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Beneath

Part 6 – The Chamber

Hundreds of miles below the surface of the Earth, under the Siberian tundra, there is a chamber. It had remained hidden for countless millions of years, stabilized in a shell of inscrutable energy, safe from all outside influence.

While the entire world recoiled in terror at the discovery of the Behemoth living beneath us, the Russians continued to dig in secret. Their tunnels criss-crossed the depths of the Earth, in search of an answer. What was the giant? What was the signal?

In the course of their exploration, four more encounters with the Behemoth occurred, each kept secret from the international community. Two of those disasters were instigated intentionally and assiduously documented. The Russians showed an unflinching willingness to sacrifice human lives in order to understand their enemy.

Eventually they learned how the beast moved, although the science behind it remained inscrutable. The creature appeared to phase in and out of our physical dimension at will, passing without seismic disturbance beneath the ground, resting at intervals in physical form, ensconced in a tight coffin of earth.

Once they better understood the giant, they learned how to scan for it. Its physics defying phase shift left behind distinct radioactive decay, a half life remnant of its subterraneous, inter-dimensional travels.

Eyes open, the Russians dug around the creature, to deeper and darker places, until the Tundra above them began to collapse from structural weaknesses. Men and woman died in droves, as they hit ancient methane reserves and tunnels opened up into poisonous lakes of undiscovered oil. Eventually they bored so deep, to places so difficult to traverse, that only robots could continue onwards.

They went in search of answers. What they found they found was The Chamber.

It was completely invisible on all scans. A room no larger than a walk in closet, embedded by forces beyond comprehension, 526 miles into the Earth.

Surrounding the enigmatic space there was only melted and compressed rock. No human being could survive at that depth – only a carbon nanotube reinforced tunnel, less than 1 foot wide, made it all the way there. The small, robotic borer breached the protective energy of The Chamber and fell a few feet to the solid ground.

A reinforced titanium robot was sent down tunnel to investigate. It’s camera showed a room, brightly, inexplicably lit, the temperature and humidity precisely controlled.

And in the center of the room, on a pedestal four feet tall, encased in a transparent crystal of still unidentifiable material, was a small book.

It took another month of testing and development to figure out how to read the book by remote inside the chamber. It was far too precious to risk removing it from whatever strange field had kept it safe and hidden for so long.

Robots were designed specifically for the purpose. The crystal cover removed, and page by careful page, the manuscript read and photographed, the strange runic language it contained recorded for analysis.

When, after weeks, every millimeter of the book was completely documented, a small piece of a page was torn out and brought up for carbon dating. It was held within layer after layer of heat resistant clays and metals. Tests revealed the the tome to be over 66 millions years old, the page itself made of a papyrus-esque material.

The Russians set themselves to the task of understanding the book’s contents, while the rest of the world waited for the next calamity. By the time Cairo disappeared, the FSB had a major headstart, which they intended to keep.

Back in the chamber, an incendiary explosive was remotely detonated. Only the dead eyes of four robotic cameras bore witness, as the book’s covers scorched, their rudimentary embossing of a human like face blackening to ash.

Egyptophiles would have recognized that image, although different in small ways from the depiction with which they were familiar. It lacked the long, ridiculous goatee, and stylized eyes.

But the headdress, the cane and flanged whip, made the figure unmistakable.

Down in the belly of the planet, the image of Osiris, God of the dead, burned to ash.



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