Phobos: Mayan Fear (19 page)

The Journal of Julius Gabriel

DATE: JUNE 14, 1990
PLACE: NAZCA PLATEAU, PERU
AUDIO ENTRY: JG-766

I
stand before the vast canvas, sharing the feeling of loneliness its creator must have surely felt thousands of years ago. Before me lie the answers to riddles—riddles that may ultimately determine whether our species is to live or die. The future of the human race—is there anything more important? Yet I stand here alone, my quest condemning me to this purgatory of rock and sand as I seek communion with the past in order to comprehend the peril that lies ahead.

The years have taken their toll. What a wretched creature I’ve become. Once a renowned archaeologist, now a laughingstock to my peers. A husband, a lover—these are but distant memories. A father? Scarcely. More a tortured mentor, a miserable beast of burden left to my son to lead about. Each step across the stone-laden desert causes my bones to ache, while thoughts forever shackled in my mind repeat the maddening mantra of doom over and over in my brain. What higher power has chosen my family among all others to torture? Why have we been blessed with eyes that can see the signposts of death while others stumble along as if blind?

Am I mad? The thought never leaves my mind. With each new dawn, I must force myself to reread the highlights of my chronicles, if only to remind myself that I am, first and foremost, a scientist, nay, not just a scientist, but an archaeologist—a seeker of man’s past, a seeker of truth. But what good is truth if it cannot be accepted? To my peers, I no doubt resemble the village idiot, screaming warning cries of icebergs to passengers boarding the
Titanic
as the unsinkable vessel leaves port.

Is it my destiny to save humanity, or simply to die the fool? Is it possible that I have spent a lifetime misinterpreting the signs?

The scraping of footsteps on silica and stone gives pause to this fool’s entry.

It is my son. Named for an archangel fifteen years ago by my beloved wife, Michael nods at me, momentarily warming his father’s shriveled pit of a heart. Michael is the reason I persevere, the reason I do not end my miserable existence. The madness of my quest has robbed him of his childhood, but far worse was my own heinous deed, committed years earlier. It is to his future that I recommit myself, it is his destiny that I wish to change.

God, let this feeble heart last long enough to allow me to succeed.

Michael runs ahead to explore the next piece of the puzzle that has beckoned us to this desolate plateau, what I now believe is the oldest and most important inscription of these mysterious three-thousand-year-old lines and zoomorphs—a perfect series of concentric circles, known as the Spiral. The Spiral is the starting point of the artist’s canvass, and yet spoiling the design is a straight line—a bold carving within the pampa, extending over rock and hill for some twenty-three miles in the direction of the Pacific Ocean.

Michael is shouting and waving at me. From this distance, it appears as if something is lying at the center of the Spiral’s bull’s-eye. “Michael—”

“Julius, hurry quickly!”

“I’m hurrying. What is it, kiddo? What have you found?”

“It’s … a man.”

END AUDIO ENTRY

15

1990 (Twenty-two years before the prophesied Doomsday Event)

T
he pain is a powerful impetus—forcing him from blackness into a state of conscious delirium. The reverberations in his skull cause his eyeballs to throb behind the closed lids, the heat baking the smooth surface stones beneath him, cooking his blood.

He forces his eyes open, only to be blinded by the brilliant light. He seals them again, falling back into an oven of purgatory … awaiting death.

He detects a presence. Someone approaching in a hurry. Trailed by a second person, the latter more cautious.

Rescuer or enemy?

A shadow passes over him. Inquisitive. “Dude, what are you doing out here?”

He searches for his voice but finds only pain. His soul slips out of his body and offers him a bird’s-eye view of his death.

The teen is dark-haired and well built, his skin deeply tanned. His father is in his fifties, a smaller, weathered version of his offspring, carefully pacing himself against the elements.

The teen shakes the body—forcing his soul back inside the vessel of pain. He finds his voice and moans.

“Michael, don’t touch him.”

“Chill out, Julius. I’m just trying to figure out who he is.”

“You want to know who he is? Look at his jumpsuit. He’s a fighter pilot. His jet must have gone down and he parachuted. If he’s military, then there could be radiation.”

“Project H.O.P.E.? That sound military to you?”

“Actions count, not words or titles. The military industrial complex tends to be Orwellian in naming their missions.”

“What would he be doing way out here?”

“Perhaps he was chasing our friends.”

“Yeah, maybe. Julius, look at the gash on his head. He’s hurt bad. We need to get him to a doctor.”

“He’s not our problem. I’m sure his pals in the Air Force will be by to pick him up soon enough.”

“And if they don’t?”

“The spider glyph lies to the west of that ridge. We’ll run our magnetometer tests and be back in an hour. If he’s still here—”

“In this heat? He’ll be dead in an hour for sure.”

“Michael, listen to me—if he was chasing our friends then he’s either Majestic-12 or worse, which means if we stay here then
we
could be dead in an hour. Leave him some water and let’s go.”

“Car keys.”

“Didn’t you hear me?”

“Car keys, Julius. I’m not screwing around.”

“Play your game of defiance all you want, Michael. You’re still not driving the Jeep over the pampa. I absolutely forbid it.”

“Then I’ll carry him.”

“You’ll carry him? You complained all morning about carrying the equipment, now you want to carry a 240-pound linebacker? Stop it. Michael, put him down. Michael, for God’s sake, the Jeep’s two miles away!”

“Owf … got him. Let’s go.”

“Enough already. Put him down.”

“I said I got him. Whoa, he’s big. Grab my bag.”

“Michael, stop. Put him down and I’ll let you get the Jeep.”

“You’re the boss.”

“Easy! Careful with his head. You shouldn’t jostle a head injury like that. Watch out, he’s puking! Jesus, he’s puking all over the Spiral! Dammit, why don’t you ever listen? If Maria Reiche sees this, she’ll have us banned from Nazca.”

“Screw Maria Reiche. The little German dictator already hates us. Who died and left her in charge?”

“The Peruvian government. And thank God they did, or these lines would be part of the Pan-American Highway.”

“They already are. Now if it was up to … hol-lee shit, we got company.”

“Maria Reiche?”

“The E.T. Don’t look up. He’s hovering high overhead, sitting in the sun where we can’t see him. Only I can see his shadow. Thirty yards west. Eleven o’clock.”

“I see it.”

“Think it’s the same Fastwalker we saw Sunday night?”

“Could be.”

“Maybe he’s checking out the pilot?”

“That would be my guess.”

“Julius, what’ll we do?”

“We leave him and come back here in a few hours like I said.”

“No way.”

“Son, if they want him, they’ll take him. There’s nothing we can do about it.”

“Is that what kabbalah taught you? To turn over your brother to the long skulls when they come calling?”

“He’s not my brother.”

“Dad, according to the Zohar, we’re all souls from the same vessel.”

“Don’t manipulate me by using kabbalah. And stop calling me Dad whenever you want me to do something.”

“Okay, Julius, let’s say Mom was here sharing this little father-and-son moment. What would your soul mate tell us to do? You really think she’d leave him to die?”

“All right, enough already. Help me get him up on his feet, you shoulder one arm, I’ll get the other. Watch his head!”

“I got him. What about the equipment?”

“I’ll come back for it later. Ready? We have to lift him over each line. Grab his knee.”

“God, he’s heavy.”

“He’s dead weight. Pour a bottle of water over his head. It’ll cool him off … maybe it’ll revive him enough to bear some of his weight.”

“Dad, what do we do if the E.T. lands?”

“Don’t do anything aggressive. Don’t even look at them—just keep walking.”

TESTIMONIAL May 9, 2001: National Press Club, Washington, D.C.

My name is Michael Smith. I was in the Air Force, a sergeant, from 1967 to 1973. I was an aircraft control and warning operator.

While I was assigned to Klamath Falls, Oregon, in early 1970, I arrived at the radar site and they were watching a UFO on the radar that was hovering at about eighty thousand feet. It sat there for about ten minutes, and then slowly descended until it dropped off the radar, was gone for about five to ten minutes, and then instantly reappeared at eighty thousand feet, stationary. The next sweep of the radar it was two hundred miles away, stationary. And it hovered there for about ten minutes and redid the whole cycle, twice more. When I found out what the normal—what you normally do when you see a UFO, I was told that you notify NORAD, you don’t necessarily write anything down—
you don’t write anything down
—and you keep it to yourself. It’s a need-to-know basis only.

NORAD one night called me later in the year to let me know as a heads-up that there was a UFO coming up the California coastline. I asked them what I should do about this. They said, “Nothing, don’t write it down; this is just a heads-up.” And then late in 1972 while stationed at the 753rd Radar Squadron at Sault Sainte Marie, Michigan, I received a couple of panicky calls from police officers who were chasing three UFOs from Mackinaw Bridge up I-75. So I immediately checked the radar and confirmed that they were there, called NORAD, and they were concerned because they had two inbound B-52s going to Kincheloe AFB. So they diverted them because they didn’t want the proximity of the two. And that night I answered many calls from the police department, sheriff’s department, and stuff, and my standard response was there was nothing on radar.

I will testify to this under oath to a Congressional hearing.

—Michael Smith,

US Air Force Radar Controller

Used by permission of the Disclosure Project

16

NAZCA AIRPORT, NAZCA, PERU

JULY 4, 1990

T
he town of Nazca, located along the southeastern region of Peru, is nestled between the Andes Mountains and an arid plateau that runs west to the Pacific Ocean. Viewed from satellite, the isolated community appears like a patch of moss overgrown between the mountains, bleeding trickles of green across a featureless gray plateau.

A closer inspection of the plateau reveals the remnants of an ancient civilization, founded by a deity.

He arrived sometime around 400 BC, a mysterious long-skulled Caucasian with white hair and beard and deep-set turquoise eyes. The Andes Indians revered the stranger, who taught them how to construct hilltop terraces nourished by aqueducts. To protect their villages, he gave them an advanced technology to counter gravity so they could move massive thirty-ton stones and erect fortresses at Sacsayhuaman, the walls of which still stand today. To prevent a future cataclysm, he had them inscribe warnings to modern man on the Nazca plateau.

His name: Viracocha.

The geological canvas that Viracocha selected to inscribe his message was a barren desert along Peru’s Pacific coast—forty miles long and six miles wide. One of the driest places on Earth, Nazca’s flatland was essentially a dead zone, and yet it possessed a unique surface found nowhere else on the planet. Covered by smooth stones, the underlying soil contained high levels of gypsum, a natural adhesive. Remoistened each day by the morning dew, the gypsum kept the indigenous iron and silica stones glued to its surface. These dark pebbles retained the sun’s heat, generating a protective shield of warm air that eliminated the effects of the wind.

For the artist wishing to leave his work to a future audience, the Nazca plateau was the perfect canvas, for what was carved upon its geology remained there for centuries. In fact, it was not until a pilot flew over the desert in 1947 that modern man first discovered the mysterious drawings and geometric lines carved upon this Peruvian landscape eons ago.

There are more than thirteen thousand lines crossing the Nazca Desert. A few of these markings extend for distances exceeding five miles, stretching over rough terrain while miraculously remaining perfectly straight. More bizarre are the hundreds of animals and iconic shapes. At ground level, these colossal zoomorphs appear only as random indentations made by the scraping away of tons of black volcanic pebbles to expose the yellow gypsum below. But when viewed from high in the air, the Nazca drawings come alive, representing a unified artistic vision and engineering achievement that has survived unscathed for thousands of years.

The artwork was completed at two very distinct periods. Although it seems contrary to our notion of evolution, it is the earlier drawings that are by far the superior. These include the monkey, the spider, the Spiral, and the serpent. Not only are the likenesses incredibly accurate, but the figures themselves, most larger than a football field, were each drawn using one continuous, unbroken line.

Besides the plateau drawings, there are two distinct figures carved into the slopes of the Andes Mountains. The first is a five-hundred-foot humanoid, known as the Astronaut. The second, the Trident of Paracas, is a six-hundred-by-two-hundred-foot candelabralike symbol occupying an entire mountainside facing the Bay of Paracas—a welcome post situated at the mouth of the Nazca valley.

The artist responsible for the Nazca drawings? Viracocha.

The city of Nazca is a sleepy community of twenty thousand, harbored in dense concrete neighborhoods constructed around a town square. A ten-minute drive in any direction and one arrives at a patchwork of fields that are the lifeblood of this isolated agricultural center. Founded in 1591 by the Spanish, Nazca long depended for its existence upon its ability to harvest its own food—until the discovery of its desert’s artistry. Now the mysterious lines and drawings of its ancestors have offered the indigenous people a new trade: tourism.

Julius Gabriel drives the 1980 CJ7 Jeep with the rusted steel body past churches and an open bazaar, turning west on the Panamericana Sur where he follows signs to the
aeropuerto
. Nazca’s airport consists of two asphalt runways and a series of hangars that store its single-prop planes. Michael calls them “puddle jumpers.” To Julius—a man who has always feared flying—they are the tour buses’ best friend.

The sky overhead is cloudless and blue, the late morning sun set on broil. The fifty-one-year-old archaeologist parks the Jeep outside the steel perimeter fence and waits inside the confines of his vehicle. The Jeep’s air conditioner is running low on Freon, the ventilated breeze more warm than cool, but it still beats the 105-degree Fahrenheit heat rising from the earth.

After a ten-minute wait he sees the white biplane appear out of the north sky, its pilot beginning a long arcing descent to the east. Julius watches from the Jeep as the six-passenger Piper Malibu touches down, then circles back to the gate, taxiing to a stop. After five long minutes an airport employee motors across the tarmac with a portable set of steps, positioning them beneath the now-open cockpit door.

A German couple exits first, followed by a priest and two men in their forties, one carrying a camera case the size of a guitar.

She is the last one out, a pale-skinned beauty in her late twenties, wearing a red and black Manchester United football jersey and a matching baseball cap, her long brown wavy hair pulled into a ponytail that feeds out the back of the hat. Tight beige corduroy shorts reveal the muscular legs of a sprinter. She is carrying a duffel bag, her eyes concealed behind dark sunglasses.

Laura Rosen Salesa struts across the tarmac and through the gate, her shirt pressed against her sweaty flesh by the time she reaches the Jeep. Tossing her bag in back, she climbs in the passenger seat next to the driver. “God, it’s hotter than hell. Hey, Jules. You look like shit.”

The accent is British, tinged by a Spanish upbringing.

Julius shifts the Jeep into gear. “I look like shit because I haven’t been sleeping.”

“Maybe I can help ease your mind.”

He glances at his sister-in-law. “That’s why I called you.”

“You called Evelyn first.”

“Only out of respect. She is the oldest.”

“Big sis refused to speak with you, huh?”

“She hates me. Your whole family hates me. They blame me for Maria’s death.”

“No, they blame you for her life. Michael blames you for her death.” Laura removes her hiking boots and socks, resting her bare feet on the dashboard. “Speaking of which, how are things between you and Mick?”

“Pretty bad until recently. The presence of our houseguest seems to have diffused a bit of his anger. Then again, maybe it’s just distracted him.”

“Or maybe he just enjoys hanging out with a stranger more than he likes schlepping across desert pampas and Mayan jungles with his father.”

“There’s a purpose to everything I do. I don’t expect you to understand.”

“Oh, but I do understand. As a linguistics professor specializing in ancient languages, my father kept us constantly on the move—Hong Kong, Moscow, Mumbai, Scotland, Kenya … name a country and chances are we lived there. Being the oldest, Evelyn missed most of it. Maria was in boarding school, then she went off to Cambridge. Me? I was seven years old when my parents sold our house and took to life on the road. You know how hard it is to make friends, let alone enjoy any kind of social life, when your parents uproot you every four months? I started calling my father by his first name out of anger just like Mick does with you. He’s had it far worse, of course, having been home-schooled by my sister. At least my schools in Russia and China had sports teams. Who’s he supposed to play American football or baseball with out on the Nazca plateau? Aliens?”

Julius shoots her a look.

“Okay, okay, lecture’s over. I know Michael is ‘special,’ that you and Maria were convinced he has a higher calling. Tell me more about this stranger you flew me in to psychoanalyze. Does he have a name yet?”

“He still can’t remember it. Michael calls him Sam.”

“Why Sam?”

“It’s short for Samson. The guy’s built like a young Arnold Schwarzenegger, only his hair’s real long, like Samson in the Bible. He’s actually taken to the name, he says it feels familiar to him. What’s really strange is how he looks at himself in the mirror.”

“What do you mean?”

“The eyes. He stares at his eyes, sometimes for hours while he lies in bed with a hand mirror. It’s as if something significant has changed.”

“What color are his eyes?”

“Black. Just like Michael’s.” Leaving the highway, Julius heads south into the neighborhood of Vista Allegre. They pass rows of single-story homes, each dwelling no larger than a double-wide trailer, harboring families three or more generations deep, the young ones relegated to sleeping on the flat open roofs beneath a ceiling of stars, livestock inhabiting the backyard.

The Gabriel abode is located across the street from a bottling factory. A massive huangaro tree occupies the entire front lawn, with groves of saplings growing on empty parcels of land surrounding the stucco habitat.

Years earlier, a Cambridge University research group, headed by Julius and Maria Gabriel, had discovered that the huangaro tree (
Prosopis pallida
) was once the keystone species of the Nazca valley. Fifteen hundred years ago the indigenous Indians, in direct violation of Viracocha’s teachings, systematically deforested the region, using the trees for food and timber while clearing more land for corn and other cultivated crops. Without the nitrogen-fixing trees the soil became less stable. In AD 500, El Niño floods struck the area, washing away the crops. Weed pollen quickly took root, collapsing the ecosystem and with it an entire civilization.

Before she had succumbed to pancreatic cancer, Maria Rosen Gabriel had spearheaded an aggressive reforestation effort. The local government had donated the land and house in her memory.

Julius parks the Jeep. Laura grabs her duffel bag and follows him inside.

The interior is an open space, more library than home. Walls are precious real estate, covered in maps. Books are simply stacked in high piles on the floor. The furnishings are limited to an old torn leather La-Z-Boy chair, several oil lamps, and a large picnic table that serves as a desk. The kitchen consists of a gas stove and refrigerator, a freestanding sink, and a warped Formica countertop littered with canned goods labeled in Spanish. A small card table sits against a yellowed stucco wall, surrounded by three folding chairs. A bedroom is cordoned off by a colorful wool blanket. Wood steps, built into the far stucco wall, lead up to the roof.

Laura shakes her head. “What is this? A home for wayward archaeologists?”

“It is what it is.”

“Can’t argue with that. Where’s the loo?”

“If you mean the toilet, it’s out back.”

“Is it an outhouse, or just a shrub with a roll of toilet paper?” She looks around. “Where’s the damn back door?”

“I didn’t design the place. I just live here.”

“Marvelous.” Laura drops her hiking boots and bag on the floor, then heads outside and walks around the side of the house to the back, her bare feet burning on the hot yellow soil. Cursing, she hustles for the shade of a huangaro tree, wishing she had never left Spain.

The deflated hot air balloon occupies most of the backyard, its orange and blue envelope laid out beside the six-by-six-foot wicker basket.

And then she sees the stranger.

He is standing beyond the wood outhouse at the edge of an open flat parcel of land. Shirtless and bronze, he has muscles chiseled and oiled in sweat. His broad V-shaped back is to her as he tosses a football to her bare-chested nephew, who is running a deep route fifty yards away.

The pass hits Mick in stride, a perfect spiral.

Without thinking, Laura claps—revealing her presence.

The stranger turns, startled.

Oh, my … he is a Samson, isn’t he?

He continues to stare back at her.

“Hey!” Mick jogs over, his body lathered in sweat. Passing Sam, he punches him on the shoulder, laughing as he dodges the bigger man’s playful retaliatory roundhouse, the blow momentarily breaking the spell.

The two athletes approach.

Now it is Laura who stares, her scalp tingling. Though separated by twenty years, the stranger and her nephew could be father and son, their physiques and facial features eerily similar.

Mick leans in and kisses her on the cheek. “I can’t believe you actually came out here. You look great. I guess being single again agrees with you.”

“Yes. Wait, what did you say?”

“Your divorce?”

She breaks eye contact with the stranger. “My divorce, right. Yes, what a relief. Two years of hell, now I’m single … no ring, no ties. God, listen to me babble.” She extends her hand. “I’m Laura, Mick’s aunt. And you must be Sam.”

“Lauren?” His eyes tear up. “Lauren, my God. Lauren, it’s me … Sam!”

“Dude, she knows.”

“No, Mick … I think your friend remembers something about his identity. Do I remind you of someone, Sam? I’m Laura Salesa. Who’s Lauren?”