in the archives. He needed me to help him get inside to find it.”
“So he used you.”
“No. Well…”
“What was this artifact?”
Diana sighed, and her eyes clouded over.
And suddenly Phoebe gasped. Her body twitched and she saw…
“Oh my god.” Phoebe had her hands on the table’s edge, trying to steady herself. “I saw it… was that real?”
“What?” asked Orlando.
Diana leaned in. “What did you see? The archives at the Smithsonian where Xavier found the item?”
Phoebe glanced up. “The Smithsonian? No, but… the men I saw at the farm, in black suits and cars with matching paint jobs…”
“The farm,” Diana whispered. “Wyoming. In 1931 a cattle farmer dug up a fossilized Triceratops, with something in its belly that should not—could not—have been there. An artificial object inside the gut of a sixty million year old dinosaur.”
“So,” Orlando said, “your old employer hushed it up. Like I’ve heard they did with a lot of stuff they found in America, things of obvious European, Asian and even Egyptian origin. Things that didn’t fit with conventional theories.”
“At the time, I convinced myself it was a hoax. That the Smithsonian hushed it up because there was no other logical assumption, other than that the farmer himself—or someone close to him—found the bones, then fabricated this sphere, put it inside, then reburied it to be discovered later.”
“But now you don’t think so,” Orlando said.
“Not after everything else I found in those restricted archives. After researching literally thousands of other anomalies that never made the light of day because conventional scientists—whose duty should have been to objectively analyze all the data before making conclusions—instead buried or simply destroyed evidence that didn’t corroborate existing theories of man’s comparatively recent evolution. Or the Diffusion Hypothesis. Or the belief that Sumer was the first main civilization, or that the Americas were only populated by savages who had traveled across the Siberian Ice Bridge ten thousand years ago.”
She took a breath. “While I had access to the secret archives in the Smithsonian, I catalogued thousands of man-made artifacts discovered in geological layers indicating great antiquity. Skulls and bones indicating that modern humans had coexisted alongside lesser developed species that we supposedly evolved from. Coexisted even with dinosaurs…”
Temple sat back, sipping his coffee, but unable to hide his smile as he watched Phoebe and Orlando’s reaction. Aria however, just seemed bored with the conversation, instead glancing around the screens with the awe of a kid watching Saturday morning cartoons on a big screen.
“I can’t believe you just saw that,” Diana said as she stared at Phoebe. “I mean, I shouldn’t be surprised, especially here, but sometimes… I admit I often wondered if Xavier was just a good con man. If he cooked up everything and made his inside knowledge appear like psychic ability.”
“Well, now you know,” Orlando said.
“Although,” Phoebe added, “I’d say Xavier’s still a con man. Don’t trust him. Ever.” She turned her glare at Colonel Temple. “Whatever that sphere is, I’m thinking that it’s something that can shield his presence from remote-viewers.”
“Why do you think that?” Temple asked.
“Because I sat in on a lot of sessions where George Waxman and the Morpheus team searched the world over for Xavier, and never found a thing. I think he needed it to block his activities, to hide from us so he could break Nina out of her confinement and go about his mission.”
“If he did all that,” Diana said, “he must have had a larger reason. He must have known…” She waved her hand to the screens. “About this. About what’s going to happen unless we stop it.”
“And that,” said Temple, “ends this uncomfortable discussion. Diana, if you please… the presentation. Tell our guests about your evidence. What you’ve confirmed, what we’ve been looking for.”
“Maybe you should start,” said Diana, who seemed winded as if she’d just run a race in the hottest part of the day. “I need a breather, and I’m guessing that our guests might not listen with an open mind if I start out.”
“We might,” Orlando started, then shut his mouth after a look from Phoebe.
They all took their seats, with Diana moving to the front and sitting by herself. She shot Temple a look and said under her breath. “You could have warned me about this.”
Temple just shrugged. He poured himself a glass of water, then passed the pitcher around. “Okay, we’re going to start with a little Theology 101.”
“Ugh,” said Orlando. “If I wanted to go to Church…”
“Listen. You all know the first verse of the Bible.” Temple stared at them, and when no one spoke up, he said, “
Orlando raised his hand. “Ooh, I know! What is: Genesis, chapter one, verse one?” He tapped himself on the back. “Do I win a Lexus?”
“Nope. Listen, the word used for God is
He let that digest. “So what Genesis could be saying is the same as what a lot of other creation myths the world over speak of: Advanced beings—or planets representing gods, or both—battled in the heavens, and their warfare resulted in massive cosmic destruction, reordered the heavens and created new worlds, our own included.”
Diana cleared her throat. “
