Earth Keepers

by Jorge Alejandro Lavera

  “Right now you’re thinking about how to overpower and kill us,” Halius told one who was begging for his life. “I’m sorry, we can’t let you go.” And he fired.

  They spent all night covering the circuit until they got to the exit. When they finally got outside, it was mid-morning and they met with the group of people they’d rescued, some three hundred people, waiting for them. Except that they were not looking at those three, but towards a place out of sight. They moved forward a little and heard the sound of triggers.

  “Drop your weapons and put your hands up,” they heard behind them.

  They looked slowly behind them and saw they were surrounded by half a dozen men.

  “Don’t try it,” threatened one of them, “we know how many times to fire to perforate those hearts of yours and we really want to do it.”

  The Atlanteans looked at each other helplessly and slowly dropped their weapons.

  “Go over there,” said another of the mean.

  They walked slowly, under the eyes of the people they’d rescued, until they saw what the people were looking at.

  A fairly large group of people, at least two hundred, were looking at the other group, in which all of those in sight were armed. And in front of the group, a tall individual got a big smile on his face when he saw them.

  “Well, well, how convenient that you’ve come out to visit us,” exclaimed Marsan.

  TRANSFER

  Alpha, November 28, 2027. 10:30 a.m. (4:30 Rho time)

  Halius, Nikaia, and Musa froze in place.

  “You were dead,” Halius said when he managed to articulate something.

  “That’s what you wanted. Too bad for you that you didn’t incinerate me in person. The human you put in charge of it worked for me, and knowing something like that might happen, I’d left him instructions to inject me with a dose of a certain technology that I needed at the moment. It was very painful and it took me some time to recuperate from a direct attempt at execution by Tzedek, but as you can see, he told you to incinerate me for a reason,” Marsan said, laughing.

  “And all these people?” Nikaia asked dispiritedly.

  “My selected faithful, who knew who you were and I took care of rescuing as soon as the attack ended,” Marsan said. “Of course, you almost ran into us the first time you came out. It was lucky you were wearing the suit and didn’t hear us, Musa. Otherwise, I would have had to detain you, and look for all those people myself. You saved me a lot of work, although, the truth is, you surpassed my expectations finding Halius and Nikaia alive. And now, let’s stop wasting time. Start walking, that way,” he ordered, indicating a path.

  The armed men surrounded the rest of them and rounded them up like a herd. Halius, Nikaia and Musa were in front, surrounded, while Marsan went in front, at a safe distance from them.

  After a couple of hours of walking, some started complaining and the group stopped. Marsan went to see what was going on.

  “We need a rest,” implored one of the men.

  Marsan took out his weapon and shot him in the head. The man fell over dead. There were exclamations and shouts.

  “Okay, now he’s resting. Anyone else need to rest?” Marsan taunted them.

  No one said anything, and the march resumed.

  After another hour of marching, Marsan showed signs of joy.

  “Ah-ha, our objective is intact,” he said happily. All that was in sight was a large field with some antennas and a few low houses with flat roofs, surrounded by a high fence.

  “What is this?” asked Nikaia.

  “What, didn’t Tzedek or Halius tell you anything?” jeered Marsan with a smile. “Well, before I tell you anything, let’s see first if everything is in shape.”

  They went to the entrance of the fence, which was open, and moved forward following Marsan, who ignored the signs that said “Project ZSLP, DANGER, Do Not Enter.” They stopped before the entrance to the third building. It was small and square, with no windows or other openings, just a door. It was a smooth plate with no irregularities, not even a latch. There was a marked area to the right of the door. Marsan put his hand on it, but nothing happened.

  “Hmm, will you do the honors?” he asked, pointing a pistol at Halius.

  Halius crossed his arms.

  Marsan moved his gun and shot at Musa’s chest, who screamed and fell backwards.

  Halius inhaled and tried to go help her, but Marsan’s men grabbed him and threatened him with their guns.

  “As you can see, we can do this the easy way or the hard way. I expect your cooperation and if you don’t give it, you’ll see every one of your friends and every one of your humans die, until you’re the last one left. Think about it, there are a lot of them. There will be a lot of blood on your hands,” Marsan threatened.

  “And how much blood will be on my hands if I help you?” Halius asked.

  “Who knows, but I do know there will be if you don’t do what I want you to,” he assured him, pointing the gun at a woman who was close by.

  “Okay, wait!” Halius begged, putting his hand on the plaque. A moment went by and the door started to open to one side.

  “Forward, friends. Each person will have a guard. At the slightest suspicious movement, someone will pay,” Marsan demonstrated, looking at Halius and then at Musa who was recovering. Halius agreed, nodding his head slightly.

  The door opened into a long corridor tilting down and lit very slightly with small LEDs every couple of yards. They began to advance and after a few yards they reached a chamber where they found a wide staircase going down on one side, and an elevator on the other. Marsan gestured towards the stairs and they carefully began to descend.

  They were going down for a good while. Nikaia lost count after fifteen flights. The air became a little more suffocating and had an increasingly unpleasant smell. Suddenly, at one turn of the stairs, they ran into the corpse of a guard, judging by the uniform, on the stairs. It was evident he’d been dead for several days. It seemed he’d tried to leave and was surprised by death on the climb. They continued down and finally came to another chamber, leaving the stairs behind.

  They passed a section of offices, forcing Halius to open several doors on the way, and they found other bodies in those. Fortunately the atmosphere was climatized, which had caused the bodies to mummify, instead of rotting, which was gloomy but less odorous. Finally, as they passed through a steel door, they found an enormous chamber full of computers, appliances, and machines. It was the size of a football field and the vaulted ceiling was at least a hundred feet at the highest point. In the middle of the place all the connections converged into a sort of cylinder whose frame was covered by terminals of copper cables, coils and spirals. The cylinder was very narrow in relation to its height, about ten feet in diameter but less than two feet deep. It was placed on its side, like the wheel of a car, with a third of its height sunk into the ground, in the center of a large hemispherical hole located in the middle of the chamber.

  Marsan headed over to a console that was behind one of the protection panels, and with evident knowledge of how they worked, activated all the controls. The place was activated, lights were turned on in the computers, humming capacitors charged and there was a vibration in the floor.

  “Very well,” said Marsan. “Now we just need to be able to use this wonder. The indicators show that we have more than enough energy, I just have to align this terminal with the other end. Which we will do...like this,” he said, pressing the controls. The vibration increased at the same time the cylinder rotated on its vertical and horizontal axes until it was carefully set at a certain angle. Some yellow lights lit up around the cylinder and from the edge of the hole, there was a path that passed through the air, like a bridge, until it reached the cylinder.

  Marsan manipulated the commands of the consoles, murmuring, “Activating remotely...” A couple of minutes passed, and then he commented: “Synchronizing and....now.” At that moment, an alarm went off and the lights turned gr
een. The vibration turned into a roar, and a white light showed inside the cylinder, as if it had turned into a lantern, but the light only went to the side where the bridge was. The other side, strangely, had darkened almost as if it were in the shade, even though it was well lit.

  “Okay,” Marsan said, nodding towards the illuminated part of the cylinder, “in the same order that we came down, we’re going through there. Walk.”

  They started to move towards the cylinder, via the bridge, and when they got to the edge, they stopped. Looking out from the back part of the cylinder, only the room and the darkness behind it were visible, as would be expected. On the other hand, looking inside the cylinder, you could see that the ramp continued to another illuminated room, as if it were crossing from one side of the ring to the other in the same place, and nothing else.

  Marsan moved forward and pushed the one in front. He had two or three of his armed men wait for them on the other side and then about half of the hostages, but no more of his men. Then he signaled to the rest to stop. He took Musa by the arm and ordered her:

  “You’ll go with them. If no one takes them out of the basement, they’ll draw attention. I’m not interested in Delta yet, but if you get there and tell them what happened, I’ll go there with my men and I’ll kill them all, after I kill all the hostages here, of course. Do I need to demonstrate to you?” He aimed at the head of one of the men in the group of hostages.

  “No, stop. It’s okay, I won’t say anything,” Musa implored. Marsan pushed her and she went to the other side. He signaled three more of his men, and sent them, too. Before letting them pass, he ordered them:

  “Make sure they don’t communicate with Delta, at least until they get to the center.”

  Maneuvering the console, the cylinder turned off, the lights turned yellow again, and it started to tilt in a different direction at a different angle. After a couple of seconds of maneuvers, he operated the console again. A couple of minutes passed and the alarm sounded again and the cylinder was activated. He had the men quickly pass to the other side, then Halius and Nikaia, and he went last.

  INNOCENTS

  Rho, November 28, 2027. 7:00 a.m.

  Juan Carlos woke up slowly. For a minute, he had no idea where he was. The sheets on the bed were soft and had a perfume that seemed familiar to him. Suddenly he remembered everything, and, passing his hand over the empty space next to him, wondered if he’d done the right thing. He got up, and when he saw Sofía asleep on the couch, covered but sprawled out, he was sure he had.

  The metal blinds started going up at the same time. The light started streaming into the room. Sofía woke up and took the covers off. He saw she was wearing a nightgown. They peeked out the windows together. It was daylight and the city was illuminated by the sun. While they watched, the blinds on the houses started going up, and the metallic grills retracted in all the buildings and objects.

  “The computer must have determined that the risk has passed from electromagnetic pulses. We should get dressed and go to the Central Command,” suggested Juan Carlos.

  They headed towards Central Command. They’d just left the apartment, and met Althaea and Damaris also just leaving. They both looked fresh and groomed. Juan Carlos and Sofía, on the other hand, looked unkempt with unbrushed hair. Juan Carlos decided it wasn’t important, but saw Damaris and Althaea look at each other and smile. He took his eyes off of them and followed. They finally arrived at Central Command, where Tzedek was waiting for them.

  “Good morning...I’ve just taped a video and sent it to the citizens, briefly explaining to them what happened,” Tzedek told them.

  “Remember the screen in our room? The video will be the first thing you see when you turn it on. Like a service for internal notices,” Althaea explained to Juan Carlos.

  “I was also in contact with Delta. They came out of it more or less undamaged like we did, so they’ve got work to do.”

  “The truth is, since we arrived in this situation, we haven’t had a second’s respite. Um, I don’t know what I’m supposed to do exactly,” Juan Carlos hesitated.

  “We can continue what we were talking about yesterday...”

  “It’s that everything changed so fast, I was hoping to find a house to be with my daughter, work, I don’t know...”

  “You don’t like the current arrangements?” Tzedek asked, looking at Althaea and Juan Carlos.

  “Oh, no, no, no, that isn’t it, it’s the opposite, I keep feeling like we have much more than we deserve.”

  “Maybe you’ve had less than you deserved all your life,” Althaea said.

  “No, not all my life,” Juan Carlos recalled, as his throat tightened.

  “Well, things changed radically when we had to turn you into one of us, in a way. And it’s best that you know that very quickly,” snapped Tzedek, opening a panel and taking out a small pneumatic syringe.

  “Another injection? What now?”

  “You’ll see,” Tzedek supported the syringe on his arm, and with a shooting and then suction sound, he extracted a little blood. Then before he could protest, he put the syringe on Juan Carlos’ arm and shot the syringe into him.

  “Sit down there, please,” Tzedek indicated, sitting down in front of him. “Now, look into my eyes and try not to think about anything but them.”

  Juan Carlos looked at them and for a few seconds nothing happened, but suddenly he started seeing image after image, each one associated with a history. Images of ancient cities, fantastic places, people, battles, politicians, friends, enemies, dangerous situations, seas, ships, inventions, diagrams, amazing technologies and a thousand other things.

  “Everything that’s important about our civilization is stored in our memories by the nanites. They are terabytes of data, that can be accessed, copied and used at will. Now you have them, too. You just have to concentrate on something, like you would to remember a home or where you left your keys, and the corresponding memory will appear in complete detail. Forgive the method. We can interchange information just by contact, but it’s very slow. This is the only way for a huge volume of information.”

  Juan Carlos was stunned. Lately that seemed to happen to him often.

  “Try it, think, for example, hmm...on something related to what we talked about yesterday.”

  Juan Carlos thought ‘portal’, and suddenly saw, as if it were a movie, the portal that the Atlanteans had discovered, its composition, and how it was destroyed. He also saw that afterwards, the Atlanteans had their own portal project. A space portal, in which they had advanced, but they were many years from being able to make it work, and local portals, which allowed them to transfer things from one place on Earth to another. Juan Carlos opened his mouth, shocked. He was going to say something to Tzedek when another related memory hit him. He went through all the memories about it and didn’t find what he was looking for.

  “You never saw the invaders, right?”

  “No, but we know what they were like.”

  “Not according to the memories that I have now. That is, you got testimonies of what they were like, but no one actually saw them, correct?”

  Tzedek shrugged his shoulders and asked:

  “Why would we doubt what we knew?”

  “What do you mean why...” Juan Carlos grabbed his head. “For being such an ancient and brilliant species, sometimes you’re incredibly...”

  “Stupid?” Tzedek was angry.

  “I was going to say innocent. You gave me a lie detector test so I wouldn’t fool you with my opinions, but some humans back in antiquity describe extraterrestrials as ‘six foot tall beings’, and you just believe them?” He was scandalized. “I’m sorry, Tzedek, I don’t want to offend you, but we’re not talking about what a landscape looked like, but some beings who were trying to destroy you. You don’t think it’s possible that they made sure that any description that got to you were intentionally deceitful?”

  “You don’t know our interrogation techniques. Well, you’ll kn
ow them now if you think about it, and then you’d know that they couldn’t have fooled us,” Tzedek explained.

  “Those interrogated told you what they knew, but was what they knew true? A species capable of creating a portal to jump interstellar distances, and capable of altering species through genetic engineering, wouldn’t be capable of fooling the ‘witnesses’ in some way so when they were caught, they’d say something false, even though they were convinced it was true?”

  Tzedek’s face got dark, and he looked at Althaea and Damaris.

  “I have to admit that, yes, it’s possible.”

  “But that changes everything,” Damaris reflected. “I find what Juan Carlos says logical, but then, if we don’t really know what those creatures were like, that means they could also have a normal-looking aspect.”

  “Or even pass as humans, too. And that would explain how they could still exist,” Tzedek considered.

  “’Created in His likeness and image’” cited Juan Carlos. “Mythological books like the Bible may have a kernel of truth. It’s pure speculation, but if they were similar to the humans, or better said, the humans similar to them, that would explain why they were never exposed.”

  “It could also be that they simply never existed. But if they’d been hiding in plain sight for thousands of years, how are we going to detect them now?” Althaea asked.

  “And who knows where they might be?” asked Damaris.

  “You thought they could be behind what Marsan did,” Tzedek said to Juan Carlos.

  “It makes sense to me, but I didn’t know Marsan for years like you did.”

  “We must communicate with Alpha. And we have to find some way of determining if these beings still exist, and if so, what they’re like.”

  An alarm sounded on one of the consoles.