FATHER MATEO PEREZ
MOUNT GRAHAM, ARIZONA
FATHER PEREZ HAD MADE A DETAILED REPORT TO COPPA, who could barely contain himself with excitement. But Perez’s own excitement had since faded, giving way to apprehensions. He remembered Coppa’s words to him upon his arrival: If the map about the location of the Ascension Testaments were real, then did that mean the map and text about the coming cataclysm were also real?
“I’ve read and reread the tablets that accompany the star map,” he told Joseph, as the two of them sat at the small table in his room looking at a stack of papers.
“Have you gotten anywhere with them?” Joseph asked, pouring them both a refill of wine.
“Only to a sense of dread,” Perez answered. “These Sumerian tablets are apocalyptic. They describe fire raining down from the heavens, cataclysms of all kinds, and wide destruction of the earth and mankind. They describe the oceans coming out of their basin, the day turning to night, and the earth shaking violently. They are eerily similar to my understanding of the Book of Revelation.”
“That seems a stretch,” Joseph commented. “I thought Revelation was to be read metaphorically, not literally.”
“Well, not according to the Sumerians. These tablets, I believe, portend real events—at least real to whoever wrote them.”
“Don’t you mean chiseled them?”
Father Perez stared as his friend for a moment, then the two of them burst into laughter. For a moment, Father Perez felt the stress of the work lift from him.
“I don’t know,” he said finally. “This description of cataclysm accompanies this star map. As best I can tell on this map, this is the constellation Virgo, with some other stars or objects in the background above it. Maybe another earthly reference? Maybe this represents the sun and this the moon, I’m not sure. But that’s all there is here. The text just goes through what is to come: the great cataclysm, destruction of mountains, seas rising—all the bad stuff. After that, the gods return, and the tablets finish with a star map. I’m not certain there is anything else to learn from these.”
Joseph nodded thoughtfully. “But perhaps there is something to be found in the golden books—if they are real.”
“Perhaps,” Father Perez said, his brows knitting.
That night Father Perez lay in his bed, unusually relaxed—the result of Joseph’s generosity with the wine after they’d wrapped up for the day. His mind wandered over the strange set of circumstances had led him to this point in his life, the Great Pyramids, and the Sumerian concept of time.
How amazing their chance discovery had been, the father thought. If Joseph had not read about the measurements of the Great Pyramids and alignment of the stars in Orion’s belt as they appeared 10,500 years ago before the time of the Egyptians, they might never have verified the connection. Remarkable, he thought. Thank goodness Joseph was such a well-read astronomer in his own right, and well versed in the history of “alternative” Egyptology. He wondered about the archeologist who had written the original article, and what had led him to research the alignment of the stars in Orion’s belt as they’d appeared 10,500 years ago.
That fit perfectly with the timing of the Sumerian tablets describing the construction of the pyramids. He rolled over and looked at his clock: 1:30 a.m. He needed some sleep. He closed his eyes and began to fade off to sleep.
Time.
Time!
He shot straight up in his bed. Time—could that be it? On impulse, he dialed the phone.
“Yes?” Joseph answered in a groggy slurred voice.
“Joseph, it’s me.”
“What are you doing? It’s past midnight. You should be getting some rest.”
“I’ve had a thought—I think there’s something to it. Meet me in the control center!”
Hanging up, Father Perez hurriedly dressed and ran out of the room. When Joseph met him in the control room, he was already working frantically at a terminal.
“What is it?” Joseph asked, excitement in his voice despite his obvious fatigue.
“I think I figured it out,” Father Perez said. “It struck me when I thought about what you said. That the pyramid alignment matched the Orion belt alignment, but only as it looked 10,500 years ago.”
“So what if this star map was the same thing?”
“I’m not following.”
Father Perez pointed to the map, his finger trembling. “What if this map is showing us an alignment at a particular point in time?” he said. “What if this Sumerian account of coming destruction and turmoil is true? What if they were pointing out the date of its occurrence?” He unfolded a large piece of paper on his desk with a picture of the Sumerian star map on it.
“Look. If we assume that this arrangement is Virgo, and that this is the sun, this is the moon, and these other stars are within known nearby constellations, it may correlate to a specific date: the date that this alignment would appear from Earth.”
“I guess that’s possible,” Joseph muttered, his face serious.
“Let’s test it.”
Over the next few hours, Father Perez ran various computer simulations using the Stellarium, and Joseph created several algorithms, looking for the alignment on the Sumerian star chart to see if such an alignment would occur in the future. Joseph found the alignment fairly quickly; a particular arrangement of stars and planets that occurred only once every ten thousand years. The mathematical brilliance of the Sumerians was proven once again. But Father Perez remained troubled.
“There’s only one problem,” he said, scratching his chin. “There is no reference to this particular object on the map. It appears to be some object that does not exist in our current understanding of the constellation of Virgo. Strange,” he muttered, mostly to himself.
Joseph yelled out from his terminal. “Father, we have something here from my query. I’m not sure, but you’d better have a look.” Perez rushed to Joseph’s terminal. Joseph had a look of consternation on his face. “If I run a future progression in the Starry Night software, I can match this alignment perfectly,” he said. “See, Virgo and the moon are exactly in the same location, as are Jupiter, the sun, the other stars—all of it exactly as they are depicted on the tablet map.”
Father Perez took over the terminal. He checked the input. He reran Joseph’s numbers. He printed out the alignment. He overlaid it on the copy of the Sumerian Virgo star map; it was a perfect fit.
“There is just one problem,” he said, pointing. “Again there is one object on the Sumerian map that does not exist in our software program.”
Joseph continued to work on his analysis while Perez studied the maps. Over the hum of the servers and the equipment in the room, Joseph finally said, “Father, you won’t believe this. How could the Sumerians have known this? Do you think the date of this alignment is significant?”
“I don’t know.” Father Perez thought for a moment. “Let me see something. He looked at the data on the screen and jotted down some coordinates before hurrying across the room to the main terminal for the LUCIFER telescope.
The control panel for the telescope looked like the cockpit of a 747, with screens and instruments everywhere. Father Perez punched in the coordinates of the alignment. There was a loud crack, followed by a low hum as the massive binocular telescope’s vast motors began to spin. The telescope slowly rotated as the large lenses tracked to the coordinates in the sky entered by Father Perez. Grinding steel squealed and screeched into the cold morning air, and then the telescope came to a shuddering halt.
For several minutes Father Perez scanned the viewing monitor, panning, zooming, and checking the telescope’s settings and temperature while reconfirming his coordinates. Finally, an image appeared—fuzzy at first, until Father Perez brought it into focus.
What he saw was an object that should not exist. His stomach flipped. The star map was right, he thought.
“Oh my God,” Father Perez whispered as he eyes went wide. He zoomed in on the object, applying various spectrum filters to the image to bring the object into better view. Faint and faraway as it was, it was there nonetheless. Father Perez swallowed hard and turned white. A chill ran down his back.
“Joseph,” he whispered, “I need you to connect me with the Vatican immediately.”
CAIRO, EGYPT
Woe to the inhabitants of the earth and the sea! For the devil has come down to you, having great wrath, because he knows that he has a short time.
Dr. Sati Am Unnefer was a creature of habit, but today he had returned early from lunch without finishing his meal. Henku had not come to work for several days, and today was the wrong day to be without an assistant; equipment deliveries were expected all day, and Sati had little time to supervise them. To make matters worse, on his way out, the restaurant’s owner had approached him to personally congratulate him on his promotion, and to discuss the rumors of a new excavation. Clearly, it was impossible to keep anything a secret anymore.
Sati crossed the busy Cairo street to the office building of the Supreme Council of Antiquities. His office was in the middle of a long corridor opposite a courtyard on the first floor, and as he walked down the hallway he looked over a copy of the daily Al-Ahra. A prominent article about the excavation was splashed across the front page. So much for staying under the radar, he thought.
Sunlight flooded through the courtyard windows that ran the length of the hallway on his left. Offices filled the right side. The sound of his leather sandals echoed lightly off of the terrazzo floor as he walked.
He started going through a mental list of items that needed completing quickly if they were going to start re-excavating the tunnels on schedule. He had to select his local team, order and stage the equipment, and ensure that power was available for the robot and related systems. Feeling a bit overwhelmed, he briefly looked up and saw Henku quickly shuffling down the corridor past his office, peering back over his shoulder. When his assistant didn’t stop, Sati was puzzled. But there was something else—something strange in Henku’s manner that he couldn’t quite place.
“Henku, wait!” he shouted. “Where are you going? Come back here. Where have you been?” The assistant quickly turned and looked at Sati, his face panicked; then, without a word, he turned and disappeared down the hallway that led to the building’s exit.
Sati considered whether to follow him, then decided instead to hurry into his office, where he could hear the phone ringing. He fumbled with his keys for several seconds before realizing that his door was slightly ajar. Had Henku broken into his office?
Anger and a feeling of betrayal welled up inside him. He walked into the office and looked around for anything out of order. Tossing the newspaper on the desk, his foot tangled on something on the floor. What he saw froze him in his tracks.
There beside his desk was a large metal briefcase. His sandal was tangled in a thin wire that was connected to it. Fear caught his breath. His heart nearly stopped, and terror gripped him. The air thickened while he fought to escape as fast as he could.
He turned to run. Time slowed, and he felt as if he could not force his body to move fast enough. It was as if his body was refusing to obey his commands—as if he were moving through thick wet sand.
Sati had only managed a few steps when the detonation occurred.
The office erupted in flame, hurling Sati’s body through the air. He flew across the corridor along with shards of wood and a cloud of smoke. He had the distinct, sickening feeling of being lifted off the floor by a massive, moving wall of compressed air and fire.
He inhaled a burning breath of smoke. His body slammed through the window of the courtyard, shattering it into a million glass particles. Sounds grew muffled as his consciousness began to fade. He seemed to feel nothing but the sensation of moving through the air, through glass. It seemed to take forever for him to hit the ground, and when he finally did, everything went black.
MOUNT GRAHAM, ARIZONA
Father Perez sat in his room at his table, resting his head in his hands and rubbing his eyes. He could not shake his fear; he’d spent the last several hours thinking about the devastating implications of his finding over and over again.
Joseph’s entrance broke through his reverie. “Excuse me, Father Perez, I have scheduled a secure video call with the Vatican,” he said, clearly as shaken as Perez. “The pope himself is going to attend. Someone will be here in your room shortly to arrange the connection.”
Father Perez gripped his friend’s hands. “Joseph, wait,” he said. “Before you go, please, listen for a moment. You must promise me something. You must promise me you will keep this quiet until we know more, or at least until I get directions from the Vatican. I know you understand the implications.” Perez held his gaze with a serious look.
“I do,” Joseph said.
“Not even Coppa is to know.”
“I understand, Father.” Joseph hesitated for a moment before he walked out, closing the door behind him.
Soon afterward, an assistant arrived and led Father Perez up the elevator to a room that was like a closet. It could barely contained a desk, a chair, and a computer.
“This will give you a secure connection,” the assistant told him. Then he typed in the login information. Father Perez then typed his personal password into the Vatican’s encrypted video conferencing application.
Father Perez received his second audience with His Holiness Pope Paul. Before embarking on this journey, he would have been awed by the audience and the attention he was receiving. Now, he was too shocked at what he had discovered to think even about himself.
“Father,” the pope said in an even tone, “it is nice to see you again. I am most impressed with the assessments of your efforts that I have received from Cardinal Coppa. The writings you prepared were excellent and should suit our new Jesuit doctrine well. The Vatican will release them soon.”
“Thank you, Holy Father, but there is something—”
“Father Perez,” the pope interrupted, “I think that in the unlikely occurrence of any announcement of an extraterrestrial life form, your writings will provide great spiritual guidance. We do the bidding of our Lord, and you, Mateo, will surely be among those rewarded for your service to Him. As you continue with your excellent work, may God and Cardinal Coppa guide your path. Now, my son, what is so urgent?”
Father Perez attempted a half-hearted smile at the compliment. “Holy Father, there is something—that I need to tell you something I have not shared with anyone yet, not even Cardinal Coppa.”
“Go on, my son.”
“As you know, my research into the Sumerian ancient writings led me to a terrestrial calculation that clearly points to the Great Pyramid as a repository of hidden records, assumed to be the gold Ascension Testaments.”
“Yes,” the pope confirmed. He leaned back in his chair. “We are very much aware of that, and an excavation is currently underway in the Great Pyramid. Do not fear; our interests are being protected on the site.”
“Your Holiness, the star map in those records holds a dark prophecy. It describes the Sumerian gods’ return and an apocalyptic time for Earth—a time of great destruction and death. I believe the star map points to a particular point in time, one in the very near future, when the stars and planets will align exactly as depicted in that map.”
“Yes—and?”
“Well, I did further calculations and found that the star map did provide an alignment that occurs on a specific point in time. It is this date that the Sumerians described as bringing this great cataclysm to Earth …”
“Go on.”
“If I’m interpreting it properly, the map alignment is showing us a future date—the date of a celestial alignment that has never happened in human history. That date, Your Holiness, is coming soon.”
“Ah, yes,” the pope said, his voice betraying his excitement. “Well done, Mateo! Tell no one of this date. Say nothing of it here, and send it only to me using the secure email you have been given. It is good to hear that you solved this riddle! It verifies scientific information we have from other sources that we have previously suppressed. More importantly, it authenticates our findings in the ancient texts here in the Archives. We must hasten our preparations.”
This statement struck Father Perez as very strange. How could a date of great cataclysm be good to hear?
“There is more, Your Eminence. The ancient star map showed an object that does not exist within the Virgo constellation. I was able to test my findings through the LUCIFER telescope, and look for that object.”
“Go on.”
“Well, Holy Father, there was something there—something of great concern.”
“Father Perez listen to me very carefully,” the pope interrupted abruptly. “Say no more. Send your findings through the secure Vatican email system, directly to me. I am aware of what you found. From this moment forward, you are to tell absolutely no one of your findings. You are to report to me alone. This is something that we are aware of, although we did not have a specific date as to when it would be significant. Now we do. It is as we have suspected. No one on Mount Graham, no one at the Vatican, and, at this point, no one on Earth should receive this information without my approval. Do you understand?”
Father Perez was stunned. The pope’s tone was almost startlingly urgent, menacing. “Yes, Holy Father,” Perez managed.
“Our history deep within the Vatican Archives tells of what comes,” the pope was saying. “We have prepared for this for hundreds of years, and now the time is upon us. You are one of only a few on Earth with this powerful knowledge. A great change is coming to the world, and the Vatican will use this information to establish its position of power, following the coming cataclysm.”
“What do you mean, Holy Father?” Perez said, a cold sweat breaking out on his brown. They suspected this? They knew this? And the Vatican has prepared for it? How? The implications rocked him to his core. He felt this knowledge was now entrusted to him, and his discovery seemed to confirm the timing of this great shift.
“These coming tribulation events will ensure that the Vatican’s authority and power cannot be repudiated. The Church will bring light to those seeking solace in the dark days to come.”
“Yes. Of course, Holy Father I—I understand,” replied Father Perez, the blood rushing to his head.
The pope began to quote from the book of Revelation. “‘And I saw another angel ascending from the east, having the seal of the living God: and he cried with a loud voice to the four angels, to whom it was given to hurt the earth and the sea, saying, hurt not the Earth, neither the sea, nor the trees, till we have sealed the servants of our God in their foreheads.’ ”
Perez was struck. His head was spinning.
The Holy Father took his silence as conviction and continued. “These are they which came out of the great tribulation … therefore are they before the throne of God and serve him day and night … and he shall dwell among them. I think it is time for you to join Project Aquarius at the U.N., Father Perez,” the pope continued. “We have the information we need. But before you do, first there is someone I want you to meet with. Someone who will provide you some additional visibility into our research in the Secret Archives. I will have my secretary make arrangements.”
With that, the call ended. Father Perez sat in the small room in a state of shock, for what seemed an eternity. He was torn as he had never been; he wanted to tell everyone of this threat. But how could he? He had given the pope himself his word as a Jesuit.
Soon the door opened once more, and the assistant entered and escorted Father Perez back to his chambers. Perez sat down at the small table in his room, his head in his hands.
The Vatican knows of this threat and tells no one? The Vatican sees this as part of its destiny? I know of this and can warn no one? The conflict nearly brought him to tears.
A few hours later, there was a small knock at his door.
“Yes,” he said weakly.
Joseph entered. “Cardinal Coppa would like a word with you, Father,” he said quietly.
Father Perez felt his stomach hit the floor. Slowly, he rose from his chair and followed Joseph through the observatory and back into its bowels. Once they’d reached the control room, Cardinal Coppa turned to greet him.
“I take it you have been working hard, Mateo?” the cardinal said, his smile friendly as always.
“Yes, Your—Paul,” Father Perez said.
“His Holiness shared your conversation with me,” Coppa went on. “He’s pleased with your efforts to this point.”
Skeptical, Father Perez kept his acknowledgement to a simple, “Thank you.”
Cardinal Coppa paused and assessed Father Perez for a moment. “What were you doing with the LUCIFER early yesterday morning, Father?” he asked, his smile broadening.
“Well, I—I was having trouble sleeping,” Father Perez stammered, struggling to articulate a good answer. “I’ve been immersed in Biblical and Sumerian texts so long, I needed a reprieve. It is a fantastic instrument, and I thought I would take some time to myself and explore its capabilities.” Father Perez was amazed he could concoct such a lie so quickly.
Coppa sat up taller in his chair and leaned slightly toward Perez, staring hard at him. But the priest betrayed no expression upon his face.
“As you can imagine,” the cardinal finally responded, “yours is a most significant role, Mateo. His Holiness expects you to serve at the Vatican as the Church’s mouthpiece on these issues. I have no intentions at this time to recommend otherwise.”
An expanse of silence passed between them. Finally, Father Perez cleared his throat and averted his eyes. Mercifully, the door opened. Joseph stood on the other side, waiting for directions.
Coppa held Father Perez in his gaze. “Joseph, escort Father Perez to his chambers,” he said icily. “Help him pack his things. Apparently, Father Perez is going on a trip.”