‘Working with them?’ Steinberg asked suspiciously.
Travers smiled. ‘I’m in communication with them,’ he answered. ‘There is a device I use, one that enables me to link telepathically to the Anunnaki, and I’ve been piecing together their entire history — as it’s related by them, at any rate.’
Adams nodded his head, not surprised that there was more than one communications box. He was sure it would be a device identical to the one that Jacobs must have been using back at his house in Mason Neck.
A sudden thought entered his head. ‘Where is it?’ he asked. ‘The box?’ If it was in the room, could the Anunnaki be reading their thoughts right now?
‘Relax,’ Travers said calmly. ‘It’s in another room entirely. We have a research library dedicated to learning and preserving their history and culture, and it’s based there. We use it regularly, and they are only too happy to provide answers to our questions. A remarkable people, really,’ he said with considerable respect.
‘Going back to the flood,’ Lynn said to Travers, directing the conversation back to the matter at hand. ‘Who survived?’
‘The Anunnaki, of course,’ Travers informed her. ‘They were aware of the possibility of the mountain caving into the sea long before it happened, but despite their technical expertise they could find no way of averting the catastrophe. Instead, they put their resources into developing their city-state of Atlantis into a spacecraft.’
‘They what?’ Adams asked, surprised. ‘They made a city into a spaceship?’
‘They were already very advanced in terms of space travel,’ Travers explained. ‘They had explored every planet in the solar system, and were in the middle of developing technologies that would allow intergalactic travel. And think about Plato’s description of the city of Atlantis — the central island surrounded by concentric rings, joined by bridges. It’s a spacecraft, plain and simple. The central island was the actual craft, and the rings — spinning once the craft was airborne — helped to create artificial gravity for their long voyage. And then the whole thing simply lifted up and blasted away into space.’
Lynn considered the matter. ‘At least that explains why Atlantis was never found,’ she said. ‘Because it’s no longer on earth at all.’
Travers smiled. ‘Exactly right,’ he confirmed. ‘The Anunnaki escaped the devastating flood by venturing up into space in Atlantis itself.’
Adams looked at a digital clock embedded into the laboratory wall and turned to the others. ‘Talking about making an escape, I think it’s time we started moving.’
Steinberg looked up at the clock and nodded his head in agreement. ‘Yes, I think you’re right.’ He turned to Travers and gave him a brief rundown of what was going on, and Jacobs’ plan for the earth’s population. ‘I’m taking them down to the Roosevelt Exit,’ he explained. ‘You should come with us.’
Travers stared at the tank containing the Anunnaki’s body for several long moments before turning back. ‘Yes. Of course I’ll come. There are still some things I need to explain.’
Steinberg smiled and turned to Adams and Lynn. ‘OK,’ he said, ‘let’s go. We’re still about a mile away from the exit.’
Moments later they were once more walking the deserted corridors of Level 36, footsteps again echoing off the concrete as they passed cavernous storerooms and hi-tech laboratories.
‘So what happened after the flood?’ Adams asked, still curious about the story Travers had so far told them.
‘Well, most of the Arkashians were wiped out,’ Travers continued, seemingly glad to be back in the role of educator; Adams supposed it kept his mind off their precarious situation. ‘But small pockets survived around the world, and we are their direct descendants. The most successful survivors were those that converged in a narrow area of the Middle East, the conditions there allowing them to develop into the agrarian cultures of Sumer, Babylon and Egypt.’
‘But what happened to all the evidence that must have remained from the earlier civilization?’ Lynn asked.
‘Most of it is underwater,’ Travers answered, ‘as you would expect after such a flood. But most of the high technology was centred on Atlantis, which was no longer on the planet. The Anunnaki’s previous technology across the globe had already been destroyed by the Arkashians long ago. Some artefacts are still discovered here and there, along with bodies like the one you found, but almost all of them end up here.’ He gestured back the way they had come. ‘That room back there alone contains several hundred examples of bodies of these ancient humans, including several well-preserved specimens like the one you found. There are other storerooms down here containing thousands of other examples of their ancient technology.’
‘And what happened to the people who made these discoveries?’ Lynn asked bitterly.
‘Most were debriefed here, before memory erasure or death,’ Steinberg admitted. ‘Others, who for whatever reasons we couldn’t get here, either met with unfortunate “accidents” or were just subjected to ridicule in the press, their “evidence” being systematically discredited and then openly mocked. That’s why you sometimes see such discoveries in the popular media, and why they are always denied by the scientific establishment.’
Lynn snorted. ‘You guys really do control everything, don’t you?’
‘We certainly try to,’ Travers said.
‘So what happened to the Anunnaki?’ Adams asked.
‘Well, they spent the next few thousand years travelling through space — much of it in suspended animation due to the vast distances involved — trying to find a new planet to colonize. Eventually, they discovered that there were no other truly habitable planets within the reach of their starship and so they decided to make the spacecraft itself their permanent home. As such, without the physical pressures of a planet-based existence, the evolution that you saw in the Roswell pilot occurred. They had no use for powerful bodies or limb strength and so on, which is why their physical shape shrank to that of a modern child’s. But their brains — and their intelligence — continued to grow, leading to the abnormally large craniums you see. Their other physical senses — touch, sight, smell and hearing — also became greatly diminished over time, and once they developed telepathic communication abilities, their mouths started to become smaller and more useless with each generation.’
‘That’s great,’ Adams said. ‘So if they’re so perfect in their own little spaceship world, why do they want to come back and take over?’
‘Simple mathematics,’ Travers explained. ‘At the moment, they are all but immortal. Due to advances in medicine, they really have no upper age limit, as their cells are kept from dying artificially. But they understand that to keep evolving, they need to keep on reproducing — but where do they have room for the new people? Not on their little spaceship. They want to keep evolving, and to do so they need more space, it’s as simple as that.’
‘But why now?’ Lynn asked. ‘Why did they return now?’
‘World War Two,’ Travers said. ‘The atomic bomb. Even in the depths of space, their sensors picked up the detonations, and it was clear that they were manmade. This told them that not only was planet earth still habitable, but we had the technology to make their return here a real possibility, although we would of course need their guidance to create the means.’
‘I’m surprised they didn’t leave sensors here in the first place, some way of monitoring what happened after the tidal wave hit,’ Lynn said.
‘They did. They left a “stay back” team, orbiting the earth in a smaller craft, to report back on what happened.’
‘Really? And what happened to them?’ Lynn asked.