The Alien Artifact 5 2014 (Novelette)

by Victor Bertolaccini

  He did not know what their next biggest problem would be! Was it finding a food source, and not dieing of starvation? Or was there something there, which had brought them there, getting ready to kill them all or what?

  They never had any communications with the outside world and the plane was damaged and never had enough fuel left, and they never knew if what had taken them there would allow them to leave, perhaps after it had finished with them.

  The next peculiarly that they saw was the strangely colored sky, with no clouds, and nobody could recall seeing anything like it and that it had not been there when they had landed.

  It was very warm and dry and Parker and his scientists removed some of their equipment outside the plane and Bryson watched them at work, and their reactions when all the instruments began reacting furiously, and the scientists started checking everything.

  “What are you up to?” Bryson asked one of the scientists, near him, looking baffled.

  “There’s a form of powerful energy influence, and it’s still stopping us scanning what’s out there!”

  “Just as it was on the airplane?”

  “Well, we seem to have found another encounter – and it’s far more tremendous! I believe that on the airplane we were not able to properly check anything as there was too much disturbance from something else! Now that we have landed we are detecting it and it is also more powerful this close ...”

  “Is it near us?”

  “It’s somewhere away out inland, and we are trying to get some more information on it!”

  He handed him some readouts, and Bryson stared at them with amazement, gasping, and asked, “What could create such power? It must be colossal!”

  “It’s like someone is playing around with something out here! Have any countries got any military or anything out here?”

  “Nobody has ever heard of this island, or of anything out here! But why would it be built out here? Why would they be using anything or experimenting on something though?”

  “Perhaps they are using or creating something too dangerous to be activated in an inhabited zone!” the scientists replied firmly.

  “That would explain it being so secretive and an uncharted island!” Bryson answered, curious in what the scientist would make of things. “How did they manage to hide an entire island of this size though? Nothing seems to add up!”

  “They surely would have to have technology beyond anything we’ve heard of!”

  “What could create such a powerful disturbance and create such occurrences?”

  “It could be someone using a natural phenomenon though? Like someone harnessing and manipulating energy from the Earth’s core or something!”

  Bryson could not realize what it was and realized that the real solution to what it was would be far more unbelievable and crazy than what they would come out with, and he wondered if he would not get what it was from them as it would be far too ridicules for them even to assume.

  Yet there clearly was no evidence of anything and only someone making a ridicules mistake would add anything to what had been said, and going by what all the scientists about him, including Merton and Mortimer, indicated and came out with as a crazy solution they never really had anything.

  “Whatever it is, we will need more reasonable and solid clues!” Parker finally announced, especially to Bryson.

  Bryson left them, and started to go further out from the airplane, where the other scientists had moved out to and he started to notice their different appearance.

  The adrenalin of the scientists was visibly rushing through their veins, overwhelming them, as they checked their new surroundings, and most realized that they had found their ultimate dream location. All around them they examined new strange phenomena, and he wondered what they were discovering.

  “Look at all this!” one explained, picking up a tropical plant that he could not recall ever seeing before.

  “What do you think it’s doing here?” he asked, curiously.

  “This island has been trapped in something ... How else could it be the way it is? Nothing like it can grow up here at this region!”

  He pointed at bright strange tropical trees, with dense regions of vegetation, and golden sand patches, formed far differently than anything and at anywhere he had seen. He was sure the warm temperature there clearly increased, going by the landscape and vegetation. Yet there was no explanation for where it came from!

  “I can see this stuff growing in the Pacific!” the scientist announced, trying to explain it. “It’s as though it has formed differently, by some means, by something else ...”

  Bryson heard Parker and his scientists giving reactions of finding another occurrence, and he started giving startled calls, and Bryson and the other scientists about him all looked over and watched their startled faces and reactions to something.

  Many of the scientists there had started getting strange findings, and Parker stood back and watched their reactions, with curiosity.

  Suddenly all of their equipment and the plane’s electronic equipment started reacting and giving out sparks, on the verge of breaking down, and they all started deactivating it.

  The scanning equipment started to blank out, as if fluctuations of energy were overpowering it!

  “Shut down everything before it’s all damaged!” Parker called out to the scientists using the equipment. “We’ll have plenty of time to check everything later when the disturbances have gone.”

  The scan equipment was important and of great value, and still confidential, and they tried to save it from being damaged as much as they could.

  Bryson was sure that they had done something that had caused it, by their reactions and replies, and while he followed Merton and Mortimer back over to them, he heard the scientist that he had been talking to there say that when the occurrence had happened that he had been trying out a different way to scan a region of the island over at the center of the island.

  Chapter 17

  The Other World

  Deep snow shrouded the colossal jungle everywhere, situated in the interior of the island, and Bryson marched on with the group from the airplane and realized that they would have to sleep there!

  The white glowing winter landscape was untouched by humans or inhabited by any animals that they so far had seen, and at times empty of sound with had a deep hollow silence that he had only heard in intense winter snow landscapes.

  The whole sky had swiftly altered to a dark cold empty night sky over the island, with an extremely fast world rotation, with the outside world altering to somewhere else. The cold atmosphere and snow clouds had surrounded them in hours and had altered the island to its winter season, and an amazing star had emerged on the horizon in such a large size that it had created forms of sunlight, which beamed and accelerated through the trees like an immense spotlight, creating shifting surreal shadows and ghost shapes, and had soon vanished beneath the horizon.

  He was sure that it was an alien world without a proper sun, which had to be at the other side, and he wondered if they could freeze to death there! Yet most of the others thought that there was a proper sun as there would be a far lower temperature.

  When they had entered the jungle all they had seen had been the absence of life, and a strange faint mist surrounding regions, and their group of fifteen members from the airplane (including him, Merton, Mortimer, and Parker), had investigated everything, even when the dangers had increased, and they still never found a way to renew their food supplies properly.

  The group had mainly been put together by Mortimer and Parker and were mainly made up of scientists and Exploration Association members, who were either the most engrossed and experienced, and scientists, archaeologists, ex-military like Parker, or explorers and treasure seekers, who had experience in searching, examining, documenting, and detecting what they might miss, or there to help or defend them.

  Bryson could hardly believe what was happening and anything that had occurred, and how luckily they ha
d been! All the facts and fantasies of the whole affair of the Exploration Association and recent occurrences were muddled up together and he could hardly believe that they were on the trail of another lost treasure.

  When they had been back at the airplane they had discovered that before the equipment had stopped working and they had shut it down that it had left a recorded image of what looked like a strange form of a large artificial structure, buried away in the island, and they believed that it was the ultimate time traveler and his lost treasures.

  They had entered there all studying their amazing surroundings everywhere trying to explain why the massive immense thick jungle closely resembled an immense prehistoric jungle, and how it could grow to the height that it did.

  The whole sky had altered right before their eyes and the outside world vanished away, and the Earth went as if it had been never there, and they were positive that the whole island had been transported somewhere, and to where it could have come from.

  The world it was now on was far too cold, and with the same gravity as the Earth, and he could not imagine the trees growing there, and he wondered how many worlds it had appeared on.

  The jungle started to look more different and deadly as they entered further, and he considered their search for the structure in what must be the most desolate and deadly region. They had not seen anything alive anywhere, and never even had insects.

  The whole event was incredible now and Bryson could hardly believe this was the outcome of the trip that he had predicted he would ruin his reputation over, and thought of as being wrong with his assumptions and theories, with false ideas at what would occur. The events of the past day were astounding and he could hardly believe that they were on the treasure quest, and still alive, and was in perhaps an even worse situation.

  The last shreds of proper starlight seemed to be vanishing beneath the trees behind them, and going into the horizon, with the deep black alien winter night engulfing them, and Bryson studied his close surroundings over trying to explain why they had thought that the jungle had even resembled a normal jungle.

  All the action was bringing him back to life and putting more life into him, after a long length of inactivity and lack of interest.

  At times he could not believe that there was a structure there, and that anything existed there! Yet he had thought the same about the last castle!

  It had surprised him again that after the castle exploration, after all the findings and evidence they had collected, in the end still seemed to add up to little! He and the two paranormal scientists had made many discoveries about the paranormal and yet it still had not proven that any of the real stuff existed, and classic stuff like vampires and werewolves, and what they had proven to exist had not just been something else!

  What was also shocking was how easily they could get lost there, and nobody knew if they even knew accurately where they were going, as there was nothing like compasses.

  They knew where they had come from but they knew nothing of what was in front of them. They had no satellites to search, but if they could find some elevated region they could check the whole region. Yet he could not recall seeing anything from the airplane, and could not recall any real features of anything there. It had been strange and different and he had never seen anything visible, and the others seemed to have done the same.

  There was nothing to recognize anywhere, and the strange jungle seemed to cover everything with its colossal trees, and the other areas were mainly just things like high rocky hills and mountains and empty areas of sand and rock.

  He watched one of the men keep attempting to use a communications device to the airplane to give and get updates on what was happening without picking up anything.

  The snow suddenly came rushing down more than he had ever seen it do, and affected their sight, and they all started getting exhausted wading through deep snow areas, and too exhausted to recognize anything significant, and he noticed a distant hum, like a distant machine sound, came from somewhere and haunted him.

  Their legs sank deep through snow and got stuck in deep bogs of stinking vegetation buried below, and Bryson thought it were quicksand a few times. When it increased in depth Bryson started to wonder if they could even find somewhere to shelter. Their lights illuminated what was definitely a swamp emerging about them everywhere!

  A long flat mist cloud floated and edged its way across their path and crept around the undergrowth and they started slowing when they reached it, and allowing themselves to rest.

  The place was nothing like anything that he had seen elsewhere, and things about him started to look strange and as though there were hidden life forms there! What had actually brought the airplane down, and with such force and unknown energies?

  He could not get what the strange environment about him held and if something strange existed there or if there was just a combination of things that created different reactions and effects, which tricked his senses, combined with his tiredness.

  Strange vapor clouds shifted together about their sides, and when they moved at an angle to avoid going through it, it shadowed them, at about the same distances about their sides, as if it were probing them and analyzing them for some purpose, and they showed surprise when they saw it floating forward about their sides, and Merton and Mortimer watched with surprise.

  There was no real wind there and it all slightly moved in the opposite direction from it, and there was nothing that could account for its strange movements.

  They stopped and watched it stop and start mimicking them, as though playing with them, and he wondered if it had ever even seen animals, humans, or life forms before, and he wondered if it was an actual first contact situation, and wondered how the scientists would react and handle such a scenario with such a thing?

  Nobody said anything though and most looked like they were wondering what form of intelligence it had, and at times pondered vaguely watching it linger over deep pools of slime in the mind-bending landscape. How could they keep such a thing without it dispersing or being destroyed? What did it live on, and could it survive in a confined space?

  Bryson and the others stopped to discuss it, and took a jar over to it and attempted to get a sample of it, but every time they tried to it would disperse away from them at the same speed as they moved forward, and they eventually gave up.

  Many questions remained unanswered! Like what did it use to exist, and what was it doing?

  Bryson still wished they could get some samples, but he was unsure how they could do it and they still did not know if it was dangerous!

  Heavy wind blew at it and it withdrew simultaneously in the opposite direction.

  It was blowing and sucking, pushing and pulling, and giving him the feeling that something far larger was there and invisible and nearby, and was breathing over there! Something supernatural or of an alien nature, like a beast breathing over its prey, and the environment seemed to react to its presence and its powers!

  Merton and Mortimer seemed to love it, and seemed to come to life more, and the later it became, as they always seemed to do in such situations.

  He recalled his last thoughts of their paranormal scientist celebrity fame and all the media coverage that they had received at one point, and more recently when their technology had vastly improved, and he had been waiting anxiously for them to find something that they would use to bring in all their new equipment to investigate everything.

  Since their investigations of the castles some of the proven details had been released, and some of what they had experienced there, and people’s thoughts on the events had been little and had seemed to alter more in the direction of there not being enough evidence to support there being what they had claimed, and no proper evidence had been properly shown and he believed that the military had made it confidential and had persuaded the scientists not to disclose anything of the findings and film footage.

  He never did get why Merton and Mortimer had not become conventional scientists like
him! Surely they were good enough to become wealthier and lead the way in another field?

  Many scientists were working on what the islands had originally been at one point, and again they all returned to their original thoughts.

  Even though he wished to investigate everything there, as they were sure to experience many things, going by all the facts given. Yet all the dangers were overwhelming and it seemed at times that they would not live or be able to return to give their findings!

  The two paranormal scientists so far had not properly proven any paranormal disturbances could be there, and had withheld their research from them, and especially when they had found out that some did not accept anything of that nature, and they now did as they mostly did and avoided giving any details of anything as much as they could, including to Parker, who could be of great use to them in the future, and they might have an opportunity someday to prove something to.

  They had only given vague findings and thoughts of paranormal activity and strange occurrences and Parker had given them his thoughts about it and that he was not fully sure what to make of it as nothing had been proven.

  Nobody, not even paranormal scientists, could explain what was there on the island and they withdrew saying anything, even though most thought the ultimate time traveler was there, and whatever it was, which they knew little of!

  As they journeyed on Bryson observed the mist that followed them thicken and it start to surround them more when deep snow and swamp pools increased and impeded their movements.

  As they lurched onwards behind Parker they became far more determined to achieve something! They knew nothing of the vague region of the island or if they were lost, trapped out in the most nowhere and in the deadliest zone that they had ever entered.

  Bryson’s legs became so stuck in deep bogs of freezing water he knew that they would have to do something soon and he carefully watched the others and them holding back complaining!