2 Minutes to Midnight (19 page)

the gate

Two adventurous engineers open an
interdimensional gate, but when they awaken the Ism, what horrors
await?

Phillip Howard had worked on the
gateway with diligent patience in his basement for almost two
years, and now it was finally operational. Two electrical wires
connected his magnetic zero point field generator to a limestone
statue resembling the entrance to Luxor temple in Egypt. Months
spent grinding and chiseling the stone, and following his
translated instructions had paid off. The copper tablets explained
that there were magical properties contained within limestone, and
it made from the same material used in construction of the Giza
pyramid. That, and red granite, but limestone was far more
accessible, and cheaper. After some trouble he was able to locate
the amount he needed for a miniature version of the doorway, which
meant that he had to modify the original schematic, but this, was
only a test. Roger Tanley, his friend and spelunking partner, when
the tablets were found, would soon be there with him to open the
gate for longer than a second.
While Phillip waited for Roger his mind played back to the day they
had discovered the ancient tablets during their vacation in Peru.
Far below the surface, and deep within the dark recesses of a
cramped and frighteningly tight cave they found a gold box. It
looked more like a pirate’s treasure chest, and it was covered in
slime and bat guano, waiting for someone to stumble upon it. How
long ago it had been resting there was impossible to tell, but when
they lifted the lid there were nineteen carved stone tablets
within. Smuggling those tablets out of Peru had proven to be a
challenge and more than once required evading detection, and a
possible jail sentence. Phillip remembered their
conversation.
"So, what do you think this is? I mean the hieroglyphics look like
they're Egyptian, or something." Phillip said. Joel held one of the
tablets in a gloved hand, turning it over.
"Where did you guys find these? They're exquisite, and in pristine
condition." Joel asked.
"Well, that's a bit sticky actually. We had to smuggle them out of
Peru."
"You didn't steal these or anything did you?" Joel laughed.
"No, no, we didn't steal anything. Roger and I were spelunking in a
long set of caverns when we ran up on the gold box that contained
these tablets. It was nearly covered in bat shit. We figured the
Peruvian authorities were not going to just let us walk out of the
country with them, so we snuck the tablets out." Phillip said. His
smile was sheepish, and he hoped that what he had revealed would
not come back to bite him later.
"It's Sumerian, and I can understand a lot of it thanks to the work
of Zecharia Sitchin." Joel said. His brow furrowed as he examined
each tablet.
"What is it? Did we find some kind of ancient Mesopotamian
curse?"
"You know, you might not want to go messing around with this stuff.
These are instructions for a doorway of some kind, and an energy
generator that is required to open it. You mind if I take them with
me to translate what they say?" Joel asked.
"Uh, I'm not s..."
"I'll bring them back when I'm done. I want nothing to do with this
project after translating the tablets, but I find what you're doing
fascinating. Who knows? You may have found a way to travel back to
ancient Sumeria."
"You think this is an interdimensional gateway, or time
machine?"
"I don't know, Phillip, not for sure anyway. But, do you see this
image on the ninth tablet? It's a door with sun shining through
it."
"OK, yeah, I see it." Phillip answered.
"Well, the two men standing beside it appear to be priests in a
temple room. The sun is shining through to the inside, but from
where?"
"Good question."

"Maybe you boys discovered time
travel. Look, I'm helping out of morbid curiosity, because I think
that if what these texts show me, just from the little I've seen
that is, it's a doorway in time-space and you could be messing with
powers you can't fathom." Joel shook his head.

"If we can open a door in time, and
control it, we could go back and stop the Lincoln assassination or,
kill Hitler before he became Chancellor."

"Hey, maybe you'll meet
the Anunnaki gods who had supposedly altered our genetics, and
allowed the human race to progress out of primitive darkness. I
wouldn't get too excited just yet. The people who made these
tablets may have been telling a story and nothing more." Joel
chuckled.
"They etched these copper plates with precision instruments, and
put them in a gold box that defies age and decay, at the back of a
cave. Who would do something like that if they were just telling a
story?"
"Good point. The better question is why did they work so hard to
conceal these tablets?" Joel asked.
"
Maybe they found something they
didn’t like.
"
Phillip nodded. Joel cocked his head from side to side in
agreement.
Joel translated the plates in three months, and gave them back to
Phillip; his translations were scribbled into a tiny
notebook.
"
You’ve got the blueprints for a time gate and a zero point
energy device. You could pull energy out of the field with this
thing,
if
you can
get it working, that is. A word of extreme caution though, I
wouldn’t show this to anyone, or tell them about it until you’re
done. Don’t put it on social media; take videos of you building it,
email your friends about, and more importantly, don’t ever try to
make any money from this device. Give it away to as many people as
possible. The designs detailed in this notebook have gotten people
like you murdered to shut them up. If you build it, just use common
sense. Good luck, brother.
"
Joel shook his hand, walked out the door without
another word, and Phillip never heard from him again.
After quietly constructing it in their off time for many months the
gate and zero point energy machine were completed. During testing
of the zero point device, they successfully powered a radio, and
then they hooked it to the battery cables in Phillips car which ran
successfully for more than three hours. Limitless energy from the
unified field was in their hands at last.
"
We’ve got the power that the
pyramid builders used, and it’s in my basement!
"
Phillip chimed.
"
We’ve got to tell
someone about this thing. Let’s take a video of it and put it on
YouTube.
"
Roger
said.
"
No
way. Joel said not to do anything like that, and it makes sense. I
don’t want some corporate hit man coming to my house to whack me
over this.
"
Phillip said.
"
Do they still call it getting
whacked?" Phillip shrugged, Roger continued. "How in the hell are
they going to know it came from your basement if we don’t show our
faces?
"
Roger
said.
Both men were mechanical engineers, but had very little exposure to
the Internet, and knew less about how the whole internetwork
functioned. It escaped both of them that their source IP address
could be traced by the ISP, so when they did put the video out on
the Internet, against good advice, with the title Free Energy
Device, some NSA watchdogs intercepted the IP, and in less than a
minute figured out where Phillip lived. He was being watched for a
month before their final test of the device.
Tonight was the first time it would be connected to the Luxor model
sitting on his bench for any serious length of time. The directions
stated that the doorway needed to be approximately sixteen by
twelve cubits, which would have made the gate twenty-seven feet
tall and twenty feet wide. To save on time and material costs
Phillip constructed his model three feet tall by two feet wide, but
he felt that the weight of the limestone was still substantial. The
shape and appearance of the doorway was not noted in Phillip’s
instructions, but it was most important that it be constructed of
limestone. He always liked the Luxor entrance, and decided on that
form early on. The three by two foot Luxor sculpture sat neatly on
his workbench with two metal studs poking out of the top. Phillip
felt like a child at Christmas, whose parents were late to rise, as
he waited impatiently for Roger to arrive. Meanwhile, he connected
the leads to his statue and paced nervously while drinking a
porter.
Minutes later, the buzzer on his wall alarmed. Phillip raced over
to the intercom.
"
Who is it?
"
"
The CIA, you’ve been caught. It’s
Roger, open up.
"

Phillip sprinted up the stairs of his basement
like a child on Christmas running for the tree.
"
It’s about time you got here. Are you ready to
do this?
"
Phillip said, opening his
door.
"
Does a bear shit in the
woods? Let’s get it done!
"
Roger high
fived Phillip, and then slapped him on the behind as he
turned.
"
That part was
unnecessary.
"
Phillip turned,
disgusted.
"
I hooked it all up in the
basement, and I almost pulled the trigger by myself a little bit
ago. I’m so nervous, I’m sweating.
"
The two moved at a quick pace down the steps and as soon as they
reached the workbench Phillip flipped the switch on his zero point
field generator. The magnets inside the device whirred to life, and
almost immediately an eerie, frothy mist began to fill the space
inside the miniature Luxor monument.
"
Was fog in the
instructions?
"
Roger asked.
Phillip shrugged his shoulders and grimaced at Roger as the fog
began to drift over the table on which his arch
rested.
"
Well, this is
interesting.
"
"
OK, but nothing’s exploded yet. That's a good
sign.
"
Roger replied.
"Why would you mention explosions? You just put that out into the
Universe, man." Phillip shook his head.
Suddenly, there was an electric buzz inside the arch, like a guitar
amp being unplugged, and then the two could hear voices from within
the fog.
"
Who opened the
gateway?
"
A female voice
asked.
"
I don’t know, but it needs
to be shut. The moon is almost full and the Ism will wake up with
all of this racket going on. We’d better tell the Chief and get
them to close this now, before…
"
another
replied.
"
Did you hear
that?
"
Roger asked.
"
What the…
"
Said
Phillip.
"
You over there, the one
asking questions. Did you do this? You’d better shut it down from
your side before
"
That was all they heard before electric static cut them
off.
"
Maybe the lady on the other
side is right, we should shut it down. At least we know it
works.
"
Roger said.
"
Just a few minutes longer, then we’ll shut her
down. Do you think we should put something in there? You know, like
a book or something?
"
Phillip
asked.
"
What do you have in mind?
It had better be in a hurry according to them.
"
Roger said.
"
I’ve got the
complete works of Edgar Allen Poe,
"
said
Phillip, his eyebrows raised.
Roger nodded agreement and slowly Phillip slid the book he had been
saving for this occasion into the fog. It disappeared.
"
What is this, some sort of
relic?
"
The familiar female voice
asked.
"
Passing things back and
forth through this door won’t stop the Ism from waking up. You’d
better do as we say, for all your sakes.
"
The other woman said.
Suddenly, Phillip’s book began to come back through the portal, but
this time it held a grotesque, grayish, clawed hand. The amazement
and wonder both men had been feeling at their scientific conquest
quickly vanished. Instead, they became nauseated with uncertainty
and fear.
"
Here. Take this back and
do as we say.
"
They heard a muffled roar in the background as if some ancient
monster had just been poked with a stick.
"
You’ve done it now. Good luck, whoever you
are,
"
said one of the women.
Then, the voices were gone and the roar grew louder.
"
Phillip, turn it off! Turn it off,
now!
"
Roger screamed.
Phillip quickly ran over to his zero point field generator and
flipped off the switch, but the door would not close. The fog began
to spread from the table across his basement floor. The roar grew
louder still. The Ism had come. Suddenly, black plantlike tendrils
crossed through the portal, shooting forward, wrapping around
Roger’s arm, and pulling him toward the portal.
"
Ahhhhhh, get it off! Get it off! Help
me!
"
Roger screamed.
Phillip grabbed his long knife and chopped down on the tendril
holding Roger, and as he did five more shot through the portal.
Watching in horror as his friend was violently pulled through the
tiny opening, Phillip began to scream. He used his knife to cut the
cables hooked to his carved statue, but it did no good, and Phillip
was blown backward by the electric discharge. Roger was gone, and
an unspeakable mess was left in his wake. Phillip bolted for the
stairs as one of the black tendrils shot out and wrapped around his
right arm. Several more grabbed his energy generator, crushing it
like a tin can as Phillip clawed for something to give him
leverage.
"
You should not have
opened the gate!
"
A deep voice
growled.
To Phillip it was the sound of doom, and although his mind was
frozen with terror he was still trying to understand how it had all
gone so badly, so fast. He watched his crumbled energy generator
vanish through the doorway just before more tendrils reached out
for him. Phillip was pulled face first toward his interdimensional
gateway, and just before his lights went out forever he briefly saw
what was on the other side.
Phillip had opened a door to a world much darker than his own, with
a purplish sky filled with black, angry clouds. The sky was filled
with winged creatures screaming in the darkness. His was in a
forest of ancient gnarly, dead looking trees. Thin mist covered the
boggy ground where Roger lay, crushed and lifeless. Phillip uttered
an involuntary cry upon seeing his friend mangled his eyes bugging
out from the pressure of being crushed by the unseen horror.
Something large moved just ahead and as Phillips eyes trailed up he
saw a hideous creature looming before him. It was grinning and
drooling a sticky white substance. Standing nineteen and a half
feet tall, the Ism resembled a Bigfoot, but with large fangs. It
was a menacing horror with malice in its blood red eyes, and black
tendrils covering his front and back. The Ism laughed as Phillip
began to scream. A moment later Phillip was pulled with a single
violent tug into a world of nightmares, and it was all over.
Back on earth the portal closed, and Phillip’s limestone gateway
was all that remained. The authorities would eventually place the
men’s disappearance in a cold case file. As for the tablets, a
special team of men in black jumpsuits was brought in to carefully
remove them from the house. They were to be stored in an
undisclosed warehouse along with Phillip’s miniature stone archway.
Had Phillip and Roger been able to travel back fifty thousand
years, they would have known that the Ism was responsible for the
destruction of the last unsuspecting tribe to find the tablets.
Those left alive had hidden the gold box far from humanity in a
deep, dark cave before fading into obscurity. A true disaster was
lurking in time, like a doomsday clock, for anyone foolish enough
to summon the Ism.