The Prometheus Objective

26

In the Cessna 680, Orlando and Phoebe sat in comfort that was anything but comfortable. Phoebe had just dozed off, but her hand was still in Orlando’s, their fingers interlocked, her head on his shoulder. He could hear her fitful breathing, and hoped her dreams weren’t wracked with guilt and fear.

He couldn’t sleep. Didn’t feel even the need for a momentary respite from the world. Maybe it was his time in the ‘other place’ as a custodian — a feeling already unworldly and detached, as if it never happened. But maybe, he thought, it changed me. Did I come back with any enhanced powers of sight, any telekinetic abilities perhaps? Something Jedi-like, please?

He held out his free hand and aimed across the cabin, to the side of the pilot’s door, to the fire extinguisher beside the parachute. Opened his fingers, narrowed his eyes and concentrated. Come to me…

After a minute of nothing, despite feeling a tug of something in his mind, like he had momentarily shifted outside his body, nothing continued to happen.

“What are you doing?”

The weight was gone from his shoulder, and his other hand was being squeezed hard. “Trying to Skywalker something?”

Orlando let out a sigh and turned to her, attempting an innocent smile. “Just passing the time, trying out my lack of inherited powers.”

Her look softened as she brushed back her auburn curls and gave his hand another squeeze. “I’m sorry, I can’t imagine how you’re dealing with this shift back from… that.”

“I don’t really know. It’s weird. Sometimes I still feel detached, out of it all and…” He shook his head and sagged in the seat. “It’s like I was the ultimate superhero, like a god for a few moments, and then had it all snatched away.”

“You really were there? Outside and with… the others?”

“At least one of them. The one you saw at Shamballa.”

“Who told me of a great destiny, or whatever.” She rolled her eyes sadly. “Not sure that’s still in the cards. Hell, if he didn’t even foresee his own end, how good could he be?”

“He sacrificed himself. Or just wanted it all to end. The program… it thrust us out of time. I only had an hour or so in there and still it felt like several lifetimes. For the others, living in multiple dimensions, jumping around in time and existing for centuries, it had to be just unbearable after a while.”

“But…?”

“But why didn’t he help out more? Or the others, or myself? I was trying — but only for you and our children, because those are bonds that I’d never let sever.”

She smiled at him. “No matter how high and mighty you became? That’s sweet to know you’d still think of us little powerless folk after you made it big time.”

“You know what I mean. And no, I don’t think of you as powerless.” His look hardened. “And definitely not the children.”

He had told her of his vision — what they did when attacked, calling on nature and controlling local animals.

“What do you think they can do? Really do? And why do our enemies want them so bad?”

Orlando thought hard, remembering the tree of energy and data as light, the golden leaves and shimmering branches, all packed tight like DNA strands, with 0s and 1s in accessible and legible patterns.

“I don’t know exactly, but they were about to open the way to what I can only think is ultimate knowledge, with a capital freakin ‘U’. Something we’ve been denied, as humans, since… the Fall.”

Phoebe squinted. “You been reading a Bible? Adam and Eve?”

“The Apple…” He shrugged. “I don’t know, maybe there’s some truth to the story. Maybe it’s not just a parable or a sweet origin tale.”

“Yeah, sweet. Packed with evil serpents, betrayal, lies and getting our asses kicked out of the all-inclusive fun place.”

Orlando turned his gaze out the window, watching the majestic peaks of the Andes not too far below. “I’m thinking maybe the apple was a taste of that ultimate knowledge, a little glimpse of what came with the full-access membership.”

He shrugged again, as something shuffled and then thumped beyond the pilot’s door a few feet away. “And that ruined something big time, but, honestly, I want to talk to your brother. Mr. Alternate Theories would be all over—”

Another thump against the pilot’s door, and then the speaker crackled.

“Good afternoon, lady and gentleman. This is your former captain speaking.”

Phoebe and Orlando glanced at each other in confusion, and rising concern.

“For the last few moments of your life, this plane will now be piloted remotely by yours truly, as I wait here in the land of ice and snow, at what would have been your final destination. As I look over the sleeping figures of your so-lovely twins, before their imminent sacrifice.”

Orlando rocketed to his feet, but Phoebe was already ahead of him, taking three steps and then launching herself at the cabin door. Locked, she pounded on it before Orlando got there, screaming.

“Just everybody calm down,” the captain’s voice continued. “We’ll be landing — nose-first against the Andes, in about… one minute.”

“Sonofabitch! Open the door!”

Orlando had a sudden glimpse in his mind: the pilot, glassy eyed, mouth open and drooling, pushing forward on the stick. Behind him, in a heap against the door — the co-captain.

A stutter in the vision, and now the pilot is clad in all red, with a helmet-mask, which turns to observe the observer. Then another glimpse: a man, dressed in red, cross-legged in a cavern or tunnel of some sort, light streaking in beams from an aperture above; all around him, artifacts, statues and artwork, and around his neck… something scintillating like an emerald. His brow is furrowed, but his lips curl back in a smile just like the pilot’s…

Phoebe looked up helplessly to Orlando, who just said it: “He’s been… whammied or something.”

But the voice intruded again, haughty and unconcerned. The man in the cavern — his lips move in time to the pilot’s voice: “And don’t worry, the rest of your team won’t be making it either, so at least soon you’ll all be together in death. I had originally planned to let you reunite you with your kids before the end.”

“If you hurt them…”

“But your friends back in New York decided to go ballistic on us, bombing my whole enterprise, without even scrying for collateral damage.”

“The twins!” Phoebe went pale, gripped Orlando’s wrist.

“Fear not, they are safe. Your brother and Mr. Montross really need to get on the ball and ask better questions before choosing violence willy-nilly. Anyway, now, I’m just angry. Need revenge for this setback, and sorry but you’re in the right place, right time — for me. Sadly, for you.”

“Release us,” Orlando said, a little desperately. “Let us land, we’ll work this out.”

“No thanks. I have what I need, and my hopes of working together with the Morpheus team have been a tad soured of late.” He sighed, a long, static-interrupted sound. “Tragic you won’t get to enjoy my coming rule and the millennia of peace to come. But again, I thank you for flying with me.”

Orlando clenched his eyes shut and this time got another glimpse: the twins rest in blankets on a table, and other dark figures move about a massive pillared chamber of ice, while something fiery hovers over them like a sword.

The plane dipped hard, nosing down.

Orlando reached for her.

Phoebe screamed.

“Definitely whammied,” Orlando yelled after they collided into the first chair and held on. Phoebe managed to grip the seatbelt and hold onto Orlando, as his legs thrashed in the air behind him. His stomach reeled, and his guts felt like there were being pulverized.

“How?” she screamed.

Managing to get one foot on the cabinets, he steadied himself, still gripping Phoebe’s hand. “Mind control? Maybe the worldwide psychic shit has left everyone vulnerable to it?”

“Then why not all of us? We’re not—”

“Debate it later. Now, we have to jump!”

“While in a nosedive?” Phoebe screamed back at him, shaking her head.

“What, then? Pray?”

“That, and… improvise.”

He saw a light in her eyes, a calmness and confidence that hadn’t been there when they first met. It had come later, evolving after surviving death, after beating back forces far more insidious than this. After giving life to two new individuals.

“We’re not leaving them,” she said in a lower voice, then yelled louder. “Hey! Asshole in there! You’re crashing this plane for nothing. You forgot about one thing.”

Silence. Out the windows: a blur of peaks and snow, of jagged rocks and a patch of blue back up there somewhere.

Then: “What?”

Phoebe smiled, and to Orlando’s questioning look, whispered: “Fourth-down bluff play.”

She yelled again, “Parachutes, asshole. Sayonara, we’re busting out, and we may be delayed after landing, but our team will find us. We’ll get to the nearest airport and have one of our own piloting this time, and we’ll find you. We’ll end you. And if, by God, we find even one bruise on our kids, so help me…”

The plane trembled, then started to level off. Orlando’s stomach did a couple backflips as he dropped and stumbled back to his feet. Now they were climbing slightly, then veering about level. Out the windows, still high up, but in the midst of the Andean range.

A rattle at the door.

Phoebe, catching her breath, motioned to the pilot’s door, to the side of it, where…

Orlando didn’t need it spelled out. He was there in a second, just as the door opened and the pilot emerged, eyes scouring, narrowed and somewhat dazed, Orlando brought both hands around in dual fists, swinging in a great arc with all his might against the pilot’s temple.

He spun and went down hard. Down but not out.

“Uhnnn. Liars…”

“Yeah, suck it up,” Phoebe kicked hard, breaking the man’s nose, by the sound of it. Then she grabbed Orlando and pushed him into the cockpit with her.

“What are you doing? Let’s tie him up and get the chutes and…”

“No chutes on this plane.” She shoved him into the left chair, then quickly — as the pilot shook off the pain, roused himself and stumbled toward them — slammed the door and activated the reinforced locks.

“Sorry,” she said, sitting beside Orlando now. “I checked that first thing. No longer mandatory, and these guys didn’t give a shit, apparently.”

“Great, so…” Orlando looked out the window, with alarm. “…we’re just going to crash into that range right there.”

Phoebe was listening, but not completely. Between the pounding on the cockpit door, and the voice ranting about them only delaying their deaths, she was all over the panel, looking for the radio controls.

“Just grab the stick, lover boy. Pretend you’re in one of your video games. Keep us from hitting anything and let me think.”

Orlando did as he was told. He quickly found the sensitivity range after a few jumpy motions and turbulence that felt like he was in a car running over a herd of turtles. The range ahead of him, coming up fast, was now edging away to their right. He ascended slightly, to fifteen thousand feet, and only after the plane steadied did he realize how hard his heart was thudding.

“I can’t believe I didn’t puke back there,” he said, not sure why he said it, but figured it might lighten the sense of impending doom.

“Thanks for that,” Phoebe said, and gave his arm a reassuring touch before she went back to the controls. Clicked on the audio mic and leaned in. “Mayday. Flight… 244, if I remember right, bound for Buenos Aires. Off-course, and pilot incapacitated. Request urgent assistance.”

Orlando risked a glance and met her eyes: still scared, but oddly confident.

“We’re not going to die today,” she said, without a trace of doubt.

“I wish you had your uncle’s gift, so I would believe that for sure.”

“Believe it. And trust me. No, trust yourself. You’re going to land this plane, and we’re going to walk out and—”

“Get on another one?” He shook his head. “Oh no, not trusting anyone ever again. The entire world could be whammied at this point.”

“Don’t have another choice.”

“What about now? Maybe we could zap that other presence out of our pilot and get him back up here.”

“How? With an exorcism? You already smacked him upside the head, and it didn’t work.”

“Yeah, well we—”

“Flight 255, this is Manco Opano Airport, Peru, outside of Cuzco. You are one-hundred and fifty miles due northeast of us, and we’ve been alerted to your arrival. We’ll talk you through it.”

“What?” Phoebe and Orlando both said it, incredulous. “Who alerted you?”

“Had a call through secure channels from Washington DC. That’s all we know, other than that they said if you didn’t trust us, we were to tell you the name, Morpheus.”

“Well, anyone could…”

“And that someone you taught recently to trust herself is now asking that you trust her. And her visions.”

Phoebe’s eyes widened, and she breathed out a great sigh. “Victoria.”

Orlando nodded and took the headset she gave him. Adjusted the microphone to his lips. “Okay, then.”

He looked over the dizzying array of controls and dials. “Damn bit more complicated than my Xbox controller.”

“You’ve got this,” Phoebe said, now squeezing his shoulder.

“I’ve got this,” Orlando repeated, into the microphone. “Okay, ground control. Take me down.”

“Will do, first adjust your heading to these coordinates. You’ll see on your left…”

Orlando followed the instructions. And his mind was open, and it was almost as if he sensed what had to be done, the sequence and the steps, before he even heard them.

In ten minutes, as they descended toward the highest lake in the world, then arced a few degrees east to Cuzco and its landing strip, they saw nearby what looked like a war zone from Iraq: pummeled buildings, smoke rising from decimated craters, warehouses in flames.

Cloud streaks from F-18s arced off and out of sight.

Ground control broke in, oddly non-committal about the scene of destruction off to the east, but with a different element to make he and Phoebe glance at each other in wonder.

“One more thing this Morpheus contact told us to relay to you. Apparently other members of your team have been airborne a few hours, coming in fast from Micronesia. They’ll land in three hours and have requested a plane fueled and ready to take all of you.”

“Let me guess,” Orlando said, meeting Phoebe’s cold, determined and impatient stare. “We’re going to Antarctica.”