(MYST) Echoes of the Past

ECHOES OF THE PAST

Part One

James Lennord stirred from his slumber as the phone next to his bed rang, his eyes fluttered opened and tried to come into focus. He rolled to his side, one hand moving towards the alarm clock and lifting it up; 4:30am.

This better be important.

His hand moved towards the cordless phone like a great weight was pressing down onto his arm.

"Hello?" James managed to murmer out in a half-awaken state, trying to keep quiet to not awake his wife.

"Doctor Lennord?"

"Speaking."

"This is Fredrick Nillian, head of the archeology division of--"

"I know who you are..." Jame interupted the man mid-speech.

"...I'm sorry for calling you so early, but my team has just found an incredible find. We are looking for people with great expertise in the field of ancient civilizations, and your name came up."

"I understand, but what is so important that you have to wake me up at the crack of dawn to tell me?"

"Well Doctor," Nillian paused. "It's something your going to have to see firsthand. We're offering you an exclusive contract and part of the discovery, naming rights, and a 500,000 dollar paycheck."

"Thats alot of money for me coming out to god knows where to look at something."

"Yes well, our benefactors feel this discovery is very important. We have a private jet awaiting you at LAX, but we need you to leave immediately."

James' wife slowly stirred out of her sleep, heavy eyes opening slowly to look towards James, who was already getting dressed.

"Honey, come back to bed."

"Sorry, this is important. I think I just found the job that'll fund our research for a long, long time."

The jet ride was smooth, and with extravegent nature of the jet itself, he could tell that whomever these benefactors were, they were very important. As the plane came in for a landing, he finally saw where he was, a sea of golden dunes and rough sand: The Sahara. The plane landed roughly on a makeshift gravel runway, skidding to a stop as it bounced and rocked back and forth. James exited the jet slowly, squinting at the brightness of the sun and absorbing the sudden change of the enviroment.

"Dr. Lennord! Dr. Lennord over here!" A man shouted over the loud engines of the private jet. The figure was squranny, some young intern waving his arms about to motion over to James.

"You finally made it. I'm David, Professor Nillians assistant. Hows the jet lag?"

"I've had worse. So wheres the 500,000 dollar discovery?"

David motioned James to follow him as they made theyre way towards a large dune. Slowly they climbed over it, reaching the top. James eyes widened as he looked down from the top of the dune.

"Amazing isn't it?" David said as he stood beside James. Below the dune was a massive crater, caved in to reveal a massive pyramid. Barely worn or aged, somehow kept prestine in the dunes for centuries, if not millenias. The pyramid was built with massive slate bricks, leading up in a step fashion all the way up to the very top, which was flattened out.

"Wheres your boss, I need to talk to him immediately."

A discovery of a lifetime...

OK...WolfofWar you've got me hooked on part 1. Now I just gotta know what exciting discoveries you're going to uncover in this pyramid.

Is it the Nefilim?

Did the Grooved Ware People have anything to do with it?

Fess up, man...Dr. Lennord has me on a hook!

If I see you in chat, the pressure will be on...

Part 2

James followed Dr. Nillian’s assistant over a small dune and to a large pitched tarp that housed what looked to be an entire excavation operation. There were computer servers, x-ray and satellite observation equipment, and a large team of scientists and paleontologists. James had instantly seen Dr. Nillian, his notable balding head and white hair was a distinctive stand out compared to the rest of the younger generation of scientists wandering about. The doctor was talking to a tall, skinny man in a dark black suit coat, with matching black tie on a contrast of a pristine white coat. Upon seeing James, Dr. Nillian had broken off his inaudible talk with the man, turning to walk down the small dune towards James. He was quite happy, as any man would have been in the advent of a new historic discovery.

“Doctor Lennord! I see you arrived safely. Did you enjoy the ride here?” Nillian said while cupping James’ hand and shaking ecstatically.

“It was too much. I had wondered what was so important to coax me to the Sahara on a Sunday, with a two hundred thousand dollar jet ride for my leisure, but well—“

“Yes it’s quite amazing, isn’t it?” Dr. Nillian interrupted James’ mid sentence.

“So, I’m interested in finding out what you know. First of all, how have we never spotted this before?” James asked as they both began to walk towards the pitched tarp.

“Well that parts very interesting, I think. You see, three days ago there was a massive earthquake here, 8.9, largest this part of the continent has ever even seen. Well it shook off the encasement that hid it—“

James interrupted this time. He placed a hand on Dr. Nillian’s shoulder to stop his walk, and have spin him around to face James. “What do you mean encasement?”

Nillian grinned towards James, “Oh, well, it was encased in about four feet of solid glass.” Nillian ate up the look of awe on James’ face. “Infact,” He continued “we took a sample of the glass, and we found that its minerals match samples found a foot or two above the KT Barrier.

“So, your saying that this pyramid was made around three million B.C.E? Are you sure that’s right?” James asked as they entered the cool belly of the tarp.

“These things don’t lie, you know that. But that’s not the mind boggling part, Jimmy—“ Nillian motioned to a young scientist, holding a folder, to come over to the two of this. “Jimmy, show Doctor Lennord here the pictures.

The young scientist opened the folder, and slid out several x-ray photographs of the pyramid, large white objects streaking through the pyramid and even farther around it.

“What are those?” James’ asked as he leaned in to look at the x-rays.

“Those Doctor slick brick walls of the pyramid are reinforced with steel.”

James looked up to Nillian, his eyes were wide, his brain struggling to comprehend what he was just told. “But that’s impossible, steel wasn’t invented till a few hundred years ago.”

“Well doctor, that’s a conundrum is it not? If steel was not made till the eighteenth century, how does a civilization three million years older then it’s conception have it?

I was hooked on part 1, now you've got me hooked on part 2. I am probably not the only one who is waiting to see what is going to happen.

Hours of talk and debate had passed, and the decision was made: They’d have to go inside. An excavation crew carefully made an opening into the monolithic pyramid, and five slowly lowered themselves inside. Lev Vadim Groluchivich, a Russian archaeologist; Dr. Cheryl Gibbs, Paleontologist; Doctor Fredrick Nillian, Doctor Nillian’s assistant, David Raign and James.

“Careful on repelling on these walls, you don’t want chip anything!” Lev’s voice echoed through the void of darkness inside the pyramid as they lowered on harnesses. The streams of light coming from the opening seemed to dimmer as they went deep down into the opening, untill they found ground to step on.

“Light ‘em up” Nillian shouted confidently, all five of the explorers pulling out chemical glow sticks. The Chemicals cracked and hissed as they were shaken around inside the plastic tubes. They soon lit up the room in hues of florescent green. They were in the middle of a massive circular chamber. In the middle of this chamber stood a massive machine, seeming to go down floors and floors.

“What is that thing?” Cheryl said while she looked towards the others, hoping to hear some answer.

“That is one of the greatest discoveries in our history Doctor Gibbs, a machine made by a race of intelligent humans three million years ago. Makes our universe a bit more smaller, doesn’t it?” Nillian proudly stated in response to Cheryl’s question.

James wandered off a bit from the others, his fingers ran against the ancient wall made of a sandstone like concrete. They were decoratively engraved in hieroglyph like artwork, ones they would no doubt be unable to decipher.

“So is this it? Just a big room and a big machine?” Lev asked to the others while they examined the monolithic machine in the center of the room. The rest were silent as they looked around, aspirations faded as the reality of nothing else being in the room began to become realized.

“No.” James broke the short silence as he pointed to a large area in the wall with a straight vertical slit in the middle: a door. “Someone help me open this up.”

David rushed over to James quickly. He grabbed one side of the slit, and James on another, and slowly pulled back the door. The door retracted manual into the walls as they pulled back. A loud crunch emitted from both sides as the door had opened as far as it was going to go. They all walked in together, James again had run his hands along to cold walls, coming onto a circular object in some form of out lit.

“This is strange.” He murmered to himself, but the quiet outer monologue was loud enough to catch Nillian’s attention.

“What is it?” Nillian asked as he walked over to lend him his glowstick.

“It looks like some sort of old battery—“ James unscrewed the ancient battery out of the wall out lit.

“I’ve seen something like that before, in some ruins in Iraq.” Cheryl added a comment to the group, whom were all lurched over James’ shoulder.

“Someone have a D-volt?” He asked as he looked to all of them.

“I, uh—“ David scrounged through his vest pockets, eyes opened wide and his eyebrows perked in anticipation as he found something in his pocket. “—Aha!”

David anxiously handed the d-volt batter to James. Without hesitation, he placed the battery into the socket. It took a little force to manage to shove it into place, but it finally clicked in. A loud hiss came from the walls, as raw, ancient electrical wiring sparked back on. The charge going up to the ceiling, which lit up in flickering hues of yellow. Tiny little metallic firefly replicas hung from the sandstone ceiling, lit up by the electrical current.

“Amazing! They actually harnessed electricity.” Lev commanded in astonishment. They all were so focused upon the lights on the ceiling, they failed to notice a small glass screen, imbedded into a wall, lighting up like a bright computer screen.

James spotted the screen in the corner of his eye, and he had quickly turned to move towards it. He inhaled deep, and blew off a large amount of collected dust upon the desk lit structure connected into the wall: It was an archaic keyboard. Various buttons and knobs lined the panel. He pressed and turned a few, out of curiosity, and by chance, something came up onto the screen. On the screen was an extremely blurry and fuzzy picture of a woman, a human woman with darkened skin but bright green eyes. She began to talk, and ancient speakers in the room roughly presented the voice:

“Qui libm qbi’ douie vfo ybmbly. Vfo qbi’ loymb Quinnyl Ylvym Yevlym. Treyn libm loymb duio—“

Part 3

Though her words were unknown to them, her facial expressions gave incite into her emotional state. In the apparent five logs they discovered, this woman on the archaic crystal monitor went from a very exuberant figure to a very depressed being. Besides Cheryl, all the expedition team was in the main room of the pyramid. A full four hours had past since they entered, the small cavity they came down from, which once proved to supply a strong beam of light down into the chamber, was now dark; sun had set on the outside. In the meantime, a power generator was lowered, with several portable scientific instruments and lighting equipment.

James walked back into the observation room where Cheryl was, hearing the same first log repeated over and over again as Cheryl hunched over the controls, replaying it in one hand, while jotting down notes with the other.
“So how is the translation going?” James asked, leaning back against the sandstone wall.

“Not too bad, I think I have some of it down.” Cheryl said as she broke away from her hunched state to look over towards James.

“It’s amazing really, the language is a mixture of several dialects of Eqyptian, Mayan, Native American, Indian. Or well, I should say that all those languages are really dialects of this language.”

“So what do you have?”

“Okay, well, in this first log, she says that this is some form of research station, for a type of power generator. They wanted to make a machine of unlimited power and resources, that could power all of their cities and never malfunction.” She said as she read her translation from the yellow notepad.

“Sounds like an ideal aspiration.” James commented as he listened in.

“Yes, well, they had this pyramid buried in sand incase something happened, and it would protect the people around it. Anyways, in her second and third logs, she mentions that it didn’t go as well as they had hoped, and she requested the project to be shut down, but somebody wanted it to be continued…and now it was being tested as a weapon, that’s all I have translated so far, I’m still working on the last two.”

James nodded to her and pushed himself off the wall, “Okay, I’ll let you get back to work.” James walked out of the room and back into the central chamber. He noticed a man talking to Nillian, the same man he saw him talking with before; Black suitcoat, white shirt, black tie, and matching pants. Nillian motioned James to come over.

“Doctor Lennord, I want you to meet our contractor. This is Rianer Bram, he’s the supervising officer of the Defense Intelligence Agency.”

James struck an eyebrow at Nillian, “Why is an agent of the DIA contracting an archeological dig?”
The suitcoat made a coy smile towards James, speaking out in perfect, unaccented English, “The Defense Intelligence Agency is interested in the potential discoveries made here, especially regarding this machine and it’s purposes.”

James was about to voice an obvious concern before the suitcoat interrupted him, again smiling coyly.

“—Do not worry Doctor Lennord, we are here to help support your research, and in the advent of this discovery, we are willing to increase your contract, upon completion, to eight hundred thousand dollars. It is in your best interest to let us do our jobs, and we will let you do yours.”

Something stank, and James knew exactly where it was coming from. This DIA agent made James instantly unnerving, “Very well,” Was all James said before turning to walk back into the observation room. Before he could have entered, Cheryl busted through the door, hoping her yellow notepad, emotional excitement physically visible in her eyes.

Cheryl busted through the door, hoping her yellow notepad, emotional excitement physically visible in her eyes

Yes, what happens after this. Ooh you gotta keep going.

great stuff cant wait for more,

very well written

Part 4

“I decoded them, I translated the last messages.” Cheryl pronounced loudly into the room, all of those inside stopped to listen to her.

“She said that their government began running tests for this machine, for military purposes. In the last few transmissions, she said they were going to start testing outside firing practices, and she was scared because of the accident.” Cheryl flipped throw a few pages of her scratchy translations, reading verbatim the last transmission, her hands trembling.

“It is cold now, so cold. I warned them not to test it, but they did. We have not heard from the outside world in weeks, and supplies are low. We tried to go outside, but everything was covered in ice, the cities were gone, the people were gone, just ice, and cold, and silence. Forgive us…”

“My god, they caused the ice age…This machine has to be destroyed.” Nillian spoke out towards the others, looking back towards the machine.

The suitcoat seemed unfazed by the translations. “I’m sorry Doctor, but I can not allow you to damage our investment. The DIA will be deeply interested in this weapon.”

James spun around quickly, looking towards the DIA agent. “Are you crazy!” He shouted at him in anger, “Did you not hear what happened? It destroyed them, an entire civilization.”

The agent calmly pulled out of his interior coat pocket a small black handgun and delicately screwed on a long black silencer. “Doctor Lennord, we are the United States of America. We harnessed the power of electricity, harnessed the explosive power of meer atoms, and connected our world through fiberoptic wiring and networks. Some old mishap by a primitive civilization does not matter, we will do it better, and do it right.”

“You can’t take it—“ Nillian’s words stopped cold as the silenced weapon was fired into him.

“I’m sorry Doctor Lennord, but your contract his been expired. It is a shame we could not have met in better pretenses, but we can not let anybody know about what was discovered today, it is important to the security of our nation.”

The man callously fired his weapon at each individual in the room, leaving James surrounded by a circle of bodies. The agent calmly pointed the silenced gun towards James’ head, speaking one last time before firing off a shot.

“If it is of any consolation, this is all for science.”

If one word is to describe the largest of humanities traits, it would be ignorance. For even in the knowledge of past mistakes, our ignorance destines us to relive these same mistakes, for eternity.

Awesome, WolfofWar. Way to go.

I love the story line, you had me hooked and I certainly wanted to know more. I read this as you posted it without commenting of course, but had to reread it as an entire piece for the contest. I think it would have been better if you hadn't written it in installments but submitted it as a complete piece.

This can be a really good story if you to rewrite it as an entire piece with the basic spell check, grammar check, etc.

But overall like I said, it was an enjoyable read.

Just reading this for the first time.. I was literally on the edge of my seat.

If anybody views this after me posting, please take the time to read it.

Absolutely blown away.

Great stuff!! I would say start turning this into a novel, making your ending the mid point and let one or two of these guys escape death......that would sell, IMO