Moon Mask

by James Richardson

  “Alternatively,” he went on without a pause, “man-kind’s ancestors travelled and hunted far from their settlements and therefore developed the ability to ‘look at the larger picture’ I suppose you could say. He had had to learn to notice landmarks, often in the far distance. He had to learn to navigate, to give and to follow directions and to be aware, not of fallen berries right under his nose, but of herds of . . . mammoths, for example, in the distance. This wider, broader sense of spatial awareness is triggered in males by neural activity on only the right hemisphere of the Parietal Lobe.”

  “This is all very interesting, Doctor,” Gibbs snapped, “but unless you’re telling me that King is about to jump out of bed and go off hunting a sabre-toothed tiger, then I don’t see how it helps us.”

  “It helps us to understand that this is the area of Doctor King’s brain where all his neural synapses are being redirected to,” Heinrich replied irritably. He didn’t suffer fools gladly.

  “So,” Raine cut in before Gibbs degenerated the discussion into chaos, “the right hemisphere allows us to become sensitive to our surroundings?”

  “Ja.”

  “And if all of Benny’s neural synapses or whatever they’re called are focussing on that one area of his brain, then we could conclude that he’s becoming ultra-sensitive to his surroundings?”

  The doctor wasn’t too sure where Raine’s train of thought was leading and answered with a cautious “Jaaa . . .”

  “Last night,” Sid inputted into the conversation for the first time since it began, ignoring an unhappy huff from Nadia. “Ben was suggesting that the mask produced some sort of ESP ability in people who wore it.”

  “ESP?” Heinrich repeated with a frown. “Extra Sensory Perception?”

  Raine cut in before either he or Nadia could voice their objections. “You said this lobe thing regulates sensory input: all of it for close up work, just the right hand side for a broader spectrum. Well, I’m a soldier, and what is a soldier if not a hunter? Ja?” he added with a smirk. “Forget about whether you’re hunting a mammoth with a spear or a terrorist with a machine gun, at the core of it it’s the same thing. The instincts are all the same. You’ve got to be totally in-tune with your surroundings, totally aware of everything around you. Your senses – sight, sound, smell, taste, touch – are all in overdrive. Your body is in a heightened state of alert. Every noise: the flutter of a bird’s wing, the chirp of insects, the sound of a twig cracking. Every sight: a flash of sunlight, the shift of shadow. Every smell and taste: the acrid scent of the other man’s B.O., the taste of blood on the air. Every touch: a leaf slapping your thigh, a breeze kissing your cheek, a footfall vibrating through the sole of your boot.”

  He looked at each person in turn to make sure they were following him. “Every sense is in overdrive, coming together in your mind all at once and sometimes, in that split second before you’re ambushed, they all alert you to the danger just in time. A kind of ‘sixth sense’. Now, I don’t know what the little electric pathways in my head looked like in those moments, but I’d say they were pretty excitable. Just like Ben’s is now, only his is so hypersensitive that his body literally can’t function anymore. Isn’t it possible that with such hypersensitivity he’s receiving sensory input, extra sensory input, from some other source, from some other sense? A sixth sense.”

  “As in extra sensory perception?” Nadia scoffed. Gone was the vulnerable woman he had laid in bed with only hours ago. She was a scientist again, as hard, cold and full of conviction as ever.

  “Like Ben said, it would explain the legends about the Moon Mask,” Sid suggested. “Perhaps also explain why all the people who could see the future through it were men, if they have this ‘broader’ perspective of spatial awareness.”

  “See the future?” Heinrich repeated with a startled frown. While being given access to information on the tachyon radiation he didn’t have the full story.

  “It would also explain the indications of tumours in the remains you found,” Raine suggested. “The same area of Kha’um and Pryce’s brains were stimulated by the tachyons, making it hypersensitive and over time the tumours formed.”

  “And there are also a hundred and one other explanations for all those assumptions. Much more plausible explanations as well, I might add,” Nadia snapped, fed up with having to repeat her argument. “ESP is a myth, created by fortune tellers and New Age cults. Whether the Parietal Lobe is hypersensitive or not, it is simply not possible for the human brain to receive sensory input beyond the five senses, and certainly not from the future.”

  “Nadia,” Raine argued. “I’m no New Age hippy, clairvoyant or guru who believes in fortune telling, crystal balls and tarot cards, but I have seen extra sensory perception with my own eyes, a sixth sense which has saved others’ lives and my life. I’ve seen soldiers jump out of the path of a hidden sniper’s bullet without any warning. I’ve seen soldiers halt their foot an inch above a perfectly concealed, invisible landmine that they couldn’t have known was there.”

  “All of which can be explained through a combination of intense training and primal instinct.”

  “Scientists conducted experiments of gamblers a few years back and proved that they were able to predict what cards were going to be shown three seconds before they were turned over. That’s a fact, Nadia. In 2011, a well-known and highly respected scientist published his findings in an equally well respected journal. His conclusions were similar to the gambler test, only this time using volunteers from the public. He measured their responses to a number of cards, some with pleasant images, and some with shockingly violent images. Again, all his subjects seemed to know when a violent image was going to be revealed and braced themselves for it.”

  “How do you know all this?” Gibbs asked, shocked at the former soldier’s sudden scientific knowledge.

  He grinned enigmatically. “I’m not just a pretty face you know.”

  “I have read those studies,” Heinrich added. “Their findings have been disputed.”

  “But not proven to be wrong,” Raine argued. “In fact, the only firm arguments I could find on the internet were pretty lame assertions that ‘ESP is not possible’ without putting forward any compelling counter-evidence.” He spoke over Nadia who tried to raise an objection. “If you look back through the historical record, just about every culture in the world has shared a belief in fortune telling- yogis in India, shamans, witch doctors, Native Americans, Romany Gypsies, Maori, Australian Aborigines. The strongest, largest faiths in the world today, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, are all based on the prophetic teachings of what, at the core of it, are fortune tellers.

  “In the Asian Tsunami in 2004, did you know only a handful of animals were killed? The rest, everything from the hundreds of stray cats and dogs, to domestic pets, to horses and even elephants giving tourists rides on the beaches, went berserk and ran inland hours before the wave hit, hours before humans with all of there sophisticated technology knew anything about the danger that claimed thousands of lives. Tell me that’s not extra sensory perception.”

  “Animals are more primal than humans,” Nadia countered. “More in-tune with their surroundings-”

  “Precisely!” Raine cut her off triumphantly. “More primal! More in-tune with their surroundings! More sensitive?” He didn’t allow her to answer his question. “I would say that to know that a giant wave was hurtling towards them, hundreds of miles beyond the limits of their vision, their hearing or any of their other senses, they’d have to be hyper-sensitive to their surroundings. To see the danger before it even exists. Hypersensitive! Just like Ben is now. Just like Kha’um and Pryce must have been after the tachyons had excited the synapses in their brains.

  “Even the American and Russian governments became so paranoid about the national security threat posed by people with ESP that they commissioned departments to combat and exploit psychic warfare, just as I’m sure the Chinese and the British and all the
other major powers have done. In the seventies, the CIA commissioned Project Stargate in response to the Soviets’ own psychic warfare division.”

  “Raine,” Gibbs cautioned.

  “Relax, it was made public knowledge a few years back,” he said. In truth, it was from his own, far more recent dealings with Project Stargate, shortly before he went on the run, from which his knowledge of ESP originated. But that was a story for another day.

  “Project Stargate,” Heinrich said, “was developed to exploit Remote Viewing; the ability of ‘psychics’ to spy on locations in the heart of Moscow from the comfort of a lab in the centre of Washington.”

  “That’s right.”

  “But it was disbanded in the nineties and the findings made public.”

  “That’s bull shit.” His unexpected vulgarity caught everyone by surprise. “Like all the great secrets of nations, they make public only what they want to make public, they throw a bone to the conspiracy theorists out there and say ‘yes, you were right, we were experimenting with psychic warfare, but no, you’re wrong, we weren’t successful. Look at Roswell, look at JFK, Project Rainbow, 9/11 . . .” he glanced at King and added with a smile, “look at Elvis. The more they reveal the truth, the more they’re concealing the lie.”

  “Raine,” Gibbs growled.

  “I’m not saying anything that can’t be found on the internet, Gibbs,” he snapped back. “My point is, there is evidence that Stargate has continued to this day. There are reports that CIA operatives even learned to kill a sheep just with the power of their mind.”

  Nadia burst out laughing. “Nate, this is going too far.”

  “I’m not saying I believe everything I’ve read,” he defended himself, unable to shake the image of CIA Director Jason Briggs out of his head. The rumour in the CIA was that he could kill you with a stare, obviously stemming from his stormy temper and ability to end careers, or even lives, with a nod of his head. He should know, after all. He had killed enough people under the Director’s un-spoken orders.

  “I’m just saying that maybe you scientists,” he concluded, “the ones that can reveal so much about the world, should keep an open mind! Psychics have been used by police forces around the world in missing person cases. They’ve been employed by private detectives, by military forces, by professional gamblers and Wall Street Stock Brokers-”

  “Nate!” Nadia snapped. “I will say this one last time! ESP is not possible. Remote Viewing is not possible. Killing a sheep with the power of your thoughts is not possible. And peering through time to see the future or the past is not possible!”

  “Yes it is,” a weak voice suddenly startled them all. Everyone spun to see King’s eyes flutter open. Sid gasped and looked down at him. Heinrich rushed to his side, staring at the EEG scans, his eyes wide with amazement.

  “His neural activity is returning to normal. His synapses are redistributing back into a regular pattern.”

  King ignored the doctor and stared past him at the assembled group.

  “I know where the final piece is.”

  49:

  Yonaguni

  Off the Coast of Yonaguni Island,

  Japan

  A storm was brewing far in the east of the Pacific Ocean but, for the moment, the tranquil, sapphire blue waters of the East China Sea were calm and peaceful, broken only by the prow of a noisy diesel powered fishing boat.

  Double checking the GPS coordinates she had been given, Kristina Lake throttled back the controls and the pneumatic-pounding of the chugging engines thankfully ceased. The pilot house was raised up above the deck, sitting atop the compartment that contained the boat’s mess-deck. Below decks were four small quarters which were usually home to the boat’s twelve-man crew, one of the most unpleasant heads she had ever made use of, and a cramped galley. One of those rooms had been converted into a giant safe, its metal door pad-locked and its single porthole blocked with a sheet of iron welded into place by engineers at a US base on Okinawa Island. For this voyage, it was home to two small rucksack-sized metal cases, one of which contained a harmless interpretation of what was contained in the other: the Moon Mask.

  On the main deck below her, the other members of the UN team were gathered along with the newest recruits to the mission: three American-Japanese US Marines on loan from Marine Corps Air Station Futenma.

  Insisting he was fine, Doctor King had discharged himself from the care of Doctor Henry Heinrich at the NATO base in Germany and insisted that the team fly half the way around the world based purely on some dream he’d had while unconscious. Gibbs had briefly explained his reasoning, something to do with ESP, but Lake, along with the rest of the team, still had her reservations. They were used to working with hard intel, not mystic premonition, but with no other leads, and King’s determination, Gibbs had authorised the mission. In truth, Lake didn’t much care, enjoying the activity following the dull guard duty they had kept over the Moon Mask back at the NATO base while the scientists worked out their next destination.

  Following a thirteen hour flight from Germany direct to the marine base on Okinawa Island, the team had arrived to find the boat and men Gibbs had requested ready and waiting to launch.

  Commandeered from a local fishing company, the Mitsuko, which meant ‘child of light’ would hopefully provide the team some element of cover in these waters. Being so close to Taiwan, always a political hotbed waiting to erupt, the waters surrounding Japan’s Ryukyu Islands had, in recent days, begun to seethe with menace. While only those highest up on the political and military food chain knew of the real reasons, the whole world had nevertheless turned its attention towards the posturing of the Chinese and US fleets in the Pacific. Chinese warships had stepped up patrols of its coastal waters and breeched the sovereignty of Japanese and Taiwanese territories. Both governments had received reports of Chinese ships detaining civilian vessels and questioning their crews and while there had not yet been an outbreak of violence, it was only a matter of time. What the Chinese were searching for, no doubt, were American spies. The location of a massive US military presence on the Japanese Island of Okinawa had always been a bone of contention for China and the team hoped that all eyes would indeed be focussed on those forces, whose numerous bases were on high alert, allowing them to slip south, skirting through the island chain to the most western point of Japan: Yonaguni Island.

  “In 1987,” King had explained in a briefing to the entire team in the passenger compartment of a NATO C-130 Hercules as it thundered through the skies towards Japan. Once he had been medically cleared and his brain activity had returned to normal, he had spent several hours with Doctors Siddiqa and Yashina, two laptops and a number of books before presenting his findings to them. “A tourist diver named Kichachiro Aratake, while searching for a viewing spot to watch hammer-heads feeding around the Japanese island of Yonaguni, stumbled, quite by chance, on the find of a life time.”

  He clicked the mouse pad on the laptop and turned the screen so that the whole team could see. On it Lake saw an image of what appeared to be a ruined building, in some ways not dissimilar to the Step Pyramid in Egypt where she knew Kha’um had found a piece of the Moon Mask. Only this structure was submerged under several meters of water which gave it a surreal, inky blue hue.

  “The structure he found was hewn out of solid bedrock about eighty-eight feet below the surface of the ocean. It’s over six hundred and fifty feet long and rises in a series of steps, each one perfect, or near-perfect right angles, to just sixteen feet beneath the surface.” He flicked through several other images of what he called the Yonaguni Monument. There were several different angles of the ‘steps’ taken from vantage points at the base, mid-way up and from above looking down. There was a shot of two megalithic blocks, sixty-five feet long and weighing around two hundred tonnes each, thrusting upwards through the gloom, reminiscent of Stonehenge. There were channels and deep-cut ravines, flat platforms and raised plinths, even what appeared to be a wal
l encircling the entire structure.

  King had continued his briefing as the photos flicked through one by one. “Scientific opinion on the Yonaguni Monument is divided,” he had explained. “On the one hand, many scientists argue that the entire formation is entirely natural, that the forces of nature thrust these straight, angular structures through the bedrock where they settled thousands of years ago on the sea floor. Professor Kimura, a geologist from Okinawa University, on the other hand, disagrees and says that the structure is entirely man-made. Other than the obvious aesthetic impression of artificiality,” he had glanced at the computer screen then, and Lake had to admit it had the look and feel of a building more so than a natural rock formation. “He cites evidence such as a ‘rubbish tip’ of disused blocks swept to one side in an unnatural manner, the regular measurements of the ‘steps’ of the structure, the presence of what looks like a ceremonial pathway, and the presence of this limestone wall encircling the site. Limestone,” he added, “is not indigenous to Yonaguni.

  “Professor Robert Scotch from Boston University seems to have taken an intermediate view and suggests that the site is a natural construct which was manipulated by humans, carved into these unnatural shapes.”

  “This is all very cool, Doc,” O’Rourke had spoken up, “but how does it help us?”