The Noah Satellite

by Allan E Petersen

  Seeing her attention to the controls, he beamed a parental smile, pointed and said,

  “I’m tired. You take control for a while.”

  She had already passed the mathematics lessons relating to gravity wave fluctuations on the haul and so had a pretty good idea of the controls. It wasn’t easy, in fact rather awkward but they eventually managed to change seats without an incident. To get a feel for the controls she gently dipped the craft up and down and swung left and right. She also understood that computer safety protocols were in effect. She couldn’t crash this thing even if she wanted to. The GPS was already locked in and so a trip to anywhere else wasn’t going to happen either. Regardless, most important for her was dad’s trust in his eleven year old daughter. Her head swelled even more when he said,

  “Let’s not mention this to your mother okay.”

  When the computers went into ‘location approach’ mode, simply lowering straight down to the target site, Santo said to Belle,

  “Program for manual control.”

  As she did, he added,

  “Delete Stealth Mode but keep the Avoidance Program active.”

  Because she had been taught to always run with Stealth Mode, she asked,

  “Won’t the natives see us then?”

  “Yes, but in this case that’s what I want. Because of Liana’s seemingly magical abilities to heal these people and her slightly different appearance, they see her as a benevolent spirit of the jungle. They know this D-wing is associated with her, making us friendly spirits as well.”

  Because she expected dad to take the controls, she was surprised when he said,

  “Just skim the tree tops and circle. I want to have a look at the site before landing.”

  After a slow reconnoitre just above the trees seeing the house and dirt mound, he said,

  “Okay, put us down in that clearing near the house.”

  Because the heat sensors indicated that there were three natives hidden in the jungle watching them, Santo put on his dark aviator glasses. He knew the natives saw them as the big black eyes of another jungle spirit. He handed a pair to Belle as well.

  Now standing on the ground next to the D-wing, with the remote control, Santo sent it high into the sky to await the return signal. It shot straight up so fast that the spying natives thought it simply disappeared. He walked over to the giant shade tree and saw the sweet root on the ground by the chair. The ones that had rolled out from the protection of the shade were already roasted by the blistering sun. Whatever happened, it happened a few days ago. The inside of the house was the same. Two beds side by side were unmade and two plates on the table had uneaten food in them. The tipped over chair was an indication that it was a quick exit.

  Knowing that the large dirt mound outside was much more than simply a pile of dirt, as they left the house and walked toward it, he said,

  “Are you aware that the mound conceals two small pyramids, one upside down on top of the bottom one making the structure look like a giant hourglass?”

  As they approached, she said,

  “Yes, mom told me that the original Sky People fled the conquistadores on the other side of the Andes. The High Priests of the Inca civilization came here and built it. It was supposed to be a communication device, a form of SOS signal for other Sky People to come and rescue them.”

  As they entered the tunnel leading into the mound, he added,

  “Yes but when Quastima came to live with Liana, with his knowledge of dimension mathematics coupled with the strange power this thing emits, it became much more than that. She told me that he had tried for years to open up a gate to another universe with it.”

  She added,

  “I know. Mom said that it was also a ‘panic room’. There is a chamber in there that safely conceals them if something bad happens outside. I presume that’s what we are going to check out now.”

  When they entered that chamber, although it didn’t stun Santo, for he had seen this room before, it was not the case with Belle. Except for the upside down table up on the ceiling it was a large empty room. Somehow the law of gravity was an outlaw here. The legs were attached to the ceiling and the two chairs were still by the table but upside down as well. She was surprised but not stunned. There were lots of legitimate reasons such a thing was possible, glue for instance. Santo saw a piece of paper on the table, pointed up there and said,

  “Get that note for me okay.”

  There were two possibilities here. One, she could go look for a ladder or simply assume that dad was teasing her. While she thought about the choices, he said,

  “Come with me. I’m going to show you something even you will not understand.”

  He took her hand and walked straight toward the solid wall on the far side of the room. Knowing that he would stop when his nose bumped into it, she was not concerned until he kept going. As if he were a ghost, he walked right through it. Because he knew Belle would resist, he held her hand tight and with a slight tug pulled her through the seemingly magical wall.

  At the beginning she thought they had simply magically walked into another room. There in the middle of the floor was an identical table also with a note on it. It was then Santo turned to her and said,

  “Want to see something even stranger?”

  As if walking through a ghost wall was not strange enough, she nodded.

  “Go back through the wall and look up at the table on the ceiling.”

  Sensing a waste of time, wondering what could be neat about it, she nevertheless complied.

  Back in the strange room, she wondered what the ‘neat thing’ was that she was supposed to see. It was then that she heard her dad’s voice,

  “Look up here honey.”

  Confused, as she looked up and her jaw dropped. There he was up there, feet on the ceiling, upside down and looking down at her. He smiled and said,

  “I told you it was strange. Now go back through whatever that wall really is and come to me.”

  Despite Robert and her being caught in a mysterious cloud and entering another world, walking through a wall still felt odd. It felt like it just wasn’t supposed to happen. Now back in the room with her dad, she took hesitant steps toward the table. It was as if she was making sure every step was securely attached to the floor, or ceiling or whatever. Dad picked up the note and read it. When seeing his forlorn expression she knew that it was bad news. He handed it her and after reading the few words she fought back tears. Because Santo was sadly aware of what happened to them, his greatest concern was how Maria would react to it. He knew that she would be devastated.

  Now outside and standing in the clearing of the yard, Belle assumed that dad was going to recall the D-wing. Instead, he continued into the house and she followed. Inside, using a tone Belle rarely heard from her dad, a strict military order was given.

  “Look around for anything that indicated an alien existence and take it.”

  The order was her first indication that Liana and Quastima would not be returning. It pressed down hard on her heart. They were going to scrub the house, removing all evidence of an alien existence. Because dad had pushed emotions to the side for the sake of duty, she attempted to be a good soldier and do the same. It was hard.

  He walked over to a desk on the far wall and picked up a piece of glass, the 3-D communicator. Belle came back with another pane of glass. Seeing it, Santo said,

  “That would be Quastima’s mathematical calculations on dimensional vertexes. Bring it with us.”

  After a sweep of the house it was decided that there was nothing inside that the natives could not have.

  Outside, Santo recalled the D-wing. As they hovered just above the tree tops, Santo turned the D-wing in the direction of the large dirt mound and entered computer commands. A blue laser beam radiated from the nose shooting straight into the mound. A second later the mound appeared to expand and then suddenly imploded to become nothing more than a heap of rubble and dirt. The beam continued penetrating the d
irt heap until smoke burst high into the sky. Belle understood that two strange pyramids and a bizarre upside down room no longer existed. When the destruction was complete, Santo entered GPS codes for home.

  Chapter 51

  When Santo and Belle were on their way back from the Amazon jungle with the bad news, Helga and Pia had already returned from the Siberian Triangle. After reporting to Maria, they dropped off the recordings and went to freshen up. Helga went home and when Waldorf saw her forlorn expression instead of a look of proud accomplishment, he immediately knew that it was not as simple a mission as he thought it should have been. Just by the long hug and words of love, he understood it would probably be the last mission she would ever request.

  Pia went back to the hangar and Henrik’s residence. Her take on the mission was different. While showering she told him everything, running for their lives and what they saw. She promised that she would never be as reckless as Helga and make moves without first calculating the danger. As he handed her the towel, he saw the excitement in her eyes and knew it wasn’t for him.

  While both were getting freshened up, Maria ran DNA swabs through her data base that Helga had collected from the sleeping parents in the village. There was no doubt that their origin was Slavic. Judging from the other ethnic descriptions they saw in the village, she was sure that the rest of the humans were from all ages and all races. What surprised her was that all humans everywhere have traces of alien DNA codes in the upper spirals as identified by her programs. Both were Anunnaki and Great Gray DNA but those codes were missing in the Slavic couple. They had traces of another alien tribe as yet unidentified.

  That is, they were unidentified until she ran the DNA swab of the sleeping alien. At least he was sleeping until Helga woke him and sounded the alarm. Whoever these aliens were, there were traces of their DNA in the Slavic couple and she was sure the rest of the village was equally compromised as well. The biggest surprise was that the DNA code retrieved from the Black Knight matched that of the sleeping alien. She was now sure she had discovered the alien species that had created the satellite. The only question was, who were they? At any rate, she was excited to discover another alien species to this planet. That makes twelve.

  It was perfect timing. Just as she had completed her DNA comparisons, Helga and Pia returned to her office ready to watch the recoding from the night vision glasses. All three sat on the sofa and Maria programmed for the visuals to appear on the far wall. The first image was not from the goggles but rather the onboard D-wing recorder. It showed them zipping through the forest with the aid of the Anti-Contact computer. Maria smiled and said,

  “That must have been exciting.”

  Pia had a different take on it, saying,

  “It scared the crap out of me.”

  Maria complimented Helga on her comprehensive recoding of the human diversity in the village as well as the mysterious clothing designs denoting different time periods. She said

  “I guess that’s just something added to the mystery.”

  There was no need to comment on the recordings taken in the house with the sleeping children. However, the children’s elementary reader books were of great help. She will give the book to Jessika for a comparison of that writing and what was found on the satellite. However, just by her own eye, she was pretty sure they were the same language.

  When Pia asked why the aliens would want to surround themselves with humans, Maria responded,

  “There have been many cases throughout history where aliens have used humans for their own purpose. The Anunnaki used the Sumerians. Granted, there was a benefit. They were taught mathematics, writing and agriculture. The Inca, Maya and Aztec civilizations all benefited by tending to alien needs. Here in this village, it is clear that they are used to farm and supply for them.”

  Helga contributed,

  “Obviously this slavery has been going on for thousands of year.”

  Pia felt compelled to repeat what she had said to Helga back in the village.

  “True but I don’t think they are slaves. Except when they were running around looking for us, everybody seemed content and happy.”

  Sometime later, when the recording showed the late night parade of humans walking single file through the street and sitting at the desks, Maria commented,

  “I can’t help by think the humans are in some sort of classroom. Although the language for the alien is not understood, I would say that judging from his hand motion and body language he is teaching the class something. I have been a professor in a university and know those motions.”

  Helga agreed but asked,

  “What on earth could he be teaching them?”

  “Well, just by the fact that they are repeating what he is saying, I would venture a guess they are being taught the alien language. Although not shown in this recording, I would also guess that maybe they are also taught to read and speak it”

  It was Pia who asked,

  “But why bother?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe it’s just an effort by the aliens to preserve their language, passing it on to the humans as it were.”

  She then looked at both and added,

  “It’s just a guess of course.”

  When the recording got jerky and flashed past objects, Maria said,

  “I gather this is where you got caught and started running through the village.”

  Helga asked a good question, one that Maria wanted the answer to.

  “It was almost instant communication and there is no electricity or telephones there. I want to know how the word about us being there spread so fast.”

  Maria said,

  “Well, they would not be the only species to communicate through telepathy.”

  When the video showed them racing out of the dead forest and the Siberian Dome coming down on them, Pia contributed,

  “I almost craped my pants here too.”

  When the Russian MiGs showed up, Maria complimented Helga on her quick action getting out of there. She also made a mental note to tell Waldorf and to get him onto why and how the Russian government knew what was under the dome and why they were protecting the aliens. Again, the biggest question was who they were and why they were here.

  Maria thanked both for a job well done and promised that if there was another mission, she would request them again. Helga frowned and Pia smiled.

  Chapter 52

  Once back in the Nazarene hangar and with a touch of larceny, Santo gave Belle her final lesson in D-wing protocols. He almost felt guilty saying,

  “Here comes Henrik with the post-trip report. I’m going to hand these two computers over to Jessika. When you are done filling out the report, report to your mom’s office for a mission debriefing.”

  Unlike her dad and possibly half of the qualified pilots, Belle took great pleasure in that responsibility. When her report was finished she handed the clipboard back to Henrik. Knowing that her mom would need a hug, she raced out of the hangar and across the gardens to the manor and her office. Without knocking, she opened the door and walked in. When seeing her mother standing next to dad and holding the note from the dirt mound, Belle came to a grinding halt. It was easy to see that mom had been crying. It was the first time she had ever seen her rock of strength in tears and it struck her hard. She stood devastated.

  Looking up to see who had entered her office, Maria held out a beckoning hand and Belle understood the need for a consoling hug. It was a slow walk toward mom whose tears were contagious. She didn’t want to show weakness to dad but regardless, the dam broke and tears flowed down her cheeks. Now in a full and tight hug, for the first time in her young life Belle felt that she was the strong one, supporting her mom in a time of great need. Of all the times mom had consoled her, Belle now felt the reward of comforting her mom.

  On the note were the words,

  ‘I’m so sorry. Our time came too quickly for goodbyes’

  Belle knew that mom understood the bleakness. Whatever happened to
them, it happened fast. All three understood that death was not involved but rather something else had happened to them. Either Quastima had opened up a portal in the dirt mound with the strange energy of the two pyramids or he had finally managed to transmit an SOS signal out into the cosmos calling for a rescue.

  Santo was sure that it had to be the Sky People who answered the SOS or they would never have gone with them. However, there was one restriction to that hope and so he said,

  “I thought Liana said that she and Quastima were the last of the Sky People.”

  Wiping away a tear, Maria said,

  “Perhaps she really believed that, but who really knows what is out there in the vastness of so many universes.”