Chapter Five
The Fall
I filled my cup full of hot chocolate. The speakers had announced five minutes ago that we were but 5 minutes away from our destination. I’d taken the warning for what it was and risen from my seat to get a drink of something warm and fortifying for who knew what lay ahead.
The sound of someone clearing their throat had me glance up to witness an older gentleman who’d just poured himself a cup of coffee. He’d obviously been trying to get my attention, but I wondered for what reason. When I had walked in search of this amenity station all those I had passed along the way had gone deathly silent and viewed me almost as a plague of some kind.
“That was quite the talk you did. I…… well, I find myself rather shook up over it all. You made some very well-reasoned points, which I admit I’m struggling to counter.”
“The evidence is all there and there’s far more than what I alluded too. I lied about nothing.”
“No, I don’t think you did. One thing in particular does puzzle me and that is, why are we here? I mean, I know what they said, but it’s been my experience that big brother rarely tells the pawns the true way of things, which would seem quite exemplified today, if in fact, you are correct and that my world is flat. Do you see what I mean?”
“No…… I’m not sure I do. I mean I don’t trust the government either, but…….”
“No no not that. Think about the story we’re being fed. We’re in a supposed hurry to get started because we’re competing against the Russians, as well as teams from all over the world, right? Do you really believe that? The world isn’t set up like that. I mean there is really no Russia or America, rather there are the competing egos and petty rivalries within the central government that moves the governments of the worlds as if they were but chess pieces. Not to sound as a conspirator, but really the world stage and the boundaries of nations is nothing but a game anymore. We’re supposed to believe that the soul goal of this mission is to find a mythical power source beyond all equal, buried within the realm of a hollow Earth? What’s even more unbelievable is that there’s a consortium of nations that are competing against each other for the prize as if it’s the second race to create the successor of the atomic bomb. No, I don’t buy any of that. Do you see the gap in logic?”
I nodded slowly as his words continued to open up corridors of thought within my mind. He went on, “I think what is up is actually something much simpler. All of this is but a clever ruse, an act of self-preservation by the world’s elite, as there is no need for some all-powerful energy module of antiquity. I’ve personally worked on zero point energy generators. They exist. There is no need for fossil fuels or coal or any of that stuff. There are patents on cheap modules that can be inserted into vehicles as they are right now that would enable them to be powered off of tap water or rainwater or even seawater. Again I repeat all this jockeying for a mythical power source is nothing more than the proverbial carrot being held in front of the donkey.”
The overhead speakers blared out warningly announcing our imminent docking and for everyone to return to their seats. The old man who’d gotten quite agitated with the explanation of his thoughts turned to go.
Stepping forward I gripped his arm. His aged eyes turned to me and keeping my voice low I asked, “Just what do you think is going on? What do you mean about preservation of the world’s elite?”
A deep well of bitter sadness seemed to open up within the man, but his words came forth with a fierceness to them, “Ask yourself if this was nothing but an exploratory mission then why so many soldiers? They outnumber us better than 30 to 1.”
My eyes widened and looking around I asked, “Where?”
“There have been five trains before us today. I heard some of the staff talking. They just finished this track two days ago and ever since then it has been in constant action.”
There was a hard shuddering that threatened to shake us off our feet as the train began to slow down. We had but moments before it would be stopped and I might not get the opportunity to talk to this man again. He seemed to sense that as well and hurriedly he said, “In early 1945 the Germans began shipping out all of their finest scientists from Europe to a secret base they had set up in Antarctica. A secret base that mind you your Adm. Byrd was unable to conquer with an entire Navy carrier task force several years after World War II was officially over. Germany knew they couldn’t win the war in Europe so they went deep and solidified their position. I think what you’re seeing here is the announcement of some global catastrophe or war on the surface that the global elite think they can’t win so they’re going deep in order to set up a base of operations by which to ensure a continuity of global governance after the ashes on the surface settle!”
People were leaving their seats and reluctantly I let go of the old man. Before he was pushed along by the crowd he called back, “Mark by words that we aren’t on the right side of this equation! Such an equation calls for an unseen integer to reset the equation to zero. New math isn’t always good math.”
I lost sight of the man. Was he saying that we should be in active sabotage of this mission?
It would seem so. If so, then why hadn’t God told me so from the start?
“God, what is going on?”
There was no answer and as the last of the herd swept past me I dodged quickly back up through the cars to sling my backpack on. I hastily started back the way I had come.
On the way I passed two stewardesses who didn’t seem to have heard me behind them as they stared out a portal talking. I paused and did my best to eavesdrop on their conversation.
………“Have they told you about your mother yet?”
“It’s iffy. They say if the base gets up and running before the clock hits zero then all requested family visas for base personnel will be honored, but you know how it is Sally.”
“Yeah. I don’t have a family, but if I did I’d sure pity them right now up there on the surface.”
The other woman nodded affirmatively and I moved on unseen. The old man had been right!
Leaving the train I received quite a number of suspicious looks for being so far behind the others, but smiling in a blasé fashion I simpered about having to get my makeup just right in an effected glitzy manner that was far from who I was. The soldiers rolled their eyes and directed me on to where I was to go in order to catch up.
I hurried on, but I didn’t miss the piles of supplies marked as military gear that were being unloaded everywhere from the train. This truly was a military incursion instead of the scientific expedition which I had been led to believe it was. Just who or what was putting up such a fight in the inner regions of the Earth as to warrant this extreme of a military front?
Idly I wondered how things may have changed within the Earth’s crust since King Solomon had acquired his underland brides. The mood at present seemed to hint at one of extreme hostility towards those who dwelt upon the surface of the world.
*****
“Okay, listen up everyone, this is no cakewalk you’ve been enlisted to participate in. We will come under direct enemy fire once we breach the portal opening and that’s if we breach the portal. We have to tunnel down through some awfully hot stuff to reach Paradise and folks it is a paradise! I’ve been there and take it from me I’d rather be down there than up here. Problem is the people down there don’t want us there. Yep that’s right, there’s people already where we’re going and they don’t like us not one bit! Can’t say I blame them much, but we need what they’ve got and that’s that. Democracy in action folks. I don’t know what they brainwashed you with in society, but here’s where you meet the real world. We are a heavily armed task force with but one mission. To come away with the prize!”
I shook my head in consternation at the strutting Marine Colonel who moved back and forth braggadociously in front of us. The group I was with, as a whole, looked completely clueless as to what was going on.
Poor things didn’t know what to think. First they’d been shown an underground side of the government that they hadn’t known existed. Then they’d been told that the Earth was flat and now they were being addressed by a hardcore military warhound, who was informing them that they were about to be dropped into a combat theatre of war.
“I’d take questions, only I won’t, as I imagine a lot of you would like to beg off and run home crying to your mama, but that ain’t happening! You’re here and you’re going. Thing is that without the establishment of a secure landing area we don’t yet have a feasible means of getting back to the surface once we go down.”
Group members were looking at each other now with a rapidly escalating comprehension of horror. All those big fat incentive driving paychecks had been for show, because nobody was coming back until the mission was a success.
The Col. was revealing a bit of the game plan it would seem and bitterly I listened on as he rambled, “…… But once we have a base, well then, anything’s possible.”
“But what about the ancient power supply module we were told about?” Cried out a voice from the crowd.
The Marine Colonel laughed, “The what? Is that the story they told you up top? Oh don’t get me wrong they got power and lots of it down there, but that ain’t what we’re after. No sir, we’re after territory! A new manifest destiny for America. There’s everything a body could want down there in terms of climate. While stuff goes societal nuts up here you fortunate gents and brawds will be living the good life down below. That is, if we get our base started and secured, which ain’t gonna be easy. Okay, that’s it for your briefing. All right, through that door double quick now! There’s no time to be wasted as new land is going fast down below and I by gum plan to see that the good old US of A has a larger share of it than anyone else! Now get along there!!!” He cried out angrily at the last at his audience of shellshocked scientists and mathematicians, who had thought they were on a quest for science in an untouched paradise, only now came to find out with buyer’s remorse that the journey they had embarked on included a side trip through hell.
As a group we were shoved along by helmeted soldiers in full battle regalia. The scene was reminiscent of cattle being coerced to go through spring gates in order to be auctioned off at a livestock yard.
In the pandemonium of panicked voices and unsteady constitutions my eyes found the old man, who turns out had only been too prophetic in his thoughts, only now to see that he didn’t look good. In fact he looked downright awful!
He saw me and lifted a hand beckoningly. I fought my way through the press to get to him.
He went down and shoving my way through I knelt down beside him. I was pretty sure the man was having a heart attack.
The skin of his hands was clammy as he pressed his briefcase luggage piece at me with desperate resolve. His voice rasping heavily he said, “Take it and protect yourself! Sabotage if you can. Code 1-3-9-7-0-4.”
The old man was drifting away fast, but his eyes flared once more and grasping my arm he said, “I believe in Jesus! Not sure about what you said today dear, but soon I will know.”
Nodding my head vigorously as I clutched onto the man’s hand I said, “Yes you will!”
He nodded as he said with his eyes closing, “So good to see someone young in these last days who is yet passionate for my Savior. May He bless and keep you always.”
I was shoved hard by a soldier and had no choice but to let go of the old man’s hand. Before I was pushed too far along though I snagged the thick briefcase with a foot and sent it sliding further ahead.
Scrambling a few feet away from the soldier wall steadily advancing behind me, I snatched it up and hurrying forward I pushed my way into the back of the pack as I had no desire to be the first in this mad push of humanity or the last.
A massive loading bay opened up and people were scattered apart and pulled toward giant screw looking ships that were poised upright over shimmery portals on the floor of the hanger. It felt like I had suddenly left the comforts of reality behind and entered a world of science fiction.
*****
The upright cigar shaped vessels were massive and the hanger bay was a-flood with activity of all kinds. Troops were pouring into the farthest cigar shaped vessels, while supplies and tech type people were disappearing into the ones closer to me.
A soldier grabbed me by the upper arm and pulled me roughly toward one cigar vessel off to the right. Everything about his manner was offensive. In a way it seemed as if all the soldiers around me moved within a rather mindless stupor that made them seem more like cattle dogs than human men.
The grip of the soldier upon my arm felt like that of machine and as bad as I wanted to pummel away at the man I refrained. In all likelihood I’d get my neck snapped if I resisted, but I was caring less by the minute if that should occur.
The weight of the suitcase combined with the weight of my backpack helped to keep me aware of reality. Just what was in this suitcase that could be used as a form of self-defense or even sabotage?
I didn’t know, but my grip on the handle of the case did not diminish even as I was hustled up a steep flight of stairs towards an opening in the side of a downward pointed vessel that it seemed I had been allotted to. Out of breath I made it to the top only to be roughly pushed inside.
Everything about these enforcer type soldiers seemed meant to intimidate, and all I was left with was the urge to pull the trigger if the opportunity should present itself.
“Strap up now daisies and Jim Carey’s or you’ll have to tell Lucy bye-bye!” Called out an officer, whose closely inset eyes seemed to confirm the mental instability that he was even now manifesting along with the accoutrements of his leering smile and sing-songy voice.
The creep factor I had for this man was immense and for fear he might be one of the fallen watchers I scrambled quickly past him and down the aisle of seat like harness contraptions set off to either side of the gangway.
“Bags below and above it doesn’t matter because below is same as above!” Came the officer’s somewhat cultic chant from behind me.
Hurriedly I un-slung my backpack and shoved it into a vacant space beneath the seat harness that I had picked out for myself. Taking the briefcase I lifted it and shoved it above my head into the cavity of space above the seat harness.
“Go to! Go to! We mustn’t be late!” Chimed out the officer with a look to his face that sang of lost marbles.
With a quiver of suppressed terror I sat back into the seat to only then gasp with fright as it secured me in a way that echoed of a theme park ride. Closing my eyes I tried to shut everything out if for only a moment.
I opened my eyes to see as I had somehow expected the officer’s face alarmingly close to my own. In many ways I was helpless in the current situation, but being defenseless in the face of a demon infested soul was not one of them.
Through gritted teeth I said, “Beat it in Jesus name and don’t come back!”
The officer drew back from me as he repeatedly blinked with surprise. He moved away then looking oddly befuddled about what was going on and then further away from me down the line I watched the possessing entity snap back into control with an almost invisible shake of the officer’s body, “Aha hello and here you be one by two soon we go down where the rabbits be!”
Warning alarm lights went off and those base personnel not in their seats quickly got into them. There was a loud horn sound, which seemed to signal debarkation as the cigar shaped vessel I was in began to spin like a theme park ride from hell.
There was no holding the hot chocolate down. In miserable horror I felt the spinning craft suddenly drop.
The change was so sudden within the bay of the vessel that everyone who wasn’t already wailing screamed now in abject horror. I crammed my eyes shut and pleaded, “Oh God please hold me!”
The spinning sensation was suddenly gone and all we were left with was the sense of falling through space. The bay of the vessel I was in reeked of vomit and worse and even in more sickening fashion I watched bodily fluid on the floor start to float upwards as if in replication of the faked NASA videos attempting to show the effects of gravity. Were we really falling that fast?
I didn’t have long to think on it before with a grinding of metal we slammed into something hard and seemingly unmovable. If it hadn’t been for the elaborate harness my neck would have been broken, as it was it only felt like it was broken.
The spinning was back, only accompanied this time by the deafening roar of metal grinding on something hard. Dimly opening my eyes I witnessed that many people were unconscious, perhaps even dead. I couldn’t say for sure, but what was sickening the most was that the few soldiers that I could see from my strapped in position appeared to be perfectly fine.
Just what had they given or done to these men to turn them into the zombies that they were? I didn’t know.
With a scream I felt the vessel pass downward in the next moment even as the atmosphere within the cigar shaped vessel became oppressively hot. Magma? Again I didn’t know.
I was pretty sure that in addition to drilling through the crust of the Earth that we were also traveling between different dimensions. Speakers crackled and I heard the sounds of war being played out upon them.
It seemed as if part of the fleet was under attack. The oppressive heat left till there was just the feeling of free falling again.
Suddenly the vessel was slammed hard. My head even braced as it was felt like part of my brain had been shook loose. There was a ripping of metal followed by a bright color that seemed to burn my eyes to look at it.
I blinked and in wide-eyed horror I watched the other half of the vessel opposing me start to slide away. The tunneling vessel had been sliced in two!
Open sky of an orange hue now lay before me and I had nothing left in me but to scream as my eyes took in an alien environment filled now with black smoke from what seemed like the open carnage of all the vessels that had been situated in the hanger bay above. It appeared as if none had survived and even now pieces were being carved off here and there from arcing laser strikes that issued forth from below.
The half of the ship I was strapped to was likewise struck. A smaller section just sliced free seemed to go upward as the heavier chunk I was affixed to sank for whatever it was that lay below faster because of its greater weight.
I saw a woman in the section above screaming hysterically and all I could think was that I was just like her in this moment and yet in life apart from this trip to hell we were no doubt nothing alike. All thoughts whether abstract or near fled from me as did all conscious thought as my section of the vessel impacted.