Atlantis Quadrilogy - Box Set

by Brandon Ellis

  He didn’t know what to say. He didn’t know what he’d done, so he didn’t know what to apologize for and nothing sucks harder than a generic apology. Then again, he needed to do something to mend the breach.

  She stepped over a downed tree. “You left me for dead.”

  Jaxx blanched. That would be a good reason to be pissed. “I have a hard time believing I left you to die.”

  She ducked under a large branch. “How convenient.”

  Up ahead Jaxx could see a road bordering the edge of the forest. He was happy it was a short walk to civilization, although in this case, civilization was just a road. “Slade had me undergoing hypnosis. I’ve gotten to the point where I saved your life.”

  She stopped and spun, almost putting a finger on Jaxx’s chest but thought better of it. “Yes. The blood. Thank you for your blood. The gift that keeps on giving. I can move things with my mind, hear what you’re thinking, and conduct electricity when I touch you. It’s a barrel of laughs.” She strode ahead, determined to shake him off.

  Jaxx followed. “Rivkah, please tell me. Tell me the whole story. I cannot imagine any circumstance where I would leave you to die. It’s just…well…alien to me.”

  “You want to know?” She kicked a rock out of the way. “I went after you, Jaxx.”

  “You went after me?”

  “After you defected to the Taiyonians. I convinced the SSP high command that I was going to get back our so-called star pilot. But, I wasn’t going to retrieve you. I was going to join you. I gave you my call-sign when I approached and you shot me down. My ejection booster didn’t work and when I survived the crash – nearly burned to a crisp – you circled my location over and over, like a predator mocking its prey. You left me for dead.”

  Jaxx didn’t know how to react, what to say. He didn’t remember shooting her down. If what she said was true, then his rational mind could only think of one thing, “My guess is I didn’t know it was you. Or, I couldn’t find you down there when I was circling. I wouldn’t leave a friend to die.”

  She nodded vigorously, eyes wide. “You know what? That’s what I thought. Even though I could have sworn I heard you telling me to ‘pull up’ seconds after you shot me.”

  Jaxx brightened. “So I warned you? I shot you by accident?”

  “Nick Cole came to my rescue. We went over my flight on the holovids while I was practically dying in med quarters. I insisted on watching everything I could about my crash. And Captain Richard Fox found something peculiar. You know what he found?”

  Jaxx pushed out his lower lip, knowing this wasn’t going to be good. “Nope.”

  “A communique, from you to the Taiyonians, confirming your kill. Your exact words were, ‘Captain Rivkah Ravenwood, expunged.’ Expunged, for fucks sake. Who even says that?”

  “You believed him?”

  She shook her head. “I didn’t want to. The guy is a prick. He’d stop at nothing to get his own way. But I had heard the audio. I knew you were an even bigger prick than him.”

  “How do you know it was me?”

  “I know your voice, Jaxx. I heard it. It was you.” She spun around and started walking.

  For several minutes they walked in silence until they came upon a path that steered off the road and back into the woods. A sign marked, Boyd’s Bed’n Breakfast, pointed them east. The path was short, dog legging to the left to a small lodge with several log cabins dotting the forest behind it.

  Without as much of a wave, she walked down the path.

  Jaxx followed, once again feeling like a beaten dog after his owner.

  She stomped up the wooden steps to a deck that surrounded the lodge. She wiped her feet on the welcome mat and walked in, letting the door shut on Jaxx’s face.

  He sighed and followed her. No prizes for guessing who was boss.

  The reception was homey, rustic, welcoming. Lines of fliers ranging from helicopter tours to the grizzly zoo lined the wall. It was a hunting-fishing-trapping-outdoorsy paradise.

  A man behind the desk looked up from a newspaper, brightened to see a potential guest. He stood, placing his hands on the counter. “How can I help you folks?”

  Rivkah leaned on the counter with a warm smile, practically batting her eyes at the guy. “I need a ride into Whitefish.”

  “I can’t leave the Lodge. There’s no one else here to welcome guests. There are no taxis or...what do they call those things? No Ubers out here. But I can probably convince one of the park rangers at National Glacier Park to pick you up, but that wouldn’t be until tomorrow.” He became serious. “Are you two okay? Where is your car?”

  Rivkah didn’t answer. “How much is a room?”

  He folded his hands. “$180 a night. We have one cabin available.”

  Jaxx unzipped the laptop case, feeling for the secret compartment. He felt a clump. He pulled back Velcro, revealing a pouch. A pouch full of the twenties that Rivkah showed him earlier.

  Rivkah pushed his hand away from the cash. “Hell no. There is no way I’m sleeping in the same bed or room as you. It’s hard enough not to kill you where you stand.”

  The desk clerk looked left and right. No doubt he’d seen his fair share of lovers’ disputes.

  Jaxx stepped forward. “Here’s $180. If you can get a park ranger to drive us to Whitefish tomorrow, then I’d appreciate that.” He plopped down nine twenty dollar bills.

  The man handed him a key, happy to rid the lobby of the drama. “Cabin 7b.”

  Jaxx grabbed the key and gave Rivkah a look.

  She snagged the key out of his hand as fast as Bruce Lee. “I’ll take that.”

  Out the door, she hurried down the steps, speaking over her shoulder. “You’re on the floor.”

  “It’s not even night time yet. Are you just going to ignore me all day?”

  She gave him a curt nod as she headed down a path marked b-Cabins. She wiped her shoes, walked in, and slammed the door behind her.

  Jaxx’s shoulder’s drooped. She’d probably locked him out.

  He touched the door knob, turning it. He let out a breath as the door opened and he stepped inside.

  The place was quaint. Blue curtains, blue bed spread, and light blue walls. No phone. No TV. Two lamps and a bathroom.

  No way to see or talk with the outside world.

  The room, though, was cheery. At least it had that much.

  Rivkah was on the bed, studiously ignoring him.

  He pulled the laptop out of its case, placed it on the desk, and opened it. The operating system came alive, showing two dozen folder icons labeled with dates starting in May, 2018, the last folder labeled June 7th. He hovered his icon over the June 7th folder, then saw a folder labeled May 22nd with the words EPICA just under it. He knew all about the European Project for Ice Coring in Antarctica (EPICA), but why was Underfoot Black interested? Why would Slade care about ice-core samples?

  He clicked on the folder, expecting to see the EPICA graphs of nearly a million years of ice ages and interglacial ages on Earth and their temperature swings.

  That’s not what he saw.

  Three subfolders popped up, marked; Pyramid 1, Pyramid 2, and Pyramid 3.

  He opened Pyramid 1.

  Three image icons dotted the screen. He tapped the first image. It was a close up of Callisto’s largest pyramid, the one he and Shaughnessy had been studying, before he’d been shunted off to fucking hypno-memory-land. He couldn’t quite see exactly what was etched on a highlighted portion of the pyramid. He hit the arrow and moved on to the next image. Similar picture, though at a different angle and closer in perspective.

  He clicked the third picture, bringing up an image he could actually see – etched lines on the base of the pyramid that went up and down like a heart monitor, though it wasn’t a heart monitor it was mimicking. Superimposed over the most famous EPICA ice-core sample graph. He’d studied it many, many times and recognized it on sight.

  “E-P-I-C-A.” He pointed at the screen, talking to himself,
“This hieroglyph is depicting exactly what EPICA depicts but the hieroglyphs’ data stops with the end of our last ice age.” Jaxx wanted to fist pump the sky. “It’s an exact replica of the EPICA ice-core sample. The Atlanteans are telling us they left Earth at the end of the last ice age, when Atlantis sank. When the waters rose four-hundred to five-hundred feet.”

  Rivkah stirred. “What are you talking about?”

  He looked over his shoulder. “Sorry. Just thinking out loud.”

  She eyed him, a killer honing in on her target. “Don’t think out loud.”

  “No problem.” He turned back around, waiting for an axe to fly end over end from Rivkah’s hand and lodge itself deep in the back of his head.

  “What are you looking at, anyway?”

  Jaxx couldn’t keep his excitement down. “The global warming craze is true. But it’s not mainly caused by humans like the media would like us to believe. It’s a cyclical event that has happened hundreds of times in Earth’s history. As the glyphs on this pyramid explain and what our own EPICA ice-core sample explains – along with a dozen more ice core samples – is that our world has an ice age, an interglacial age, and a global warming cycle. They’re cyclical.”

  Rivkah stared at him like he was nuts.

  “Look, Earth has had more than one ice age. They tend to last about one-hundred-thousand years. At the end of each ice age, the heat rises into an interglacial age and the waters rise hundreds of feet across the Earth, changing us from fifty percent water and fifty percent land to seventy percent water and thirty percent land.”

  Rivkah buried her head under her pillow. “Major geek alert. Take cover.”

  Jaxx didn’t let it stop him. “About thirteen to fifteen thousand years later, Earth ends its interglacial age with a global warming spike, again melting ice and raising the water. Global warming hits a peak, then plunges us back into an ice age. We see this cycle over and over in the ice core samples.” He pointed to a handful of upward climbs on the glyph’s graph. “You see? Here is a global warming spike, then we descend into an ice age. Here is another global warming spike, then another ice age. It happens like clockwork. It’s sort of like the Earth has this binge-and-purge cycle. She wipes the slate clean and starts over. It’s a kind of ecological magic.”

  Rivkah threw her pillow at him. It landed a foot short. “What the fuck? Magic? Wiping the slate clean? Are you completely tone deaf? You’re talking about the end of humanity as it’s currently configured; the death of billions of people.”

  Jaxx shrugged. “Nature’s a bitch. She needs to be.”

  “So we’re going to heat up, the oceans will rise, and we’re just gonna jump right back into an ice age, is that what you’re saying?”

  “No, no. In an interglacial age, the water to land ratio gets to a point that the moon’s gravity pull tilts the earth a certain degree, ushering in the next ice age. Water and the moon’s gravity pull are the keys to this all.” He could see she wasn’t getting it, or she just didn’t care. “Once an ice age occurs, after about one-hundred-thousand years, the ice to water ratio is at a certain point that the moon’s gravity pull with water isn’t exceptional and Earth tilts back to the degree that we are now, ushering in another interglacial age. It’s simple physics.”

  “So, nerd brain, why does it matter?” It took more than “simple physics” to impress her. She had the kind of advanced training all astronauts had. Advanced physics wouldn’t have phased her.

  “We have been through these changes many times. The Lemurians. The Atlanteans. We survived. When we fall into another ice age, it’s not as if the entire earth is covered in ice. The earth actually gets top and bottom heavy with ice, the waters start to recede, and more land is exposed. Earth would look more or less pumpkin-shaped during an ice age.”

  “Lemuria and Atlantis, huh? You leave the SSP and become a loony bin?”

  “Yeah, pretty much.” He gave a fake smile. He was used to this jeering tone from his peers, why not from someone who’d never studied the subject in the first place?

  “So, dismissing anything about Lemuria and Atlantis, what you’re saying is that most of us will die when this ice-age arrives? When the Earth becomes a pumpkin and tilts off its axis?”

  He had her hooked, he could tell. She understood what he was saying and was asking the smart questions, now. Jaxx clicked off the EPICA image and went back to the main screen. He took his fingers off the keyboard, wanting to explain more. “The ice-age is well on its way. Once the tail end of the global warming spike hits, just like every global warming spike before an ice age, life changes. Oceans rise for a bit, then they fall. Rivers rise as well and then they fall. Earthquakes and some mayhem, people either move to safe areas – away from volcanoes and oceans and large rivers – or get injured or die. But these changes are not as drastic as they were before the pyramids were built.”

  “Jesus, dude. Really? Now we’re on to the pyramids?”

  “Yes, because the pyramids were built to act as weight distributor and volcanic release valves. Sometimes cultures completely collapse and disappear during these drastic climate changes. But, that doesn’t have to happen anymore. We’re connected by something I don’t think the Earth has ever seen – the internet. All we have to do is tell people to move inland and get out of the colder areas.”

  “We’re all going to huddle together in the middle?”

  “Anything above Wyoming and below Chile will be under ice.” He pushed his hands together, as if pushing people down from Alaska and the Russian Steppes, up from Australia and South America. “Move more inland and away from major water areas. Once the tilt occurs and the ice age begins, we will find more land in the equatorial regions – land that was once under water.”

  She laid back. “Back up there, buddy. I’m finding it hard to believe that pyramids lessen earth changes.”

  He nodded matter-of-factly. “What I’m saying is, pyramids were designed to help sustain life more easily on Earth. Yes, major disasters happen. It would, however, be worse without the pyramids, because building a pyramid the size and gravitational strength as what we have in Egypt, China, Europe, Antarctica, Central and South America, will create a rise of some type on the other side of the earth. The rise will occur 180 degrees – measured directly through the Earth’s core – when the pyramids punch holes through the earth.”

  Rivkah sat up. Her head was to one side. She was thinking. Hard.

  Jaxx was in his own world, lecturing to the rapt audience he’d never had. “Basically, the Giza Pyramids, the Shen Pyramids, the Pyramid of the Sun, etcetera, punched holes through the Pacific plate, the Atlantic plate, and the Indian plate.”

  “You’ve lost me.” Rivkah shook her head, looking at Jaxx. “How does a pyramid punch a hole in the earth?

  “Magma cuts a hole through the Earth’s crust and seeds a volcano on the ocean floor, exactly 180 degrees on the other side of the earth, at the approximate same latitude. The volcano will grow overtime. Magma will spew out of said volcano, building an island above sea level.” Jaxx watched Rivkah’s eyes glazing over. “Are you listening? This is important. You need to understand how this venting system raises the land. This…” Jaxx shot to his feet. “We can do it.”

  “Do what?” Rivkah rolled back on her side and closed her eyes.

  He’d done his usual party trick and bored someone to sleep. Didn’t matter. He had an idea. A good idea. No, a brilliant idea.

  “We can build more pyramids, switch them on, vent more magma, raise more land, and house more people. We can save mankind.”

  She was already asleep.

  He’d had a moment of complete brilliance and there was no one there to witness it.

  Jaxx worked through the night, connecting the dots, charting magma flows, mapping where exactly the new pyramids would go and how large they’d need to be. There was no coffee, no tea, no caffeine in their cabin, so he was working on adrenalin and fumes. Rivkah slept like the dead, not even turning in her
sleep. He wanted to cover her with a blanket, but he didn’t dare.

  He put his head down, just for a second, to contemplate the names of the new continents he planned to raise from the ocean floor, then woke with a start, drool on his forearm, his eyes blurry.

  A sound blared through the cabin.

  Thrump thrump thrump thrump.

  It was familiar.

  A helicopter.

  He stood. His chair toppled as he stepped back. He turned to see if the helicopter had woken Rivkah. The bed sheets were crumpled, but she wasn’t there. He walked into the bathroom, turning on the light. She was gone.

  He went back into the bedroom. A window was open, large enough for Rivkah to escape.

  He climbed onto the sill, ready to make his escape, but the cabin door burst open just as he’d gotten one leg out of the window. A rush of wind blasted him. He spun around. Someone was in the doorway, holding a searchlight so bright it almost blinded Jaxx. He dropped his head, shielding his eyes with his hand.

  “God dammit, Jaxx.” It was Slade. “I would have at least liked a chase.”

  Jaxx dropped his hand, sitting straighter in the window frame.

  Slade’s silhouette filled the door, suffused with the light, almost like a god dropped from the heavens. Slade took several hefty steps forward and took one big swing, connecting his fist with Jaxx’s chin.

  Jaxx fell to the ground, out for the count.

  50

  June 11th, 2018 ~ Charlotte, North Carolina

  Drew had done everything in his power to derail Slade. He’d broken into high-security facilities, leaked pictures of man-made pyramids on a far-off moon to the press, been interviewed with him on TV, and – to top it all off – had provided incontrovertible evidence that the asshole was planning to evacuate a fraction of the Earth’s population – only the highest-ranking officials, politicians, and scientists – and leave the rest of them to rot in the rising waters.

  He was so proud of his team. They’d gotten the word out, just as he’d asked.