Mount Condour: The Adventures of Lando

By Carlos Antonio Rios

Mount Condour a quiet remote city in New Mexico and the home of physicist/inventor Lando Managua. Strange and unexplainable things have been happening, and the US Military has hired Lando to assist them in their investigation. Little do they know that something bigger lurks on the horizon and all signs point to warnings of an alien invasion. Can Lando help restore order for the residents of this sleepy little town or will the aliens destroy it and anyone who gets in their way?

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Oct 31, 2016
• ISBN: 9781483582719

Book preview

11

Chapter 1

It was the year 2011 and I lived in a peaceful neighborhood where all the houses in my area were alike, and all on a square court. There were about thirty houses on this block, separated by a large patch of lawn where many kids would fly their kites and just hang out. Nobody in the area seemed to have any worries and for the most part everyone got along. We lived in a city called Mount Condour, located in a remote area of New Mexico. Along the back side of our court entrance were huge rocky cliffs that towered over us like giant skyscrapers. On the top of these rocky cliffs were icy patches that looked like fluffy melted marshmallows that oozed down the peaks. The area we lived was cool, but not cold. Occasionally a breeze would swivel down the mountain and give us a chilly sensation, but for the most part the climate was manageable.

To the townspeople I was known as the Wizard, as I was always creating something. My background was in Physics and Creative Arts, and I came up with my first invention when I was about five, disassembling a couple toy robots and making something better with the parts. My name was Lando Managua and I was in my mid-thirties and lived in my house with my girlfriend Isabella Kimachi. We were both from this state, went to high school together and officially got together in college, where we attended the University of New Mexico. Isabella was a professor of Biology at the local college while I stayed home doing what I do best, inventing.

Isabella was a beautiful woman, with long, straight, jet black hair that had a natural shine when the light would reflect on it. She had a light complexion with stunning light green eyes and a smile that would make the angriest man grin. She was of Asian descent and was about 5’3 with an athletic body. She was an amazing cook and specialized in Vietnamese cuisines. Isabella was the perfect package, as she was both beautiful and charming. She was humble in nature and loved to be around kids.

As for me, I was an average 5’11 man with short, dark black hair that occasionally spiked up when I didn’t have time to comb it. I was into sports and worked hard on maintaining my physical and mental health. I was half Asian and half Latino, and was fluent in three languages, Spanish, Chinese, and English.

Even though my background was in Nuclear Physics, I turned down many jobs at the local university as well as NASA. I was an independent contractor and enjoyed the idea of being my own boss. My previous inventions were of a smaller caliber, but were still big enough to help put my name out in the public’s eye. For the past three years, I had won inventor of the year, and had been nominated for several other Nobel prizes. Some of my previous inventions had to do with building devices using high-tech crystal technology. Because of my creative nature and ability to work well by myself, the government would help sponsor my projects as they wanted me to create something very top-secret for them in return.

I had been working on this top-secret government project for quite some time and I had almost perfected it, but for some reason something was missing. I couldn’t quite get the calibration of the crystals right. The government wanted me to make them a laser beam that could possibly change the weapons technology using top-secret alien technology. The government had expected me to have the project ready for presentation by the end of the month.

Not even my girlfriend Isabella was allowed to know about my latest project as the government had specifically restricted me from telling anyone about the weapon. The crystal I was using was something they had recovered at one of the older UFO crash landing sights and it was something that was extremely rare. The crystal was surrounded with hieroglyphics and it was green in color. It was about a foot long and three inches thick. From the top-secret files, I was informed that there were only a handful of these types of crystals that had been recovered. It seemed like they were from the Superman era, since they resembled kryptonite, but with ancient scriptures.

From what I was used to, I had done unique inventions using quartz crystals and stalactites from the caverns of Mt Shasta. The crystals were used to measure radiation in thermal pools, and to check for seismic activity. I had also used rubies along with smoky quartz to power a tractor beam that I called Super Eyes. Super Eyes was used to see below the surface and scan for fossil fuel and other natural forms of fuel. It was about two feet long and looked like an upside-down telescope with a huge magnifying lens, and would usually be connected to a monitor. Many archeologists used Super Eyes to scan for lost dinosaur bones, and because of my invention they had discovered many other types of dinosaurs that were new to us.

The Menotaraptus was one of the newer species of dinosaurs scientist had discovered using my invention; the creature looked like a gigantic bull about twenty feet high and stood on two feet with an armor-plated spiny tail. Its horns on its head stretched out to ten feet across in width. The most interesting part of this new species was that it had human-like hands with razor sharp claws. Scientists wondered if the Menotaraptus was a carnivore since it didn’t have teeth or fangs like most predators. Their molars in the back were like that of an herbivore and like human teeth in the front.

There were about ten of these species found all over the world, and each one was more bizarre than the next. The horns varied in shape from continent to continent, as some were jagged, pointing straight up, and others curled like a ram’s. It was always a special treat to see the remains of these creatures in a museum, especially after I was given the privilege of naming these beasts. It made me feel proud to be part of history in helping discover more pieces to our past.

Day after day I would work long hours trying to meet my deadline, and with fifteen days left I decided to take a break and get the house ready for Halloween. In previous years, our house was known to the kids as a fun haunted house as Isabella and I would go all out with the decorations. Our house was three stories (two floors and a basement), and had plenty of room to allow our creative nature to come alive. We would decorate the front yard with dead zombies that would lie down around a grave site.

Inside we had our walls covered in cobwebs and in every corner we had giant black widow spiders that dangled every time someone would approach them. We also had robotic gargoyles that would pop out of dark corridors and evil clowns that would be hiding in the cabinets. We even had a coffin with a mummy hiding inside courtesy of our local museum that I did so much business with. One of the favorites from previous years was the giant kiddy pool of coagulate blood, which was really just a pool of Jell-O that had all kinds of fake body parts in it. Our house looked so real that it sometimes scared Isabella when she would come home late from her job, and I would sometimes get caught in the cobwebs that were dangling around everywhere. The entire house was covered in ghosts, ghouls, and creepy creatures, except for my basement.

After a couple of days of preparing the house it was time to finish up the project; I had gone over the blueprints to my device and I had discovered that the crystal had a small tear along the backside. I determined this was causing the power to fire up and then shut off. In essence the crystal had a short, and there was no consistency in the igniter of the apparatus.

I had two options: I could try to build something around the problem, which would take several weeks to do, or I could slice the tear off. I decided to go with the second option and try to shave off the tear, since the deadline to present the weapon was looming over me.

As I started to sever off the tear I noticed that the crystal would begin to glow orangey-red; at first I thought it was the torch I was using that was causing this, but I quickly learned I was wrong. The hieroglyphics soon started glowing a bright yellow as if the crystal was trying to talk to me. Every two seconds the flashes would light up and then move on to the next carving; after an hour of weird lights the crystal went back to its dormant stage and turned back to green. I decided to continue with my project and finished cutting off the tear; I cut off approximately three inches from the crystal and polished the rest smooth. I put the smaller crystal that I cut off in a separate container and decided to keep this one for myself.

That night as I lay in bed with Isabella, I swore I heard strange noises coming from the nearby mountains. Isabella leaned over and kissed my cheek. It’s just the wind Lando, she told me before rolling over and turning her bedside lamp off.

I knew what wind whipping through the mountains sounded like, and something inside me told me this was not the wind. When I heard Isabella’s even breathing signaling she was asleep, I slowly slipped out of bed, put on my robe and went outside. I went to the middle of the field and I noticed that there was a strange light behind the cliffs. I thought it was probably a routine military operation similar to ones they had conducted in the past, but for some reason the noises were different and seemed out of place this time.

Out of the corner of my eye I saw a figure venture into the field; it seemed my neighbor Chuck was also questioning the strange noises and lights coming from the mountain. We both started talking and he was telling me that he had witnessed this before; he explained that it occurred every three days at three o’clock in the morning. We chatted for another ten minutes before saying goodnight; there seemed to be a chill in the air that hadn’t been there before.

As I climbed back into bed, my mind was still heavy as I started to analyze everything I had heard and seen. Then I started to think about what Chuck my neighbor was telling me. Isabella woke up from her sleep and whispered to me, You’re still thinking about the noise, aren’t you? It’s probably the military doing one of their night ops again. I chuckled and agreed with her so she could go back to sleep. As I continued to ponder, before I knew it I fell into a deep REM sleep.

I began to dream that the noise coming from the mountain seemed to get closer and louder, as if something was on the roof of my house. It was so strange: I was fully conscious and I could see everything so clearly. Then suddenly, my dream took a turn for the worse.

I felt paralyzed and everything turned pitch black; the loud noise became a loud buzzing in my ear that sounded like a jet engine hovering directly above me. I couldn’t understand what was going on, and I felt my heart racing. Was I having a nightmare? After ten minutes of the loud ringing in my ear, I had sight again; the first thing I saw was the atmosphere and stars everywhere. I felt like I was in a galaxy and l was going through hyper speed like you would see in Star Wars. This was too much for me to handle, so I tried to force myself to wake up. I tried and tried again but nothing seemed to work; then the stars and everything else disappeared and I was in a dark room sitting upright. I heard a door slide open and I could hear footsteps approaching me; my heart was racing and I began to panic. I tried and tried to wake up and have my night terror pass. With every last ounce of strength I had in my body, I tried one last time and finally forced myself to wake up.

NOOOOOO!!! I screamed as I woke up, startling Isabella.

Lando are you ok? I heard her ask.

Taking a minute to assess my surrounding I knew I was drenched from head to toe in sweat and I felt Isabella rubbing my back as she quickly calmed me down, saying that I was having a bad dream. She went to the bathroom to grab me a towel and a glass of water. Want to talk about it? she asked me.

As I sipped my water I told her what I had just experienced. It was really strange, as it felt so real. Glancing at the alarm clock I realized it was only four o’clock in the morning. An hour had passed away but it seemed like I had been gone for at least half the day; was I astro-projecting? Either way, it was something that I had to do some research on. I kissed Isabella good night and I held her tight as we fell back asleep.

Upon awaking a few hours later, I slowly got up. As I was brushing my teeth, I heard the doorbell ring. To my surprise it was my neighbor Chuck; he seemed like he hadn’t slept at all. I told him to come in and I made him a cup of coffee. He then began to tell me what he had experienced last night. I figured he must have stayed outside all night, trying to figure out what the noise was.

To a certain extent I was right: he did remain outside, but he also told me that he saw a strange light above my roof. He was telling me that he couldn’t see clearly due to the heavy fog, but he said he saw some sort of craft hovering on top of my roof. I didn’t tell him about my dream, I just let him talk. He told me that the lights coming from the mountain turned from orange to red to blue and that they were the same ones that were on top of my roof. As he continued with his story, the doorbell rang again.

This time it was a couple of federal agents at my door. I told Chuck that it was best that we catch up later and that I had to attend to some business. Chuck, not knowing why the federal agents were here, looked surprised as I said goodbye to him.

Of course I knew why the agents were here: they wanted to check on the progress of my project. As we went to the basement I showed them that everything was going according to plan, and that the weapon would be finished by the end of the month. They read over my notes and did their routine inspection, and after an hour they were gone. I was happy that they did not notice that I had sliced off a piece of