by S. E. Meyer
Frank bent over him and wiped more blood from his forehead and cheek. “We’ll find her John, don’t worry. Oh and I just realized, it must be time for me to give you your next injection. Are you feeling okay John?” Frank asked.
John was looking past Frank now and he couldn’t tell through the blood and sweat in his eyes if what he was seeing was a continuation of the 3D animation he had just witnessed or something else, but he noticed a rectangular shape open up in the wall behind Frank. There was light coming though what looked like a doorway. Several figures entered the room from the opening in the wall and headed towards them.” What…what… who is that?” asked John in barely a whispered murmur.
“You really did take a good bump didn’t you? I better give you that shot now.”
“No, Frank! Behind You!” John tried to yell out. Just as Frank began to spin around John saw the figure closest to them hold something to Frank’s neck. Another figured leaned over and took the pyramid from the column leaving them once again in darkness.
“Finally, we have the last stone,” the figure said. John’s head felt as though it was going to split in two again as he felt himself slipping away. John’s final thought was “where‘s Jenny?” as he closed his eyes and completely lost consciousness.
An Unexpected Journey
There was a loud crack as the door closed behind Lucas and Hosea. Lucas turned around to find Hosea trying to get his jacket off. The door had caught one corner of it just as he made it to the other side, pinning him where he stood. He finally managed to squirm out of the jacket with help from Lucas. The two of them began pushing on the rock wall where the doorway had been moments before.
“There must be a way to re-open it,” Hosea said. “They’re trapped in there!”
“There must be somehow. We opened it once, we should be able to do it again. I need to get a team down here working on it. Come on Hosea, there’s nothing more we can do from down here.” Lucas began jogging back to the elevator and Hosea followed. As soon as they were inside Lucas pushed the button to call the elevator operator.
“Go and wake up Patterson, NOW! I need a team down here immediately. Bring us up”
The elevator began to climb at what seemed like a snails pace, given the circumstances. Before they arrived at the top, Patterson came into view on the small screen inside the elevator car.
“What’s going on Lucas, everything okay?”
“No, the room sealed itself somehow and we have people trapped inside. I need you to assemble a team as soon as possible and get them down here, we need to open it back up”
“I already have one standing by, they just made it to the bottom of the first shaft. They will take the elevator down the rest of the way as soon as you get to the top of the main shaft.”
“You already have a team coming down? How did you know…”
Patterson cut him off. “Because whatever you did while you were down there made all of our instruments light up like a Christmas tree. Unfortunately, it also attracted a lot of attention because everyone’s instruments halfway around the globe did the same thing. So I’m supposed to tell you that General Wentworth is already en route, he was in Baghdad and will be here within the hour. He wants to see you immediately”
“Well, tell him I am kind of in the middle of something here, I’m going back down”
“Sir, he said it was….” He was cut off in mid sentence. Two armed soldiers came into view and took Patterson by each arm. “You better get up here Lucas, there’s something going on.” The two guards lifted Patterson to his feet and escorted him from view but they could still hear him speaking, now in elevated tones. “They won’t tell me what’s going on, but all of our buildings and labs just got swarmed by armed U.S. troops.” Lucas barely made out the words since Patterson was being escorted from the room.
“What’s going on up there? Where are you taking Patterson?” Lucas yelled. The elevator stopped and as the doors opened they saw a half a dozen members of Lucas’s team surrounded by armed soldiers. As they stepped out of the elevator two of the soldiers stepped in front of Lucas.
“Sir, we have orders to escort you to the General sir.”
“What the hell is going on?” There was no response from the guards and Lucas reluctantly followed them with Hosea close behind.
“Who’s is he?” asked one of the guards gesturing towards Hosea.
“He’s part of my team,” answered Lucas.
“Bring him too,” the other guard said. There’s was no more conversation between them as they rode back up in the first car and back outside onto the ground overlooking the first hole that had been dug. They were led back into the large tent to a meeting room. They sat down and a few moments later the General came through the door followed by an entourage of five other gentlemen. Two were military and the other three were in suits. They all sat down at the far end of the large meeting table. The General was bald and muscular and one could tell immediately that he was a combat general. He was the kind of man that most likely did tours in every major conflict since Vietnam. He’s a tough looking bastard, thought Lucas.
The General pulled a cigar out of his pocket and reached into his pants for a lighter while staring down the table at Lucas and Hosea the entire time. It was Lucas that finally broke the silence.
“So what is going on here?” he asked in a calm tone. “What did you do with my staff?”
“A lot of them are boarding a plane right now, the same plane that you will be boarding shortly. The rest will remain here to work under close supervision.”
“On a plane? Going where? And I should remind you that I still run this place” Lucas said, with a little more agitation in his voice.
“Not anymore son, this entire operation has just been one hundred percent militarized.” he puffed on his cigar a few times. “The army runs this place now.”
“This is such bullshit! I was told I would have complete autonomy and full operational control of this project!”
“That was before you stirred the hornets’ nest son. I don’t know what you did down there, but you have a lot of people in high positions speaking your name. Stirred it up so good I don’t even know where I’m taking you. My orders are to get on that plane along with you, but I have no idea where it’s going.” He paused for a minute and slowly puffed on his cigar a few more times. He began speaking again, slowly and with a wrinkled brow. “I have the highest level of top secret security that a person can obtain and I don’t have clearance to even know where we’re going. That's the kind of shit that's hitting the fan right now son. The kind of shit that smells so bad you have to plug your nose. Whatever you did down there in that hole raised quite a stir indeed. I don’t like it any more than you do. I can only remember one other time when I was put on a plane and not told where I was going, or who I was going to be meeting. I was dropped in a rice patty with a gun over my shoulder. Then I was told that I would be one of the lucky ones if I managed to live longer than seventy-two hours.”
The general leaned back in his chair. “So you can see how all this secrecy, makes me a little anxious, and I don’t particularly like feeling anxious son. No, I don’t like that feeling at all. My point is that this is way over both of our heads now and there isn’t a damn thing we can do about it” Just then the meeting room door opened again and armed soldiers walked in.
“It’s time sir, we’re ready for you, and everyone else is on board.” They were escorted onto a military aircraft and were seated towards the front of the plane. As they entered the aircraft Lucas recognized several faces and they were seated in a row next to Dennis from the lab.
“Hello Mr. Goodman” Dennis said with his youthful smile. “Do you have any idea what’s going on here?”
“No, not a clue Dennis.”
“By the way I got some of the reports back on that powder.”
“Dennis, you never cease to amaze me. We’ve just been abducted by the army and are being taken to who knows where and you still want
to talk about work.”
“Well this is interesting. When we sent it through electron particle analysis only one element showed up. You know what it was?” Lucas was about to guess but Dennis didn’t give him the chance.
“Ninety nine percent of the powder is made up of gold.”
Two soldiers walked by as the General was seated at the front of the plane and the doors were shut.
“Gold? How is that possible? The powder we found wasn’t metallic in nature at all.”
“I know, but whenever we tested it the machine’s computer decided it was gold. It seems to be in some sort of mono-atomic state. I don’t get it either. We ran it through five times.”
“Be quiet,” yelled a soldier in their direction as the aircraft gained speed and lifted off the ground. Everyone remained silent for several hours until they began to get tired of sitting in a cramped airplane. One of the guards spoke over the radio and let the passengers know that they would be brought to the restrooms on either end of the plane one by one as needed. A few people raised their hands. A few more hours had gone by and Lucas was about to ask one of the soldiers how much farther it might be. The thought made him feel like he was a child taking a long trip in the back seat of a hot car while his brother punched him in the shoulder. He then noticed that the soldiers had taken seats and they were finally descending.
“Seven hours,” Dennis whispered to Lucas “it’s been almost seven hours, where the hell is seven hours from Baghdad?” he asked rhetorically
“Well I’m beginning to think it was either straight north, or straight south,” replied Lucas
“Why do you say that?”
“Because look.” Lucas pointed to the front of the plane where two soldiers were passing out army issue parkas to everyone. “Wherever we’re touching down, it would appear that it’s a wee bit colder than where we just came from.”
The plane jumped around in the turbulent winds of the South Pole as it continued to shorten its distance from the ground. Nothing could be seen out of the small windows except a white fog. There was no way to tell that the plane had even landed if it hadn’t been for the jerk as it bounced once off the ice runway and then settled on its tires. The engine began to slow and the plane taxied its way through the whiteout as the soldiers made sure everyone had their parkas on and zipped appropriately with hoods over their heads. The plane suddenly stopped and the main side door was opened. There was an immediately rush of wind and blowing snow that was felt throughout the cabin. A soldier came over the radio again.
“Hold the belt of the person in front of you. We will be going single file straight ahead. It’s not that far, but we recommend you keep your skin completely covered. In case you hadn’t noticed we are experiencing a blizzard tonight and the wind chill is eighty below zero. That means it’s almost two hundred degrees colder than where you all just came from. It can be a bit of a shock to the system. All right, let’s move out.”
The group was led in single file out of the plane. After walking several feet they could still see nothing but blowing snow all around them. Dennis began to notice a pale glow coming from up ahead. No one realized what it was until they were directly under a set of spotlights projecting out of a long metal wall that disappeared in both directions on either side of them. They were led through a small door in the wall and into a long narrow corridor. After shuffling along for another hundred feet the corridor opened up into a large room. The passengers filed in one by one and were made to line up along the walls of the bright white room.
“You feel that,” Lucas asked Dennis.
“What?”
“Heat.” Lucas replied with a smile from behind his fur-lined hood as he pulled it away from his face. A soldier in the middle of the room began speaking in a loud voice.
“You will be taken to your rooms now. You can take off your parkas and leave them with the guards at the door as you leave. Clothes and food will be provided for you and you will be briefed shortly.”
Everyone began taking off their jackets as they were led through a doorway at the opposite end of the room. As Lucas and the general approached the doorway a man stepped forward blocking their way. “Not you Mr. Goodman. You and the general are to follow me right away.” The man led them through an adjacent doorway and down several hallways to a large set of double doors. “This is where I will leave you gentleman.” He opened the door and gestured for them to go in. “They’re waiting for you.”
Lucas and the general walked into a dimly lit room and immediately noticed a group of people sitting around a long meeting table. The wall on their right was littered with large computer monitors and the only light in the room was shining down onto the meeting table in front of them. As they approached an elderly man seated at the head of the table stood up and addressed them.
“Welcome to ESRL. Earth Science Research Laboratory at the South Pole Observatory.”
“Please, have a seat,” he continued. “You have most likely already noticed that this facility is a bit more than just an observatory. Let us tell you why you have been invited here. He then gestured towards one of the women to his left. She stood up and began pushing buttons on a computer screen built into the table.
“This is Baghdad ten hours ago.” The monitors on the wall combined to form one large screen and an aerial picture could be seen. On the bottom of the screen Lucas recognized the large hole in the earth and the complex surrounding it. Suddenly there was an intensely bright blue flash emanating from the hole in the ground. Like a blue laser beacon it stretched off the screen to the right. The picture then changed to a ground view looking up. The beam of blue light flashed straight up into the night sky. “Here is the frequency it is running on. It’s an enormous power source,” the woman said as the picture changed again, this time into two charts and graphs. “The one on the right is the signal pattern, the one on the left is the intensity. Now here is what will really blow your mind.” The pictures changed again, this time into two sound wave bars. The two seemed to be identical. “The one on the right is the signal from the Babylon site, the one on the left was recorded minutes later. We thought that it must be a reflection of the signal somehow, bouncing off a satellite and giving us a ghost signal, but that wasn’t the case. The other signal isn’t coming from Earth at all,” she explained. The screen changed again to a picture of the solar system. The presenter pushed a few more buttons and a square was highlighted directly below the sun, which zoomed in to show a small cluster of spheres.
“This is where the signal is coming from. Now, we don’t know what happened down there, but we are very interested in finding out. It would seem that not only did you activate some sort of large power source that projected a pulse out into space it also would seem to have encouraged a response. They all turned their gaze to Lucas.
“Have you been able to pinpoint the exact location that the signal is coming from? Lucas asked. He had a quizzical look in his eye as he wrinkled his brow.
“That’s why you’re here, because we’ve been very interested in that small piece of space, where the signal came from, for some time now. That’s really why the South Pole Observatory was built. It was constructed here in 2004 in order for us to keep an eye on this.” The screen changed again, zooming in further to an image of what looked like a disk with wings. Wisps of red and orange seemed to protrude from both sides. As the picture zoomed in closer Lucas could see that it was a solar system. The red sun in the middle was clearly visible and there were smaller sphere’s that were orbiting around it. “We’ve been tracking it, calculating its exact path as well as the paths of its seven orbiting planets. The five smaller ones are more like large moons, but the outer two are much larger. I’m sorry to be the one that have to break this to you but this small planetary system is coming straight for us, it’s going to be a close one gentleman. It will be a very near miss and a collision with Earth is not out of the question. The good news is that we’ve known about it for some time now. Plans have been in motion f
or years in preparation. We now have the seed bank in Norway, the underground protection facilities like this one. Five in all have been built and are ready for operational use. This facility is designed to withstand even the worst of any disaster. This location was not only chosen for the view of space, but for its geographic advantages, as the poles will be somewhat immune to many types of problems the rest of the world will face. We should be well protected here against earthquakes, tsunamis and volcanoes. In the months to come this will be considered one of the safest places on Earth.”
Lucas Goodman had a shocked look on his face, but excitedly rubbed his hands together. “So you’ve found it then. This is Sumer’s Nibiru?” he asked excitedly.
The elderly gentleman at the head of the table spoke again. “We were hoping you could tell us. You see Mr. Goodman, the key here is we can prepare. We can plan for the worst and make preparations, as we have done, for what could be the worst devastation this planet has seen since the extinction of the dinosaurs. What has changed is that now we know there is most likely an intelligent species on its way as well. This was not a contingency we were prepared for. As we struggle to survive, in the middle of trying to save our species, we may be meeting a new one. We need to know what to expect. Will they be friendly? Who are they? These are the things we need to know as soon as possible.”
“The Annunaki,” Lucas whispered as he stared at the screen for several minutes. He then turned around to face the group sitting around the table. “Wait now, if this is really Sumer’s twelfth planet and it’s going to be close enough to start causing problems on Earth then why hasn’t anyone been talking about it? Why can’t anyone see it? All the ancient writings speak of the flying winged disk and seeing two suns in the sky.”
