D. Thomas - Backlash

This sparked a heated debate about who had seen who doing what. Paranoia had people rapidly jumping from one suspect to another. Things got heated to the point that Miller ended up shoving Craig, who then punched the professor in the stomach, knocking the wind out of him.

Lewis wrapped his arms around Craig to restrain him. He turned to the others, who were still yelling at each other, before shouting, “That is enough!” Lewis was a little surprised when the fighting actually stopped. “Everyone needs to calm down,” he continued in an even tone. “Nobody really knows what happened, and there is no use pointing fingers or arguing about it right now. Perhaps Stonewood just had an accident. Perhaps some of the gear was spilled in all the transporting. Perhaps the cave-in was just a natural collapse. Perha-”

“What about the explosion that knocked me into the pit?” Pierre interrupted.

Samantha was quick to answer. “That last one actually sounded like a natural collapse. Based on my experience, that tremor was caused by the rupture of a gas pocket, probably near the site of the earlier cave-in.”

Lewis raised his hands, regaining control of the situation before going on. “I’m sure there are a lot of what-ifs, but right now we need to focus on getting out of here alive. Let’s try not to leave anyone alone, and everyone should watch each other’s backs.”

The speech worked to at least calm everyone down. Craig immediately went to Miller to check on him, saying he was sorry multiple times, and Miller apologized for starting the physical altercation. Lewis realized a change of subject was in order so he asked Samantha, “Did you find anything in the rubble pile back there?”

The mining engineer’s eyes lit up. “Yes!” she exclaimed. “I didn’t find a way out of here, but I did find where Stonewood’s uncle entered.” She proceeded to describe the outline of a narrow tunnel she had found, revealing that it was now buried deeper than she could measure with her tools — certainly deeper than they could possibly dig, or even blast if they still had the explosives. Samantha finished with, “The other thing I don’t understand is how they got the treasure in through that narrow passage — I think it would be a tight fit for an average-sized person, let alone some of the larger artifacts.” Lewis thought of a pair of 6-foot shields leaning together amongst the antique weaponry; one was slender and might fit if the tunnel was fairly straight, but the other was a large circle.

“I believe I can explain that,” Miller offered. “I found some encoded engravings over by the story panels. The people who brought all the treasure here belonged to a secret society known only as the Curators ; a small group that has existed for thousands of years, striving to preserve our civilization’s history. I haven’t figured out the details yet, but I believe the engravings are a sort of user manual for what the Curators called, ‘The Archive,’—this cavern.” The professor smiled when he saw that all five pairs of eyes were firmly focused on him. He began pacing back and forth as he continued, as if he were in front of a classroom of students. Miller retold the initial tale of the treasure’s transport across the ocean; and later, across the continent to the Snake River Canyon, this time filling in some information about the Curators.

As Miller described it, the Curators had scoured the Earth for centuries, gathering samples of culture and technology in an effort to preserve a record of our world. The threat of the planet’s impending doom prompted the society to transport their archive of humanity to a secure location. Miller had not yet puzzled out the full motives, or the expected cause of this doomsday event. He had found vague hints and obscure clues to the secret society during his linguistics research, but it wasn’t until his work on Oak Island that Miller had even found any hard evidence that the Curators actually existed.

Craig was losing his patience with the wandering history lesson. “I don’t see how any of that helps us,” he said rather gruffly.

“I’m getting to that,” Miller said softly, like a magician about to reveal his next illusion. “You see, I believe the engravings also describe a sort of map of this whole cave, along with the route the treasure came in and was to leave through when the time was right.”

Lewis felt a renewed energy overcome his drained body. “Nicely done, Doc!” he exclaimed.

“Not so fast,” Miller went on, remaining calm. Walking everyone over to the engravings, he outlined exactly what he currently knew, and what remained to be figured out. Miller’s rendition took almost an hour as he moved between various drawings and engraved texts, none of which appeared to be written in any recognizable language.

Lewis managed to distill Miller’s lecture down to a few key details. Most importantly, there was a network of underground rivers that the Curators had used to move the treasure into the cave, and it was this river system they had planned to use to get everything back out — the passage that Uncle Pete found didn’t seem to exist at the time the Curators were here. Second, the Curators had some sort of control system for the underground rivers, allowing them to change which underground channels flowed in which direction; and to raise and lower the water in various chambers. The final highlight was that Miller believed the river which had almost drowned both Gonzalez and Lewis was actually flowing towards the control room, located at the center of the entire system.

One of the lanterns died while Miller was giving his explanation, reminding everyone that time was critical.

Based on what he had deciphered, Miller believed a diver could follow the river to the control room and use the controls to turn the water off, allowing the others to walk through the now dry passage. This clearly wasn’t part of the Curators’ overall scheme, but they didn’t plan on being trapped inside the system.

Lewis and Gonzalez discussed the underground river and what it would mean to dive it again. A solo dive under those conditions was beyond dangerous. They discussed bringing Miller to decode any instructions found with the Curators’ control system. Although he was willing to go, in the end, the dive would simply be too much given the professor’s lack of experience. Lewis would go with Gonzalez and hopefully he could figure out the system based on the overview he received from Miller.

Gonzalez was skeptical. “Crazy cave drawings and mysterious symbols don’t exactly make a good dive plan,” she said to Lewis.

“That much water has to go somewhere ,” Lewis responded, trying to sound hopeful despite his own reservations about re-entering the deadly tunnel.

“Yeah, probably to hell,” Gonzalez shot back.

“At least we’ll get there fast!”

Bantering aside, both Gonzalez and Lewis were serious as they assembled their gear and went through their mental checklists. Each double-checked the other’s setup. They were as ready as they were going to get.

The plan was to dive together, with each diver using two of the full tanks in a side-mount setup, like when they first entered the cave. That would leave only four half-full tanks behind. The logic being that if this dive to the control system didn’t work, they were all dead anyway. Besides, just because they were bringing four tanks, didn’t mean they had to use all the air. Better to be safe than sorry.

Everyone pitched in, transporting the gear from the treasure room all the way back to the chamber with the pool of water. Gonzalez and Lewis each carried their own harnesses and the smaller dive equipment. Craig and Samantha worked together on the tanks. Pierre packed the climbing equipment necessary to set up the rappels, both into the room his group had been stuck in earlier, as well as the big room with the pool. Miller’s hands were busy the entire time, waving around as he talked to Lewis, trying to educate him as much as possible. All in all, the journey took over four hours. Two of the headlamps died on the way, leaving the entire group with just three working headlamps plus the dive lights, which wouldn’t last long, and a lantern back at camp that was probably about to give out. Clearly, they hadn’t been as conservative as they’d planned.