21st May
I must have fallen asleep for a period.
I was awakened by Arkangel stirring in the darkness.
‘What happened?’ I heard her say. ‘Where am I?’
‘After all that has happened, you still thought you could trick me,’ I said, constructing a scenario on the premise that she had intended to consign me, but not herself, to these chambers. I assumed we must be somewhere below the Gobekli Tepe site.
‘Why are you using your powers against ARK?’ said Arkangel.
‘I’m not,’ I replied. ‘I’m not happy, however, with you torturing and murdering people and, in particular, trying to do the same to someone close to me.’
‘We had to try to stop you and WAR from preventing the deflection of asteroid.’
I did not ask what she meant by WAR. ‘I’m not working with WAR,’ I said. ‘What made you think that I was?’
‘Your attack on ARK at Meadowcote,’ Arkangel replied, ‘and the conversation you had with me by videolink.’
‘So that was you,’ I said.
‘A simple mask,’ she replied. ‘From what you said, it was clear that you must have known about the whole situation.’ She returned to the main point of our discussion. ‘If you had the same objective as ARK with regard to the asteroid, why would you have been so evasive? Why would you not want to share the secret of prophesy that Sam Collins passed to you?’
‘Why would I collaborate with an organisation that uses the methods of the Inquisition?’
‘It’s only since you told me about Harris, Rider and Hartnell, during our videolink conversation, that I and the Masters of ARK have understood the medieval methods they used to gain information. We would certainly have never condoned that.’
‘What about their killing of David Butler?’ I continued.
‘I believed he was going to cause the location of our launch base to be revealed,’ Arkangel replied. ‘I do not agree lightly to the taking of life, but ARK is trying to save the Earth from destruction – whilst you are trying to murder billions of people.’
‘Please believe me,’ I continued, ‘I want the American missiles to deflect the asteroid. However,’ I added, further trying to support the illusion that I could call on mystical powers and was not totally reliant on luck, ‘although I was able to bring you with me into this cavern, I do not know how to leave.’
‘You must have known we would meet and that I would activate one of the traps or you couldn’t have arranged for the second trap to open and bring me down here with you. If you know about the layout of the traps around the site, why don’t you know about the caverns?’
Good question, I thought. ‘As I explained when we spoke on videolink,’ I said, ‘the future is not totally defined in advance. When causative factors are ill defined, all is not clear to me. That is particularly the case at Gobekli Tepe.’
I wasn’t sure if that sounded convincing to Arkangel or whether it came over as the total nonsense that it sounded to me.
I subsequently learned that it came over as total nonsense to Arkangel and was the starting point to her very rapid understanding that I had no supernatural powers at all.
Before I could say more, the chamber was suddenly filled with light.
When my eyes had got used to the brightness, I saw Arkangel standing by the wall, next to a light switch.
‘So, Mr. Morrison,’ she said, ‘we meet again!’