The Anomaly(86)

“How is this even possible?” Pierre asked.

“I’ve no idea. It’s not something we can do.”

“You mean, modern technology?”

“Now or ever.”

We walked into the center of the room. There was a frieze on the floor, split into equal halves by the path, taking up the entire space. Portions were raised by about an inch. The edges were sharp, as if laser-cut, far more precise than anything we’d seen in the rest of the structure. The shapes within it were rigidly geometric—some large, yards to a side; others smaller. Some had tiny points of light within their boundaries. Again, not actually in the stone. The glows didn’t appear rooted to the rock itself, but as if suspended an inch above the surface. There weren’t many lights. I counted six in the left half, seven in the right, thirteen in total, widely spread. Most were a dull amber color. I turned to face the left portion.

There was one in the upper left quadrant of this that was a deep, rich red. It was this that enabled me to finally find the pattern.

“It’s a map,” I said.

Molly frowned down at it. “Of what?”

“The Earth. Reduced to basic land masses. Look.”

Once you’d seen it, the shapes fell into place. They showed the continents and the world’s major islands, simplified to stylized geometric figures. Done that way out of an artistic impulse, or maybe even to allow for gulfs of time long enough to involve continental drift.

She pointed at the tiny rich red light. “So that’s us?”

The glow was about a quarter of the way in from the left in its quadrant, about three-quarters of the way down. The approximate site of the Grand Canyon within a heavily simplified North American continent. “I think so.”

“And the other lights are sites like this?”

“They must be.” I held up my phone and took pictures of both halves of the room. One of the amber lights looked like it could be in Egypt. There was one in a rectangle that was presumably Australia. Another deep in the heart of Russia; one in France. One in what was probably Israel.

Then I noticed one of the lights was up in an area that could be interpreted as the far reaches of Alaska.

“Shit. Yes, they are.”

The light there was the same dull amber as the others. But would it stay that way? Would they all? Or had we started something even bigger than we’d realized—something that would now arc out across the entire world in an avalanche of destruction?

“Nolan—look. At the other one.”

I looked back at the light that seemed like it must indicate our position. It had started flashing.

“Why’s…it doing that?” Molly asked.

It was pulsing at a rate of maybe once every two seconds, smoothly transitioning from off to on and back again. “I don’t know.”

Pierre was looking twitchy. “Let’s go.”

“But this could be a control panel. We might be able to stop this thing from happening.”

“It’s far more likely we’d just make things worse,” Molly said, staring at the light and sounding scared. “As with every single other thing we’ve done.”

“We have to try,” I said, and stepped off the path and onto the frieze, heading straight for the flashing light.

“Nolan—no!”

But nothing happened. I walked straight over and stamped on the light. When I removed my foot, the glow was still there, pulsing like a tiny inaudible siren. I tried again, and again, stamping down with increasing frustration and panic.

Pierre put his hand on my arm but I shrugged it off. “There’s got to be something we can do.”

He pulled at me, harder.

“Let’s go,” Molly said. “Nolan. Please.”

“It’s not working,” Pierre said. “Come on.”

Molly led the way to the other side of the room, moving fast. As we ran up the matching set of steps I noticed a cavity to the left of the doorway. Lodged in there was a narrow slab of stone. There was a groove across the top step.

That gave me reason to hope, but I decided to keep it to myself for now. Pierre caught up with us as we stepped out into the corridor beyond, which led left and right instead of continuing straight ahead.

“Now where?”

“Right,” I said. “And this time I’m pretty confident.”

“Why?”

“When we first got here, to this level of the site. On the other side of the stone ball. You went exploring down the other corridor by yourself. You found a doorway blocked with a single sheet of stone, yes?”

“Yeah, I think.”

“I’m hoping this was it.”

I turned on my phone, noticing the battery icon was now in the red. We ran along the corridor, passing doorways of a style I was sure we’d seen before, curved at the top. The air felt different, too. Less stale. Less dead.

After a hundred yards we encountered another corridor, crossing at right angles and noticeably wider. “Yes,” I said.

“Is this it? Really?”

It was hard to be certain. A rock tunnel in near-dark looks very much like every other near-dark rock tunnel you’ve ever seen—and God knows we’d seen a lot. But on the opposite side, a couple of yards down, was a doorway like the one we’d just come out of—surely to the corridor we’d first explored when we’d emerged here after the ladder. “I think so. Oh thank God.”