Melissa walked in and kissed him, “My day was terrible, we were down two people and I had to work through lunch to get everything taken care of.” She continued to fill Luke in on her day while he washed the dishes and half-heartedly listened to her tale. His mind was too busy organizing his thoughts about how discuss the mysterious but lucrative offer from the D.O.D.
When Melissa had finished talking, Luke took a deep breath and then filled her in on his visit, “I had a very strange visit from the Department of Defense today at school.”
Melissa raised her eyebrows in confusion, “The Department of Defense! What on Earth did they want with you?”
Luke smiled, “They wanted to offer me a job for three times my current salary and full benefits for you and the kids.”
Melissa ran over and hugged him, “That’s tremendous! I told you that if you just kept trying something would come up for you! What is the job about? I can’t image what the D.O.D. would want with someone who teaches students with autism. I know you tell me how tough those kids can be but I don’t see them being on the front lines in Iraq or anything.”
Luke took a deep breath, “That’s one of the two catches to the job. I don’t exactly know what it is that they want me to do.” Melissa stood there waiting for the second catch. Luke hesitated for a moment and then he filled her in the second stipulation to the job, “If I accept the job, we would have to move to Virginia. They have offered to move us at no cost to us and you and the kids would be coming with me as well.”
Melissa rolled her eyes, “So I would have to quit my job and we would have to pull Stacy out of school and away from her friends. What about our families? Everyone that we know lives up here.”
Luke had been prepared for this discussion and his response was slow and measured, “Honey, you have been talking about leaving your job for years. You have also often said that you wish you could spend more time with the kids. This is the chance that you have been waiting for. With the money that I will be making and with our housing paid for, you won’t need to work anymore. You can stay home with the kids! Stacy is only in kindergarten and she has her dad’s personality. She makes friends quickly wherever she goes. She will be fine. Sally is still a baby and it won’t make any difference to her. With the money that I will be making, we will have the ability to send the girls to any college that they want to attend when they graduate high school. As for our families, Virginia is only a six hour drive from here and an hour flight. They will be able to fly us right into Maguire Air force base whenever we have free time.” Luke waited for his words to sink in then continued with his thoughts, “I feel like this is the chance that we have been waiting for. The chance to take the next step in our lives. I think we should go for it. I know you are scared of the unknown, but I feel that together we can handle anything this world can throw at us! I am asking you to take this chance with me, but at the same time I am telling you that I won’t take this chance without you. If you feel strongly that we should pass on this offer, I am okay with that. Like you said, something else will come along.”
Melissa smiled with joy. She knew Luke and she knew how much a chance like this would mean to him and still he was willing to pass it all up for her no questions asked. How could she say no to him in this instance? This offer appeared to be everything that they had ever wanted. She was scared of the unknown but more than anything she loved Luke and their kids. This position at the D.O.D would secure all of their futures. She hugged Luke again, “Of course I will go with you. I would go with you to the ends of the Earth.”
While her response was something that wives typically said to their husbands, Luke knew that when she said it she actually meant it. What Luke did not know is how true her words would come to be.
Chapter 6
The Atlantic Ocean
The Merchant ship, the Mockingbird, was making its monthly trip of taking American made cars to Africa. The ship was the size of a city block and housed nearly as many people. The crew worked around the clock in three separate shifts. One crew was on duty running the ship and checking the inventory on a regular basis, one crew was off duty, and the third group of crew members was sleeping soundly.
Tony Johnson was a former naval man who had had left the military and taken to the life of a merchant marine. He loved being on the water and, while he was a brave man who had served his country with pride, he was happy to be on a ship that was not heading into a war zone. He found that it was much easier to live on the water he loved so much when his life wasn’t in danger from a foreign enemy.
Tony had just finished his shift and was currently off duty. There were literally dozens of things to do on the ship when someone was off duty. The ship had a movie theater, a night club, and a full gym amongst other things. Still, with all of the comforts that the modern ship offered, Tony preferred the classic method of playing cards to pass the time when he was off duty. He and several other shipmates had a bi-weekly poker game that Tony was heading to. He had been on a hot streak the past several weeks and he was looking forward to continuing it. Tony walked into the mess hall where the game was going to take place to find several of his shipmates waiting for him.
John Harmon turned to Tony and smirked, “There’s the hot hand! The other guys were wondering if you were going to show up or not. I told them that a smart man would take a few weeks off and keep the money that he had won until we got to shore where he could use it. I told them that with you they have nothing to worry about because not coming is what a smart man would do.”
The three other men burst out laughing at John’s comment. Unfazed by their jeering, Tony confidently walked over to the table and sat down, “I don’t to need to be a smart man. I just need to smarter than you knuckleheads. Now, let’s play same poker.”
Tony sat down and John shuffled the deck and started to deal the cards out. He was in the middle of dealing when he looked down to see a strange blue light emanating from the floor below him. He tapped John on the shoulder, “What the hell is that?”
The light appeared to be coming right through the floor and it almost seemed as if the light itself was spinning as it rose. The light touched John’s boot and he began screaming in pain, “AHHHH, my foot! It feels like it is being cut to pieces!”
The other sailors jumped onto the poker table as John’s foot gave out underneath him causing him to fall to the floor. Tony watched in disbelief as the blue light continued to swirl around John, dissolving his body but leaving his clothes seemingly unaffected. In mere seconds, John’s body was simply erased from existence.
Tony and his remaining friends shrieked in terror as the light began to wash over the sides of the table that they were standing on. A moment later, Tony’s feet felt the pain that John had described when light had touched him. Tony’s scream changed from a shriek of fear to a bellow of anguish as the light dissolved his foot within his shoe. He began to fall and he reached out to grab one of his fellow sailors for support. Tony and his friend both tumbled into the swirling blue light. The last thing that Tony saw was the brilliant blue light and then his eyes were torn to shreds. His scream was cut short as his throat suffered the same fate. Tony felt three more seconds of agonizing pain before he felt nothing at all.
Ten minutes after Tony had passed away, the entire crew of the Mockingbird had shared his fate. Piles of clothes were all that remained of the over three hundred crew members onboard. The Mockingbird continued to float across the ocean as ghost ship while the blue light that surrounded it began to expand.
Chapter 7
In the past twenty four hours, Diana had been put onto a military flight to Virginia and driven to an instillation in the Appalachian Mountains. She was put in a small briefing room where she was told that she would need to await the arrival of a second person before she could be completely filled in on why the D.O.D. needed her “expertise” as they put it. She was unsure exactly how her skills as an English major could help out National Security but the agent who spoke to her
made the situation seem pretty grave. The generous package that they offered her was also a pretty good incentive to accept the new position.
Her phone had been taken from her when she entered the facility. All that she was afforded were a few magazines to look at to pass the time. The room had four white walls with no windows and no pictures. It was the dullest room that she had ever found herself in. After an hour or so of waiting, the door opened and a tall, athletic-looking, middle-aged man entered the room and stood in the doorway assessing the room as she had when she entered it. Diana looked the man over and thought that, while not model good looking, he was still attractive. As she was assessing him, she noticed the wedding ring on his left hand and she immediately rushed the thoughts of how attractive he was or was not out of her mind.
The man had the same confused look on his face that Diana was sure she possessed when she was ushered into the room. Never one to be shy, Diana walked over to man and introduced herself, “Hi, I am Diana Cain. From the look on your face, I guess you were offered a mysterious position with the D.O.D as well.”
Luke shook hands with the attractive professor, “Yes. I am Luke Davis. Do you have any idea what all of this is about?”
Diana shook her head, “All I know is that they are bringing me in here primarily as a consultant. I work as a professor of myth and folklore at my local community college. Why the government needs my services, I have no idea. I was told that I would not be heading into a currently active combat zone.”
Luke shrugged, “I am Board Certified Behavior Analyst. I work as a teacher in a school for students with autism. I was approached only yesterday about this position and today my family and I were flown down here from New Jersey. Other than that, my story is pretty much like yours. I have no idea why the D.O.D needs me.” Luke scanned the room again and smiled, “Well, at least they have placed us in a stimulating environment while we wait.”
Diana giggled at her fellow teacher’s dry sense of humor and responded quickly, “Yes, it appears that the interior decorating techniques of the D.O.D. are second to none.”
Her comment caused Luke to laugh and she was sure that each of them could feel some of the tension from the situation ease out of the room.
The wall on the far side of the room from them suddenly disappeared revealing a two way mirror. A tall and muscular man with a uniform on, which identified him as a general, stood behind the mirror. Next to the general stood a short, overweight man wearing a lab coat who Diana guessed was a scientist. The wall-length mirror slid open and the general stepped forward with the scientist behind him.
The general approached them and started speaking, “Please excuse the theatrics. I just wanted to get a quick look at the two of you prior to introducing myself. I am glad that you two seem to be getting along so well. You two will be working together for the foreseeable future on what is likely the most important operation since the Manhattan Project.”
Diana was shocked by the man’s claims and from Luke’s facial expressions she could see that he shared her surprise. Before either one of them could speak, the general continued his introduction, “My name is General Sam Parsons. Please have a seat. We do not have much time to waste. I will explain to both of you why you are here and the situation that your skills can help our government address.”
Diana and Luke sat down with their eyes fixed on the general as he continued to brief them on the situation, “Let me first start by explaining why we recruited Ms. Cain and then I shall address Mr. Davis’s role in the situation.” The general took a deep breath, “Ms. Cain, would you please enlighten us as to the nature of your Master’s thesis?”
Diana’s mind was awash with confusion. In her mind, she was thinking how a thesis on real world explanations for myths fit in with the D.O.D. The general asked her again, “Ms. Cain, as I said time is of the essence, please inform us as to the nature of your thesis.”
She took a deep breath, “The gist of it is that many of the ancient myths were based in reality. For instance, the discovery of the giant squid seems to have given credence to the Vikings legend of the Kraken. There are other examples of animals, either living or extinct, that explain many of the beasts that appear in mythology. I also explored the possibility that people with peak human abilities or attributes could have been the basis for the myths of ancient heroes.” She paused for a moment as she would were she speaking to one of her classes to ensure that everyone was following her, “For instance, the giant warrior Ajax might have been a real person who suffered from gigantism such as the professional wrestler, Andre the Giant. Achilles perceived invulnerability can, to a much less exaggerated extent, been seen in someone like Cal Ripken Jr. who is highly resistant to injury.” She smiled, “To use professional wrestling as an example again, didn’t anyone else think that The Rock was the perfect person to play Hercules in a movie?” She laughed, “I mean, a world class athlete with his physique would surely have been seen as a demi-god in ancient times.”
The general prompted her once again, “What of the gods themselves Ms. Cain? How did they fit into your hypothesis?”
Diana sighed, “The gods themselves are the most difficult part of my thesis to account for. I, of course, turned to the works of Erik Von Daniken and others who suggested that the ancient gods were extraterrestrial beings. I did deviate from his idea though in that I offered the idea that the gods did not come from another planet. Physics is not my field of study but I did find that what little theoretical data we have on interstellar travel suggests that, while possible, it is highly impractical.” She paused for a moment. It had been a while since she had to defend this section of her thesis and she wanted to make sure that she had her information correct, “To travel through interstellar space, you would need to travel at the speed of light. Einstein proved that as a body approaches the speed of light, time slows down for that object but remains constant for everything else in relative time and space.” In her mind, she was thinking that she must sound like one of the Doctor’s companions from a late night BBC marathon. Diana refocused then continued, “With that in mind, even if an advanced civilization existed that could travel at light speed, they would know that do so would be a waste of time. Let’s say that a ship of aliens had left their planet and traveled at light speed for two years, worked on another planet for a year, and then traveled back to their home planet for two more years at light speed. From the perspective of the aliens on the ship, they would have been gone for six years but from the perspective of the people on their home planet they would have been gone for over six thousand years.”
She stopped once more to make sure that everyone was following her. She felt reassured when she saw the man in the lab coat nodding his head. She had no idea what he did but he looked scientific and he seemed to agree with what she was saying. Before the general could ask her to continue again, she finished her explanation, “Think of what a difference six thousand years makes. We are talking about the difference between today and four thousand B.C.! Anyone who knew of them and their mission would be long dead, and society would have advanced to the point that the aliens who had left on the mission would no longer recognize it. Then there is the possibility that in six thousand years their entire society would have gone extinct. Then you need to consider what exactly would the aliens on the ship have accomplished on their mission?”
General Parsons and the scientist hung on every word that she said while Luke continued to just stare at her with a quizzical look on his face. She guessed that, much like herself, he was even more confused than ever as to why they were here. She looked back at the general and finished reviewing her thesis, “I speculated that the ancient gods may have indeed come to Earth and helped shape early humanity, but I suggested that instead of coming from another planet, they may have made the much shorter trip from another dimension. Honestly, I would need to look at my thesis again to explain the theoretical science behind it but I know that it was feasible.”
General Parsons no
dded, “Thank you, Ms. Cain. I am sure that you are wondering why I would have you recite a research paper that you wrote fifteen years ago. The answer quite simply is that you were absolutely correct on almost all of your points.”
Diana grimaced,” You mean that the ancient gods are real?”
Parsons sighed, “They are more than just real. What I am about to tell the two of you is currently classified information, but over the next few weeks it won’t matter because the entire world will soon learn the horrifying truth that is facing our species.” He took a deep breath and then continued, “The Ancient gods are real. Specifically, The Asgardians, the Olympians, and the Mesopotamian gods. All three pantheons are members of the same interdimensional race. One month ago, members of this race contacted several world leaders in secret to discuss their plan for humanity.”
Parson’s grabbed a nearby chair and sat down, “It seems that these beings see themselves as protectors of planets capable of sustaining life. By human standards, these creatures are extremely long lived if not downright immortal. We don’t really know for sure. When they met with our world leaders, the beings had informed them that centuries ago they had left the Earth with the idea that we humans would become caretakers of the planet. They felt that through the skills that they claim to have taught us that we would be capable of caring for the planet in their absence. After inhabiting other dimensions for several thousand years, the gods have returned to check on the Earth. When they saw how we are destroying the planets eco-system and over populating it, they decided that we needed to be exterminated.”
Chimera: Scourge of the Gods: A Kaiju Thriller Page 3