The Otherlings and the Crystal Amulet

by S V Hurn

  They approached the pyramid, its large glowing eye looming above them and seeming to follow their every move. This cold, unnerving place was permeated with a smell of dankness from a long-forgotten age. Walking closer to the pyramid, they could begin to make out inscriptions carved into the stone blocks. Dorathy peered at its apex and saw an antiquity that she had seen as a child in a picture of ancient Egyptian artifacts. The stone was thought to have fallen from the stars as an iron meteorite. Upon entering the atmosphere, it had transformed into a perfectly shaped pyramid. The image of the slender neck bird carved into its surface was peering at her. A haunting image, it represented a stellar religion among the ancient world. It represented the rise of the Phoenix and, with it, the rise of a new civilization.

  Dorathy ran her hands over the inscriptions at the base of the pyramid and started to read the words written so long ago. Jobar and Coolie were patting each other on the back and hugging their traveler friends with excitement and joy, for they were closer to solving the mystery of the Otherings and the portal than anyone had ever been before.

  Jobar was giddy with happiness. “You can read what has been written here . . . this is a day that history will remember! For this language is foreign to us and we are sure no one else has ever been here in this cavern besides us.”

  “My God”, Dorathy said as she proceeded to read,

  We ventured out among the stars looking for the creator who had entrusted us with the code of ages. We, the survivors of humankind, departed our Earthly home on a grand quest, the quest to end all quests, for we have arrived and flourished.

  The chosen ones have stayed behind to ensure their mission will continue. Our brothers have moved forward to continue the quest of order from chaos whilst we wait for the key to the holiest of places. Indeed, we search for the path of all our species. The path is the way, and the way to the gate is just beyond, but forever far. The path that leads us to the great beyond is paved with golden luster. it leads to our placement in the cosmos and we are carried by its essence in the blood of the original creator. It is all knowing and will protect the chosen one, she is the key. Beneath these walls lie the fruit of the many seeds planted long ago. They are the true Illuminati, the ones who had sacrificed the most and we are forever in their debt.

  We will meet once again old friends. fear not, for time is meaningless, forever is redundant.

  Dorathy and the others could not believe their eyes as they each read the carvings on the stones placed there eons ago. Henry read it through a few times and turning it over and over in his mind, finally said, “This place is a tomb for the ones who were left behind, and there must be a way in.” Everyone else seemed to be coming to the same conclusion.

  Brenda shook her head. “Yes, that much is true, but it also leads me to believe there is a key here to finding the other side.” She then read aloud part of the encryption, “The path that leads us to the great beyond is paved with golden luster. It leads to our placement in the cosmos and we are carried by its essence, of the blood of the original creator. It is all knowing and will protect the chosen one, as she is the key.”

  Henry said as he leaned against the cold, stone surface, “The way I hear it is we need to be looking for a path—‘golden’ perhaps refers to the particle beam.”

  Jobar said enthusiastically, “Deep space miners over the years crossed the path created by the portal. All have said there was a brilliant yellow beam that bent the space surrounding their ships as they unwittingly crossed through the wake it had left behind. The turbulence it had created caused much damage to the ships as they traveled through.”

  Dorathy obviously knew every facet of her Space Bending Device and was attempting to ascertain the type of damage caused by crossing the wake of the particle beam leading to the path of the portal. “Amazingly,” she said as she thought of her creation, “this same technology has been used, but is it just coincidence that the same type of technology is what gets us through to wherever it is we are searching for? Or does it differ somehow?”

  Henry was left contemplating her train of thought. Breaking the silence, he said, “Somehow it must be the same, since it’s how we came to be here. Somewhere there must be a way to amplify it, to somehow push the envelope to the next level.” Henry shook his head to clear the cobwebs, seeing something that caught his eye and redirected his attention, “Hey anything under all that scrub?”

  Magnus had wandered off, trying to clear encryptions that had been covered with moss and vining plants. Brenda and Dimitri joined Magnus and working together started to remove the large vining branches that had been blocking one side of the pyramid.

  Magnus realized they had stumbled across what seem to be a door of some sort. “Hello, what do we have here?” he mumbled as he cleared away craggy old vines. “Looks like a passageway. Its keystone is marked with the imprint of a human hand.”

  Everyone gathered around to see what Magnus had discovered. “This must be the entrance to the tomb,” Jobar said, climbing onto an ancient stone block that had partially come away from its structure, allowing him to get a better look.

  Coolie was trying to finagle the hinges that kept the stone door closed securely in place. “Maybe we can find something to smash through the entrance.”

  “Highly doubtful, my mighty little friend,” Magnus said, “This is solid rock. Having the proper key is the only way we are going to get through.”

  Brenda grabbed Dimitri’s arm. “Bend over, let me get on your back.” Dimitri saw the look in her eye and did as he was told. As she balanced herself, she placed her hand on the print in the keystone. “Hmmm, definitely a woman’s hand.” She jerked her head in Dorathy’s direction. “I have a thought girlfriend, I think you need to try,” she declared as she climbed down.

  Dorathy stood with arms crossed. She had a sinking gut feeling that Brenda might be right, but didn’t want to acknowledge it. Reluctantly, she climbed on Dimitri’s back and hesitated for a moment. Her head was swimming with thoughts of something horrible happening once she placed her hand onto the stone.

  She looked at Henry for guidance, and he took her left hand to steady her. Slowly, she matched her right hand to the imprint, and it was a perfect fit. She shrugged, looking down at Henry. “Nothing . . . wait . . . the stone it’s starting to heat up!” Withdrawing her hand, she could see a strange glow coming from beneath the rock imprint. “Oh Shit!” She scrambled off Dimitri’s back and they both lunged out of the way.

  There was a deep rumble as the mechanism that controlled the entrance came to life. The door pushed back with a scraping sound and as it did, air and dust blew out from the opening. The door slid open, revealing a staircase leading down a dark narrow passage-way.

  “Christ!” Dorathy said under her breath. “What the hell is that all about?”

  The group stood and stared at her in amazement. Finally, Magnus said, “You, my dear, are apparently the ‘chosen one.’

  “What the hell?” she yelled, as she stood with all eyes still fixed on her. “Why the heck am I so goddamned special? This is really starting to freak me out and I don’t like it—not one goddamned bit!”

  She was starting to hyperventilate. “If you assholes think I’m going down there, you’re out of your damn minds . . . no freaking way!”

  Henry had developed a calming ability when dealing with Dorathy from the day they revived her. Her emotional outbursts were a part of her make-up. “Look Dora, for whatever reason, and God only knows why, you possess a special ability and purpose for this mission. The only way we are going to get to the bottom of this craziness is if you follow us down there. Dora, you know I won’t let anything happen to you and I will be right next to you always.”

  With a heavy sigh she realized he was right. “God, will someone please tell me how I got to this screwed up place and time. This shit really blows!”

  Brenda put a loving arm around her friend. “You know I love you, but you really need to just suck it up, for all our sakes
.

  Dorathy pondered her highly irregular position in the universe and concluded that the likelihood of her ever having a normal life had ended a long time ago. “Yeah . . . ,” succumbing to her irregular set of circumstances, she said, “whatever you say . . . still freaks me out though.”

  On that note, they all fumbled to turn on their light rods and started down the steep stairway with Henry in the lead and Dorathy close on his heels. As they went deeper into the tomb, the lingering scent of mildew and stale air that had been trapped deep in this catacomb over the eons filled their senses as a reminder of how much time had passed. The stone walls were moist from condensation, but the stairs themselves were fabricated from some type of metal. Dorathy found it hard to resist touching the walls as they descended; somehow it made the situation more real, assuming she wasn’t having a delusional nightmare.

  Down they went, finally reaching the bottom, the stairway’s structure terminating in the center of what appeared to be catacombs from the time when there was a bustling modern civilization hidden deep in the core of this frozen planet. The rock floor had been polished to a reflective shine and the curved wall had clear heavy glass and metal doors securing each of twelve ancient sarcophagi. It appeared the tube-like casings had been positioned there eons ago. As they took their last step from the staircase to the smooth rock floor, a flickering of lights from above came slowly to life and illuminated the room with a soft eerie glow.

  Dorathy looked down and pointed to the writing she saw carved into the stone floor. She read it aloud,

  “The BLOODLINES have laid to rest their original kind. Our altercation over the years has allowed us to continue. We are leaving this place behind to start a new life amongst the civilization we have engineered; to govern the masses of the displaced ones.

  Where there was chaos there is harmony, and we will continue the work we were sent to do. The peoples of these worlds will live as one and flourish.

  “Well there you go, that was the beginning of the New Western Ordinance,” Jobar said. “There have been legends over the years, mostly conjecture and a lot of hearsay, but there it is written in stone; passed down from generation to generation, its true meaning lost over the millennia. This truly has been an epic day.” He shook Coolie’s hand. “Finally, the truth of the powers that be. The hierarchy of our installed government has been around for countless generations—this proves without a doubt that they came from this place, from your world.”

  “Seems like,” Henry said. “Also, by the sounds of it they had been altered to somehow live long enough to see the job through.”

  Brenda wondered, “If they had been altered for the trip here as we were, perhaps they had fine-tuned the method over the years not only for longevity, but procreation. They had to have found a way to not only create synthetic DNA, but to have it passed on to their offspring.”

  Dimitri added, “They must also have broken the code buried in our DNA and found the originating point in space. We must possess that information if we are to have any hope of finding the portal.”

  Everyone agreed and Dorathy concluded, “If ever there was a place for the answers we are in search of, I would say, that place is here. All the clues must be here, we just need to find them, and I think the first place to look is in this final resting place. What better way to find heaven than to ask the dead for directions.”

  The group stood in the center of the circle of tombs, all upright, standing at attention, gathered together as if they had been the Knights of the Round Table. There was a slight humming of the lights from above and air passing through the stairwell made a low howling sound that gave it a feeling that their spirits were watching from beyond the veil.

  Magnus brought out his scanner to see if it could tell them anything unusual about the area they had just entered. As he looked at the data streaming in, he raised an eyebrow. “Fascinating.”

  Henry wondered what he was referring to. “What?”

  There seems to be information encoded in each container. It’s redundant and cycles into infinity.”

  Dorathy was attempting to wipe dust from a surface that seemed only too familiar to her. The glass was thick and pitted, preventing her from seeing inside. “Infinity indeed, life never ending . . . death is not the end, it is only a beginning to another form of existence.” They nodded as they understood her meaning.

  She wiped enough dust from one of the closed glass tombs to reveal a scanner just to the right of the door. “Hey look at this.” Dimitri had also been clearing off the dust from another tomb, “Yes, there is one over here, too.”

  Henry approached Dorathy. “Well try it, see if your hand works for these as well.” Dorathy

  clasped her hands together as anxiety started to build. “Hey, I don’t want some mummified shit show to come tumbling out at me!

  Henry put his arm around her waist and pulled her to him. “I’ll be right here. Now try your hand.”

  She slowly extended her hand and placed it on the panel. A light began to glow. “You know, I really don’t like being in the position of be all end all of this mission.”

  Henry said in her ear as he looked over her shoulder at the console, “Well, get used to it.”

  They all gathered around to see the information glowing on the panel. Magnus attempted to read the data, “Seems to be dates, perhaps a reference to this individual’s date of birth and death, but the language is unfamiliar.”

  Dimitri looked at the panel and then flashed his gaze at Jobar. “This seems to be an ancient text form from your planet.”

  Jobar, standing on his tip toes, the glow reflecting off his leathery skin, said, “Oh my, you are right. It is very familiar to me, but I cannot read it completely.”

  Magnus said, “I’ll scan them all to see if we might find similarities that might give us some insight as to where they have gone and whom they have left behind.” He pulled a data pad from his backpack and started to log the first entry by connecting to the mainframe. “Okay, this might take a little while, but nothing ventured nothing gained. Once the information from each capsule has been downloaded, it will show any consistencies, so let’s continue. Dora, after you, my dear.” Dorathy dreaded being in this position, but at some point, she knew they would get to the bottom of it all.

  A couple of hours later all twelve of the tomb’s occupants’ data streams had been logged. Henry approached Dorathy. “We need to get a good idea of what we’re dealing with so we can ascertain where it was the rest of them headed off to. Then I want to go up and get another look at the carvings on the pyramid.”

  Dorathy wiped her eyes with her shirt tail. “Well, so far the best we can tell there are twelve family names . . .”

  Brenda interrupted, “twelve bloodlines.”

  Magnus agreed, “Yes, based on what we’ve surmised, logic would suggest they’d be the original bloodlines of the Illuminati, but these are twelve separate DNA codes.”

  Brenda shook her head. “You’re not getting the higher meaning of this, my friends. The Illuminati have thirteen bloodlines. I’m betting, regardless of this gathering of some type of intergalactic counsel, I’d guess that these twelve represent the purest form of the Otherlings and the thirteenth bloodline is Dora’s.”

  Dorathy’s eyes grew wide as she looked down at her hand. “Oh no . . .”

  “Yes . . . it’s all making sense now. Regardless of your lack of active participation, your family . . . your father, is the thirteenth bloodline. You seem to be the Key Master of sorts and these twelve I’m guessing might be some type of Gate Keepers. Whatever secrets they may hold in this tomb, you carry the answers.”

  Dimitri and Magnus had started to review some of the data they had collected. They were huddled together with their backs against the wall with Jobar and Coolie nodding off on either side of them. Dimitri yelled, “Stop! Yes, there it is, a code written within their DNA!”

  Everyone gathered around the data pad as Dimitri magnified the image to 3D. “Thi
s is going to take me some time to decode, but I am positive we have what we were looking for.”

  Henry clapped his hands together. “Okay, we got what we came for. Let’s get topside and take images of the writing on the pyramid, then we’ll get a fresh start down tomorrow morning.”

  On that note, the group packed their gear. Dorathy stretched and walked over to one of the canisters, wishing she could get a look inside. She ran her hands along its surface, trying to determine if there was something she was missing. It all seemed very strange to her, yet oddly familiar at the same time. She scraped her hands over the entire glass and metal casing and felt some grooves through the layers of dust and muck. She started to brush away at it vigorously, until she could see the image with more detail. “Look at this, seems to be a bird of sorts.” She continued to expose the insignia. “Yes, it looks like the Phoenix rising from the ashes.”

  Henry squatted down to get a better look. “Yeah, you’re right. I wonder what that’s all about?”

  Dorathy shook her head, knowing its significance to the Illuminati but also aware of its symbolism in Greek mythology. “Rebirth from death. Oddly enough, its meaning is the same as cryogenics.” Henry gazed into Dorathy’s weary eyes and knew her journey would be a long one.

  Slowly, they departed the room of tombs. The lights flickered off as they climbed the staircase. Dorathy wondered how many more centuries these tombs would lie undisturbed and who else in the future would have the ability to enter, if anyone at all. The ages seemed to have passed this place by. They climbed up in the darkness, each step measured by countless eons of loneliness; untouched.

  Dorathy looked up at the keystone as Dimitri got down on all fours. She climbed up on his back and placed her hand on the stone imprint. The stone door closed slowly with a heavy thud. She helped Dimitri up off the floor. “Well, I guess that’s it. We follow the next clues, see where it takes us.”

  Dimitri said, already clearing vines from the pyramid, “Yes, I am eager to get back to our ship so I can start working on the code.”