Danilo Clementoni - The Writer

"There’s too much oxygen here, for us. Perhaps it would have been better to organise our emergency base high up in the mountains."

"No. At least not for the time being. The forcefield will be more than sufficient until we get ourselves organised a little better."

"Ok, you're the boss," said Petri, emphasising the phrase with a kind of military salute like he had seen the terrestrial soldiers do.

“Shuttle two. Activate the containment dome,” said Azakis into his communicator.

Starting from the top of the central shuttle and betrayed only by a slight vibration in the air, a sort of almost invisible veil spread rapidly with a radius of about a hundred metres, forming a hemisphere-shaped hood which extended from the apex of shuttle two’s virtual pyramid straight down to sink into the desert’s sandy soil.

"That looks like a good job to me," said Petri satisfied.

"Why have they positioned themselves like that?" asked Elisa intrigued.

"Like what?" replied Azakis. “What do you mean?”

“The shuttles. The pyramids they’ve formed are almost in a straight line and positioned with one side facing south. The two most external ones are apparently aligned while the central one looks slightly more off-axis."

"You have an excellent spirit of observation" commented Azakis.

"The fact is they remind me greatly of something else."

“What exactly?” asked the Colonel who had suddenly shown great interest in the discussion.

"Have you ever been to Egypt?"

“A long time ago.”

"And have you visited the Giza plateau?"

"Obviously yes," answered Jack. Then, slapping himself on the forehead he exclaimed "but of course! They’re positioned just like the three largest pyramids."

"Cheops, Chephren and Mycerinus," pointed out the doctor.

"I don't know what you're talking about," said Azakis perplexed.

"Wait a minute,” Elisa answered. "I'll show you,” and she walked quickly towards the laboratory tent. She emerged less than a minute later carrying a large, well-thumbed book. As she drew near the other three, she quickly leafed through the pages. “Here we are. Look” and she held it out to the alien.

“Interesting… What are they?”

“Let me see,” said Petri, sliding the thick book from his companion’s hands. “Ah yes. I’ve seen this sort of construction. They’re like that one,” and he pointed to the Ziggurat behind the field. "But they must have been built by another people and in a different era.”

“Well done Petri. You’re right, of course. Since the day they were discovered, our scholars have been racking their brains to understand the reason why they were built and why they were arranged that way."

"But it’s very simple," said Petri flashing a beautiful smile. "Can you see those stars up there?" and he pointed to a constellation in the middle of all the others, in the space left by the setting sun.

“Yes, certainly. We call it the Orion constellation. It takes its name from the Greek demigod Orion" said Elisa. Then, as she traced its profile with her index finger in the clear desert air, she added, "If you join up its stars with a virtual line, the head, shoulders, belt and feet of a man appear. According to Greek mythology, Orion was a giant born with superhuman abilities, a mighty hunter who killed his prey with an unbreakable bronze sledgehammer. When the Greek hero died, he was placed among the stars for eternity."

"Your stories are always very evocative," said Petri enraptured. "However, from what the Elders have taught us, all the constructions of this type, and there are many scattered all over the earth, are linked to us.”

"You, aliens?"

"We ‘Gods’, who came down from heaven to start the human race” specified Petri.

“And wouldn’t you just have guessed that you had a hand in that too” blurted out Jack. "It seems as if everything we have done up to now is solely and exclusively down to you."

"Well, coming to think of it," commented Elisa, "I must say he does have a point.”

"I just wanted to say," added Petri quietly "that our shuttles are simply positioned like the three stars in your Orion "belt"."

"And so, the same would apply to the pyramids in Egypt?" asked Jack shocked.

“I’d say so.”

“So, the assumptions of our scientists were true,” said the doctor almost in a whisper. Then she held her chin between her thumb and forefinger and added, "However, I’ve still not understood the real reason for that arrangement."

“Simple my dear,” exclaimed Petri. “Energy.”

"You’ll have to explain this to me properly," replied the doctor, straightening her back and crossing her arms.

"Even we don’t know very much about it,” Petri hastened to clarify. "But it seems that, a pyramid-shaped object is able to generate a kind of positive energy that is beneficial to all living things that are close to it. Obviously, the larger the object, the more energy it generates. Then, if it’s also in connection with a heavenly body or better still, with a series of them, everything is amplified in an exponential way."

"But what kind of energy are we talking about?" asked the archaeologist.

"Like I said, it’s not clear even to us. Many of our Experts have studied it but we still don't have reliable data.”

"Finally, something that even you don't know," said Jack satisfied. “That’s almost a miracle."

"There are lots of things we don't know, my friend. On a global scale, we are only slightly more evolved than you. There are so many mysteries in the universe. You didn't think we knew them all did you?"

"I confess, for a moment, I really thought you did."

“There are concepts that we will never understand. We must resign ourselves to that."

"But we’re intelligent beings, imaginative, curious. What can prevent us from understanding?”

Then Azakis entered the debate saying, "It's just a question of levels of perception.”

"This I really haven’t understood," exclaimed Elisa puzzled.

"Although you may think that our brains are who knows how "evolved", there are some dimensions so far away from our structures of thought that we cannot even begin to make suppositions, at least with our current knowledge."

"I'm sorry but I'm not following you."

"Take a cell of your liver as an example,” continued Azakis patiently. “Imagine it intent on reasoning about its status, about its work, about the cells close to it. Who knows how many times it will have tried to understand what's beyond that reality it experiences. Will there be other groups of cells? Will they be like me? Perhaps it will also have tried to postulate the presence of a God. It will also have tried to get in touch with him following goodness knows what complex rites, praying for his intercession in solving its daily problems. But who is its God? Your gallbladder? Your heart? You? What perception can a cell ever have of your liver, of you, its God? How could it ever come into direct contact with you? And if it does not perceive you, could it ever perceive me? And the sea, the sky, the sun, the galaxy... This is what I mean by different levels of perception.”

"Blimey,” exclaimed Elisa, as if she had just come out of a trance. "I really hadn't ever thought of this... So, we might never be able to contact beings of higher levels or imagine what could be outside the dimension in which we live."

“That’s not necessarily true. It would seem, including thanks to the peculiar energy we were talking about earlier released by pyramids, that some people may already be able to jump one or more levels. Unfortunately, even our knowledge in this very particular matter, is still very limited."