CHAPTER FOUR: THE IMPOSSIBLE WELL

The gas fuelled generator area droned loudly in the empty halls of the current research area. It was a stark contrast to the absence of any modern technology in the ancient abandoned city. It was clear why the lights were so necessary. It was hard not to bump into things in the dark. Calin could only follow Kara who had the only flashlight on the move through the strangely windowless buildings that circled the core of the city.

It wasn’t like there were no efforts made by the civilization to enhance air-flow, because from numerous places, a breeze moved over him, but it was weird that there weren’t windows. There was almost no natural light that came in once inside the buildings. It bothered him enough that he asked, “Um, Kara, is it me or did these guys like their darkness?”

Light flashed over his face as the flashlight in the girl’s hands pointed in his direction and back forward.

“You are asking about the windows right?” She didn’t pause to wait for an answer as she continued, “I know what you are saying. We have been discussing this fact a lot lately, because as we could make our way closer to the centre of the city we were also surprised that at a certain point the buildings mostly didn’t have any spaces for windows for letting in sunlight. The same cannot be said for the outer rim, which is really confusing to say the least.”

“Yeah, no kidding,” Calin smirked.

The girl opened another door and she got a thoughtful expression as she turned back to him. Her voice took on a more methodical tone of explaining things as she said,

“The theory so far is that the centre of Mesa Versee was a place of pure cultural importance. Maybe they only allowed the bare minimum of light as part of their traditions. I’m still searching for clues to explain it, but I don’t know, there is something that cast doubt on that. I’ll show you in a little while. Yet, for now we are stumped—”

“Not that I am complaining!” Kara interrupted herself in defence. Calin hadn’t even realized that he was frowning as he tried to think of what she was saying. He threw up his hands to show that he didn’t misinterpret.

“No worries! I was also thinking about all this.”

Kara clearly sighed with relief at his words, but then bubbled with energy as she said, “The place is fascinating. And the best thing is, I’m part of the team that is first to try and unravel its mysteries! Yay!”

Calin smiled. He wished he was busy exploring the city like that. At the very least he and Jerry now had a chance to see the place. He turned to his friend as they walked and said, “I can’t wait to tell the others of all this!”

“True words buddy. True words... Hey! There is Dr. Getsamé.”

Through the dark a small area was lit with a battery powered lantern and a slender man with glasses and a white coat was making notes in a little book, his ginger hair was ruffled.

“Ah, great timing lads!” Kara’s dad exclaimed when he spotted them, “I was just about to head back in and I really needed more light. So you are most welcome.”

He approached them and quickly gave his daughter a hug. His eyes sparkled in the light of the lantern.

“Kara, you really won’t believe it when you see it. I still can’t believe it myself.”

The girl frowned, a deeply worried look passed over her fair features as she said, “Dad, what you said is impossible, you know that right?”

“Yes, yes, but it is exactly as I told you. Let’s help set up all the lights and I will take you there.”

“Okay,” She pouted and Calin knew why, she didn’t want to wait. Always the impatient type. He chuckled as he motioned for Jerry to help him connect the cables to the generator so they could start getting light in the place.

As they opened their boxes and started rolling out the wires for the lights, Jerry turned to him and grinned as he said, “Do you think these guys were vampires or just mad, living in the dark like this?”

“Funny.” Calin said as he shook his head and chuckled.

“Yeah I know, but seriously I think these guys were weird. Who would want to live like this?” Jerry threw up his elbow as if he was shielding himself and took on a strange accent. “Noooo. Not the sun! I’m melting, I’m melting.”

Laughter burst forth from Calin and Kara as she walked in on the act.

“Unoriginal!”

“Crazy as always eh, Jerry?”

“You know me.” He said with a smirk.

Kara grinned back and was about to say more when the first big light came on in the dark circular room, then she spread her arms.

“Ah, let there be light! ... Thank you good sir.”

She curtsied. Calin quickly smiled and took a small bow as he also replied in a formal accent, “You are certainly welcome good lady.”

Kara giggled and moved to a door that was at least three metres tall and wide.

“This door is the one we could not budge at all, not with tools or anything; it is more like a wall by now than anything else. So to get to the inner sanctum we build a pulley system with a small ledge on the cliff to get around.” Then she pointed to the carvings on the door, “What’s more is this. I’ve been studying it for a while now.”

“Whoa!” Jerry said as he reached it first, “Is that a crystal tree?”

The girl nodded as Calin also moved closer. Immediately he could just stare, in the stone door there was a carving of a magnificent tree with crystals for leaves. It was truly beautiful. Enough so, that Calin knew if he had been a craftsman it would have been the crown jewel of his life and he would have hung up his crafting tools after creating such a thing.

“It’s so pretty, don’t you think?”

“Yes,” Both he and Jerry gulped at the same time.

“I love it to bits, and the story in it is something that is captivating me more and more as I study it. But I haven’t shown you the best parts yet.”

As she said that, she stepped to the side she lifted a heavy duty spotlight from a stand and switched it on. With it the bright light fell more directly on the door. As she did, the carving lit up as the crystals that symbolized the leaves were now glowing with a turquoise light. Calin was speechless. He had no words to describe what he was seeing. Furthermore the scene revealed more as the intense light passed over it. Lines of smaller glowing crystals were moving away from the roots of the tree to a circular structure on the carving. As she continued to shine the spotlight on the tree, more and more of the crystals around the room started glowing. Calin was speechless and could now see why Kara was so animated about the Ruins. They were wonderful.

Just then the girl said, “The thing that is really bothering me is, that bright light make the crystals on the carving glow; but where are the windows then? Or even a small slit in the roof so that it could cast light on it? Why aren’t there even signs of something that could give this light? Meh, as amazing as this place is, it really drives me mad sometimes. It doesn’t give clues easily which really is uber frustrating. I lie awake for hours sometimes trying to figure it out!”

“Times like this I’m glad I didn’t study Archaeology then,” Jerry said with a serious sounding voice. “I would have broken stuff within a week.”

Kara gasped and looked at Jerry with big eyes, but Calin just patted her arm and said, “Don’t mind him; he has the patience of a fly. We understand your passion. And I personally wouldn’t have minded working in this place every day.”

“Oh,” Kara said in a small voice.

“Oi! I can be patient.”

“Yeah right, I still have to see it,” Calin said with a raised eyebrow and ignored the glare Jerry was giving him.

But after a moment the boy swatted his back and said, “Yeah, yeah, doesn’t really do good denying the truth. I don’t do patient so well.”

The three of them laughed as they continued setting up the cables and their respective lights.

After a while they reached the small platform and Calin gulped. The small platform swayed in the wind far above the crashing of the waves down below. It was only connected with four cables to the pulley system up top. But nothing about the thing said safe.

A hand dropped onto his shoulder and he jerked slightly. He turned to see Kara as she smirked at him with a knowing smile.

“Don’t worry. I was scared of it myself, but it is fine. You will be hooked up, so you can’t fall.”

It wasn’t very comforting, but Calin took a breath and nodded. Kara just chuckled at him while fumbling in her knapsack, with flair she pulled on her sleeveless hoody. But what help it would be against the chilly wind, Calin didn’t know. Finished, she got a broad grin as she wrapped a safety harness around his body and dragged him onto the platform with her, before clicking him in place.

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With much more confidence, the girl’s father joined him with one of the boxes of lights, followed by a strangely subdued Jerry with the extension cord to provide power to the lighting in the next area in his hands.

Dr Getsamé pressed a button and with loud groans that stung the ears, the platform was moved to the side. It was bad enough to be on the thing, but it didn’t help Calin when a strong wind made the whole platform swing from side to side. He clung to the small thin railing with all his might.

But just as he shut his eyes it came to a stop.

“There, wasn’t so bad now was it?”

Without waiting, Calin jumped off onto the ledge only to be pulled back by the safety harness. He landed with an oomf on his backside.

The others burst out into laughter as Kara unhooked him. With a sigh he stood up. It would probably be the joke on him for the next few days. He just shook his head and took some cables and lights from the box on the metal platform. With it, he laid lights in the slightly smaller circular room than the previous one. As Jerry hooked up the power, the strange crystal-lined stone room came into view.

Kara was immediately giddy next to him as she exclaimed, “Yay! I can’t wait to see what we find with more light. Let me show you the armoury! It is sweet!”

But just then her father came and said, “That can wait darling, I have to show you what is in the centre of the city. Everything else is second priority.”

Tentatively the three followed the man through two rooms that were without doors. They were all filled with artefacts that hid in the gloom of the low light. Calin also spotted lots of scientific equipment.

As they passed the other side of the crystal-tree door in the next half-circular room, there were voices coming from around the bend, with the occasional flashlight illuminating the curve. Dr Getsamé just said, “Don’t worry, that is just Dr James Wikus and Dr Cecelia with their assistants. We will go say hi after I have shown you the inner room. Oh, and Kara did you bring the colorant like I asked?”

Kara nodded and removed her bulky knapsack and handed her father a small bottle. They then moved into the final room that was clearly the centre of the city. It was relatively dark as it looked more southwest than east, with only the ambient light from the early morning hinting at the features in the room.

What really fascinated Calin was, that it was true what they had said, that the city of Mesa Versee looked like it was cut in half. Every room so far, as they got closer to the centre of the city, was almost a half moon in shape. And the side of it perched perfectly on the edge of the cliff.

It was then that a small round structure in the middle of the room came into view as Dr Getsamé walked towards it. The man stopped at its side and said, “Come look at something that truly defies the laws of nature.”

Calin and his two friends tentatively approached. There were immediately startled gasps around him as they looked into what was a Well.

It was cut perfectly in half and the same with the water that resided in it.

“Impossible...”

“No way...”

“Whaa...?”

Everything in Calin echoed those words that were whispered in shock from those next to him. It was as if the water in the Well was suspended in mid air. Kara was shaking as she whispered, “Dad, I think I’m going mad, it can’t be true what I am seeing right now, it is not possible.”

The slender scientist came and hugged his dazed daughter as he said, “No, no you are not going mad honey, you are seeing the same thing as all of us.”

“But it is impos...”

“Yes it is, but it really is a water-well with water hanging in mid air.”

Jerry slapped his cheeks next and asked, “But how?”

The man pushed his glasses up a frown clearly on his face. “What we are seeing here goes against everything I’ve been taught over all my years. I can honestly say I don’t have even the slightest idea how to explain it. The laws of physics tell us the water in this Well can’t be hanging in the air. But there it is...”

The doctor walked to the edge and used his fingers to get the gravity defying water to move, before dripping what looked to be a colorant into the right side of the small current. The swirling water moved the colour to the side of where the water looked to be cut off in half and it promptly disappeared, then a moment later it reappeared on the left side.

The father and daughter’s eyes were shining as they watched the experiment in the impossible Well.

“Fascinating, isn’t it?” Dr Getsamé said with wonder in his voice before he turned to Jerry and asked, “Will you go get one of the bigger lights? I wish to set this up for further experiments.”

The dazed boy only nodded before disappearing through one of the doorless portals at a brisk pace.

The room was painfully silent for minutes as the three of them watched the water swirl with the small line of colour disappearing each time it reached the missing half of the Well and reappearing a few seconds later.

After another minute Kara asked a small uncertain voice, “Dad, what will this mean?”

Calin watched as the man turned to his daughter and said, “When we announce this to the modern world, it will truly change things majorly. It is the find of a lifetime.”

Hands clapped together loudly from behind.

It startled the three from the mysterious Well. When they turned, Wanrey stood there in the door applauding.

“Well done doc! What a discovery you made.” The bulky man was draped in a cloak as he stepped forward into the better lit area. Behind him were four other masked and strangely dressed figures.

“Wanrey? What are you doing in here and who are these people?”

“Not your business really, but let us say they are representatives of a hidden order. Which brings me to what you just discovered, you see, we were shown in the direction of certain things years ago, by these very gentlemen behind me. Though they never say what it is for or where it comes from. But that is beside the point. We stand with the sole goal of not allowing random people, like you, let the world know there are these unexplainable things. They are quite remarkable and we prefer to be the ones who control these... discoveries.”

The doctor bristled next to Calin and through gritted teeth he said,

“So you are telling me, you are here to cover up the discovery that has the potential to change the world; just to keep it for yourselves?”

Wanrey’s eyebrows lifted in intrigue and he laughed. After a moment, he said, “My my, doc you are smart. True... one can’t expect any less from a man with two PhD’s, now can you? But yes you are right. We like taking the best finds for ourselves and then when we had explored it’s mysteries to the deepest extent we sometimes sell some of the find to the highest bidder.”

The tension was high in the air. It was clear these men were the exact opposite kind of people than the Getsamés. Calin slowly moved in close to the Doctor and whispered, “Doc, what should we do?”

The man whispered, “Run for the door Calin, you have to get help, go get the group with Dr James. He has a gun. I’ll hold them off for a moment.”

“NO WHISPERING!” Wanrey shouted. “Follow us without a struggle and you might see your families in a year or two. If you don’t... well, use your imagination.”

Calin was uncertain if he should run, but the statement made him steel his resolve. He eyed Kara sideways, fear shone in her eyes. He nodded to her. He was going to do his best to get them out of this situation.

With a last deep breath he tensed his muscles, launching himself forward.

Halfway to the door, one of the strangely dressed figures behind Wanrey moved with incredible speed and an armoured hand slipped from under the man’s robe and struck Calin with some force, sending him tumbling on unsteady legs back towards the Well.

His abdomen struck the solid stone of the Well and his upper body splashed into the water.

The water flared up with bright lights, as without warning, warmth overwhelmed him. His body shook, unable to move. Out of nowhere, clear voices sprung up around him, even though his head was still under water.

“This one is different.”

“Locked.”

“Seven?”

“Indeed a mystery. Should we free him?”

“Is it possible?”

“We can try.”

“Not yet. He seeks safe passage for those around him and to protect their work.”

“Grant it?”

“Yes.””Yes.””Yes.””Yes.””Yes.””Yes.””Yes.””No”

“Then it is decided.”

A great light burst forth from the Well and with it the water out of its depths. Calin landed on his back dazed as his strength drained from him, the warmth of his body seeping into the water around him. With it his thoughts and consciousness faded into black.

***

“Calin.Oi? Are you alright buddy? Where are the others?”

Calin groaned as he slowly woke up from his drowsiness and as he tried to sit up, he cringed. His muscles were slightly unresponsive. But with some effort he sat up and looked to Jerry sitting next to him. Just then he remembered the situation. He flew up onto his feet and looked for the people that had just been there.

“Where are they?” Calin asked with growing fear as the empty room gave up no sign of any of the intruders or the Getsamé’s.

“Huh? I asked you first,” Jerry pointed out with worry in his voice. “I was out on the platform getting the lights when suddenly the whole place lit up like a Christmas tree. It must have been a flash bang or something because I was blind for like minutes and when I could finally see, I came here just now. But... you were alone. What happened? Where are the Getsamés?”

What? Calin looked around as his hands went up to his head. “I don’t know. There were people threatening us Jerry, Wanrey was here with some weird looking people, they were going to take us prisoner for finding stuff. I fell into the Well and then... I don’t know what happened after that.”

“Wanrey? But I was on the platform. How?”

“I don’t know.” Calin said knowing he had no answers to the events of the last few minutes.

“Come on!” Jerry said with urgency, “We have to find them. We can’t let them kidnap our people.”

“Wait, I know, but what can the two of us do? Uh, maybe we should go get Dr James and the others first, they can help.”

The boy nodded and Calin set off through the rooms with the small flashlights, but then something became clear. It had not just been four people in on the situation, all the lights and equipment that had been there was all gone, every single piece of it.

This only forced anxiousness to rise as he moved to the area where the other scientists had been. But upon rounding the long bend, he hit a dead end. Not a single person was there. Confusion was high, but Calin continued his search, desperate to find the others.

In the dim natural light, Calin came upon the crystal-tree door. It was standing ajar. This came as a shock, as Kara had made it clear there had been no way to open the thing. Nothing made sense. What is going on?

The situation became dire as the search with Jerry dragged on and on for the next hour without a sign that anybody was ever there. Exhausted finally, Calin motioned to Jerry and sat down. The boy plopped down next to him, the same hopelessness in his face. All the scientists were gone, taken prisoner most likely and there was nothing they could do.

After what seemed an age, a voice broke the spell.

“Hi Calin, Hi Jerry, what are you two doing here?”

It was Misses Getsamé.

“Where are the others? I brought enough lunch to feed a football team. Wait... don’t tell me they left you all alone while they are off studying something? Seriously! I will have to have a talk with those two.”

It was enough to make the tears, which had threatened to come for a long while, burst forth as he stood up, he could hardly see through his eyes as he croaked.

“I’m... sorry... I’m sorry... I’M SORRY!”

“What? Calin... why are you crying, what’s going on?” She asked, fear rising in her voice. But Calin didn’t know how to say what happened, to tell her that her husband and daughter went missing.

It was bad enough that Kara who was one of his only friends in the town of Lamb’s Crest went missing. It ate at him. But all of them...

The only words he could utter stuttered out.

“They are all gone...”

***

The events that ensued were plainly just too jumbled for Calin as he tried to come to grips with what had happened, which wasn’t helped through Misses Getsamé breaking down in tears, or when the local Police showed up making him answer as many questions he could, while he was just as baffled as they were about the strange group who wanted to steal the knowledge of the discoveries alongside those who had found it.

At the same time he tried to answer the big question that was plaguing him, why had he been left behind by the group of kidnappers.

But one thing was clearly certain, ten scientists including all their equipment went missing. Yet he and Jerry had not been taken.