by A. G. Riddle
David panted and stared up at the clouds on the balloon. He hoped that somewhere below them, Milo was sitting at the top of the mountain, safe, and that someday, somewhere, he would find the stillness within.
PART III:
THE TOMBS OF ATLANTIS
CHAPTER 97
After Kate had finished repairing David’s bandages, she crawled to the other side of the balloon and slumped against the basket wall. For a long time, they simply floated through the air, feeling the breeze on their faces, staring at the snow capped mountains and green plateau below. Neither said a word. Kate’s muscles burned from the exertion of pulling him into the basket.
David finally broke the silence. “Kate.”
“I want to finish the journal.” She drew the small leather bound book out of the sack with the medical supplies. “Then we can make plans. Ok?”
David nodded, then leaned his head back against the basket and listened as Kate read the last few pages.
February 4th, 1919
One year after I awoke in the tube…
The world is dying. And we killed it.
I sit at the table with Kane and Craig, listening to the statistics like they were the odds for a horse race. The Spanish Flu (that’s what we’ve sold the world on, how we’ve “branded” the pandemic) has moved to every country in the world. Only a few islands have been spared. It’s killed countless millions so far. It kills the strong, sparing the weak, unlike any other flu epidemic.
Craig talks at length, using more words than the information deserves. The long and short is that no one has found a vaccine, and of course the Immari don’t expect they will. But they think they can still sell it as the flu. That’s the “good news,” Craig announces.
And there’s more of it. Overall the mood and assessment has turned optimistic: the human race will survive, but the losses will be intense. 2-5% of the total human population, somewhere between 36-90 million people are expected to die from this plague we unleashed. Around 1 billion will be infected. They estimate the current total human population at 1.8 billion, so “not a bad shake” are the words. Islands offer good protection, but the reality is that people are scared, and the whole world is holed up, avoiding anyone who might be infected. Estimates from the war are around 10 million dead. The plague, or Spanish Flu rather, will kill 4-10 times more people than the war. Of course hiding it is a problem. The war and outbreak combined, roughly 50-100 million people, gone.
But I only think of one. Why she died and I lived? I am a shell. But I hold on for one reason.
Kane looks at me with cold, wicked eyes, and I stare back. He demands my report, and I speak slowly, in a lifeless, absent tone.
I report that we’ve excavated the area around the artifact. “Weapon,” he corrects. I ignore him. I offer my opinion: once we disconnect it, we can move inside the structure. They ask questions, and I answer robotically.
There’s talk of the war ending, of the press focusing on the epidemic, but of course, there are plans for that.
There’s talk of doctors in America studying the virus, talk that they might discover that it’s something else. Craig placates, as always. He has the situation well in hand, he assures everyone. He claims that the virus seems to be winding itself down, like a forest fire that has almost run its course. With the pandemic waning, he believes research interest will follow.
The working theory is that this doomsday plague grows weaker with retransmission. The people in the tunnels were killed instantly. The people who found them got sick and followed shortly after, and so on. Anyone infected at this point is likely five or six transmissions away from Gibraltar; hence the climbing survival rates. There have been two subsequent waves of outbreak. We believe both were caused by early-infection bodies from Gibraltar or Spain reaching high-population areas.
I argue that we should go public, trace anyone who left Gibraltar. Kane disagrees. “Everyone dies, Pierce. Surely I don’t have to remind you of that. Their deaths serve a purpose. We learn more every time a wave of infection occurs.” We shout at each other until we’re both hoarse. I can’t even remember what I said. It doesn’t matter. Kane controls the organization. And I can’t afford to cross him.
October 12, 1938
Almost twenty years have passed since my last entry. It’s a long lapse, but don’t think nothing has happened. Understand me.
I started this journal as a respite from the dark desperation of being a wounded man in a helpless place. A way to sort through my own despair, an avenue of reflection. Then it became a testament to what I believed to be some conspiracy. But when you watch the thing you love the most in the world die, a victim of something you unknowingly unleashed, the product of a deal you made for her hand, the sum of your whole life reduced to a burning coal in the palm of your hand… it’s hard to pick up a pen and write about a life you think no longer matters.
And deeds you’re ashamed of. That’s what followed the day in that tent.
But things have gone far enough. Too far. This is the end of the road for me. I can’t be a party to genocide, but I also can’t stop it. I hope you can.
Since my last entry, the following has transpired:
The Device:
We call it the Bell, or for Kane and his German cronies, Die Glocke. Kane is convinced it’s a super weapon and that it will either kill the entire human race or cause a rapture, leaving the genetically superior and killing anyone who might be a threat to this chosen race. He’s become obsessed with his racial theories, the pursuit of this master race that can survive the coming apocalypse, the machine. Conveniently, he believes he’s a member of this supreme race. The research efforts have focused on how to create this master race in a controlled fashion, before the supposed Atlantean attack. Since they extracted the Bell, I’ve been marginalized, but I still hear things. He has taken the Bell back to Germany to conduct experiments near Dachau. The situation is desperate in his Fatherland, with widespread famine and dangerously high unemployment. The government there is easy to manipulate. He’s taken full advantage.
The Immaru:
I’ve learned more about the history of the Immari and their sister faction, the Immaru. At some point in antiquity, the Immari and the Immaru were one group, presumably as recently as the time of the Sumerians, the first written history we have. In Sumerian Mythology, Immaru simply means ‘the light.’ Kane believes the Immaru have known about the device and the fate of the human race for thousands of years, since before the flood. His theory is that the Immari, his people, were a group of Immaru rebels who believed man could be saved, but they couldn’t convince their fellow members of this super race. According to Kane’s history, his Immari ancestors forsook their own safety to journey out of the Aryan homeland into Europe where they believed they would find the ruins of Atlantis that Plato wrote about, and with it, the keys to humanity’s salvation.
When he announced this revisionist history, I asked him flatly why this wasn’t revealed to the Immari earlier; after all, it seems like helpful historical facts. He lectured me condescendingly, something about “heavy is the head that wears the crown” and “knowing we alone stood between humanity and annihilation would have destroyed us. Our ancestors were wise. They spared us the weight of our actions, so that we could focus on finding the truth and acting to save the world.”
It’s hard to argue with a maniac who grows more immortal and important by the day.
Kane’s Expeditions:
Kane has sent expeditions to every region of the Asian highlands: Tibet, Nepal, and Northern India. He’s convinced the Immaru are there, hiding, sitting on secrets that can deliver us from the coming end of days.
He insists that these Immaru will reside in a cold climate, a highland. He points out that the Nordic peoples of Europe have long dominated the continent because of their connection to the original Immaru bloodline, which flourishes in cold, icy environments. He brushed aside my mention of the advanced Roman and Greek civilizations, in their balmy
southern European climate. “Artifacts of genetic gifts bestowed by the Immari as they journeyed to the North, seeking Atlantis and their natural, preferred habitat,” he said. He insists that this “Atlantis Gene” which bestowed all humanity’s gifts, a genetic heritage most concentrated in the Immari, must be connected to cold weather. From there, he’s postulated that the rest of the Atlantean race must be out there somewhere, in the cold, hibernating, waiting to retake the planet.
As such, he’s become obsessed with Antarctica. He’s sent an expedition there as well, but no word has come yet. He plans to follow-up personally, in a super sub he’s building at a shipyard in Northern Germany. I’ve tried desperately to find out its location, hoping I could plant a bomb on it, but I’ve heard that the sub is nearing completion and that he will soon sail for the far east to dispense with the Immaru once and for all, before turning south for Antarctica to find the Atlantis Capital. It’s quite a plan.
I had hoped his absence would provide an opening, that I could take control of Immari in his absence, but he’s accounted for that as well. I’ll soon be out of the picture, more or less permanently. So, I’ve made other plans.
I’ve convinced a soldier in the expedition to carry this journal to you, assuming Kane even finds the Immaru, and that the soldier keeps his promise. If he’s caught with it, it’s a death sentence for him (and me).
A Chamber of Curiosities:
There’s one final thing I wish to tell you. I’ve found something. A chamber of some kind, deep inside the ruins at Gibraltar. I believe it holds the key to understanding the structure and possibly the Atlanteans. The technology here is advanced — dangerous in the wrong hands. I have gone to great lengths to keep it from Kane. I’m enclosing a map to the chamber, which I’ve hidden behind a false wall. Hurry.
Kate unfolded the delicate yellow page with the map, studied it for a few moments, then placed it back inside the journal. “It was the same device — the Bell — in China. They used it on me, on hundreds of people. That’s what they’re doing, trying to find a genetic key that will impart immunity to the device. All my research, all the Immari research into genetics has been about this one end: finding the Atlantis Gene. All Martin’s lies, my whole life… they used me.”
David gazed out of the basket at the mountains and forest flowing by below. “Well I’m glad they did.”
Kate focused on him.
David looked her in the eyes. “It could have been someone else. Someone who wasn’t as strong. Or as smart. You can figure this out, and you can still stop them.”
“I don’t see—”
“Let’s just go through what we know. Let’s just lay all the pieces of the puzzle out there and see what fits together. Ok?” When Kate nodded, David continued. “Back at the monastery, I said I knew what the Bell was. It’s an old World War II legend. Conspiracy theorists still talk about it — Die Glocke, or the Bell. They say it was an advanced Nazi weapons project, or possibly a breakthrough energy source. The theories get wilder from there. Everything from anti-gravity to time travel. But if it caused the Spanish Flu in 1918, and bodies from China got out—”
“It would be another pandemic, this one much worse than Spanish Flu, or the 1918 flu pandemic as it’s now known.”
“I mean, is that possible?” David said. “Are the Immari statistics even right? How could we not have a vaccine for something that killed 2-5% of the population?”
“We studied Spanish Flu in medical school. Their stats are right, or close. We think Spanish Flu killed between 50-100 million — so about 4% of the total global population—”
“It would be like…280 million dying today — the entire population of the United States. Surely they have a vaccine. And how could the Immari hide this — or sell it as the flu?”
“At first, doctors didn’t think it was the flu. It was initially misdiagnosed as dengue, cholera, or typhoid — mostly because the symptoms were very… distinctly un-flu-like. Patients had hemorrhages from mucous membranes, especially from the nose, stomach, and intestines, even bleeding from the skin and ears.” Kate thought back to the dark room with the Bell hanging over the cowering crowd, of the bleeding bodies. She had to focus. “Anyway, of all the flu strains in the world, it’s still the least understood — and the most deadly. There is no vaccine. Spanish flu essentially caused the body to self-destruct; it killed through a cytokine storm — the body’s own immune system ravaged it. Most flu strains are devastating for people with weak immune systems — children and the elderly. That’s why we vaccinate — to boost the immune system. Spanish flu was fundamentally different. It killed people with strong immune systems. The stronger the person’s immune system was, the worse the cytokine storm was. It was deadly for people aged 25-34.”
“It’s almost like it killed anyone who could be a threat. No wonder the Immari think it’s a weapon,” David said. “But why unleash it? The world wouldn’t stand a chance. In 1918, at the end of World War I, borders were sealed everywhere, the whole world had ground to a halt. Think about how connected we are today, a similar outbreak would wipe us out in days. If what you say is true, the contagion has already left China and is scouring the world as we speak. Why would they do it?”
“Maybe they don’t have a choice.”
“There’s always a cho—”
“In their minds,” Kate said. “Just based on the thinking in the journal, I have a couple of theories. I think they’ve been looking for the Atlantis Gene so that they can survive the device. That’s why they wanted to know what I did to the kids, why they kidnapped them. They must be out of time.”
“The satellite photo — with the codes on the back. It had a sub in the middle.”
“Kane’s sub,” Kate said.
“I bet so. And there was a structure below it. We know they’ve been looking for the sub since 1947 — the obituary in The New York Times decoded to: Antarctica, U-boat not found, advise if further search authorized. So they finally found the sub, and under it, another Atlantis City — a threat.” David shook his head. “But I still don’t get it, the science, why unleash another pandemic?”
“I think the bodies from the Bell are Toba Protocol. It seems that direct contact with the Bell is the most deadly, but there’s only one Bell, or was only one. Maybe they’re going to distribute the bodies around the world. The subsequent outbreak would reduce the world’s population drastically, to only those that could survive the Bell, to anyone with the Atlantis Gene.”
“Yes, but why — aren’t there better ways? Couldn’t they, I don’t know, sequence a bunch of genomes or steal some data and find these people?”
“No, or maybe. You could probably identify people with the Atlantis Gene, but there’s a missing piece: epigenetics and gene activation.”
“Epi—”
“It’s sort of complicated, but the bottom line is that it’s not just what genes you have, it’s what genes get activated, as well as how those genes interact with each other. The plague conceivably would cause a second Great Leap Forward by activating the Atlantis Gene in anyone who has it. Or maybe it’s something else entirely, maybe the plague will reduce the population and force us to mutate or evolve, just like the Toba Catastrophe did…” Kate rubbed her temples. There was something else, some other piece, just out of reach. The conversation with Qian flashed through her mind: the tapestry, the flood of fire, the dying band of humans cowering under the blanket of ashes… the savior… offering a cup with his blood, and the beasts of the forest emerging as modern humans. “I think we’re missing something.”
“You think—”
“What if the first Great Leap Forward wasn’t a natural occurrence? What if it wasn’t evolution at all? What if humanity was on the brink of extinction and the Atlanteans came to our rescue? What if the Atlanteans gave that dying band of humans something that would help them survive Toba? A gene, a genetic advantage that made them smart enough to survive. A change in brain wiring. What if they gave us the Atlantis Gen
e?”
CHAPTER 98
David looked around as if deciding what to say. Finally he opened his mouth to speak, but Kate held up her hand.
“I know it sounds crazy, ok, but just hear me out, let me talk through this. It’s not like we’re going anywhere for a while.” She motioned to the basket and the balloon above it.
“Fair enough, but I’m warning you, I’m out of my element here. I’m not sure how much help I can be.”
“Just tell me when it starts sounding too crazy.”
“Is that retro-active? Because what you just said—”
“Ok, actually, you just listen for a while, then call me out on any craziness. Here are the facts: around 70,000 years ago, the Mount Toba Supervolcano erupts. There’s a global volcanic winter that lasts 6-10 years and possibly a 1,000-year-long cooling episode. Ash blankets Southern Asia and Africa. The total human population plummets to 3,000-10,000, maybe even as low as 1,000 viable mating pairs.”
“Alright, that’s true, I can confirm its non-craziness.”
“Because I told you about the Toba Catastrophe in Jakarta.”
David held up his hands. “Hey, just trying to be helpful here.”
Kate remembered her own reaction and her words to David in the van days ago, what felt like a lifetime ago. “Very funny. Anyway, the reduction in population caused a genetic bottleneck around that time. We know that every human on the planet is descended from an extremely small population, between 1,000 to 10,000 breeding pairs that existed about 70,000 years ago. Every human outside of Africa is descended from a small tribe that left around 50,000 years ago with as few as 100 people. In fact, every human alive today is directly descended from a man who lived in Africa 60,000 years ago.”
“Adam?”
“Actually we call him Y-chromosomal Adam, since we’re scientists. There’s an Eve too — Mitochondrial Eve, but she lived much earlier, we think about 190,000-200,000 years ago—”
“Time travelers? Am I still calling out the craz—”
“Not time travelers, thank you very much. They are just genetic designations of the people everyone on earth is directly descended from. It’s complicated, but the bottom line is that this Adam had a huge advantage — his offspring were far more advanced than any of their peers.”
“They had the Atlantis Gene.”
“For now, we’ll stick to the facts — they had some kind of advantage, whatever it was. By around 50,000 years ago, the human race is beginning to behave differently. There’s an explosion in complex behavior: language, tool making, wall art. It’s the greatest advancement in human history — what we call the Great Leap Forward. In looking at the fossils of humans before and after, there’s not a ton of difference. There’s also not much difference in their genomes. About all we know is that it was a subtle genetic change that caused a difference in the way we thought, possibly a change in our brain wiring.”
“The Atlantis Gene.”
“Whatever it was, this change in brain wiring, it was the greatest genetic jackpot in the history of time. The human race goes from the brink of extinction — less than 10,000 people, from hunting and gathering in the wilderness, to ruling the planet, with over seven billion people, in the span of 50,000 years. That’s the blink of an eye in evolutionary terms. It’s an extraordinary comeback, almost hard to believe for a geneticist. I mean, 12% of all the humans who have ever lived are still alive today. We only evolved around 200,000 years ago. We’re still riding a mushroom cloud of the effects of the Great Leap Forward, and we have no idea how it happened or where it will lead.”
“Yeah, but why us, why did we get so lucky? There were other human species around, right? The Neanderthals, the— I can’t remember what you called them; what about them? If the Atlanteans came to our rescue, why not help the others?”
“I have a theory. We know there were at least four subspecies of humans 50,000 years ago — us, or Anatomically Modern Humans, Neanderthals, Denisovans, and Homo floresiensis, or Hobbits. There were probably more that we haven’t found, but those are the four subspecies—”
“Subspecies?” David said.
“Yes. Technically they’re subspecies; they were all humans. We define a species as a group of organisms capable of interbreeding and producing fertile offspring, and all four of those human groups could interbreed, in fact, we have genetic evidence that they did interbreed. When we sequenced the Neanderthal genome a few years ago, we discovered that everyone outside of Africa has somewhere between 1-4% Neanderthal DNA. It was most pronounced in Europe — the Neanderthal homeland. We found the same thing when we sequenced the Denisovan genome. Some people in Melanesia, and especially Papua New Guinea, share up to 6% of their genome with the Denisovans.”
“Interesting. So we’re all hybrids?”
“Yes, technically.”
“So we absorbed the other subspecies into a combined human race?”
“No. Well, a small percentage maybe, but the archaeological evidence suggests the four groups survived as separate subspecies. I think the other subspecies didn’t receive the Atlantis Gene because they didn’t need it.”
“They—”
“Weren’t on the brink of extinction,” Kate said. “We think Neanderthals existed in Europe as early as 600,000-350,000 years ago. All the other subspecies are also older than we are; they probably had larger populations. And — they were out of the blast radius of Toba — the Neanderthals were in Europe, the Denisovans were in present-day Russia, and the Hobbits were in Southeast Asia — farther away
