Earth Before Man

by Allan E Petersen

  Chapter 52

  Their flight back to Spain was almost directly west and because Maria was in a hurry to get back to Base, she lifted straight up to the stratosphere taking advantage of the Earth’s rotation. This way Spain was only a few minutes away. After programming, the GPS to the Spanish laboratory there was not much else to do but sit back and reflect on the horror and disappointment of past events. Everything had been a bitter disappointment for her. She was so close to collecting the DNA of probably seventeen different alien species and now it was all for nothing. Who knows where the bodies were transported to. Perhaps their atoms were scattered back to where they had originated, to the universe. Now all she had are pictures of them in a coffin.

  Although Pia saw Maria’s deep contemplation, she knew it was a short trip and wanted answers to many questions. Taking a chance, she risked annoyance and asked,

  “What’s so important about Anannaki DNA anyway?”

  Understanding that Pia did not know about her work, she got the short version of Passive Genetic Recolonization. After what Pia considered a horrific story she said,

  “So it’s really important to have that specific DNA then?”

  “Yes honey but it was all for nothing. Sadly everything was destroyed.”

  For a second it seemed as if Pia had sunk into deep thought, contemplating something. Then, making up her mind, she reached into her shirt pocket and brought out something pinched between her fingers. Maria thought it was a thread from her torn pocket and asked,

  “What’s that?”

  Pia replied,

  “Before that bubble thing started destroying everything you told me to try and get the coffin open. All I had to do was lift the lid and it opened. I then pulled hairs out of his beard.”

  Sudden joy and numerous other uncontrolled feelings of ecstasy slammed into Maria. She screamed,

  “You got Anannaki DNA for me!”

  Taking the strands of hair from proud fingers, more snatching them, Maria stuffed them into her shirt pocket and said,

  “You are a princess!”

  Knowing that she had done a good thing, she said,

  “I know, right.”

  As Maria went into happy thoughts, already planning laboratory procedures, Pia then asked a most disturbing question.

  “About this passive genetic recolonization thing? Should we tell the world what is happening to them?”

  Maria tried to sound sincere, patted Pia’s knee and said,

  “No honey. The world is not ready to hear something that shocking yet.”

  Another annoying question followed,

  “Why? You said it yourself. We are now already twenty-percent Anannaki. Don’t you think people should know that they are not exactly the way God had created us?”

  It was a firm reply,

  “No and there lies the dilemma. Can you imagine what that would do to religions? Most people don’t even believe in aliens and flying saucers. They would never be able to accept such a fanciful story. No. Best we keep this a secret for now. With any luck, thanks to you, I will be able to reset the DNA codes and maybe in a few generations all the world will be back to the intended creation. Then it can be known what really happened.”

  When the D-wing automatically started its descent into Spanish airspace, Maria looked long and hard at Pia. It was clear that Pia had not accepted the ‘keep it from the public’ reasoning. But as far as Maria was concerned, for the sake of all the societies of the world, a peaceful co-existence must be maintained. At this point of human development now was not the time for truth.

  Sadly, it came to Maria that was exactly what she hated about the Smithsonian when they discovered a vast treasure in the Grand Canyon. It was treasure not only of the antiquities of this planet but from various alien cultures before the age of man. She hated that the Smithsonian kept those treasures secret and locked away in unmarked boxes in their basement. Although she abhorred the thought, it came to her that perhaps there was some justification to their strategy of shielding humans from their true and implausible history. She realized that she was now harboring those exact thoughts.

  Understanding the rashness of youth and their tendency to cling to their own notions, she knew what was zipping through a youthful mind right now. As the D-wing automatically engaged the camouflage program and set down on the giant ‘H’ pad on the roof of the Spanish laboratories, Maria turned to Pia and asked what seemed to be a frivolous question.

  “Are you a trusted member of the House of the Nazarene?”

  Surprised and fearing what Maria was going to say next, Pia nodded uncomfortably and optimistically answered,

  “Yes, I hope so.”

  Liking the answer, Maria added,

  “Good, then as a member in good standing, I would expect you to obey orders. I’m ordering you to keep what you have learned as the truth of our DNA a secret.”

  Her reply was an indication that there was a lot of ‘adult’ in the young woman.

  “You can depend on me.”

  After Pia jumped out of the D-wing and Maria lifted high to the clouds for a return trip to Headquarters, she was reminded of her double standards. It was something she hated. She was now doing what many other organizations in the world were doing, including the House of the Second Creation, keeping secrets of development and history of this planet from mankind. The biggest pain was in hating the Smithsonian for doing what she had tried to explain to Pia was best for mankind and cultural stability. She wondered if Pia now hated her for having a Smithsonian frame of mind. The short trip back to headquarters seemed to take a lot longer than normal this time.

  Chapter 53

  While Maria brought Pia back to Spain, Han Lee dropped the Professor into the abandoned house with no roof at the far end of the village. Because the Professor did not understand ‘D-wing camouflage’, he stood on the knoll outside the ruined house and watched for Han Lee to lift up high. After a few minutes, thinking that something was wrong, he walked back into the house to see if he could help. He was surprised when he saw only an empty room and dirt floor. Aliens and now magic. He wondered what strange organization he had joined.

  He walked off the knoll and over to the village. It was a difficult walk but not because of the uneven geography and thinner air. He was used to all that but rather because of what was spinning in his head. Like a delayed reaction to a disaster, the reality of what happened up on the field slammed into him. It was devastating when realizing how close to death he came when running through the tunnel with Maria and Santo and chased by whatever that strange alien science was.

  As he entered the village and walked down the main dirt path passing sheds and houses, his one redeeming touch of accomplishment was that he was the one who discovered the artificial shrub. He brought the House of the Nazarene to the cave and the discoveries inside it. He was the one responsible for saving the lives of Santo and Maria. It was slow in coming to him but when the good of what happened finally kicked in, a proud posture struck his body. There was a fulfilled quickness in his step now. Maybe he just might like being a member of an organization despite what the leader said, was not alien.

  As he looked up the winding path of colorful village houses, he saw Inspector Buruk and Yesin sitting with three older men at a table alongside the path. As he approached, it was clear by two empty vodka bottles and another almost empty that they were drinking heavily. Under normal circumstances, he would avoid his nemesis and turn onto another path but this time, as a member of the House of the Nazarene, he was given an order and it was time to obey it.

  When he approached the table, as hoped, the Inspector looked up and in a drunken stupor loudly slurred,

  “Professor. What a pleasant surprise. Come and sit with us. Have some Vodka. It is Russian swill not fit for pigs but it is all we have.”

  He sat and sipped foul smelling Vodka. With glass in hand, he listened to the rest of the conversation and surprisingly it was on the subject Maria had ordered him to d
iscuss with the villagers. Looking at the three elder notorious gossipmongers, he could not have asked for a better audience.

  Two hours ago, when the Inspector and Yesin walked back to the village, they agreed never to mention dark spirits or what they had seen proof of in the field. It was especially agreed to keep mum about the folly and stupidity of shooting at a dark spirit only to see the bullets pass right through them. However, excessive Vodka had changed all that. The attentive and awed elders sat guzzling the elixir of truth when the Professor sat down with them. Maria had instructed him to lay it on thick, in effect to scare the villagers away from the cursed field of dark spirits that ate goats and killed herders.

  The fourth bottle was now empty and laying in the dirt beside Yesin’s foot. The Professor was finished with his horrified exaggeration of a dark spirit chasing him across the field with the intention of eating him. He knew that by the end of the day the whole village, including three adventurous and promiscuous boys, would forever stay away from a haunted field.

  Chapter 54

  A few days later

  There was no doubt that many different aliens had occupied Earth as a multicultural and multispecies planet. It was clear to Maria that despite the Sumerian legends, the Anannaki did not come looking for gold. They came to take over the planet for their own kind. She often wondered if Zak was right. His theory was that when the other aliens learned of an intended Anannaki takeover, was that the cause of the Great Earth War? Were they planning to eradicate only humans from this planet or all aliens as well? Were they experimenting on the genetics of the different aliens found in the Anannaki fortress? Was that the reason they had one of each species there? According to Zak, it was in Sumerian legends that the Anannaki came to ‘create a different man from mud’. Was that how the Sumerians understood it? Was the ‘different man’ to be created on this planet the Anannaki?

  According to Dr. Marls, the three Great Gray antiquated D-wings recovered from the cave still had antimatter containment energy for probably five hundred more years. There was enough known Nazarene technology in his laboratory to install anti-contact computers as well as camouflage ability. If the financing came though, they might be operational within a few months. Because Maria was desperate to have them added to her diminished fleet, she assured him that all costs would be covered. He might be a cantankerous old goat but he was also a genius worth suffering.

  Dr. Marls had given Maria what he thought might be a communication module pulled from one of the warships before the mysterious dimensional bubble sent the craft to goodness knows where. When returning to Headquarters she gave that component to Jessika along with instructions to do what she could with it. Maria was optimistic that it contained war secrets, perhaps even who started the great Earth War and what became of possibly millions of aliens occupying this planet at that time.

  One of her closely guarded theories about the disappearing aliens from this planet after the Great Earth War, although only a theory, was that many aliens never left. There was a chance that the reason so many came to colonize this planet was that it greatly resembled their own. Because of DNA studies of various divisions of humans, she believed the diversity of DNA in many humans possibly explained a relationship to many missing aliens. She thought it was very possible that many who walk among us today are not aware of their long lost heritage. She has already proven that many humans possess traces of Great Gray DNA high in their spirals. Also, we as humans are already twenty percent converted to the aggressive Anannaki invading DNA.

  In the early afternoon, Maria was walking through the garden holding an umbrella tight and low. It was unusual to suffer so much rain in this climate. It was pouring down and windy. She had not seen Santo in a few days, which greatly added to the gloom of the day. Her walk through the garden was not to inspect weather damage to the roses or to get fresh air. Jessika had called and asked to her come get the results of the communication component Doctor Marls had recovered.

  At the entrance to Jessika’s building, Maria shook her umbrella and entered the foyer. There was no umbrella stand at the door so she placed it upright in the corner. Seconds later, there was a great pool of water on the floor. When she walked into Jessika’s office she saw her dutifully applying her expertize to a complicated computer program probably only a handful of experts throughout the world understood.

  Understanding how annoying it was to be rudely jolted from concentration, Maria gently knocked on the open door. The intent was polite but the result was the same, Jessika practically jumped out of her shoes. Trying not to laugh, Maria walked up to her and while attempting to add a degree of levity to her rude intrusion, using her best Boris Karloff deep impersonation of a butler said,

  “You rang?”

  Jessika, never one to hold a grudge or easily explode into a temper tantrum snapped around, and said,

  “You startled the crap out of me.”

  Her response was in kind,

  “Yes, I know that feeling. What have you got for me?”

  The question wiped the grin from her face. She confessed,

  “Okay, I got nothing.”

  Quickly followed by,

  “But I can give you some insight into the Anannaki communication system.”

  Maria looked at the monitor and silently confessed that the mathematics meant nothing to her. She asked,

  “So, you were not able to retrieve any communication at all?”

  “Oh no, I was able to accessed the whole thing. However, retrieving and understanding are two different things. They do not communicate using speech as we do.”

  She then reached down and pressed ‘play’ on the keyboard. Maria listened but all she heard was high-pitched squeals much like one might hear from a dolphin. It only lasted for six seconds.

  Jessika saw Maria’s confusion and tried to clarify.

  “Like you might have suspected, they have about the same communication system as a dolphin, quick short blasts of high pitched frequencies conveying massive bits of information. What you just heard, if translated into our language could possibly equal ten minutes and express very complicated information. For them to communicate with the Sumerians I’m sure they used a translation technology. Conversely they must have equipped Sumerians with converters to communicate with them.”

  Disappointed, Maria shook her head and said,

  “That must have been an annoying conversation for the Anannaki. They would have to wait for the Sumerians to talk and then convert it into a second of understanding.”

  Jessika added,

  “Even longer for a second of Anannaki conversation to be converted to human speech.”

  To that Maria said,

  “Yes, it had to be a tedious communication.”

  On her way out, Maria said,

  “Okay, archive the communication. Perhaps something might come along later on to translate it.”

  Chapter 55

  The reason for the slight difference of air composition in the cave, more oxygen than normal and a higher concentration of hydrogen was never solved. The Nazarene Laboratories theorized that the Anannaki somehow filtered their ideal breathing composition into the cave from their own dimension through membranes. They suspected that filter was the steel plate Maria and Santo had escaped through. Nobody could figure out any other reason for it being there. The only thing determined for sure was the breathable air on their planet came close to matching ours and perhaps was a deciding factor in wanting this planet as theirs.

  Apparently, the connection between the lake and the cave was instrumental in the cave’s location. There was no doubt the lake was key to everything. Because of its great size and length, their war machines could approach the cave undetected, sinking underwater miles away and approach the entry tunnel undetected.

  Nazarene engineers eventually solved the mystery of the airflow in the cave. Again, it was the location of the lake. They noticed that the entry and exit tunnel was close to the size of the war ships coming and
going. Although safely guided through the narrow tunnel by computer, why was the tunnel not a lot wider? Why was there a large containment pool at the end of the tunnel? If the tunnel were larger, allowing water to pass easily around the approaching ship, they would not need to have bothered with a containment pool. Therein lay the solution to air flow.

  They wanted the approaching ship to push water into the holding pool thereby increasing air pressure in the cave and pushing spent air out through a ventilation vent. When the ship was clear, the water forced into the holding tank sucked back down into the lake decreasing cave pressure and pumping fresh air through the ‘steel plate’ membrane.

  The lake played another important role in airflow. Although not of great measure, only a foot, there was a surging tide. The difference between high and low tide was also enough to fluctuate the air pressure in the cave. As long as there was a lake, and the tide occurred, there would be sufficient breathable air in the sealed cave.