by Sean Ellis
He turned and pointed the flashlight in the same direction that Mira had been traveling. Its beam revealed a cramped tunnel that appeared to have once been the path of an underground river. The light revealed a ghostly serpent for just an instant, but then the scaly form slipped around a bend and was gone. Atlas started walking toward the place where it had vanished.
“The Naga are creatures of another world,” he said. “I’m not sure why they so often appear to us in the form of serpents, but they do seem to show up everywhere. Hinduism, Buddhism…you even find snake gods in the Americas. Oh, and of course, let’s not forget the serpent in the Garden of Eden, tricking Eve into taking a bite of the apple. That’s what they do. All of them. The snakes, the Wise Father.” He filled the words with contempt. “They manipulate us.”
Mira had not expected him to elaborate on the subject of the strange snake specters, but she got the sense that he was about to start connecting the dots.
“They’re not really here. What you saw and heard was just a…I guess you could call it an echo, like an afterimage burned onto a computer screen. They can’t hurt you, but they can mess with your head. Pretty effective guard dogs to block the path.”
“You knew about this way into Shambala,” Mira said. She was thinking aloud, trying to make sense of Atlas’ motives. “Before I met you, I mean. You could have come here anytime to get the Trinity.”
“I didn’t know it was here. After I was defeated, it took me a while to come back. By that time, the Trinity had been separated and I had no idea what had become of the pieces. You’ll recall that I had to enlist your help to find Atl’an’s tomb in Panama. I thought he had taken them all with him when he fled Atlantis.” He gave a little shrug. “If only I had known.”
“Known what?”
“The truth about the Trinity. And everything else. All those years spent thinking I needed to possess it, that I could use it to achieve ultimate power, rule the earth. What a waste.”
“Why?”
“Because now I know what it is. And what I am.”
Mira let out a low growl. “Stop being so goddamned cryptic and answer the question.”
“The Trinity is a loaded gun in the hands of a child. It is a practical joke played on us by a sadistic trans-dimensional bully who wants to see how long it will take for us to destroy ourselves.”
“God?”
“He’d like to think so.”
Mira pondered this in silence. She didn’t want to believe anything this odious creature had to say, and yet she had expressed similar concerns to Booker about the Trinity and blindly following Collier’s instructions.
“I regret that we never spoke of this,” Atlas went on. “I’ll confess, when I finally figured it out, I was shaken. Everything I had desired, everything I had worked and suffered for…all of it was a lie.”
“Boo-hoo.”
He gave her a sidelong contemptuous glance. “You’re as much a puppet as I am. You were sent to restore the Trinity, but did you stop and ask yourself why? You must know what it can do, what it has already done; it blinds people like you, people with abilities.”
“I know.”
“So why would you go along with this? Don’t you feel like a traitor to your own kind?”
“I don’t have a kind,” she snarled. “I’m a freak. A throwback. And frankly, the idea that there might be people out there like me is a little scary.”
“Those aren’t your words, and they aren’t true words.” Atlas’ soft murmur sounded almost fatherly. “Have you ever asked yourself why the Wise Father gave them the Trinity? They were the outcasts, the weaklings. Genetically inferior. Evolution selects the fittest for survival. So why did the Father interfere?”
Despite the ire Atlas had stoked in her, Mira was curious to know the answer. “Maybe he felt sorry for them?”
Atlas chuckled. “What a delightful thought. An entity so powerful that we would name him Almighty, looks out across the infinite dimensions of the multiverse and decides to root for the underdog. But he doesn’t merely rescue that poor underdog; he gives it steroids and tells it to tear out the throat of all the other dogs. Do you call that altruism?”
“I’ll bet the outcasts did.”
“Oh, indeed they did. They enshrined the Wise Father, and his presence echoes across all of history. And when anyone asks, ‘Why?’ the answer is always the same: ‘God is love.’” Atlas snorted derisively. “Was love the reason he massacred the Ascendant Ones, driving them almost to extinction?”
Mira didn’t answer. Atlas had a point to make and was clearly building up to it.
“No one dares question God’s motives.” He adopted a mocking falsetto. “We are like children to Him. We are like insects. He moves in mysterious ways. Doubt and faith are incompatible.
“All very convenient, don’t you think? But if we stop and think for a moment about what the Wise Father gets out of all this, suddenly He doesn’t seem quite so altruistic.”
“Okay, I’ll bite. What does he get out of it?”
“Think about it. Who did he target first? The Ascendant Ones; humans, but with extraordinary psychic abilities. An entire race of super-humans who could have stopped him in his tracks. Who did he help? The outcasts, people with no power at all.
“It’s a classic strategy for empire building. When you want to conquer a place, you first target the current leader, then you empower his enemies to do your fighting for you. When they succeed and set up a new regime in its place, they will be your willing vassals.”
“Let’s say that’s all true,” Mira said. “The Wise Father isn’t really God, but some alien bent on world domination. He clears away the Ascendant Ones, and then what? Why hasn’t he come back and finished the job?”
“Are you sure He hasn’t? Do you think His true appearance is a wise old man with white hair and beard? He could be anyone.” Atlas was silent for a second, then laughed. “But I don’t think that’s very likely. I think His original plan called for something very different to happen thousands of years ago, and unfortunately for him—fortunately for the rest of the human race—the plan got sidetracked.”
“I’m hearing the words ‘I think’ an awful lot. Do you actually know any of this for a fact?”
“Here’s what I do know for a fact. Ten thousand years ago, after the defeat of the Ascendant Ones, I tried to take the Trinity away from the three chosen ones, and I almost succeeded. If I had, I would have made myself into a god and enslaved every last human on earth.”
“So you sidetracked the plan by stealing the Trinity segments and killing the chosen ones?”
Atlas shook his head. “I used to think that, but no. I didn’t sidetrack the plan; I am the plan.” He stopped and shone the light directly ahead. Instead of reflecting off the walls of the cavern, the beam was swallowed up by the darkness. “Ah, we’ve reached the end.”
42.
Mira gripped Atlas’ shoulder and forced him to turn and face her. “What do you mean you are the plan?”
He smiled again but there was sadness in his eyes. “I didn’t know. All those years of looking for it, killing for it, and I had no idea that I was just His puppet.
“I was meant to defeat all three of them. Atl’an should have died and the complete Trinity should have been mine. That’s what the old man wanted. But Atl’an got lucky. Or maybe somewhere out in the universe, there really is a God who decided to throw a monkey wrench in the works. Atl’an won and the survivors hid the Trinity away, and for ten thousand years, the plan was on hold.”
“That’s not an answer. What is this plan you keep talking about?”
Atlas rolled his head forward, indicating that they should keep moving, and then started walking toward the narrow mouth of the cavern. Even before she reached the opening, Mira’s nostrils were filled with the smell of smoke.
“To conquer. To destroy.” Atlas gave a non-committal shrug. “I wasn’t told. Don’t you see? That’s what makes it so insidious. We think tha
t we are free agents, doing what we want, but He is always in control. The three believed they were in control; look what good that did them.”
“You’re still not answering the question, and I think I can find my own way from here.” She started ahead of him, not really sure if this was a bluff or if she really meant to leave him behind. He hadn’t really told her anything; his explanation had been mostly innuendo and philosophical rhetoric. Nevertheless, the questions that he had so expertly avoided answering remained, and his circumlocution had only made her desire for answers burn hotter.
“Do you want to know why I left the Trinity in Libya? Why I tried to destroy it?”
She stopped but did not look back. “That’s as good a place to start as any.”
“It took me ten thousand years to finally get my hands on it, and even then, it was incomplete. Ten thousand years ago, none of them wondered why the Trinity did what it did. No one knew anything about computers or nanobots. It was magic, and that was explanation enough. But a lot has happened since then. I wanted to understand what made the damn thing tick. I thought maybe if I could figure that out, I could restore the missing segment in the laboratory. So I put it through every test I could conceive. It was the electron microscope that revealed the truth.
“Not about the Trinity,” he added hastily as if correcting a mistake. “I still don’t have a clue what makes that thing work. No, it was the scan of my own blood. Oh, it appeared ordinary enough under a regular microscope, but the STEM scan took it down to the molecular level, and that’s when I realized it. Every cell in my body is made of Trinity nanoparticles.”
Mira turned around slowly. As answers went, that one was a humdinger. “What do you mean?”
“I’m not real.” Atlas’ sly smile was back. “Or I should say, not really human. I’m an automaton, made by the Trinity. And I never even knew it.”
Mira knew that the Trinity functioned by producing microscopic copies of itself—nanometer-sized machines—that could replace and seemingly reanimate organic tissue, to literally bring the dead back to life. “That’s not so surprising. It explains how you were able to stay alive for all these years.” And survive a bullet through the eye, she didn’t add. “Your cells were replaced with Trinity nanobots.” She shrugged. “It happens.”
“That would be one explanation of course,” Atlas admitted. “And perhaps it’s true. You see, I don’t remember anything before my original war with the chosen ones. I have no memory of childhood, of parents, of anything at all before the day that I went forth to take the Trinity for myself. And for ten thousand years, I have thought of nothing else. I am, and have always been, the Trinity’s creation. Its puppet. It has been pulling my strings all my life.”
“So you’re not to blame for anything. Nothing is your fault.” Mira shook her head. “Look, I’m grateful for you showing me the way out, but this doesn’t change anything between us.”
Atlas’ reply was surprisingly strident. “Haven’t you been listening? The Trinity made me! It destroyed the Ascendant Ones, and then it created me to finish off the rest of humanity.”
“What you’re saying doesn’t make any sense. If the Wise Father wanted to destroy humanity, why save them? And why go to the trouble of sending you to do it?”
“I don’t know,” Atlas said, his voice an almost feral growl. “I was only the weapon.”
“And while we’re on that subject, if you’re just a…a robot, how were you able to see through this? And what possible reason could you have for wanting to oppose it now?”
His ferocity vanished as quickly as it had arrived, and he ducked his head. “I don’t know. Maybe I lived too long, started to figure it out on my own. Maybe the Wise Father got tired of waiting for me to accomplish my mission and released me. I think time moves differently on the other side. Ten thousand years for us is just a heartbeat over there. All I know is what I know. And I know that just because I’ve quit, it doesn’t mean the plan has changed. If I won’t do it, he’ll get someone else who will, someone who probably won’t even realize what they’re doing.”
That stopped Mira in her tracks. She didn’t know if Atlas was sincere or delusional or both, but what he was saying made too much sense for her to simply ignore it. “Okay, I’m listening.”
Atlas nodded. “The Wise Father has a new prophet, but I guess you already knew that.”
She nodded. “His name is Collier.”
“He’s going to bring everyone together, unite all the religions of the world back into one: the worship of the Wise Father. And with a restored Trinity, he’s not going to have any trouble convincing them to do whatever he wants.”
“And what do you think that will be?”
“The first thing he’ll probably do is order them to kill the unbelievers. There will always be unbelievers. My Chinese friends are particularly concerned about that.”
Another question answered, Mira thought.
“After that? I suppose it depends on what the Wise Father really wants. Maybe this is all a prelude to an invasion. Maybe we’re to be slave labor for them, or a food source. Maybe we’re just a plaything for a cruel alien child who wants to watch us destroy ourselves for his amusement. The point is, we have to stop this, and the only way to do that is to prevent the Trinity from being restored.”
Mira was silent for a long time. This was an impossible choice. Atlas was evil. If what he said was true, then he was created for the sole purpose of conquering or destroying the world, and therefore everything he said was suspect.
Collier on the other hand was an upright honorable man, on a mission to end thousands of years of religiously motivated violence and unify the human race. She wasn’t naïve enough to think the transition would be smooth, but neither was she cynical enough to think that the status quo was a better alternative. And yet, everything Collier intended fit into a plan designed by an entity who had already engineered the massacre of the Ascendant Ones.
If she sided with Atlas, she would be risking the chaos that might result from the collapse of the psychic dampening field. If she continued to follow Collier’s lead, she would be risking the possibility of destruction or enslavement by the Wise Father.
It was a coin flip. Her intuition told her nothing.
Except, in a way it did. The mere fact of its existence, in defiance of everything the Trinity stood for, told her that Collier was wrong. She was the descendant, the spiritual and literal successor to the Ascendant Ones. Her abilities were not the result of the Wise Father’s interference, but rather existed in spite of him.
She faced Atlas, and held his gaze. “I don’t trust you. I don’t like…no, actually, I hate you with every fiber of my soul. But I also think you’re on the right side of this.”
Atlas flashed a relieved smile. “Then we’ve earned a temporary reprieve, but soon the prophet will realize what’s happened and send someone else to finish the task you’ve rejected.”
“I have to find Del, if he’s still alive.”
“Del?”
“My friend.” Atlas didn’t need to know more than that. “We found Shambala together, but were separated when the city collapsed.”
“If he did not find his way to the Road of the Naga, then I’m afraid you must prepare yourself for bad news. Potala Palace is in ruins. Destroyed by Chinese bombs five hours ago.”
“What?”
“Not my idea, I assure you. I told Deputy Minister Xu to let me speak with you. I knew I could make you see reason. But their government is in full panic mode.”
Mira went weak in the knees. Another friend lost, devoured by the rapacious appetite of the quest for the Trinity. She took several breaths, pushing back against the darkness. “Five hours? That can’t be right. I haven’t been down here that long.”
“Time isn’t a constant in the space between worlds.”
Five hours. Now at least she knew what had triggered the destruction of Shambala. By falling into the abyss at the base of the tower, she had inadvert
ently found her way into some kind of wormhole, saved by some trick of inter-dimensional physics. Booker evidently had not been so lucky.
She felt utterly desolate.
Atlas did not allow her a moment for grief. “You have my sympathy, for whatever that’s worth. But we cannot delay here. Whomever the prophet sends next will make for Lemuria.”
“Not Atlantis?”
Atlas raised a bemused eyebrow. “Lemuria will be easier for them to find. And easier for us to reach as well.”
Mira put her concerns about Booker into a mental lock box. Atlas was right; there would be time to grieve later, if they survived what was coming. “Lemuria, then,” she said. “If you can get us there, I’ll do the rest.”
Atlas stepped through the narrow cave opening and shone his light down into the darkness below. As she followed him, emerging at last into open air, Mira became aware of several things.
The cave was on the slope of a mountain. Where exactly, she could not say, but the artificially lit skyline of Lhasa was visible. The air was hazy with smoke, and high above, the pall reflected back the orange glow of Potala Palace, still burning.
Yet, it was what lay below, illuminated by Atlas’ flashlight, that fully arrested her attention. A trail led down the slope to a road. Parked on that road was a battered Toyota Surf SUV. Standing in front of it was a woman, her head tilted as if staring directly at Mira from behind a pair of dark sunglasses.
Mira felt a glimmer of apprehension, a psychic warning arriving too late to inform her decision. Before she could make a move, a dozen men in camouflaged uniforms, emerged from the darkness to form a semi-circle at the mouth of the cave. They brandished rifles, aiming them at her.
“I can get you there,” Atlas said, gesturing. “With a little help from my friends.”
PART FOUR: DESCENT
43.
Nepal
Booker huddled against the rocks, willing himself to blend in with them as he watched the helicopter circling overhead. He was shivering, and that was a good sign since it meant his body had not yet given up the fight to maintain a healthy core temperature of 98.6 degrees, or thereabouts. He was cold, no doubt about that, and he didn’t have much left in the way of metabolic fuel to burn.
