He noticed that they mainly took it for granted that the canyon had not collapsed anywhere and they would reach somewhere, and that they would not have to journey back.
Bryson spotted something away in the distance and saw that the others about him followed his glare there and saw it too, and they all went there with their eyes focused on it trying to observe something there that could not be properly observed.
He eventually ignored it and waited until it was close, watching the tunnel about him, making sure that nothing was in their immediate way. Occasionally getting ready for something, losing his sleepiness, especially at the others reactions to it.
They continued on examining what was there with some surprise and he knew that they had seen something, and he looked up startled and saw something blocking the canyon ahead, and he started to gasp as well.
Chapter 20
The Transcendent Gateway
Once Parker explored the canyon ahead and discovered that the entire canyon ahead was blocked full of boulders, and that they could not pass there, he exploded with anger and his scientists had to calm him down.
The entire expedition was turning into a mess, even though they had made an immense amount of major findings and more than any other scientists for probably many years. Yet they were not on the world anymore and there was a good chance that they might never even return with the findings.
Everyone there seemed annoyed or depressed at what had happened, and many looked on the brink of losing their patience, including Merton and Mortimer.
Why would any canyon artificial or natural lead anywhere?
Mortimer looked annoyed but started preparing to go back!
He and Merton had a discussion of the problem, and Bryson attempted to hear everything in their silent hushed chants and he saw that they did not come to any conclusions!
They stood beside Parker, resting, glancing at individual sections of the wall of rocks, as the others stood back at a distance observing them.
“It looks artificially done!” Merton remarked. “There could be something hidden behind this? What do you think is?”
“You’re probably right!” Parker remarked, touching the strange shapes of the boulders, and watching the way they were piled together. “Someone wanted the route blocked off!”
Bryson believed that none of them knew what was behind it, and he realized that their lights were getting weaker, and their batteries running out, and that they would be soon be out, and they would have to return in darkness, and he turned off his light and hid it away as he intended to keep it for an emergency and when all the other lights were not working.
Merton started feeling along the edge of the wall of boulders looking for a gap going through it, to try to see what was at the other side.
“We could try shoving some away,” Merton moaned, looking at it, realizing the truth. “With our combined weight!”
He mechanically placed an arm against an area of smaller boulders and started to push it and they joined in and a few bricks fell away, and they were unable to move anything else.
Merton went along examining everything and gasped when he reached the end of the boulders, where they were against the wall of the canyon, and he called Mortimer over to him and they started examining something that was there.
The others all watched them without moving, hoping that they had found something! The majority reacted more to having to confront the things in jungle again than the long walk back!
Bryson moved in close first and saw thick debris covering a gap there, which had looked like rock, and they pushed away some rocks in the gap and other rocks crumbled and collapsed across the ground, and fully opened a small tunnel.
Parker removed his communicator and started trying to see if it now worked, trying to contact the airplane, which he still regularly did, and when he could not pick anything up he put it away.
With the lights held out the black gap there became visible and full of the thick debris, and they illuminated a tunnel going on and they moved in, removing the debris.
Bryson watched his dark shadow stretch along the stone, and his unblinking eyes watched the ground searching for obstructions, and he continued following Merton and Mortimer along, and he watched the others follow him, and noticed that the tunnel was made similarly but with something different and was inaccurate, and as if something had removed the rock quickly with powerful equipment, removing chunks at many different angles.
As he moved further into it he heard the murmurs of some of the archaeologists and Exploration Association members behind him, who were loving the exploration, which was one of their ultimate explorations, and he realized that Merton and Mortimer, who were now far away out in front of him, had announced something to them.
In the blackness ahead something indistinguishable looked as though it were emerging, making his heart quicken, and at any second he expected to find something deadly.
Bryson stopped to listen into the darkness ahead, and finally turned on his light, and he watched Parker approaching him further at a slow pace, looking around him, showing he did not think there would be much there, and Bryson moved on, and thought he saw Mortimer away in the distance, looking peculiar, standing unmoving doing something, and he wondered why he could not see him properly, and thought there must be a bend in the tunnel there.
When Bryson slowly approached the area he was surprised to find stone stairs carved into the rock going far below, and he stood trying to see the bottom or where Mortimer was, but he never saw anything. The stairs vanished into the distance like an abyss!
“What’s there?” Parker called, trying to see what was there.
“There’s stairs ... They go down far below somewhere!”
Bryson shifted down the steps making sure he never slipped, and a deep thud echoed down from behind, from in the tunnel somewhere. The ebbing radiance of the light was not enough to allow him to see very far and he tried to see where Mortimer and Merton were, and was surprised at not being able to see them anywhere and he continued on when he saw that the light only shone to a certain distance below, and he wondered why they had gone away so fast.
As he continued going down he wondered what he was doing! What could possible be below? What could they properly profit from going there? Everything they wanted was above, and not away down there! How could this possibly get them further along the canyon?
Yet it could lead them through the hill to somewhere else?
He tried to grasp the concept of the tunnel and believed someone had built it to get around the canyon being blocked.
Yet why had they not attempted to make their way through where it was blocked, and realized that it would not work as the boulders would have collapsed in when they dug it and that the cliff that it had fallen from might have collapsed more!
Yet why was the tunnel going below? Had they had some form of scanning equipment that had shown where to tunnel through the rock and had discovered some form of obstacle in their path? Perhaps the equipment had detected the rock would collapse and had found the best place to go was below?
The steps were mathematically perfect, and clearly cut by some form of computerized equipment.
Sounds from behind altered and echoed along giving muddled and strange tones, and he had to strain his eyes more to see what he was doing as his light was getting dimmer.
He occasionally looked back up, and when he was far below he saw Parker and two of his scientists standing at the top, who clearly had decided to remain there and to see what happened.
Bryson saw little and that there were no new features of anything, and that the tunnel’s small shape vanished into the dark.
At first he thought he saw something in his light below, and as he moved down bright light exploded out as though his light had increased in power and he looked at it and around him for the real source, and its intensity started blinding him and he could not see anything and stood stunned!
Once it dimmed he studied his surrounding
s and saw that he no longer was in the shaft, and as he tried to see his surroundings a colossal whirlpool of lights shifted over him, and he saw that he had no proper presence, and was some form of energy formation, and that he was being shifted somewhere outside of the universe!
II
The Transcendent Time Machine
Chapter 1
The Awakening
Energy exploded through Bryson as he gained consciousness, and his entire vision altered from surreal mind-bending displacements to deep dense blackness. All of his knowledge seemed to go with it and it left him mesmerized!
Was he even classified as a life form? His knowledge of what was beyond the universe and where he had been vanished, and he felt that he had met something far greater and mind-boggling than he could have ever imagined, but it vanished!
“What happened?” Bryson moaned, and gave a faint laugh to himself, and awoke himself more as though he had awoken from a hangover, though in wonderment, and he staggered.
While he became more conscious he considered if he had actually departed from life and gone into a form of afterlife! His entire surroundings were solid blackness, with a peculiar empty silence with deep faint echoes from his deep breathing.
He could barely remember anything! Why? He could not even properly remember any of the occurrences that had put him there, and he suddenly realized that he could not properly remember who he was! It was as though someone had deliberately been playing around with his mind, for some unknown purpose!
When he recalled things in more detail it made him shiver thinking of it and what the consequences of it would be!
For a moment he thought what had happened had not and he considered what could have happened! Could he have somehow fallen down the stone steps to the bottom?
His fingers gently caressed his head and he stopped when he never found anything, and felt through the dirt on the ground and a perfectly flat artificial floor below, which seemed to him to be near where he had been as the rock with its texture seemed the same. Where else could it be, and have complete darkness? Yet he knew anything was possible at such a place as the island! The island shifted between outer dimensions, and even between many dimensions simultaneously, which he could not fully imagine the consequences of.
He walked around where he was feeling the stone wall going all the way around him! Was he trapped in something? But where?
He could not find exit or do anything, and he finally rested and thought about calling out to show his presence in case someone could hear him, and he shouted out everywhere and rested on the cold stone floor, and considered what he would die there from!
It would have to be from thirst, which was a lousy way to die!
He recalled the last things that had happened over and over, in more detail than before, trying to find something that he might have missed. Some small clue to what was happening there! And tried to awaken himself further! And he searched through everything that had happened from the start, from his appearance at the Exploration Association meeting and the findings that they had given there, which everything had originated from.
The explorers had scanned and mapped the surface of the world with their new more highly advanced underground surveillance technology, developed by David Parker and military scientists. And they had be doing an underground scan and map of Britain from an airplane, with an accuracy beyond anything achieved, and had uncovered a disturbance at the site where Rudolf Hess had crashed his plane during the Second World War.
They had uncovered a black artifact of unknown origins there, which could only have been found by the recently advanced airplane scanning technology!
The artifact had been more amazing than thought, when they had placed it in a museum, where it had been activated, and a strange being had appeared from its energy bubble, which had turned out to be a future human time traveler from suspended animation, in the artifact, who expected to be revived in the future.
The artifact time machine had been damaged during the Second World War, at the same time and location as Hess had crashed, and the time traveler had been about to die before he had entered suspended animation!
The his injuries had been fatal and had killed him but before his death he had told them why he had arrived there, and that he had been searching for the lost treasures and ultimate technology of colossal value of an ultimate time traveler.
Bryson had soon realized what he had missed and that he had arrived at the wrong latitude and that the location had been at the same exact line through the same longitude, and when they had searched for it their scanning equipment detection methods had activated something there, and the uncharted interdimensional island had appeared there.
Something had landed the airplane there, and later the island had altered through interdimensional space to another dimension, trapping them there!
What could be that powerful? It had stopped their scanning equipment working! Yet they had discovered an immense structure hidden away on the island!
Did it want them to find the structure for some plan?
Their group of explorers, scientists, archeologists, paranormal investigators, and treasure seekers had been put together and led by Parker and his scientists, and Bryson and his two paranormal scientist friends, Merton and Mortimer, had helped, and they had been exploring the mysterious island and had been fanatical with getting their hands on what was there!
They had uncovered unknown discoveries everywhere and had been chased by deadly things through a dark jungle into an immense artificial canyon through a large hill, and at the end of it had found it blocked by boulders. But Merton had found a tunnel hidden at its side, and he had been tracing where Merton and Mortimer had gone through it and had been going down the stone steps in almost complete darkness, going out into an abyss below, when his surroundings had altered!
At first he had thought he had seen something in light below, which when he now thought of it had a shape, which he could not place, and he realized it had come upwards towards him and had trapped him, and its light had exploded out and he had been blinded by it, and he had not been able to see its source, and it had stunned him!
It had altered into a colossal whirlpool of lights shifting about him, and he was sure that he had thought that he had no proper presence and had been some form of energy formation! He had gone unconscious after that and he could not realize anything, and he sat contemplating everything.
He wondered where Merton and Mortimer had gone? Had they survived or had they avoided it? Where the hell was he?
He kept rummaging through his things trying find anything that could be of use to him, and wished he had not dropped his light!
He wondered if he could suffocate and tried to measure the amount of air there, and realized that it was not in slightest bit used up, which it should be over the length of time he had been there, and he realized that it had a fresh scent, and he felt air was entering there from somewhere.
He continued searching through his backpack for something that could help him, and realized that he had a small camera and that it had a flash. But when he attempted to make the flash work he realized the batteries were dud, so he just rolled over and tried to sleep, contemplating the outcome.
Solid blackness steadily and eventually enticed him from his sanctuary, and he gave swift glances into the depths of darkness with confusion. What could do such a thing?
His determination was mounting, attaining his imagination, and drawing him out of his inner world to probe his peculiar surroundings again. How could such a room be built without any entrance? And why was it there? He went around the floor feeling it all about him, and every square foot.
He philosophized on how to contemplate the situation, and tried to recall his appearance there. He had vague reminiscences of wild dreams! One had him floating through the cosmos, engulfed in blackness and stars, clearly created by what had happened, and he explored it seeing if anything had occurred.
He sporadically thought that h
is surroundings were part of a complex structure of something, and even wondered if something was checking him out.
Bryson slept and became lost in strange dark dreams with his blindness in them and when he finally awoke he rolled over and stared out at his dark world and upwards trying to see anything of the roof. Hoping some form of energy would make it appear and he watched an imaginary star in the blackness that allowed him to believe that he was just resting in a dark night.
Yet as he observed it further peering into its depths he was amazed at how realistic the small light became, and stood up and looked close at it and realized that it was not real.
He shifted around looking for a roof and any light illumination from any form of gap upwards, looking for some form of air vent, making him believe the place had been at least built to stay in, and he was sure there had to be an exit.
The room seemed normal besides the differences, and it seemed as though it had been made by the makers of the canyon and the tunnel and steps, or someone using the same technology, and he tried searching the only place left, where he had not looked, which he had thought of earlier, which was just above his head height, and he moved about waving his hands over the stone wall, going as far above him as he could, going around the walls, and was amazed when his hand entered an area going inwards and he felt along it, and found a gap and exit going inwards.
The concept startled him and he considered what sort of room it was and what it was doing there. Was it inside the hill, or had he been transported away to somewhere else? Yet why would it not belong to the builders of the tunnel?
After three major attempts he hoisted himself up and rolled over onto his back and rested, and felt the tunnel and realized that it was exactly the same shape as the tunnel he had been following down the stone steps.
The blackness seemed normal now and he wandered down the tunnel feeling and checking everything that he could, and putting each foot forward and feeling there was no obstacles.
The Lost Treasure Map Deluxe Book Collection (2017 Edition) Page 72