Steve Alten - The Mayan Resurrection

‘Remember,’ the female cautions, ‘you only have thirty hours before we must depart through the wormhole. If you haven’t returned by then, don’t bother coming back. The radiation from the supernova will kill you.’

Dominique allows the female Guardian to assist her into a black temperature-regulated exoskeleton bodysuit.

‘This suit was designed by the transhumans to access the nexus. It should allow you to survive in Devlin’s realm as well. As you move, the battle armor and its neural connections will collect and recycle your body excretions, providing you with water. Drink through this extraction tube. Attached to your back is a thin, flexible air tank and oxygen processor, which supplies air through this nostril tube. There is no oxygen in purgatory; this unit creates your air supply by extracting oxygen from the CO2.’

Dominique finishes dressing, then joins Jacob, who is already wearing his white body armor.

The Guardian lead them to a launch chamber.

Lined up in rows along the chamber’s periphery are dozens of two-man transport ships, their bows encased in launch tubes angled at forty-five degrees.

‘One of our transports will take you directly to the Tezcatilpoca genetics site,’ the younger male explains. ‘May God’s highest light shine upon you both.’

‘Let’s not keep my father waiting any longer.’ Jacob climbs into the two-seat pod, a flat, triangular-shaped vessel, twenty feet long from the tip of its bulbous nose cone to the end of its propulsion device.

Dominique straps herself into the seat next to him.

The entry of the vessel reseals, activating the ship’s controls. A forward screen switches on, presenting them with an exterior image.

Stars and the blackness of space loom beyond the tunnellike launch tube.

Docking clamps release. The engine activates, its deep thrum causing Dominique’s skin to tingle.

Expelling a blast of energy, the transport accelerates through the launch tube, leaping into space. They pass high over the lunar base and the barren surface of the moonscape until the entire forward screen is filled with the silvery red world of Xibalba.

There is no sign of the Balam.

Dominique’s heart pounds with trepidation as she stares at the surface of the alien world. He’s down there somewhere, suffering from an eternity of mental anguish. Will he recognize me? Is his mind even capable of a sane thought?

WARNING: ENTERING PLANET’S ATMOSPHERE.

The transport plunges through dark magenta atmospheric storm clouds. Moss-covered volcanic rock appears beneath the overcast sky. In the distance is a continent-sized mass floating several hundred feet in the air.

‘New Eden,’ Jacob says. ‘The habitat abandoned by the original trans human culture.’

‘Incredible…’ Dominique whispers. ‘But who were these transhumans? What happened to them?’

‘I don’t know.’

Coming into view on the shadowed horizon is a silvery breeding pond the size of Florida’s Lake Okeechobee. The transport follows the artificial shoreline for several minutes, then lands next to an arena-sized complex.

The domed roof of the facility has been shattered, destroyed long ago by a tremendous force.

Jacob turns to his mother. ‘I can handle this. Stay here where it’s safe.’

She unbuckles her harness. ‘I’m coming with you.’

‘Fine. At least plug your air hose into your nostrils and set your regulator. Remember, there’s no oxygen on Xibalba, just carbon dioxide.’

Breathers in place, they exit the vessel and head for the lake’s edge. Jacob points to the domed facility on their right. ‘The posthumans’ genetics lab.’

‘Yes, but what happened to it?’

‘I don’t know, but I get the feeling there’s a lot the Guardian prefer we didn’t know.’ Jacob stops at the silvery shoreline and closes his eyes.

Several minutes pass, and then, a mile out, the once-tranquil surface begins to froth.

Dominique watches an enormous wake build, rising higher as it moves inland.

‘Okay, you handle it.’ She hurries back to the pod as the head of a monstrous alien being emerges, its viperous head dripping silvery ooze as it looms thirty feet over Jacob.

The genetically enhanced biological resembles a monstrous alien serpent, the creature’s girth as wide as a train, its skull as large as the mixer on a cement truck. The beast regards Jacob with two of its cybernetic eyes-vertical slits of gold, surrounded by incandescent crimson corneas.

A thunderous snort causes Jacob to jump backward as the serpent expels a stench-laden breath through its synthetic nostrils. The frightening jowls part, revealing rows of ebony, scalpel-sharp teeth.

Jacob returns the creature’s gaze, refusing to yield. A surreal moment passes as man and beast contemplate one another – and an overwhelming sense of deja vu washes over Jacob’s brain.

The suddenly docile creature lowers its head to the ground, keeping its right eye focused on the twin.

Jacob stands. He steps forward, placing both palms against the creature’s oily, scalelike emerald green feathers, registering the being’s deep, intense reverberations of breath – as a white haze envelops his mind…

*

Jacob’s consciousness soars across time and space.

He remote-views the Nile River.

Moves inside the hidden chambers of the Great Pyramid of Giza.

Enters the Queen’s Chamber.

Gazes up through a viewing shaft, its thirty-nine-degree angle aimed precisely at the brightest star in the evening sky… Sirius.

‘Jake!’

The sudden intrusion startles him. He opens his eyes, his ears buzzing with energy.

To his surprise, he is lying on his back. His mother is by his side, the alien sky now filled with stars, the red super-giant directly overhead.

The great head of the alien serpent remains onshore, the rest of its 110-foot-long body still submerged in the exotic silvery liquid.

‘Jake, what happened? You’ve been unconscious for hours. Are you okay?’

He sits up, still in a daze. Dominique notices that his entire body is trembling.

‘My God…’ He stares at the creature, tears forming in his azure-blue eyes.

‘Jake? What is it?’

‘Those bastards… those manipulating fubishitting sons of bitches

… they lied to us.’

‘Who lied? The Guardian?’

‘Yes. Everything they told my father about Xibalba, everything they programmed into the Balam ’s astrology charts… it was all one big calculated lie. This planet isn’t in the Orion Belt, and that red giant out there isn’t Betelguese… it’s Sirius. And that white dwarf, it’s Sirius-B!’

‘What’s the difference?’

‘Don’t you get it, Mother, we’re not hundreds of light-years from Earth, we’re on Earth!’

‘What?’

‘ Xibalba is Earth… only Earth hundreds of thousands… maybe millions of years in our future!’

‘No… Jake how can that be? Look at the red sky-’

‘The atmosphere’s changed, the dust particles scattering light differently.’

‘But there are no oceans.’

‘They must have evaporated. Maybe it was the loss of the ozone layer, maybe even a massive green house effect. The seas could still be frozen beneath the planet’s surface… same thing happened on Mars.’ He stands, then reaches out to touch the serpent. ‘And these poor creatures… do you know what they once were?’

She shakes her head, still in shock.

‘They were whales, mother, whales that were cloned and genetically altered to serve their posthuman masters.’

‘I… I don’t understand.’

‘Toothed whales evolved the ability to echolocate. The posthumans used this ability to tap into the nexus. They enslaved the whales… altered their genetic pattern, then rewired the poor beasts with cybernetic implants. The mammal’s ability to communicate in harmonics enabled the posthumans beyond the nexus into the spiritual realm.’