Decipher (41 page)

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Authors: Stel Pavlou

BOOK: Decipher
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We live in a universe of patterns. Every night the stars move in circles across the sky. The seasons cycle at yearly intervals. No two snowflakes are ever exactly the same, but they all have sixfold symmetry. Tigers and zebras are covered in patterns of stripes; leopards and hyenas are covered in patterns of spots. Intricate trains of waves march across the oceans; very similar trains of sand dunes march across the desert … By using mathematics … we have discovered a great secret: nature's patterns are not just there to be admired, they are vital clues to the rules that govern natural processes.
 
Ian Stewart,
Nature's Numbers,
1995
“I never thought I'd see you in a church again.”
“Things change,” Scott replied flatly, his voice echoing around the now empty chapel. “What're you doing tracking me down here, Fergus? University wanna reinstate me?”
Fergus seemed embarrassed at his end of the line as Scott scooted closer to the vid-phone on the altar by sliding his barstool forward. “No reinstatement,” he said.
“Then what is it?” A cloud had descended over the priest. “You know about Atlantis, don't you?”
“Yes,” Fergus admitted. “Yes, I do.” He glanced nervously back over his shoulder. “My boss … wants Atlantis destroyed at all costs. He feels it will have an undesirable effect on the fabric of society. Destabilizing his power base.”
“God wants Atlantis destroyed?” Scott smirked. “He told you that personally, did He?”
“Not God, the Pope,” Fergus glowered. “This is no time for jokes. Your life's in danger, Richard. Serious danger. The Papacy has made a deal with the U.S. to destroy Atlantis.”
Scott laughed. “Fergus, you're paranoid.”
“He feels the discovery of an ancient advanced society would make a total mockery of Christianity. He's not alone, he's taken meetings with other religious leader.”
A frown crossed Scott's face. “Then my work was correct. And you know it.”
“Richard, all that matters is your life is in danger. You have
no
idea what's waiting for you in Atlantis. None.”
Scott folded his arms defensively. “So enlighten me.”
An image popped up onto the screen. “You've heard of the mythic Golem, haven't you?”
It was always amazing how a lack of time helped focus the mind.
Nano-technology was the only thing that plausibly explained the appearance of the hand in the Giza tunnel that kept Douglas stuck fast just before his death.
The implications of the video feed Fergus showed from Pini Pini was daunting. In Atlantis they were to face automatons that defied all modern capabilities, yet had been constructed by the hand of ancient man. It wasn't so much that modern man had a lot still to learn, more a lot to
re-learn.
Scott studied the glyphs etched across the “face” of the Golem, back in the lab. They were Atlantis glyphs. To find them etched on the face of an angry nemesis did not inspire confidence.
“How do these nanoes work?” Sarah wanted to know. “I mean, they're tiny little robots, right? What's their power source? Do they strap little batteries to their backs or what?”
“When Drexler first expanded on his theory,” Matheson explained, “he proposed nanoes would be powered by sonic energy. Sound waves would pass between the nanoes, transferring energy between them, kind of like a sonic network that required no wiring, just sonic transmitters and receivers.”
Scott was confused. “So how would they become one creature? One thing?”
“That's just it. It's not a
thing
. It's a nano
swarm
.”
“It's
many
things?”
“Thousands of tiny units, all working together to form one solid creature. Hundreds of thousands, maybe even millions, swarming and acting like a single entity.”
“Is that even possible?”
“Of course that's possible!” Hacket interjected excitedly. “What the hell do you think jellyfish are?”
“Jellyfish are separate units?” November quizzed.
“Jellyfish are an army that, on occasion, decide to go to war.”
“How?” Sarah demanded. “There's not enough time for so many individuals to pass information on to each other and work as one. It should fall apart.”
“Jellyfish don't fall apart,” Hackett said firmly. “It's known as biological synchronization. Like your earthquake calculations, Sarah, it's a property of resonance. When Dutch physicist Christian Huygens, inventor of the pendulum clock, was ill in bed in the 1660s, he noticed the pendulums of two of his clocks swung in sequence when moved close to each other. Knocked out of step they were soon back in step a little time after. Move them apart and they went out of step rapidly. This same proximation synchronicity is seen in fireflies, fiber bundles that regulate the heart, flocks of birds that change direction, schools of fish. It's not a conscious decision, it's a factor of environment, a subtle mathematical thread which can be applied even on a social level—like religion and sects relying on geographical frameworks.
Southern
Baptists.
Anglicans
in England.
Islam
in the Middle East.
Hinduism
in India. It's to do with reaction to the environment.”
“This
environment
is gonna kill us at this rate,” Gant commented as he strutted into the lab with Lieutenant Roebuck in tow. A chill wind whistled in behind them. “Brief us.” He slapped a map down on the table and rolled it out. “What else can we expect to find in Atlantis?”
 
“First up,” Pearce corrected, “Atlantis was the island—said to be as large as Libya and Asia combined. The city's actual name was Poseidon.”
“Whatever,” Gant shrugged. “What's our best entry point?” He used his pen to sketch out where the Chinese base was in black. Then switched to red to map out the satellite imagery of the structures below. “Did they booby trap? Was it easy to get about? What kind of minds conceived of this place? Were they warlike?”
“Atlantis was fortified. Plato spoke of them going to war with Athens. But the central portion of the city was enclosed with concentric rings of sea. I'm assuming he meant giant canals. Plato described them as being like cartwheels. They were equidistant from each other with the rings of land connected by bridges and tunnels, and were in turn connected to the sea by one huge canal, 300 feet wide and 100 feet deep. Major, they kept their entire navy harbored around those rings.”
“What else?”
“Well, they had buildings of different-colored stonework. The outer land ring was covered in bronze, like a veneer. The middle land ring was covered in tin that was fused to the walls. And the central island's buildings were covered in Orichalc, including the acropolis, the dominant place of worship. There were temples all over and the laws of the land were written on a central pillar of Orichalc, where the ten ruler kings of the provinces would meet every fifth and sixth year thereby showing equal respect to both odd and even numbers.”
Scott and Hackett immediately exchanged intrigued glances.
“Oh, and the wall of the Shrine of Poseidon and Cleito was made of gold.”
“That's it? That's all we've got?” Gant threw his pen down furiously.
“That's all there
is
!” Pearce exploded right back at him. “That's all Plato wrote. He never finished the story. Like any writer who's written three chapters to a book that Hollywood never bothered picking up, he threw in the towel and wrote something else.”
“What you've just told me offers absolutely no indication of what this new power source might be. What it is we have to switch off. In nine hours, people, a solar storm is projected to hit this planet, so violent it may boil the atmosphere right off our globe. If that machine under the ice is still operational there's every chance it'll succeed because that thing'll suck it right in. I need to know what the hell I'm trying to blow up.”
The scientists stood gripped around the table, silently devastated by the implications. All, that is, except for Scott who hadn't come all this way just to fail.
Quietly he said:
“‘The third angel blew his trumpet, and a huge star fell from the sky, burning like a ball of fire, and it fell on a third of all rivers and on the springs of water; this was the star called Wormwood, and a third of all water turned to wormwood, so that many people died; the water became so bitter.'”
All eyes settled on Scott.
“What are you talking about?” the marine major demanded impatiently.
November's eyes lit up. “He's quoting the Book of Revelation, verses 8:10 and 8:11.”
“Why?”
Hackett knew why. He smiled. “In the Ukraine,” he explained lightly, “just north of the capital city, Kiev, they have a profusion of forests made up of trees indigenous to the local area called wormwood trees.”
“So?”
“Well, uh, let me put it this way, Major. What is a star?”
“I don't underst—”
“A star is nothing more than a nuclear explosion that goes on for millions of years.”
“When I was a teenager,” Scott took over, “in the same area of the Ukraine where they have all the wormwood trees, they also had a nuclear power station that went critical. Like a star falling from the sky it turned the water and soil radioactive. The name of the place became synonymous with nuclear disasters.”
“I know,” Gant answered diligently. “Chernobyl.”
“Right,” Scott said. “And Chernobyl, in English, means wormwood.”
 
“That's all very well on the prophecy front, Professor Scott.” Gant was growing irritable. “But what does it have to do with the layout of Atlantis?”
“It always struck me how the description of the city of Atlantis always sounded so similar to the city in the Book of Revelation where mankind's final battle will be fought.”
Now that had the military men's attention.
“In Revelation 21, The Messianic Jerusalem, the city's described as being seen from a hill and looking like some glittering precious jewel of crystal-clear diamond with twelve gates. The outer wall was made of diamond, and the city of pure gold, like clear glass. The foundations of the city were faced with precious stones. The first was diamond, the second lapis lazuli, the third turquoise, the fourth crystal, the fifth agate, the sixth ruby, the seventh gold quartz, the eighth malachite, the ninth topaz, the tenth emerald, the eleventh
sapphire, and the twelfth amethyst. The twelve gates were twelve pearls and each gate was made from a single pearl. The main street of the city was pure gold—yet appeared transparent like glass. And the city did not need the sun or the moon for it was lit by the radiance of the glory of God.”
“Sounds like a geologist's dream,” Sarah commented.
“It sounds just like Atlantis,” Matheson said, awestruck.
Scott inclined his head. “The only trouble with the analogy is that the new Jerusalem was perfectly square. Atlantis is perfectly round.”
“How does it help us here?” Roebuck asked in all seriousness.
“In Revelation 9:2, it speaks of a fifth angel blowing its trumpet and in so doing, another star falls to the earth where the angel is given a key. This key unlocks the ‘shaft of the Abyss' from which sulfurous smoke rose out from a huge furnace as the sun and sky were darkened. And from the smoke dropped metallic armored locusts with stings in their tails like scorpions. They hovered, and made the racket of many chariots with their horses, charging.”
“Christ,” Roebuck gulped. “They sound like Apache attack helicopters.”
“What does this Abyss do?” Gant asked.
Scott shrugged. “I don't know. But the angel's name in Hebrew was Abaddon, and in Greek, Apollyon.” He looked down at the picture of the Golem. “By removing the sacred word from the Golem's head it is reduced to dust. Abaddon could be its name …” He eyed Gant again. “The point is, what power source could be so unbelievably big that it lit up your security satellites? What if Atlantis is sitting on a volcano?”
“What we registered is
not
volcanic activity.”
Matheson was one jump ahead. “Yes, but the site in Giza was tapping into and converting geo-thermal energy. This site could be doing the same thing on a massive scale. And situated over a Pole? The use of the earth as some kind of magnetic dynamo? That's incredible! And more power than you'd know what to do with.”
“So how do we shut it down?”
“Close the damn Abyss, I should imagine, sir,” Roebuck responded flippantly.
“The fifth angel,” Pearce noted. “The fifth site. The site with the Abyss—the power source.”
Hackett shook his head. “All this ancient scripture and we're gonna look like real idiots if we finally get down there and all we find is a giant Energizer Bunny banging on a battery.”
Nobody laughed.
“In the Egyptian
Book of the Dead,
” Scott warned, “there's a place described as being crucial to human survival in the next world that human souls must attend to. Carved out of solid rock it is ‘The Chamber of Ordeal,' or more commonly, ‘The Chamber of Central Fire.'”
“Great.”
“So we need to get to the center of the city,” Gant concluded. “To find this chamber, this—Abyss.”
Scott looked down upon the node photographs again, puzzled. “The Book of Revelation,” he explained, “is also where God likens himself to the alphabet. Just as in the beginning was the word, God says he is both Alpha and Omega, the First and the Last. The Beginning and the End. Always it comes back to words …” The epigraphist eyed everyone around the table. “God also warns those who may wish to enter the city and warns against those who may not enter. Dogs, fortune-tellers.”
Pearce shook his head. “Well, that's me without an invite.”
“The sexually immoral.” Sarah seemed to blush. “Murderers.”
Gant shifted uneasily. “It was a war situation.”
“Idolaters.” Scott looked around the room, his eyes eventually falling on Hackett.
“I guess I do kind of worship, uh, science,” he admitted sheepishly.
“And anyone of false speech and false life,” Scott concluded. “Which counts the rest of us out.”
“Well,” November remarked. “This'll be fun.”
Sarah turned to the Major. “Now that you know what you can expect to find under the ice, what can we expect to find on the surface?”
Gant immediately set about marking up positions. “The signs are not good,” he said. “We have reports of enemy activity
here, here and here, fully encircling their base for approximately a hundred square miles. Even if we had the time, which we do not, we'd never get in by land. Our only alternative is by air but the V-TOLS just don't like this cold. We've tried adapting them but there's a heater problem. I've already sent them back to the
Truman.
”

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