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While Anne danced under New England stars and made polite small talk with the country’s illustrious and powerful, Michael Levy met with a group wielding a very different kind of power. Tapered white candles burned in niches on each wall of the room. Two rows of pews lined the north and south walls and in the east stood a simple but elegant altar with more candles and a vase filled with red roses.
Michael sat in meditation, waiting for the last of the group to arrive. After a short wait, one straggler entered and quietly made his salutation to the east, then, squaring each corner of the room, walked to his seat. Silence descended for some time. Then, stirring from this silence, like a lotus gently nudging its head above water, a clear, round vowel sound rose and deepened as each member added voice to the chant. The group sang a series of tones together, the women adding the sweetness of chimes to the resonant bell tones of the men.
Michael felt his body relax and his spine straighten. The silence had now grown into a deep pool of awareness. Fifteen minutes passed. After a silent prayer, Michael opened his eyes and waited for the meeting to proceed. His initial excitement about his news had now quieted to a confident glow. Perhaps all was not lost, as they had feared.
Guy, the group astrologer, began the meeting. “Pluto and Chiron are finishing the work they began in their conjunction at the beginning of the millennium. Their current configuration, along with Uranus and Neptune finishing their journey through Aquarius, suggests that collective consciousness should have shifted dramatically. Yet secular events contradict this. If we are now fighting the Last Battle, as was predicted, we must control the energy to prevent wholesale destruction. Other traditions concur with our calculations, but the shift still hangs in the balance. We must do something to help this transformation occur, but, given recent events, I am at a loss as to how to proceed.”
“I have news that may help.” Michael addressed himself to the group.
All faces turned to him.
“I had an interesting visitor at my uncle’s store recently. A young woman came in shopping for a gift for her grandmother. When she described her grandmother’s collection, it became clear she was talking about the crest symbols of one of the Families. When I took her payment, my suspicions were confirmed. She is a Le Clair.”
An older man opened his mouth to speak, but Michael held up a finger. “She told me she had just inherited an antique crystal necklace topped with a fleur-de-lis.”
The room stirred to life.
“Finally.”
“Excellent.”
“The crystal has been passed.”
Guy’s voice rose above the din. “Surely this is a sign for us. The forces brought her to you. Perhaps we will be able to gain access to this crystal after all. Which Le Clair has it now?”
“The niece, Anne.”
“Anne. What do we know about her?” asked Robert, the Grand Master. “Our last informant never mentioned her.”
“We should investigate her.” Guy looked at Michael.
“It would be my pleasure.” A light kindled in his eyes.
“Perhaps it should be someone else,” Robert said. “We must retrace the footsteps of our last contact to find out what she discovered, and Michael is the best candidate for that job. He could travel under cover on business. He may have to leave the country soon.”
“Yes, but he has the most plausible reason to contact Le Clair,” Guy pointed out.
Robert looked around at the group. Several people nodded in agreement.
“Then proceed with the niece,” Robert said to Michael, “but move quickly. The time may almost be upon us.”
☥☥☥
Paul Marchant pushed a button on the remote and the next slide filled the screen. “Here you see the Fibonacci spiral on the nautilus.” He aimed his laser pointer at the swirl of chambers, his thin arms too long even for his tall form. He pushed the button again. “A pine cone.” In a black suit, backlit from the screen, Marchant resembled the thin, attenuated creature from the mother ship who had greeted the scientists in Close Encounters of the Third Kind.
He pushed the button again. “Even the arms of our own galaxy spiral in such a way. The Fibonacci series is a basic building block in nature, the number sequence that defines the Golden Mean.” He hurried through these basics. “Mathematics describes the basic relationships that form the universe we live in.”
Surely everyone knows this by now, he thought.
The next slide showed the Egyptian pyramids at Giza from the air. “How many of you know that the pyramids are laid out on the same scale as Orion’s belt?” He squinted his eyes against the lights. Many hands were up. “Good. We don’t have to go into that too much. The pyramids serve as a grounding spot on Earth for Orion’s energy, a sort of sympathetic echo of the larger system. The pyramids return that energy, setting up a resonant field between the two places. When the pharaoh was laid in the sarcophagus, his spirit was able to return to the galactic civilization that founded ancient Egypt.
“Now let’s return to the dodecahedron shape.” He pushed the remote several times, clicking back through slides. Finally, the Earth appeared, and superimposed over it was the image of a many-sided sphere made of triangles. “It is no accident that one of the points of the dodecahedron lands at Giza. These points form the Earth grid, the energy matrix making up our planet.”
A few murmurs came from the audience.
“If you follow the points, you will see that one rests on Stonehenge.” He pointed his red laser at the south of England. “Another at Chichén Itzá.” He illuminated eastern Mexico. “Another on Kilauea, the volcano in Hawaii. And so on.
“Ladies and gentlemen, each area is connected to a different star system, and these energy flows are what literally hold the planet together at the quantum energy level, in harmony with the rest of our galaxy. This is galactic gravity, so to speak. Now, when our harmonic resonance drops to zero point, we know what is going to happen.”
“Pole shift,” said one eager audience member perched on the edge of his seat.
“Exactly,” Marchant said. “A pole shift. And most researchers are predicting a disaster of gigantic proportions on that day. Earthquakes off the scale, huge tsunamis that will swamp the land, devastating winds. But this can all be avoided if we reactivate this grid system.” He jabbed a bony finger at the audience. “If these stone monuments, the physical markers for these points, can be reactivated, the earth will remain stable through this shift. This is why it is vital my work continue. Are there any questions?”
Marchant took a drink of water as the houselights came up and the floor microphones were adjusted.
A young man spoke from the first mike. “Mr. Marchant, I’ve always admired your work, but these predictions of doom are reminiscent of the 1990s. Everyone predicted devastating floods, earthquakes, but the world did not end when the new millennium began. As we all recall, nothing of any significance happened. How can you expect us to take your work seriously when you couple it with these doom and gloom prophecies?”
“I disagree that none of these predictions came true.” A vein stood out in Marchant’s temple. “If you remember, sir, there were floods in the mid-western and southern United States, weather patterns changed dramatically, and there continue to be earthquakes around the Pacific Rim, in the Mediterranean, Mexico, and California. This pole shift will happen, and it will be devastating if we do not prepare for it.”
A woman wanted to know about Edgar Cayce’s prediction that a chamber under the Sphinx’s paw would be opened soon. An ardent twenty-year-old interrupted her and made a speech accusing the shadow government of stealing Atlantean technology from this chamber when it had been opened in 1999. Marchant was saved from comment. An older man wanted the Platonic forms explained again. Marchant answered this question so quickly that the man mumbled his thanks into the microphone and returned to his seat scratching his head.
And so it went until the emcee walked on stage and took the mike. “Much to our regret, the time is up, but Mr. Marchant will be autographing books in the lobby.”
Marchant signed copies and answered questions. He disliked this part of conferences the most, rubbing elbows with every armchair scholar who had never traveled to any of the sites but thought they knew as much as he did because they’d read a few books. At least they were buying his book. That might fund his research for a few more months. As the crowd thinned, a robust man with dark, close-cropped hair and a black leather jacket stepped up to the desk.
“Who would you like me to sign it to?”
“Turnkey.” The man’s voice was pitched only for Marchant’s ears.
Startled, Marchant looked up. Here was a man standing over him, practically announcing his affiliation with the group that was more than likely recovering the Hall of Records. Marchant could not speak.
The man smiled and said, “If you’d like to talk, I’ll be in the bar at five.”
Marchant returned the book, forgetting to sign it. “I’ll be there.”
☥☥☥
The barroom was full of smoke. The television blared a football game, and several men sat at the bar cheering. Some conference participants at a table nodded in Marchant’s direction. He nodded back and walked quickly past them to the man sitting in the back corner.
The man rose and extended his hand. “I’m glad you came, Mr. Marchant. I’m Karl Mueller.”
Marchant shook his hand.
“Please have a seat.”
Marchant slid into the seat opposite him. A waiter arrived and took his order for a Heineken.
“Your knowledge of ancient geography is impressive, Mr. Marchant—”
“Paul.”
“Paul,” Mueller nodded. “But there are many who know this information.”
The waiter came with the drink and started to pour the beer into a glass. Marchant waved him away.
Mueller took out a black electronic device the size of his palm, pushed a button, and set it on the table. “Now we can speak freely.”
Marchant glanced at the machine, then back to Mueller’s face.
“You are also schooled in the physics of sound and have some knowledge of primordial languages.”
Marchant had never revealed his study of ancient sacred languages outside a very select group. “How did you—”
Mueller raised his hand. “We know a great deal about you. And I’d say you know more about us than we’d like.”
“I don’t know exactly who ‘we’ is.”
“And you never will,” Mueller said flatly.
Marchant blinked, uncertain. Mechanically, he picked up his drink.
“I’m prepared to offer you the opportunity of . . .” Mueller sat back and smiled. “I was going to say a lifetime, but this kind of situation only comes around every fifty-two thousand years or so.”
Marchant choked on his beer.
“May I tell my colleagues you are interested?”
Coughing, he answered, “Absolutely.”
“We’ll be in touch.” Mueller picked up his device, threw a few bills on the table, and stood up.
“But . . .” Marchant half stood. “When do we start? I have to reschedule—”
“We’ll be in touch.”