The Guardians of Atlantis: novel, #7

By Luis E. Iñigo

Two Spanish Egyptologists, Sonia Gonzalez and David Donnelly, find during an archaeological excavation in the tomb of an Egyptian priest some strange inscriptions that turn out to be a fragment of the Critias, Plato's dialogue that tells the story of Atlantis.
Surprised by the discovery, they embark on an investigation into the origins and significance of their discovery in which they will soon have the help of a mysterious character who will guide their steps.
With the help of a friend and colleague from the university, Alvaro de Andrade, they travel to the Brazilian city of Manaus, in the middle of the Amazon rainforest, where they make contact with a retired police inspector who puts them on the trail of a strange city lost in the jungle in which the key to the Critias, the inscriptions on the Egyptian tomb and the existence of a civilization that disappeared in the night of time may have been the common origin of the great human civilizations of the Ancient Age.
Guided by a strange character, and closely pursued by a cruel mercenary in the pay of a mysterious international lobby that intends to appropriate at all costs its possible discoveries, the protagonists of the novel embark on an initiatory journey that will change their lives, put them in touch with the true past of humanity and make them messengers of a change in which the last hope of humanity can be found.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Cydonia
• Release date: Jun 16, 2020
• ISBN: 9781071551523

Book preview

Prologue

9564 B.C.,

WESTERN ATLANTIC.

While his ship was heading steadily towards the immensity of the ocean, Lhasa, Reverend Supreme guardian of the Fifth Circle of Aztlan, was looking with sadness the golden shores that were slowly fading in the distance.

Neither the annoying pitching of the ship, which was advancing at full speed, raising waves of foam in its wake, nor the strident cries of its crew, who were busy with their tasks, could get him out of his self-absorption. In his spirit reigned the deep sorrow of one who knows that he will never return home; even more, the icy desolation of one who intuits that soon there will be no home to return to.

He was beginning to think that he deserved the destiny that the gods had in store for him. He had failed completely. His mind was incapable of finding arguments, or even pretexts, to silence his conscience. Nor did he intend to. In reality, it was his responsibility alone to warn his fellow citizens of the danger that lay ahead. And he had tried, the gods were witnesses that he had been tempted, putting in the task until the last of the potencialof his  soul. But he didn't know how to do it. His people had not listened to him; perhaps he was no longer listening to anyone. His ears, once sensitive to the subtle call of the spirit, now attended to no other voice than that of the flesh. Drunk with wealth and power, they felt free to hasten even to the dregs the cup of life.

With precise clarity - he was already in that treacherous age - he evoked the happy years of his first youth, in which the remote past is evoked much more clearly than the immediate one. As in one of those old black-and-white movies, he felt the day, distant but still intense in his memory, of his entrance as a novice in the First Circle project itself into his mind. And then, as if in a huge close-up, the always calm face of his master, the venerable Kiron, his guide and inseparable companion during the five long years of his apprenticeship as Guardian of Aztlan, took shape.

-Lhasa, he heard once more from his mentor, you must know that the path you choose is not simple, it is tortuous and arduous. The people of Aztlan are disoriented. People are running after their desires, and as soon as they reach them they feel the restless sting of new and intense desires. They do nothing but chase the wind, and their hearts, always unsatisfied, move further and further away from true happiness, which is born only of peace of spirit. Science, once the servant of progress, has now become a slave to caprice, and I fear that, without a light to guide its steps, it will end up turning against the very men whom it is called to serve. The days to come will cover Aztlan with a veil of deep darkness that will cloud the understanding of mortals and plunge their souls into confusion.

-Master, he had replied at that time, unable, as usual, to turn his attention away from those intense and captivating eyes, is it not good that people should have what they desire? Is not wealth better than poverty, excess than necessity? Were the Atlanteans happier in those times, fortunately already far away and forgotten, in which they suffered hunger and misery, and suffering and death fell upon them?

-It's not that, my son," Kiron's eyes took on a look of sweet condescension. Truly I tell you that wealth, like science, is neither good nor bad in itself. It is only a means. We can use it to practice good, but it can also corrupt our hearts and subject them to slavery.

In these days, he continued after resting for a moment his voice, wearied with the weight of age, men use wealth badly, for they have allowed covetousness to reign over their souls. They no longer occupy their minds with lofty ideas; they are only interested in the immediate satisfaction of their passions. You are still very young. The sensual call of the flesh retains much strength even in your burning heart. But you will remember these words in the future, when the years have tempered in your spirit the fieriness of youth, and then you will understand what I say to you now.

He remembered exactly that prediction, which, without any kind of answer, had floated in the air until it vanished little by little, like a light morning fog. Many times he had thought of it later, when, after his Master had died, he could finally understand the profound truth that lay behind his words; when, having become Master of Novices himself, he had to commit his strength to showing them the light in the midst of a darkness that was becoming more and more impenetrable.

The first to suffer from the excesses of the Atlanteans was naturality. Runaway consumption required more and more resources at every turn to feed the insatiable hunger of the factories that produced day and night. The forests were cut down, the mines were exhausted, the enormous waste made the waters of rivers and lakes unhealthy and impregnated the air with myriad stenches. Even the immense sea of crystalline waters became around Aztlan a dark and nauseating pellet. Then the first warnings came, slowly at first, accelerating later the cadence of their manifestations.

The weather, before gently, altered the ordinary succession of their stations. The summer lengthened while the winter shortened, blurring the spring and autumn. Droughts became frequent and unsettled. The fields yielded increasingly meager harvests.  But no one heard the sharp cries of pain from the battered planet. Eager for pleasure the insatiable spirits of the masses, the rulers ordered the wise men to seek new sources of energy. The sacred alloy, the oricoco, which had been used until then to clothe the veneration of the gods in majesty, was also sacrificed on the altar of consumption. Little did it matter that in the process new and foul soot was thrown into the already tortured air. The machines continued to work without rest, and the stinking winds began to spread the disease everywhere.

No one cared about these changes. The doctors of Aztlan could triumph over any evil that might attack the body, so great was their knowledge then. But of the evils that afflict the spirit they seemed to ignore everything, and so they did not understand how obsessive and unhealthy the pursuit of enjoyment had become for the Atlanteans. The decadence became more acute. Contempt for nature soon led to contempt for knowledge. First its more speculative branches were abandoned, those which did not guarantee speedy access to wealth or power. Philosophy and history fell into oblivion, held to be dead disciplines, or considered to be learned and unimportant pastimes. The children, following the example of their parents, were interested only in practical knowledge. For a time, economics, physics and engineering experienced a great boom. But this was only the beginning. Not much later, even these sciences were abandoned. Knowledge demanded effort. But effort had become unnecessary, even abhorrent, for people educated, generation after generation, in the belief that they had a right to receive everything just because they existed.

The crisis soon reached the most venerable institutions. The age-old ties that held families together.The lines began to dissolve. The obsessive search for pleasure was at odds with the commitment, sacrifice and encourage that the human couple needs to survive in time. The bond between man and woman, which the ancients held sacred, became a simple contract with an expiration date. The offspring, once a source of pride, was immediately seen as a burden that no one wanted to carry on their shoulders. The rulers, worried about the falling birth rate, tried to support it by means of aids. The pro-natalist propaganda campaigns hammered relentlessly into the ears of the Atlanteans. It was no use. Children demanded time. They required hours of unbridled consumption, obsessive care of the body and the numerous and superficial relationships that were becoming habitual among people. The citizens of Aztlan were increasingly empty. Slaves to consumption and servants to pleasure, lackeys to marasmus and apathy, they seemed at every moment less willing to gamble confidently on the future and make sacrifices in its name.

The love of the gods was forgotten. The temples, deserted and deserted, were covered with cobwebs, and in their immense halls, which once echoed with thousands of voices raising in unison hymns to the godhead, only the aged chant of the few Guardians who still officiated in solitude at their secular rites could be heard now. Superstition soon returned, lending itself to filling the void left by religion. The old values, quickly relegated, found no others to take their place. And then, antisocial behavior, which seemed to have been eradicated forever, spread again like wildfire. Thefts, murders, rapes, the consumption of substances that turn man into a slave without a will, already erased from the memory of the Atlanteans, burst into their lives with renewed strength. Mistrust infected hearts like a lethal virus. Nothing was offered without expecting something in return. Each individual saw in the others only means to his own ends.

Lost faith, lost hope, lost the true love of life, people desperately sought new deities to whom they could give their loyalty in exchange for a little meaning to their existence. The race, the faction or the party were, as before, raised to the altars and revered as gods. The seeds of discord, sown in propitious soil, were slow to germinate. Intestinal quarrels multiplied. Each side despised the other, rejected the humanity of those who supported them, and, having taken this step, allowed themselves to be subjected to the most frightful humiliations and tortures. The identity gods, proud and demanding, demanded their share of human sacrifices. Aztlan was immediately plunged into the horrors of civil war.

The old prophecy, which went back to the night of time, in the origins of the Fourth Root Race of men, began to be fulfilled. Lhasa had not needed books to remember it. When he could evoke them for the first time the sacred words were engraved in his mind with the permanence of an inscription carved in marble. It was written:

"When the human character begins to dominate in them, when the divine principle begins to diminish in them, then, no longer able to endure their prosperity, they will fall into indecency. It will be then that they will believe themselves to be truly blessed, possessed as it were of unjust greed and boundless power, but true happiness will be alien to their corrupt hearts. Be prepared, because the days of the Fourth Root Race will then come to an end.

The terrible explosion brought Lhasa back into contact with reality. An unexpected shock wave, brutal as the onslaught of a beast mad with rage, hit the ship with unusual force. Those on deck felt the air crushing them. Then a sudden heat wave and a sudden gust of hurricane wind swept the ocean in succession, raising waves behind them like mountains. Loud and uncontrollable, the cries of terror erupted around them. An immense ball of fire, blazing with the intensity of a thousand suns, had appeared in the horizon, right in the direction that Aztlan was. Soon the dazzling object was transformed into a mass of purple clouds that began to rise to the heights, crowning itself with a dense nimbus of white smoke. A gigantic mushroom covered the sky, imprinting on the retinas of that forced and astonished audience an image at once malignant and strange, never before contemplated by human eyes.

Like a litany learned to the unconscious after endless repetitions, the words which continued the prophecy came to the mind of Lhasa:

"The Gods will then decide to end the race of men, for they have known the secrets of the angels and all the violence of the demons and all their secret powers and all the powers with which they cast spells. Therefore, they will see their punishment, and sterility will come at the end of a great chariot of fire, and for a time the Earth will have two suns. Know that this will be the last sign.

The cries did not cease. Some members of the crew, working with their bare torso to facilitate their movements, complained of sudden deep burns which had erupted on their skin for no apparent reason. Others, hopelessly blinded by the intensity of the light, rubbed their eyes violently, trying to restore their sight while shouting in desperation. All the ship's electronic navigation devices stopped, as if frozen in time by a fickle, whimsical god. Chaos took hold of the ship, it was suddenly a broken toy, doomed to suffer helplessly from the onslaught of the raging waves. The cerulean spectre of death, which no doubt hovered over Aztlan that day, seemed to have stopped for a moment on its way to make sure that nothing was left alive after it had passed.

Only Lhasa remained calm, perhaps because he was the only one who could understand something of what was happening. He was lucid to the point of no return, he could hardly see the sores and blisters which had formed on his bare hands.

He remembered reading about the deadly effects of a new weapon with unimaginable destructive power. He remembered this, precisely because it had been this news that had dispelled his doubts, convincing him that the prophecy was about to be fulfilled. The end of days had come. Only a few hours later, he urgently summoned the Guardians of the Fifth Circle and explained to them his conviction and his proposal: Aztlan would not survive; there was no other way out than to abandon him.

The discussions that had broken out then seemed to have no end. The fourteen Guardians who, together with him, made up that cenacle of privileged minds, the last lights in a world of darkness, were divided into two sides that tried to persuade each other. The poorest arguments were clothed with complex oratorical displays; the most baroque of forms disguised the smallest of contents. Vanity, the desire for notoriety and the obsessive search for recognition by others seemed to have also contaminated with their harmful influence that last stronghold of the old virtues.

He could have made his colleagues see it that way. Perhaps, as Supreme Guardian, he should have reproached them for their attitude. He might even have settled the argument with the casting vote that gave him the immense spiritual authority that he enjoyed among his peers. But he did not. It was too late for that. He urgently needed to make a decision, to draw up a plan, and to work to put it into practice. So he left each guardian free to act as he saw fit, and declared the meeting closed. If even those enlightened minds could not understand what was going on, the days of Aztlan were surely over. There was no point in wasting time in discussions.

The following days witnessed an overwhelming work done under the pressure of an indescribable urgency. He, and those like him who were convinced of the imminence of the end, undertook the task of compiling the vast knowledge treasured by the countless generations of Atlanteans whohad preceded them. Technology, which was to be the blind executioner called upon to carry out the unappealable sentence already passed on that world, would also serve to preserve their knowledge. Thanks to modern processing and data storage devices, the equivalent of a thousand libraries filled with wisdom were soon archived on lightweight oricoco discs.

Then it was time to organize the logistics of the journey. Ships would have to be assembled, loaded with essential provisions and instruments, men and women selected to embark on them, and a destination chosen. There was not much time, so, in order to diversify the risk, it was decided to disperse the goals, moving them away from each other as much as possible. The seven guardians who had agreed with Lhasa were left in charge of each expedition, and they took charge of making whatever decisions were necessary to lead them to their goal. Each of them was then given a destination in the distant lands populated by barbarians, and their crew were given precise instructions as to what they were to do when they reached that destination.

Each colony of Atlanteans was to serve as the nucleus of a new city, to attract to it a large group of indigenous people and to educate them in the sacred principles and old forms of knowledge that had given Aztlan its lost greatness. The most precious part of the Atlantean tradition would thus be preserved and, for the fourth time in its history, the global progress of mankind would not be interrupted. Those men and women, ultimately humble individuals, but protagonists of a tiny and select exodus, would carry on their shoulders the immense responsibility of saving the heart and mind of a world whose body was perishing without remedy.

No one was surprised, then, that when the time came to leave, the pilgrims felt their hearts bound by a confusing mixture of conflicting feelings. Their souls were filled with the ineffable sorrow of a farewell that they knew to be definitive, but also with the restless hope of those who were ready to found a new world. It sprouted in their spirits the nostalgia felt by those who lose in an instant all that ties them to their past, but at the same time the barely intuited pride of those who feel they are the protagonists of a historical event was born in them. No one came to see them off. They left alone for distant lands, knowing that they had been given a destiny that was not certain, but how could they regret it when in their minds was installed the certainty, much more regrettable, that nothing would happen to them after their departure?

That was only a few hours ago, and yet no less than a whole year seemed to have passed. The brutal detonation of that ingenuity and its tragic effects on the ship had changed everything. Was there now room for hope? Could he even dream of reaching a destination thousands of miles away with a ship turned into scrap metal, still capable of floating but not directing its course? Lhasa thought of his companions of the Fifth Circle: Man-U, the wise; Deucalion, always so willful and determined; the venerable Viracocha, of prudence recognized by all; Kukulcan, still young and strong; Atram-Hasis, reflective and circumspect; Osiris, the silent one; Quetzalcoatl, the feathered one... Would his ships have suffered a similar fate? Would they have been surprised by that astonishing liberation of energy even closer to Aztlan, disintegrating them without remedy? Or perhaps they would have managed to move further away from the condemned island, stealing their destiny to an inapeable verdict?

I would never know.

I

Voices from the past

"Regarding the above, the Egyptians told me to one with their priests, and proved it with their monuments, that counting from the first king to the priest of Ptah, the last who reigned there, had spent in that period three hundred forty-one generations of men ... Counting, then, a hundred years for every three generations, the three hundred referred to give the sum of ten thousand years, and with the forty-one remaining also make eleven thousand three hundred and forty years.

HERODOT.

The nine books of history.

CXLII

1

2 MARCH 2007.

IEEF CAMP*, LUXOR, EGYPT

The sun was saying goodbye, as it does every evening, wrapped in the warm embrace of countless reddish tones. David Donnelly, whose figure, huge but ochre and dusty,

mimicked without difficulty the dark yellow and dirty white of the Egyptian landscape, breathed with pleasure the fresh air that announced the cold night of the desert. This was his moment, his perfect oasis of total calm, of absolute peace amidst the strident din in which he spent his endless days of work.

He had been in Egypt for five months already. In just four weeks he would be back in Spain, wrapped up in the monotony of his university classes. That was how he had always spent his life, or at least it seemed that way. After almost twenty years of offering himself body and soul to Egyptology, he could not remember having known another one. So absolute had his dedication been, so

* Institute of Pharaonic Egyptian Studies In the novel, a private institution dedicated to financing archaeological excavations, doctoral theses and publications related to ancient Egypt. In reality there is a similar body, the Institute of Ancient Egyptian Studies, which inspired me to create the above-mentioned institution (Author's note).

––––––––

He had completed his sacrifice, everything else had been diffused around him until he disappeared.

Almost without realizing it, he had lost his wife, who had left him five years ago, tired of his endless absences. He couldn't blame her. He would disappear from her side as the excavation season went on, between October and March of each year, six months away that she found unbearable. But things did not improve much with her return, which only made the physical distance spiritual. Standing beside her, even face to face, her gaze was lost and her heart and mind flew off to the land of the Nile like the soul of a dead pharaoh fluttering in search of its ethereal home in the dark world of the dead.

No, I could not reproach him. He had enjoyed himself with Anna, especially in the first moments of their relationship. Their bodies had adapted to each other with mysterious accuracy, as if nature had designed them for the sole purpose of melting them into the crucible of uncontrollable passion each day. He had wanted her very much; in his own way, he had even come to love her... but Anne had not made him dream. Only Egypt had her spirit in the fire of illusion. This ancient culture, still shrouded in mystery, had a magical effect on him. Its power was such that it even seemed to turn him back into a child eager to discover everything, to understand everything. Every morning, he would jump out of bed and return to it in Egypt after a long day in which he gave it his last bit of strength. No person had ever been, or would ever be, able to awaken in him such a delusion.

Perhaps that was why there was not much room left in his soul for love. But he still had a place in his soul for pain, a word that always led him without shortcuts, like an automatic and well-oiled re-draw, to the memory of his daughter.  He had not seen her grow up; he had hardly ever spent any time by her side. He did not guide her first steps or hear her first words. His father's steady hand did not hold the handlebarsof her bicycle while she was charmingly awkwardly trying to keepthe balance. But it was his daughter. There was something special, ineffable, telluric, in that bond; something that nothing, neither space nor time, could break. That's why it hurt her to remember how their relationship had already been reduced to a few phone conversations and a few engagement visits, which her rebellious teenage nature had increasingly spaced out. She had never honored the divorce agreement, nor had Anne ever demanded it. And now they were almost two strangers. He lacked the strength to fix the situation, and he felt guilty, immensely guilty about it.

The distant bustle of the camp, the strident cries raised above the impressionistic background of the crushing music, ripped him abruptly from his reveries. It was Friday, the sacred day of the Muslims, and therefore the only day of rest allowed, more by imposition of the authorities than anything else, in the exhausting rhythm of the campaign. The peace had been broken, but he was grateful. His reflections were taking a dangerous course. And when that happened, his body, too solicitous, seemed to come to the aid of his soul. He inevitably ended up leaning over the bar of the nearest pub, where he tried without much success to drown his sorrows in alcohol. Or he would cling to the wheel of his car, which he drove like a man possessed until he could bring his thoughts to the surface. And so on until the next time. No, that night I wasn't going to allow it. Maybe I'd better get some company for a change.

As if the divine Aton had read his thoughts, David then managed to see in the dim light of dusk the gangly figure of Sonia, his chief assistant in the direction of that project. They had been working together for two seasons, and from then on he had not ceased to feel a strange, paradoxical sensation, made up of unconnected shreds of emotion that he had not yet fully understood. Intellectual affinity, physical indifference, respite, even professional admiration, and a certain affection with which he had been confused, flowed in a confused maze of feelings from which he seemed to be goinga  peculiar but sincere friendship is slowly emerging.

Of course, it wasn't her body that attracted him to her. There was no way he could consider her a beautiful woman, even in some way attractive. She was tall, almost like himself, and slim, no doubt too much for his taste for inveterate feminine curves. Her hair, dark without being black, and cut in a garçon style with no other objective than to facilitate her daily care, subtracted femininity from an ensemble that was not already very much in evidence. The breasts, barely prominent, and the shoulders, bony and straight, were more typical of an adolescent just out of puberty than of a woman about to leave the years of her first youth. And the face, excessively angular, seemed to be delineated only to divert attention to large, intense eyes, dark as the soul of a murderer, and at the same time mysterious and magnetic. It was not easy to avoid his gaze, capable of dissecting the soul like a coroner's scalpel would do with a corpse.

And it was those eyes that now observed him with an amusing ex-pressure, intensified by a funny smile halfway between compassion and mockery, wide enough to leave just a glimpse of perfect, very white teeth that had never known tobacco or chocolate. How different they were! They both loved Egypt, of course, but she seemed so cold, so self-sufficient.

-What, boss, another chat with the pharaohs? -Said Sonia in a good mood as she sat beside him on the little slope of the ground that served as David's makeshift seat. Don't you think it's about time you let them get some sleep? How about going back to the mortal world and having a conversation on some trivial subject for a change?

Well, you come out of the night like a specter of Tartarus and you want us to talk about something-how did you put it?

Banal? Besides, how do you show up here without a drink? You know that's not a good way to start something with me.

-Let's see, let's see, let's take it one step at a time. First, I don't have the slightest intention of starting anything with you. It would be too much for me, I'm in a relationship with a man and three thousand years of history. You know how jealous I am! And secondly, I believe you are well aware that I never drink a drop of alcohol. I leave that to the weak spirits, who need to rely on ghosts like drugs, religion... A mature and balanced person has enough reason to face the world. The canes are for those who need them.

-Hey, stop, stop! -David felt as if those phrases were directed especially against him. But it couldn't be. Sonia was unaware of his fondness for alcohol, which he had so far successfully managed to hide even from his best friends. So she decided to go off on a tangent. Don't throw one of your anti-religious diatribes at me! Not all atheists are mature and balanced, as you say, nor are all believers weak, far from it. I know a few convinced Catholics who have suffered real misfortunes in their lives that would have ended anyone's resistance, and they are more balanced than you and I... Although that is not saying much, the truth.

-Hey, speak for yourself, Sonia Gonzalez is very balanced. I'm not the one who spends my nights staring at shrews without relating to anyone. And to think you've got half the scholars on the team pining for you!

-Bah! -That doesn't