The Prometheus Objective

29

On the USS Marcos, a mile off the ice shelf at Ross Bay, Caleb stood inside at the portside promontory. He had just come up from his temporary quarters, where he had managed a quick lukewarm shower. He changed into thermals, wind-breaker khakis, boots and a cotton navy turtleneck that made him feel like he should be on the prow of a Nantucket whaler vessel smoking a corn pipe.

Arctic gear was prepped and ready: heated parkas and climbing boots, gloves and hats, goggles and flashlight head-beams. Edgerrin finished a call behind him, conversed with the Navy captain and two others, then came to stand beside Caleb.

“How are you holding up?” Caleb asked. He never took his eyes off the distant peak past the bluffs and the crashing surf, beyond the jagged glacier ridge and the steep ascent to where he’d seen the satellite imagery of the pyramid-shaped mountain. They’d mapped the best route in, and were just waiting for dusk, after noting some defenses and patrols along the way.

Edgerrin’s reflection was resolute, almost as if painted in transparent greys and whites upon the glass. “Would be better if I could take those blasted meds. The visions are insane. But I’m focusing. Like you taught me.”

“Hone your mind,” Caleb said. “Shut out the temptations, focus on the mission. Might even get a glimpse of something that could help us out here.”

“It’s working. Weird being on the other side of all this.”

“’Weird’ is a good word for it, I imagine. Feeling a bit of that myself”

“That and having the weight of the world on my shoulders. Trying to keep to the day to day. President… clinging to life. VP and the cabinet… dead or incapacitated. Others out of their minds. NORAD prepped and defense satellites all on high alert in case someone else gets possessed and launches on us — or our allies or anyone else we can protect.”

He let out a long sigh. “It’s a lot to juggle. And then Montross and Ms. Montgomery. Gave then full access to NASA systems and the HAARP facility. Praying they can figure this out and shut this shit down. Get us all back to normal. You on this side of crazy, me back on the other, normal, side.”

“In time,” Caleb said. “And I hate to say this, but we may want to wait and time it right.”

“What do you mean?”

“I sense that many members of that army waiting for us may be incapacitated themselves. Or at least, not playing their A game.”

“Great, so they’ve probably sensed us coming.”

“That’s a safe assumption.”

Edgerrin massaged the back of his neck. “Bring it all down too soon, and the filter’s off, and our advantage gone. And—”

Edgerrin suddenly groaned and dropped to a knee. The captain shouted something.

“Saw it, sawit, sawit, runrunrunRUN!”

Edgerrin shoved Caleb to the side room with the arctic gear, and as he stumbled, at a loss for what was happening, he saw it:

Streaks of light arcing from that mountaintop, from concealed turrets under the ice.

Missiles.

Heading for them.

The next few minutes were a complete blur of violence, explosions, frozen water and counterfire. Somehow Caleb got to the boat, still struggling into his parka. He threw on the hood and vehemently refused the heavy gun thrust into his hands.

Despite the explosions, the ringing in his ears, the ice and water and flaming wreckage raining down around him, all he could think was: how would I even pull the trigger wearing these heavy gloves?

The destroyer returned fire, missiles streaking from the side bay and deck port, but the Marcos was in grave shape. Flames raged over half the deck, gaping holes were torn in the near hull. Still, she struck back just as hard. The glacier plateau erupted in several locations, and as Caleb looked through the spray and the smoke, the wall of ice seemed to be sliding down into the sea, a graceful but terrifying avalanche. Tiny forms tumbled amidst the white: defenders, guns and vehicles spilling into the icy waves.

Edgerrin gripped Caleb’s shoulder and pulled him back. Took his spot at the prow, aiming with a scoped rifle of some kind. Caleb couldn’t see anything clearly. Heard his name, and more shouting. Other soldiers were in the rescue craft with him, and two more boats roared to life beside them. They skipped over the tumultuous waves and raced toward shore.

More explosions and chunks of ice—

An image of something in his mind: blurry at first, then resolving. Pyramidal, ice-covered. Ancient. Beyond ancient. Hazy with a blue screen around it — a screen that became more and transparent.

Splashes of icy water, and he was tipping with the boat. A deafening scream in his ear, spearing past the echoes of explosions and then — he was submerged into a world of utter cold, like nothing he had ever experienced.

A shock of frozen agony, it sliced through the thin blue veneer in his mind — the last vestige of the shield blocking the sight of what lay ahead, calling for him.

And he saw it: not one pyramid jutting out from the ice, looming immensely over tiny human forms at its base, but two more — misaligned in a row, not unlike the familiar precision at Giza, reflecting the belt of Orion in the night sky.

As he descended, mouth open but not breathing in the icy waters, and before the hand grasped his hood and hauled him up, his mind reeled under the flood of warm, sunlit images:

A jungle world. Lush, developed with roads and spires, appearing like a cross-architectural menagerie: turrets and spires alongside open-air temples; Greek-style pillars beside gothic archways; hanging gardens, wide canals and immense waterfalls gracing every hill… and the Pyramid he had just seen, looming over it all, dazzling and golden, shimmering in the sun while thousands basked in its rays and went about their lives.

Beyond this pyramid, a trail up the side of a steep cliff to a plateau where shade drapes the land, cast by the gargantuan branches of a tree so huge, so thick, majestic and almost godlike in its grace. Its leaves dazzle, its branches ripple with a fluorescent energy and its trunk seems so vast it can hold all the world’s temples and churches side by side and stacked high, housing their bricks and mortar — and their very scripture, verse and belief…

The branches creak, and something slithers in the foliage, knocking down bark and leaves. Something with hungry eyes.

Eyes searching for him…

On his back, staring at the blinding sky where a dim sun burned somewhere. Forms bustled around him. His chest heaved — coughing, he realized, hacking up mouthfuls of icy liquid.

He heard a rumbling somewhere, like an engine peppered with sputtering bangs. Focusing, he saw Edgerrin crouching beside him, firing with precision bursts here and there at what must have been waves of enemies bearing down on them.

“Can’t be!” he shouted. “Our forces should be here!”

Caleb coughed and half-chuckled, half-choked. “Not…ours anymore,” he tried to say.

Come on, he thought. Put it together. Our enemy must have turned or possessed the troops here. Probably a while ago, recruiting them to his side, knowing that he was coming for whatever they were guarding.

What were they guarding?

Did they even know? Or were they just doing their jobs, assigned to the bottom of the world to protect the greatest secret ever discovered?

Caleb thought of the recent visits to this location by world dignitaries and religious leaders. They had been shown something, told something — that had changed their world view, shattered their preconceptions and brought about a new move toward harmony.

Was it the revelation of another civilization, long-forgotten, or something far more ground-breaking? Was it along the lines of the multi-verse concept, the Custodians or UFOs in our midst? So many theories and conspiracies, he couldn’t track — or rank — them all. But if he tried, if he had just a moment of peace amidst all this carnage… the blue screen was down, he could see it. He could just about…

But the numbness and utter chill seeped into his bones and the wind ripped through his every cell, and it felt like he was being disassembled by the frozen hands of some mischievous ice demons, and he couldn’t focus for one second. He had to get warm, had to get dry or he’d have—

— nitrogen narcosis, rising too fast, and…

…and for a moment he was back under the Alexandrian harbor, touching that stone head of Isis, the one that had started it all and led to his recuperation in the hyperbaric chamber on Waxman’s yacht where his visions continued.

Where am I?

It was like being in two places at once: in the warmth of the Mediterranean and on the icy shores of the Antarctic. Straddling both times and locales in his mind.

Gunfire and explosions still popped in his ears, only now the Greek setting was being torn apart by the shells, and men in parkas raced this way and that, firing and shouting orders, and there was Edgerrin — (but he wasn’t even around during the first mission) — and now he dove over Caleb, still shooting at what must have been a massive group advancing on their position.

Caleb cried out as a hole punched through Edgerrin’s insulated coat. Red streaks on the ice as he spun around, tilted and tumbled out of view.

Shadows fell, guns pointed at his face, and Caleb peered up through the pockets of warmth from the Egyptian sun. Clinging to that other place, to the warmth of the past, he fought off the chill…

Long enough to clear his vision and see not only in the present — in the brutal cold of this icy battlefield (where the battle was clearly lost) — but also beyond it, beyond the veil of secrecy and eons of blindness, to find the man who now spoke to him through the mouth of another.

One of the soldiers stood up straight, lowering his weapon. He was out of breath, but his voice was restrained and calm, yet encouraging.

“Mr. Crowe, thanks for coming. Let’s get you out of the cold and show you what you’ve been searching for all your life.”

Caleb could feel his head moving even as he was lifted, pulled up by several others, helped to a transit vehicle of some kind, ushered into the back seat where he felt a true blast of warmth. The possessed soldier got in beside him, then pounded the back of the driver’s chair, and they took off.

Before he knew it, he was out of his coat and a sweater and a heavy insulated heated blanket had been wrapped around him. Through it all, he kept mumbling. Words that he realized, formed a question.

One question, over and over.

“Who are you? Who are you?”

The man to his left, youthful but hardened by the elements, just grinned. After a moment, as the driver veered around a bend, still ascending, sunlight speared in from a low angle and dazzled Caleb’s eyes. He squinted, leaned forward and saw it: their destination. Up a steep and winding ramp of ice, toward the triangular summit of what first appeared to be a mountain but was clearly an edge of an immense pyramid.

Knew it, he thought. Damn fuzzy Google Earth images.

Dizzying in height, massive in width, Caleb could barely breathe as he shuffled to the window to look out and down. For a moment, his mind did it again: bifurcating and existing in the present, observing this icy anomaly, and also in a past so ancient as to be beyond prehistoric even: a lush world of vines and greenery and plants so huge and alien they could have been at home in an epic sci-fi movie. Rivers and waterfalls cascaded in the dazzling glow from the gold-plated pyramid looming over everything like a cyclopean behemoth.

But the same in both worlds: an entrance, halfway up, in the shape of a great, triangular arched door, plain and opening into welcome darkness.

“Who are you? Who are you?”

The words still came from his trembling lips as they neared the doorway.

This time, an answer came, of sorts.

“That’s the wrong question, Caleb. You know all about that problem, right?”

“Wrong question,” he echoed. “Wrong…” He blinked and tried to pull back from one of the worlds, and found himself in the warmth, in the dazzling blaze from the pyramid that wasn’t just glowing but trembling, as if it could barely wait to reveal the secrets inside.

“What’s the right question, Crowe?”

“Not who are you.” I know that answer already anyway. He blinked down now at the tiny forms below, the men and women of the past age. Bathing by the river’s edge, working at the village in the valley, writing, painting, designing, planning…

“Then?”

“Who were you?”

The silence stretched and lured him back to the grinding of the tracks into the ice, of the engine rumbling, until the soldier leaned in and spoke…

“That is not only the right question, Crowe, but the one…”

Caleb flipped back to the present, to where, at the edge of the ascending pathway, in the arched doorway, a man in red robes calmly awaited him, and finished the sentence:

“…you should be asking yourself.”