The Voyage

by Douglas Falk

  There’s no point in even trying to run away from this. One needs to realise when the game’s over, and that time is now.

  The doors flung up, and soldiers in military uniforms rushed out of the armoured cars. The soldiers were heavily armed with automatic rifles, and they were now all pointed at the pair of them. John knew enough about guns to recognise what type of firearm they were carrying—some of the most ruthlessly efficient of their kind. Most of them carried M4A1 while others pointed what looked like HK416 guns directly at him. William dropped his knife to the ground, and they both held their arms up high.

  It’s over now. Whatever clandestine agency is running the show here, these are the foot soldiers. The pawns.

  Their uniforms were coloured in grey, and they all wore helmets. John and William were forced to their knees with their hands still pointed towards the sky. John looked at the armada of trigger-happy men with rifles pointed their way and noticed something on the soldier closest to him. There was a sewed-on patch on his chest in blue and white. He instantly recognised the symbol, and when he looked around he noticed that every single one of them had the very same patch on their uniforms.

  It is the emblem of The United Nations…the azimuthal equidistant projection. Oh my God. Right. It’s their official flag, for crying out loud! How did that slip under my radar? They’ve been telegraphing this the whole time, all these years. Hiding in plain sight, flaunting it to the unaware sheep. The United Nations is in league with NASA and the rest of the conspirators! Everything makes sense now. It all falls into place. The map is even divided into thirty-three Masonic sections!

  All that could be heard was the wailing of the wind blowing through the trees. The soldiers did not speak a word, and it was as silent as the grave. Suddenly, John heard how the backdoor of one of the Jeeps slammed open, and a tall man in black suit and sunglasses walked towards them slowly with resolute, determined steps. He appeared to be in his late thirties and emanated a vile, menacing vibe. He unveiled the holster on his belt, drew his pistol up in the air, cocked it, and pointed it at them both.

  “Are you armed?” he roared with a clear American accent. “Well? I’m not going to ask again.”

  “I am,” said William. “I have a gun in my pocket.”

  The man in charge now aimed his pistol right at William’s heart.

  “Remove it, carefully, and throw it ten feet ahead of you.”

  William obeyed and threw Seydoux’s Glock in front of him. The man walked forward and picked up the pistol.

  “William Milton and John Wilander. You are under arrest. The United Nations Police will keep you under custody for now.”

  “Under what charge? Aren’t you going to give us the Miranda rights?” cried William.

  The man laughed. “This is not America, child. And I need not delve into what you are being arrested for. You’ll have plenty of time to reflect upon what you have done when you are in safe keeping.”

  “All right, sir. But I can assure you…we can assure you…we will have our own attorney if this comes to trial. We can afford it. You can count on that, punk.”

  The man ordered his squadron to handcuff and blindfold them both, and they were quickly ushered into separate cars. John squirmed in the back of the car, out of breath and out of sight. The engine of the SUV started, and off they went.

  Where the hell are they taking me?

  24

  “Seven point six billion people call Earth their home. You are now two out of approximately five thousand individuals who know the truth. Even fewer have actually seen it with their own eyes like you have. And you have seen but a sliver of it, know this. You haven’t even peeled off the outermost layer of the onion,” said Colin Vance, director of the United Nations Security Council.

  Vance had the look on his face of a rugged, embittered hermit. John and William did not reply, so he continued.

  “Look around you. There are no high-profile politicians in this room. Donald Trump is not present. Vladimir Putin is not here. Xi Jinping is not here. Nor is Justin Trudeau, Angela Merkel, Theresa May, Narendra Modi, or Shinzo Abe. These men and women of power did not decide to not grace themselves with their presence because they consider this business unimportant. No. They are not present because they are blissfully unaware. Just like the vast majority of the population of Earth. Some truths are of such magnitude that they cannot be shared, not even with those who imagine themselves wielding ultimate power. You now know of a secret that 5,000 people—I’m sorry, I mean 5,002—out of 7.6 billion humans on Earth know. The secret that we don’t live where we’ve been told that we live.”

  The atmosphere was tense in the damp bunker they were being held. Underneath the United Nations headquarters, deep below the area commonly known as Turtle Bay in Midtown New York, they were questioned in front of a large audience.

  John and William kept their mouths shut once again. After their capture in the lush rainforest beyond Antarctica, they were flown out of an airfield nearby the very same day and arrived in Buenos Aires some ten hours later. Upon their arrival to Argentina, they were under constant surveillance and still in cuffs. After a three-hour layover they were taken to a connecting flight to New York and brought directly to the United Nations headquarters. They had not slept for thirty-seven hours, and they had only been fed scraps of food and one glass of water at the Buenos Aires airport.

  They had an airfield down there. A military base. Even a church and a post office no less! I was unlucky to just catch a glimpse of that settlement when I managed to remove the blindfold for a couple of seconds, but the guards put it back on almost straight away. Had I managed to see more…Jesus. They are building a colony down there. A new state. Is that the motive, when it all comes down to it? Simple greed, making a buck for a few acres of land in areas the public doesn’t know of?

  William Milton tried desperately to wriggle his hands out of the cuffs and squirmed in his seat. Knowing that it was to no avail, he decided to speak out instead. “We did not come to Antarctica and beyond to acquire a membership card to your exclusive club. We searched for the truth.”

  He spoke to Vance and all the folks around him in the dimly lit bunker. They were thirty-three in total, including Vance. They were representatives for the UN, NASA, JAXA, Roscosmos, ESA, ISRO, CNSA. On the far right sat two women who, judging by the emblems they wore on their suits, represented Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic, respectively.

  Even SpaceX is in on it. How could I have been so naive to think that Musk was an independent power player in the space industry? SpaceX is funded by the American government after all. Congress gave them five billion dollars last year, or was it even six? Musk is but a puppet; it all makes sense. His irrational behaviour and his obscure promises about the future with hotels on asteroids and Mars colonies. He is but a pawn, and he doesn’t have a clue what’s going on. But Virgin Galactic? They haven’t accomplished a thing! Other than spreading empty promises about space tourism around in the media for a decade or two…

  “Ah, the truth. Aren’t you quite the Boy Scout?” said Colin Vance in a fatigued tone of voice. Colin Vance was an African American in his late fifties. Judging by his accent, he was from the Deep South. He was nearly bald and sported black moustache so remarkable that it reminded John of Agatha Christie’s character Hercule Poirot, the Belgian detective.

  “The truth. The truth can be adjusted and modified. Especially when it gets in the way of the greater good. Do you get what I mean?”

  They did not reply.

  “Agent Malucelli!”

  A beast of a man who appeared to be of South American origin waddled slowly towards the table separating Vance from John and William, placed a polaroid photograph in front of Vance, and lumbered back to his earlier guarding position with his arms crossed. Vance mumbled something half-hearted that sounded like “thank you” and flipped the photograph over. He slid the photograph slowly over to John and William. “Do you know this man?”


  John eyed the photo closely and recognised the iconic facial features of one Jacques Seydoux.

  Only the face is familiar, though…

  The Canadian’s eyes were wide open, and his corpse rested on a bed of red-coloured snow.

  “This photograph was taken by one of our men in the field, sergeant Alexei Larionov. It clearly depicts a certain Jacques Olivier Laurent Seydoux out of Quebec, Canada. From what we have gathered, this man was your companion. What happened? Why did you kill him? Who fired that lethal round in his chest?”

  Neither of them replied. John looked down at his feet, and William looked wistfully up in the ceiling as Vance and his thirty-two disciples kept staring at them.

  “Neither of you did the deed? Oh, well. No matter. Our private investigation team will find out soon enough. And even if they don’t, know that we will pin this on the both of you whether you did it or not. You stand defenceless. You have no more cards left to play.”

  John kept staring at his feet, but William could not take it anymore. His gaze wandered from the ceiling back to Vance and the conspirators behind him. He stared at Vance with fire in his eyes.

  “Why, Mr. Vance? I know, you know…well, everyone knows. Everyone knows that our part in this tale is over. John and I will be wiped off the face of the Earth soon, so you might as well tell us something the both of us have been quelling over for a very, very long time. Why? Why are you people doing this? Why are you conspiring and lying to the humankind? Why are you perpetrating this hoax? You are all despicable, irredeemable human beings, and one day, one day, you will pay for it. You will face your creator, and you will feel sorry for what you have done. Karma will catch up to you lot, and justice will be done.”

  Colin Vance leaned back in his chair and studied William with a curious look on his face. “The creator…our creator. You know, not that long ago I would have dismissed any such notion in a heartbeat, threats of God smiting us infidels down. But no longer. You see, I’m a lifelong atheist. Always been. Well, I was. I grew up in Huntsville, Alabama, and went to church every day as a young child. My father did everything he could to turn me into a Bible-thumper like the rest, to no avail. He married his high school sweetheart, and they had me shortly thereafter. Eight years later, my mother was pregnant with their second child. Long story short, Mr. Milton—my mother died in childbirth along with my stillborn brother-to-be. My father completely lost his faith in God after that and became an embittered drunkard for the rest of his life. He died of cirrhosis before he had even turned fifty. I grew up in a household that had abandoned faith, Mr. Milton.”

  Are we supposed to sympathise with you people now just because you have a sob story to throw at us?

  Vance sighed and took a sip of water from the glass in front of him. “I’ve lived the better part of my life with the belief that all of us are the result of a cosmic accident. A bug in the system. A missing link in an indifferent, cold universe. Until about ten years ago, when I took over the reins from the now-retired Cameran Simms. He’s still alive; eighty-five years old he is now, living out his last days at his family ranch in Texas. But that is not important right now. What is important is what I am about to tell you now. Something I think you deserve to hear even though the pair of you have broken just about every international law there is, and more. You have breached the law, and we will see you punished, and neither of you will ever be free men again. I will grant you this piece of information as a personal curtesy…a gift, if you will.”

  “What’s the gift?” asked John.

  “That there is a God, and everyone you see in this room is sworn to secrecy in relation this truth. We are protecting it.”

  “Why? Why are you in cahoots with these people? Why lie to the entire world…every man, woman, and child?” exclaimed John.

  Vance gave him a hard look. “Not only do you look like a child, you ask questions like one. There is no simple, easily digestible answer that I can give you. You lads performed one hell of a journey on foot, though. I will grant you that what you two accomplished is nothing short of extraordinary. You made it further on foot than most men would even dream of. Anyway, why are we lying, you ask? Well, what’s your best guess? We have time to spare. I am going out on a limb here, and I’ll say that the both of you have discussed this topic to some degree for quite some time.”

  William raised his cuffed hands to his chin and put his elbows on the table. He looked down on his shirt and gently poked the wolf brooch, still pinned to his chest. He laughed to himself, and John could guess why.

  They took everything we had, and they want to imprison us for life, most like. But they let him keep his ridiculous House Stark pin needle to the hearing. No wonder he’s laughing.

  “You are right, Mr. Vance. We have tried to decipher the motive for a very long time. Personally, in my worst moments, I’ve boiled it down to a maniacal, psychotic need for control. The kind of need only men of the upper echelons of power positions crave. You—the power elite—control the flow of events and you write the history books. And you have come to the conclusion that we, the plebs of society, if you will, could not handle the truth. You protect a lie that was put into place before you were even born, and yet you defend it. I think you are wrong, Mr. Vance—the truth will out, always. The truth fears no investigation. In my more sombre moments, however, I do believe that perhaps you lot are upholding this lie for some kind of an idealistic, utopian purpose. A deception for the greater good. You fear what will happen when the world wakes up. You fear what will happen when the few becomes the many. The truth is dangerous—therefore, the lie is the best alternative. The lesser of two evils. Am I close to the mark, Colin Percival Vance?” sneered William defiantly. He slammed his cuffed hands on the table.

  Vance was taken aback. He looked at William with a nondescript expression on his face.

  I can’t tell whether he is impressed or disappointed. Impressed, I suspect.

  “Very good, Mr. Milton. You have some wits about you, but I knew that already. You are the son of a great man.”

  “When he hears that I am being held captive, I swear, it will be the en—”

  “Don’t even bother, Mr. Milton. Do you really think we are going to telegraph the real reason as to why you and Mr. Wilander are held here? And even if you managed to reach out to him, would he believe you when he hears just how insane your conspiracy theories are? Think a little, child. You have lost.”

  William stared with an empty look at the table, and Vance counted that as the sign of a broken, defeated man. He cleared his throat.

  “The lie started some sixty-two years ago, when Sputnik 1 was to be launched into orbit from Bajonkur on October 4, 1957. U.S.A. and the Soviet Union had both learned earlier the same year that the cosmology we had all lived by was proven wrong. Thanks to an extraordinary discovery in Antarctica by none another than Admiral Richard Evelyn Byrd, the rules of the game were changed forever. We sat down with the Russians and had intense discussions lasting months about how to deal with the fact that the Earth was proven to be flat. We eventually settled on an agreement—we had to lie. A white lie. We decided to launch a long-term plan and weave a convincing narrative that would fool the world if everything went according to plan. Oh, and when I use the term we, I mean it loosely, of course. Referring to my predecessors. Anyway. Yes. The narrative…the space narrative had to be woven with surgical precision. We had to make a judgement call—choosing to tell the public the truth and incite mass riots, slaughter, and mayhem on an unprecedented scale, or keep the paradigm going. We chose that the best option was to let them live in their fantasy world for the sake of world stability. If a truth is too destructive, it should not be told. All the scientific progress that we as humankind had slowly but surely incorporated into our society for millennia would be toppled overnight. Do you realise what would have happened if people were told that we are divinely created?”

  “People would run to the churches and pray. Science would lose all cr
edibility, and all universities and colleges would shut down.”

  “Correct, Mr. Milton. It would be a terrifying sight—atheism as a worldview would become annihilated, and every single person would bow down and pray to our Lord for mercy. We just can’t have the masses turn into religious zealots overnight, can we? When the decision was made, there was no turning back from that point onwards. If a lie becomes big enough, it has to be followed through to the very end. The other super powers followed our example and formed their fake space programs as a result. We formed NASA, and the Russians installed Roscosmos. Let’s jump ahead to what happened after Sputnik.”

  “Wait,” said John. “Sputnik was real? They actually sent a craft into orbit? But…how does that work if—”

  “Of course not. Don’t play obtuse. There is no such thing as an orbit, and they sure as hell did not send any craft up there that flew around the Earth like a satellite. It was the first chapter of the space story. The fake launch from Bajonkur on that day sixty-two years ago…well. That is when the plan kicked into motion for real. Naturally, we had to play along and rile up the media with faux doomsday scenarios of space being dominated by the Soviet Union for the years to come. If the lie is to be convincing, you need to have useful idiots who unknowingly play the part.”

  “What happened after Sputnik 1?” asked John.

  “Well, that’s the part of scripted the narrative when we, as in the United States of America, take over. Wernher von Braun is now the director of NASA, the former Nazi officer who was handpicked in Operation Paperclip by our recruiters. As you might know, we and the Ruskies divided the scientists evenly—half of them were taken in by us; the other unlucky half was taken to Moscow. I’d say that the most important year since Sputnik is 1962.”

  William turned his gaze away from the table and looked directly into the eyes of Vance. “JFK. His speech. Did you guys kill him too? It wouldn’t surprise me in the slightest. Lee Harvey Oswald did not act alone.”