The Lost Code Part 22

"What?" Lilly asked. It was too dark for her to see where I was pointing. I got out of the craft and climbed back up the stairs. I was stepping lightly, trying not to make any sound. I had this feeling that something was down here. Something that we might awaken if we weren't careful.

The siren seemed smaller, flickering along the wall, and then she disappeared as I arrived. I ran my hands over the stone and found a narrow gap, impossible to see in the shadows. It was barely wide enough to fit through. I had to turn sideways.

"You sure this is a good idea?" Lilly asked, behind me.

"No," I said, but I also knew at this point, I was going as far as I could. The magnet pull was undeniable now. I slid into the narrow pa.s.sage. My shoulder almost immediately hit stone. A flash of blue to my right. I struggled to turn myself and found that the pa.s.sage continued that way. I slid until I hit another wall. The pa.s.sage turned again, and again. I smelled the damp, cool stone against my bare skin. My wet shorts caught on the rough surface. The s.p.a.ce was tight, I could barely inflate my lungs. I twisted around again, squeezing and sliding in pitch-black, and finally I slipped free into another chamber. This one was small with round walls bathed in brilliant white light.

"Owen?"

I turned back to the narrow, twisting hall. "I'm through. Come on."

I waited, hearing Lilly's arms and shoulders sliding along the rock. I stared into the black of the narrow entryway, waiting for her, and also not wanting to turn around and face what was behind me.

Lilly appeared. The white light washed over her face.

"Whoa," she said, squinting to look over my shoulder. "That's it, isn't it?"

I already knew that it was. I turned around, holding a hand up against the blinding brightness. In the center of this small circular chamber was another pedestal.

On it was the skull.

It gleamed in pure crystal-white, the light seeming to come from inside it, just like in the vision. We walked over to it. I could feel it humming, or myself humming, it was hard to tell, but I felt like this was the source of the magnetic pull, or maybe we both were, and we were being drawn together. I stood over it, looking down into the clear crystal, its sparkles and fractures refracting its own light, making little rainbows. My bones and its stone seemed to be vibrating at the same frequency.

And I knew what to do.

I put my palms on the smooth crystal. It was warm.

"Owen, you're glowing... ," Lilly said.

But her voice was already distant. I was leaving. Into the white.

Chapter 17

"h.e.l.lO."

There is no time inside the skull. There is before, and there will be after, but within the crystal electric medium there is only a sense of now and that all things are and have been and will be.

And I feel that this sense is called something. But I don't yet know the word. Or it feels more like I don't remember it yet.

Above are dark clouds. I sit on a stone floor, outside. Tan pyramid peaks and carved spires of the stone city are just visible over a low wall. Soft white, heatless light glows from globes on metal stands around us, on nearby balconies, and in window recesses. The air is flecked with that gray snowfall.

I look down to find myself in a plain white fabric s.h.i.+rt and pants. My feet are bare. As flakes of the dark snow hit my clothes they make soft smudges, and though the flakes are cool, they are not wet.

"It's ash."

Across from me is the boy from the vision, Luk. Between us, the skull glows softly in the twilight, illuminating our faces.

"It's midday, actually," says Luk, hearing my thoughts. "It never gets brighter than this, anymore."

He has a face similar to the siren's-I think, Primitive Primitive, but that is wrong. That implies less intelligence, and I can feel the intelligence radiating from him like heat from a fire. My dad has photos of fifth-great grandparents from back at the dawn of photography, and even just that many steps back in time you can see how things have changed, like head shapes, nose curves, shoulder slants.

For Luk, the word I am looking for is ancient ancient.

And yet he is so familiar that the first thing I ask is, "Are you... me? Or, am I..."

"No," Luk replies. "You are you, and I am me. But we are related."

"How are we speaking?" I ask. "I mean, you-You probably don't speak English."

"We are communicating beneath language," says Luk, "through the harmony of the Qi-An."

"The what?"

"There have been many names for it before us, and no doubt there have been many since, names that describe the energy that binds the cosmos...." He closes his eyes and in the silence I feel a strange presence in my head, like fingers flipping through pages. "A term for it in your mind is yin-yang. We referred to it as the Qi-An."

"Energy," I say. "You mean like gravity."

"Gravity is one face of the Qi-An. There are many more. The Qi-An gave birth to the living presence in the cosmos. It is called, let me see"-I feel that sensation again, like a breeze over my thoughts-"what you might call the Gaia. We called it the Terra."

"And you're... dead."

Luk smiles. He glances over his shoulder. I follow his gaze and see the three pedestals where the skulls were, in the vision. "Yes," he says. "Not in here, though."

I look around. "Where's here?" For a moment, I think to ask if this is heaven or something like that.

"There would be truth to that," says Luk. "But I think, technically, rather than getting into talk of metaphysics and harmonic energy transfer for now, the easiest way to put it is to say that we are inside the skull."

"How is that possible?"

"You are still standing in the temple, obviously, but the skull has"-Luk squints as he checks my mind again-"uploaded," he says. "Your consciousness has uploaded to the skull, where mine is."

"So," I say, "you died, and they put you in here?"

Luk's forehead creases as he thinks. "Close enough."

A flake of ash falls on my eyelashes. I look around. "And where is this?"

Luk stands. "Come see."

We get up and he leads me to the wall. We lean over the edge. He is shorter than me by almost a foot.

The city fills the center of a steep-walled mountain valley. Snow-capped peaks soar on either side. To our left, twisting veins of light trace roads that lead farther up into the valley's tail, where a glacier looms. To our right, the city ends at a ma.s.sive wall. On the other side is a rough and frothing sea. Huge waves roll into a winding fjord and pound against ma.s.sive stone docks in explosions of white spray. There are boats tied there, enormous boats with giant sails, their edges and masts gleaming with copper plating and bolts.

"This is our last city," says Luk. "The rest are lost, and soon this one will be, too."

"Who are-Who were were you people?" I ask. you people?" I ask.

Luk turns to me. "We have been called by many names: Viracocha in the Inca tradition, Tartessians in southern Spain, and, most commonly, Atlanteans. From the Atlantis of your myths. Not that we called ourselves that. For thousands of years we navigated the world, building our cities, learning from the earth, the ocean, and the stars, creating a great global civilization. But much of what we have known has already been lost. We're dying out. This is the end."

I look over the glowing city. I turn to Luk. "Are you serious?"

This seems to amuse him. "Very."

"And this," I say, "this is Atlantis?" is Atlantis?"

"Part of it," says Luk. "There were once many cities around the world."

As we pause, there is an ominous rumble. I see Luk's fingers tighten on the railing as he tenses in fear. I do too. I feel like I know this fear in my bones, as if some part of me remembers this past, but still I have to ask, "What was that?"

"That," he says, "is what we've done to ourselves. We learned enough about the Terra to think that we could change it. Once, we felt the rhythms of Qi-An, heard nature's whisper and acted as one with it, of it. But as we advanced technologically, we lost our ear for that divine music. We thought we could control the Terra itself. Thought we could shape the world in our image."

I think about the Great Rise and its causes. About how this sounds familiar.

"Yes." Luk agrees with my thought. "As a result we made things worse. Terribly worse. We harnessed power we had no right trying to control. Now, the entire world is falling apart. We've lost the sun, caused a great flood. I believe you know this flood, from your myths."

"You mean like, the the flood? From the Bible?" flood? From the Bible?"

"Yes. Noah and his ark, the story of Manu in the Hindu tradition, Deucalion of the Greek myths, Utnapishtim in the epic of Gilgamesh. All speak of the same event. And it's more than just a flood. Whole continents are moving, sinking, mountains rising, all of it by our hand."

He waves down to the city. "We must leave here, now. The skies have become too unstable, so we will only travel by sea. That is the safest way to ride out the flood. When the cataclysm subsides, we'll disperse, and take up our existence in the stable corners of the world. We'll pa.s.s on what we feel is safe, let it change, let it adapt. But some things, we will leave behind, to be lost in time."

I look down into the streets and alleyways of the ancient city. "And this is all happening, or happened, how long ago?"

"About ten thousand years," says Luk. "Give or take."

Below, these Atlantean people make their way in slow moving lines toward the giant docks. I feel grief for them, almost like they are family. It makes a knot inside me.

"That is because they are," says Luk.

"What?" I ask.

"You, Owen, your family. You are an Atlantean. Through the thousands of years from me to you, the human... what would you call it..."

I feel his fingers sifting through my mind.

"Yes, genetic code... has branched and evolved, with certain traits being favored over others, forming vast variations. New areas of the human code have been favored, come alive, while others have fallen dormant and been lost. And through all that change, you contain what is closest to the pure Atlantean version."

"Code, you mean, like DNA?"

Luk sifts through my mind. "Yes, but it is more than how you think of DNA. It's not just eye color and whether you are tall or short. It is also perception and memory. You carry in your genes an understanding of the Atlantean consciousness, a connection to our existence. Our lost civilization lives on inside you."

"Okay," I say, thinking that this is all crazy, unbelievable, and yet I feel like I completely believe it, as if I've always known it. "So you're saying I have, like, Atlantean DNA inside me, and it's been, what, turned on?"

"That is more precise than you know."

"But turned on by what?"

"By proximity to this skull. It is tuned to the Qi-An frequencies of your Atlantean genes, designed to make them function once more."

"So, this thing, and this awakening, that's why I have these?" I point to my gills, but at the same time I am looking at Luk and realizing that he doesn't have the lines on his neck. "Wait, do you-"

"The awakening process involves the activation of parts of your code that have been dormant for thousands of generations," says Luk. "The process of turning on these areas is bound to cause some upheaval on the genetic level, a bit of reshuffling. Any side effects of the awakening should select themselves out in time as the organization progresses."

"Oh," I say. "So you guys aren't gill people."

Luk looks at me and suddenly he laughs. It is an odd sound, short and sharp, again showing the gulf of time between us. "No. Though our babies have gills, sometimes, but they fade. And we have legends of gill people, in the past. We did all come from the sea, after all, if you go back far enough."

Now it is my turn to laugh, though less enthusiastically. "So this is, like, spinning my evolutionary clock, kinda."

He nods.

"And the others who have gotten gills," I say, "they've got some of this Atlantean DNA in them, too?"

"Yes, but they are not pure, like you. Every human has some amount of the ancestry, and these other gill people you speak of likely have more than most. Their proximity to this skull will produce effects, but only you are the true Atlantean. The only one that heard the skull's call."

By call call I think he must mean the siren. "But Lilly," I say, "my friend out there, heard it, too." I think he must mean the siren. "But Lilly," I say, "my friend out there, heard it, too."

"I see her in your mind," says Luk. "Well, this this skull is only for you. skull is only for you. I I am only for you, but she may well be one of the three, in which case, there is a skull for her, at another location." am only for you, but she may well be one of the three, in which case, there is a skull for her, at another location."

"The three?"

"Yes. There are three Atlanteans. That is how we designed the skulls, to find the three with the most pure version of the code, within parameters such as age. Only a youthful brain is elastic enough to handle these transformations. And your body is young and strong, which will be necessary for what's to come. Also, the skulls are tuned to specific apt.i.tudes. So, not only do you have to be pure enough, but you must also possess the right skills."

I think that I should feel fear, or more frustration at being told all this, because none of this is my choice. It's completely beyond my control. Instead, what I feel is peace. Again, it's as if I have known this already, as if a part of me, a purpose, is waking up for the first time in my life. "Okay, and what's to come?"

"There is a legend," says Luk. "Like this: 'Before the beginning, there was an end. Three chosen to die, to live in the service of the Qi-An, the balance of all things. Three guardians of the memory of the first people, they who thought themselves masters of all the Terra, who went too far, and were lost to the heaving earth. To the flood. Three who will wait, until long after memory fades. And should the time come again, when masters seek to bend the Terra to their will, then the three will awaken, to save us all.'"

The words sound like truth to me, like something I'd known all along.

"Now that you have been awakened, it is your destiny to return home. You must protect the Heart of the Terra. It is in danger."

"In danger from what?"

"From the very machinery that we built. Someone has discovered our sin, and seeks to use it. If they do, humanity will near extinction once more. And this time it may plunge over the edge."

"Who found this... sin that you're talking about?"

"I am unaware of the exact events that have taken place out in the world, only what they must mean if you have arrived here. If you are here, talking to me, then the Sentinels were activated. How to describe this..." He checks me. "Okay," says Luk. "Think of the Sentinels as sensors that were tripped. The sensors activate the skulls, and the skulls find and activate the Atlanteans. The Atlanteans return to the Heart of the Terra to protect it. How this all happens I can and will explain to you, but not now. We have to go slow. Even your young brain is only so elastic."

"Okay, sure, but..." I am already feeling exhausted. He's right: it is more than enough to know I'm an Atlantean, descended from an ancient culture. "Where am I supposed to go? Like, where is this Terra? Wait, are you going to tell me it's inside all of us, or something?"

"No, it is very real and had a location. But finding it is the job of the Mariner."