Incarnate: Mars Origin "I" Series Book III (18 page)

He slammed the
side of his fist against the table.

“Where is she,
Simon? You have me come across the whole goddam globe for something big and now
you’re twiddling your thumbs.”

“It is big.”
Simon was starting to sweat. Aaron had arrived with big guns in tow. A mercenary
of sorts, and a girlfriend who looked at him with disgust. “I thought you were
bringing a team,” he got out despite the nervousness that was starting to take
hold of him. “Didn’t you have a team over there? How are you going to take this
over?”

“Where is the
team you had?” Aaron said.

“They’re in
Belize. This is something else. I’ve seen them carry out things. A lamp. A
codex. They’ve found something.”

“Who?”

“Logan
Dickerson. She had been in charge of the dig in Belize. Until . . .”

“I don’t know her.”
Aaron said, cutting Simon off. “Although the name does sound familiar.”

“She’s Dr.
Justin Dickerson’s daughter.”

“Justin
Dickerson? Didn’t the two of you work together before?” He eyed Simon. “What is
this all about?”

Simon tried to
suck up his uneasiness. “Yeah, I did a lot of work with her. But she’s gone off
the beaten path as of late. She claims to have found some manuscripts that she
refused to publish back in the late 90’s. Supposedly, they gave an alternative
history of man’s origin on Earth.”

“What kind of
alternative history?”

“The alien
kind.”

Aaron laughed
heartedly. “Fringe archaeology. I want no part of it. But I will take whatever
they have now. I need this. Something good. Something now.” He eyed Simon.
“This is real, right?”

“Where’s this
place?” The girl spoke for the first time. Simon looked over at her, and then
at the mean mugged man that had yet to speak.

“Aaron. I’ve
got in with the U.S. government and I need to make this legit. Make this good.
You know?”

“You’ve got
permits to excavate here?”

“No. But with
what they’ve . . . What I saw them pull out, it wouldn’t be a problem getting
them. I could reach out to my contacts on Capitol Hill.”

“You have
contacts on Capitol Hill.”

Simon
hesitated. “Yes.” He lowered his eyes. “I’ve got a few fences to mend with
them. But . . .”

“You go mend
your fences. I’ll get what we need to present to them.”

“How do I get
to where they are?”

“I . . . I
don’t have directions? They are kind of all over the place. Finding things . .
.” Simon lied. He couldn’t help it. Aaron seemed to want to take over. He
couldn’t let Aaron intrude on what he needed to do. He just wanted him to be in
place to show the Senator. To make sure he’d get back in the Senator’s good
graces.

“Well, how have
you been locating them?”

“Tracking. GPS.
From the satellite phone.”

“Give it to me.
I’ll find them. And Castor,” he nodded toward him, “will get what we need from
them.”

“Look at the
colors in these murals, Ma.” We were in a small area that was clean, had squared
off walls, and paved floors. Our tree searchlights lighting up the area. This
area felt like an entryway to a palace. And ancient palace. The area seemed to
act as a passage way, but the walls had caught our fascination and we had yet
to venture into what lied beyond them.

The corner of
the walls were at ninety degree angles and were covered with vibrantly colored
murals – the ceiling to floor kind. It was like we were standing in a museum.

“These
depictions looked as if they were painted yesterday,” Logan said as she ran her
fingers over them.

“They do.” I
said. “The colors haven’t seemed to fade at all.” I put my face up close to one
of the paintings. “Maybe this
is
new.” It was in such contrast to the
area under the tomb where we had entered. The tomb room, as I named it, that
had led us here was small and looked as it had been looted. “Maybe someone
recently found this and did this.”

“Look at this,”
Jairo said. He had his light aimed on one of the murals.

“Oh my
goodness,” Logan said walking over to stand next to Jairo.  “It’s the
mural from San Bartolo.”

“And the
observatory at Caracol,” Jairo said.

I put my light
on the next mural over. “Look at this one.” It showed what looked like our
solar system. But only the first four planets. I rubbed my finger on the fourth
planet. “They have Mars depicted.”

“Don’t start,
Ma.”

I chuckled.
“I’m not starting.”

I followed the
pictures around the wall. “The four Bacabs,” I whispered as my light found the
next mural. It was the depiction of what we had translated. You could see two
of the Bacabs rising from underground, two from a river. And Maize Mountain.

“If that’s
supposed to be Maize Mountain,” I said touching it with my hand. “Maybe it’s
not what we thought it was.” I turned to Logan. “It looks more like a volcano
with lava shooting out of it.”

“I think that’s
corn coming out of it, Ma.”

“Doesn’t look
like it to me.” She set her light on another mural. “This one looks like the
rapture. Look at this, all this people being pulled up into the air. How
strange.”

“Maybe they’re
being pulled up into spaceships, Logan. It could be depicting their
disappearance.”

“I’m just going
to ignore you, Ma. Okay? No disrespect, but I am not getting sucked into your
alien theories.”

“I think maybe
my Maya legend is true,” Jairo said. He had moved to a wall opposite to where
we were standing and was staring at the wall.

“Which one?”
Logan asked, walking over to him. “You’ve told us about a hundred Maya myths.”

“This one,”
Jairo said. He’d pulled his searchlight back making a wider beam and bringing a
larger portion of the mural into view.

The mural was
showing women - some of them pregnant - and children being led to a cliff. And
once there being pushed off. Sacrificed. Their faces covered in blue paint,
there were numbers inscribed over their heads as if they were being counted. A
group of people standing off in the background had a large number, perhaps
their total, posted over their heads.

I stood in
front of it, tilted my head and stared at it. “I don’t know, Jairo. It could
mean something else.” I tilted my head the other way and narrowed my eyes.

He looked at
me. “What else could it mean?”

“I don’t know.”
I laughed and hunched my shoulders. “I guess it couldn’t mean much else, huh?
But didn’t we already know that the Maya practiced human sacrifice?”

“We didn’t know
they were keeping count.” He turned from the mural and his eyes met mine. “Not
until now.”

San Diego,
California

The
triangle of power. That’s where she was headed. At least to one leg of it.

Victoria
Russell was excited about her meeting today. The culmination of her hard work,
meticulous research and her passion had now become the fuel for a powerful
political machine. Although for the present, where she was headed was to be
kept secret, finally action for her cause was going to be taken. She hated
having to be furtive. But whatever it took – that was her philosophy. And she
was willing to see it through, by any means necessary.

She
smiled at her reference. She kind of felt like Victoria X today. An underground
movement to save the world.

Finally, her
population control series seemed to hit the right airwaves. She had gotten the
attention of someone important. Someone that could really do something about
what she considered a problem that should be everyone’s number one priority. To
have his ear was going to be a feather in her cap. And apparently, he had more
allies than she could have hoped for. He had in earshot some of the most
powerful people in the world.

As
she walked she tugged at the navy Kasper suit jacket she wore underneath her
unbuttoned trench coat. She was nervous, so much so that even her usual routine
had been off-centered.

Something
as simple as what to wear had caused her angst that morning. She had pulled
practically every suit she had out of the closet. One by one she tried each on.
Twisting and turning in front of her cheval floor mirror, and then yanking it
off and throwing it into a pile on her bed. In the end, she plopped down on top
all the outfits and, with eyes closed, blindly reached out and grabbed a
garment. Opening up her eyes, it was the skirt to the suit she now donned. She
dug through the pile located the jacket and a white blouse. Even putting on
mascara had been a disaster – it had smudged under her eye. She took a tissue
and wiped it off, unpinned her hair and tossed free her red curls. As they fell
around her shoulder she took a close look at her face, rubbed her lips together
and grabbed her purse. No more fussing over looks. Too many other things to worry
about.

Even
with the morning mishaps, she was feeling like the day was going to be a good
one. Like her father had always taught her, she was proud of herself. A Rhode
Scholar, a member of Mensa, but mostly she was proud of what she had
accomplished in spite of being a woman. She was well liked, admired even in her
field. Forty-three years old and she had taken her passion and made it a
mission. And now she was a going to be member of an elite, secret society – a
think tank - that was comprised of the people that shaped the world. Those
people now included her.

The
group’s meeting, at least the committee she was speaking to today, was
gathering on the 34
^th
floor of the One America Plaza in San Diego,
California. She took in a breath and pulled open the large glass door to the
building. She stepped inside. She inconspicuously shook herself, a smile
crawled up her face. She almost couldn’t believe where she had landed.

On
the 24
^th
Floor she found the room and with confidence went inside.
Some people she recognized. That took her excitement notch up a few levels. She
had been told that there would be a sampling of politicians, bankers, and
journalist. She was pleasantly surprised at who was in attendance.

I
might could use this as a springboard into so many other endeavors
, she
thought.

But
today she was focused on just one thing.

She took her seat, and cleared her throat.

The meeting was informal, she was in a small media room. She decided to
forego the usual speech, since people there already knew what her agenda was.
She had opened with a Q & A. The very first question was easy: What is
overpopulation?

“There is overpopulation when the number of people exceeds the number
that their environment can sustain indefinitely once food, habitat, water and
other necessities are factored in.

“If a population can't be sustained without the rapid depletion of
resources and are not renewed at a sufficient rater after extraction, or
without the degrading the capacity of the environment to support the
population, then there are too many people,” she continued, then she looked
around the room. She took in a breath. “The United States is steadily moving
toward that point. Some places in the world have already reached it.”

Another person asked a question without being prompted.

“How do we fix the problem?”

She
thought for a moment. And during that moment she thought better than to just
throw her genocide theory out without a soft introduction.

 “Just
like I relay in my presentations, the black death, HIV – all of these major pandemics
originated in an animal. Usually, animal diseases don’t transmit from the
animal to humans. But in these cases that’s just what happened. Why? You might
ask.” She looked around the room. Faces seemed to anxiously await the answer.
“And I would say to you – I don’t have an exact answer for that.” A grin slid
across her face. “But, perhaps, if I were to take an educated guess, which I am
very good at doing, I would estimate that this is nature’s way of controlling
the population. It’s part of the evolutionary process. Only the fittest
survive. So on and so forth. Perhaps it was purposely interjected. Divine
intervention. If you believe in that sort of thing. And then again maybe not.”

“Are
you suggesting that we introduce a disease into society?”

“Perhaps
it’s already been done.” Victoria smiled. “But no. I’m not suggesting that.”
She stood up and walking around the table, passed out the folders she pulled
from her oversized Prada bag. “What I am suggesting is that we, like the
pandemics we’ve had throughout history, lower the population. And there are
several ‘mitigation measures’ as they are called. That’s what we need. There
are just too many people in the world today. So how do we mitigate the
overpopulation problem?” She laid down the last folder in front of the person.

“We
must not only decrease population growth in the long run, she said, and then
looked up at her audience. “We have to do something about the number of people
living today.

“Taking
an active role in decreasing the population. We’re talking about killing off
people?” He pointed to the person that had made the last comment. “If not by
introduction of a pandemic, then by other measures?” The speaker didn’t seem
disagreeable to the idea. He only seemed to want to be clear in what he was hearing.

“Today,
there are five states that allow assisted suicide. Instead of people hanging
on, suffering out an existence filled with pain and suffering they do it
themselves. That’s one method. Take the stigma off of suicide. Or, today, we
have countries like China that have a government that recognizes the problem.
China has policies in place that regulate the number of children a couple is
allowed. So does India. Other countries have started propaganda programs, if
you will. Social marketing strategies to educate the public on overpopulation
effects. So, implementing a social agency to disseminate information is another
way. And today.” She paused and let her eyes float to the face of everyone in
the room. “Today, we have the ability to mimic nature’s way of cleansing.”

Victoria
was enjoying her audience. None of the gasping, or walking out that she had to
endure at her public talks. It’s the rare occasion that she has such a captive
audience.