James Rollins - Deep Fathom

“And you knew this solar cycle off the top of your head?”

“Not exactly. I was already researching this angle. Remember on the day of the Pacificwide quakes, there was an eclipse coinciding with a major solar storm. I wondered if there might be some correlation.”

“You think the solar storms triggered the quakes — and the pillar had something to do with it?”

“Think about the platinum book. Even back then, the writer reports seeing strange lights in the northern skies before the big quake. The aurora borealis. It grows more brilliantly and expands far south during a solar storm. The ancients were experiencing a peak of solar activity prior to the disaster.”

Jack shook his head. “This is all too much.”

“Then let me put it all together for you. You remember our talk about the Dragon’s Triangle a few days back?”

Jack nodded.

“And do you remember me telling you how it is exactly opposite the infamous Bermuda Triangle? How the two create some type of axis through the planet that causes disturbances in the magnetic lines of the Earth? Well, now I think I have an explanation. I would wager there are two massive deposits of this ‘dark matter’ crystal — one under the Dragon’s Triangle and one under the Bermuda Triangle. The two poles have been acting like the positive and negative ends of a battery, creating a massive electromagnetic field. I believe it is this field that drives the Earth’s magma to flow.”

Jack tried to wrap his mind around this concept. “The Earth’s battery? Are you serious?”

“I’m beginning to think so. And if I’m right, those ancients made a horrible mistake by digging free a sliver of this battery and exposing it to direct sunlight. They made it vulnerable to the big solar storm. A lightning rod, if you will. The crystal took the solar radiation, converted it into dark energy, and whipped up the Earth’s magma core, creating the tectonic explosion that destroyed the continent.”

“And you’re suggesting something like that happened here two weeks ago?”

“A watered-down version of it, yes. Remember in the past the pillar was on dry land. Today it’s insulated by six hundred meters of water. The depths served to shield it from the strongest of the storm’s energy. It would’ve taken a significant solar event to trigger the recent quakes.”

George lifted his hand to speak, but Jack interrupted, afraid to lose his train of thought. “How does all this tie into the President’s plane?”

“If it was passing over the site when the crystal was radiating, the dark energy could have damaged the jet’s systems. I’ve noted strange fluxes myself when experimenting with the crystal: magnetic spikes, EM surges, even tiny fluctuations in time, not unlike your own short lapses in the sub. I bet these bursts of energy have been messing with vessels in the area for centuries.”

“If what you say is true…”

Charlie shrugged. “I don’t purport to be an expert on dark energy…at least not yet. But can you imagine the devastation here millennia ago? Quakes that tore apart continents. Massive volcanic eruptions. Ash clouds that circled the world. Floods.”

Jack remembered words in the ancient text: the time of darkness . The insulating layer of ash would have created a greenhouse effect, melting the ice caps and drowning their ravaged lands.

“We got off easy,” Charlie said. “Can you imagine living during that time?”

“We may have to,” George said sharply, his face stern.

Jack and Charlie turned to him.

George held up a sheet of paper. “I contacted the Marshall Space Flight Center. I confirmed what you wanted, Charlie. On July twenty-first, four days before the quakes, the Yohkoh satellite recorded a massive CME on the sun’s surface.”

“CME?” Jack asked.

“Coronal mass ejection,” Charlie translated. “Like a super solar flare. They can hurl billions of tons of ionized gas from the sun’s surface. It takes four days for the explosion to hit the Earth, creating a geomagnetic storm. To support my theory, I postulated that such a violent event would have been necessary for the submerged pillar to react so severely.”

George sighed. “They also confirmed that the epicenter for the Pacific quakes has been calculated to be where the pillar lies. At the spot where Air Force One crashed.”

Charlie lit up. “I was right. Not bad for a couple days’ work.”

Jack turned to George. The historian held a second piece of paper, at which he was glancing nervously. “You have more news, don’t you?”

George swallowed. “After I contacted the Space Center, they forwarded the latest pictures from the Japanese satellite. Another coronal mass ejection occurred just three days ago. It was the biggest ever recorded.” George stared at them. “A hundred times larger than the last one.”

“Oh, shit,” Charlie said, his grin fading away. “When does NASA expect its energy wave to hit us?”

“Tomorrow afternoon.”

“Damn…”

“What?” Jack asked. “What’s gonna happen then?”

Charlie looked over at him. “We’re not talking quakes and tidal waves this time. We’re talking the end of the world.”

Miyuki sat at the worktable in the marine biology lab. In the background she heard the muffled voices of Jack and a pair of his crew talking animatedly in the geology suite. Around her a thousand eyes watched from the clear plastic specimen jars lining the shelves and cabinets. It made it hard to concentrate.

Shaking her head against these distractions, Miyuki continued her own line of research. Earlier she had Gabriel do a global search through all the rongorongo examples gleaned from Easter Island to see if there were any other references to the pillar or the ancient disaster. She had little luck. A few scant allusions, but nothing significant. Now she was rereading through the passages in the platinum diary.

At her elbow, the briefcase-mounted computer chimed. Gabriel’s voice came through the tiny speakers. He had been assigned to work out a linguistic equivalent to the language, using phonetics supplied by Mwahu. Miyuki looked up from her sheets.

“I’m sorry to disturb you, Professor Nakano.”

“What is it, Gabriel?”

“I have an incoming call from Dr. Grace. Would you care to take it?”

Miyuki almost fell out of her chair. “Karen…?” She slid in front of the computer. “Gabriel, patch in the call!”

Above the flat monitor, the one-inch video camera blinked on. On the screen, a cascade of pixels slowly formed a jerky image of her friend. Miyuki leaned near the microphone. “Karen! Where are you?”

Karen’s computer image flittered. “I don’t have much time. I was able to contact Gabriel with your coded address for him on the Internet. He was able to encrypt this video line, but I can’t trust that someone won’t catch on.”

“Where are you?”

“At some undersea research base near Jack’s obelisk. Is he there?”

Miyuki nodded. She leaned back. “Jack! Come quick!”

The captain of the Fathom poked his head out of the geology lab, his face worried. “What is it?”

Miyuki stood up and pointed to the screen. “It’s Karen!”

His eyes widened. He fell out the door of the geology lab and stumbled around the table. “What do you—” Then he came in view of the computer’s screen. He rushed forward, leaning close. “Karen, is that you?”

Karen watched Jack’s face form in the small square in the lower right-hand side of her computer monitor. He was alive! Tears welled in her eyes.

“Karen, where are you?”