Bound and unable to move, Claudia and Nino awoke from their forced sleep in a place completely foreign to them. The darkness only revealed a few hints about their new surroundings. It was barely lit by the thin slivers of light that managed to slip in through a few slits in the highest part of that room. To their right, they could faintly make out the body of a decapitated man, although they grasped right away that it was only a painting. On their left, the darker side, a series of wooden scaffolds rose higher and higher until they were lost to sight. The rest of what was there could best be described as objects covered in plastic and junk covered in dust.
"Are you all right?" Nino asked when he saw that Claudia had just woken up.
"My head hurts, but... where are we?"
Confusion and panic set in and frightened her. Her feet nervously tapped the floor and a desperate look came over her face once she realized she was tied up.
"What the hell is going on?" she cried anxiously, trying in vain to free herself.
"I think the men who were chasing us through the tunnels captured us."
"It can't be true, this isn't happening," she sobbed.
"Hey, calm down. If we're still alive, it's because they want something from us. We have to stay calm and act smart."
Claudia lowered her head and clenched her teeth to force herself to concentrate.
"I will be strong, I will be strong, I will be strong," she repeated to herself over and over again.
After a little while, she looked up again, apparently calmer, and said to Nino:
"OK, I'm better now, now tell me the plan."
"What plan?"
"The plan that's going to get us out of this mess, the plan that always surprises me, the plan you're conceiving in your head right now... the plan," she insisted as she shifted her weight from right to left.
"Ahh, right, that plan."
"Yeah, that one."
"Welllll, actually I don't really have one."
"What?"
"You have to understand, I just came to myself and I haven't had time to think about anything. Not to mention that I was worried about you."
"I'm fine, so now you can start to think about how to get out of here."
Nino concentrated. He looked at everything around him, focused intently on seemingly unimportant details like pieces of furniture and statues, and struggled in vain in the chair trying to free himself from his bonds. Then he said:
"I think I have a plan."
"Seriously?" Claudia wondered.
Without saying a word, Nino leaned his body forward, closed his eyes and hurled himself backwards.
The legs of the chair shattered. Aside from taking a hard shot to the ribs, Nino managed to maneuver his legs around, even with his hands tied, and get to his feet before going over to one of the statues. Using a broken edge of the statue as a makeshift saw, he began to work away at weakening the rope until he managed to free himself completely.
"Lean forward," he ordered Claudia.
He bashed away at her chair a few times until he finally smashed it to pieces.
"Are you all right?" he asked.
"Yes, yes, I am now," she replied happily.
"Now go over to the broken part of the statue and try to free yourself. While you’re doing that, I'll go look for a way out of here."
"OK."
The ceiling in there climbed higher and higher until it was lost from sight in the darkness. That wasn't the only thing. It was built like an inverted cupola, forming an arch that would end in a peak. The outer wall could be identified easily enough since the shuttered windows weren't able to completely block all the light from coming though. The luminous threads of light that settled like sharpened knives on the opposite wall revealed that wooden panels had been used to build the wall.
They are movable pieces, thought Nino, surprised and puzzled.
He pushed one of the panels to confirm it would move.
"If I give this a good shove, I'm sure I can go right through it," he said to himself, absolutely convinced it was true.
Then he realized doing that would almost certainly attract a lot of attention... too much attention. He continued exploring the false wall, heading towards the darkest part of the room.
"Got it! Here it is!" he exclaimed happily.
"You found a way out?" asked Claudia, who had just finished freeing herself.
"Yes, and it's not locked."
When they opened the door, the intense light blinded them for a second.
"Well done, very well done," said Ernest, surrounded by about 20 men. "And now that you've freed yourselves, what do you think you're going to do?"
Once their eyes adjusted to the harsh glare, Claudia and Nino realized the seriousness of the situation facing them.
"Fight!" Nino growled, shielding Claudia behind him. "If we have to die, it won't be without defending ourselves."
Ernest took two steps forward before he spoke.
"Who said you're going to die?"
"You're all members of the church of the dead."
"I can see you two know a lot, maybe more than I figured before," replied Ernest, squinting in the bright light. "To be more precise, we are members of the Order of the Living Dead.
"Oh, my God!” exclaimed Claudia, genuinely frightened.
"But it's not what you two are imagining," Ernest added quickly.
"Ah, it's not?" was Nino's skeptical response.
"Of course not. We belong to an order dedicated in body and soul to the protection of the dead, bringing them back to life, and not to killing people who show they are blessed with the qualities of curiosity and intelligence."
"I don't understand," said Claudia, coming out from behind Nino.
"You two went deep down into the tunnels of the city searching for the Temple of 1000 Crystals, or as you called it before, the church of the dead. The curious thing is you found its ancient location."
"But we didn't see anything down there," Nino interrupted.
"Of course not, because we moved it a long time ago, shortly after I was born."
"Why?" Claudia asked.
"The answer to your question is quite simple. Our order moved it to protect it."
"From who?"
"From vandals, the inclement weather, all the corrupt officials and speculators... from all enemies of knowledge."
"Then your order bears that name because you watch over the dead that you keep alive," Nino remarked.
"Exactly! Didn't I tell you these two kids were worth the effort?" Ernest commented, looking back at his companions.
"For what?" Claudia asked.
"Perhaps you don't realize where you are yet?"
They both raised their heads and looked up. The pillars curved upwards and transformed themselves into a gigantic cone overlaid by windows that enabled the light to enter and envelop the interior. The circular shape of the base merged with the ground, symbolizing the union between earth and heaven, accessible for all human beings. The artificial lights seamlessly blended with the brilliance of natural light, creating flashes very much like reflections in a mirror engraved with images from the outside world: the sky, clouds and horizon.
"Good God!" exclaimed Claudia. "It's like the inside doesn't exist, as if we were standing outside these walls."
"It is the interpretation of a dream, the same one Apollonius had when he built the temple," Ernest said, moving behind them as he put his hands on their shoulders.
"But this isn't ancient."
"No, Claudia, it is not. What is built underneath the Santuario de la Madonna delle Lacrime*, yes, that is indeed the true masterpiece of Apollonius.
"Now I understand," Nino jumped in, "the sanctuary was created to cover the Temple of 1000 Crystals so that the temple wouldn’t lose access to the light."
"Exactly, but our greatest frustration is that we were never able to put the mechanism that Apollonius installed in the temple into operation."
"And what is that?" Claudia wondered, even as her eyes never strayed from that vision of the sky.
"It appears that some kind of key is required, an artifact that will activate the mechanism. We built some gadgets that imitated the shape of the slot, but we still haven't found anything that fits."
"That thing!" exclaimed Nino.
"What are you talking about?" said Ernest, caught up in Nino's excitement.
"We found this thing that looked like a crystal with the map of human skin."
"Don't joke around with me, Nino. A map of human skin? A crystal?"
"It's a long story," Claudia leaping in to divert Ernest's attention, "but I'm sure you'll be very interested in hearing it while we go back to pick up the Vespa."
*
Two hours later...
The spiral staircase ended at a wooden door with enormous hinges that supported the great weight of that work of art. The engravings were extraordinary. In the upper part, twelve men perched in the clouds pulled on chains anchored in a depiction to scale of the original temple. In the lower part, twelve other men pulled on other chains to bring the temple closer to the earth. It was as if the artist wished to portray a struggle between the divine and terrestrial for possession of this wondrous creation.
"Are you ready?" Ernest asked before opening the doors.
They both nodded, absorbed in their own thoughts.
The central section of the temple almost defied description. Several rows of columns supported the weight of the tiled roof, while several bodies of golden snakes coiled themselves protectively around the columns as if guarding them against harm. The stained-glass windows, colored with the ancient art of alchemy, envisaged suns over copper-colored lands, skies embracing golden wheat fields, and seas surrounding verdant green lands with beautiful color tones and artistic portrayals. The full Creation in all its splendor was displayed for the visual enjoyment of the visitors.
"Now you two have the honor and the duty to preserve our secrets. Now you are members of our order," Ernest said solemnly. "Will you allow me to use the crystal key?"
"Yes, of course," Nino replied, puzzled but happy all the same.
The walls trembled when the crystal was inserted into the slot. The upper section of the columns moved back, sliding along a system of bearings that supposedly still had not been invented in the era the columns were built. The corners of the stained-glass windows changed shape, as if some intense heat source was melting them and the white marble floor began to sparkle with a spectacular shine.
"Oh my God!!!" blurted Claudia, overcome by a feeling of fear mixed with admiration.
The temple was inundated with beams of bright light, bouncing from one side to the other and creating an atmosphere impossible to describe. The statues came to life until they disappeared from sight. The ceiling tiles were changing patterns and colors as rapidly as the scales of a chameleon. And as the columns were enveloped by the coiled snakes, there only remained an altar in the middle of an absolute void.
"How is that possible?" Ernest said in wonder. "It's like standing before the gates to Heaven."
Suddenly the light began to dissipate, making way for a glorious sky, the very one over the city of Syracuse at that moment. The clouds took their shapes from the whims of the wind right before their eyes, creating the sensation of being close enough to reach out and touch with their hands. The city lay revealed at their feet with all its streets, buildings, inhabitants... everything. It was as if the sky had transformed itself into a satellite where information is collected about what exists under its lens and then transmitted for the temple to interpret and project the data.
"This can't be real," an astonished Nino remarked.
"Now I believe it," declared Ernest, pointing to the altar at the rear of the temple.
"Believe what?" Claudia asked.
The man opened a stone box by fitting a key into a panel and took out a book.
"This is the Voynich Manuscript, but not the copy they display in the museum. This is the original. These pages that could never be deciphered described the greatest secrets of the universe. Like how to build a machine to create energy using nuclear fusion, how to compress time and space. There are even drawings in here where men are apparently manipulating the DNA of animals and plants. And more secrets that we still haven't managed to decipher even today.
"So... then... did Apollonius actually decipher it?"
"Possibly, Claudia," Ernest replied, "but it's even more probable that Archimedes was the first to do it."
"And his disciples utilized this knowledge," Nino interjected.
"Or part of it. There are wonders in the world whose existence we simply are not capable of explaining, like this temple. It is our obligation to bring them together, protect them, decipher their meaning and share the knowledge acquired with the rest of humanity, but without placing the discoveries in jeopardy."
Claudia walked away from them and pointed to a wall where there was no reflection of the outside world.
"Apparently, the construction wasn't perfect. The mechanism failed here."
Ernest came over.
"It's true, although I don't believe the failure was due to Apollonius' design."
"So... then what?"
"I have the feeling the mayor of Syracuse isn't going to like it very much when we tell him we have to rebuild the sanctuary," Ernest chuckled.
And right there, where the sky bordered the earth, the new members of the order of the living dead laughed heartily with their new brethren, and dreamed of all the secrets yet to be revealed.
––––––––
THE END
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* This was the basic weapon, along with the sword (gladius), of the soldiers in Roman legions. It was similar to a lance or javelin and measured about two meters long.
* Fountain of the Plaza de Archimedes
* Fountain of Artemis
* Our Lady of Tears
THE ISLAND OF JAN MAYEN
Title: The Island of Jan Mayen
Original Idea: Alexander Copperwhite
Cover: Víctor Manuel Mirete Ramallo
Text and style revision: Corrigenda
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CHAPTERS
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