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Authors: Stel Pavlou

BOOK: Decipher
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All across the earth, hidden Carbon 60 tunnels and structures, resonant to specific frequencies of energy, began kicking into action like magnets and drawing in the residual energy left over from the quasicrystallization process.
Slowly, the seas began to froth and the rivers to flow once more. The air began to move and creatures within the biosphere that was planet Earth were able to move freely again. But it was by no means a return to normality—merely an accommodation for the next stage of the process. A process that began in Atlantis.
 
The shimmering vortex-like wall of water that had reared up from the outer canal and swept around encapsulating the entire inner city in a shimmering cycloid suddenly lost cohesion and collapsed back down into the canal in a massive explosion of water. Buildings within Atlantis which had remained dark up until now, suddenly lit up and crackled with new energy. Energy which seemed to be drawn from the very ground itself and frazzled through the Atlantis system until it shot up the seven incredible towers and arced down onto the central pyramid.
The pyramid sparked and hissed as the mass of fiery power seethed and convulsed across its surface. Like so many snakes that had been set ablaze it shuddered until its final act was for the power to merge and become one vast energy column which, like the plasma twister that had come
before it, was sent blasting back up into space. Blasted, through the very hole in which the initial twister had arrived.
Meanwhile, around the periphery of the city, any energy that could not be expelled this way was rerouted and sent down into tunnels that connected back into the very network that had been used to quasicrystallize the planet.
 
Across the earth, incredible lightning-fast tubes of energy started to crisscross at seemingly random points. The waters had parted and created gigantic hollows through which these ferocious tongues of fire were traveling.
Soon the entire globe appeared as if it had been wrapped up in some gigantic blazing ribbon. For this was the invisible network that had once carried nothing but sound waves; and was now laid bare, serving as a conduit for pure undiluted power. This was the Atlantis Network performing its final task.
Off the coast of Yonaguni, a small Japanese island, a huge underwater monument constructed in around 10,000 B.C. when the ocean levels were much lower, suddenly lit up. Its six-story-high, great pyramid-length body began to shudder. The enormous channels cut into its stonework in perfectly straight lines, which needed laser sights to accomplish their construction, began to fill with the energy, channel it and store it. While above the monument a vortex in the water began to rotate and open up until air touched the monument for the first time in millennia.
Within micro-seconds, the energy crackling across the surface of the monument coalesced and became one almighty thunderous pillar of fire that shot up into the sky.
Following the principle that the amount of energy pumped into the earth's system to perform quasicrystallization needed to be conducted away again lest the earth be destroyed—so the second of close to a thousand great energy release valves swung gloriously into operation. The principle was as ancient as the earth itself, for it was a little-known fact that lightning, far from being a strike sent down from the heavens, actually began life on the ground. Lightning journeyed
up.
The sight was awe-inspiring and faultless in its execution.
It was a different story elsewhere.
 
 
In Mexico stood one of the world's tallest active volcanoes. El Popo, or Popocatépetl, was 17,802 feet high and expelled hot gases, rocks and ash which regularly mixed with rain and glacial melt water to form lethal mudflows. The Nahuatl name for this volcano was
zencapopocz—
“always smoking.” And throughout the solar crisis El Popo had more than lived up to its name.
Which left the priests at the Catholic church at the foot of this volcano in somewhat of a dilemma, for their church was built on top of a pre-Hispanic pyramid which sat next to it. Little was known about Tlachihualtépetl, or “manmade mountain,” except that right now it was one of the best places to be to avoid dying in a mudflow. So the villagers had raced up for shelter, but there was little room for them. And fearing for their own safety in all the panic preceding the quasicrystallization process, the priests had only allowed inside its walls the mayor, the bankers and the movers and shakers of the surrounding region.
They were all dead inside ten seconds.
However, the villagers camped outside the church for their own safety, and who were still caught in this peculiar stasis effect, were suddenly released from its hold as reality sped back up to real time. At which point the ground continued to shake once more. Electricity filled the air, making their hair stand on end.
And the Catholic church exploded.
A pillar of livid flame shot out the top of Tlachihualtépetl, obliterating the building that stood in its path.
The villagers dived for cover, for they had had, as it turned out, the luckiest of escapes.
All across South and Central America, where Catholic churches had been built atop monuments of the past, the buildings were either torched or vaporized as release valve after release valve expelled excess energy up into space.
The eight pyramids of Pini Pini shot columns of energy out from the rainforest, as did the submerged structures of Bimini. The Pyramid of the Moon too, along with The Pyramid of the Sun and The Pyramid of the Feathered Serpent also launched three incredible blasts of raw power up into space. The three pyramids of the ancient site of Teotihuacan
in Central Mexico were significant too because when seen from the air they were laid out in the shape of the belt in the constellation of Orion, matching exactly the same building placement as the three great pyramids of Giza, in Egypt, which also blew out streaks of energy up into space.
 
In Orlando, Florida, where a Wal-Mart had been inadvertently built over an ancient Native American burial mound, the entire home fixtures and furnishings section was suddenly obliterated as it found it was sitting atop an ancient release valve. The column of energy that was unleashed was so powerful it sent many of those fixtures hurtling up into the air with it. Reports came in for weeks afterward of toilet cisterns being found in fields as far away as Gainesville.
Across Europe, Saxon burial mounds were suddenly rolling with energy and expelling pillars of flame. In the county of Kent, in southern England, Kits Coty, an ancient site on the side of a chalk cliff, obscured by trees and a freeway, suddenly exploded into activity, causing half the cliff to break away as it spewed out its fiery tongue.
Release valves exploded into action at the Arctic, across the Pacific at Angkor Wat, across Africa and the Middle East. Columns of fire were seen shooting into the sky in India, Pakistan, and across the ancient sites of China.
For several minutes around the globe, vast fiery tongues of energy were blasted into space as the quasicrystallization process dissipated and then, as suddenly as it had started, the whole process stopped.
The ancient monuments fell silent.
 
There was no more.
The earth was safe.
The rest of the solar system would have to take care of itself.
Internal analysis of glyph sequences will reveal patterns of glyph distribution and thereby structure, from which the nature of the language can be discerned. In doing this one learns the thought processes and logic of the society and people from whence the language came. The inevitable consequence is that all matters in a people's history will fall neatly into place.
 
Richard Scott, Linguistic Anthropologist and Epigraphist, 1970—2012
Gant sucked in a huge lungful of particulate air as Maple's hand, which was clamped around his throat, suddenly turned to dust along with the rest of his automaton body.
Moments later a whole wave of decay swept through the entire area as every single nanoswarm effigy was reduced to so much sand.
The light that had so characterized Atlantis suddenly shimmered and went out, leaving them in darkness. They glanced up at the pyramid above them, now lifeless, like the rest of the city. Its twinkling life-force gone, its stellar lifeblood all dried up.
Atlantis had returned to its slumber.
November looked around. With the only illumination coming from the dying red embers of a retreating, calming volcano it was difficult to make out where to go, so she turned her flashlight on. It cut through the dust that clung in the air, like a beacon from a car headlight on a foggy night, before suddenly dipping and fizzling out. She smacked it a couple of times as the iceberg they were all perched on bobbed lazily in the water, but the device refused to work.
She resorted to shouting: “Bob!” Indeed, they each called out his name one at a time, but were only met with silence.
Soon they emerged out from under the pyramid and watched as some of those spectacular cathedral-sized stalactites broke off into the water and bobbed up and down after splashing down. Some rolled onto their sides like logs, while others remained flat side up.
And as the iceberg floated up the slope of the pyramid as the water level rose steadily, they all realized that unless they found Pearce soon, he would surely die. For the cavern walls were narrowing. The breathable air pocket was reducing. Soon, there would be nowhere else for all the ice and water to go except back up the massive hole through which the plasma twister from space, not long dissipated, had come down in the first place.
“Bob!” November yelled, refusing to give up. She sat on the edge and looked down at the pyramid below as slowly, very slowly, its slanted features slipped under icy waters once again.
And it was once the pinnacle of the pyramid was completely submerged that November noticed the faint sparkle under the water. It started off as a slight shimmer which she thought might be an optical illusion or her eyes playing tricks.
But her eyes were not playing tricks.
Faint traces of crackling energy sparked around the pyramid before growing in intensity and finally coalescing into some kind of will-o'-the-wisp. It was a face, she realized, peering up at her from the confines of the pyramid. November shifted excitedly, rocking the iceberg.
“Easy!” Gant cautioned.
“Look!” November exclaimed. “It's Dr. Scott!”
And sure enough, down in the dark, murky depths of the waters below there had appeared a face, pale and blue and ghostly, like the souls of the
Var
. Richard Scott had indeed appeared as if to bid them farewell. Sarah came up beside him, followed by another face. Then another. Thousands of faces. Millions. Each one a twinkle, a sparkle in a cascade until suddenly, seconds later, the entire city lit up one last time far, far beneath them, like a massive floodlight.
And it was only because the city did this that they were all suddenly able to spot Bob Pearce, unconscious and floating up toward them.
 
“Quick, quick! Give him air!” November shouted once they had dragged the slippery CIA agent up onto the ice platform.
But Gant did more than that. He cleared Pearce's airway first, before checking for a pulse and massaging his heart and giving him mouth to mouth.
A steady stream of water and bile sprang up out of Pearce's mouth like a whale's blowhole when it was surfacing. He convulsed in chokes as he rolled onto his side and spewed some more while gasping for air.
“Let me guess,” Hackett deadpanned. “You almost preferred getting shot.”
Pearce said in between retches, “Where am I?”
“On an iceberg,” the Major explained.
“In trouble,” Matheson added hastily.
“So what's new?” Pearce grumbled as he tried to sit up. But the problem was obvious. There was no room for all the ice.
The icebergs were bunching together. Compacting. Vying for the best position as they jostled around the ceiling of the ice cavern. About twenty or thirty feet away, the best candidate for being pushed up the shaft to the surface was already being squeezed up and out of the water. Its flat top surface was already clear by a couple of feet and rising sharply.
“We better leapfrog over there,” Gant commanded.
They set to, jumping from iceberg to iceberg, the buoyant if unstable surfaces wobbling underfoot as they went. One by one they clambered up onto the steadily rising platform. But by the time it was Hackett's turn the iceberg had reared so far up out of the water, the top was up near his chin.
He had to jump. He scrambled to get on board but the sharp movement merely helped force the ice he was standing on, down, deeper into the water.
It was like trying to clamber onto an elevator that was stuck in its shaft with the doors open as the iceberg, crushed together with many others, started sliding up into the ice shaft leading to the surface.
The others rushed to help him, thrusting out their hands. “C'mon! Just grab a hold, we'll pull you up!” But it was easier said than done. Hackett's feet kept slipping on the frictionless ice as he panicked in his attempt to get up.
The ice lurched as the water pressure below started to build.
“C'mon!”
Hackett jumped again, desperate. Grabbed on, and this time he was pulled to safety. But his legs were still out over the side as the ice once again shuddered under the onslaught of building water pressure.
He snatched them in quickly as the iceberg lurched violently and sped up the inside of the ice shaft.
 
About a mile and a half above them was daylight, while all around them, the constantly compacting, constantly evolving ice shelf groaned with the strain as the pressure built below.
They all moved to the center of the ice on instinct as the sides began to scream in that deathly awful screech that only massive amounts of ice can make when rubbed together. Their berg lurched again, the sides of the shaft crumbling as the compacted ice mass shot up the hole a further ten feet.
There followed another lurch. Then another. It was like being inside an elevator that was dangling from its fraying cable, but in reverse, for there was no fear of falling here, only rising. Like ants stuck on the end of a champagne cork, it was only a matter of waiting until it went—
Pop!
All five of them were knocked to the ground as the G-forces kicked in. Bang! Gant twisted his head to see a vast boulder of ice explode on impact as it landed next to him. He faced the shaft and looked up, only to realize that the way ahead was as crumbling and unstable as the cavern had been.
Bang!
Another solid mass of ice impacted next to him. And there were many more on the way. As each projectile made contact, every second felt like a minute. Every minute felt like an hour as they rocketed toward the top until—
The ice platform jerked to a halt.
The ice had wedged again, only a few feet from the surface.
 
They all stared up at the powder-blue sky and caught their breath. Laid out on their backs they knew they should move but were simply too petrified to do so.
But as they lay there, a series of faces began to peer in all around the rim of the ice shaft.
Soldiers.
On instinct, every surviving member of the Antarctic Team raised their hands in submission, but were surprised to find the soldiers tossing down ropes.
Gant was cautious. “Are you American?” he asked.
“And Chinese,” came the reply. “I'd hurry if I were you. I think that thing you're on is gonna blow.”
They didn't need telling twice. But as they got to their feet and the ice plug lurched again, Hackett realized the motion had changed.
The ice had started falling back down the shaft.
“I think a vacuum's built up underneath. This thing's gonna follow the tide.” There were questioning looks. “Forget it,” he said. “We just need to get out of here.”
The ice lurched again, falling a couple of feet.
“I see your point,” Gant snapped, grabbing one of the ropes and starting his ascent.
They all followed suit, all started climbing, and just in time, for behind them the compacted ice plug began steadily slipping away until it fell back into the shaft at least a hundred feet.
 
There was a whistling noise, just like the sound of an incoming shell as the Antarctic Team gathered their wits about them on the surface.
“Look out!” came the warning cry. “Here comes another one!”
Everyone dived for cover as a charred-looking Tomahawk cruise missile fell out of the sky and crashed across the ice, fortunately failing to explode.
“What the hell's going on around here?” Gant demanded as he got to his feet. He was referring to the fact that the Chinese and American forces were, for the most part, standing around and chatting.
“Some kind of electromagnetic pulse shorted out most electronic equipment in a fifty-mile radius,” the young lieutenant explained. “We got all sorts of stuff falling from the sky. Got just one working radio. We sure as hell can't fight a war … sir.”
There were units of army men all over the massive crater that had been
Jung Chang
before the ground beneath it imploded. And as they all surveyed their situation, another young soldier rushed over to them brandishing that only working radio.
“You gotta Professor Scott in your party?”
The team eyed each other, subdued. “He couldn't make it,” Hackett offered.
“Pity. Admiral Dower wanted to congratulate him personally.”
The team remained tight-lipped and headed for the nearest transport vehicle. Behind them they left a horde of soldiers as confused and astounded by recent events as they were, and who were watching the ice shaft in anticipation as the ground shook all around them.
“It's gonna blow!” came the cries.
 
And they were right.
There were going to be plagues.
Of locusts, flies, mosquitoes—and of diseases. There were going to be all manner of plagues.
It was an inevitable consequence of the scarring across planet Earth. Of the devastation wrought by severe volcanic activity in so many areas that entire stretches of lush farmland the size of small countries had been decimated. Food supplies had dwindled and as a result insect populations were predisposed to band together and swarm. In the past they had been known to attack even sleeping babies in their cribs when volcanoes had caused merely minor damage, just to control the food supply. There was every reason to believe the situation would be on a much larger scale in this instance.
On a much more Biblical scale.
And no machine the size of Atlantis could stop that.
Everyone aboard the Seahawk helicopter knew that it was going to take time for mankind to regroup and rebuild.
 
It was a peculiar sight to see the massed armies of two such bitterly opposing nations simply pack and go home. But there they were—American and Chinese soldiers, engaged in helping each other stow their belongings. It was a far cry from the time when they were prepared to unleash such a formidable arsenal against each other that any damage the sun might have caused would have been inconsequential by comparison.
The earth was experiencing a period of change.
Hackett watched all this and checked his watch. Habit, he guessed, by now. It was a real rugged out-of-doors type of affair with a compass on it which he rarely used. There was little chance of getting lost on the way to the bar, after all.
But something about the way the needle was pointing made him smile.
The engineers on board the chopper had been complaining about navigational and technical errors on all electronic equipment in the fleet. They'd put it down to the final electromagnetic pulse blasted out by Atlantis—something akin
to the detonation of a nuclear warhead. But Hackett knew different, probably because he was the only one who had thought to look.
The physicist looked out the window and in his best formal impersonation of Scott, said: “Galaxy, from the Greek ‘galaxos' meaning milk. The Milky Way …”
Pearce pulled the thick blue blanket tight around his shoulders as he nursed a hot chocolate, looked over at Matheson and November and knew they had cocked their ears to listen.
“I read about this guy,” Hackett said, “William Tifft. Worked out of the University of Arizona until a couple years ago. For over a quarter of a century he studied the red-shift of galaxies. Y'know what red-shift is, right?”
“No clue,” Matheson yawned.
“If a bright object is moving away from us,” the physicist explained, “it will appear to be a little more red-colored. If it's coming toward us it will turn a little more blue-colored. Blue-shift and red-shift. Tifft was studying the red-shift of stars and galaxies. And because of the Big Bang, the degree to which an object is red-shifting, in other words how fast those objects are moving away from us, should be random.”
“Here comes the but,” November sighed.
“But they're not,” Hackett confirmed, unperturbed. “Tifft discovered that, depending on the type of galaxy, you got a different kind of red-shift reading even if it was in the same part of the sky. Spiral galaxies seemed to have a higher red-shift than elliptical galaxies. And the increase seemed to go up in quantum-leaps. Specifically, forty-five miles per second. Galactic red-shifts are quantized like the energy states in an atom.”
Gant rubbed his face and ripped his hat off his head from where he'd been trying to get some sleep. “So what?” he barked. “Who gives a shit?”
Hackett seemed genuinely hurt. “
I
give a shit. Do you know what that kind of information means? It means the universe
isn't
expanding. So it means there was no Big Bang. It means the entire wealth of twentieth-century cosmology can be tossed in the trash. If it ain't random, then it weren't a bang. There's order in the chaos. Complex, but it's there. And if there was no Big Bang, where did this whole
universe thing come from? You gonna tell me, from God? There is no God, I thought we just proved that. It was a myth created to save all our asses.”
“What the hell has that got to do with anything?” Matheson wanted to know. “What's the point?”
“There is no point,” Hackett sighed. “Not in the kind of sense you mean. It's just, all I'm trying to say is … maybe we all need to get used to the idea that there are going to be a few changes around here from now on. Everything we've taken for granted our whole lives will be different now. It always was different—we just couldn't see it. But now we have proof …”
He sat up. Eyed his friends in the 'copter. Tapped the watch on his wrist. “This thing is a compass too,” he said. “And right now it's pointing due north.”
“So?”
“So …? It's pointing due north—
back in the direction we just came from.
North is now at the South Pole.”
The others were surprised, and about all they could manage was a smile.
“Sarah said the Poles shifted every now and then—completely swapped over. The last time was in 10,400 B.C.—about twelve thousand years ago. It's a geological fact,” November added.
“Sarah said a lot of things,” Matheson said. “She was like that.”
Pearce held up his solitary cup of hot chocolate in a toast. “To Richard and Sarah,” he said.
Exhausted, what remained of the team quietly went back to looking out the window.
It was Easter Sunday, Hackett realized. The ancient festival dating from way back before the time of Christ, symbolizing death, sacrifice and renewal.
Might be nice to try and get an egg, he thought.
 
It had taken them the best part of a day to reach McMurdo again. And several hours to refuel the Seahawk.
As they flew low over McMurdo, off toward the waiting aircraft-carrier
Truman
, a little red speck, the ice-breaker
Polar Star
had just arrived in the bay.
She was late. If they had stayed aboard her there was no
doubting they would never have made it. But despite that, in an effort that mirrored the human spirit, unstoppable in the face of insurmountable odds, it was still a comfort to see her majestic bright red bow ride up on the pack ice and crush down on it—forging a new path ahead.

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