The Third Corridor

by The third corridor (NCP) (lit)

  More silence. Sera knew they were still connected. She could hear him breathing.

  "Major, sir?"

  "I have some time this afternoon," he finally responded.

  If relief was an audible thing, Sera’s would have been heard across the compound. She left the POSSUM lab filled with hope.

  Garret watched Sera disappear around the corner of the hallway. He stepped from the utility closet he hid in to avoid be being seen by her. He overheard her telling someone she would leave within the hour and now his aim was to find out who that somebody was. He entered the lab and checked the computer’s history to see what Sera had been reviewing. Garret then noticed her palm pad sitting forgotten next to the KNOE. He grinned with satisfaction. The device would give him the information he needed. Sera never kept a lock on her portable computer, let alone its phone.

  Sera and Clay Jackson agreed to meet in the carrels at the IASA’s library at twelve o’clock that day. She hopped the monorail heading north. The IASA was in Cape Canaveral, two hundred miles away, a forty-five minute ride by direct transit. Canaveral was the launching site for the Mars shuttles. The library was located at the large military complex nearby.

  Major Jackson was twenty minutes late, but at least he showed up. He was mature, but not old, a man of about forty-five years. Though Sera had read his profile and viewed his picture she was taken back by his rugged good looks and lean, strong appearance. He wasn’t tall, about five feet, eleven inches, but carried himself with the proud gait of a seasoned military officer. His dark blond hair, graying slightly at the temples, was cut short in regulation style, and he had a mustache with traces of silver intermittent among the blond. His expression was stern and focused directly on her as he approached.

  "Lieutenant Moros?"

  "Yes Sir." Sera stood rigid in front of her superior.

  He glanced at her wrenching hands and then opened the door to an empty carrel. They stepped inside of the private reading room. He pulled out a chair at the table, seated her and then took a chair on the opposite side. He inhaled and exhaled sharply as he stared at Sera from across the table.

  "State your piece, Lieutenant."

  Sera tensed at the irritation in his voice, suddenly worried that it might have been a mistake to seek him out.

  "I wanted to know more about the dream you had while you were linked."

  "You have read my report?"

  "Yes."

  "Then why are you here? There is little else I can offer you about the POSSUM."

  Sera took a deep breath. She was truly taking a risk. Even if Major Jackson did believe her, what could he possibly do to help? And if he didn’t, he could report her irrational thinking to her superiors. They might have her declared as being mentally incompetent and she could be discharged from military service.

  Garret would be furious.

  Sera bit her lip. She didn’t care what Garret thought, and her emotions were in such a turmoil at the moment that only two things mattered--Jerad and their unborn child.

  "I don’t believe it was just a dream. I…I think we were really there."

  Okay, she said it. Now what?

  The Captain smoothed a hand over the top of his head. He waited for several tension filled moments before answering her.

  "Lieutenant Moros, I agreed to meet with you because you sounded distraught. I was quite unsettled myself after working on the POSSUM. I am sure you are aware of the details. I would have to say that your imagination is much more creative than mine and perhaps augmented by a seed already planted."

  He rose from his chair and headed toward the door. "Good day, Lieutenant. I have work to do."

  "I’m pregnant!" Sera blurted.

  The major turned to her and crooked his eyebrows. "Congratulations Lieutenant Moros, but I don’t see how that has anything to do with me. Now, if you’ll excuse me."

  "No," Sera briskly crossed the room and grabbed his arm.

  "You don’t understand. It’s…" Sera paused. She knew how insane it sounded. "… it’s Jerad’s baby."

  The major rubbed his hand across his forehead and shook his head. He removed her hand from his arm and gently patted it. "I urge you contact a psychiatrist."

  He pressed the wall button and stepped through the open doorway.

  "Please, Argilos," Sera pleaded. "You have to listen to me,"

  "I believe we are done with this conversation, Ms. Moros."

  "No Major, please don’t go!"

  Major Jackson blew out an exasperated gust of air. "Young lady, I suggest you return to your life and disregard your obsession with this castle in the air."

  He turned to walk away.

  Sera closed her eyes. "I will never forget you, my castle in the air."

  Sera spoke to his back, quoting the last entry to Argilos’ diary. Her voice was low and barely audible, but he heard what she said.

  Clay Jackson froze and then slowly turned toward her.

  Sera continued, "In the quiet of the night when cool, gentle whispers of breezes caress my face…"

  She recited the verse, nearly unerringly, keeping her eyes closed, as the words flowed through her mind. When she finished, she lifted her lids to look at Clay. His eyes were alive with shock. His gazed darted back and forth across her face as if searching for some unknown truth.

  "I wrote that, in one place, in one time. It was never mentioned again."

  "Jerad saved your journal." Sera gulped. Her eyes began to well with tears. The journal was mentioned nowhere in his documentation.

  "It was true," Jackson grimaced and pressed his fingers against his temple. "All true?"

  He moved back to the table and unsteadily lowered into a chair. His hands were trembling.

  Sera nodded. "We were really there."

  An array of emotions crossed Clay’s face. He rubbed his jaw, searched the floor, propped his elbows on the table and dropped his face to his hands. Finally he leaned back in his chair, threw his head back and stared at the ceiling. During it all Sera told him everything--every detail of her saga from beginning to end.

  When she was finished he stood abruptly and stomped toward the door. Sera’s shoulders slumped in defeat. It was over. There was nothing more she could do other than re-link and hope it took her back to Jerad. Perhaps she could find a way to stay this time.

  "Come with me."

  Sera looked up. Major Jackson was holding his hand out toward her. She hesitated with uncertainty. Was he going to commit her himself?

  "Don’t look so worried. You have found an ally, Lieutenant." He took her hand into his and guided her from the building.

  "Where are we going?"

  "To the observatory."

  Garret was crossing the quad and caught a glimpse of Sera passing through on the other side. She was with Clay Jackson. He recognized the Major from the profiles of the previous POSSUM team, stored in the lab. Garret started to follow them but ducked behind a tree when Sera suddenly doubled over and fell to the ground.

  The ground dropped out from beneath Sera’s feet. She looked down and started to scream. Her body was dangling at least two hundred feet in the air. Sera sucked in a raspy gasp as the ground below her sped by.

  "Hades breath, woman, where did you come from?"

  Sera looked up to see Mekal’s stunned face peering down at her. He was holding her by the upper arms.

  "Wrap your legs around me before you fall."

  Through her panic, Sera managed to throw her legs upward and hooked them around his body. He released one of her arms and then the other. She wrapped them around his back, then hid her face against his shoulder. Mekal guided his glide flyer and they drifted downward. He landed on his feet with complete control, but Sera clung to him for dear life refusing to let go.

  "Although I am glad to see you Sera, it is good that Jerad is not here to witness how glad you are to see me, less we have more explaining to do."

  Sera was too frightened to be embarrassed, but she released her hold on him a
nd sank to the ground. Mekal undid the harness, freeing himself from the kite and squatted in front of her.

  "Your sudden appearance nearly drove my flyer to the ground. It is good that you are as light as a feather, otherwise..."

  Sera threw her head back and began to scream again. She was shaking uncontrollably. Mekal wrapped his arms around her and tried to comfort her.

  "Gain a hold, Sera. You are safe now."

  "I can’t take this anymore, Mekal! I’m not really here!"

  "You are as clear to me as the sky above, but I know you are an apparition."

  His image began to dim and then it faded to black. Through the darkness, tiny bursts of light grew brighter. Sera was staring at the sky. Clay kneeled over her. She sat up and looked around at the crowd that gathered.

  "Are you okay, Sera?"

  "I’m fine. Just help me get out of here."

  Clay assisted Sera to her feet and pulled her through the crowd. As they continued their walk to the observatory, Sera explained the incident to Clay and also told him about the others. He denied ever moving between Earth to Protogio after his dream link, and as far as Sera knew, it hadn’t occurred with Garret either. Why then was it happening to her?

  "This place is an astronomer’s dream," Major Jackson told Sera as they entered one of the several planetariums available. "The observatory has the most technologically advanced equipment and current database available to study the stars. I used to come here looking for answers."

  "To what, Argilos?"

  The Major moved to the computer panel in the center of the room and activated it. The room darkened and the dome above them began to sparkle. They were surrounded by billions of photo-simulated stars, a visual record of the universe.

  "Thomas and I had our suspicions and discussed it each time we were awakened. We wondered if we weren’t half-mad, but what we experienced was much too existent to ignore. Unfortunately, as you know, we never got the opportunity to explore the possibility."

  "His death?"

  Clay nodded. "I took a one year medical leave after my stint with the POSSUM, citing extreme duress because of Thomas’ death and anxiety caused by having my sleep induced mind tampered with. During that year I did some research."

  Sera sat beside him and listened.

  "I gathered quite a bit of information on the Greek gods, which I knew little about before the POSSUM, but had a head full of afterwards. One thing I discovered was that Hypnos, god of rest or sleep, sired the four deities, collectively called the Oneroi. They controlled every type of dream from nightmares to ghostly visions."

  He pressed a button on the panel and the images in the dome rotated until Orion’s Constellation came into view.

  "The observatory maintains an ongoing record of the universe. Every change that occurs is recorded here. Do you know who the Protogenoi are, Sera?"

  Sera shook her head.

  "In Greek mythology they are the first-born gods, the beginning of life. Proto, when translated means first or original. Gen, refers to being produced or born, and geo means, of the earth."

  "Protogio…Proto-geo. First Earth?"

  "Interesting, isn’t it? And I believe the Origins traveled between the planets. For what reason, I can only surmise. But I don’t think it ended there."

  "I learned on Protogio that there is connection between Eksaf ‘anise and the great Egyptian pyramids, and astronomers have known for years that the three great pyramids align themselves with Orion’s belt. Watch the stars on the belt. I discovered this several years ago."

  Clay entered some calculations on the keyboard and froze the image that appeared. He highlighted an area on the viewer in front of him and it appeared on the dome above. "It is barely noticeable to the naked eye, but I found it."

  "What is that?" Sera gazed up at the dome. There was linear shadow extending from Alnilam, the center star on Orion’s belt. It looked as thought the universe was folding in on itself.

  "It’s an anomaly. I call it a temporal fold. Now, I am going to trace the line. Watch where it leads to."

  Sera’s mouth dropped open as Clay revealed the path that the temporal fold was taking. It seemed to pierce the Earth’s atmosphere and come to stop directly at the center pyramid in Giza.

  "This particular fold occurred on July fifteenth, two thousand and fifty-one, the exact same day we conducted the POSSUM experiment. Well, my curiosity got the best of me and I checked further back in time. A temporal fold also occurred a little over twenty years ago, but that was the last one I could find in this millennium and there were none during the nineteen hundreds. Because no method of recording images of the universe existed before the twentieth century, I couldn’t determine if there were any folds before then, but I suspect there was."

  "Do you think it’s a porthole, Clay?"

  "Yes, I do, and if my assumption is correct, there should have been another one during your POSSUM induced sleep." Clay punched the date into the computer and a new picture appeared. It was there, another temporal fold and the computer indicated that it lasted for approximately eight hours.

  Sera furled her brow. "The descendants on Protogio are from Greek origins. Why would an Egyptian monument be used for their runes?"

  "I thought about that myself and did some further investigating. In ancient mythology there was a Greek woman by the name of Io."

  "Jerad called the Key, Io’s curse of the tombs."

  Clay nodded. "I read the Protogian Principles. Demeter, according to the historical documentation is responsible for creating the Key. According to Greek mythology here on Earth, Io worshipped Demeter and Demeter adored her. Io was banished from Greece and eventually came to settle in the area known as Egypt. She is associated with the Egyptian goddess Isis, but more importantly Io is also the progenitor of Aegyptus, father of the Egypt. It is believed that from him, the great pharaohs descended. So you see, there is a connection, though we may never know the particulars of how it all came to be."

  "This is incredible."

  "And an ingenious idea you have to admit. After all, would you hide the key to your home in your own backyard, or would it be safer in your neighbor’s lot?

  "But how could the POSSUM have produced that?"

  "My theory is that the calibrated brain waves we used opened the porthole and transported us mentally to the planet."

  "The Edict said that the Ptino asteri will in truth be a spirit, but flesh to the touch."

  "Yes, Sera, and we know so little about where the mind ends and the spirit begins."

  Sera was speechless. Never could she imagine that she would find herself on the cusp of something so remarkable.

  "A shuttle passed through the temporal fold twelve years ago," Clay continued. "There was no damage, but the crew reported a major disturbance in their flight pattern, similar to a jet’s wake. It threw them off course, but not significantly. I believe that the KNOE’s calibrations opened the porthole, but the signal was too weak to allow an actual object to move through it. However, with a stronger signal aimed directly into the pyramid…"

  Sera shot out of her chair. She was completely overwhelmed with the possibility.

  "We could physically go to Protogio! We have to tell the IASA. They could research this, they could…"

  "No, Sera!" he yelled at her. Sera clamped her mouth shut and gave him a perplexed look.

  "Even if we could convince them that this actually did happen, how long do you think it would take for them to get approval, conduct their own research and then execute the necessary experiments to prove it were true, months, maybe years? I don’t believe you have that much time."

  "What do you mean?"

  "If you remain here, I don’t think your child is going to survive, and you may not as well."

  Sera hugged her belly protectively. "Why would you say such a horrible thing?"

  Clay’s eyes darted to Sera’s abdomen and then back to her face. "The baby you carry was conceived somewhere in the cosmos, between two world
s. I believe it is the reason you drift between here and Protogio. You told me that each time you link the pains worsen. It is not you that is being drawn there, Sera. Your child is being torn apart."

  "Oh my god!" Sera placed a trembling hand over her mouth. "My baby, how can I save my baby?"

  "I can think of no other solution other than your returning to Protogio."

  "But how?"

  "Simple. We are going to steal a shuttle."

  Sera looked at him wide-eyed. "You would do this for me?"

  "I would do it for both of us, Sera. The POSSUM ruined my life. I lost a very good friend that day, and my obsession following the experiment destroyed my marriage. My wife left me. My kids don’t even speak to me. I tried to put it out of my mind, and when you showed up on my doorstep I was determined to deny it, but I really never could let go of the POSSUM completely. You were all the proof I needed to tell me I wasn’t insane."

  Sera inhaled deeply and sat down in her chair. They sat in amiable silence for a long time. Neither of them noticed the shadowy figure that leaned against the wall at the far end of the room, or when it disappeared through the exit door.

  …The Ptino Asteri will deliver unto you the prior one…

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  ...Be not caught unaware, for a baneful warrior through the line of Nyx will seek to annihilate your people and claim that which is not his to hold…

  The elevator doors opened and Garret, dressed in civilian clothing, stepped out. He crossed the base, and headed for his pick-up truck in the parking lot. He took a leisurely drive to the front gates. A soldier stationed in the guardhouse saluted. Garret returned a quick nod. The guard pressed a button and opened the security gate.

  The drive to the privately owned storage buildings was ten miles away. It was dark when Garret pulled up. This was a good thing. As always, the less he was observed the better. Renting a storage cubicle with this company was a brilliant idea. The manager, who provided him with the key, allowed him access to his possessions day or night. The employees, indifferent in their attitudes, never paid much heed to his comings and goings. It had been an easy ploy bringing the documents, weapons and explosives to this place for safe keeping. He even managed to secure a dirty bomb. Being a terrorist interrogator had its advantages.