Christian Clarity Review

Okay. Something is amiss here. I know I posted chapter eleven of the novel as well but its not there either.

So without further ado:

Chapter Eleven:

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Chapter Eleven

The Institute:

Archived video from the site has been reviewed from as far back as three weeks before the earthquake. All show an increasing trend of withdrawal from conversation.

The work at the station had gone on as usual. The habitat had been slowly coming together under the ice.

The opening of the exploration tunnels for the lower levels had coincided with the shift in behavior. The new tunnels had been melted using a smaller, portable device modeled on the subterrene that melted small-bore exploratory shafts. The ground sonar had indicated a series of caverns. Tunnels were bored to tie in with the natural caverns.

“We found something. Or rather, they did.” Peters says as Henry walks in the communications room.

Video:

The crew of the habitat walk into the caverns. Commander Smith is the first to view them with a small handheld light as the others follow behind.

The scene fades in and out of focus as the computers cut from one to another camera of each crew member. As the interior of the caverns came is lit, Smith reaches out and touches one of the walls.

Smith: These aren’t natural caves.

The wall in front of him is smooth, hard and glassy. Looking at the ceiling, the camera reveals stalactites that begin in some unknown height, appearing at the far edge of the light and reaching to the floor as if hanging in mid-air. Some are more than twenty feet in diameter. The lights playing over the walls show calcite deposits in lava-like build-up covering much of the original walls and floor.

“The air is okay. On the dry side: seventeen percent humidity.” says a voice from behind the camera. A hand reaches out from the side of the camera to the wall and brushing the calcite deposit. It crumbles like chalk, raising a small cloud of white dust.

“I thought we were the first ones down here.”

“This place is old. Ain’t nobody been here in a looong time. Stalactites grow about an inch every hundred years. These things are huge—and dried out. There’s no telling how long these tunnels have been here.” says another voice.

“There must have been water here. And these tunnels were definitely manufactured. I don’t know…..why…or.. ” Smith falls silent as they all became quiet except for the sound of their breath in the enclosed suits.

Lights play over a huge cavern studded with stalactites and almost completely covered with calcite deposits. The lights disappear into the darkness. Shadows and columns of white and grey intertwined at the extreme edge of the lights.

Smith: How big is this thing?
Another voice behind the current camera says, “I’m reading fifteen hundred and forty five meters to an obstruction dead ahead. To the right is three hundred ten meters, to the left is…..four fifty. There looks to be another entrance on the far side.”

“Giminsky, you’re with me. McGregor, Walters–go left. Jimenez, Roberts go right. See what you see and report back as soon as possible. Don’t go off the main …room.” Smith holds up his arm and looks at the oversized chronometer.

“Man, that’s what they always do. They always split up.” says a voice moving off to the left of the camera.

What are you complaining about now, Roberts?

In the movies, man! Just before they get eaten or somethin’–they always split up. Somethin’ slips up behind ‘em and when they look left, they get eaten from the right.

Yeah. They always go deeper into the darkness and then the lights go out. Knock if off. There’s obviously nothing here–nothing could live down here. Just stay sharp. Remember, this is for the record books. You getting this, Virginia?

There is a short break of static. “We got it. Be careful.”

“Thanks, mom.”

The teams explore the cavern. The camera switches back and forth to the current speaker. Each cut can be from the same scene.

The floor of the cavern/tunnel is completely covered in a fine powder of rock and mineral dust. Each step results in a small cloud. Over the next few moments their disturbance causes a fine haze of powdered rock and minerals to obscure the air.

Shadows and curved shapes of the huge pillars are now captured through a sparkling haze of powder. The camera angles show the teams struggling to pick pick their way through the dust as it grows thicker and thicker.

“This dust is getting thick. There’s no way to avoid it. I’m heading back to the entrance before I can’t see at all.”

“Wish there was some air flow in here. At least you could stay ahead of it.”

Smith cuts in. Everybody out. Head toward the entrance. This dust is only going to get worse. Whoever gets out first secure a line from the entrance and come get the rest of us. Hook up a static line to each other now.”

The next several hours of video showed them getting one person after another out. In the end the dust was so thick the lights would penetrate only a few feet in front of them. The images of individual team members had become obscure sources of haze.

Afterwards they sealed off the entrance from compound with mylar sheeting.

“Well, that won’t work. We’ll have to figure out a way to explore it without raising that dust.”

“One or two at most–and on a safety line. Maybe we lay down some rock.”

“I think you’re missing the point.” Smith took off his helmet. He wiped his face with the back of his hand and rubbed his eyes. “That glass melt is exactly the same as the by-product of our own subterrenes. They must be at least thousands of years old just from the calcite deposits.”

Giminski: You think they are old mines?

“Could be. There might have been a time when Antarctica was only partially covered with ice. We can explore in shifts and in teams as long as we keep up our schedule for the site.” Smith wiped his eyes again. “Well. At least we saw it first.”

The next few days of video show them exploring the newly discovered tunnels. A path is blown through the dust to the far walls day by day. After that, the exploration went quickly.

On two occasions the video suddenly winks off. A check by the operator reveals a satellite linkage glitch at the time. “Probably due to strong solar winds. We get a shower of highly charged particles from the sun all the time. Occasionally it overwhelms the equipment for short periods. The self-test code says error 193–an orientation problem of the satellite due to an electric overload. That’s consistent with a strong solar wind.”

———————————-

Underground
On site:

Rotating blades glow white hot as the subterrne slides by the opening and grinds to a halt. The rock melt flows until it freezes in place, sparks, glowing orange, then fading to yellow as the blades retract, the hatch opens inward as a small walkway settles onto the tunnel floor.

A hard beam of light shines out into the darkness as Hayt appears in the opening, walks down the steps and out onto the rock. The translucent glass of the tunnel walls and floor half absords the light in bent, oblong shafts that give a glow to the whole. The other half is absorbed in reflections that only make it a few meters with less and less shine. It all moves in tandem with Hayt’s hand and illuminates an empty tunnel in an instantly retracting path of light.

There is a break of squelch. “So?”

Hayt adjusts his earpiece. “Nothing yet. No lights. No sound. Nothing. The light is a little weird.”

Another light appears as Mike comes out behind Hayt. Together they walk toward the darkness receding in front of them. Around a sloping curve and fifty meters later they find the airlock.

“Still no lights. Nothing but dust and steel.” Mike plays the light over the entire steel door, encrusted with dust. There is rock debris in a pile to the left on the tunnel floor. A panel to the right juts out from the steel as if hastily left in place. A thick coat of caked dust covers everything. The cavity into which the panel rotates into the wall is partially filled with moist dust.

Izzy comes over the radio. “Hit it with the hammer a couple of times. It’s always polite to knock.”

Mike pulls out the small hammer and gives it to Hayt. Hayt hits the steel door once.
An echo travesl through the site and into the walls. It sounds through all the small caverns, all the small crevices and cracks. It goes only outward, traveling at the speech of sound.

Inside the subterrene Mary’s face is a question.

Izzy smiles. “You’re kidding, right? You’re in there and don’t know we’re coming, there isn’t supposed to be anything on the other side of that door but a few feet of empty tunnel. Suddenly the door opens..”

She smiles.

Hayt hits the door again and listens to the slight echo in the tunnel. “Sound doesn’t travel too far in rock unless at high or ultra-low frequencies. They probably won’t hear us anyway.”

Mike looks around at the tunnel. “Weird acoustics.”

———————

The Sleepers:

There was talk.

The talk is unlike anything that has come before its arrival. It has now lasted for millennia on millennia.

When it had first arrived, it was strange and wonderful. He had thought it exillerating and had sought to be a master of it. It had not been easy. It was alien to the Word he knew.

But he had become wise within it.

It changed him—elevated him above the rest.

The others had become jealous in their ignorance of it. They couldn’t even say his new name within it. It was a cloak in which he was hidden and none saw him as he got wiser and wiser within it. He liked being incomprehensible, invisible to them. It was like being the Most High.

He is a better speaker than they. It is a part of the wisdom it had given him. He merely spoke and it brought his desires to him. His power over the others with it in them was what made them jealous.

Now they had brought charges against him of treason. But they were liars. He could prove it with his wisdom.

The Most High would understand.

The Most High spoke, yet not in the speech.

He had smiled to himself. The others could only understand the common sort of tongue.

“How long will ye judge unjustly, and accept the persons of the wicked?”

The Most High paused. There was no answer.

“Defend the poor and fatherless: do justice to the afflicted and needy. Deliver the poor and needy: rid them out of the hand of the wicked. They know not, neither do they understand; they walk on in darkness: all the foundations of the earth are out of course. I have said, Ye are gods; and all of you children of the most High. But ye shall die like men, and fall like one of the princes.”

Something had happened then. He had turned to the speech and used his wisdom within it to find what ‘wicked’ and ‘die’ was. But there was nothing. It did not exist in his speech.

The Most High had spoken gibberish for the first time. He was growing weak.

That meant it was as Lucifer had suspected. The Most High hadn’t really created anything at all. He just knew secrets he wouldn’t share about what already had existed forever.And His front was failing.

But the others had begun to persecute him. Something was wrong.

Butno matter what else happened, he had understood the Most High’s power.It was too late for Him to hide it. It was speech. Now he had one of his own.

In his wisdom the speech had given him the location of the Oracle.

In his dream he relived his horror over and over on realizing he could not say it. He could no longer speak the common tongue! He could not answer the Most High! And he had to have an answer until he could overthrow the whole front the Most High had built and show them all they had been deceived by God

But the Oracle had given him names of creatures not yet that would come and speak the common tongue. He would follow them back to it and have the power of both speaks. All he had to do was hide so that they would find the him.

He dreamed of Gabriel discovering him before he had the list complete. He had escaped with only four names.

There were others who had understood him and agreed: something had to be done. He remembered Lucifer and his confidence in the plan. But where was he now?

He knew they couldn’t touch him. The Most High had made promises and di not yet know they had seen through the front. But remembering is no longer dreaming and he wondered if his long sleep was at an end.

Vibrations rolled past him. Sounds drifted in. Two long echoes. He sensed it. He knew it.

The names are here!

————————————

There is a break of squelch. “Do it again. Then introduce yourself.”

Hayt hits the steel once more and waits as the echo trembles around them and slowly dies out.

“Eight-seven-one-seven-three-zero-six-three.”

Hayt punches the code. The lights on the panel, flicker, and spark as the lock rotates and the door begins to open. Light spills out from the crack into the tunnel. The panel sparks again and the door freezes in place.

Hayt places a hydraulic jack in the door and manually work the jack. The heavy steel door slowly swings open far enough for Hayt to squeeze inside. “I’m in.”

Mike joins him inside. They walk into the fifth level of the site, past a huge “5” painted on the wall next to the door and into a central corridor.

The corridor is dimly lit by a small rope of lights pinioned in rough intervals to the concrete floor.

Mike looks left and right and then at Hayt. Hayt looks at the map strapped to his forearm and turns right, following the corridor. Their steps echo ahead and behind them.

“Hellooo!”

Hayt jumps slightly at Mike’s outburst. Mike shrugs, “Well what do you say? We, as technically trained and competent individuals are the first two members of the first rescue of the first underground habitat in existence. Yet in the same sense, we’re just two down to earth people walking down a corridor. I mean, they’re professionals too.”

“You can be inappropriate sometimes.”

“It’s called being polite.”

“So having gotten to a place of relative solitude and in the midst of the possible beautiful thoughts therein, they will no doubt be delighted to be dragged back in to the common nerf speech of polite society? Hi. The whole country just spent millions of dollars and I just risked my own life to have a pizza with you. Where’s the john?”

“Oddly, that would be the better part of professional courtesy.”

“Maybe in your world. No. I take that back. Not even in your world. You laugh like that and then say something like that?! You know something you’re scared to say and you cover it up with bullshit polite speak. …but I suppose it would be better than an implied “You guys couldn’t keep it together so we had to come save your ass.”

“See there? You wouldn’t like it very much if, through no fault of your own, the shoe were on the other foot.”

Hayt appears at the bend of the tunnel shaking his head, looks down the passageway, continues toward the camera and passes underneath. Mike is close behind.

Jack switches views and watches them from behind as they made their way away from the camera. He taps the keyboard and bringst them up on a different view from overhead.

——————————–

The hospital:

Henry knocks on the door and peers in slowly.

Dmitiri is in bed, bandages over both eyes, sucking on a package of juice with a straw. A nurse is writing on a chart.

Henry: You look the same plus eye patches. Why’d they keep you?

Dmitiri: American decadence has corrupted me. I am weak. Henry! It is good to hear the voice of someone I know. Sit down…anywhere.

The nurse smiles at Henry and leaves. “He’s always like this?”

Henry: Always. You’ve got your sense of humor. You can’t be too bad off.

Dmitiri doesn’t answer.

Henry sits, pushing the magazine he has carried with him onto the night stand. “Sorry, I wasn’t thinking. I brought you a magazine. Traditional hospital gift. I guess I really should have let Laura pick it out.”

Dmitri: Laura is good?

Henry: Yeah. Laura is Laura. So how long..

Dmitri: Is anyone with you?

Henry: No, just me. They’re getting together a little something for you at the Institue. Gunther and the guys. Even jack. You know how it is. It’s your turn.

Dmitri: Is anyone in the room?

Henry: Just us.

Dmitri: I have to tell, to ask you something.”

Henry: About what happened?

Dmitri: The laughter–the sounds came over the speaker. The artifact immeditately lit up–I thought it was going to explode.

Henry leans closer to the bed. “You’re saying that guy laughing activated the artifact?”

Dmitri: I saw you there.

Henry: Yeah. I was..

Dmitiri shakes his head. “No. In the light. You were laughing.”

Henry: Uh, no. I was with you in the office.

“I saw you there! Listen to me.” Dmitiri whoarsely whispers. “You were there–and you were laughing. And when you laughed there was another light. It was so wonderful. It was so wonderful I thought I would die.”

Henry: Maybe you mistook …

Dmitri: No. It was you. You must tell me the way to get there.

Henry: Tell you what?

Dmitri: How.

Henry: How to what?”

Dmitri: It was you! Tell me how.

Henry: Calm down. How to do what?

Dmitri: To do it. To laugh like that. To be like that. To say it–to pronounce the artifact. To say me in that language. You know. I saw you there. You must tell me.

Henry sit very still.

“Stop pretending you don’t know. We are friends. It was you. You know! You…” Dmitiri subsides into a coughing fit. An alarm begins in the room.

The nurse rushes in. “What did you do?”

“Nothing.” Henry said, rising rubbing his hands on his pants. “I didn’t do anything. It’s a mistake. He’s…mistaken.” He backs away while the nurse attends Dmitri.

Henry walks to the nurses station. The secretary looks up.
“Could you tell me how Doctor Pavolvich in three nineteen is doing?”

Secretary: “I’m sorry sir, I’m not his physician. But Dr. Hendricks is right there. You can ask him.”

Henry thanks the woman and approachs the man sitting at a small desk behind the counter, making notes on a chart. “Excuse me. I’m a co-worker of Dr. Pavolvich in three nineteen. I was wondering how he was doing?”

The doctor, a tall, balding man, who dwarfs the chair in which he sits impatiently waves his pen without looking up. “He’ll get his sight back over time. There was no permanent damage. But he won’t be ready to go back to work for at least several weeks.”

Henry: Is he in any pain?

The man lookes up with a frown. “No. Not unless he’s good at hiding it. He’s comfortable. Had some headaches but nothing unexpected. He’s fortunate.”

Henry: So he’s not taking anything that would make him…woozy?”

Doctor: No. His eyes are the only reason he’s here. He’s got a heart murmur, that’s why we’ve got him on the monitor. But that’s not related to his accident.

“Thank you.” Henry backs away and walks toward the elevators. Dmitri has calmed down and appears as if nothing has happened. Henry watches, as the elevator doors close, the nurse hang another bag of fluids.

He has to get outside. The elevator moves down one floor and stops.

A nurse and doctor get on, followed by a custodian pushing a cart. The nurse and doctor talk in low tones over a chart. The custodian stares at Henry’s shoes.

The elevator stops again. A woman almost came on, sees it is crowed and motions she will wait for another. All of them cast serruptitious eyes at Henry. He stares at the woman until the doors close to be seen by the others as staring very reasonably and uninterestedly at another human being. The doctor turns to him. “Are you alright?”

It’s not me! “I’m fine. Why do you ask?”

————-

The Institiute–

Jack sits in his office watching the misson unfold, a scotch on ice in his hand. He looks from the monitor to the ice floating in his glass, then drains the contents. A burning shot of satisfaction and courage spread through him as the whiskey flows down. Everything is proceeding exactly on schedule, just as they had predicted.

It’s really true!

He pours himself another as he watches the search continue level by level. The video switches between the voices in an eerie resemblance to the video he had watched only weeks before. An elation, an expansion of something in the pit of his stomach won’t go away. He can’t drown it with the scotch.

——————————————-

Genesis 19:14 …But he was as if he jested, in the sight of his sons-in-law.

In the Name of Jesus Christ, Amen