The Atlantis Plague(84)
“We are ready to resume. If you are, of course,” Janus said.
Kate and David sat in club chairs adjacent to the couch.
The wood-paneled, glass-accented room was lit only by three candles on the coffee table now, and the ambiance had gone from a well-lighted science conference to a late-night sleepover.
David turned the paper with Martin’s code around on the coffee table, positioning it to face the others as if it were a Ouija board.
Everyone took a moment to reread the note.
PIE = Immaru?
535…1257 = Second Toba? New Delivery System?
Adam => Flood/A$ Falls => Toba 2 => KBW
Alpha => Missed Delta? => Delta => Omega
70K YA => 12.5K YA => 535…1257 => 1918…1979
Missing Alpha Leads to Treasure of Atlantis?
“Several items still confuse me,” David said. “I believe the first two lines are simply notes—one about PIE. As we discussed, I’m quite certain Martin believed the Immaru were the PIE, Proto-Indo-Europeans, or at least a descendant group. The other note refers to an event in 535 and again in 1257. I know what it is, and I’ll explain that in a moment. Then the three lines are a chronology—a time line that overlaps and corresponds to the Tibetan tapestry Kate saw at the Immaru monastery. But I believe Martin’s chronology may be incomplete. Let’s take it step by step.”
David pointed at the word Adam. “Adam, Alpha, 70K YA.”
“In research,” Kate said, “the alpha signifies the first person in a clinical trial—the first to receive a test therapy.”
“Yes,” David said. “I think Adam here is the first human that received the Atlantis Gene. That’s the event in the flood of fire in the tapestry and the first major event in Martin’s chronology. The next is the Flood, A$ Falls, 12,500 years ago. I believe A$ is shorthand for Atlantis. So Flood, Atlantis Falls. When I was in the Atlantis structure in Gibraltar, there was a chamber with a series of… holomovies. I believe they showed this event—the fall of Atlantis at the foot of the Rock of Gibraltar. In the movie, the Atlantean ship hovered just above the water, then set down on the coast, just outside a prehistoric megalithic settlement. Two Atlanteans in suits exited the craft and interrupted a prehistoric tribal ritual, saving a Neanderthal. As soon as they returned to the ship, it was hit by a tidal wave that drove it inland, destroying the ancient city. As the water pulled the ship back out to sea, explosions rocked it, destroying the ship.”
“Where it lay buried for almost thirteen thousand years, until 1918, when my father helped the Immari find it,” Kate said.
“Exactly. The puzzling part is the notation: Missing Delta?”
“Delta signifies change,” Kate said. “‘Missing Delta’… So a change didn’t happen?”
“If we piece together Martin’s code, the tapestry, and what I saw that night in Gibraltar… In the first two floods on the tapestry, the Atlanteans interact directly with humans. Saving them or warning them. This implies a direct relationship.”
Kate sat back in her chair. “What if the Atlanteans were somehow guiding human evolution? Like an experiment with periodic intervention—and that intervention failed to happen 12,500 years ago because of the ship’s explosion: the fall of Atlantis.”
“I believe that’s what Martin thought.” A thought struck David; did he have the other piece of the puzzle?
In Antarctica, when David was in the tube, the Atlantean had released Dorian first—given him a head start. The Atlantean had watched David and Dorian fight to the death, as if he knew the outcome, as if the Atlantean were simply waiting for his champion to triumph—Dorian.
David had died a second time in Antarctica. But unlike his first death, he hadn’t resurrected in Antarctica. He had awoken in the Atlantis structure in Gibraltar—a section at the base of Jebel Musa in Morocco. Someone had made David resurrect there. Another Atlantean? David had noticed another damaged suit on the floor of the resurrection room. He tried to think back to the holomovie. Neither of the suits had been damaged during the events, he was sure of it.
Yet, the fact was undeniable: another Atlantean had brought him back—after Dorian and the Atlantean in Antarctica had killed him.
Another faction? One clearly wanted him dead. The other had saved him.
David was now sure of two things. One, that the Atlanteans were waging some sort of civil war. And two, that there was no way he was telling Kate or the two scientists what had happened to him. It was too… fantastic, even for him to believe—and it had happened to him.
“I have a theory,” David said. “I believe what I witnessed—the Atlantis disaster—wasn’t a natural phenomenon. I think it was an attack.”