Origin (28 page)

‘But what happened to all the evidence that must have remained from the earlier civilization?’ Lynn asked.

‘Most of it is underwater,’ Travers answered, ‘as you would expect after such a flood. But most of the high technology was centred on Atlantis, which was no longer on the planet. The Anunnaki’s previous technology across the globe had already been destroyed by the Arkashians long ago. Some artefacts are still discovered here and there, along with bodies like the one you found, but almost all of them end up here.’ He gestured back the way they had come. ‘That room back there alone contains several hundred examples of bodies of these ancient humans, including several well-preserved specimens like the one you found. There are other storerooms down here containing thousands of other examples of their ancient technology.’

‘And what happened to the people who made these discoveries?’ Lynn asked bitterly.

‘Most were debriefed here, before memory erasure or death,’ Steinberg admitted. ‘Others, who for whatever reasons we couldn’t get here, either met with unfortunate “accidents” or were just subjected to ridicule in the press, their “evidence” being systematically discredited and then openly mocked. That’s why you sometimes see such discoveries in the popular media, and why they are always denied by the scientific establishment.’

Lynn snorted. ‘You guys really do control everything, don’t you?’

‘We certainly try to,’ Travers said.

‘So what happened to the Anunnaki?’ Adams asked.

‘Well, they spent the next few thousand years travelling through space – much of it in suspended animation due to the vast distances involved – trying to find a new planet to colonize. Eventually, they discovered that there
were
no other truly habitable planets within the reach of their starship and so they decided to make the spacecraft itself their permanent home. As such, without the physical pressures of a planet-based existence, the evolution that you saw in the Roswell pilot occurred. They had no use for powerful bodies or limb strength and so on, which is why their physical shape shrank to that of a modern child’s. But their brains – and their intelligence – continued to grow, leading to the abnormally large craniums you see. Their other physical senses – touch, sight, smell and hearing – also became greatly diminished over time, and once they developed telepathic communication abilities, their mouths started to become smaller and more useless with each generation.’

‘That’s great,’ Adams said. ‘So if they’re so perfect in their own little spaceship world, why do they want to come back and take over?’

‘Simple mathematics,’ Travers explained. ‘At the moment, they are all but immortal. Due to advances in medicine, they really have no upper age limit, as their cells are kept from dying artificially. But they understand that to keep evolving, they need to keep on reproducing – but where do they have room for the new people? Not on their little spaceship. They want to keep evolving, and to do so they need more space, it’s as simple as that.’

‘But why now?’ Lynn asked. ‘Why did they return now?’

‘World War Two,’ Travers said. ‘The atomic bomb. Even in the depths of space, their sensors picked up the detonations, and it was clear that they were manmade. This told them that not only was planet earth still habitable, but we had the technology to make their return here a real possibility, although we would of course need their guidance to create the means.’

‘I’m surprised they didn’t leave sensors here in the first place, some way of monitoring what happened after the tidal wave hit,’ Lynn said.

‘They did. They left a “stay back” team, orbiting the earth in a smaller craft, to report back on what happened.’

‘Really? And what happened to them?’ Lynn asked.

‘You’ve read the Bible?’ Travers asked with a smile. ‘It’s all in there.’

‘W
HAT DO YOU
mean?’ Adams asked as they rounded yet another corner in the underground labyrinth.

‘Pretty much everything in the Torah, the original books of law from the earliest Bible, relates to the crew of the ship that stayed behind,’ Travers explained. ‘And because the Bible was built on earlier myths and tales, you can also read the history of this people in the writings of the ancient Sumerians, Babylonians and Egyptians. And because the same stories were told again by the Indians, Greeks, Romans and even the Vikings, you can read them all again in their own various religions and mythologies.’

‘It sounds like what Baranelli was telling us,’ Adams said to Lynn.

Lynn nodded. ‘Yes, we studied comparative religion at Harvard,’ she said. ‘And it’s true that there are some remarkable similarities in otherwise disparate religions all over the world. The Great Flood, for example.’

‘Exactly,’ Travers agreed. ‘And it is clear that almost all faiths describe “gods” or “angels” descending from the heavens, often in rather complex machines.’

‘And you’re saying that these “gods” were in fact men left behind after the flood, who were now based in an orbiting spacecraft?’

‘Yes. They monitored from a distance, unsure whether the Arkashians would survive, or whether the atmosphere of the earth was too compromised. And so they observed as generations came and went, until communities became established in the “cradle of civilization” as we know it, and started to farm the land.’

‘Did they send their reports back to the mother ship? To Atlantis?’ Adams asked.

‘That was the aim, but it soon transpired that their communications were for some reason not making it back to their comrades who were now in deep space, and so these people were there on their own.’

‘What became of them?’ Adams asked.

‘Aware that they had lost all contact with the rest of the Anunnaki population, and now sure that the earth was truly safe to re-inhabit, they started to visit us. They came down in small spacecraft, and were instantly perceived as gods by the ancient Sumerians. Indeed, the name “Anunnaki” for these gods is clearly preserved in Sumerian literature.

‘Of course, having been alone for so many generations, the visitors revelled in the glory and attention that they received here. In order to further their status, they began to teach those early civilizations the rudiments of reading, writing, and mathematics – not at an advanced level, but enough to whet the appetite, so to speak, in order to ensure the people’s continued worship, which they now craved.

‘Despite their advancement, they were still human, and were subject to the same human emotions as us. They therefore ended up interbreeding with us – which
proves
that these visitors were human, as members of different species can’t interbreed successfully – and were finally subsumed into our own populations, although with their offspring they created “royal” dynasties that lasted for hundreds, if not thousands of years. The royal line of David, for instance, can be traced back to these early visitors.

‘Their relationships were like some sort of modern-day soap opera, as you can see from the tales of the Greek gods, most of which are based on much earlier stories, originally true for the most part. Some of the stories really do have to be read to be believed. And then there are all the reports of advanced technology and weaponry. Zeus’ lightning bolt? A laser weapon brought down from the spacecraft.

‘Similar stories are found elsewhere. The spacecraft themselves are to be found described in the Indian Vedas as “vimyana”, and they came from a “star” in the sky that could be readily identified. It was of course the orbiting space station, which could indeed be seen by the naked eye in much the same way as our own international space station can.

‘In the Bible, the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah was based on an actual event that occurred long before the book was written, when an entire city was razed by a nuclear weapon. And there’s a lot more, throughout religious literature.’ Travers cleared his throat. ‘“When mankind had spread all over the world and girls were being born, some of the heavenly beings saw that these girls looked beautiful, so they took the ones they liked . . . In those days, and even later, the Nephilim were upon the earth, who were descendants of human women and the heavenly beings. They were the great heroes and famous men of long ago.” Sound like a virtual history of extraterrestrial visitation and interbreeding? It is. Genesis, chapter six, verses one through four.’

‘You’re joking,’ Adams said.

‘He’s not,’ Lynn broke in, her mind racing. ‘The Nephilim were sometimes referred to as “the giants” in other translations, but the exact meaning was never known.’ She turned to Travers. ‘So you’re saying that the Nephilim were the surviving Anunnaki?’

‘Absolutely. “Nephilim” is, in fact, a direct transliteration of “Anunnaki” into ancient Hebrew from their own language. It’s all there,’ he continued, ‘written plainly in black and white, in front of all of us. The entire history of our world. Everyone’s read it but nobody truly understands it. Some believe that the gods described are actually supernatural beings, while others believe that they are the result of drug-induced hallucinations or visions, or are merely symbolic. Nobody really takes the stories as the
literal
truth. The closest are those who tout the ancient astronaut theory, who say that these ancient gods were in fact aliens.

‘But the truth is even more amazing. These ancient gods, the whole basis of all religions and all faiths, were men and women. We were, and still are, worshipping humans.’

‘W
E’RE HERE
,’ S
TEINBERG
said as they rounded another corner, suddenly confronted by what looked like an elevator door. ‘This is the Roosevelt Exit,’ he explained, ‘built some time after the original construction, on presidential orders. Roosevelt – who visited us here from time to time – was a claustrophobic, and something of a paranoiac. He hated the idea of one single elevator being the sole means of escape should anything happen down here, and so ordered a secret tunnel to be built.’ Steinberg leant forward and pressed a button to the side of the elevator door. It opened smoothly, showing a standard elevator interior. ‘It was disguised as a normal lift, which has always been out of order, eventually being decommissioned as unsafe. But,’ he continued, tapping a code into the control panel on the inside wall, ‘it was never intended as an elevator at all. At least not in the normal sense.’

As he finished speaking, the rear wall of the elevator slid to one side, showing an inordinately long tunnel stretching at a slight incline as far into the distance as they could see.

Adams peered into it. ‘If we’re thirty-six storeys below ground,’ he said, ‘then at that angle, the tunnel would have to stretch—’

‘Five miles,’ Steinberg finished for him. ‘It comes out just near the “Extraterrestrial Highway”, Route 375, that runs up to the base perimeter. The tunnel exit is just outside the fence line. It’s still on US Air Force property – the whole area for hundreds of klicks around is Air Force property – but it might just be far enough for you to make it out of here.’

Adams gestured to a metal cart on the right of the tunnel, resting on what looked like a rail track. ‘What’s that?’

Steinberg smiled. ‘I would ignore that if I were you. It was intended for a quick escape but it’s sat there unattended for the last forty-plus years, and even if it did work, the G-forces probably wouldn’t do you any good at all.’

Adams nodded. ‘Let’s go then,’ he said, stepping into the tunnel, Lynn next to him.

He turned back round when he realized the two scientists were not following them.

And then Lynn gave a startled yell and Adams’ eyes went wide as they saw Professor Travers standing there with a pistol aimed directly at Steinberg’s head.

‘D
ID YOU REALLY
think I was just going to let you walk out of here?’ Travers asked. ‘Did you think I was unaware of the plans?’ He laughed at them. ‘I was a guest at the Bilderberg Group meeting of two thousand and two, picked for the Hundred immediately.’ He gestured back down the corridor. ‘You hear that sound?’

Adams could hear it, and cursed himself for not picking up on it sooner. It was the sound of boots, lots of them, running towards them. He had allowed Travers to distract him with his stories. From the sound of the echoes, Adams estimated they would be upon them within the next sixty seconds.

‘Twenty members of security,’ Travers said, a wicked smile painted across his features. ‘And they are not known for their tolerance of escapees.’

Adams saw the look of indignant rage on the face of Steinberg long before Travers did, and was gripping Lynn’s hand and moving for the tunnel even as Steinberg let out an angry yell and launched himself at his colleague.

Steinberg clasped both hands round Travers’ pistol and yanked the arm upwards. A loud blast rang out, and a single supersonic round ricocheted down the corridor as both men struggled for control of the weapon.

Adams could hear the footsteps just about to turn the final corner, and pushed Lynn into the metal cart, looking in vain for the controls.

Steinberg saw what they were trying to do and yelled to them, ‘The left-hand side! The red button!’

Adams turned and saw the armed guards storming into the corridor, submachine guns raised at shoulder level.

He flinched as they pulled their triggers, heard Lynn cry an exultant, ‘Yes!’ saw Steinberg ripped to bloody pieces by hundreds of nine-millimetre hollow-point rounds, and then felt his own body surge back into the metal cart with tremendous force as it tore free from its moorings and accelerated at terrifying speed up the tunnel, leaving Travers and the twenty guards as tiny, insignificant specks in the far, far distance.

Steinberg hadn’t been joking about the G-forces, Lynn realized.

At first, the shock of the cart’s speed made her brain all but malfunction, the incredible force pinning her against the back of the cart, her face rippling under the intense pressure. But her faculties started to return, and she estimated the G-force to be in the range of 4 or 5.

During her time with NASA, she had experienced forces of up to 12 G in inverted dives when she had been invited to observe pilot training, but that had been wearing a special G-suit which mitigated much of the shock. And although 4 to 5 G was about the same as a high-G rollercoaster ride, those figures only applied to short spells on the fastest parts of the ride. Here, there were no protective suits, and the acceleration was constant, for a prolonged period of time.