A Matter of Degrees

by Alex Marcoux

  “And what happens if I say no?” Rachel asked. “Are you going to kill me?”

  “No! Your memory will be erased and you’ll return to your life as you knew it before. You will have no recollection of any of this. But before you make your decision there is one more thing I need to show you.” He approached the wall to the left of the cart. With a wave of his hand, a third archway appeared. The room lit instantly.

  “Oh, my God,” she whispered. In the midst of a laboratory, Jessie lay on a gurney. Her eyes were closed and electrodes crowned her head. Surrounding her were electronic instruments and monitors. Rachel stepped toward her, but Kek seized her arm.

  “Let me go,” she tried to twist free. “What have you done to her?”

  Kek calmly said, “When you’ve heard what I need to tell you, you can go to her.”

  Rachel’s resistance disappeared. “What have you done to her?”

  Kek released her. “Nothing…yet. But if you don’t join me, Jessie will die.”

  Rachel was horrified. “What? You expect to gain my loyalty with blackmail?”

  “I’ll take it any way I can get it. I need your answer.”

  “Now?” Rachel turned toward Jessie. “Let me go to her. Can’t I have a little time to think about this?”

  Showing that he wasn’t completely heartless, he considered. “You can go to her. She’s sedated. I doubt she’ll even be able to hear you. But when I return, I’ll need your answer. Don’t do anything stupid. If you try to move her, she will die.” Then he pointed at the wall beside him. “The only way out of here is through that wall.” He sat in the cart and turned the vehicle around. “You have thirty minutes.” He floored the accelerator.

  Rachel thought the car would crash, but instead, it sped through the concrete wall. She rushed to where the cart had exited and felt the cold, hard surface. There was no indication that the cart had even bumped it. “I don’t have much time.” She hurried into the lab and approached the gurney. “Jessie, can you hear me?” She picked up a limp hand. “Jessie?”

  Jessie stirred, and her eyes fluttered. “Rachel?” she murmured. “Yes. It’s me, Jess. Are you in pain?”

  “No. I’m so tired.” Jessie’s eyes remained shut. “Turn this contraption off.”

  Rachel studied the instrument that Jessie was connected to. Leads from the electrodes on her head linked to a computer-like instrument.

  “My father…Kek told me that if I moved you—you will die.”

  It took so much strength for Jessie to talk. “It’s frying my brain. If you don’t turn it off…I’m going to die.”

  Rachel studied the instrument. There was an LCD display with dials that referred to volts and a frequency control that was set on one minute. A neuroimaging monitor on the opposite side of the bed seemingly reflected her brain’s activity. Abruptly, Jessie jolted. The scale on the monitor spiked, recording her brain’s response to the electrical stimulation.

  “I don’t have much time,” Rachel said as Jessie’s body calmed. “I need to decide whether or not to join him.”

  “Don’t.” It was a whisper.

  “They’ll be consequences if I don’t.”

  Jessie’s eyes opened and met Rachel’s. Using all her energy, she said, “Kek won’t hurt you. Don’t join him. You always have. That’s how he keeps pulling you into his life…Say no.”

  Rachel’s eyes filled with tears. Her lips met Jessie’s limp hand. “I just keep hoping this is a nightmare and I’ll wake up and it’ll all be over.”

  “Has he told you…about Nibiru?” Jessie’s body jolted as the electrical current zapped her.

  “Jess? Who’s Nibiru?”

  She was so tired. She took a deep breath. “The ark will explain.” She could barely speak. “He has it.” Jessie fell into unconsciousness.

  “The Ark of the Covenant?”

  Jessie didn’t respond.

  Rachel turned to the machine that Jessie was connected to. There were two controls, one for electric stimulation, the other frequency. She turned the red dial until it read 0 VOLTS, then waited for the clock to approach the one-minute mark. Jessie’s body didn’t jump.

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Rachel watched as Jessie slept calmly. “The ark will explain Nibiru?” Rachel squeezed Jessie’s hand. “I’ll be back, Jess. I promise.” She hurried from the lab into the now-empty entryway. Eyeing the storage room of treasures, she rushed through the archway to the rear of the storage area. “The ark will give me the answers,” she mumbled. She stepped upon the stage and approached it. “But how?”

  Soon Rachel realized that she was trembling. Was she nervous? “This is ridiculous. Its only a chest.” She took a deep breath and felt the aged acacia. It was smoother than she had expected. She tried to remove the cover, but the span of the cherubs’ wings made it difficult for her to grasp the lid. Then she lifted the wings and, surprisingly, the cover came free.

  “Now what?” Rachel stared at the lid in her hands, She backed away from the chest and set it down. If Rachel had had more time to consider what she was doing, she may have become more nervous, or even scared. But she didn’t have the luxury of time. She needed to figure out this piece before Kek returned.

  Rachel peered over the edge of the ark. Two flat slabs of stone were stacked together on the bottom of the chest. Carefully, she lifted the tablets and laid them beside the ark. They were much heavier than she had expected. Etched in the stones were markings. Although she couldn’t read it, she assumed it was the Ten Commandments.

  She looked into the chest. Inside, there were two slots, one on each end. They appeared to be about the same size as a tablet’s width and depth. Near one of the slots, there was a symbol. She inched closer. It was an ankh. She inspected the opposite end and found a snake. “What does that mean? Who is Nibiru? How can the ark help?”

  She examined the relic thoroughly, getting more frustrated by the minute. Then she turned to the tablets but their markings were indecipherable, until she spotted the ankh on the far corner of one. On the opposite corner of the other stone, there was the snake.

  Could this be something? She lifted a tablet, and brought it to the chest. Sliding it into a slot she confirmed that the ankh on the tablet and the one in the chest aligned perfectly. With the second tablet, she lined up the snakes. Another perfect fit.

  “Now what?” To Rachel, it seemed as if she waited an eternity, but it was really only a couple minutes. Nothing happened. Feeling the pressure of being forced to make a decision, she turned away to retrieve the cover, but as she leaned over, a soft continuous noise rose from behind her.

  Rachel turned. The sound was coming from the ark. She moved toward it, but stopped when a high-frequency pulse reverberated from within the chest. What was happening? Rachel’s pulse raced. She was close enough to witness the ark’s floor shift. Unpredictably, a futuristic apparatus with a lens emerged. The pupil on the lens dilated and light spewed above the chest, forming a holographic, sparkling globe.

  Within the sphere was a small object. She had to move closer to see it. It was a bright circular light. Surrounding the light were smaller spheres randomly dispersed. It was a three-dimensional model of the solar system. The miniature lights moved faster and faster, becoming blurry. Abruptly, the lights dimmed and the globe went dark.

  “Now what?” Rachel waited for what seemed to be forever.

  “And who’s there?” a deep voice echoed.

  Rachel’s heartbeat quickened. She looked around the storage room.

  “Over here!”

  Rachel gasped. The voice was coming from the orb. Cautiously, she moved toward it. Many researchers and theologians have speculated that the Ark of the Covenant was a communication device with God. Could it be? On one hand, it made sense. Kek’s incarceration of it prevented humankind from communicating with God.

  “I still cannot see you, come closer,” the male voice commanded.

  She drew closer to the orb, and about two feet away, an ima
ge came into focus. It was a man wearing a toga, perhaps in his mid-twenties, with golden, shoulder-length hair.

  “There you are,” he said. “Why Rachel, I didn’t realize you had joined Kek yet.”

  “You know who I am?” she inched closer to view the man. He had a familiar cleft chin and sky blue eyes.

  “Of course I do.”

  The celestial aura about him prompted her, “And you are…God?”

  The man laughed. “I have been called that. But my family calls me Marduk. Or you can call me Ra.”

  “Ra?”

  “Hasn’t Kek explained everything to you?”

  “I haven’t completely grasped it all yet. I still have many questions.

  “Any I can help you with?”

  “Yes. Who is Nibiru?”

  “Nibiru is not a person. It’s our home, the tenth planet of the solar system.”

  Rachel’s head spun. “The tenth…planet?”

  “That’s correct.” Kek’s haunting voice came from over her shoulder, startling her.

  Chapter Forty

  Kek’s cold eyes bore down on Rachel. Holding back his anger, his jawline tightened, and his face flushed. He approached the orb. “Marduk, I need to speak to your sister.” Abruptly, he withdrew one of the tablets from the chest. The globe disappeared, and the humming ceased. “I must give you credit, Rachel. I don’t know anyone who has so hastily figured out how to communicate with the ark. Most don’t even dare to open it.”

  Rachel’s head throbbed. She watched Kek arrange the tablets in the position she had found them. “It’s a transmitter and receiver,” she mumbled. “The tablets function as a power source to communicate with…You told me you were Satan.”

  “I agreed that I have been called by many names, including Satan.”

  “I thought you were the demonic Satan referenced in the Bible.” Not that it made any difference, because in Rachel’s heart she believed he was the devil.

  Kek stared into his daughter’s eyes. “I am the Satan referenced in the Bible.”

  She sat on the stage, closed her eyes and rubbed her temples. In a flash she looked at Kek. “How can you be Satan and…what exactly are you?” Tears swelled in her eyes. “Are you an alien? I’m part alien?”

  Kek put the cover back on the ark. “Yes.”

  “This has not been a good day.” She thought she was losing her mind. “When were you going to tell me?”

  “I was planning to take you through the ancient mystery teachings. That approach seems to have worked the best over the centuries.”

  “How can I be part alien? I look like everybody else.”

  “And I don’t?”

  Rachel eyed her father. “You do look like everyone else. How can that be?”

  “We don’t have a lot of time,” Kek said urgently. “The longer you stay out of your life, the more complicated it becomes getting you back. Come with me.”

  He led her to the golf cart and tossed her the hoodwink. “Get in and put this on.”

  “Are you serious?” But the look in her father’s eyes answered her question.

  While she was blindfolded, Kek maneuvered the tiny cart in full circles, so that Rachel became disoriented, and then he drove through the wall. “You can take it off,” Kek instructed.

  She removed the blindfold. The cart was back in the vestibule, parked in front of a door. Kek opened it, and nodded at Rachel to enter. As the lobby, the walls were white. With the exception of two soft chairs and a coffee table, the room was barren.

  “Please sit,” he instructed. He picked up a remote control from the table. “I’m going to tell you our story, Rachel.”

  He pressed a button on the remote; the lights dimmed, and the room became pitch black, Over the coffee table in front of them, a three-dimensional image of the solar system appeared. Glowing dust particles from the ceiling provided the only clue to where the projection equipment was mounted.

  “This is our solar system.” Standing partly within the image itself, Kek pointed out the various planets and their orbits around the sun. “And this is Nibiru.” He identified a planet about three times the size of Earth. He quickly demonstrated its orbit, and then slowed it down. “As you can see, Nibiru travels between Mars and Jupiter, then proceeds on its elliptical path taking it far outside our solar system before the gravitational force pulls it back.” The other planets’ orbits revolved much quicker than Nibiru. “In the time it takes Nibiru to orbit the sun once, the earth revolves around the sun thirty-six hundred times.

  “Thousands of years ago, when Nibiru was in close proximity to Earth, my father—your grandfather—organized a mission to colonize Earth. My brother, Enlil, and I were responsible for the actual migration. Enlil was the commanding officer while I was the chief science officer. We settled in the Persian Gulf, in Mesopotamia. Today this area is known as Iraq. It was chosen because of the vast availability of fossil fuel and water.”

  It hit Rachel. “You’re behind the turmoil in Iraq?”

  “I’m behind most turmoil, Rachel. I was responsible for building irrigation systems. Thousands of years passed and a second Nibirian ship arrived with reinforcements, this time under the leadership of my son, Marduk.”

  “Ra?”

  “Yes. The Egyptians called him Ra. My Nibirian name is Enki.”

  “Why did you come to Earth?” Rachel was curious.

  Kek pressed a button on his remote and Nibiru grew. “Nibiru was experiencing a problem that Earth is now facing. Hydrofluorocarbons were destroying the ozone layer. We needed gold.”

  “Gold?”

  “To patch the hole in Nibiru’s ozonosphere, we needed to disperse tiny particles of gold into the upper atmosphere.”

  “One minute. Over the Edge did a report on our ozone problem. If I remember correctly, scientists believe that if we were ever required to repair our problem, dispersing gold into our atmosphere was the best option.”

  “Where do you think they got the idea?”

  Rachel looked into her father’s eyes. “Continue.”

  Kek pressed a button on the remote and the display disappeared. Lights came on. He sat in the chair opposite her. The Nibirians mined Earth for years. It was an incredible task we had undertaken. And it didn’t look like we were going to make it on time. If we were going to save Nibiru, we needed to speed things up. The only way I knew how to do that was to have a slave force. And since my education was biogenetics, I proposed to clone primitive workers and use them to mine gold.

  “My proposal was approved by the governing Nibirian body. At the time, there were primitive humanoids in Africa. To understand the species, we experimented. We produced a variety of mutated creatures such as lions and bulls with human heads, apes and humanoids with goat feet, winged horses, along with other variations.”

  “Were these creatures the basis of the mythological legends?”

  He nodded yes. “Then we took a reproductive egg from the primitive African humanoid and fertilized it with the sperm of a young Anunnaki male.”

  “Anunnaki?”

  “I’m sorry. I know this is confusing. Anunnaki and Nibirians are synonymous. Anyway, the fertilized egg was then placed inside an Anunnaki female. Basically, Adamu was the first test-tube baby. He was created in our image.”

  “You’re telling me that you did create man?”

  “Yes, mankind as we know it today.”

  “I don’t believe it.” Rachel stood up. She was angry. “You’re lying.”

  “Why would I lie? Our people were far more technologically advanced than humans are today. I could understand if this was a hundred years ago and you didn’t believe me. But face it, humankind now has the ability to clone and has been producing test-tube babies since 1978.”

  “Why would you be so advanced?”

  “To you, I may appear to be a man of forty-five years, correct? I am forty-five in Anunnaki years. In Earth years, I’m over one hundred sixty thousand years old.”

  “Are you
immortal?”

  He shook his head. “No. I will die just like everyone else. But it’s likely that I will live over three hundred thousand Earth years. I believe our species has been able to evolve quicker because of the longer lifetime.”

  It was barely a whisper. “How long will I live?”

  “You won’t live thousands of years, Rachel. But it is possible that you will exist into your early hundreds. If you take a look at some of the biblical characters, many of them lived hundreds of years, as St. Germain did.”

  “Are you telling me that they were also aliens?”

  “Rachel, they were part Anunnaki, which contributed to their longevity, as it will play a role in your own.

  Rachel was still trying to take it all in. “Let me get this straight—you created mankind to be your slave?”

  “Yes. And they served their purpose well for thousands of years.”

  “No wonder you’ve been called Satan.”

  Laughter from a distant past echoed in Kek’s ears. He was reminded of when his brother banished him from E.DIN, the day he had first earned his demonic reference. “You will never be a leader, Enki. My work will rise above you, and you will be called Abaddon, and from where I will put you…you will be the keeper of the bottomless pit.”

  Kek shook the memory from his head. “But that’s not how I earned the nickname Satan. The irony is—I wanted something more for humankind. As slaves, their lives were meaningless; they worked and were treated badly by the Anunnaki. Most were cruel, incestuous, and hateful. After watching generations of first-man and woman live their pathetic lives, I selected a few and offered them an opportunity to seek eternal salvation and spiritual freedom.

  “Because of this, I was banished by my people. My punishment was to stay here, on earth. I was condemned for committing the original sin. Somehow, humankind interpreted my shortcoming as their weakness. At the time Enlil dubbed me Abaddon.