The Prometheus Objective

3

“Okay,” Nina snapped. “Let’s dispense with the history lesson and all the cool Ancient Aliens aspects about what we’re about to see. Let’s just pretend your father is here, regaling us with clever tidbits of lore and legend. Meanwhile, we can all get down to business.”

“But it’s crazy interesting!” Alexander insisted. He was in the front of the outrigger, eagerly looking ahead, through the mist rising like witches’ fingernails from the murky water north of the shore.

They had landed after midnight at the Pohnpei International Airport, with its red and yellow faded coloring, with its one runway ending at the acid-washed blue jean water. They’d first set down in Guam and chartered a quick jumper from there. Along the way, on his iPhone, Alexander had brushed up on all the history he could find on the ancient city of Nan Madol, deciding that someone needed to focus on their mission.

Jacob and Aria were fast asleep minutes after takeoff — which concerned Nina and Alexander, given that Aria was their shield against psychic detection, but they figured it was too late now. Their enemies surely knew of their mission if they had any psychics to RV their location, but it shouldn’t matter. They had a sizeable head-start out to this nearly inaccessible part of the world, out in the middle of the ocean.

Their phones had lost satellite connection around 2 AM, and they landed shortly after. They took a short taxi ride to the local hotel where everyone crashed hard. Everyone except Nina, who stayed up, readying weapons and staring out the window as if expecting an army to burst from the swaying palms at any moment.

Alexander awoke after a fitful three hours, confused that he couldn’t remember the gist of the dream he’d just had, other than something about a familiar chair, radiating power, and his father again seated in it.

They tried again to reach anyone from the Morpheus group, but had no luck. Phones were out, and very few islanders were about — which they attributed to the limited population anyway. The island, seen for the first time now in the dawn’s light, was mountainous and lush, sporadically dotted with run-down homes and chicken-wire farms.

But they had no time for sightseeing. A quick breakfast of eggs, pork sausage and bananas, and they were off to meet a guide at the dock and throw their gear into the outrigger. Two tanks, scuba gear, gloves, suits and flashlights, and they were out just as the sun cleared the lush peaks and scattered festive lights on the water to blaze their way.

Alexander bit his tongue at Nina’s scolding of his history lesson and tried to think about what his father would say at such a moment. “This isn’t about travel guides or making conversation,” he snapped back, and met Aria’s eyes. She finished a big yawn and tried to get comfortable amidst the bags and oxygen tanks, all while squeezed between Nina and Jacob.

“What’s it about, then?” Jacob asked. “Ancient rocks and cryptic puzzles and deadly traps? In other words, ‘the usual?’”

“I don’t know. Not sure what’s waiting for us, but if our new team back in Virginia has any skill…”

“Which I highly doubt.”

“…then they’ve given us a map to where this Emerald Tablet is.”

“ET Part II, you mean?” Jacob laughed at his own wittiness. “After our dear old Dad shattered the first one.” He said the last part with some bitterness, recalling the event in different shades than Alexander did, as they had been on opposite sides for that battle.

Alexander had the scribbled map in his hand now, holding it up to the sun as they followed the coastline, then turned into the thicker mist. The shore had become thick with mangroves, choking the ground and spreading out and over the coral banks.

He considered the map, the line drawn through the rectangular shapes to a large circular centerpiece, which then became a dotted line to the center where there was an ‘X’.

“Victoria and her team indicated that one of the tunnels riddling this site should lead us into a cavern system. Natives believed the tunnels and pits all were ceremonial and sacred and were used in burial rites for their rulers.”

“But,” Aria spoke up, “like with the Great Pyramid, maybe that’s not the case, and the real, original purpose was for hiding something else?”

“Exactly.”

Nina cleared her throat and hefted one of the bags. “Victoria also told us most of the tunnels were blocked up long ago. Purposely caved in or filled with boulders. So…” She smiled. “We brought C4, and I’m more than okay decimating this internationally-protected site.”

“I’m not,” Alexander said, wistfully looking ahead at the large shape taking form in the mist ahead: something immense rising from the coral. “But I think we can make an exception in this case. For the greatest of all artifacts.”

“If it’s even still there,” Jacob said sourly. “You know how you Morpheus people get things wrong by not asking the right questions.”

Alexander glared at him. But he had to admit, the thought had crossed his mind too. Victoria and the new recruits were just that — new. And while this site certainly had promise — it was ancient, far beyond what modern archaeologists believed to be its age. They had relied on carbon dating of ashes found in a pit to fix the date around a thousand years ago, forgoing everything the natives told them — that these massive ruins and carefully designed man-made islands, constructed with basalt stones averaging twenty tons or more — had been here for millennia.

“Look at that.” Aria spoke, and her voice was dreamy, full of awe, as the scope of Nan Madol came into view. Flickering in the dawn’s brilliance, it rose up out of the waters; mist clung to the coral ruins, along with mangrove growing from the cracks and along the tops of the cyclopean blocks, which were stacked together like Lincoln Logs.

The first section of the artificial island city greeted them like a ghost from the ancient past.

They maneuvered a short distance into the city on its unnatural canals, marveling at the architecture, the sheer size of the blocks and the sense of great age of everything.

“So, they just built these things on top of the coral?” Aria asked as the boat slowed to a glide, veering toward a shallow section beside a large complex. Fruit bats circled overhead, and mosquitoes buzzed about, temporarily avoiding them due to morning lethargy, bug repellant, or both.

“Yes,” Alexander replied, getting ready to guide the prow alongside the bank. “Nan Madol. It means ‘Between the Spaces’, and it fits.” He took a breath. “Somehow, they stacked up these giant blocks — almost eight million of them, some weighing up to sixty tons — and built the walls around the small rectangular islands they created out here; and then they filled them in with tiny bits of coral, building walkways and craving out entire channels. It was called the Venice of the Pacific. The Eighth Wonder of the Ancient World.”

“Whatever,” Jacob said, checking the air tanks and the scuba gear. “How far to the thing we have to blow up before we get to go swimming?”

“Settle down, kids.” Nina slipped the pilot a fifty-dollar bill and told him to wait, and to “forget hearing anything to do with explosions.”

Alexander wasn’t sure the guide’s English was that good anyway but realized this could be problematic.

Aria, however, wasn’t concerned, and was still marveling at the size of the basalt columns and walls. “How did they move these things? And where did they come from?”

“That’s the really fun part,” Alexander said, enjoying her enthusiasm. “Like at Stonehenge and Baalbeck in Lebanon, and Easter Island even… the source of the incredibly heavy stones were miles and miles away. Here, the quarry is even more ridiculously located. Over mountainous terrain, it would have been impossible to transport these stones which are ten times heavier than anything used at the Great Pyramid. A Discovery Channel team attempted to move one but couldn’t succeed with anything weighing over one ton. Not over land, or on boats — as archaeologists guess they did.”

He thought for a moment, then asked the guide: “What do the locals say about this? How were the stones moved?”

The pilot’s old and wrinkled face turned back to them. Confirming he could understand and speak English, he said: “Two brothers come, long ago. They raise stones with magic. Magic sounds and words, harmonies, a staff of power. Float rocks into place.”

With that, he took a swig of something in a dark brown bottle, and then spat over his shoulder.

“Well,” Jacob said. “There you go. You heard the man. Magic iTunes. Now can we go?”

“And a dragon,” the guide added as a mere afterthought. “Dragon come, breathing fire and creating the canals, and the other cities, now underwater.”

“Hang on,” Alexander said, perking up. “Sunken cities?” He’d read about legends from several early explorers confirming such things. “Before the war, the Japanese excavated and explored the area, bringing up relics and treasures, especially coffins made of platinum.”

Aria perked up. “Coffins?”

“Yeah, but not always full of bones. Mostly jewels and gold, or so they said. But once the war broke out, the Japanese left this island, and everything just stopped. But there were earlier stories too. A German explorer, Joharnes Kubary in the 1870s mentioned something about sunken ruins. Stories he’d heard from early pearl divers who would descend more than a hundred feet into Madolynym Harbor. They saw a ‘castle’ down there, and roads and columns disappearing into the silt.”

Aria gripped his shoulder. “You and Nina are the only ones who are going to scuba that deep. I snorkeled once in my YMCA pool, and that’s it.”

“It’s okay, I don’t think we need to. Not if we can get into that tunnel.”

“Maybe there’s more treasure and some of that platinum stuff,” Jacob said, hunger in his voice.

“Maybe. But Kubary wrote in his journal that he loaded a boat with everything he found here…”

“Fucking thief,” said the guide, spitting again over the side as he jumped out and pulled the boat up to a hitching post.

“…and the vessel sank near the Marshall Islands during a storm.” Wearing his diving boots, Alexander stepped into the low tide canal and carefully made his way around urchins and sea fans, carrying the tank and scuba bag to the shore.

A sudden thought spiked his confidence. What if the wrong question got answered, and we’re searching someplace where the Tablet had been, instead of where it is now?

He froze.

… at the bottom of the ocean, inaccessible, and lost forever in a sunken ship full of other treasures. Maybe Kubary never knew exactly what he had found.

Should they RV the wreck? He hesitated, standing there dripping on the hard, coral path, amidst the ancient walls and massive sixty-foot walls marking the entrance to Nan Dowas, the largest of the ninety-two artificial island complexes.

“How about we focus on the map?” Nina suggested, readying the bags, slinging a backpack over her shoulder and sliding a Beretta into her belt. “And then we blow stuff up…”

The others started splashing out after Alexander. Aria winced as she dropped into the cool water up to her waist, but Jacob was there in a moment, splashing in after her. He took her arm before Alexander could think to come back, and helped her to the coral edge and the rough path.

Alexander dropped their gear and was about to move to her but realized they had bigger issues to deal with than jealousy or petty rivalries.

As if on cue, a guttural cry came from the boat.

“Agggh!” The guide spat out a local curse, and he clutched his temples. “What… sorcery is this?”

“What the hell’s wrong with him?” Jacob asked, still trudging out of the water.

“Visions!” the guide screeched. “I’m seeing… death and fire!” His eyes were wild as he scrambled back in the corner of the boat, where he dug into a pack and pulled out a huge machete. “You’ll not steal from us! You and the others, coming in the helicopters!”

“What?” Alexander felt like he had stepped outside his body. This wasn’t happening. It was surreal and impossible, and one moment they were all fine, but now it was like an invisible wave passed through them all, affecting only…

The guide suddenly charged, machete raised high for a strike, about to leap off the boat into their midst — when a flash of silver whistled through the air and a short fishing knife buried itself into the center of his throat.

He gagged, slipped on the boat’s edge and went down hard, cracking his skull on the basalt wall perimeter, then sinking below the water.

“Jesus!”

Jacob backed away, scrambling to shore, as his mother calmly leapt out of the boat, crossing the water onto the path in one leap. She watched the water another moment to make sure the floating body wasn’t moving, then brushed herself off and pulled out her trusty Beretta. She met their looks.

“Don’t ask me. I heard ‘helicopters’. I would guess either our guide was hiding a special talent at perception, and we’re about to have visitors, or…”

“Or somehow he just got those powers?” Alexander swallowed hard, frowning. His earlier intention to RV the German explorer’s shipwreck now was supplanted by a more urgent question:

What the hell just happened?

And why was he sure, absolutely convinced in fact, that it had something to do with his father, his dream of the chair, and something about a global catastrophe?