The Voyage

by Douglas Falk

  “Anyway…one month ago, when the three representatives dispatched by Lockheed Martin arrived at McMurdo Station in Antarctica to draw out the lands for the project, something peculiar occurred, as I mentioned earlier. They were halted upon arrival…by representatives of the UN. Or, to be more precise, New Zealand—which is one of the countries tied to the treaty. One of the Kiwi correspondents promptly informed the Lockheed Martin reps that any sort of business activity down in Antarctica is out of the question, referring to the treaty. The trio were asked to leave immediately and fly back to Christchurch on their private jet, from which they had previously been stopping over from their flight from the States. In other words…they faced the same fate as Andhöy did.”

  “Who on Earth is Andhöy?”

  “Jarle Andhöy, the beleaguered Norwegian skipper. He sailed his yacht to Antarctica a couple of years ago without the legal permits—and got several of his crew mates killed during the expedition. They died of hypothermia, I think…not sure. Anyway, what happened to his crew is not important. What is important is that he was captured, threatened at gunpoint, and fined by the Antarctic coast guard. I’m not making this stuff up, John. It’s real. They are guarding something monumental down there…something of paramount importance. I doubt the folks doing the actual guarding even know what they are protecting, ironically enough. I think it’s above their pay grade…but that’s just my own pet theory.”

  John took a sip from his Famous Grouse in the gloomy haze of Molly Malones.

  “And? Is there more to this story?”

  William adjusted his glasses. “Don’t you think it is at the very least a strange occurrence? This place on Earth, seemingly the most unimportant speck of land on the entire planet, without any indigenous population apart from the emperor penguins…is in fact guarded as if it was the Holy Grail itself. Don’t you think it’s curious?”

  John shrugged. “Why’s it strange? If the treaty dictates that unwanted people, outsiders, are not allowed to tread those grounds…it is fully understandable that those who signed those regulations in the first place elect to uphold the law as they should?”

  “That is true,” William spoke calmly. “But why do you think they chose to isolate the continent to begin with? Is it not the oddest thing, unless there is something of value down there?”

  John looked in to his tepid half-empty glass of Famous Grouse with a pondering expression on his face. “I guess…I guess it is somewhat curious. From the little I know of Antarctica, it just seems to be this desolate, freezing, miserable place. A place of no importance, in other words. What is it you think, have they found something of value down there? I know that Nazi Germany set up a base there during World War II called New Schwabenland, if I am not mistaken. Did they find something game-changing, you think?”

  William showed a hint of a smug, gleaning smile. “I do indeed. I believe they found something down there…a long time ago. And I believe this very discovery has been concealed from the public ever since.”

  William looked at his friend and paused for a short while for dramatic effect.

  “If I was to make an educated guess, I would say that this discovery is the reason for the signing of the Antarctic Treaty and a myriad of other important events that shaped the world for the years that followed. Understanding this discovery—this fundamental truth—grants you the knowledge that only a select few are currently in possession of. Accepting this truth is the key to understanding what makes this world tick, and you will in time recognise the smokescreens planted to deceive us, and you will one day decipher the rest of the lies and red herrings out there. The greatest truth of them all—if it became common knowledge, it would change the world as we know it forever!”

  John studied William closely and stared into his crazed big blue eyes with part concern, part curiosity. What the hell is he going on about?

  William had no plans of stopping just yet. “Do you know of Admiral Byrd, John?”

  “Never heard of him.”

  “Of course you haven’t heard of the man. Richard E. Byrd, admiral in the U.S. Navy. He led the expeditions to the South Pole during the forties after the end of the second World War. The operations under his command were called Operation Deep Freeze and Operation High Jump. These expeditions were carried out with an armada, John! Thousands of soldiers armed to the teeth. What they were looking for is unclear, officially…the jury is still out on that one if you were ask any expert historian about this. But from where I am coming, there is no doubt as to what Byrd discovered during his expedition, and why the details of this very escapade still are classified as top secret.”

  “So what did he discover?”

  “He discovered,” continued William, as he waved at the bartender for a refill, “more land than expected. That stretched further inland than would be possible. There was something wrong. There was something very wrong indeed…the map of the area was inaccurate.”

  The bartender approached the table and filled William’s empty glass to the brim. William took a sip and leant even closer to John.

  “And here, my friend, is where things get interesting. After Operation Deep Freeze in ’56, Byrd retires from the Navy…but shortly before his retirement was announced publicly, he went on to do an appearance on live American TV on a show called Longines Chronoscope. And guess what he goes on to say when asked about his Antarctic expeditions?”

  “They found unicorns down there? The Loch Ness monster? Jimmy Hoffa?” John was still all ears, but he began to feel weary over William’s incapability of telling a story without relying on theatrics.

  “No, I’m afraid not. He claimed…and I’m paraphrasing from here on, mind you. He said: ‘We have found a land mass the size of North America, never once seen by a human being. This area is rich with minerals, coal, and other natural resources. It is quite astonishing that there should be an area as big as that…unexplored.’”

  William looked wistfully outside the window of the pub as he recited the words of Admiral Byrd. The street outside looked enchantingly picturesque, almost like taken out of a Disney film. Tiny flakes of snow fell slowly from the skies.

  “Do you understand what this means, John? What we have here is the admiral who led the very expedition, a national hero and quite possibly the greatest explorer in modern time…claiming that there is an enormous, uncharted swath of land in the deep South out there, ripe for the taking! And this all happened during the fifties…the fifties! By that point, my friend, the world map was since long complete and every inch of our world was known and measured right down to the last centimetre. What Byrd speaks of should not exist…it can’t exist. Do you understand what this means?”

  John was still confused, and the cheap whiskey he’d been sipping all night didn’t exactly help to clear things up. “I don’t. What does it mean?”

  “It means,” said William in a raised tone of voice, “it means that the maps are wrong. Not just the map of Antarctica that Byrd and his men realised were not real—but the entire world map. Byrd discovered on that day that all that we until then thought was carved in stone as absolute truth…was wrong. Newton, Copernicus, Kepler, Einstein…the whole scientific community was mistaken during all these centuries. Byrd discovered additional land beyond Antarctica. He realised that there’s more land to be found beyond, in these regions…and today, it is being covered up and concealed with surgical precision. Millions of people have already discovered this truth across all continents, but to prove it completely is something not yet accomplished. Logistics, resources, time, and money are what is required for that…and I possess all of those, John. I tick all those boxes. I am one in a million.”

  William looked at his confused friend and decided it was the right moment to lay the cards on the table.

  “There is no gentle, or subtle, way of telling you this, my friend…so I’m just going to lay it all on the line. The Earth is flat, John Wilander. The Earth is flat and stationary, and everything you think you know about
the cosmology you have been taught is either a lie or a misconception. The Earth is flat, and outer space as we know it does not exist…and we have absolutely no idea where we are right now.”

  2

  John looked into those big blue eyes and tried to discern if his friend was in the process of pulling some sort of long-winded practical joke at his expense. Alas, there was not even a hint of irony stemming from the words spoken, nor did his face reveal any clue of that nature. John slid his fingers gently on the rim of the empty whiskey glass in front of him, feeling numb. All around them, the noise had become even worse as the company next to them had extended into a large crowd with two hefty middle-aged women chirping away along with the couple.

  Jesus Christ. My friend has become…one of those people.

  John had half-heartedly followed the rise of this bizarre underground movement in the peripheries of the dark and obscure corners of the internet.

  The type of websites and videos I watch now and then on a bored night somewhere between 2 and 4 a.m.

  John stroked his long golden hair back and pondered.

  A flat-Earther. What is going on with the world? Fewer than four years ago, a worn-out reality star in his early seventies had been elected president of the United States…and about the same time, this theory began stirring in the fringes of society. The renaissance of a theory more hated and ridiculed than anything else in this world suddenly made a sensational comeback on the world stage after being dead and buried for five hundred years. What’s next? Flying unicorns? Dogs and cats living together in perpetual harmony?

  John had read about the celebrities coming out as flat-Earthers during last couple of years. Tila Tequila, Shaquille O’Neal, rapper B.O.B.—while John did not deem any of them as particularly bright, he did recognise it as a sign of things to come.

  Something is going on, and I cannot for the life of me understand why. The fact that we live on a globe is not up for debate.

  “William,” he murmured with a tired, weary voice. “Don’t tell me that you have really become a flat-Earther. You have fallen into the trap of a CIA psy-op! Don’t you get it? It’s such an obvious psychological operation, with the distinct purpose of reeling in as many gullible poor sods as possible into the deep, dark rabbit hole that is flat-Earthism. It’s crystal clear for anyone with half a brain to see. Tell me that you’re joking…before I keel over and die from overexposure to stupidity.”

  William Milton did not waver. “I am completely serious, John. This is real.”

  John fiddled nervously with his smartphone and drank the very last drops of the whiskey.

  “All right then. All right. Only because I do care for you, and I am falling into a stupor…which is very fortunate for you, my friend. Because if I wasn’t drunk, I doubt I would care to listen to another word of your impending nonsense. But have at it…if you must.” John sighed.

  William leant back in his chair with a more relaxed expression on his face than usual. “I won’t be able to convince you over just one conversation, John. But I can plant a seed in your brain that something is wrong with the world. Something is very wrong indeed. And whether or not you will be able to run past the hurdles that we call cognitive dissonance is all up to you.”

  “Okay then. Fine. For the sake of entertainment…hit me with your best shot. I’m going to order another cold one and drown it to the tunes of your impending gibberish, if you’ll excuse me.”

  William smiled as John walked towards the counter of the bar. As John watched the bartender pouring him a pint of Falcon Export, John looked back at his strange friend and shook his head in disbelief.

  It’s a good thing that I’m drunk tonight.

  John grabbed hold of the beer and walked back to the corner resolutely.

  “Okay. How did you get caught up in this whirlwind of nonsense? What pushed you over the edge, so to speak?”

  “Apart from the chicanery going on in Antarctica and the story of Admiral Byrd? I don’t think I’m able to cherry-pick any sort of point that made me flip—it was the sum of all parts. But as for the final nail in the coffin, I can tell you about that. It was when I managed to get in touch with a geodetic surveyor who worked for my father’s company not too long ago. I interrogated him rather ferociously over the phone. The old man probably hated having to answer my inane questions for hours on end, but he did comply…he knew who I was—who my father is—naturally, he wouldn’t dare to hang up on me. The old codger confirmed everything I needed to know and more. I am one hundred percent convinced that the Earth we stand on does not curve downwards. There is no curvature, John.”

  “What did he confirm?”

  “This surveyor in question is in his late sixties. We spoke about five months ago, but I still remember just about everything that he said. During the entire span of his thirty-five-year-old career, he never once…ever…took the curvature formula of the Earth into account during the projects he had been involved in over all those years. He could also not mention a single time any colleague of his had brought it up either. Do you know the curvature formula of the Earth, John?”

  John threw his arms out in disbelief. “No. Why would I know that?”

  “Exactly! Exactly. You don’t know that formula…because we were never taught it in school, or after we finished school for that matter. Stuff like that we just hand over to the scientists, right? Let the smart guys at NASA figure it out. Let Brian Cox or Bill Nye worry about that, right? Wrong. The learned men of science that we place our faith in…they don’t have the faintest clue about a surprisingly large number of basic scientific facts. Let me give you an example.”

  William cleared his throat.

  “Neil deGrasse Tyson, the man universally hailed as the smartest individual walking the Earth right now after the passing of Stephen Hawking, didn’t have the foggiest idea when he was asked by Joe Rogan about the formula last year on his podcast. Eight inches per miles squared, for your information. That is the official Earth curvature formula…and it’s quite a considerable slope downwards on a ball with a circumference of 24,900 mil—”

  “You talk of this as if you were an expert yourself, a scientist! Are you, a spoiled brat in your mid-twenties, more qualified to pass judgement on all the scientific and mathematical progress concerning the study of the Earth—and just dismiss it all as lies—than the people who devote their entire lives studying this very topic?” John had no qualms about interrupting his friend so brashly.

  William raised his glass in a flippant-looking manner and answered without hesitation. “Absolutely. Yes, in this case…absolutely. Because the so-called experts…they have been indoctrinated and brainwashed far worse than the common man has been. To them, the shape of the Earth will never, ever be allowed to be put into question. They wouldn’t believe it even if they ascended high enough to see the plane they live on themselves. So even if they are indeed experts, and highly qualified in almost every other scientific area, in this case, it is counter-productive, and their decades-long indoctrination has clouded their minds and programmed their brains into a state that is nigh impossible to be yanked out of. It’s like they say in the Matrix, John—we never unplug someone who has reached a certain age. Morpheus did not refer to the shape of the Earth in the film, but it has the same bearing—the older and more experienced a person is, the harder it is to wake them up. It’s akin to The Emperor’s New Clothes. The Earth has no curvature to be detected, but these experts will still see the curvature in their mind’s eye even though it does not actually exist. It’s brilliant! A masterful way of deceiving the public, letting the most trusted men and women fight the battle for you. Useful idiots, if you may.”

  John raised his finger as if attempting to speak, but William wasn’t finished.

  “John. Hear me out now, because this is the most important conundrum in this whole mess—the most important foundation of what makes this conspiracy such an ingenious invention. This spell will likely never be lifted because of one simple tru
th—even if the scientists managed to overcome their own programming and they decided to peek behind the curtain, they would never even dream of stepping out of line like that. What would you think would happen if a famous scientist, like Tyson, suddenly declared that the heliocentric model of the universe is indeed false? He would be ostracised, de-funded, ridiculed…and his entire legacy would be smashed to pieces! The Copernican heliocentric system of the universe is just far too cemented in our society, and that is exactly why a select number of people in the power elite decided to keep this truth under wraps about sixty years ago.”

  John cackled loudly. He could no longer silently watch this freakshow go on any further.

  Out of all the madness that encompasses the flat-Earth movement…the motive itself for the deception is the most baffling. Why would the governments of the world align for this cause of keeping the real shape of the known world a secret? How does it change anyone’s lives if the Earth is flat or spherical? People would still have to drag their asses to work every day and slave away for soulless corporations, just like before. Madness. Madness and stupidity.

  John raised his voice.

  “Why would they waste so much time, money, and effort in keeping this so-called ultimate truth a secret? Listen to yourself speak, my man. There is no motive in lying about the shape of the Earth. A deception only makes sense if the conspirators gain something out of it. There literally is no motive in convincing the public that the Earth’s geometrical shape differs from what we have been told.”

  “Au contraire, my dear John.” William sounded annoyingly smug and confident, and John did not care for it one bit.

  “You can’t see the motive. That’s all right. I couldn’t see it either at first, but in time I saw it, clear as day. I was blind…and now I see. All the pieces matter, and suddenly they all fit just right…like in a jigsaw puzzle.”