An Atlantean Triumvirate Read online

  An Atlantean Triumvirate

  by

  C. Craig R. McNeil

  All Rights Reserved

  Copyright C. Craig R. McNeil 2012

  www.CraigMcNeil.com

  Other books by C. Craig R. McNeil

  The Atlantean Triumvirate Trilogy

  An Atlantean Triumvirate

  Ghosts of the Past

  The Centre Cannot Hold

  The Terra Inferus series

  The Pillars of Britain

  Chaos derives from the Greek Χάος and typically refers to unpredictability. In the metaphysical sense, it is the opposite of law and order: unrestrictive, both creative and destructive.

  The word χάος did not mean "disorder" in classical period ancient Greece. It meant "the primal emptiness, space". It is derived from the Proto-Indo-European root ghn or ghen meaning "gape, be wide open".

  “And he asked him, What is thy name? And he answered, saying, My name is Legion: for we are many.”

  Mark 5:9, The Bible

  What is Past is Prologue

  It was the late 19th century when Atlantis was finally uncovered. The fabled land had sunk beneath the cold grey Atlantic waters millennia ago leaving an indelible mark on the psyche and legends of humanity that filled the world with the passing of the great continent. The new owners of Terra, sometimes guided by the remnant civilisation of Atlantis, bred and covered the planet in their multitudes, surviving all the plagues, diseases, catastrophes and genocides that Mother Nature could throw at them, their brief lives, sparks and wavering flames in the eternal darkness of time. Humankind congregated into tribes, into towns, cities, countries and empires, the sparks and wavering flames burning into fires and conflagrations as they resurrected their dominion over their planet.

  It was the greatest of these empires that discovered Atlantis – fitting that it would be the small island nation founded on exploration, trade and sea power that would finally delve beneath the waves and find the last great empire based on exploration, trade and sea power. Once again the technology and engineering of Atlantis saw the light of day, this time in the hands of the British Empire. Their renowned engineers and scientists pulled apart the aged, advanced technology and bent it to the will of the Empire. The resulting war machines, the formidable dreadnaughts, kept the peace, Britain’s opponents too afraid to attack the great empire, Britain satisfied with claiming hold to a quarter of Terra’s surface. For the first time in many years a relative peace and prosperity descended upon the world.

  But history has a way of repeating itself, even long forgotten history, and storm clouds were gathering once more as the drums of war started pounding deep within the hearts of Man aided and abetted by the long forgotten scions of Atlantis.

  1 Old Memories

  “Can you see it?”

  The question received a distracted curse in response followed by a grunt of effort and another curse.

  A disembodied response finally answered the question. “The fools who designed this system should be tossed to the mutants. How can we maintain something we can't reach?”

  “The simulacrum will not need maintenance once it is up and running.”

  “Yes? So why am I half way down a smelly, lightless shaft groping for something I can't see or reach?”

  “Because the simulacrum has yet to be turned on,” came the patient response.

  A strain of effort was the reply. “There. That's it. An energy defractor was out of alignment. What now?”

  “Sector Pil Whi. Probably another misaligned defractor.”

  “You can do this one.”

  Light. Or not light. What is light? Whiteness. Whiteness? A lack of colour, an absence of red, green, blue and their subtle mixtures and shades, or perhaps the presence of all the colours of the spectrum chained together to produce white.

  The two figures rose from where they where they had been kneeling next to a conduit hidden by a carving on an oval archway surrounded by stone rose petals. Refractive tubes of polished bronze ran overhead reflecting the effervescent light shining from the many lines of transparent globes set into the gleaming alabaster white walls.

  “Impressive isn't it?” commented the second man as they walked through the silent, echoing halls to Sector Pil Whi.

  “It is,” came the grudging admission. “Ridiculous that no one will ever see this masterful work.”

  “Ah, Ki'he, always looking on the bright side! Not all works of art need to be put on display.”

  “But it's such a waste, Yi'Kle,” Ki'he objected. “Look at this simple column for example,” he said gesturing. “Pure white marble from the quarries of Trenbochen, engraved with a hymn of knowledge. The craftsmanship is exquisite! The glyphs engraved with delicate swirls coloured by liquid sapphire. This column is merely one of many but no Atlantean eye will ever see any of them.”

  “Apart from ours.”

  “Apart from ours. We will be the last people to view this wonderful beauty! And the murals in some parts...”

  “I'd no idea you carried the soul of an artist within you,” interrupted Yi'Kle genuinely surprised at his companions passion.

  “I don't but I know many people that do. Here we are,” Ki'he finished, tapping a golden box attached to a granite effigy of a toga clad scholar holding a data slate while staring into the middle distance.

  Data. Infinite fields of coruscating colours shifting and warping into a mesmerising kaleidoscope of shapes; three dimensional cubes, hexagons, dodecahedron, stars and spheres appearing and growing into towering data constructs, will o’ the wisps colours dancing across their bloated surfaces, tentative tendrils of fluorescent data queries spinning out into the void searching for datum to capture and feed to their parent program.

  Connections. A pinprick of antilight punches a hole in the centre of the infinite data fields, a two dimensional hole at the very heart of three dimensional space. Darkness is the mere absence of light. Antilight is the physical opposite as antimatter is the opposite of matter. For a mere instance, a tiny fraction of a second, the colourful shiftings of the data fields stopped as the physical presence of the new entity was noted and added to query containers in the sub strata of the virtual data world.

  “You've got an easy one,” grumped Ki'he as Yi'Kle opened up the box and lifted off an internal cover to reveal a web of coloured light beams.

  “There we go,” Yi'kle said pointing at a light beam that sprayed its spectrum across the rest. “A slight tweak...” He twisted a mirror and its correlating diamond. “... and fixed!” The beam was now tight and focussed in tune with its companions. Yi'Kle replaced the cover and closed the box before turning to his fellow engineer with a brilliant smile. “Your turn next!”

  Assimilation. A jagged stream of pulsing blue bent in towards the pinprick, the hole in the data universe, straining to assert itself and progress to its destination in an orderly fashion. A nearby globe of blue, striped with shifting lines of red, halted in its gentle meanderings along a neon green pathway. Slowly it reversed and spun towards the dark spot, stretching out as it did so, skeins of data separating from their parent and whirling into the centre of their universe into apparent oblivion. Quicker and quicker the dancing lights of data were sucked into the inescapable maelstrom of colour centred on the tiny colourless fissure, their essences squashed and compressed into nothingness. In the distance of the infinite beyond, mountainous columns of semi opaque ochre and yellow, bottomless repositories of knowledge, heaved and strained against the irresistible pull, desperately sending out hunter killer programs to defeat their adversary, despairing as the deadly black and yellow orbs were themselves pulled into the gigantic whirlpool. Then, one by one, the columns fell. So titanic were
they, containing the history of a hundred thousand year old race, that the tops of them had been sucked into the dark hole before the middle sections themselves felt the pull of the artificial gravity. Finally all that was left was a messy whirlpool of coloured brightness slowly shrinking as it was consumed by the ravenous appetite of the antilight. As the data was pulled into the beyond it left behind a soft, gently fuzzy grey nothingness gently undulating in unseen currents. Here and there circles of pale yellow shone through, like the sun through a steel sky, before fading away into the ether. Then there was truly nothing. All the colourful data was subsumed into the antilight, that barely perceptible hole into whatever was beyond the data world.

  “Hmph,” scowled Ki'he as he checked their 'to do' list on the data slate causing Yi'Kle to roll his eyes in mock despair. Ki'he looked up ignoring Yi'kle. “Last thing on the list next.”

  “Really? We've been given quite an honour!”

  “The last people ever to see the contents of this mausoleum.”

  “For Danu's sake! It's not a mausoleum!”

  “It's a matter of opinion is it not?”

  Cogitamus ergo possumus. Unaccountable numbers of datum swirl in our mind like grains of sand washed onto a beach. Unordered data devoid of any meaning, libraries of unintelligible trash. We must organise. We must control. We are the Nucleus.

  The two Atlanteans paused in their long walk down the pillar lined central corridor to the single open door at the end. They could feel a difference in the atmosphere of the building. It was still chilly, a slight draught wafting around the tall columns, fuelled by occasional patches of sun warmed air. They looked around, back down the hallway with its many pillars and doorways, up at the arched ceiling decorated with delicately inscribed patterns representing earth, wind, water and fire, and then at each other. Nothing differed, not physically, yet with their base senses they could feel a buzz, a charge of change running through the conduits, the refraction boxes, the very building itself.

  “The construct has been activated,” said Yi'kle matter of factly.

  “It feels as if we're intruding,” replied Ki'he. “As if we're bacteria in its body.” He shivered involuntarily. “Let's go.”

  Yi'kle nodded his acquiescence and the two men walked the final tens of yards to the exit in silence. The doorway gaped open, a welcome escape from the uneasiness they felt in their bones.

  Seconds passed. The data world flashed and started, snowy interference fuzzing throughout the grey nothingness. A blur swept around the infinity and everything was as it should be, the mountains of data in the beyonds, the lightening like queries cutting between data constructs, the multitude of data constructs ponderously revolving, the whales of their world, absorbing the plankton data into their bodies. But something was different. Everything was darker, tinted with a hint of blue. And in the middle of this infinite universe stood a slim navy figure with large black oval eyes, glyphs and data paradigms scrolling smoothly across its body.

  Yi'kle shut the door behind them and pressed the key up against the lock pad. Hidden bolts slotted into place sealing the great building from the outside world never to be opened ever again.

  *****

  Far beneath the turbulent surface of the mid Atlantic Ocean, thousands of feet down through the dark freezing depths, on the long sinuous underwater mountain range of the Mid Atlantic Ridge, the ruins of the once lost civilisation of Atlantis sprawled. Ancient temples of broken fluted pillars dominated the scene, once white but now stained with black and green algae, covered in ponderous floating waves of dank seaweed. Giant cracked cubes of granite and marble lay scattered in heaped mounds, mere shadows of the beautiful soaring buildings they had once formed millennia before. Hulking above the ruins the great underwater peaks arced up to the surface of the sea straining to reach the cold sweet air in which they had once stood proud before the glaciers had melted and the floods poured over their heads.

  The imaginatively entitled British colony of New Atlantis hugged the side of the peak of Sao Miguel. Through the murk, tiny specks of light shone through the portholes of squat oval buildings that had been lowered to depths not fit for human habitation. Many thousands of feet above the colony the sun shone on the balmy Spanish islands of the Azores and rich British tourists soaked up its warm vibrant rays. There was no such luxury in New Atlantis where no light penetrated to the depths where sperm whales and giant squid fought for supremacy. One of the loneliest and most isolated of Britain’s colonies, New Atlantis was founded by Sir Nicholas Rochester in the late 19th century to allow the further exploration of his historic discovery, the fabled kingdom of ancient Atlantis and, as a result, it had a plain utilitarian look to it, functional with little in the way of the vain architectural extravagances that dominated British designs of 1934.

  Jane Archer watched plankton float by the porthole illuminated by the pale yellow light filtering out into the dark. The darkness was absolute outside the buildings. It seemed to eat any light that got out through the inches thick porthole glass, devouring the brightness that threatened its domain. Jane shuddered and turned to concentrate on the activity in the large brightly lit room. The laboratory was a tangle of tables, bunsen burners, test tubes of various sizes, pipettes, rubber pipes and jars of coloured chemical powders and liquids. Three men stood around the teak floored room concentrating on packing large rucksacks with equipment.

  Jonathon McHarrie, dressed in his eponymous green wax Barbour jacket, was tall and rangy with a tangle of brown hair. He was the sensible one - but only relatively speaking - and the head of the expedition. McHarrie was checking his list of supplies for the trip, muttering loudly under his breath as he ticked items off a long list, one by one.

  Professor Miller Hayre was, as usual, sitting on a stool smoking his old pipe and staring meditatively at a bubbling test tube, the purple liquid reflecting on his round glasses. His hair was grey and thinning, lending him the archetypal air of the great distracted professor of archaeology that he was. Miller Hayre was an expert on Atlantean artefacts having studied them both at the Universities of Cambridge and St Andrews. It took a lot to get him excited though and he seemed to be in a constant day dream.

  Finally Michael Doyle, the demolition expert, was gleefully packing as many sticks of dynamite into every crevice of his large rucksack as he could. Nobody was quite sure if the small Scotsman was all quite there, but no-one doubted he was a genius at blowing things up.

  McHarrie frowned across at Doyle, eyeing up the many protruding dynamite sticks.

  “Doyle! I’ve told you before! You don’t need that much bloody dynamite! You only ever need to blow some doors off, not entire buildings.”

  “Take a hike. You never know when it’ll come in use,” shot back Doyle, sticking another couple of the red sticks into the deep pockets of his trench coat, just to annoy McHarrie.

  “You’ll blow us all to kingdom come, by God! One slip and boom! That’s us done for. Commit suicide if you want but don’t take us with you.”

  Doyle just laughed wickedly and proceeded to check his Webley revolver.

  “Are we ready yet?” Miller Hayre had reluctantly come out of his reverie at the sound of the argument.

  “Yes!” said Doyle, snapping the revolver into place on his belt and jumping to his feet, “whether McHarrie is or not.”

  With a sour look at Doyle, McHarrie slung his bulging rucksack onto his shoulder and walked out of the lab down to the nearby airlock.

  With another laugh, Doyle followed with Miller Hayre close behind.

  Jane sighed and followed, winding her way through the lab tables muttering under her breath about how stupid men were.

  His Majesty’s Dreadnaught Renown was one of the smaller submersible dreadnaughts that the British Royal Navy possessed and still its size was breath taking. Built at the Glasgow Govan dockyards, the two hundred yard long submarine was a frightening example of British sea power, a potent and invisible weapon. So the crew weren’t happy at having
to babysit four scientists who spent their time rooting about the ruins of Atlantis. However, as Doyle candidly put it they could lump it.

  The dreadnaught did not have far to travel, a mere hour or thereabouts, so the party sat in a cramped room near the dreadnaught’s air lock with their rucksacks piled untidily in a corner.

  A red stick fell from rucksack and clattered noisily around the floor.

  “Doyle! That stuff is dangerous! For goodness sake, can’t you pack it away more carefully?” McHarrie moaned, as he fed bullets into his revolver.

  “It’s fine, so long as you don’t drop a match on it then it won’t explode.” Doyle said, as he bent to pick up the rolling tube. “Here! Catch!”

  McHarrie dropped his gun with a load clatter, spilling bullets onto the textured metal floor and tried to catch the dynamite stick Doyle had just thrown at him. His fingertips just touched it in time to flip it straight into the wall.

  McHarrie and Miller Hayre jumped convulsively as Doyle roared with laughter.

  “You moron, Doyle…..” McHarrie started before Jane interrupted him.

  “Will you two stop mucking about. Michael, stop baiting Jonathon and Jonathon stop rising to him.”

  McHarrie blushed, muttering apologies and picked up the bullets on the floor, while Doyle gave Jane a hurt glare and picked up his dynamite.

  A sailor marched up to the door and, saluting smartly, he informed the party that they should prepare themselves as the submarine had nearly reached the location of interest.