headlights illuminating the area perfectly, the three men had special long range flashlights which had been developed by the U.S. Navy laboratories and were capable of simulating sunlight at those depths.
Will carried a small monitor that showed them the exact coordinates where they had to look, like a kind of GPS. According to the radar, they were less than three hundred feet from the source and were moving in the right direction.
The first few feet turned out to be easier than Richard had imagined, but the further they were from the submarine, the greater the sense of panic he felt. He didn’t want to think about what would happen if that dome, with a radius of 1300 feet and height of 650 feet, were to disappear, allowing millions and millions of tons of water to come crashing down inside. It would crush them as if they were ants trying desperately to get to their nest.
Will stopped dead and looked straight ahead. “It can’t be!
Scott followed behind, looking in the direction that his colleague was pointing in and he was astonished to discover how the point indicated by the radar was right in the middle of the place where the gigantic pyramid emerged from the ground. “It has to be inside. How do you get in?”
“Look at in the middle! There are some steps which lead to the central part of the pyramid. Maybe there’s a way in up there.”
Richard no longer seemed to be afraid and he was lagging behind slightly, studying a kind of engraving carved on one of the rocks on the site. He was still absorbed in his thoughts when Will went to look for him.
“What’s the matter?”
“It’s impossible!” was the first thing to come from his lips. “Look at these engravings!”
“What’s so special about them?”
Richard didn’t even get irritated by the Marine’s ignorance and he tried to explain their significance to him. “This writing is made up of an alphabet very similar to our own, but these rocks must be over eight thousand years old, which would make that impossible. Until recently, it was thought that writing came about out of a need to take down inventories, around 3100 years ago. The wealthy Sumerians that owned vast amounts of grain and livestock used clay tablets on which they would inscribe a series of pictograms in vertical columns. They were marking their possessions! The first words to be written were in the form of drawings, which are known as pictographs. These carvings were made on damp clay with a sharpened reed stylus that made irregular edges, so it didn’t work. A triangular point was used instead, which left a wedge-shaped impression; the Latin for wedge is ‘cunenus’ and so Mesopotamian came to be known as cuneiform script.”
“But I heard that they recently found remains of a script that was over eight thousand years old.”
“That’s correct. Several Chinese archaeologists found a cluster of pictograms which dated back eight thousand years, two millennia before the creation of cuneiform script and hieroglyphics. From what I heard, they are cliff carvings located in Damaidi’s caves at Beishan Mountain, in the region of Ningxia Hui.”
“They were pictograms in any case.”
“Exactly!” exclaimed the professor. “In this case it seems to be the letters of an alphabet that combine to form words. Those who created this structure undoubtedly belonged to very intelligent civilization which was extremely advanced for their time.”
“Could it be the famous Atlantis?”
“I don’t think so. Its layout on the seabed doesn’t take the form of the famous concentric circles that Plato mentions. I can’t even see those avenues through which they could steer a boat to the center of the city, but it doesn’t mean that we should discard the possibility of it being a colony of theirs. However, if it was, it would be a great step towards discovering Atlantis.”
Suddenly, a faltering voice rang out across the depths of the ocean. “Scott, it’s just in front of you.”
Richard felt his own pulse in his neck. He looked all around him until he saw that the voice was coming from his intercom. It was Alexandra communicating with Scott.
“Come on!” he called to them from twenty yards ahead, just at the base of the pyramid. “We have fifty minutes left.”
The steps were slightly worn and eroded by the movement of water; a sea current probably passed by there. The pyramid was gigantic and it seemed that its topmost point extended upwards until it threatened to burst that huge electromagnetic dome, causing a devastating rush of water. Richard looked up and he could only see blackness. The headlights had changed their angle to show them the way to the base of the pyramid, which meant that the top of the dome could not be seen. He avoided thinking about what would happen if the force field vanished and all those millions and millions of gallons of water which rested above their heads came crashing down on them.
They quickly ascended the steps, coming across an opening of around twenty square feet which they peered into without any fear. They couldn’t see anything at first, so they decided to turn on their flashlights. It was a triangular room, something that they ha
d never seen in their lives. On the three walls as well as on the ground, there were hundreds of messages engraved in a script similar to that on the blocks outside. The ceiling showed a depiction of our solar system, together with other systems, planets and stars of which Richard had no knowledge.
“That must be it,” said Scott. In his hands he carried the radar with the global positioning system. When he was less than seven feet away, it began to beep.
In front of them was a kind of smooth marble sarcophagus with thousands of symbols chiseled on it. It was incredibly beautiful, much more impressive than the Egyptian sarcophaguses. It was sealed with a stone block around four inches thick and which featured a carving that astonished Richard even more. It was a drawing exactly the same as the triangle that they obtained after managing to fuse the two fragments.
Back on the surface, Alexandra was getting slightly agitated. The radars were showing something which was approaching the dome at great speed. It was of considerable size, around sixteen feet long. It could have been some kind of sea mammal, but that wouldn’t pose any risk to them. If it penetrated the magnetic field, it would find itself without water to swim. She thought about informing her colleagues just in case.
“This is control. Do you read me?”
No reply.
“This is control. Does anybody read me?”
Again, silence. Just a spot of interference here and there.
“Push! It’s gotta be under there!” shouted Richard.
Time was running out. They had thirty-five minutes until the force field generator ran out of energy and allowed water to flood in.
When they eventually managed to move the granite block that covered the sarcophagus, they looked at what was inside with expressions somewhere between disbelief and nerves. It was a kind of crystalline prism around twenty inches long with three rectangular faces which were joined along the sides, forming two parallel triangular bases at either end.
Scott picked it up and wrapped it in a cloth in order to protect it. It wasn’t very heavy according to him, weighing around eleven pounds. He then passed it to Richard who would be charged with determining its authenticity in less than five minutes. The paleographer carefully studied one of the three parallelograms which formed the smooth faces of the crystal and which was inscribed with an extraordinary amount of symbols and letters. The calligraphy was incredibly similar to that which appeared engraved on the walls of the room itself; in this case, however, the letters were not made from grooves in the crystal, but rather a perfectly formed relief that was clear and deliberate. The crystal shone like a diamond and seemed to be quite hard. The professor had some concerns. It was crazy to think that a civilization which existed over eight thousand years ago could have communicated through writing and with a language so similar to our own. It meant that two thousand years before the creation of cuneiform script there had been another script in existence, which was simply impossible unless the hypothesis that a truly advanced civilization lived on our planet over ten thousand years ago was indeed true.
When Richard shone the flashlight on the crystal, it shone like a light bulb. It was incredible. Nothing down there could be the source except for that object. “I think it is what we’re looking for,” he said finally, after several minutes of meticulous study.
Scott raced out of the room and headed for the submarine with Will close behind, but Richard was still reluctant to leave the chamber. He was stood before thousands and thousands of pieces of information which gave an insight into an ancient civilization whose astronomical knowledge was much more advanced than ours. It gave the impression that they had created similar buildings in a desperate attempt to attract out attention. They were trying to tell us something. Just like those in the Great Pyramid, the stone blocks were perfectly smooth and sandwiched tightly together so as not to leave the least gap between them. Although the light wasn’t as bright as it had been with the three flashlights, his alone was more than enough to carry out a preliminary study of the carvings.
“Richard, we have to go. You have fifteen minutes to get to the submarine,” announced Will via the intercom.
“I’m coming now,” he replied.
Scott had by then taken his seat in the submarine. He activated all the computer systems and started all the test programs. Three minutes later, Will came inside the compartment.
“We’ve got eleven minutes left. Where’s Richard?”
“He was following on behind.”
“Fuck! You should have brought him back with you.”
“This is control. Do you read me?!”
“Loud and clear,” replied Scott.
“I’ve been trying to get in touch with you for ten minutes. Something’s wrong.”
“What?!”
“The radar has detected an intrusion in the force field by something relatively large, around sixteen feet in size.”
“Impossible!” Scott glanced at the surveillance monitors. “I don’t see anything!”
“You don’t understand. What I am telling you happened ten minutes ago. Somebody disabled the communication systems, interrupting the signal that your transmitters were receiving. I have managed to change the frequency but that isn’t the worst of it… whoever crossed the force field left their vessel and was walking towards the pyramid. That’s where I lost all trace of them.”
“Shit! Richard, can you hear me?! Richard!”
“Seven minutes…” shouted Scott.
Inside the underwater pyramid, Richard had heard Alexandra’s words loud and clear. He had instantly switched off his flashlight but it was probably already too late. He had spent ten minutes studying the carvings on the walls with the light. Anybody coming into the chamber would have seen his flashlight shining in the middle of the dense darkness. He started to shake, and he wished he had gone back to the submarine with his two companions. He crouched down and crawled towards the exit in such a way that he could still see by some of the light coming from the headlights of the submarine. He carried the piece of crystal in his arms. He had thrown the earpiece to the far corner of the room and had turned the volume up to the maximum in order to try and throw his stalker off the scent, but he quickly realized his mistake. When there were five yards left between him and the exit, his arms came into contact with the legs of somebody who was in his way. He felt so afraid that he almost wet himself. His attacker furiously grabbed his clothes and shook him about in the air. Richard tried to break free but it was impossible. When the little light that was filtering into the chamber lit up his face, Richard stifled a scream of desperation when he saw the dislocated jaw of Alpha 2.
Scott and Will ran out of the submarine and headed for the pyramid. Something wasn’t right.
The attacker’s face was contorted. He was wearing a neoprene suit which was tight against his defined physique. The beams from the headlights didn’t seem to bother him at all. He proceeded to knee Richard hard in the ribs, knocking him to the ground. He took out his favorite knife while he strangled the paleographer in order to wear down his strength. He was unable to free himself, and no matter how hard he wriggled and kicked, he only managed to add to his attacker’s pleasure. He raised the knife up high and was getting ready to deliver a well-aimed stab when Scott took him by surprise and hit him over the head with a rock, leaving him slightly stunned on the ground.
“Three minutes! Shit, it’s going to come down!”
They helped Richard up and ran out of the pyramid with the source in their possession. They looked at the top of the dome in sheer terror, as it could crack like thin glass at any moment.
Just when they had got down the staircase, a couple of drops landed on Scott’s face. At that very moment, Alpha 2 was scrambling out of the opening in the pyramid and starting a bitter chase which would see him take the steps four at a time. Water was starting to flood the site again. They felt as if they were on a sinking boat. When they reached the submarine, the water was already up to their knees and although Alpha 2 had
considerably reduced the head start they had, taking it from one hundred yards to fifty, he didn’t catch up quick enough before the hatches were locked and he started to punch the shell in rage.
“Shall I save him with a quick recharge?” asked Will.
“No, let him rot at the bottom of the sea. Fuck him!”
The water had already covered the mini-submarine and it would be practically impossible to swim to the vessel. Even though he knew he was going to die, he wasn’t frightened; instead, he was furious at not being able to carry out his job. Time ran out and the magnetic field vanished, allowing millions gallons of water to fall on his head. It took less than a second for him to die.
Chapter 76
Despite the journey lasting less than one hour and thirty minutes, at an average speed of 3700 miles per hour, James thought that it had taken them over four hours to travel the five thousand miles between Area 51 and Stonehenge. Not even the tension of the takeoff, where the plane had reached an astronomical speed before leaving the ground, had allowed him to forget about his daughter.
Trifariam, The Lost Codex (2012) Page 42