Now for a PSA from our friend, Sean Ellis:
Okay, for today's blog, I thought I might talk about the ongoing debate over the future of print books in an increasingly digital...
No. Scratch that. I don't want to talk about ebooks or publishing or any of the wearisome details of this vocation that constantly conspire to suck every last drop of joy from the creative process. I'm a writer, a storyteller, and that's what I'm going to give you today.
Submitted for your approval...
Fifty/Fifty
by Sean Ellis
The temple emerged from the jungle like the moon rising above the horizon. Dina Raidin checked her watch--11:18 a.m.--before allowing herself a brief--very brief--sigh of relief. The goal was in sight, but the race was not over; not by a long shot.
She glanced at Reyes. The archaeologist had always had a kind of Messianic air about him, an undeniable charisma that had drawn her, body and soul in a very literal sense, into his quest, but now, as he beheld the object of their search, he seemed positively transcendent. He had always believed they would find it in time, and he had been right.
Well, right about finding it anyway. If he was right about the rest, about the significance of the temple and the importance of this day in history--this very hour--then the question of whether or not they had found it in time remained unanswered.
The temple was barely recognizable as a structure built by humans. The passage of years had transformed it into a verdant hillock, and its unique pyramid shape grew less distinct as they got closer. Reyes quickened his pace as they reached its slopes and immediately began scrambling up to its apex.
"There would have been a shaft, descending from an opening at the top."
She nodded, and immediately deployed a "borer worm," one of toys The Group had outfitted her with. It was a shaped penetrating charge, designed to punch holes through everything from mine shaft walls to concrete bunkers, with a minimum of peripheral damage. According to the manuals, you could stand at arm's length from it during detonation.
Still, better safe than sorry.
"Get back," she directed, as she finished prepping the blasting cap. Ideally, she would have liked to have something solid--a big rock or a pile of sandbags--between herself and the borer--but situated as it was at the top of the pyramid, there was really nowhere to seek cover. She hiked about halfway down the slope and then pressed herself flat, gripping the trigger. "Fire in the hole!"
The explosion was nothing more than a loud thump that reverberated through the flanks of the structure, and a moment later, dust and debris began to rain down from the dark smudge of smoke that now rose from temple's apex.
Dina checked her watch again. 11:23. "Let's go!" she urged.
Reyes nodded. "Yes, we must hurry, but watch your step. There may be traps."
"Traps?" She shook her head. As if things weren't bad enough.
Although they had been searching for the temple for nearly three months, the last forty-eight hours had been a brutal marathon of dodging the anti-government insurgents and drug cartel members that called Panama's Darien Gap home, eluding Consortium operatives intent on finding and exploiting the temple's secrets with no regard for the rest of the prophecy Reyes had translated, and literally running through the jungle to reach this place. And now, traps.
Reyes shrugged. "Maybe not. But 'watch your step' is always good advice."
She understood the importance of watching her step, but she also knew that if they didn't get inside the temple and figure out the mystery in the next thirty-six minutes, then it would all be for naught.
The end of the world. Just about everyone had heard some variation of it--the end of the Mayan calendar would mean the end of everything...or maybe not--but Juan Reyes had found something different, something that explained why. Not a myth or prophecy, but a simple historical account of the creation of the Mayan calendar. If that account was true, and if Reyes' translation was accurate, then an ancient Meso-American astronomer had discovered a mysterious temple in the wilderness to the south of his ancestral lands, and in that temple, inscribed on the walls, he had found symbols that corresponded to the passage of time. It was not a calendar; it was a countdown, just like all the doomsayers had been shouting for the last decade. But the codex Reyes had discovered also included information on what to do when the end drew near. The account was spare on details, but as best Reyes could determine, there was a riddle in the temple; solve the riddle and reset the countdown. The Mayan calendar was synchronized to the winter solstice, and if Reyes was correct, whatever was supposed to happen would occur exactly at high noon.
It had sounded crazy at the start, but it hadn't been Dina's job to assess the sanity of Reyes' claims. Her orders from The Group were simple and straightforward: keep Reyes alive and make sure he succeeds. Falling in love with him? Well, that was just a bonus.
A haze of settling dust and high-explosives residue hung over the crater at the top of the mound, but below it, like a vein of shadows, the central shaft plunged into the heart of the temple. Dina activated two chem-light sticks--the kind that were short lived, but intensely bright--and dropped one into the void. It bounced off a flat surface about ten feet below, then skittered away out of view.
"That's our way in," she announced, tucking the remaining light stick into a mesh pocket on the front of Reyes' safari vest. Then, without further comment, she lowered herself over the edge and into the darkness.
The first light stick lay some thirty feet away, at the bottom of a descending flight of rough hewn stone steps. Its glow illuminated the immediate area, but the intervening steps were shrouded in darkness. Reyes dropped down a few seconds later.
"You do realize," he said, in a faintly amused voice, "that getting back up is going to be nearly impossible."
"I can't think of anyone else I'd rather be stuck in a hole with." She flashed him a quick smile, but then her expression hardened. "We need to get moving. You're the expert on this stuff; lead the way."
Reyes nodded, then held out the light stick like a torch to reveal the walls of the passage. The steps were strewn with rubble from the borer worm explosion. The archaeologist started down. "If there were any traps here, the blast would have triggered them. I think we're safe, but--"
"I know. Watch my step."
The foot of the stairs, where the second chem-light lay was only a landing, the first of several switchbacks that carved through the heart of the temple mound and took them deep into its interior. Dina kept one eye on the luminous dial of her wristwatch; this was taking too long.
The stairs descended seven flights before leveling out into a short tunnel that ended at an ornately carved threshold. Reyes probably could have translated the Mayan glyphs carved on the lintel, but that would have taken more time than they had. Instead, he took out a laser scanning device and swept its beam across the bas relief images. In the time it took for him to get his laptop computer out of his pack, the uploaded glyphs had already been translated.
"No trespassing?" Dina ventured.
Reyes quickly read through the list of possible interpretations. "Actually it's more like a welcome mat. They planned for this day; they knew that a 'wise priest' would make the journey. This last bit here--" He pointed to tiles that had horizontal lines and dots instead of stylized images-- "Identifies the safe route across the stone tiles in the next passage. It's sort of a literacy test; only a wise priest would know how to read. A common grave robber would just blunder on ahead."
Dina inclined her head. "I'll let you do the blundering then, wise priest."
In spite of the urgency of the moment, the archaeologist leaned over and kissed her quickly on the lips. Then, with his chem-light held high, he crossed the threshold.
The tunnel beyond was narrow, only a few feet wide, and about fifty feet long. The floor consisted of a single long row of undecorated square tiles. Reyes stepped on them in a very deliberate sequence, carefully jumping over specific tiles.
"Step where I did," he called back, unnecessarily. "Just like hopscotch on the playground."
"I thought you knew me better than that," she retorted, as soon as she completed the traverse to stand beside him. "I spent my recesses in the library, not on the playground."
"Me too." The archaeologist laughed, then waved his light around. "Look."
Dina's breath caught in her throat. She had only a passing knowledge of archaeology; her expertise was more rooted in the modern world--before joining The Group, she had earned degrees in advanced mathematics and physics--but she knew enough to recognize that the chamber in which they now stood was not the product of the Mayan civilization. "So it is true."
"Some of my less reputable colleagues have always believed that the Maya were influenced by visitors from...elsewhere. I guess this proves it." He sighed. "I think we're in your world now."
The chamber was spherical, about fifty feet in diameter, and moving through it was an assault on the senses, like a crooked house attraction in a roadside carnival. The sides were perfectly smooth and black as graphite, but as soon as they entered, the walls began to ooze light. Strange images, similar in many respects to the Mayan language, burned crimson just below the matte black surface, and in the space of a few seconds, the sphere was awash in an eerie red glow.
"Or maybe not," Reyes breathed. He lightly traced his fingers across some of the symbols. "This is the calendar! Every permutation, dating back to 3114 BCE. This was their inspiration. Do you see the pattern? Groups of symbols, corresponding to individual days on the Long Count."
"Which one is today?"
Reyes hugged the wall to avoid stumbling and ventured into the chamber. "It's here! And it's not red!"
Dina hastened over to join him, and saw that the group of glyphs that represented the last day of Baktun 12 in the Mayan calendar glowed a faint green amid the sea of red light. "When these numbers turn red, it's all over?"
"I think so." He turned, studying the walls for some clue about what to do next. Directly beneath the calendar symbols was another group of glyphs, dots and lines in a row--sequential numbers from one to nineteen--that were also glowing green, but their significance eluded him. After a moment, he pointed to something at the bottom of the curving chamber. "How did we miss that?"
The object that had caught his eye was the one thing in the room that evidently was of Mayan origin. It was a short, rectangular stone pillar, set just slightly apart from the dark circular depression at the very center of the chamber. The column was decorated on all sides with glyphs similar to those they had found earlier as well as other symbols that looked more like the glowing images on the walls of the sphere.
"I think this might be a sort of Rosetta stone," Reyes announced as he commenced scanning the images into his computer.
"Can you crack the code in--" Dina checked her watch again--"twelve minutes?"
"I guess I'd better." He tapped furiously on the keyboard. "This would be easier if I could access the servers at the university."
"We'd never get a signal down here. I'd have to run a hardline to the surface and set up a satellite antenna--"
"Dina." He put a hand on her shoulder. "It's okay. I can do this."
She rested her hand on his and gave what she hoped was a reassuring smile. "I've never believed otherwise."
He gave her hand a squeeze. "Okay. First the good news. I've cracked the code for the meta-language, at least to the same extent as the Mayan priest who carved this. Here's my best approximation: 'When the number of days is reached, the children will ask the gods to remain. If the children possess wisdom, they will descend to Xibalba--the underworld. One will return with the message that will please the gods. One must be given. If the gods are not pleased, they will devour the creation.' "
"That's it? Descend into the underworld? How do we do that?'
"I think we're supposed to..." He pointed to the dark circle just beyond the pillar. He shrugged and then took a step into the shadows. Nothing happened. Reyes frowned, and then consulted the computer display again. "Maybe I got something wrong."
"No, you got it right." Dina took a step forward to join him, and as soon as both her feet were in the circle, the floor began descending. "I think it's weight sensitive," she explained out loud. "You said 'the children,' plural. It needed more than one person to activate."
"So you're not just a pretty face," Reyes said, approvingly. The movement of the floor segment was so smooth as to be imperceptible; the only way to gauge their descent was the by the relative rise of the illuminated symbols, and after a few seconds, those were all but eclipsed by the cylindrical walls that seemed to fold over them. "So, what do you think this place is?"
"Like you said, the Mayans must have been influenced by visitors from elsewhere."
"So this is some kind of spaceship?" Reyes didn't sound nearly as incredulous as she would have expected. "ET's that never made it home?"
She shrugged. "That's my best hypothesis for the moment. Maybe it crashed or broke down, and the Mayans found it after the original inhabitants died. They did their best to make sense of what they had discovered, and somehow added it into their cosmology."
"So what does the end of the countdown mean? A self-destruct?"
Before she could answer, the surrounding walls of the shaft opened up, revealing another spherical chamber, this one adorned somewhat more haphazardly with a scattering of red and green symbols. The circle on which they stood continued to descend down until it was flush with the floor.
"So much for Xibalba," Reyes observed. "I should have been more literal with my translation. Not 'descend to the underworld' but simply 'go below.' "
"I'm sure the ancient Mayan priest thought it was the same thing." Dina stepped out of the circle. "We need to translate these symbols, ASAP."
Reyes took out his scanner and swept its beam around the chamber, but when he tried the translation program, he breathed a curse. "Useless. It recognizes some of the words and numbers, but there's no context. Whatever this room was, it was beyond the grasp of the ancient Maya."
Dina studied the glyphs, trying to think about them as a mathematical code from an advanced civilization, rather than the memories of an ancient, and relatively primitive people. " 'Ask the gods to remain.' The gods would be the aliens, and this was their ship. Asking them to remain would suggest that they were planning to leave." She turned to the archaeologist. "It's not a self-destruct. It's a start-up sequence. An automatic recall. This ship is getting ready to go home."
"So...how does that mean the end of the world?"
Dina took a deep breath. "The pillar said the gods would devour creation, right? How did they know that? Is that word here? Devour?"
Reyes managed a grim smile as he studied the detail of his translation. "Yes!" He moved over to a row of green symbols. "It's here. And right here underneath it is a word that could mean 'begin.' "
"What if 'devour' is another way of saying 'refuel'?"
"So...what? Refueling will somehow consume the entire planet?"
"It would if this ship uses a quantum singularity drive."
Reyes cocked his head sideways. "A quant...?"
"A miniature black hole. An immensely powerful gravitational source that can devour anything, even light, and which theoretically could open wormholes to facilitate interstellar travel." She spoke rapidly, as if the ideas were coming off the top of her head, but in fact this had long been a working theory at The Group, and her familiarity with the theory was one of the main reasons they had chosen her for the assignment.
She checked her watch again. It was 11:54. Six minutes left, and they still had no idea what to do. "The stone said something about 'wisdom.' It said we would find 'the message that would please the gods.' That message must be the shutdown code. It's got to be here somewhere. Shutdown, stop, something like that?"
Reyes studied his translation again, and the his eyes came back to the same group of symbols. "It's here. This could mean 'stop' or 'prevent', and it's followed by a series of numbers. That could be the shut down code!"
Dina reached out and touched the illuminated numbers, but nothing happened. "How do we use it?"
Reyes snapped his fingers. "Of course! Up in the calendar chamber, right under the symbol for today, there was a row of numbers, all in order. It's like a keypad. All we have to do is get back up there and tap the numbers in this sequence--" He pointed to the numbers as the appeared on the wall--"and that will restart the countdown and give us another five thousand years."
His elation was short-lived. "Just one problem. How do we get back up there? Maybe if we go back to the center? Elevators go both ways."
"I don't think we're meant to go back the same way." Dina stared at the glowing green display until she felt like the Mayan numbers were burned into her mind. " 'One will return...one must be given.' I think I understand."
She reached for the panel again, and before Reyes could shout the warning that suddenly sprang to his lips, she touched the symbol he had identified as 'begin.'
If she had expected that the room would come alive in a blur of alien activity, she was disappointed. But there was nevertheless a change. A pair of perfectly round holes, each about five feet across, opened without a sound on either side of the illuminated panel.
"There's our way out," she announced. "Heads or tails?"
Reyes studied the openings. "Many ancient cultures believed the left-hand was the path of magic. We should start there."
Dina nodded. "You take left, then. I'll go right."
Reyes shook his head in confusion. "We should stick together."
"Don't you get it? 'One will return...one will be given.' It's supposed to be this way. One door leads back to the calendar room, and the other..." She took a deep breath. "The other leads to the...the devourer."
"You can't be serious."
"If it is a singularity, then it probably needs a small infusion of matter to remain on standby, just like a car engine idling needs a constant supply of gas."
Reyes shook his head, as if by dogged resistance he might somehow change the reality of the situation. "Even if you're right, we can figure out some way to get around it. We'll throw some rocks into it."
"There's no time, Juan. There's barely time to do even this. So, you go left and I'll go right."
Reyes mouth began working but nothing coherent came out. She took a step toward the right hand opening. "Better get moving."
"Dina, wait."
"There's no time," she repeated.
"You go left. I'll take the right. You know the code?"
"I want to live as much as anyone, Juan, but it's a coin toss, isn't it? The lady or the tiger? We won't know for sure until it's too late to change our minds."
He sagged. "Yes."
Dina felt the emotion building in her throat, but she also knew that if she didn't move--if they both didn't move--then they would both be lost. Everything would be lost. She pulled him close, drawing his face down to hers, and kissed him. "I love you, Juan. But now it's time for one of us to go save the world."
"Both of us."
She nodded. "Both of us."
"I love you too, Dina." He pulled away and moved toward the opening on the right. Just before he entered, he looked back one last time. "Watch your step."
Dina checked her watch. It was 11:59.
* * *
Sean Ellis is the author of several novels, notably The Shroud of Heaven, The Adventures of Dodge Dalton in the Shadow of Falcon's Wings, and the forthcoming Into the Black (Dec. 2010)
For more information visit http://seanellisthrillers.webs.com
I feel this piece of original fiction - the first it's seen of this world - can speak for itself. I hope you weigh in on it. Please, leave you comments, which will put you into the pot to win a
Variance ebook.
As with the rest of our guests, we are very lucky to have pieces on here for your reading enjoyment that are this good. I hope you appreciate the hard work these authors put into their masterpieces. Have a great week until we speak again.
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