The Milestone Protocol Ernest Dempsey (best short novels of all time .txt) 📖

of the Khan’s mother. He held a candle in one hand and a sagebrush in the other, wafting it over the ailing woman in what must have been a religious rite. Sean studied the picture for a minute and then scrolled to the next. The second displayed the same setting, though without the detail of the first. He scrolled again, and this time was shown a mural of Jani Beg in a green robe and sitting atop an orange pillow. His left hand rested on his lap while his right held a strange scepter, keeping it propped up on his shoulder. The top of the scepter looked almost like a fountain with a cone at the top. The hand in his lap held on to a golden orb that reminded Sean of the famed Fabergé eggs.

He fixated on the scepter. It was a familiar image, but he couldn’t immediately recall where he’d seen it before.

Tommy cracked the silence. “If Alexius is the saint entrusted with protecting the rose stone, then we need to find out where he is buried.”

Tabitha jerked her head back. “Wait. Buried?” She held up her right hand. “I’m sorry, but I’m not doing any grave robbing. That’s disgusting. What is wrong with you people?”

“It’s not like that,” Tommy defended.

“It’s kind of like that,” Sean joked, making things more difficult for his friend.

Tommy fired an ungrateful scowl at him. “We’re not grave robbing. We do this kind of thing all the time.”

Tabitha recrossed her arms and tilted her head at an angle, begging for him to keep digging himself into a deeper hole.

“What he means is,” Kevin said, coming to Tommy’s defense, “is that as archaeologists, often our jobs entail digging into the past. Sometimes that means burial sites. However, in this case, we don’t have to do any digging.”

“We don’t?” Tabitha and Tommy said together.

“No,” Kevin reaffirmed. “The bones of Saint Alexius are kept in a cathedral in Moscow. I see no reason why we couldn’t get special permission from the church to have a look at the bones. After all, they put them on display once a year during one of the religious festivals. With our credentials, I’m sure whoever is in charge of the cathedral would be willing to help us with our…investigation.”

“Assuming they let us in the country,” Tabitha countered. “Right now, you might still be considered a suspect in the attack that happened on your dig site.”

“Me?” Kevin jammed a thumb toward his chest. “A suspect?”

“I’m just giving you the information. But yes. The Russian authorities have you on a list. I don’t think they believe you did it either. You have an alibi. And the scope of the attack tells us it was a sizeable group.” As relief settled in, she forced it back by adding, “That doesn’t mean you couldn’t have coordinated the attack.”

“I would never.”

“Look,” Sean cut them off, “we can find a way into the country. Right, Magnus?”

“It shouldn’t be a problem. I have connections there.”

“See? He has connections. But we have another question we need to address before we go anywhere.” He paused, waiting to bring it up until he had everyone’s undivided attention. “Why didn’t this Saint Alexius simply destroy the rose stone when he had the chance? The riddle is telling us to do it, but he couldn’t? Why?”

“Or wouldn’t?” Magnus pointed out.

“Exactly. Why didn’t he destroy it? Why all the riddles and clues and instructions when he could have simply dropped it into the ocean or cast it into a fire or…I don’t know, smashed it to pieces?”

The question drove the room into a tailspin of utter silence. The only sounds came from the clocks on the wall as the second hands monotonously ticked away.

No one had an immediate answer. Magnus scrunched his face into a scowl, which he immediately relieved with a sip of scotch.

Then a thought crashed into Sean’s mind and lit up his face like the lights of a Major League Baseball stadium.

“The pyramids,” Sean said. “The ones we found.”

“What about them?” Tommy asked, taking a sip of tequila from his own glass.

“They were harvesting energy. Well, the one in Alaska was. But what if Saint Alexius knew something no one else knew?”

“Such as?” Magnus wondered out loud.

“If the pyramids are a vast network that spans the globe, it might be that they were constructed for two reasons. The Cult of Thoth follows a series of prophetic and mathematical calculations.”

“The protocol,” Tommy said.

“Yes. If the pyramids are some kind of ancient, global secret weapon, what if they could serve two purposes? What if this array could provide vast amounts of power to regions all over the globe? Over six hundred million people don’t have access to electricity in sub-Saharan Africa. Imagine what that could change for an entire continent, and the world, to get cheap or free electricity to everyone?”

Tommy’s face darkened. “But the cult’s purpose is supposed to be to monitor humanity’s progress and only strip away the population when it is clear the numbers are going to be too great according to their timeline? What you’re proposing—”

“Could change all that,” Kevin finished the thought. “It could propel the global education level by 30 or 40 percent. More education means more scientists with more ideas.”

“Information available through the internet in places that could never have imagined it before,” Sean added.

“Knowledge will increase, and men will run to and fro,” Magnus said, quoting a scripture from Revelation.

Sean wasn’t sure how that exactly figured in, but he didn’t mention it.

“I don’t understand,” Kevin confessed. “If this group is supposed to help humanity, no matter their sick processes of doing it, why would they not use something like this to help the world? Why would they only be intent on wiping out a huge chunk of the population?”

“Same reason any tyrant or tyrannical organization does anything,” Sean answered. “Control.”

“Control of what?”

“Everyone.”

24

Atlanta

Alex stopped the Camaro in front of the middle school playground and looked around. Desmond and his two friends watched from