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Life and Death in the Crystal Palace

Part 1

DECEMBER 20, 2012

The Mayan calendar was due to end on December 21, although an alternate method forecast December 23. Whatever the case, the world was in a frenzy, one much worse than when the end of the world had been predicted by the Jehovah Witnesses in the 1990’s, for radio, TV, and other electronic signals all over the world were all being disrupted by some unknown source. And there were the tremors.

Commander-Grandmasters East and West were already at the TOE Center in Hawaii when the President’s CIA chief called in.

East put it on speaker: We can’t track the source of the disturbing signals. My experts tell me that these signals are like none they’ve ever dealt with before; that whenever they think they’re getting a fix on them the waves relocate to a new and apparent source which soon does the same. Also, the waves are at a frequency which can’t—well, shouldn’t even function for their range. If we could only get near to the source, even in its vicinity, we could then probably hone in on it—I’ve got planes crisscrossing the world trying to localize it, but it will only be luck if we run into something stable. I’ve certified that the signals are not coming from space.

“Bad news”, she (East) said, to no one in particular. That means the signal doesn’t want to be found.”

West added, “Which means that if we did find it, we could possibly turn it off or neutralize it somehow.”

The speaker continued: …And I’ve got reports of small tremblors all over the world at once. That’s unheard of. They’re quite minor, and no quakes have been reported, but they’re been increasing and spreading since yesterday. Could the world be ending?

East replied, “The signals are of an alien nature; that’s why you don’t recognize them and why they have such strange properties.”

West surmised, “So the radiating device was planted here ages ago, when…”

“…The earth was visited by them,” East continued.

“And the Maya somehow knew about it,” added West.

“And there’s that unexplained ancient runway in South America,” surmised East.

“Who do we have on ancient symbols and Megaliths?” West asked of the TOE Center Director.

We have Leskey, right here, and Fredrick, who’s out and about the island right now.

Leskey piped up, “Sir, Fredrick found some new glyphs on the rocks near the runway a while back, for they had removed the 20 feet of soil that had accumulated over the millenia—and there seemed to be drawings of some lakes carved therein. I can access Fredrick’s photo files.”

“Good,” answered West. “And let’s fetch the young master; he has the Sight.”

“My God!” cried Leskey, “They are a much larger and detailed version of what I found at the end of the calendar stones at the Mayan Ruins.”

“Quick, match it to the globe, present and past.” pleaded East.

It was going to take some time to search all of the maps of the ages.

Meanwhile, Fredrick, surfing, heard the rotors and turned to see a black Ninja helicopter approaching and then hovering about two feet off the ground, creating a mini sandstorm.

A while later, Leskey reported, “I’ve got it, Grandmaster, it’s the Central Lake District in Canada—well, as it was a long time ago.”

“I heard,” chimed in the CIA Chief. “I’ll have an AWACS with a survey helicopter in it there within an hour.”

The action paused, as they awaited the over flight of the suspect Canadian area.

East asked for geographics of the site.

Profpat answered, “I’ve got it on Google Earth and Wikipedia—it’s a region with forests so dense that the snow cannot even reach the ground. All the snow stays aloft, on the treetops, like a canopy. I wouldn’t try to land on it.”

“Thanks”, answered East. “I’ll pass that along. They sure picked an almost impenetrable area.”

“Almost?” asked the Prof.

“We can go anywhere—get one of our helicopters to the region.”

Lunch was served.

The CIA chief came back on: Some of the electronics on my AWACS are going haywire and burning out, but we have a general location—we’re dropping the chopper now to locate it and my AWACS is getting out of there.

The survey chopper dropped like a stone, the wind soon catching the rotors and stabilizing the craft— which they soon started.

All they can see is snow and ice.

“There’s a forest underneath.”

What the… I’ve got an infrared satellite coming over in 17 minutes… We just burned up half its fuel to get it there. What did the aliens want with us, anyway?

“Not all things are solvable. We have no answer of what is probably now some long abandoned agenda.”

The survey helicopter headed off in the general direction of the strange signals; however, there came an avalanche of strange sensations as they began to narrow the source of the emanations—such as nausea, high heartbeats, a sense of suffocation, tight chests, panic, anxiety and much more than they’d ever known in the strenuous training of flight school…

Their very selves were fragmenting. One last effort reported all of this back to CIA Command as the craft begin its swan dive and crashed through the ice into the depths below.

Mission failed and crashed—the crew reported some kind of extreme mental disturbances—maybe your ninja craft with its mind-diciplined crew can get closer—enough to pinpoint the source. My guys were still 5 miles away.

“I hope so. We’re about 7 minutes away from your copter’s last location”.

Go for it.

The Ninja Craft did make it much closer, to about a thousand feet of the source, its crew also bearing the waves of unreality washing over their psyches, but then, too, they came to be on the verge of blacking out. Only the pilot’s last bit of remaining logic stabbed at the autopilot, which carried the craft aloft and away to safety.

“We had to abort, but we’ve got the source to within three hundred yards,” reported East. “They dropped a flare.”

We’ll refocus the infrared satellite to that location—it can read a label on your clothes from space.

Grandmaster West sat back in his chair and pondered during the brief interlude, looking about the room of the dedicated ToeQuestors. Who can we send? he thought. And how much time do we have?

CIA: Sir, a Russian jet fired three missiles toward the target, but their electronics and guidance systems fizzled and fried, the missiles winging away erratically and plowing into the ice like harmless duds.

East interjected, “If it’s of an alien race from another star that can conquer space, then it’s no wonder that our primitive electronics can be thwarted.”

The satellite’s data came streaming in—a five minute high definition video of the device and it’s glowing control panel.

Fredrick walked in the door, noting the video just beginning to play, and studied it intensely until it ended. One of the symbols in the middle had been changing rapidly, and another one, too, but only every so often.

“I’ll bet it matches no known language, font, or number system,” said Fredrick.

“That’s true,” answered an associate. We just put it through the translator.”

“My Kingdom for a Rosetta stone,” replied the TOE Center Director.

“We have three hours, or so” answered Fredrick. I identified its ‘zero’ character and then deduced the rest from their structure and form—and from the sequence of the rapidly changing symbol—it’s a timer that has advanced six minutes in the five minutes that we watched it— it’s on its way down to all zeros.”

Fredrick sat down and went into a trancelike state.
Someone came over.

“No,” said West, “leave him be.”

CIA came back on: Have your craft clear the area—we have a Super Stealth inbound at a thousand miles an hour—the President has authorized a tactical nuclear strike. 10 minutes to arrival.

“We’re already clear, but the strike won’t work,” answered East.

It’s worth a try.

A while later, Fredrick looked up from his reverie.

“What did you see?” asked West of Fredrick.

“I saw the blankness of… no Earth… and a dim vision of a woman walking in the dark with a flashlight through a forest overcrowded with trees… that’s all, sorry.”

West addressed the room: “No sorry—that’s it. Who do we have that can approach this thing that so much disrupts human functioning?”