[Original Novel] The Eternal Mysteries of Vril, Part 11
source
Previous parts: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10
“It is suspected by the Vril-ya that some hybrids survived the purge. Professor Travigan probably told you it was an accident.” I nodded, vaguely recalling something about early experimentation with Vril in Northern Europe.
Neil smirked. “Travigan imagines himself to be enlightened, but much of what he thinks he knows about the Vril-ya is just a second layer of lies buried beneath the first, most transparent layer. So that the few who dig deeper will stop there, satisfied that they have uncovered the truth.
Each layer beneath the first is designed to be ostensibly logical and have the appearance of reality to individuals with different degrees of education. The first consists of absurdities nobody in their right mind would believe, simply to prevent most educated people from taking seriously accounts of the Vril-ya and the Earth’s interior”
I might’ve known. But then, might this also be a lie? My head swam. For the first time in my life I couldn’t get a bead on what’s real. The Earth can’t be hollow, I thought. The physics of it don’t work. But I was even now surrounded by technology the likes of which could plausibly conceal the existence of a hollow planetary interior from humanity.
“So there are hybrids, then. Between their kind and ours.” Neil nodded. “As written in the Torah, there were once giants. Angels, in the Abrahamic traditions, who lived among humans and took the daughters of men as their wives.
In all my years devoted to their service, I have never heard of a Vril-ya depraved enough to sleep with humans. Odds are good that the hybrids were instead the result of illegal genetic experimentation. The movement to ‘uplift’ humans is a very old one which had more supporters back then.”
He then turned and looked directly at me. Reflexively, I put a little more distance between us. “The arn I spoke with. He’s convinced you have hybrid ancestry.” I blinked, processing it. “As in...one of my ancestors was…?” He asked me if I was any relation to a “Maria Orsic”.
I confessed to never having researched my own ancestry in any depth, and that I’d never heard that name until now. I then asked what the significance was. “She led a pocket of hybrids. A cult, to be fair. Though having experienced the Vril-ya’s animal magnetism firsthand, I’m sure you can imagine how someone with even a small fraction of Vrilic ancestry could easily become the center of such a group.”
He withdrew a locket from beneath his robe made out of the same pale yellow metal as the corridor around us. Inside, one photo depicted a gorgeous woman with features like mine. The other picture was of a Vril rune, surrounded by a laurel wreath.
I repeated that I’d never heard of her. He shook his head. “Didn’t think so. Of course I was not so foolish as to contradict him to his face, but did I offer what I felt were more realistic possibilities. He was having none of it. For whatever reason he’s convinced that you have some degree of hybrid heritage. I’m to bring you to Agharta at once for-”
I broke in here. “Excuse me? To where? I thought we were returning to the surface.” When he answered that I was instead being delivered to a research facility on the largest continent of the Earth’s interior for “experimentation”, my blood ran cold.
I said nothing, so as not to give away that I was inwardly making plans to escape. But with the rest of the group ahead of us, trying to force my way to the lift didn’t seem feasible. Nor would I be able to reach the controls by myself, for that matter.
Instead, I hung back. Bit by bit, the black robe helping me blend into the shadows, until I’d managed to separate myself from the group entirely. Still wet and shivering, the painfully cold metal floor did my bare feet no favors as I ran down the darkened corridor.
I looked over my shoulder more than once, paranoid that I might find the rest giving chase. If they noticed my absence, they didn’t seem bothered enough to pursue me. In retrospect, that should’ve seemed stranger to me than it did.
I headed for the saucer hangar only because it was the one room I’d not yet been through. I hoped there might be some service passage or other route to the surface from there. As I passed silently as a mouse between the hulking craft, I cautiously felt their hulls to convince myself they were real.
Despite everything, some part of me remained unbelieving. Or in shock at least, my understanding of what’s real, or even possible, having been turned on its head in the span of an hour. I remembered, in the process, that this hangar doesn’t connect with the surface.
I continued searching, hoping I might at least find a weapon. At last I came across a saucer with its entry hatch hanging ajar. This, too, should’ve struck me as suspiciously convenient. Instead I climbed inside, and upon detecting my presence, the interior automatically illuminated.
...Lit by electric bulbs, oddly. None of that golden fluid to be seen anywhere. In fact the craft appeared to be made from aluminum, and none of it looked any more advanced than you’d expect from technology of the 1940s except of course for the shape of the vessel itself.
If only I had my phone, I thought. But then, even if I were to take photos, it would look like the set of a hokey scifi B-movie from decades ago. All those big analogue knobs and dials covering every control panel, nixie tubes providing numerical readouts.
Nobody in their right mind would believe that this was the inside of an actual spacecraft, if indeed that’s what it was. I spun around in an instant when I heard the hatch close. Neil stood there, brandishing some sort of pistol.
“Neil! I was just...I got separated from the group, and-” He told me to stuff it, and that this is where he planned to take me anyways. I eyed his weapon. Worn and dusty, probably taken from this very vessel. I wondered if it even still worked.
“It’s a klystron laser” Neil explained matter of factly, as if reading my mind. “Long obsolete by their standards, but it’ll still put a hole through you easily enough.” His voice was utterly calm, but I knew enough about him not to doubt his sincerity because of it.
There was simply nowhere to run. So for the time being I took the seat he gestured to with the barrel of the laser pistol, strapped myself in as instructed, and did my best to keep my robe from falling open in the process.
Neil twisted a few knobs, toggled some switches, and a whole bank of blinking lights suddenly illuminated. At the same time, the whole vessel lurched perceptibly upwards by a few feet before re-stabilizing.
So the damned thing actually flies. I could hear no jet engines or spinning propellers to explain it, but peering out one of the portholes confirmed that the vessel was now aloft and slowly rotating in place. Neil gingerly pressed a sliding throttle forwards.
I felt mild nausea as the craft accelerated. Neil seemed to notice, and after a few more flipped switches, I no longer felt any indications of motion whatsoever. Despite this, when I looked out the porthole, we were still moving.
It made no sense. But then, none of it did from the start. As I watched out the porthole, we flew more and more swiftly towards the hangar door, which began lazily parting to admit our passage. I still couldn’t feel any motion through the seat. No more nausea either. If I closed my eyes, it felt as if the craft were still on the ground.
“Did that help?” Of course he didn’t bother to say what he’d done. I nodded, and he smiled before returning his attention to the controls. “Neil...how are we flying? This thing looks like it belongs in a museum. Technology like this didn’t exist back then.”
He didn’t answer for a few moments. Then, he swiveled his chair around to face me. “I suppose at this point, it can’t do any harm to tell you. Like I said the first time we passed the hangar, these were built for human use. So as not to hand over technology we might use against them, the Vril-ya included only materials already known to us, and antiquated weaponry we’d soon develop ourselves anyway.”
I asked if he meant klystron lasers. “Exactly. The United States military is only now beginning to make use of solid state, free electron lasers for shooting down drones. The ones they’ve mounted to battleships are about a quarter as powerful as this little guy.”
Stay Tuned for Part 12!