Fire - Betrayal (25 page)

Ben closed his eyes and visualized the next step that they would take.  The
step where they entered the vortexes together.

Shocked, Ben opened his eyes quickly. What if they all entered the
vortex, but then could not return to this dome, the meeting place of all vortexes?

Ben brought his question out in the open to consider the views of his partisans.

Jazz, who considered herself to be the least of the partisans, volunteered to be the living sacrifice of the vortexes.  She would enter alone and completely to the other side, and then attempt to re-enter, to see if it could be done successfully.

They all bowed their heads towards Jazz in respect for her dedication, and bravery.

Jazz stood, while the others watched on, and walked slowly towards the red vortex.  She hesitated briefly, calling upon her courage before stepping into the vortex, and completely disappeared.

No-one spoke a word, but waited with bated breath, unsure of the outcome of her bravery.  They all prayed that she would re-enter without trouble, but were also prepared for the very worst, that she would not return.

The Warrior’s companions looked at each other, losing hope, and then looked to the floor.  The journey that they were undertaking was unpredictable, and dangerous.  But they must do it to save Une Autre Terre.

Ben looked up towards the dome’s centre, where the sun’s rays entered the perfect octagonal structure, and where the purest droplets of water fell to the glass bowl below, breaking the eerie silence.

Then, first, they saw her hand poke through the vortex, and disappear again.  Next it was her foot, then her hand and her foot.  Jazz pulled them back in and poked her head out smiling at them, and then jumped through as if she were playing a game.

They all stood and applauded when
Jazz returned, unharmed, and happy, and listened intently as to what she had to say about her experience beyond the vortex.

“Ben, I feel the vortexes here are just a gateway leading to the portals, which lie beyond the tunnel.  There was no effort on my part to pass back through to return.  There was no resistance, no change in any way, shape or form.  In my opinion, it would be safe for us all to go through the vortex to the real portal.  But I am very happy to test out the other vortexes here in this dome, before we make a final decision.”

Josiah spoke, “
I
agree with Jazz.  She must test out the other six vortexes here before we make out final decision. I bow down to you Jazz for your bravery.”

The six companions were not nearly as nervous this time that Jazz entered the other
vortexes, their confidence was high that they would all be the same, and they were.

Now, they would all enter the red vortex to see where it led to, and then find the portal and observe how it behaved, and test how the opal seeds interacted with the power of the portal.  Now was their moment of challenge, deep thought, powers of observation and thinking outside of the square.  If there was an answer, they would find it.

Jazz entered the red vortex first, closely followed by the others.

It was exactly as Ben had described earlier, a very dark tunnel with a low level rushing wind sound.

Ben found his solar torch and engaged the power.  It worked effectively, lighting up the area in which they walked.

As they looked around
in their new environment, they discovered that the walls were made of a dark clay type soil, with the height of the cave about twice the height of a man.  The floor underfoot however, was most unexpected.  It had been carefully constructed of large flat, square sandstones, forming a pathway.

They walked in the darkness of the tunnel, with a torch lighting their way for approximately 15 minutes, until they came to a dead end.

To the untrained eye, it appeared as if the tunnel ended there, and the only way out was to go back to the vortex.

But, to the Terreans,it was a cleverly disguised portal.  It had shimmers of blue and green in amongst the imitation brown clay, and occasionally, mist would swirl out from the wall.

The Warrior and his partisans stood back.  They needed one of the clan to test the portal to see if they could move through it.

Without even hesitating, Jordan volunteered to aid the experiment.

“Jordan, approach the portal, I want to see if it opens up to let you through,”
said Ben.

Slowly, but steadily, Jordan walked towards the portal.  Nothing happened.  He placed his hand on the portal – nothing happened.

“Thank-you Jordan, now everyone of us needs to do as Jordan has done, to see if opens at all in our presence. Let’s go female, male, female, male until we are done.  I will go last,”
Ben instructed.

At the completion of this part of their journey, they had concluded that the portal was closed at this time, and that, simply their presence, be it male or female
or any of the numberous combinations of these made no difference to the behavior of the portal.

Due to the results of this first test on the portal, Ben decided to approach the portal with one opal seed. No change, the portal did not open.

Ben returned to his bag and reached in and took out another opal seed. Two might do the job.

As he stood up, he hit his funny bone against the wall of the tunnel, instantly affecting his reflexes in his hand.  His hand quickly jerked open, and one of the opal seeds fell to the ground, smashing.

Ben looked up and breathed in loudly, angry with his clumsiness.  He bent down with his torch to pick up the pieces.  It was then that he was flabbergasted.  The opal seed had not split as large chunks, but had shattered into perfectly shaped heptagons – seven sided polygons.  And the number of them was inconceivable.  He carefully picked them up and placed them into a large container that he had in his backpack. Then he reached into his backpack and took out another opal seed.

He carried the two seeds carefully towards the portal.  Nothing happened.  He tried three opal seeds. Still nothing occurred.  Ben continued on testing the portal with the opal seeds until he had carried twenty over to it.  Again, nothing happened.  He was perplexed.  At the old farmhouse, when he had the back pack on, the portal opened.

Then instantly, like a light turning on in his head, he realized that, in his backpack he in fact had twenty-one opal seeds.  After shattering the other one, he now only had twenty opal seeds. He stood up and paced back and forth with his hands behind his head, frustrated.

“
Ben, you are troubled. Please talk with us about what is going on in your head.  If you throw it out in the open, perhaps we can help to find an answer,”
suggested Jack through mind communication
.

Ben looked at Jack, breathed in deeply, and nodded. He gathered his six companions and communicated to them without talking.  He went over his observations here and back at the farmhouse.  He expressed his anger at dropping one of the opal seeds, and his companions felt his frustration.

“
My Warrior, I believe that accidently dropping the opal seed and seeing it shatter into a zillion heptagonal pieces was extremely significant.  Here we have seven portals, and the heptagonal shapes have seven sides.  Can you see the pattern that I am seeing?
” asked Julia.

They all looked at Julia considering her theory, based on number patterns.  It seemed very logical.

“
Perhaps we need seven opal seeds for each portal?
” spoke Jared.

“
No, that won’t work Jared, we don’t have enough opal seeds for each of the the seven portals
,” added Josiah.

“
I’m working with the number seven for each portal from Josiah’s idea, but, using carefully cut opal seeds and a heptagonal shape.  We are meant to use the heptagons, otherwise we would not have witnessed such an amazing event,
” suggested Jade.

The men started with working on formulations with numbers to find a solution to opening the portal, while the women tackled the problem by drawing patterns and shapes involving seven.

After two hours, they stood back and presented their ideas to the others.  All ideas were well thought through and deserved some merit, but it was Julia’s simple six pointed star drawing with a heptagon in the centre that stood out from all of the others.  Her suggestion was to divide each of the opal seeds into thirds, each portal would have two opal eggs cut into thirds, making six pieces and then the heptagon in the centre making the seventh piece.

Her work was well drawn and simple enough to replicate for the seven portals.

Ben looked closely at each person’s ideas, and decided to test each one.  It would take time, but they had to solve the equation to open the portals.

The six companions were very pleased with the decision to test each idea out, and helped Ben eagerly in preparing, testing and writing anecdotal records on each one.

To their disappointment, all ideas failed.  Their morale was low. Julia was frustrated that hers could not be tested because they had no way to carefully cut her opal seeds into thirds.

“
Ben, I request from you that we still test my theory, but with two whole seeds and one heptagonal polygon.  I am curious to see what happens
,” said Julia.

Not wanting Julia to feel unworthy to the clan, he agreed to go along with her request, confident that it would not work.

“
Ben, I will hold one of the opal seeds to the front, while you hold the other opal seed towards the back, and I will then place the heptagon in the centre.  I feel that the arrangement, or positioning of the seeds is important for some reason
,” explained Julia.

Julia held up her opal seed, then Ben held his about half a metre away.  There were absolutely no signs of anything about to happen, as with the other ideas.  Then Julia placed the heptagon piece in the centre of the two opal seeds, and to their astonishment, the portal opened.

They were suddenly hit by a wave of strong rushing air, attempting to suck them through the portal.  Mist filled the tunnel, and the Terreans became terrified of the power that they had unleashed.

Using all of his strength, Ben pulled his hand away that was holding the opal seed.

And then, abruptly, all of the sucking air ceased, and the tunnel was peaceful again, except for the low rushing wind noise.

Immediately, the Terreans looked at each other, shocked by what they had just witnessed. Ben calmly walked over to his laptop computer and entered the data about what they did, observed and felt.

Ben walked around shaking his head.  He could not believe what had just happened.  It was indescribable.

Jazz was so hyped up about the discovery, that she wanted to open the portal again and go through it to see if she could come back.

“NO!” Ben said assertively and immediately upon the suggestion.

“
We must enter into the other vortexes and test our theory to see if it works on each and every one of the portals.  And we must do it now, while it is still fresh in our minds.  Then we can return to our pods back at the village and sleep, while our minds work on the information and formulate a plan for us to follow,”
he added less aggressively in mind communication.

Ben gathered all of their belongings, making sure that he had all of the opal seeds, and briskly walked back to the vortex, with the six companions in tow.

They entered each of the vortexes, testing Julia’s formula, and found that it succeeded in opening every one of the portals.

The Terreans left the dome structure and ventured back through the cave to the waterfall, where they carefully walked along the fallen trunk that lay over a deep ravine, and back to the village, feeling pumped at the success of their days work.

For the next week and a half, the Warrior and his partisans worked endlessly on cutting the opal seeds with intricate detail and precision.  They laid the opal seeds on tables in the shape that Julia envisaged, with the heptagon in the centre.  Then they brain stormed how they would assemble the configuration around the portals so that it was disguised or camouflaged from all.  After a great think tank, and many drawings and designs, they finally agreed on one blueprint.  They would have to construct a frame to hold the opal seeds in place.  They surmised, for the energies of the opal seeds to operate the portal on both sides, that they would build two frames, one for the Terrean side of the portal, and one for the earth side. The only part of the design that was not revealed to them was how the heptagonal polygon would play its part in the scheme of things.  How would it be held in place? Would it get lost as you entered through the portal? How would they store the heptagon? These questions were yet to be answered and solved.

Forming and molding the frames out of natural, but permanent materials took a lot of time and patience. Each person with the Warrior helped in some
way, encouraging and supporting, refueling and cleaning up.  And finally after two months, the frames and the opal seeds were constructed and ready to be transported to the portals.

Twilight was their signal to begin transportation each day.  In pairs, they carried the frames with the opal seeds to the dome.  It was a journey that was perilous, especially the challenge of the tree trunk that lay across the ravine.  It would have been so easy for one or two of them to fall and lose their lives.