Understandably, no one believes until he sees it with his very eyes...
«I know, it's a desperate solution, but believe me, Dr. Moore, if only you had seen at least one small part of what I have seen in all those years... I'd rather be unaware of all this. There's not a single day in which I wished the Norwegians had never found the specimen.»
«The last time we talked you mentioned something about the origins of the organism of which we're speaking, I remember you used the word creators. What did you mean by that?»
The man lets out a half-smile, as he looks at the petite woman beside him. His hawk eyes take a mild look for a moment or two. He feels empathy for what could be his perfect daughter, and he sees in her spirit his own thirst for knowledge. «You don't miss anything... I wouldn't share this information, normally. At least not with someone who hasn't an access level beyond top secret. You see... society, economy, power, are based on some main structures, first of all the history of mankind and of the planet that hosts us. You are different from most of the people I have met. I can see that you are a pure soul, devoted to science.»
The shy nerd dormant in the heart of Emily Moore takes the upper hand for a moment, and the woman perceives the hated feeling that precedes the blush on her cheeks, so she looks away, focusing on arranging the glassware on the bench in front of them. Ivanov pushes a switch that turns on a fume hood, then he proceeds to mix substances in a two-liter flask, a few drops at a time, causing a slight effervescence. After some seconds, the Russian resumes talking to her. «The implications of what I am about to say may undermine the very foundations of the world that you know... But I am getting old, and some weights are too big to carry on your shoulders alone.»
«Please, go a head», she says.
The man sighs, but seems convinced. «Well, I have already made you aware that the paleontologist we found died of hypothermia. She mentioned the wreckage of an alien ship found in the ice. In the following years we tried to find it, but our attempts were fruitless. Previously, however – I mean a few years before finding the body of the paleontologist – we made another important discovery. Something far beyond imagination. At that time one of our expeditions was set in a very cold and remote area in Antarctica. It was a mountainous plateau at about 4000 meters: the Dome Argus. In some places the ice sheet covering the continent was thinner, so our men managed to dig tunnels to reach the underlying rocky layer, to collect samples. During one of the perforations, a big piece of ice gave way suddenly, causing a landslide and the death of two men who were never found. There, however, we found that a large section of the underlying rocky surface had been freed, and at that point there was a cave. At first the explorers thought that the shape of the opening, an almost perfect triangle, was an oddity of nature, but when they reached it, they found that it had an artificial origin. I was immediately contacted and sent to verify the eventual presence of traces of life forms dating back to very ancient times. I won't bore you with the details of the perfectly smooth structure or the spectacular dimensions. I'll tell you that we went inside the cave. It was a triangular shaped corridor that went deep into the heart of the mountains. As we proceeded we had to remove odd ice obstructions, each time older. After a distance that we estimated at about six miles, the tunnel opened into what at first sight looked like a huge underground cave. Later we found that it was not a natural cavity, but a cuboid room. The size was colossal and its sides in perfect proportion to the first three square numbers.»
A break follows Ivanov's last words, while he checks the acidity of the liquid that he is mixing, using a pH meter.
«An artificial structure in the heart of Antarctica? How is such a thing possible?», asks Moore, somewhat doubtful whether Ivanov is making fun of her or not.
He keeps describing the room buried deep in Antarctic mountains, apparently ignoring her question. «From our analysis, the ice crystallization found in the chamber had an approximate age of not less than five hundred million years, although I personally think that it was older, almost double that.»
For a moment, Moore's eyes seem to become enormous, to emphasize that huge time interval.
Ivanov smiles at her stupor. «Wait to wonder, I haven't even told you the best. The walls of that huge room were entirely carved in exquisite bas-reliefs. They described the history of a race, highly developed creatures coming from outer space, who had visited this planet in an extremely remote age. They mastered bio-engineering, and created complex life forms on this planet. At the center of the room, there was a kind of low stone fence, perfectly circular.»
Ivanov's gaze moves inside again, while describing memories and feelings of the extraordinary discovery. «I remember that day like it's yesterday. I was the first to cross the threshold of that stone fence, shortly followed by my dear and unfortunate friend, Yuri. It was like stepping into an area where the atmosphere was almost as dense as being liquid. I could feel a sort of clicking on my skin, as if the clothes were charged with tiny electrostatics. I perceived a distinctly sour taste in my mouth, like when you touch the poles of a battery with the tip of your tongue, to check whether it's fully charged o r not. The air before my eyes quickly began to take a slight bluish glow and an ozone smell. The strang e phenomenon grew up in intensity till it turned the place around me in a completely white world. After the first terrible moments of disorientation, a new universe took shape. Scenes came to life, and they were not just holograms. I could feel the wind, the smells, the warmth of the sun on my face. At first my point of view was from the upper atmosphere, as if I came from space. I remember that I recognized our planet, and I realized that the morphology of oceans and land surfaces was quite different than today. I cried as I realized I was staring at a still virgin Earth, ancient and unspoiled. Time didn't flow in the usual way, the visions – or should I say the memories – flowed in me like high-speed transmitted packets. I saw the arrival of strange creatures on this planet. Their appearance was monstrous, and the way they manifested themselves was always in some way infused with the same feature. Everywhere, in architectural structures, in ships, in the furnishings, there was a radial starry geometry. The creatures communicated with what people would call a form of telepathy, or distance communication without the help of any visible machine. I personally think they were using very low frequency sounds to communicate, because I remember well that I experienced the feeling of strong vibrations that shook my body to the core. While scrolling through time at amazing speed, I saw those beings create immense cities in the deep sea bottom and on the land surface. They mastered genetic engineering and were capable to instill the spirit of life into inanimate organic material. They created the first plant and animal life forms on the planet, populating the continent they had chosen and launching entire ecosystems, aimed at the production of food and raw materials. They used specially designed creatures to build their immense megalithic constructions. These creatures were amorphous protoplasmic masses, which could be molded to shape limbs and new weird life forms, following the directives imposed by the influences of their creators. It was a magnificent world, clean, but at the same time terrifying. In my journey I saw beings that don't appear in the history books or in museums, some of them were created for utility, others for purposes that we may define funny. I saw whole forests of trees with colossal proportions, far bigger than today's giant sequoia.
Then, in that sort of alien golden age, something happened that deeply marked the history of the planet itself. Apparently some kind of accident happened in one of the facilities where the protean organisms were genetically designed and created. Something escaped the control of the genetic engineers and the protoplasmic creatures underwent an uncontrolled evolution, soon gaining their own awareness and intelligence. Very quickly they became unmanageable. There was a kind of rebellion, followed by a war between both races. It lasted for thousands of years, with terrible losses on both fronts. The mucilaginous beings were fin ally exterminated, and only few of them managed to escape hiding i
n the volcanic caves of the underground and into the deep of the mountains. In a desperate attempt to resolve the war once and for all, the creators drew upon them their most fearsome technology. Through the use of this technology, far beyond our actual knowledge, they altered the Earth's axis, causing the lush land that had once been their first home to become the actual Antarctica. This caused enormous upheavals in the earth's crust, a global catastrophe that caused the extinction of many animal species that they themselves had created.
The creators themselves lost much of their knowledge and they risked extinction.
Think about it... in geographic and star maps carved by the creators along the walls, this planet was depicted with not one, but three moons, and the orbit of that area of the solar system that we call "asteroid belt" was occupied by fewer asteroids than today, but almost as big as planetoids.
In my journey through millions of years of the planet's history, I saw as the creators had calculated that a swarm of comets would have traveled through the asteroids belt that stood between Mars and Jupiter. The percentage of hitting the bigger planetoids was extremely high. The following chain reaction would have caused strong upheavals in the inner solar system. Scientists of that magnificent race calculated that many debris would hit the Earth, causing a new planetary catastrophe. They didn't have the possibility to avoid this occurrence, so they prepared to depart, leaving this region of space. Most of them went toward the constellation we later identified as that of the Pleiades. Just small detachments remained on Earth. If they survived to the looming disaster, they would make sure that life on the planet would keep existing, waiting to start over and re-create the conditions for the return of their people. Their last vestiges were concealed in huge cities carved deep into the earth's crust, in the bottom of the ocean abyssal plains and on top of the highest and remote mountains. Some of them survived, and I think it's plausible that they can still be alive today.
I felt like having traveled and lived for an unbelievable long time, and when I saw one of our moons hitting the planet, looking at the devastation that followed, it was too much for my mind, and I lost consciousness.
Later on I woke up in a bed in the infirmary of our base. Yuri and I were in a sorry state. The icy cold of the continent seemed to have penetrated to our bones. Shooting pains in the joints prevented the slightest movement. It took months of grueling rehabilitation sessions to even stand up and walk. Then I learned that our men dragged Yuri and me out of the stone fence. I believe that there was still some kind of an active force field within it, a form of energy that projected in our minds the testimony left for us by the beings from the outer space. My friend had also the same experience, and he was never the same from that day on. We realized that, of the eight members who made up our group, just me and Dmitriev had experienced that kind of hallucination. The phenomenon did not repeat when we or somebody else entered the stone fence. We were never able to determine what was the technology that had caused it. Whatever it was, it performed its job and turned itself off. In spite of our perceptions, we stood inside the area subject to the force field for no longer than a few seconds.
This is, briefly, what happened. Of course I'm omitting all the details that we could learn later from the engravings that adorned the walls of that time-capsule.
Now, let's come back to our subject. I can only hazard a hypothesis about how things went, because as I already told you we could not find the alien ship described by the paleontologist. However, the creature that I had the opportunity to study for all this time is all too similar to the engineered creatures that I've seen thanks to the technology of the creators. My idea is that the plummeting alien ship penetrated deep into the ice, triggering a small earthquake in the area and reaching, perhaps, the rocky substrate. This disruption may have attracted to the surface one or more of those monstrous beings which adapted to survive in the bowels of the continent, harboring an ancestral hatred and developing a kind of xenophobia towards all beings from outer space... or at least from the surface. Millions of years had passed since their creation, and although isolated in the bowels of a desert continent, they might have undergone further evolution, sharpening their ability to take any shape or, as in our case, to replicate that of another living things. The evidence I have seen with my own eyes forces me to think that they have developed a form of intelligence and a deep awareness, far superior to those of humans.
When you have the time, if you like it, read something by Lovecraft. That man has somehow managed to access diaries of old expeditions, or who knows... maybe he came in contact with something like that stone fence we found, and his mind reached ancient truths. The fact is that, in one of his stories, he described something very similar to what we have perceived and somehow lived in our skin.
Those immense cities, their incomprehensible technology, millions of years of world history, the answers to many of our questions... Everything is still there, hidden in the darkness of the eternal ice, waiting for someone to bring them back to light again.
Now let's go on with our visitor. Our solvent is ready.»
Totally enraptured by the words of Ivanov, Moore has almost forgotten where they are and what they're doing. The woman shakes her head, as if to recover from a period of absence.
«It's an interesting story Dr. Ivanov...»
«It's much more than that, Doctor. It's the plain truth, believe me. Although I myself, even tough I lived it personally, struggle to believe it sometimes. I wish I had doubts... I could take refuge in the belief that it was a hallucination caused by hypothermia. But the sculptures in the room were there to confirm that everything was real. Anyway, please consider this an extremely confidential and dangerous information. In the world there are some who are well aware of these truths, and they will always make sure that these secrets remain such. At any cost. But let's go on. Please tell me, have you identified the compound that I've just made?»
Recovering, the woman adjusts her glasses, back to focus on the instruments before them. «I've seen that you used concentrated hydrochloric acid, and fuming nitric acid, in a ratio of three to one», she says. It's what ancient alchemists called Aqua Regia, a powerful corrosive that can dissolve even gold, which is notoriously resistant to common acids. You also used a salt, the ammonium chloride, which is composed of the same elements of the solvent, probably to absorb the aqueous fraction in excess and make the solution even sharper.»
«Ten out of ten doctor. Now, please, give me the test tube with the boy's blood, stay back and watch carefully.»
The woman takes the vial, surprised by the slight trembling of her hand, and delivers it to Ivanov. She feels anxious for the story she just heard, and for the man as well, who is looking haunted again.
The Russian turns a knob at the bottom of the Bunsen burner, setting the flame to the maximum. The gas burning produces a roaring noise, like a miniature jet, and the light emitted by the flame creates grotesque shadows on Ivanov's face, giving him an even more disturbing and bizarre appearance.
The scientist pours half of the corrosive solution in a tall glass beaker, then removes the cap of the vial with the blood of Ahmed and without even pouring the content, he puts the vial in the acid solution. «Be careful now», says the Russian in a low voice while holding the Bunsen burner.
He pushes down the tube with a tiny glass rod, to make it sink in the acid, leaving a red trail. For a while nothing happens, and the woman is just starting to think that the scientist has really got a screw loose when the tube has a start. Attacked by the acid, the blood begins to sizzle and throws itself outside the vial, thereby forming a roughly spherical lump. The woman looks in amazement as the mass of blood takes a spiral shape, squirms like a worm, and moves in the acid toward the glass container wall , then it rises to the surface, emerges and crawls over the edge. At the top, the tiny creature that vaguely resembles a leech, shrinks, again taking a spherical shape that slides down on the outside of the glass to reach the table. The tiny dark clump gro
ws, swelling up to take on a rounded shape, about the size of a walnut. The acid on its surface keeps sizzling for a while, letting out a stream of reddish and acrid smoke.
Nothing more seems to happen, and Moore turns a quizzical look to Ivanov, who doesn't take his eyes away from the tiny lump, which has now taken a dry appearance.
«Don't get distracted», whispers the man. «It sacrificed a part of its own flesh to create an outer shell capable to stop the acid. It's something that I saw it doing dozens of times. Look carefully no w.»
After a half minute during which nothing happens, suddenly the little dark walnut has a start. With a sharp crackling, an irregular line appears on the surface, which slowly ex pands into a crack, while slender antennas as thin as hair emerge, moving slowly in the air and probing the white surface of the table. After a few moments they retract inside, then a trickle of reddish flesh leaks out, slipping on the shelf and collecting in an amorphous roughly spheroidal mass.
A cry dies in Moore's throat, while she looks at a tiny mouth equipped with fangs that is opening longitudinally and is giving a shrill sound. At the same time, rough and slender appendages as tiny as toothpicks burst from everywhere, bending with small pops to produce rough joints and hardening in segmented legs with which the little creature moves uncertainly on the table surface. A blackish compound eye emerges from a pseudo-pod that sprouted sideways, and it seems to look at the scene around it like a periscope. Then, with a flick, the creature moves, running on asymmetric limbs, progressing awkwardly toward the woman, who backs away terrified when...
With a quick gesture Ivanov heads the beak of the Bunsen burner on the little monster, setting it on fire. The tiny being shakes, trying to avoid the flame while its flesh sizzles and gets smaller in size. Like a balloon that collapses, it shortly becomes a small patch of burnt organic matter.
The soldier Vasquez, who kept staying in the background until then, merely casually monitoring the two scientists, observed the scene. An incredulous and bewildered look is stamped on his face.
Cellular Activity- The Djinn Page 14