"The Domed City"
“Hello,” I ventured, not really knowing if she could hear me through the Multi-Purpose Protection Field. The mermaid smiled.
“Do you understand me?” I asked. She smiled again, winked and quickly swam behind the rock.
“Little Neptune, I’m going to put us each into separate protective fields.”
“Prrrrr,” he nodded.
I repeated what “The Spell Book of Androganine” referred to as an ‘addendum spell’ which in this case had the effect of separating the Multi-Purpose Protection Field into individual fields. (Did I mention it was an absolutely amazing book!) Fortunately, this addendum spell was one of the little spells I had memorized, just in case it would come in handy. The mermaid watched curiously from behind the rocks.
Free from cumbersome size of the larger field, I proceeded slowly toward the mermaid. Her eyes were deep blue; her skin, smooth and silky; her facial features where both crisp and soft at the same time. Her face seemed to beam through the water like a light shining through the darkness. I was no longer afraid of behind submerged in this inky ocean.
“Hello,” I ventured again. She smiled and swam away.
Since she was headed in the same direction that we had been traveling in, I decided we should follow her. I cast an addendum spell on Little Neptune’s Conveyance Spell. This allowed me to control his speed levels since he couldn’t speak. The two of us headed off after the lovely mermaid through the ocean—into the unknown.
* * * *
The girls stared in awe at the vision that lay before them. For just behind the wall of boulders that the Starship Jupiter had cleared, was a city. Lit by some unseen source, the city glowed from beneath a nearly invisible dome. There were magnificent buildings with spired towers, stone sculptures and paved streets.
“Rob, what is it?” asked Melissa.
“It does not compute. My visual inputs register its existence, but my sensors do not detect anything.”
“But it is there?” stated Lisa, in a questioning tone.
“Unknown.”
“Where are we?” asked Cindy.
“What?” asked Melissa.
“Where are we? I mean, where in the ocean are we?”
“According to Rob we’re in the Atlantic, somewhere off the coast of Gibraltar, why?” replied Melissa.
“How deep are we?” she asked again.
“Depth is 31,633 feet,” reported Rob.
“That’s almost six‑miles!” calculated Melissa.
“It couldn’t be,” replied Cindy, “it doesn’t exist.”
“Cindy, you’re getting weird,” said Lisa, “what doesn’t exist?”
“Atlantis.”
* * * *
The mermaid continued her swim forward, every now and then stopping and glancing back to see if I was still following. She, evidently, wanted me to follow her. As long as she continued in the direction that the Starship Jupiter had been pulled in at, I had no objections to following her. Maybe she was taking me to the where the ship was.
Shortly, we came upon a cave. She stopped at the entrance and waited for Little Neptune and myself to catch up. The opening to this cave was hidden from the surface and hidden from the bottom by a thick mass of undersea foliage that was growing out of the rocks; swaying hypnotically to the unseen tidal rhythms.
She motioned for us to follow her and then proceeded in. I looked over at Little Neptune, who nodded his approval. Shrugging my shoulders and taking a deep breath, I followed the mermaid into the cave, closely followed by the little, crimson steed.
If not for the Illumination Spell that I had cast on our Multi‑Purpose Protection Fields, this cavern would have been pitch black. As we proceeded though, the illumination became unnecessary as the walls of this foreboding place were soon covered with strange luminescent plants. They cast eerie—and at the same time, beautiful—glows of light, enabling us to view all that lurked in the inky blackness. Strange crustacean creatures, the likes of which have never been seen before, scurried amongst the crags of the rocky bottom.
After traveling for a while, a black fog appeared without warning, filling the water around me. I quickly lost sight of the mermaid and heard the frantic whinnying of Little Neptune behind me. The protective field was evidently now keeping something out, for I felt myself being jerked from side to side at sharp angles. I looked around and suddenly noticed large circles appear all over the outside of the field.
The field now shook violently. I felt like a genie in a bottle being tossed about. The same must have been happening to Little Neptune for his whinnying continued almost non-stop.
“Speed Level 4,” I shouted, hoping to pull away from this force. I felt forward movement, but I was then tugged backward and sideways again.
The inky blackness now began to clear and for the first time, I saw our enemy. It was—of all the stereotypical undersea terrors — an enormous squid. His suction‑cupped tentacles held tight to our protective fields. I quickly looked around, finding Little Neptune clutched in a tentacle up near the ceiling of the cave. He was trying to kick out at the squid, but the fields held tight.
Little Neptune suddenly looked toward me and began braying and whinnying, motioning with his nose. I turned around to see a wide fanged mouth, opening and closing as I got closer and closer. The orange tailed mermaid was nowhere to be seen.
Was this it? Was this how it was actually going to end? Without “The Spell Book of Androganine” I was helpless to come up with any witty spells to save myself. After all I had been through; time tornadoes, Greek gods, medieval archers, freezing in a toga, earthquakes, vindictive Time Keepers...was this how it ended? Was I to be reduced to nothing more than fish food?
* * * *
“Prepare for landing,” came a soothing female voice.
“Rob, where’s that voice coming from?” asked Melissa.
“Unknown.”
“Is it another life-force?” asked an anxious Lisa.
“Unknown.”
“Please prepare for landing,” came the voice again.
Looking out of the viewscreen, it was obvious where the tractor beam was emanating from. Below the Starship Jupiter was some sort of landing pad. It was located on the ocean bottom, just outside the domed city.
“We can’t,” began Melissa, looking around the spaceship. Not being quite sure where the voice was coming from, she felt it best to address the air in general.
“Our ship is encased in an Encapsulated Life Support Pod,” Melissa added.
There was a moment of silence. The girls waited for some sort of response. Finally it came, by means of the soothing voice from beyond:
“Qwoetra, Malatin, Jepevion, Bobotos, Rae,”
Melissa’s eyes widened with each word. “That’s the incantation that removes the Els‑pod! How does she know that?”
“The Encapsulated Life Support Pod has been removed,” calmly stated the voice, “please prepare for landing.”
“I guess we lower the landing gear,” stated Lisa.
“Affirmative.” Rob pushed the appropriate buttons and the girls heard a deep hum as the landing gear lowered itself.
The ship made an almost undetectable landing on the circular undersea pad. After a moment, the soothing voice came again.
“Thank you. Please stay where you are. You will be contacted by your liaison officer in just a matter of moments. Thank you for your cooperation.”
“Cindy, do you think this is really the great lost city of Atlantis?” whispered Melissa.
“It would make sense, doesn’t it?” she said, “Rob, give us a full run down of what you know about Atlantis.”
“Affirmative. Be aware that since the continent of Atlantis is a mostly considered a mythological entity, my programming of its existence is limited to legend and folklore,” he began.
“Go ahead anyway,” said Woba, settling down next to Rob, “I love a good story.”
“There are three distinct trains of thought as to its location,” began Rob, “the most prevalent one being that Atlantis was approximately the size of North America; situated off the coast of Spain in the center of the north Atlantic Ocean. The Greek philosopher Plato reported that the continent was sunk by a great earthquake. Another is that the Atlantian society was based on the Greek island of Thera in the Mediterranean, which was lost to cataclysmic volcanic activity around the year 1628 B.C. The third is that the continent sized Atlantis was lost during an unprecedented shifting of the tectonics plates of the Earth’s crust, shrouding it in a tomb of ice, beneath what is now Antarctica.
“Regardless of geographic location, it is further thought to have been inhabited by a race of super humans that were actually responsible for teaching the rest of the world everything it knows. For example, the pyramids of both Peru and Egypt have their origins in this legend.”
“Parts of the legend are a bit more complicated than that,” added Cindy, this being her area of expertise, “in some circles, the continent is thought to have been an outpost for alien civilization. These aliens were Darwin’s missing link; taking primitive man out of the trees, educating and genetically altering him into what is now modern man. From their continent home, where ever it was, they sent forth the equivalent of missionaries...”
“...or liaison officers?” questioned Lisa, listening attentively.
“Or liaison officers,” smiled Cindy. “Anyway, they were sent out to the four corners of the globe. They taught the primitives all about agriculture, stone work, government, and civilization in general. Because of their advanced ways and actual alien powers, they were considered by all of the primitive cultures to be gods. If this assertion is correct, then the Atlantians that went to Greece, for example, made their home atop Mount Olympus and used it as their base.”
“So Apollo and Athena and all the others were actually aliens from another planet?” asked Melissa.
“Exactly,” said Cindy, “I tried to question Athena on this point during the feast, but she just smiled and told me to believe what I wish. I took that as a ‘yes’.”
“So when we were in ancient Greece, Atlantis was still afloat,” stated Melissa.
“In theory, yes,” smiled Cindy, “and now that we’re in the future, Atlantis is on the bottom of the Atlantic.”
“What a minute,” interrupted Cleo, “formally being mythological myself, I know a little about it. If this is Atlantis, and it’s been here for centuries, why hasn’t anyone been able to find it?”
“For the same reason that Rob doesn’t sense it. They don’t want to be found.”
“Besides,” nudged Woba, “you koleapi where around for centuries and no one could find you, either.”
“Rob, do you have any sort of reading yet?” asked Melissa.
“Negative. I am going through my circuits now to find the problem.”
“Rob,” began Cindy, “there is no problem. They do not want to be detected.”
“Negative. If my VIs can sense it, my sensors must be able to sense it. It is only logical. This does not compute.” (If a robot could sound frustrated, this was it).
The doors to the Starship Jupiter suddenly, silently slid open. No one came aboard and much everyone’s surprise, no water rushed in. The girls looked at each other, but neither of them had opened it.
“Please disembark your vessel,” came the same sort of soothing voice, but this time it was male.
“Well?” asked Woba.
“I guess so,” said Melissa, taking the initiative to go first, “stay close.”
Melissa went to lower the gangway from a switch within the air lock, but found it already down. The little party proceeded down to the landing pad. Looking around curiously they found that a watertight dome now covered the landing area. While they’d been talking inside, the area had been covered and drained of all water. Only a slight residual moisture remained on the ground.
They proceeded slowly toward the main dome, along a red carpeted walkway. Above and all around them they watched fish swim by. They tried to see the top of the ocean, but it was miles away. When they reached the other end of the walkway, they found a sign that read: “Please Wait to Be Announced.”
“This is beginning to get weird,” stated Lisa.
“What do you ‘beginning’?” asked Melissa.
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