Trifariam, The Lost Codex (2012) (62 page)

Money! My daughter has just witnessed the murder of two innocent people, one of them her mother, and she has seen her father kill a third with his bare hands, and this man is offering me money!
James thought to himself. He wanted to yell at him, tell him all the security errors they had committed, but he kept his composure. “When all this is over?”

“Yes. It has only just begun. If you would like to accompany me, I will show you something which will answer all your questions.” Peter noticed the doubt on James’ face; he seemed reluctant to leave his daughter when she was going through the most difficult time of her life. “Please, don’t worry. Forgive me for being so blunt, but your daughter is suffering from post-traumatic shock. She doesn’t know you’re here, and she won’t realize you’re missing for a few minutes.

Even though it seemed an invitation, it wasn’t. They were clearly forcing him to attend that meeting whether he wanted to or not, so James nodded and left the office with the Secretary of Defense and his friend Richard, but not before making sure that his daughter was in good hands.

The
Trifariam
had been taken to the scientific laboratories to carry out last minute tests and check if it had suffered any damage.

It was the same room as last time, but it was now full of people. In the middle of the table was the President of the United States of America, Barack Obama, along with the highest ranking officers in the CIA and NSA. Next to them, forming a small group of four people who didn’t stop offering their opinions, were the Secretaries of the Marines, the Army and the Air Force. As for the fourth person, neither James nor Richard had the slightest idea who he was, although judging by the insignia on his clothing which read “NASA”, he must have been somebody who held a high position in that organization. His face was contorted, and he even showed signs of having a mild panic attack.

As soon as he saw James, the President stood up to greet him and offer his condolences on the death of his ex-wife. Despite being locked in a meeting, he seemed to have been kept informed of everything that had happened in the Director’s office. “I hope you daughter makes as quick a recovery as possible. She’ll have an excellent medical and psychological team at her disposal in order to do so. Please don’t worry, they’ll get her back.” James thanked him for his kind words. “Now, if you would be so kind as to take a seat.”

A group of computer engineers hurriedly set them up with two high-tech laptops and then left the room in disgust, as they had hoped to remain inside. Only one scientist, one computer technician and a reputed astronomer were allowed to remain present at the meeting.

The President began to speak. “First of all, Mr. Cheney, I would like to know how the CIA intends to sort out the racket caused by our guests in the city in Italy. I understand that the police are still looking for suspects.”

“Mr. President, everything will be resolved this afternoon. We have assured them that the two people who were being chased in the station in Florence were in a witness protection program and involved in a case against one of the most high-profile mafia members in our country. Thanks to a tipoff, those two assassins managed to find out their new place of residence and identity, get rid of their bodyguards and try to kill them.” James was astonished at the immunity the Government intended to give them. “We have sent them photographs, DNA samples and tissue samples that we found on the top of the Pyramid of the Moon so that they can check them against the ones they have and see if the assassins are dead. They will send us a response this afternoon.”

The President nodded and invited the Secretary to speak.

“What you are about to see,” he said, “must not be revealed to anybody, not even your family members. If this information comes to light, there would be mass panic which would complicate matters for us. The rates of robbery, vandalism and murders would increase exponentially and make our job even harder.” He waited for the two professors to nod in agreement. “Okay, show it to them.”

The video showed what seemed to be a gigantic asteroid belt orbiting around the Sun, between the planets Mars and Jupiter. Within it, they could see how several of these asteroids broke free of their orbit and were expelled from the Solar System.

The astronomer spoke. “You are seeing how several asteroids have managed to move out of their orbit and fly out of control through space. They weren’t dangerous to begin with because they were not very large in size and their initial path was far from the Earth. However, something implausible has happened. Do you know how the craters on the Moon were formed?”

The pair of them hesitated but Richard ventured a response. “They say that the vast majority are the result of lunar volcanic eruptions.”

The astronomer grinned and began what he felt would be a long explanation. “That is not true. The Earth and the Moon are physically very different. The surface of the satellite is peppered with countless craters made by the impact of meteorites and asteroids. The Earth also suffers from being bombarded by space matter, but the existence of seas, oceans and atmosphere means that many of them break up before they reach the Earth’s surface and those that do are lost at the bottom of the sea. For a while now, man has enjoyed a false sense of security, made possible by the few craters found on the planet. We go on believing that it doesn’t happen on Earth.” He paused for a while, picked up one of the many books at his side and opened it on a particular page. He showed them the picture. “Do you see this photo?”

The two nodded together.

“The two planets shown here are Mars and Jupiter. The patches you can see between them are the asteroid belt. Every time an asteroid passes through certain areas of the belt known as ‘Kirkwood gaps’, spaces where there aren’t any asteroids due to the orbital resonances of Jupiter. This planet’s gravitational pull exerts a force on them so that their orbit shifts, meaning that they could collide with another planet or be expelled from the Solar System. A planetary storm caused by this phenomenon had an effect on the Moon and Earth 3.9 billion years ago. Thousands of asteroids affected by the orbital resonances of Jupiter collided with the surfaces of the Moon and Earth, but as the Moon lacks seas and atmosphere, the scars remain visible to this day unlike on Earth. The collisions with our satellite sent lunar matter flying in all directions, with the great majority of it settling on Earth. That is how we have come to find remains of the Moon on our planet.

“Could it happen again?” asked Richard, pointing to the asteroid belt in the photo.

“Look at the screens!” exclaimed the astronomer.

Just then, thousands of asteroids suddenly flew out of the belt in different directions. The video simulated the orbit some of them would follow and the result was devastating. The system identified eighty-four asteroids which were resolutely making their way towards Earth.

The scientist stopped the recording at the astronomer’s request.

“All these asteroids you see will collide with the Earth’s surface at the end of December 2012.”

“What?! That can’t be right!” James got up out of his seat, alarmed by the massive coincidence. “But that date is… incredible!… Are you sure?!

Richard could read his friend’s thought. The date 21 December 2012 was known by another name. The Mayans called it “4 Ahau 3 Kankin” and according to their prophecies, it was the day that the human race would die out.

* * *

James cast his mind back for a moment, back to that rainy day in January just before the exams. He was giving a class on History of Art for his first-year students and was summarizing the most important concepts in Mayan history, when one of the girls in the front row interrupted him. She was wearing a white T-shirt, miniskirt, dark pantyhose and heavy make-up. James couldn’t help but wonder if that new trend among young people for going to class dressed for a nightclub would ever end.

“Professor, could you tell us about the Popol Vuh?”

James was reluctant at first because it wasn’t on the syllabus. However, when he saw the joy on his students’ faces when the subject came up, he decided to treat them to a little introduction. “The Popol Vuh, otherwise known as the ‘Book of Counsel’ or the ‘Book of the Community’, is the sacred book of the K’iche’ and is something like their Bible. Comprising a series of legends about the K’iche’, a people of the Mayan civilization, they try to explain the origin of the world, man and different natural phenomena. According to this book, humanity has been created and destroyed on four occasions, so we humans are the fifth civilization illuminated by the Sun, or as they called it the Kinich Ahau. All the previous civilizations were destroyed by natural phenomena, the last of which was a great flood.”

“Is it true that all the cycles have the same duration? And how did they measure the time?” asked the young man to the side of her.

“Yes, each of those cycles has a duration of approximately 5125 years, and the Mayans recorded them on three different calendars that they used simultaneously; the Tzolkin or sacred calendar of 260 days, the Haab or civil calendar of 365 days and the Long Count. The first two calendars coincide every fifty-two years, making up the famous fifty-two year Mayan Cycle by which they organized their crops and construction. They thought that every cycle brought new life, so when the time had passed they demolished their temples and homes and rebuilt them. Meanwhile, the three calendars coincide every one hundred and four years; it is the great Mayan celebration of change. It is worth noting that this last calendar registers days through a set of five numbers separated by points. In other words, the first day is marked as 0.0.0.0.0 and the last as 13.0.0.0.0, with each unit known as a baktun, katun, tun, uinal and kin respectively.”

James couldn’t help but be disgusted when he saw the look of astonishment on his students’ faces. They were fascinated by this subject so he couldn’t understand why some of them seemed to be so ignorant. He grabbed a chalk and scrawled some numbers on the board as he kept talking. “The Mayans called the days ‘kin’. Twenty kin make a ‘uinal’, eighteen uinal make a ‘tun’, twenty tun make a ‘katun’ and twenty katun make a ‘baktun’. What I’m doing here is showing you a simplified progression of the Long Count calendar from start to end.”

When James moved back, his students looked puzzled at the jumble of numbers on the board.

“When the calendar gets to 1.0.0.0.0, then 144,000 days have passed, so the sum total would be 13 * 144,000, which makes a total of 1,872,000 days. According to the Mayans, one year lasts 365.2422 days, so those 1,872,000 days would make 5125.366 years which is the duration of each cycle. The Long Count calendar began on 11 August 3114 BC (0.0.0.0.0) and will supposedly end on the 21 December 2012 (13.0.0.0.0), the day that the end of the world will come according to the information chiseled into the stone stele in the city of Coba, near the Riviera Maya. That stone mentions four dates, three of them already gone by. Even so, not even the researchers themselves can come to an agreement about how to interpret them. Some claim that the end of the world is coming, others say it’s the end of a cycle, the end of the evil nature of man, the rebirth of a world in harmony with nature, a period of change…”

“And what do you think?” asked the girl.

“Well, it is a bit of a gray area. According to researchers, there are seven Mayan prophecies. The first one warns us that after 1999 we will have only thirteen years to rethink our ways before the end of the world becomes inevitable. The second tells us how our lives will be from that moment. The third and fourth speak about climate change, the melting of the poles, natural disasters and how they will affect our planet. The fifth claims that we will realize all the mistakes we have made when we are implicated in our future, precarious situation. The sixth tells us that a comet will appear to warn us that the change of life is coming. The seventh and last prophecy talks about man and the world becoming one and the same and that we will learn to appreciate our planet. I personally don’t believe any of it. I think that the prophecy is referring to the end of Mayan culture itself; in fact, very few young people nowadays keep to the traditions of their ancestors, know about their rituals and carry them out. I think that the Mayan prophecy tells us that with the last shaman who are alive today, everything will come to an end.”

James couldn’t help but answer the rest of his students’ questions until the bell rang and it was the end of class.

* * *

The rumors that were swirling among the leaders were quickly stamped out by the Secretary, although they had been enough to bring James back to reality. All the while, the President remained silent. There was more.

“On 16 July 2009, a gigantic meteorite collided with Jupiter and the debris from the impact was discovered by an amateur astronomer. A considerable number of scientists believe that this incident and however many others that occur each day are signs that the Earth is crossing a dangerous area of the Galaxy. We all know that our Solar System completes one orbit of the center of the Galaxy every 226 million years, so it is not a great leap to believing that we are on the cusp of entering one of those balls of clouds made up of comets and asteroids. We discarded that theory at the beginning, but with recent events…”

He then pressed a button and the video continued.

The rest of the simulation showed what would happen when all those asteroids reach Earth. The smallest ones were destroyed as soon as they crossed the Earth’s atmosphere but many more of them managed to reach the surface of the planet, causing millions and millions of deaths and, very probably the extinction of life on Earth for the following three weeks.

The President began to speak. “The simulation is ninety-eight percent accurate. Four weeks after the arrival of the asteroids, there won’t be a trace of life on the planet. We will all be dead.”