EarthUnder (The Meteorite Chronicles Book 1) (21 page)

Gary, hard at work in his lab, knew where we were and what we were doing. Never in all of my days spent visiting his home here in the Pacific Islands had I allowed a morning or evening to pass without climbing to this vantage to witness life on the grandest scale coming and going as the planets spin their paths through space. Witnessing this phenomenal event is an endless reminder of how small I am. It’s hard to know when to break off and leave the view. Once the sun is full in the morning sky, the birds go nearly quiet and begin their busy day of foraging and survival. They’ll return to their perches again this evening to call out the ending of another daylight cycle.

As the weight of the day began to hang in the air, we climbed back down to the garage to find Gary there standing in front of the printer waiting while hard copies were produced. He was printing multiple copies: one for his vault, one to mail off to a neutral recipient, one for Mina and me, one for Gary to tear up at his desk in future days, and one for each of his research team to do the same. When we got close enough to hear his voice over the machines running in the lab, he told us that he had already sent a copy to everyone.

Gary went on to say, “I figure that within two to three days government officials the world over will learn about this reveal.” It was time to get the heck out of Dodge. There was nothing we needed to do in preparation for the next leg of our journey; in fact, we hadn’t spent any time making plans beyond this point. We needed to get the word out any way possible and keep Gary safe. When I asked Gary if he was ready to take a trip, he jumped up from his desk and burst out a retortive “am I ever!”

We left the lab and walked into the house. As we walked across the living room floor Mina threw an arm around each of us and pushed us hard towards the front door. “Teranor!” she screamed with horror in her voice.

She could see their red nimbus through the leaves of the trees outside the front window. She pushed us into the Vug. Immediately we began to sink through the floor and into the Gray. Mina had set up a shield around Gary’s house to protect us all from Teranor approach, but at a glance she could see that they were trying to get through her shield. As we sank into the Gray there came a rumbling wave of shock through the Vug and the ground surrounding us.

Mina spoke, “I believe that Gary’s house has been destroyed.”

Gary didn’t seem to hear what Mina had said. He was so taken by the moment that the house no longer mattered. The shock of what transpired had kept me from introducing our new passenger to what he was going to experience. Gary was entranced, so anything we might have said would have been wasted words. There wasn’t much to say; he was going to see it all first hand, and with his science mind he might never wish to leave. If Mina was right and the house was gone, then Gary had no place left to return to. We traveled through the Gray as usual and when we dropped out into the Void a gasp of amazement blurted from the mouth of our guest. He blinked and rubbed his eyes as if the view would change. He mumbled, but the words made no sense. Gary was baffled beyond his own ability to rationalize what he was seeing.

“Gary,” I started his orientation, “these people terraformed our planet. Actually, it’s their planet, maintained by them with gravity that is created and maintained by them. We owe them for our existence on this globe; they brought us here. There is a great deal more that will amaze you, man. I don’t want to spoil the surprises for you, and there is a lot I have yet to learn for myself. This is the Void, it traverses the entire planet, a world beneath our world, Mina’s world, EarthUnder. What do you think?” Gary looked at me, closed his eyes, and shook his head; he had no words.

We sailed through the Void over masses of people and animals between rivers of humanoid forms flying through the air. As we moved along I noticed something that I hadn’t recognized before. When flying people change the direction of flight, they circle around one of the columns as if they were roundabouts, and all of the movement is counterclockwise around these columns. This must be their form of traffic control—I had missed this before. No doubt that through time more and more things will reveal themselves as I grow less numb from the newness of this strange world. Gary was seeing the phosphorescent light and color of this world for his first time.

When I could see the lights reflecting in his eyes, I knew what he was feeling and thinking. Gary would have more questions than I, and I felt it would be important that he have his brain filled with answers just as I had. To Gary, information was the greatest gift that one person could give another. Gary had given the world a number of technical journals and large books as his gift to mankind. He was a generous person who believed in sharing any discovery no matter how small, for the benefit of the greater good. Gary looked at me again as we passed one of the fumaroles feeding a volcano above and he spoke, “My house and lab are a very small price to pay for all of this.”

This was classic Gary, never a self-centered bone in his body. He would never look back in regret as long as his life was full of adventure and discovery, as this existence promised to provide. And since the brain bone represented the ultimate universal form of information sharing, like a living historic library, he already knew that he would commit the rest of his life to protect it. He smiled a clever narrow smirk as he lifted the samples and the thin section from the pocket of his colorful bird-covered Hawaiian shirt. I saw him as the ideal curator of our world’s greatest store of knowledge: a bright mind willing to share and preserve the history and knowledge of all our peoples since the beginning of time. Somehow I knew that once here Gary would never want to leave. I guess it was just as well that he had little to go back to. The time would come when our worlds will communicate openly, and he would be there, ready to share all that he can.

Mina had a more serious expression on her face as we traveled through the Void. I listened to her thoughts; she was concerned with how quickly the Teranor had found our location and descended upon the lab. She knew they had devices and technology beyond her knowledge and she feared they might catch up with us somewhere and stop our progress. I could see in our shared memory some of the terrible tools and weapons they had manufactured over time. Everything seemed destructive in design. Nothing appeared to be built to produce, but rather all to take or destroy. The list and inventory of devices seemed endless. I could understand the expression on Jasmina’s face.

I questioned Gary hopefully, “Do you think we got the word out? Is there any chance that those emails were blocked?”

Gary replied with glee, “Not a chance, I felt the importance of this information so I sent out a pulse mail that went into the cloud and will continue to resend until everyone gets it. I also sent it to several thousand random friends, acquaintances, politicians, and religious leaders around the planet. I sent several hard copies through the vacuum tube to a dozen different labs around the island and I brought this.”

He held up a memory stick on which he had downloaded all of our probe work as well as pictures from the SEM and a few pictures under reflected light. I gave Gary a huge shoulder hug as we both laughed in relief. His guts were screaming at him like mine do with me at times. Mina could see that we were all on the same page. In her mind the resilience of humans was going to be a priceless asset in the quest to survive the invasion of the Teranors.

We were all happily blitzing along enjoying the view. Mina announced that we would soon meet with the Elders, and that millions of her people were going to join them in a gathering to greet us and to applaud our first success. I could hear Jasmina communicating with the Elders. The Elders had made it impossible for the Teranor to invade the Void, but a conflict with them on the surface could be devastating to us all, Earthling and Teranian alike, especially considering the wicked devices used by the dark ones. I asked Gary to let me see the specimen for a few minutes. He handed me the bag from his pocket with everything in it. I gave the hard copy of our work to Mina and I sat on the floor of the Vug to hold the thin section up into the Teran light to see what I can see using a hand lens I had picked up in Gary’s lab. I was peering through the lens at the structure of the brain bone when we began to lower to the gathering below. A breathy “oh wow” came from our guest as he looked through the bottom of the Vug at the masses below. I knew just how he felt seeing this for his first time.

Chapter Eleven

Flade

T
he Vug came to a halt just above the surface of the Void and we stepped out. The Elders encircled us in several rows and were surrounded by an ocean of humanoids all watching us as we moved out of the Vug. Just then Gary began to collapse in convulsions as he fell to his knees, his face, neck, and arms turning a bright red. Horror swept over me as I looked at Mina and back at Gary several times searching for an answer to this behavior. Mina screamed out at the top of her lungs, “He’s a Flade!”

His eyes filled with blood and his body swelled as he contorted in a crumpled form at our feet. Then, as if a machine, he raised up to eye level and began to glow with the same aura we saw surrounding Teranor on the surface. I realized what we were witnessing, but the Elders had known much earlier than I and they had not flinched. Gary was a human bomb, a drone made to destroy the core of these people. He had won our trust and infiltrated this world. One of the Elders stepped forward and touched the ticking bomb that suspended in front of us all. As he touched Gary’s face with his hands the process appeared to stop. Gary’s writhing and twisting ceased and the nimbus faded. His eyes cleared and the grimace dissolved from his lifeless face as his body straightened and stood upright floating just above the floor. The light of life returned to his eyes and he whimpered in a slight squeal of pain and remorse. Gary looked into my eyes with a sadness of regret and confused emotion. The Elder shot into the air above and disappeared in the Gray above us all. The remaining Elders began to explain that a Flade was a body used for infiltration and demolition. “They are hard to spot until they are set to detonate,” a voice came from the group explaining some of what we had just seen.

Mina explained, “Flades are drones made from average humanoids or animals. The iron in their blood platelets is bonded with a high explosive and fluid memory is installed in the blood that gives the self-destruct command and concentrates the blood for priming and detonation. Micro bio-bots were most likely installed into Gary’s brain to control his actions and to force him to go along with the conspiracy. He had no control of himself during this ordeal, and for the most part he knew not what he was doing. It is all remotely controlled and independent of usual conscious functions. We have lost the Elder who sacrificed his life to save Gary. His memory is ours now and we shall keep him in our thoughts and prayers. There is severe damage to Gary, but we will repair him and give him better health with which to function. Gary also harbored a serious cancer, which was removed by the Elder who has gone.”

Mina and I moved away from the center of the masses as the Elders went to work healing our new guest. Jasmina told me this was extremely close even for the Terans. She continued to clarify for me, “The Elders suspected this might be a possibility, so they were entirely prepared for the potential of a trick like this.”

My mind turned to the work we had done. Obviously all the work was a decoy and the emails were never sent. But we were there; I watched the work done. I had the thin section and the memory stick in my pocket. Mina had the hard copy. Could it be that in spite of the bio-bots, Gary was able to perform independent functions and did he actually send off those emails? We would soon learn from Gary once his mind and body were cleared of the infiltration of Teranor technology.

Mina looked at me as I worried, “If they got to one of my best friends like this, then nobody on the surface is safe and nobody can be trusted. This explains some of why Claus Laurent was such a royal pain.”

I could see the red around Laurent in my mind’s eye. The guy had come close to offing me several times or at least paid some dirty dog to take me out, and all for a few lousy rocks. Well, that was then, now these stones held a great deal more importance, which explains why he had been so relentless in his pursuit of me. And now I understood why this stone was always referred to as the sacred Touchstone; it was able to impart the endless memory of these people in a single touch. I was feeling anxious to speak with Gary. A humming chant came from his direction and I could hear Gary cry out; it sounded painful. We both floated overhead to see what was being done to our friend.

The Elders were finished with the work and Gary lay there on a bed of moss. One of the Elders gestured for us to come. We moved down to their level and listened to what was said. We were told he would be perfectly healed following a brief rest while their energy aligned the cells in his body and brain. He handed us a strange, clustered, wire-like construction that looked something like an octopus. It appeared to be part mechanical and part biological. Along each wire and at the terminal end of each was a group of tiny, finger-shaped formations. The Elder told us that this was new tech that was hardwired into his core and connected to pretty much everything inside him. He didn’t feel the pain, but his body reacted with simulated pain to resist the complete removal of this contraption. “Now he is clear of all outside manipulation. He may stand alone in this world,” said the Elder as he gently hinted a smile and began to move off. Mina and I thanked him for his contribution and for the sacrifice made by the Elders. He simply raised his hand as he moved away as if to say, “What is done, is done.”

Moments later a wave of energy soared through all of us as it moved across the terrain and sifted through everything in this world below. Jasmina told me this was the life force of the Elder who sacrificed his term to save the others of us who stood encircling Gary as he began detonation. She told me that the Elder’s energy was in all of us now and that he would continue to live on in each of us. “His conscious thought will become part of the memory within the brain bone; only his body is gone from our world,” Mina explained, “as will we all someday.”

We walked for some time to find our calm and to talk about what should be done now. Eventually we would need to talk with Gary about what might be salvaged from our work in his lab. Fortunately, we still held the fragments and the thin section as well as a hard copy of our findings. For now the immediate priority was security. If the Teranor were able to get this close, then what other hazards were closing in on us? In my mind, I could see a myriad of horrible contraptions developed for capture, torture, and killing. Based on this most recent event, the Teranor were able to incorporate both biological and mechanical technology into their arsenal of weaponry. It gave me a sickening feeling to think of them, up there, devising their next plan of attack. What nasty artifact will they implement next and where will it rear its ugly head?

As we strolled amongst the giant trees, Mina’s people filtered off into the distance. Many of them came by us to silently touch our shoulders in a gesture of support. From a distance we could see that Gary was standing now and speaking with the Elders. He seemed immersed in the conversation so we left him there to get his fill of answers while we enjoyed some time to ourselves walking and watching as the creatures around us went about their subsistence. What we learned from Gary might determine where we went from here. This may be what the Elders were working on right now. It was good to see my old friend standing there, and I knew he was ecstatic about his new lease on life and the opportunity to learn everything about this new world we had brought him into. When we arrived back at the center of the gathering, we were made aware that Gary had been enlightened by the Elders. They felt that his mind could handle the answers and they gave him the gift of an enlarged memory as well. Gary was enabled to answer his own questions. He seemed very calm and collected.

“Hello there, Gary,” I greeted him with a reassuring grin, “Welcome to your new life. They removed everything bad from your body and brain, including a nasty little cancer you had been lugging around in your pancreas. You were quite a prize there, ole G.W. Did you have any idea of what was going on inside you?” Gary quietly shook his head no.

“Could you feel anything?” I pried, unrelenting.

“Nothing, ” he replied.

“Gary, do you know if the emails were sent? Obviously they triggered the Teranor to raid your home.” Gary was not sure, he described how everything seemed to be a fog and he felt like a puppet on a string with no will or independent thought. He said that he knew it felt wrong to come with us to the Void, but he had no idea of why he felt that way. He continued to describe the screaming pain he felt as we drew close to the gathering. He said that his mind went blank as the pain raged, a pain that would have inspired any man to wish his own death if only to end the agony.

Mina broke in to say, “We call this a ‘death wish weapon’; they are an insidious creation of mayhem from an innately violent time, now Gary understands the nomenclature.”

“Wait a minute,” Gary expounded; “I sent emails to a large group of random friends with no scientific affiliation; that was me, I did that independent of any outside affect. In my mind, there is no question that these emails were pulsed out to the recipients unnoticed or traced. There are roughly fifty six hundred people on that list and many of them know me well and are connected in government or the science services; our word did get out there! If just one of those people releases that information, then it will go viral and our quest has made its first quantum leap.”

The three of us smiled at each other, delighted at knowing that there might still be a chance that our attempt would not fail. It was time to show Gary around and get some food into him. We settled near a small stream and each ate a nutrition pod while Gary asked Mina a few questions. He knew the answers, but it seemed to help to hear them spoken by another. Jasmina explained to him how fluid memory works within the bloodstream and that the blood of a human body can carry memory in the blood platelets that can be accessed utilizing an octopus installed into the cerebral cortex with fingers attached to the central nervous system. With a nuclear trigger, every atom within the body becomes an integral part of the bomb, Plutonium chargers attached to the iron in the blood operate as the fuse and igniter, the perfect, walking weapon.

Mina explains, “Basically, Gary, you were sleep walking from the day they installed the device. Your actions under this level of influence and control are a testimonial to the admirable strength of the human mind. Even when you were a human robot you still managed to perform independent thoughts and actions sending this separate email pulse, unnoticed and untraced, to a large number of witnesses. Your successful effort is the spark that will ignite a raging fire of change in this world of ours and begin the new era for our peoples. We shall prevail over the Teranor and we shall save our world for the future ages.”

Thinking that Gary might wish to see more of New Tera, we walked to the Vug. As we stepped inside, Gary volunteered that he would like to see one of the windows. I had to agree to myself that this was one of the more amazing features of Tera. As we flew through the Void, Gary admitted his mind was in a torrent of turmoil over all of the physics standards that he was taught in school and how many of those standards were being shattered. He still couldn’t get his head around the fact that people were flying everywhere at incredible speeds. Soon we arrived at one of the massive windows, and as we slowed and neared the ocean porthole a pod of gray whales cruised across our view into the deep blue brine. Gary’s jaw was locked open and his head slumped forward like the true nerd that he is. He was a kid in a candy store and he reminded me of myself just a few short days ago. I could understand everything he was feeling right now. In fact, I could hear his thoughts, which were close to exactly my reaction when I saw all this. The whales were a bonus for all of us. Mina told us that it was rare to see the whales come this close to any of the windows. The Vug took us past the window and off into the Void to view the columns; then we sped into an area filled with lush forest and a scattering of the giant trees. We stopped there to pick some nutrition pods. Mina put several in a bag that hung around her waist. Hmm, were we taking another trip?

Each of us enjoyed a pod as we continued in the Vug through the Void viewing all manner of new creatures. Gary and I were both mesmerized by the view as we traveled for many miles while the terrain changed below and above. The colors and illumination were beyond describing; this was the best way to share the sensation with someone from the surface.

In Gary’s typical sharing fashion, he looked over at us and commented, finishing with an inquiry, “I can’t wait for the rest of the human race to see this, wow, what a head hack! I don’t ever have to leave this, do I?” I laughed with him as we both looked to Mina for an answer. It was a strange mix of emotion as we enjoyed this unbelievable new fantasy world. We needed to remain focused on the serious aspects of staying alive and working diligently to save this amazing world from Teranor devastation. We settled into a deep, detailed discussion about what our next moves should be and where to go next. Gary made the great observation that we needed to set up a protected base of operations where we could make shielded contact with the outside world and where we could produce evidence and proof for the doubting masses we would encounter. We also needed to devise an offensive to throw the Teranor into a defensive mode. We were going to make their lives miserable and do serious damage to their infrastructure wherever possible.

“Mina,” I questioned, “Just what kind of infrastructure might the Teranor have here on Earth?” Jasmina told us that the Teranor might be deeply integrated into the human race and we would have to rely on the Elders for a great deal of help in dealing with this matter. She went on to explain that it might take time for her people to adjust to any plan that resorted to a use of violence. Teran abilities were designed for defense and protection and not for aggression. In my mind, I recalled the power we used in Vienna; Gary could see images of our actions. When he saw the Teranor pursuers fly across the hall and slam into the stone wall, falling limp to the floor, he acknowledged that we had a good start. Ghosting and shielding would also be powerful tools and we would need to master those abilities. “But,” I said, looking at Mina, “we’re going to need a more impressive and powerful weapon to take out the enemy.”

Jasmina told us that she could target adversaries with severe memory loss and that she could perform mind control, which the Teranor could not master. “Also,” she said, “we can fly and they cannot; we can swim endless distances and they cannot; we can walk the Gray and they cannot. My voice can render them deaf, either temporarily or permanently, and I can turn most anything into a deadly projectile. One last weapon is one of relentless destruction: the particle beam. In our millions of years of learning to master energy, Terans found that we can project our energy in focused, incredibly destructive, plasma energy, particle beams. It is exhausting to utilize but it can stop and destroy virtually anything. Terans refuse to utilize this ability as the taking of even one life may alter the course of the future. A life, human or Teran, is sacrosanct and no matter how evil that individual may be, we believe all creatures have right to the life given.”

Gary directed his pointed question at me, “What makes you believe we can win this battle to save Earth?”

“She does,” I replied without hesitation, tipping my head in Mina’s direction. “She is my guiding star and my path.” A murmuration of Mizlets soared above us, changing formation as if painting the sky with their wings, millions of wings beating as one. As they shifted position the colors of their wings changed in a wave that moved opposite the direction of their flight. The flashes of color and movement bounced off the reflective waters below and filled our eyes with the dance of light.

Gary looked at us both and blurted out, “I will do anything to save this Paradise!” We needed a next move. With any luck the information about the brain bone meteorite was out, now working its way into the minds of humans. Soon we would need to back that up with another reveal, and then eventually we would need to meet with world leaders to take this effort to the next level. Each time we went to the surface, we risked contact with the Teranor. It would be fairly ideal if we could perform effective work from here in the Void. Right now we needed to find a way to see if emails got to their destinations. Gary volunteered that he sent a few dummy emails to dormant accounts to which he holds the passwords. If we could get to a monitor, then we would be able to verify receipt.

Jasmina suggested a way we could do this without being approached. “There are closed underground military bases throughout the globe. Many of them have power sources intact and computer systems installed.”

Gary said, “That’s right, they’re all over the planet; I can think of several that might be perfect, deep underground with extremely complex access codes, and some of those are obsolete so that even military officials would have to break in. Let’s find one of those and get started on verifying our success.” Mina agreed that we can approach a base in the Vug and enter from the bottom so there would be no sign of entry. “Let’s do that now,” Gary responded with his usual enthusiasm.

We all wanted to know how far we had gotten in our first attempt, and instantly we were under way in the Vug headed for a base deep in the ground below a long closed installation in New Mexico. Gary was certain that the secured bunker entry system was loaded with redundancies and that if we were approached, we would have plenty of early warning. Upon arrival the Vug slowly rose up out of the Gray of solid stone through Corten steel reinforced concrete walls and into the total dark of a room built for just this sort of action. Lights flickered on as we stepped out of the Vug. The room was a command center designed to have everything we currently needed. Gary walked to the wall and flipped open a breaker panel to power up the room. Immediately, he moved to the main monitor to start the computer. He took measures as if he had been here before. As Gary keyed in the startup codes, he announced that this was what he did while working on his Master’s and PhD; he did civilian position labor for the military installing computer networks in subterranean military bases all over the U.S. These bases were designed to be powered independently and built deep enough to evade Electromagnetic Pulse weapons.

The link with the outside world was a hard wire separator that could be manually or remotely connected. We needed to get hooked up, confirm our success, and get gone as quickly as possible. Chances were good that very soon military personnel would know that we had compromised this facility and someone would rush to the site. Gary got the computer running and began to log onto the web. He commented with a chuckle that it amazed him that after all these years his backdoor codes were still viable passcodes. Soon we three were staring at the email he sent to himself while he was working as a zombie in his lab at home. A feeling of cheer came over us as we read the first lines of data. I could see Gary’s smiling face in the reflection of the computer screen.

Mina slipped her arm under mine and weaved her fingers into my hand. Gary scrubbed our access to leave no evidence behind and shut down the system. We backed out just as we had entered, breaking the outside link and shutting off the power supply. Gary wiped off his fingerprints and we stepped back into our ride, slipping again into the Gray. Our new partner shook his head slowly as we began to travel through the Earth’s crust, “I’ll never get used to this,” he confessed in amazement, “and I will never take this for granted.”

I felt the importance of what he was saying. What we were doing right then broke every rule of physics that was pumped into his mind through all the years of higher education. A part of Gary would be excited by the new knowledge and learning, but part of him would be filled with despair over all of the crap he was taught as gospel. In the future it would pain Gary to erase from his mind all of the doctrine he was forced to memorize, even teach as a “farce clone” spewing a tangled web of speculation and theory. The poor guy was in agony as the truth took hold of his mind and spirit.

I leaned over to Gary and whispered to him, “Focus only on our future and let your past be gone. The sooner you let go, the lighter everything will become.” I could see the tension release in his shoulders as he let down and began to work this through in his head. Continuing with wisdom from something I had read once, “Free the mind from worry, free the heart from hatred, live simply, give more and expect less.”

Jasmina bumped her forehead against mine, and I could feel her smile. She said in a soft, loving voice, “There’s my dearest Bryce Monroe.” She put her hands on my shoulders and we continued to lean into each other until long after the Vug had popped out of the Gray and soared deep into New Tera. With our heads touching we traveled into a quiet place of pure thought where time stood still. Gary shared his thoughts about an idea that had been stirring about in that brilliant mind of his. His thinking was that soon scientists and government officials would begin to hear of our probe work. He suggested that we make a video of this world below and launch it on the web. His thinking was that we would need to win the help of humanity if we were going to stand against the Teranor for the possession of the Earth.