Islands in the Sky Page 3

  "Alright, I have no problem with that, as long as she can handle her own," Tom barked back with hard look, which won him a sharp glare from Mica.

  "I can assure you sir, that Mica here is quite capable, and willing to apply herself to any situation," Logan returned with a gracious nod towards our newest team member. On that thought, Tom offered a pout of acceptance and asked me to offer my opinion on the matter, as their active security.

  "Well ...I'm not aware of Miss Mica's background or her ability to work in the field, but really don't see a problem," I granted Tom with mild confusion; wondering if he was just trying to get someone to jump on his side, or if he was actually a male chauvinist at heart. At this point I couldn't tell which.

  "Thank you Allen," Mica nodded with a graceful smile. Tom, on the other hand, gave a huff and made a petty excuse to remove himself to attend to his duties. Tom, in my opinion, was acting slightly odd, since being at this conference was one of his duties. Professor Logan simply reacted with a grunt and a raised brow at the personal slight his logistics officer had shown.

  "If I may ask Miss, what exactly are your skills in this field of research?" Alexander inquired, much to Walter's added interest.

  "I've been an understudy for renowned geologist Vincent Rice, who combined applications of magnet waves with his background research in helioseismology," she granted.

  "I'm, I'm sorry ...who is that?" Alex stuttered with confusion as he adjusted his spectacles.

  "Rice was an old friend of mine back when I was a freshman, myself," Logan smiled as he interjected on her behalf, "he is one of the top scientists in his field, regarding; well ...internal fields of solar bodies," he smiled with mild embarrassment to his clumsy analogy.

  "Actually," Mica corrected in an effort to stand up for herself, "it is the study of internal wave structures; whether they be seismic, acoustic, or gradational by their nature," she answered.

  "I'm a little confused as to what use that will be on this endeavor," Walter offered in return, which was the same question I would have asked.

  "Ah, well that is where my previous decade of research begins to come together my friend," Logan answered, "Allen, perhaps you could assist with injecting a fresh viewpoint for us; being one outside the forum of such academic studies," the professor asked as he turned to face me. I was stunned, if not a tad insulted by his question; which sounded like he was calling me a dolt. However, that automated reaction might have just been my ignorance speaking for me, in place of reason.

  "Yeah, sure; what do you need?" I answered awkwardly.

  "Before accepting my employment, if I may ask, what were the major media stories you were aware of before we left the mainland?" Logan inquired.

  "Uh, well ...economic downturn and political tensions, which I imagine were primarily linked to the threat of international war," I gathered as the plausible answer he was looking for.

  "And has that mainstream media you've witnessed thus far rotated around any different subjects of top interest in say, the past 10 or even 20 years?" he tested me.

  Truth be told, the answer was no. The foremost events revolved around war, incursion, invading and occupying foreign countries without provocation; including whispers of wild conspiracies that any such provocations reported were where intentionally fabricated in pursuit of a given result; more excuses to engage in war and the public need of government to direct the masses. I stood there for an uncomfortable moment trying to analyze what I remembered from outside of the box; and what it suggested troubled me. In all honestly, I had began giving a measure of credence to those vague if not fringe claims of government corruption; especially when it became ever more obvious that our news stories were scripted. It became commonplace in the public forum that the same story being repeated over and over again by our available media without any counter viewpoints; even when they were proven to be false, they stuck to their narrative.

  "Alright, now let me ask you another question, Allen," Logan asked again when it became clear that I was struggling for an answer to his first question, "What do you know about polar shifts?"

  "Well, I believe I've heard that it may have happened a few times in earth's past," was all I could remember from the sparse nature documentaries I had seen.

  "And that's all?" Logan pushed for a more descript answer, but the shake of my head told him his efforts were in vain.

  "Yep," I shrugged my shoulders, wondering at his point.

  "There, you see gentlemen," the professor turned back to his colleagues, "the general public has no idea what is coming, and are completely unprepared for what is ahead."

  "You lost me, Logan," Walter intervened a he rubbed his injured arm, "how are polar shifts connected in any way with this wild expedition of yours?" he barked, "Yes, you found an impressive specimen, which was most likely kept frozen from the Mesozoic period; but you've thus far refused to show us the scope of your documents on this little safari to the far ends of the earth," Sir Walter began to growl, which was out of character for him, bearing the verifiable title as both a gentleman and a British scholar.

  "Mica here, as you now know, studies wave fields; and her research with Vincent Rice in the small arena of geomagnetic behaviors was recently repressed and disbanded," Logan spat.

  "Well, yes, but I heard that certain grants had been withdrawn in the ecological labs..." Walter admitted, but was cut off mid-sentence.

  "And a concerning degree of censorship was levied upon their research," Mica helped to enlighten the group, "and there is the fact that within the past two months, 4 of the top 5 scientists who had been dismissed were found dead; reported as accidents or death by natural causes," she charged.

  "If you probe the facts, you'll find that our planet's poles have already jumped far off from their normal regions of variance and the magnetosphere of this little blue planet of ours has already weakened by a disturbing degree over the past several decades; which I attest, is the forefront of an upcoming polar shift," Logan declared.

  "Ah, yes ...but such theories can't be confirmed as they've never been fully recorded; besides, they are reported as rare events which spanning hundreds of centuries during such reversals," Alex replied as if to brush off the air of concern spouted by Logan and his new associate.

  "My studies with Dr. Rice suggested we would witness such an event in our lifetime..." Mica added.

  "On a timeline that is much sooner than anyone realizes," Logan inserted his opinion in for hers.

  "How soon?" I inquired, as I dared to interrupt the back and forth bantering between Logan and his senior colleagues.

  "My calculations won't be complete until we fully audit the site of the anomaly," the professor answered as pointed towards the stack of books he previously introduced about the fable of the giant iron tree we found, "but there is the real possibility that an extinction level event will occur before the end of the year," he answered as his glanced into our glazed eyes; as we were unable to process what he had just claimed.

  "Ecological societies and engineers have already logged hundreds of reports of ocean die-offs, and hundreds of millions of fish washing ashore. Disappearing bee populations and other pollinating insects, and havoc being reported in migrations of wild herds and flocks of birds wandering astray; throwing our entire ecosystem out of balance, and its only going to get worse," Mica offered to explain the severity of the situation.

  "And that giant tree, that unique specimen from antiquity; may very well be at the center of it all," Logan sited to our disbelief.

  I trusted the professor and his assistant knew what they were talking about, but I couldn't get a grasp at the magnitude of the situation. A polar shift wasn't at the top of my shopping list of things to worry about, as most common folk. Of course, if there was any true cause for worry, authorities in the government would have warned us; wouldn't they? With a shrug, I realized I already knew the answer to my own question.

  "So what was it that this Vincent fellow you studied with actually cam
e up with?" I stumbled over my words as I addressed Mica.

  "Are you referring to our hypothesis or our validated findings?" she answered, seemingly confused as to the direction of my question; or, she could have just been acting cheeky to spite me. I couldn't tell which.

  "Uh ...both, I guess," was all I could stammer out, while trying not to sound like an idiot.

  "The resulting artifacts affecting our ecosystem are escalating expeditiously," Mica returned without hesitation.

  Damn, I sure did hate big words; and this woman was making me feel like I should crawl under the table and hide. I knew I didn't always act like the brightest crayon in the box; but I was starting to feel out of my depth here with the high IQ's bouncing around the table. So in a moment of aggravation, I burst out with something a tad out of line.

  "So, basically you're saying that the world is fucked, and there's nothing we can do about it," I blurted as a statement rather than a question. I immediately regretted my crude tongue, especially in front of the lady; but the other men seemed just as unnerved about this troubling news.

  "Actually, there may be something we can do to avert this dilemma," Logan answered after the awkward moment of silence following my outburst, "and I will need your help, everyone's help," he offered with a gesture to the rest of us at the table.

  Logan's plan was riding on the faith that we had missed something vital during our last outing. If his theory was correct, then the melt-off at the iconic tree would have escalated over the past week and would have exposed more of the site for us to survey to complete his analysis. Now that we had the proper equipment on board and a viable replacement for our injured team member, there was nothing stopping us from revisiting the target site. However easy I may have thought that was going to be, it might have jinxed us. It was in the cold dark before the break of dawn when Tom woke me up as I lay in my bunk; ordering me to get dressed.

  "Allen, get your ass out of bed! I need you geared up and on the skiff, pronto!" Tom barked as he rudely shook me awake. It was mentally scarring having been ripped from a dream about a warm summer beach; only to be pulled back into reality of the chilling metal cabin and rocking of the ship.

  "Wha... what the hell? We aren't due for launch until ten o'clock," I whined as I checked my watch.

  "There's a squall rolling in from the West, and Logan is afraid a snowstorm will cover the site; so we need to get to the rally site first," Tom answered with a raised voice, "I need you on your feet now!"

  Just for the record, I really ...I mean I really hate the cold, and not fond of snow for that matter. No matter how much coffee you drink or how thickly you try to bundle up, the numbing cold seems to seep through all of it. Thermal underwear, two sets of wool socks, pants, overalls, anti-frostbite gloves, turtleneck, scarf, head cap, earmuffs, storm jacket and double layered mittens. I imagined it took less time for an astronaut to put on a space suit.

  I made my way up top to the bridge before heading to the storage room outside the deck and saw the radar track of the storm. It was big, but moving slowly. Based on the telemetry data, both Tom and Logan thought it was a risk worth taking. I helped our crew load up the skiff and we hit the water an hour before sunrise. Logan, Alex, Tom and I helped Mica onboard and we set off towards the inlet where we had first landed several kilometers from the ship.

  The glow of sunrise was overshadowed by the enormous clouds rising like a wall above the horizon. At our position on the ice shelf, we were beginning to withdraw from the daylight season where the tilt would leave the sun hanging low above the icy tundra for nearly five month before entering into a darkened twilight. Personally, I planned on being on a warm beach with a margarita in my hand long before the winter juncture arrived.

  This time we hauled out a motor sled which Tom and I both shared the burden of hauling while the rest of the group kept pace. With a few grumbles from Tom, Mica did manage to keep clip with the rest of us. We attempted a new approach from the bottom edge of the glacier towards our target site, which Logan kept on track by the few sparse flag markers he had left on the upper trail. When we finally arrived, we were perplexed by the recent formation of fresh ice along the lower edge of the field.

  On approach of the iron tree, we could see that a great deal of the surrounding glacier had withdrawn from the limbs of the enormous artifact. The twisted arms of the tree were now mostly bare of the dangerous icicles which had been the cause of our last debacle. Approaching the upper platform at the base of the trunk, Mica took a moment to soak in the magnificence of the ancient artifact. There was a look of disbelief in her face, even though her eyes were hidden by the tinted goggles she wore.

  "This is..." she began to say,

  "Amazing, isn't it?" Logan interjected.

  "I was going to say; beautiful," she corrected him as she took a few snapshots with her camera.

  The gale of the approaching storm started to pick up as we made our way into the protective walls of the melted glacier, which was an area free of ice which spanned like a globe from the center of the tree itself. Tom looked up above us, and I could tell he wasn't too happy about the amount of overhang above us. A few hundred pounds of ice melt from the limbs was avoidable if you were fleet of foot. Several tons of compacted snow waiting to collapse was another matter entirely.

  "Good gracious," Professor Logan spouted out as he stepped up upon the giant platform of hand carved stone I had mentioned before. There within the ancient rock was the chiseled for of the entwining snakes. Alexander grabbed a video camera and began recording the area on his behalf.

  "You see here," Logan pointed out to Alex as he recorded the scene, "the eight worlds, tied to the central sphere of our own; entwined within its protective coils," the professor exclaimed.

  "Wasn't the serpent the messenger of evil, Doc?" Tom queried with a measure of apprehension.

  "Humph, no lad, only so in younger and less enlightened religious doctrines. In times of antiquity, the mighty serpent was seen as a symbol of fertility and rebirth, even royalty and divinity itself," Logan responded.

  "Are these symbols for other planets?" Alex inquired with interest.

  "Well ...I'm not quite sure if they have anything to do with astronomy, for the lack of any factual evidence," the professor seemed perplexed at the possibility, "but it could represent another land or society on a more mundane scale."

  "Or other kingdoms," Mica offered as an answer, to which Logan nodded in agreement, "or even astral worlds in the afterlife, if viewed from another context."

  "Or levels of hell..." Tom smirked back, as if to slight her.

  "No, no; there are various numbers in reference to purgatory claimed by countless religious zealots and cults from mankind's brutal past," Logan corrected in her defense towards Tom, "if this magnificent artifact was purely a sculpture, I would have an alternate hypothesis; but since it is a living entity, I believe it had a far more sacred purpose."

  "It's alive?" Mica breathed as she stared upward into its massive canopy of branches. She touched the hardened bark of the roots in wonder as she saw that it wasn't a man-made artifact, but a work of nature.

  "Very much so, and that is why we needed to get a core sample of the heartwood before we leave this expedition, to get a true reading as to its age," Logan granted.

  Motioning to Tom, they began to set up the laser drill from the sled, and I helped them clip the equipment into place. Alex collected stone fragments while simultaneously taking soil samples and density readings alongside Mica. Logan explained to her that this relic was entirely encased within the glacier less than a year ago; and he had went to great lengths to keep this site secret. Upon that revelation, her tone turned from excitement to one of apprehension.

  "How secret?" Mica responded in worry.

  "Very, my dear. I took great care not to disclose the site location and placed my target coordinates for this expedition far off course to the North-West of us; in case anyone was snooping. Why do you ask?"

  "I
ah, well," Mica stumbled on her response, "I kind of published your findings as a supporting note in my thesis to the academy during my last semester," she admitted. The look on Logan's face was one of shock and dismay.

  "Ohhh shit, the cats out of the bag," Tom smiled as he finished ratcheting in the last bolt to the frame that held the drill.

  "You didn't..." Logan shook his head in disbelief.

  "Your messages stated it was personal, not confidential; so I assumed you were in the process of disclosing your data to the academy of scientists before the end of the year ...since there might not actually be a very pleasant ending of this year," she shrugged innocently.

  The wind was picking up and raging gusts began to enter the small enclosure within the proximity of the tree. Tom radioed the ship but his message was met with pricks of static while he tried to make sense of the crewman's response. The ship's radar had confirmed with satellite imagery that the massive tempest we had seen over the horizon was closing in faster than expected. For the safety of the crew, Tom had to make a call.

  "Sir, we need to wrap this up now and get back to the ship," Tom advised.

  "Nonsense, we have far too much data and samples to collect; we will make it back in time," Logan brushed off his misgivings to the seriousness of the situation.

  "Even if we left this second, there is only a slight chance we will make it to the ship, sir," Tom corrected his demeanor, "otherwise we have to dig in for this storm and we'll be snowed in until it passes."

  This was unwelcome information, which worried all of us except for the professor; whose concern was that this was his last chance to collect the needed data. He had no more finances for a return trip, and there were more crucial matters at hand if he failed to confirm his findings. The rising wind began to curl its way into the breach and bite at our exposed skin with particles of ice. It was a dilemma that he wasn't prepared to face, so he ordered us to continue working in his desperation to not return empty handed. Another call came over the radio where Tom deciphered the message through the streams of static overtaking their communications.