by Abhishek Roy
Eventually, when I got up on the altar, careful not to plant my foot on the carcass of a person who is the most valuable in the history of mankind and who is probably my great grandfather too.
Ram said, “Mathias, why would Bor want his dead body to be kept here on Earth and not on Asr-Gawa?”
“I have no clue. He was probably emotionally attached to this place. As he has written, the dinosaur like creatures that we encountered were actually made by him to guard his death bed,” I suggested.
“Remember what Baldr told us in the temple? He said that they can tele port anywhere in space and time. This means that after Bor saved life on Earth, he went back to Asr-Gawa but came back in a distant time period. He probably wanted to see how humans were doing after the deluge.” Ram and I grinned. “Over that he also says that his father was one of the most intelligent beings to have been created by ‘God’. It seems surprising that the beings, people here worship as Gods could be worshipping their Gods too and these Gods worship their Gods. It’s almost as if it is a never ending chain of advanced and older civilisations that span across the cosmos and influence the civilisations below them,” I said.
It was then that it struck me that although this manuscript answered lots of questions, there were many more to be answered. In addition to that, the way Noah explained how the teleporter worked wasn’t crystal clear. He used the word bindpath whose meaning I didn’t know. I remembered the time when Baldr seemed to be confused between universe and dimension. Hence, I felt the need of some light to be shed on the differences between universe and dimension in this case too.
I looked at the circular shield. At casual glance it looked like a battle weapon. But in the dim light as I took a second look, things became clear to me.
“Guys!” I called. “This is also very important. This disc seems to have all the important locations carved into it! I can see the Himalayas, and clearly the cave cities of Derinkuyu. Can’t make out clearly, but the other two locations depicted here should also be other locations to reach Asr Gawa! That means we are on the right track — we should find the path to Asr Gawa here!“
“There seems to be something on the reverse side also,” said Ram.
I took it and began translating,
“The Power to the gate
Lies in the hand of Bor
Surrender to fate on his last bed
And open the door“
“The power to the gate means the power to the teleporter,” suggested Vivek.
“Lies in the hand of Bor. Does this have a literal meaning or... “ Ram brooded over it.
“Oh I know what it means!” Ram smiled in glee.
“What? What?” asked Vivek anxiously.
“It’s what you brought along with you,” Ram answered. Vivek looked at the staff of Bor that he had kept carefully in one corner of the room.
“Oh yes! Of course! The staff!” he cried.
“The next line says Surrender to fate on his last bed. I think his last bed is his altar,” offered Ram, “So maybe... his altar is the teleporter!” he yelled.
“True. It’s possible,” Vivek and I concurred. “The last line reads And open the door, “ I looked up at them. “That has to mean the portal to Asr-Gawa. Hey, that is what he wrote in his diary, didn’t he? The creatures were entrusted to guard his own path to Asr Gawa!”
“Right. So I think that was our fastest decryption so far. Though it shouldn’t have been because this is the ultimate piece in the puzzle but I don’t mind.” Ram grinned.
Kapittel 44
Mathias’s story
HATAY, TURKEY
March 14, 2017, Tuesday, 1955 hours EEST
“Alright. Now let’s move this,” said Vivek.
Ram managed to get up on the altar. Vivek stayed on one side and I walked up to the other. Together, we picked the carcass up and set it down on the ground with utmost care.
When his body was down on the ground, we finally had a look at the entire face of the altar. It was made of three neatly polished blocks of black granite but the face of the altar wasn’t just plain and blank.
At its centre, there was a circle with a diameter of roughly the same as the breadth of the altar. On the circle was inscribed a perfect golden spiral with its end spiralling down and disappearing into eternity.
About three feet from the end where Noah’s legs were facing, there was a shallow and small notch in the granite.
I stared at the notch and something clicked in my mind, “Vivek, give me the staff please.”
Vivek handed me the staff. I studies the disc but could not find anything worthwhile there to help, and handed it over to Vivek for safekeeping while I wanted to look at the altar.
“Take this Ram,” I gave him the staff who was still standing on the altar and looking at the engraved circle.
“What do I do with this?”
“In the poem, it was written that the power lay in Noah’s hands. I think that the staff’s base should fit into that notch there. It’ll probably power the altar up.”
Ram stood directly on the circle and tried fitting the base of the staff in the notch. After twisting it twice, it dropped into the notch and fit perfectly. Ram became antsy as he waited for something to happen.
“Hey!” Vivek tried to say when suddenly, something whirred inside the altar. The three of us stopped breathing and waited.
Slowly, the whir increased and as it increased, there appeared a glow on the swollen head of the staff and the point where the staff met the notch. The glow was actually quite different. It was almost like tongues and sheets of black and dark shadow leapt from the two places and diffused into the air. On closer look, the shadow warped the space around it, like a mirage. It wasn’t plasma nor was it electricity. Neither was it fire nor light.
When the emanation of the shadows and the metallic whir reached their peak. Something unexpected happened.
The circle Ram was standing on started to slide open but stalled after opening up a few inches. Ram jumped away from the circle in fright and gazed at the opening while the mechanic whirr stopped.
“What in the name of God!” yelled Ram and bent down to peer inside the opening. Vivek and I waited for him.
“Nothing. Inky blackness.” Ram looked up at us. “I think whatever machine is there inside the altar has stopped. Otherwise, the circle would have opened completely.“
“So, the staff is actually powering the machine. From the look of it, I think it has fallen short of whatever fuel it is supplying it. How will we power it up?” I asked them both.
“Do you think we should pry this open?” asked Ram, pointing at the opening.
“No, no. If the staff is giving the energy to the machine, what if we give energy to the staff proper?” offered Vivek and trailed off in his thoughts. Suddenly, he jumped from his place and detached the staff from the notch. “Let’s see if this works out,” he muttered while he took out his small translator. He scanned the charging port of the translator and then the base of the staff. He touched the base of the staff to the charging port and as soon as it touched one of the diodes, the translator was dead. Out of power.
“Yes!” screamed Vivek. “Success! This staff not only gives energy but also sucks it up when it needs it!“
“I think it needs much more power than that.” I said.
“Yeah, I agree,”
Vivek’s face went blank for two seconds. “No problem!” he exclaimed with a smile, and asked us to wait. He ran back down the path we came, and after about twenty minutes (which seemed like an hour to us) he was back with the fuel cell, detached from the craft where we had left it.
Vivek touched the base of the staff to one of the ports on the side of the fuel cell and took a deep breath. He kept the fuel cell on the ground and flicked the switch. The power started to drain out very quickly while the fuel cell gave out a deep humming noise. A tiny display showed the power that was still left.
It read ‘68%’ in the first 3 seconds.
> 64% in 4 seconds.
60% in 5 seconds
43% in 6 seconds. Vivek glanced at us, his eyes showing us his amazement.
35% in 8 seconds.
15% in 10 seconds.
2% in the 12th second. Then it just died.
“I think it’s done its job now,” smiled Vivek and gave the staff to Ram. Ram took it and fit it into the notch while unconsciously, keeping his right foot on the circle.
In an instant, the circle Ram was standing on slid to the right and disappeared into the altar. This made Ram stumble into the altar and disappear from view.
“Ram!” I cried as I climbed onto the altar, avoiding the staff that was still stuck in the notch. Once I got up and looked into the hole, my breath escaped me.
What I saw was very, very hard to describe. There about five metres down, was a circle of distortion. It distorted everything around and after it and looked like a churning pool of darkness. At the centre of the distortion was a small dot of white light and heading towards it was Ram.
He hadn’t completely fallen into the distortion but his legs had disappeared down first. Yet, he appeared to be frozen in time. His upper torso was stuck an inch down the distortion and didn’t move at all.
As I stared at his body for a few minutes, he started to turn red. I also spotted Vivek from the corner of my eye and found him to be completely frozen. He was staring at Ram with wide eyes with the cylindrical disc in hands. He didn’t move from his place and nor did the fire flicker in the torches. Time had stopped for him, just as it had earlier in India. As usual, my amulet was glowing and I was mobile.
The air had also stopped moving and I had a lot of trouble breathing. Instantly, I was reminded of the similar incident in the Biosphere, when time had stopped and the bullet didn’t pierce my head. I looked back at the distortion and knew that this was what caused this to happen, now and at the Biosphere too. It was a something like a wormhole and I seemed to be immune to its effects.
Ram turned more red in colour after every minute and after nearly three minutes, his body faded away until he was gone. At that very instant, another body rushed out of the distortion. The body occupied the entire place on the altar. I was pushed aside by the body and fell on the other side of the altar. I heard the circular granite disk grind with a loud noise, and suddenly the entire structure started glowing. It must have been overloading from all the power in the staff charged by the fuel cell. Within the next two seconds, there was a loud crack and the entire structure broke into many pieces and imploded.
I looked up at the body to see that it was that of a woman. She was around five and a half feet in height or more. She was blond and had sharp features. She looked young, but if she was an Asurian, I doubted her age. She wore a formal white robe made of cotton and had designs made of silver.
She lay motionless on the altar but her breathing was audible. I stood up and saw Vivek move suddenly.
“What happened? Where is Ram? Who is she? Where did he disappear in less than a second?” Vivek was totally flustered.
“He probably disappeared into a wormhole.” I replied, deep in thought. “The feeling was similar to the incident in the Biosphere.” I looked at Vivek. “Time had stopped. Everything but me! I saw everything happen for nearly five minutes! I saw Ram fade away as his body redshifted! I don’t know how I am immune to this but it also happened at the Biosphere but I didn’t get the chance to explain it to you, properly!” I cried, now tears coming out in the thought of what fate would have befallen poor Ram.
“So you just saw a wormhole?” Vivek took in a slow breath.
“I am not completely sure but YES! Possibly!” I exclaimed. “It was almost as if...all the spatial forces and the temporal forces were balanced such that everything came to a stasis! I must be having some anti- stasis thing in me or something!”
“Fine.. .we’ll talk about this later on. But who is she?”
We huddled together, petrified at the recent turn of events. “We have lost Ram and now we have this strange lady from nowhere. I think I am now having second thoughts of going back to Rishikesh, you know.” Vivek whispered into my ears.
“This is not right! This is not right “ I spoke rapidly when Vivek cut me off,
“Stop! Breathe... we need to get ourselves together.”
“Vivek, this doesn’t seem right to me. We need to find Ram. We need to find him now. But that worm hole or bindpath as was mentioned in the diary must have taken him to Asr-Gawa,” I thought and stopped dead in my tracks.
“Well, Mathias,” Vivek called out to me.
“Hmm?”
“You see...” he held out the golden disk or rather that was still in his hands. He held it such that the inside of the cylindrical shield faced me. “I tried telling you but before I could, it all happened. This seems very familiar. I seem to have read about it when I was in Japan. This shield seems part of the Japanese regalia with sword and jewels which disappeared in the twelfth century. This shield resembles another mirror which was there but this is larger. I think this was called the treasures of Kusanagi! This must be worth millions! Besides, what is a Japanese shield doing inside Noah’s tomb inside the Ark in the middle of Turkey!“
“That is something which we need to find out later,” I said. “Now let us get out of here.“
“What about her?” Vivek motioned to the prone figure of the lady.
“We will all get out. If Ram has reached Asr Gawa, then it is most likely that she is from there too. There must be some high level mass-energy conservation law in a relativistic sense operating here, so that Ram’s transfer across the dimensions has brought someone here from that dimension. She will then be very useful for us to reach Asr Gawa and to understand more of the place. I only hope I will be able to communicate with her using my broken old Norwegian. Now get the staff out and come with me”
I led Vivek away from the altar to the chambers below and towards the controls of the airship which we had ignored earlier. I suddenly understood how to get out of here. Vivek followed me quietly, not sure what I was up to. I reached the controls and using my knowledge of the Asurian language now, which was becoming better, I worked out the controls.
“Remember the corkscrew like head at the front of the Ship?” I asked. “That is going to help us get out of here.” I started the engines, and with the help of the staff, which was still full of power though the altar was broken, I made the craft move slowly forward.
The ship was now moving forward quite fast, boring its way by the fast rotating corkscrew which was obviously made of some very hard alien material, cutting through the rocks easily, ascending with some noise. With a crunch it suddenly burst out into the open and we could see that we had surfaced on the open grounds of a church.
“I think we came out of a really secret undercroft,” said Vivek as we glanced at the church. “Wait. What church is this?“
I turned to face the church front and gasped in surprise, “Oh my God! This is the Church of Hatay! So Ram was right! We are at the southernmost tip of Turkey and very close to the sea!”
“The Church of Hatay?” asked Vivek.
“Yes! The city behind us is the city of Hatay and this is the Church, also called the Church of Saint Peter. It is one of the oldest Christian churches. Actually, it is the oldest because now I remember reading a newspaper article about it a month or so back where it was clearly mentioned. Archeologists and radiocarbon dating has proved that it is at least a thousand years older than Christ himself! If Noah’s body itself is kept here, this has to be the oldest Christian Church ever!
“It is said that Peter, the first apostle himself was the founder of this church and it was here that the people were first called ‘Christians’! It even has a reference in the bible!” I looked at Vivek.
Vivek was still sceptical. “But do you know where to go?”
“I reckon I know where we need to go!” I said confidently, as the ship took to the air and started floating in the sky.
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“Where!” Vivek shouted over the din now.
A smile appeared on my lips. “Remember in Noah’s diary, he spoke of a beacon where the largest teleporter had been installed. I understand the meaning of the original poem also now. The Top of the World did not point at the Himalayas, but to something else more relevant in that era. The rainbow to guide the way is in our hands, the staff, and we need to find that egg shaped rock.
We have to go where ancient mankind first started the task of making beacons!“
INTERLUDE
SOMETIME, SOMEWHERE
The surge of energy was felt by all the living beings. It was so strong and intense that it startled each soul as it was experienced. However, this time a leading socialist moved over to his latest creation.
A machine.
Oblong in shape.
Made from few quanta of mouldable energy and represented the three dimensional universe they wanted to get in.
The machine had detected this energy surge and as it was programmed to show the exact location of the source of the surge in that universe, a lone dot of light appeared on an arbitrary location inside the model and the coordinates appeared instantaneously. The socialist absorbed the coordinates and noted them down in his memory lattices.
Next, he flipped the model inside out and observed another point of light which glowed a little brighter. He again noted down the coordinates in his memory lattices as fast as possible and flipped the model of mouldable energy once again. He couldn’t find another location. The socialist moulded it one more time and found a dot. It was extremely faint but he spotted it anyway.
Once he was done scribbling in his lattices, he translated outside and made his way to the commander of the energy forces. He found the commander inside a fluid chamber, communicating to the fellow delegates about the matter in hand.
The socialist exchanged a carrier boson with the leader and he responded immediately. The commander excused himself out of the chamber and communicated to the socialist. Both of them were so overjoyed that they let out a burst of bosons to let everyone know of the breakthrough discovery. The leader gave the socialist a revitalising discharge and translated instantly to the troops. He moved through the portal and adjusted the amplifier, ready to spread the news of their discovery to the millions of troops down in the camps. All of them stood their ground, waiting for the commander-in-chief to speak.
