Read Domain Online

Authors: Steve Alten

Tags: #Fiction, #Thrillers, #General, #Suspense, #Fantasy, #Science Fiction, #Contemporary, #End of the World, #Antiquities, #Life on Other Planets, #Mayas, #Archaeologists

Domain (35 page)

BOOK: Domain
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The Queen’s Chamber is a barren, 17-by-18-foot room, with a 20-foot-high gabled ceiling. Its only notable feature is a narrow ventilation shaft, the opening a mere eight-inch-by-nine-inch rectangle. This shaft, as well as the two found in the King’s Chamber, had remained sealed until 1993, when the Egyptians, seeking to improve the pyramid’s ventilation, hired the German engineer Rudolf Gantenbrink to use his miniature robot to excavate the blocked ventilation shafts. Images taken by the robot’s miniature camera revealed the shafts were not blocked, but sealed from within by a sliding apparatus, a tiny door held in place with metal fittings. When unimpeded, the shaft would open directly to the sky.

Using a sophisticated clinometer, Gantenbrink was able to calculate the exact angles of projection to the night sky. At 39 degrees, 30 feet, the Queen’s southern shaft had been directly targeted on the star Sirius. The King’s shaft, at 45 degrees, on Al Nitak, the lowest star among the three situated on Orion’s belt.

Astronomers soon thereafter discovered that the three pyramids of Giza had been painstakingly aligned to mirror the three belt stars of the constellation of Orion as they appeared in 10,450 BC. (The legend of Osiris is also linked with Orion; his wife, Isis, with the star of Sirius.) Was cosmic alignment the true purpose behind the excavation of the shafts, or were they designed to fulfill another function?

The Grand Gallery is an incredible engineering accomplishment unto itself. Less than seven feet wide at floor level, the walls of this corbelled shaft gradually narrow along either side as they rise to meet the 28-foot-high ceiling. Climbing at a 26-degree incline, the tight passageway runs upward more than 150 feet, an amazing architectural accomplishment considering that the Gallery’s vaulted masonry supports the entire weight of the upper three-quarters of the pyramid.

At the summit of the Grand Gallery is a mysterious antechamber, its walls composed of red granite. Strange pairs of parallel grooves resembling tracks for an ancient set of partitions have been carved into the wall. From here, a small tunnel leads into the King’s Chamber, the most impressive room in the pyramid. The chamber is a perfect rectangle, 17 feet, 2 inches wide, 34 feet, 4 inches long, its ceiling rising 19 feet, 1 inch off the floor. The entire chamber is composed of 100 blocks of red granite, each weighing in excess of 70 tons!

How could the ancient builders possibly have managed to lift these granite blocks into place, especially in such confined spaces?

Only one object is present within the King’s Chamber, a solitary block of mud-colored granite, its interior sculpted out like a giant bathtub. Situated along the western wall, the piece is seven and a half feet long, its width and depth each measuring three and a half feet. The solid block of granite has been cut with unexplainable machinelike precision. Whatever technology was used to slice this object was superior to any tool possessed by modern man.

Though no mummy has ever been found, Egyptologists continue to identify this hollowed object to be a lidless sarcophagus.

I have a different theory.

The King’s Chamber appears to function as an acoustical instrument, gathering and amplifying sounds. On several occasions, I have found myself alone in the room and used the opportunity actually to climb into the bathtub-shaped coffer. Upon lying down, I became overwhelmed by what felt like deep reverberations, as if I had climbed into the ear canal of a giant. I do not exaggerate when I state that my bones actually rattled from the overwhelming vibrations of sound and energy. Further discussions with electronic engineers reveal that the geometry of the apex of the Great Pyramid (at 377 ohms) makes it the perfect resonator, matching the impedance of free space.

As bizarre as it sounds, it is my theory that the Great Pyramid had been designed to function like some incredible, monolithic energy-channeling tuning fork, capable of resonating radio frequency-type currents, or perhaps some other as yet unknown energy fields.

 

More sobering facts: In addition to our own investigation of the Great Pyramid, Maria and I spent countless hours interviewing some of the top architects and engineers in the world. Upon calculating the tonnage, labor, and space requirements involved with building the structure, each of these professionals rendered the same startling conclusion—the Great Pyramid could not be duplicated—not even today.

Let me reiterate this: Even using our most sophisticated cranes, human beings of our own era could never have erected the Great Pyramid.

And yet, the Great Pyramid was constructed, some 13,000 years ago!

So then, who did build the Great Pyramid?

How does one seek answers to define the impossible? What is the impossible? Maria prescribed it as “a faulty conclusion drawn by an uninformed observer, whose own limited experience lacks the information base to comprehend accurately something that is simply not within their own acceptable parameters of reality.”

What my beloved was trying to express was this—mysteries remain mysteries until the observer opens their mind to new possibilities. Or, to put it more succinctly—in order to find a solution to what is perceived as the impossible, seek impossible solutions.

And we did.

Logic dictates that, if human beings alone could not have built the Giza pyramids, then someone else had assisted them, in this case—another species—one obviously superior in intelligence.

This simple yet disturbing conclusion was not derived out of thin air, but from hard, empirical evidence.

The elongated skulls found in both Central and South America tell us the members of this mysterious species were humanoid in appearance. Various legends describe them as being tall Caucasian males, with ocean blue eyes, and flowing white beards and hair. Several of the most successful ancient cultures in history, including the Egyptian, Inca, Maya, and Aztec, had revered these beings as men of great wisdom and peace who had arrived to establish order from the chaos. All were great teachers, possessing an advanced knowledge of astronomy, mathematics, agriculture, medicine, and architecture that elevated our savage race to nations of ordered societies.

The physical evidence left to confirm their existence is undisputable.

This humanoid species also had a clear agenda—to preserve the future of humanity, their adopted children.

What a bizarre and frightening conclusion Maria and I had stumbled upon. Here we were, two modern-day thinkers, doctoral graduates from Cambridge, presenting each other with theories that would have made Erich von Daniken proud. Yet we were not proud. In fact, our initial reaction was one of shame. We were not some Swiss hotelier turned author. We were scientists, renowned archaeologists. How could we possibly approach our colleagues with such preposterous notions of alien intervention? And yet, for the first time, my young bride and I felt as if our eyes had finally, truly opened. We could sense a master plan at work, yet still felt frustrated that we could not decipher its hidden meaning. Our humanoid elders had left us instructions in the Mayan codices, painstakingly duplicating the message upon the Nazca plateau, but the codices had been burned by the Spanish priests, and the message of Nazca still eluded us.

Maria and I felt frightened and alone, the Mayan calendar’s prophecy of doom hanging over our heads like the sword of Damocles.

I remember holding my wife, feeling like a lost child who, after learning about death, struggles to comprehend his parents’ concept of heaven. The thought made me realize that, for all our exploits and accomplishments, our species, from an evolutionary standpoint, is really still in its infancy. Perhaps this is why we are so prone to violence, or why we remain such nourishing, emotional creatures, always wanting for love, always feeling alone. Like 30,000-year-old toddlers, we simply don’t know any better. We’re a planet of children, Earth—a massive orphanage, with no adult minds to guide us as to the ways of the universe. We’ve been forced to teach ourselves, learning the hard way as we go, living and dying like red blood cells circulating with reckless abandon throughout the body of humanity—so young, so inexperienced, and so naïve. The dinosaurs had ruled the Earth for 200 million years, yet our first ancestors had only fallen from the trees less than two million years ago. In our incredible ignorance, we fancied ourselves superior.

The truth is, we are nothing but a species of children—curious, ignorant children.

The Nephilim, the “fallen ones” had been our elders. They had been here long ago, had taken Homo sapiens women as their wives, providing our species with their DNA. They had taught us what they felt we could grasp, and had left us clear markers as to their presence. They had also tried to warn us of a calamity to come, but like most children, we had turned a deaf ear, refusing to heed our parents’ warning.

“We’re still infants,” I remember telling Maria. “We’re fragile, naïve infants, thinking we know everything, obliviously rocking in our cradle while the serpent crawls in through the open nursery window to slaughter us.”

Maria agreed. “You realize, of course, that the scientific community will scorn us.”

“Then we mustn’t tell them, at least not yet,” I said. “Humanity’s prophecy may be written in stone, but the future is still ours to determine. The Nephilim would not have gone to all this trouble to warn us of 4 Ahau, 3 Kankin without also leaving behind some weapon, some means of saving ourselves from annihilation. We must find the means to our salvation—then, and only then, will the rest of the world listen with an open mind.”

Maria hugged me, agreeing with my logic. “We won’t find the answers here, Julius. You were right all along. While the Great Pyramid is part of the prophecy’s puzzle, the temple appearing on the Nazca plateau is in Mesoamerica.”

—Excerpt from the Journal of Professor Julius Gabriel,

Ref. Catalogue 1975-77 pages 12-72.

Photo journal Floppy Disk 4: File name: GIZA, Blueprint 17.

 

 

 

Chapter 18

 

DECEMBER 1, 2012
NULLARBOR PLAIN, AUSTRALIA

5:08 A.M.

T
he Nullarbor plain, the largest flat expanse of land on the planet, is a desolate region of limestone that stretches out over ninety-five thousand square miles along Australia’s barren southern Pacific coastline. It is an uninhabitable area, devoid of vegetation and wildlife.

But for part-time naturalist Saxon Lennon and his girlfriend, Renee, the Nullarbor Plain has always provided the perfect escape. No people, no noise, no project managers yelling—just the soothing sounds of the surf crashing against the sheer limestone cliffs one hundred feet below their campsite.

The sonic reverberation causes Saxon to stir from his sleeping bag. He opens his eyes, pushing back the tent flaps to gaze at a canopy of stars.

Renee slips her arm around his waist, playfully fondling his genitals. “You’re up early, luv.”

“Stop for a second—did you hear something whiz by?”

“Like what?”

“Dunno—”

The tremendous
thud
causes the earth beneath their tent to shake, sending Saxon scurrying out of his girlfriend’s grasp.

“Come on!”

The young couple hurries from the tent half-naked, slipping on their hiking boots without bothering to lace them. They hop in their Jeep and head east, Saxon being sure to keep the vehicle a safe distance from the edge of the coastal cliffs running parallel on their right.

The dark horizon has turned gray by the time they arrive.

“Goddam, Sax, what the bloody hell is it?”

“I-I dunno.”

The object is enormous, as tall as a two-story house, with reptilian wings that expand a good sixty feet from tip to tip. The creature is black as night, perched on a pair of three-pronged talons that seem to grip the barren limestone surface. An enormous, reflective, fan-shaped tail remains motionless, several feet above the ground, while a series of tentacles jut out from the abdomen. The faceless, horn-shaped head seems to be pointed at the heavens. The statuesque being appears lifeless, save for the luminescent amber-gold glow of a disk-shaped organ located on one side of its torso.

“Could be one of them remote aerial vehicles the Air Force is always flying about?”

“Maybe we ought to call someone?”

“You go ahead. I’m going to take some photos.” Saxon aims his camera, snapping several shots while his girlfriend tries the car phone.

“Phone’s dead, nothing but static. You sure you paid the bill?”

“Positive. Here, take a photo with me in the picture, you know, so I can show how big this thing is.”

BOOK: Domain
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