Ascendant Saga Collection: Sci-Fi Fantasy Techno Thriller

by Brandon Ellis

“You about done walking, Mr. Jaxx?”

  Jaxx twisted around and started to walk backwards, facing Fox. “Don’t you ever get tired?”

  “No.”

  “Do you really think I’m a threat? I’m an archaeologist, for crying out loud.”

  Fox bared his teeth. “Then why in shits-hell-hole did you take the pictures, Jaxx? If I was Slade, you’d be digging ditches with inmates.” But we need you.

  “What did you just say?” asked Jaxx, turning down another hallway and passing doors, hoping he didn’t wake other scientists.

  “I said I’d send you to prison, you son of a bitch.”

  “No, after that.”

  Fox stopped, and shot him an odd look. “You hearing things, Jaxx?”

  Jaxx paused and tried to extend his mind field into Fox’s thoughts. Apparently it didn’t work that way. All he got was some crappy 70’s disco song on a loop. Something about a “starship trooper.”

  “I told Slade not to trust you the moment we took off in the helicopter in Peru,” said Fox. “We don’t take kindly to those who defected from the SSP.”

  “Defected?”

  A voice came over Fox’s radio. “Code one-one-nine. We need you up top, Captain. Code one-one-nine.”

  Fox didn’t hide his irritation. “Get back to your room.” He took off at a fast clip, leaving Jaxx by himself.

  “SSP? Defected? How could I defect from a fictional organization that Slade and Doctor Donny put in my head?” Fox believed it though. You didn’t need to be a mind reader to figure that out.

  “How could I defect from the SSP? To where?”

  He headed back to his room, chewing over what Fox spit out.

  Now, he wanted answers more than ever. Screw jail time. If they caught him, so be it. They’d let him out again. They needed him. There were Beings on Callisto, Beings who perhaps wrote—or better yet—spoke Atlantean. Who else on Earth knew Atlantean? No one. He was safe.

  He jogged to the RIOUT room, making his way to another computer. He turned the screen on, adjusting the brightness as low as his eyes could tolerate.

  He searched the computer’s database for SSP. Nothing came up. He searched under Slade Roberson. Again, nothing spectacular. Next, he searched Richard Fox. Nothing.

  Duh, spell it out, Jaxx.

  He typed in Secret Space Program.

  Zilch.

  This wasn’t the computer he needed.

  He leaned back, scratching his head, catching something peculiar on the screen. The term secret brought up something else, secret syllabary.

  What an odd term. He scrolled down to the “syllabary” and clicked. The file opened up a list of photos, all images from the TECS IV satellite.

  He clicked on a picture dated May 9th. A hieroglyph in Atlantean writing. A closeup, yet he couldn’t see if it was on a pyramid or another structure. Yet, easy to decipher; water symbol, bird carrying a branch, the sign of the zodiac symbol for the age of Leo, and the winged disk.

  His mind calmed, as if the Atlantean hieroglyphs were the only things in the room, or in life for that matter. Water and the bird carrying the branch meant the last great flood. Not the only flood in Earth’s history. His studies had found several great deluges throughout time. This, however, was the most recent. The sign of Leo gave it away. It coincided with the end of the Atlantean era—12,500 years ago—around the time of the last ice age melt. Now, the winged disk was odd. That meant many things in one ornate hieroglyph. The sun passed through the center of the winged disk which represented the sacred gateway into the next age of the Zodiak. The center of the disk, however, wasn’t hollow like it should have been. Instead, it had another circle in the middle, though slightly smaller and pock-marked.

  He clicked out of there and went straight to the internet, typing in Callisto.

  As he suspected and should have remembered from when he first entered Underfoot Black, Callisto was pock-marked. It told Jaxx that the gateway was either Callisto or the gateway landed the Atlanteans on Callisto. Either way, the circle in the middle of the disk was most likely the Jupiter moon.

  The wings of the disk represented flight. Why would they have a gateway to Callisto and then flight?

  “That doesn’t make sense. Did they fly to Callisto or use a gateway to get to Callisto? Both? Are there two ways to get to Callisto?”

  The symbols confirmed that the Atlanteans created the structures on Callisto during the last great deluge, at least to Jaxx. He slumped in his chair. He was on the cusp of a great discovery, but if he told any of the other scientists on the team, apart from Jon Shaughnessy, they’d laugh him out the room.

  He went back to the file and clicked on the next image. The time on the computer’s clock showed only a few more hours until work started.

  He pulled up more glyphs. A basket with a handle on the right side, a bird looking west, a greeting hand, a sun, and a symbol for water. The hieroglyphs directly below were the serpent, a bird looking west, and another basket with the handle on the left side.

  If he knew which type of building this was etched on instead of this zoomed in portion of a wall, it would be much easier to figure out, because right now those glyphs didn’t make sense.

  “The western bird fills the cup as the hand which greets life lifts the cup to the sun, creating rain. The snake and the western bird reverse the cup.”

  That told Jaxx nothing. He tried again.

  “The western bird. The cup. The hand which greets life. The sun. Water. Then the snake. The western bird again. The cup, though reversed.” He pinched his lip. “The reversed cup has to mean something.”

  He read it backwards.

  “The reversed cup delivered by the western bird to the snake.”

  The western bird must be Callisto. The snake had to be Earth. Wait, maybe these were ancient alien Beings?

  It meant something.

  “What if this wasn’t a saying.” Sometimes hieroglyphs were mere letters. Jaxx decided to spell it out. He gasped, held his breath, then released. “Impossible.”

  He read it again, rubbing absently at his arms. “No way.”

  This couldn’t be a coincidence.

  It read, “Kaden Jaxx.”

  10

  May 26th

  Charlotte, North Carolina

  It was late night and Drew needed to get things done. A deadline due and uncle Kaden Jaxx in need. Which outweighed the other?

  Perhaps he’d hurry through his deadline then finish the investigation on the GSA and this Slade character. Yet, he couldn’t get Slade out of his mind, as if someone had stamped a mental image of the guy in his brain. The little amount he found out about Slade intrigued him a lot more than his deadline for World News Network. In fact, the deadline with WNN had been off his mind for a couple of days.

  He grabbed his laptop and sat on his couch, placing his feet on the coffee table, knocking his bong over and spilling water and ashes of burnt weed onto the table. Dirty water mixed with marijuana smoke created a nasty stench.

  He rushed to a towel lying on his table, still there since the last spill. He wiped it up quickly.

  He needed an inside lead on this Slade dude.

  He reached for his cell phone. He dialed a number knowing at this hour it would go to voicemail. Ann Maddox, his contact at NASA.

  “Hi Ann. I was wondering if you could get me an inside line to someone in the Global Safety Administration? Give me a call when you can.” He was about to hang up, almost forgetting whose number he wanted. “Oh, I’m looking for Colonel Slade Roberson. And while you’re at it, can you look up some information about Terra Energy Corporation for me? I’m sure NASA has a lot more information than I could ever get.”

  He hung up the phone and brought up his email. Drew hadn’t replied to Jaxx’s email. He decided to leave a short, but critical note.

  Hi Jaxx

  It’s great to hear from you.

  I’m on it.

  Sincerely,

  Werd

&nbs
p; 11

  May 26th

  Underfoot Black, Grenada

  Jaxx laid in his bed staring at the ceiling, something he did more and more, even though being late to the RIOUT room pissed Slade off maximally. He couldn’t help it. He needed time and space to think.

  The symbols spelled out Kaden Jaxx. He must have read the Atlantean hieroglyphs incorrectly. Plus, the symbol for x was also the symbol for y and z. And always up to the archaeologist’s interpretation. It could have been Kaden Jayy or Kaden Jazy or the list could go on and on.

  It clearly spelled Kaden, though.

  Why would any Atlantean scribe etch his name in a stone wall, on a moon orbiting Jupiter? He wasn’t important, hadn’t made his mark in the world, wouldn’t amount to a hill of beans according to his physics professor. He was having delusions of grandeur.

  Beings on a colony thousands of years old wouldn’t write his name. Admitting he was crazy and that his peers were right crossed his mind.

  He’d needed a second look.

  Jaxx jumped into the shower, scrubbed himself down, and washed his hair. As he rinsed, a flash of inspiration to polish his shoes popped into his mind. He laughed. Out loud. For at least a minute. He lost his damned mind.

  He reached for his towel and let out a yell. He brought his hand back into the shower, looked it over. He did his best to breathe through the sudden shock. Someone touched his arm.

  Not only delusions of grandeur, he manifested fake ghosts.

  He reached for the towel again, and pulled it into the shower and dried off. He slid the curtain open and yelled a second time, slumping against the side wall.

  A woman, with black, curly hair, gave him a deathly stare. Then faded away.

  Rivkah?

  It was her. He was sure of it. Why was he hallucinating her again?

  Please don’t tell me this place is haunted. He chuckled. “Don’t psych yourself out, Jaxx.” Everything here was new and stressful. His brain was doing its best to cope with everything thrown at him. Ghosts weren’t real. Telekinesis wasn’t real. The Secret Space Program wasn’t real. Rivkah wasn’t real.

  “Get that fake shit out of your mind, Jaxx,” he said.

  The only thing real in his life right now was Underfoot Black and the operation.

  He got dressed and headed to the RIOUT room.

  Slade glared at him the second he walked in. “God dammit, Kaden Jaxx. Nice of you to show up.” Slade pointed to Shaughnessy’s station. “Don’t keep Shaughnessy waiting. Help him figure out what he’s looking at.” He pulled out a piece of gum, unwrapped it, and slid it in his mouth.

  Jaxx pressed his elbows to his side, making himself as small as possible. He gave Slade a nod and walked over to Shaughnessy’s station.

  “Hey, man,” said Shaughnessy. He made a sidelong glance toward Slade, keeping his head still. He talked softly. “You need to come in on time, my man. It looked like he was crapping his pants pacing the room waiting for you. Plus, you’ll piss off the rest of the scientists here.”

  Jaxx frowned. “I don’t think I could get any more unpopular than I already am.”

  “Yeah, I think you could.” Shaughnessy chuckled and tapped on his screen. “Help me with this? This is the size of the Great Pyramid of Giza. It’s the big one on Callisto. What do you think about these glyphs at the base?”

  Jaxx sat at Shaughnessy’s computer station and nudged the tip of his toe on the laptop underneath the desk.

  “Watch it,” came Shaughnessy.

  “Why do you have a laptop under there anyway?”

  Shaughnessy looked over his shoulder, no doubt to make sure Slade hadn’t heard Jaxx’s question. He rested his hand on the back of Jaxx’s chair, whispering, “I’ve been given the shitty and stressful job of maintaining a backup laptop, just in case Underfoot Black has an emergency evacuation. If it does, this laptop has all the information stored from all the computers in this room.” Slade paced toward them. “Anyway, back to the size of the Great Pyramid of Giza.”

  Jaxx paused. He gave Shaughnessy a double take. “Hold on. Did you say this pyramid on Callisto is the exact size of the Great Pyramid of Giza?”

  “Yeah. It’s a big blighter.”

  “How do you know it’s the exact size?”

  “We measured the dimensions. It’s identical. Of course, it weighs a lot less because of the gravity difference on Callisto. Although, I wouldn’t be surprised if it had the exact number of stones as the Great Pyramid of Giza.”

  “Why would they make it the exact dimensions?”

  Shaughnessy shrugged, half smiling. “You mean why would the Atlanteans give it the exact dimension?”

  Shaughnessy was either making fun of him or was on board with Jaxx’s theory. Either way, he didn’t care. He just wanted to get to the truth.

  Jaxx cleared his throat. “I’m not one hundred percent positive that the Atlanteans made these structures on Callisto, but if they did, I’d love to know why they’d make a duplicate of the Great Pyramid of Giza.”

  Shaughnessy rubbed his hands together. “Why?”

  “I mean, how many more clues can they give us?”

  “Clues that they are Atlantean?”

  Jaxx cocked his head to the side. “Whether the people who built this specific pyramid on Callisto were Atlantean or not isn’t what I am getting at. What I’m getting at is that the people who created this pyramid were from Earth and not from another system or planet altogether.” Jaxx gestured toward the screen. “They are giving us clue after clue.”

  Shaughnessy put out his hands, shaking his head. “Uh...can you enlighten me, Atlantis boy?”

  Jaxx shot him a look, then sagged in his chair. Atlantis boy? That must be my nickname. Could be worse. “How many days does it take for Earth to orbit the sun?”

  “365 days.”

  “Almost, but in actuality Earth orbits the sun in 365.24 days, not just 365 days. That’s why we have a leap year. Now, bear with me on this as I explain what I’m getting at here.”

  Shaughnessy gave Jaxx a look, a look Jaxx had seen many times. It said, “don’t geek out on me, dude. Just cut to the damned chase.” It didn’t matter. Jaxx needed Shaughnessy to understand the ins and outs of his theory. He needed to geek out on the details, big time. He took another deep breath and launched into his lecture.

  “The Atlanteans worked with sacred geometry, something lost to our modern-day science. Sacred geometry ascribes symbolic or sacred universal patterns in the design of reality, including mathematics and geometric shapes. That’s how they were able to create the pyramids in pi and phi ratio and sequences, along with creating perfect Pythagorean triangles within these pyramids. No structure on Earth comes close to the way the great pyramids were built. In fact, the blocks they were created from are cut at 1/100th of absolute geometric and mathematical perfection.

  “Everything the Atlanteans did with the creation of pyramids had a reason. And we can see this with this pyramid on Callisto, if it truly is in exact dimension and proportion as the Great Pyramid of Giza. When you measure the Great Pyramid of Giza, you’ll find that all four walls are a total of 36,524 inches in length. 36,524 inches in length correlates with 365.24 days of Earth’s orbit around the sun. This is a hint that the Beings who created this pyramid on Callisto were from Earth and not someplace else.”

  Shaughnessy scratched his chin. “I see. Jupiter and Callisto don’t have the same orbit as Earth. It takes years for Jupiter to do a full orbit around the sun. This is conclusive evidence for you, though?”

  “To me, yes. It’s just another piece to this ever-growing puzzle. In the most simplistic terms, the measurement of the big pyramid on Callisto asks us to look at Earth, not at any other planetary system that we know of. Why else would they replicate the exact dimension of the Great Pyramid of Giza?”

  “Perhaps to look at Earth for the best source of life? I mean, how many habitable planets are out there? Maybe that’s why they built all sides to equal 36,524 inches, to
point to another viable home? It could be that simple.”

  “Perhaps. Or, it could mean a lot more. That’s why we need to keep digging.”

  Slade’s boots clacked as he approached. “Mr. Jaxx, can I see you in the hall?”

  Jaxx leaned slightly away from Slade. “Sure.”

  He followed Slade into the hall and closed the door behind him.

  Slade crossed his arms, chewing loudly. He gave a wink, something he did too often, never mind chewing that gum. “I’m thinking you need some time in the Sendep Unit?”

  Jaxx swallowed. Hostility came from Slade. “What do you mean?”

  Slade crossed his arms, chewing louder. He stood as stoic as possible. “You’re not firing on all cylinders, Jaxx. We need you to rack focus. Time in the tank will help with that.”

  “The tank?”

  “Ye gods. What have I told you about the damned echo? You make me insane. Sendep, Sensory Deprivation. I’ve recommended Donny take you there, before your next session.”

  Slade was a mess of contradictions. He wanted something from him, but resented him for it. Still, Jaxx was buggered if he knew what it was Slade wanted. “What do you think I’ll uncover?”

  Slade shrugged. “You’re on a path, Jaxx. An important path. You know more than you think you know and I want to help you dig into it. Look at it as mental archeology. You’re a gold mine. We’re teaching you how to mine that gold. You’re meeting Donny at 0400 hours. Do not be late.” Slade turned on his heel, in his usual military manner, and strode away.

  “Did you or did you not plant those memories in my brain? I mean, the Secret Space Program?”

  Slade turned and squinted at Jaxx. “Yeah. We did plant those memories. It’s all part of the plan. The memories are fixed in your mind via a technology tool we use during the session.”

  Jaxx held up a hand, requesting permission to speak.

  “Don’t ask me to explain how it works. It’s not my area of expertise.” Slade looked everywhere but in Jaxx’s eyes. “When you go through those sessions, the installed memories help with uncovering more information about you.” He folded his hands behind his back and raised his chin high, chest out and held his body away from Jaxx. “I’m sorry we didn’t tell you from the beginning.”