Charger the Soldier (32 page)

Phil shuffled a few papers on the desk and
started a slide show portraying the scientists working with the
first few Dinosauroids. "We were somewhat surprised that these
amazing creatures wanted to be referred to as Reptoids, using the
combination of reptile and hominid. Scientists have always
considered the Dinosauroids as non-reptile, but we were certainly
willing to accommodate these new entities on Earth."

Phil had flipped through a few slides, which
hung three-dimensionally in the air above and behind him as he
lectured, depicting the evolution from dinosaurs to Reptoids. "We
had long established through the fossil record that the ancestral
form of the Reptoids, known as Troodonts, had a large enough skull
cavity to accommodate quite a substantial brain, suggesting a good
potential for intelligence."

As the slides clicked past, an outline of the
full evolutionary scale, from primitive to intelligent, emerged.
"Their hierarchical tribal structure determines their leadership,"
Phil continued. "This understanding made it easy for us to
establish a program for the reintegration of these life forms back
into their ancestral homeland of Australia."

"With regard to their discovery in the
complex under Stonehenge," Phil went on, "we can only surmise that
at some point, the Enoch must have placed them there. This suggests
that the Enoch have an understanding of advanced technology."

The term 'Enoch' had been deciphered from the
graphical depictions on the walls of the British complex in the
form of movable pictures. This term did not go unnoticed by the
minimal religious community which still existed on the fringes of
modern civilization.

All of science had become the free exchange
of enlightened ideas, free from the dogma and hypocrisy of world
religions of the past. But one of the questions that was asked of
Dr. Curtis came from the Open University link that several distance
students used.

A young male face on the video monitor spoke.
"Hi, my name is Mustafa, and I am a distance student in Uganda. My
question is, Enoch is referred to in historical and religious texts
from the past. Are these one and the same?"

"Yes, this does appear to be the case,"
replied Dr. Curtis.

"Then is it not correct to reason that the
religious texts of the past represent the truth, and that we as a
people have strayed from the righteous path laid out by our
creator?" Mustafa asked.

"You might be correct if it had not been for
the fact that every religion of the past rejected the writings
about Enoch," Phil responded coolly. "Only a few sentences were
ever used and then were dismissed. If the religious community of
the past was so sure of its facts, then why, when shown their
blunder, did they reject the one answer that works?"

He had grown used to being asked this
question at every lecture. It seemed the remnants of a false
doctrine had persisted in surviving because the adherents desired
to degrade humankind's achievements once again.

Mustafa said, "But can we not now agree that
our ancestors were wrong to reject the Enoch and accept this new
knowledge? And that by embracing our forefathers' mistakes and
worshiping the Enoch, we can redeem ourselves in our creator's
eyes?"

"If you wish to return to the old ways of
burying your head in the sand and begging for forgiveness, please
feel free to do so. But don't try to suggest that yours is a
desirable path for humanity to take. In the past, religion
repeatedly proved itself to be a destructive force." Phil's tone
was stern and without remorse. "These beings we know as the Enoch
deliberately hid the time-lock device and the existence of the
Dinosauroids from the people of Earth and this speaks volumes
regarding the influence of truth."

Several other questions were addressed by
Phil before he turned the podium over to Dr. Kent.

"Hi, you can just call me Andy. I am one of
the lead scientists in charge of the British complex site once
occupied by the Enoch, and I have been there since the site was
first discovered. Your professor, Mark, and I go a long way back,
to when we both were grad students together. My job at the site is
to decipher some of the tools and instruments we discovered there,
along with the imagery found on the complex walls."

Andy showed slides of the dig site on the
three-dimensional projector and stopped at one in particular. "You
see here an image of the columns at our complex. At first we were
all perplexed as to their meaning, then a fellow scientist had an
idea. Before the war, she had found an old site map from a place
known as Gobekli Tepe, in what was then Turkey." Andy overlaid the
two images together, showing how the pillars found at the British
site and the site in Turkey aligned perfectly.

"We now believe that the Enoch had some
influence on the humans that built the Gobekli Tepe site, and that
this site was later recorded in history as a colony of Atlantis."
This caught the imagination of several students but, unwilling to
accept interruption, Andy pressed on in his lecture. "As near as we
can now tell, these Enoch have been referred to several times in
human writings, most notably as angels. It is our conclusion that
humanity has been influenced or interfered with by these beings
over time, therefore proving beyond any doubt that we are not alone
in the universe."

Andy clicked a few more slides. "We have no
understanding, as yet, of the origin of these Enoch, but we are
sure that they were responsible for placing the time-lock device
within the complex walls."

Andy flipped to a world map of Earth. "A new
discovery has everyone at the complex excited. We have been told
that two more sites exist, one in Egypt and the other in Africa. We
have teams of scientists scouring the two suspected locations,
looking for any clues that might lead to a new discovery." He went
on to explain the discoveries of importance at the British site and
the relevance of the geothermal style power grid the Enoch had used
to support their grand complex.

"I will now display images of the bodies of
the Enoch we have since discovered. Please show proper respect here
and don't ask questions." Andy clicked a few controls and many
thousands of human bodies in a state of limbo appeared on the
projector, all held in teardrop-like modules suspended from the
ceilings of several immense rooms. "The bodies are alive, though
all biological functions have ceased. We do not fully understand
this process, but the theory is that these are vessels for the
minds of the Enoch. According to their writings from almost a
million years back, these Enoch discovered a technology we can't
even begin to fathom. With this technology, the bodies are held
safe and the mind is allowed to exist forever and to wander as a
type of hard light."

The students looked awestruck but remained
silent, so Andy continued. "We really have no idea how the Enoch
create this hard light, but the best comparison we can offer is our
own hologram projections."

Andy's images clearly showed the human beings
called Enoch doing tasks of such a complex nature as to be almost
magical. The records these beings had left behind told of an
amazing period in Earth's history.

When the lecture ended and all the students'
questions had been addressed, Mark, Andy and Phil decided to have
supper together at the local university haunt and catch up on each
other's lives. After supper, the three friends made their way to
the local pub for several pints of beer. This finally got Mark
talking. "You have it lucky. I'm stuck lecturing classes while you
two run off and play explorer!" The beers were obviously taking
hold, as Mark slurred his words.

Andy laughed. His old buddy had never been
able to hold his liquor.

Phil chugged down his ale. "That may be true,
Mark, but a stable life with a nine-to-five job is still what I
hope for someday."

The three drank long into the night and then
staggered across campus to their respective dorms to sleep off the
evening's excesses. By midday they had recovered sufficiently to
gather in the cafeteria for strong liquid stimulants. "Looks like I
have to pull the plug on our visit, guys," Andy said, as he held
his head and leaned over a steaming hot cup of tea. "Got a message
last night from the Somalia dig site. Seems they found the opening.
I'm catching the first shuttle out in less than an hour."

Though they hated to break up the visit so
soon, the three friends promised to reconnect soon and, within
three hours, Andy was standing with the dig site team leader in
what was left of Somalia in Africa. The entrance to the underground
complex here made the entrance in Britain look like a hatch by
comparison. Andy thought this must be the primary site, for the
grand and enormous design dwarfed the British site.

Knowledge of how the British site worked
meant there was no need to break through the door by force to gain
entrance. It was a simple matter of selecting the right frequency
and, like Aladdin's magic cave, the entrance materialized before
the astonished team. The entire complex began breathing itself back
to life, the sounds of distant machines surging into operation,
providing lights and heat to welcome the team.

The interior of this site was radically
different from the British site, too. Instead of solid walls of
smooth composite materials, with grand hallways and movable
three-dimensional photos, here they walked into a forest.

Trees, rising skyward to magnificent heights,
were such a deep green as to be nearly black in hue. It looked as
if the makers of this place had built an unbelievably large shell
over what was then the surface of the planet, encapsulating a green
and growing ancient forest, with life forms nearly a million years
old. As the machines that controlled this complex became
operational again, so too did the life forms held in its interior.
In full biohazard suits, the team led by Andy took their first
tentative steps into history and walked the surface of the planet
as it had existed long ago.

Never let it be said that scientists are not
human, for as the team walked through ancient forests and open
savanna, upon ground almost a million years old and still as fresh
as the day it first existed, excitement and conversation boiled up
like lava from a volcano. Like children on Christmas morning, the
members of the team were nearly blind to any dangers that might lie
within these walls. And there were dangers. They nearly stumbled
over a saber-tooth cat feasting on an elephant calf. Both parties
backed away from one another, the cat snarling, the scientists torn
between running away and trying for a closer look.

This was humanity's first introduction to a
rare, almost unknown and even less understood element on the
periodic table. The element was considered to be a member of the
noble gas family, but was so dense at the molecular level that it
embodied and encompassed the entire dome structure like a metal
shield.

The team that walked the ancient forest floor
and through the tall, waving grasses on the savanna found animals
from a time long past in Earth's memory, scurrying about and
busying themselves with their daily tasks, not at all bothered by
the humans invading their home.

So caught up were the humans in the
excitement of this new find that no one even felt so much as a
shiver from the ground. But the entire complex was lifting itself
back to the surface of the world. Like a massive elevator, the
complex rose skyward, returning to the light of the sun that had
once graced this ancient place. The small, war-ravaged, deserted
village that existed above it disintegrated and crumbled out of the
way of the rising dome. The mud brick buildings began to break up
into sand and mud as the vibrations destroyed what was left of the
village and the ground slowly gave way to the rising complex from
below.

The shell of the complex began to
deteriorate, the noble gas changing to a lesser state on the
periodic table and fading away. The first rays of sunlight caused
many good scientists to lose their stable condition of logic and
shed a tear at the beauty they now beheld. Three hundred miles
across, and fully functional, adaptable to the conditions of
present day Earth, a mighty gift from the Enoch resurfaced to grace
a war-torn world. It was a world barely recognizable after the
chaos of war with the descendants of the people of the once mighty
and ancient country of Mahoud.

As if that incredible act was not enough, two
other domes some sixty miles distant also resurfaced, giving a new
home and renewed hope to what would eventually be thousands of
human caretakers.

"I have no words," Andy muttered as he slowly
removed his protective headgear to inhale the smells of this
incredible place. "To think a technology of such immeasurable depth
once existed." He fell silent then, and it was nearly two full days
before he could even begin again to communicate. The news of this
discovery made its way around the globe in a heartbeat, however,
and people who had suffered much stood for a moment in silence,
unable to find a way to give thanks to a populace they now knew as
distant family.

>>>

"I'm telling you, we found a circle in the
third risen forest complex that matches the description found in
the British site!" shouted an excited young researcher. The roar of
the transport craft that Andy was preparing to board made it
difficult to communicate.

"That's impossible," Andy shouted back, sure
the researcher had made some sort of mistake.

"There is no mistake. We checked the figures
twice and ran the math through our computers several times. We are
looking for the entrance to the Egyptian site in the wrong
location!" The young researcher tugged on Andy's sleeve, trying to
stop him from leaving.