Mayan prophecy.

[Charlatan]

Hey guess what? On the twenty fourth of december this year, 2011, there will appear a thing called Ryumyo. This is the first stage of the end of the world or the beginning of a new one says the mayans.

Anyone care to speculate on what this means, if anything?

[Jack]

If I'm not mistaken, Ryumyo is the first name of the alien who, after a peaceful lunch on the recently formed Earth, took a dump behind a boulder leaving behind the organic compounds from which all life later evolved. In Ryumyo's culture taking a dump on an uninhabited planet is equal to us planting a flag on an uninhabited (at least by us) continent. So by the rules and regulations of Ryumyo's home world he owns the planet Earth and all that's on it. I understand his return this month is to enforce his property rights and we all may be evicted or heavily fined for trespassing.

[Charlatan]

And now I or we know...

[Rahul]

According to the Mayan calendar, The Sixth World begins on December 12, 2011 AD, and will end on April 4, 7137 AD. We have the intervening time to use responsibly the double-edged sword of technology that our ET cousins have created. We must use both the energy of nature and the power of technology to try to fix the damage done on our planet.

P.S. I personally think that the Mayan calendar is grossly misunderstood :)

[Charlatan]

Well where is this alien guy?

[Jack]

What, you missed him? Bummer.

[Night]

The whole thing is a bunch of ridiculous nonsense. Another example of a religious belief proclaiming the end of the world. Fortunately this time it's not another Christian apocalyptic whack job.

[calvinthomas]

yes, only God knows

[Charlatan]

Well, now i hear that our world and a world of the aliens collides on this date - 23rd of december.

Apparently they will be sent to our planet.

rumor has it at least...

[DragonFly]

Life and Death in the Crystal Palace

DECEMBER 20, 2012

The Mayan calendar was due to end on December 21, although an alternate method forecast December 23. Whatever the case, the world was in a frenzy, one much worse than when the end of the world had been predicted by the Jehovah Witnesses in the 1990’s, for example, for radio, TV, and other electronic signals all over the world were all being disrupted by some unknown source. And there were the tremors.

Commander Grandmasters East and West were already at the TOE Center in Hawaii when the President’s CIA chief called in.

East put it on speaker: “We can’t track the source of the disturbing signals. My experts tell me that these signals are like none they’ve ever dealt with before, that whenever they think they’re getting a fix on them the waves relocate to a new and apparent source which soon does the same. Also, the waves are at a frequency which can’t, well, shouldn’t even function for its range. If we could only get near to the source, even into its vicinity, we could then probably hone in on it. I’ve got planes crisscrossing the globe, trying to localize it, but it will only be luck if we run into something stable. I’ve certified that the signals are not coming from space.”

“Bad news”, she, East, said, to no one in particular. That means the signal doesn’t want to be found.”

West added, “But which means that if we did find it, we could possibly turn it off or neutralize it somehow.”

The CIA speaker continued: …”And I’ve got reports of small tremblers all over the world at once. That’s unheard of. They’re quite minor, and no quakes have been reported, but they’re been increasing and spreading since yesterday. Could the world really be ending?”

East replied, “Could be. The signals are of an alien nature; that’s why you don’t recognize them and why they have such strange properties.”

West surmised, “So the radiating device was planted here ages ago, when…”

“…The earth was visited by them,” East continued.

“And the Maya somehow knew about it,” added West.

“And there’s that unexplained ancient runway in South America,” surmised East.

“Who do we have on ancient symbols and Megaliths?” West asked of the TOE Center Director.

We have Leskey, right here, and Fredrick, who’s out and about the island.

Leskey piped up, “Sir, Fredrick found some new glyphs on the rocks near the runway a while back, for they had removed the 20 feet of soil that had accumulated over the millennia, and there seemed to be drawings of some lakes carved therein. I can access Fredrick’s photo files.”

“Good,” answered West. “And let’s fetch the young master; he has the sight.”

“My God!” cried Leskey, “They are a much larger and detailed version of what I found at the end of the calendar stones at the Mayan Ruins.”

“Quick, match it to the globe, present and past,” East pleaded. It was going to take some time to search all of the maps of the ages.

Meanwhile, Fredrick, surfing, heard the rotors and turned to see a black Ninja helicopter approaching and then hovering about two feet off the ground, creating a mini sandstorm.

A while later, Leskey reported, “I’ve got it, Grandmaster, it’s the Central Lake District in Canada, well, as it was a long time ago.”

“I heard,” chimed in the CIA Chief. “I’ll have an AWACS with a survey helicopter in it there within an hour.”

The action paused, as they awaited the over flight of the suspect Canadian area.

East asked for geographics of the site.

Profpat answered, “I’ve got it on Google Earth and Wikipedia; it’s a region with forests so dense that the snow cannot even reach the ground, so, all of the snow stays aloft, on the treetops, like a canopy. I wouldn’t try to land on it.”

“Thanks”, answered East. “I’ll pass that along. They sure picked an almost impenetrable area.”

“Almost?” asked the Prof.

“We can go anywhere; get one of our helicopters into the region.”

Lunch was served.

The CIA chief came back on: “Some of the electronics on my AWACS are going haywire and burning out, but we have a general location. We’re dropping the chopper now to locate it, and my AWACS is getting out of there.”

The survey chopper dropped like a stone, the wind soon catching the rotors and stabilizing the craft, whose engines they soon started.

“All they can see is snow and ice.”

“There’s a forest underneath.”

“What the… I’ve got an infrared satellite coming over in 17 minutes… We just burned up half its fuel to get it there. What did the aliens want with us, anyway?”

“Not all things are solvable. We have no answer of what is probably now some long abandoned agenda.”

“Jeeese…”

The CIA’s survey helicopter headed off in the general direction of the strange signals; however, there came an avalanche of strange sensations as they began to narrow the source of the emanations, such as nausea, high heartbeats, a sense of suffocation, tight chests, panic, anxiety and much more than they’d ever known in the strenuous training during flight school… Their very selves were fragmenting. One last effort reported all of this back to CIA Command as the craft begin its swan dive and crashed through the ice into the depths below.

“Mission failed and crashed. The crew reported some kind of extreme mental disturbances; maybe your ninja craft with its mind-diciplined crew can get closer, close enough to pinpoint the source. My guys were still 5 miles away.”

“I hope so. We’re about 7 minutes away from your copter’s last location”.

“Go for it.”

The Ninja Craft did make it much closer, to about a thousand feet of the source, its crew also bearing the waves of unreality washing over their psyches, but then, too, they came to be on the verge of blacking out. Only the pilot’s last bit of remaining logic stabbed at the autopilot, which carried the craft aloft and away to safety.

“We had to abort, but we’ve got the source to within three hundred yards,” reported East. “They dropped a flare.”

“We’ll refocus the infrared satellite to that location; it can read a label on your clothes from space.”

Grandmaster West sat back in his chair and pondered, during the brief interlude, looking about the room of the dedicated ToeQuestors. Who can we send? he thought. And how much time do we have?

“Sir, a Russian jet fired three missiles toward the target, but their electronics and guidance systems fizzled and fried, the missiles winging away erratically and plowing into the ice like harmless duds.”

East interjected, “If it’s of an alien race from another star that can conquer space, then it’s no wonder that our primitive electronics can be thwarted.”

The satellite’s data came streaming in, a five minute high definition video of the device and it’s glowing control panel. Fredrick walked in the door, noting the video just beginning to play, and studied it intensely until it ended. One of the symbols in the middle had been changing rapidly, and another one, too, but only every so often.

“It matches no known language, font, or number system,” said Fredrick.

“That’s true,” answered an associate. We just put it through the translator.”

“My Kingdom for a Rosetta stone,” replied the TOE Center Director.

“We have three hours, or so” answered Fredrick. I identified its ‘zero’ character and then deduced the rest from their structure and form, and from the sequence of the rapidly changing symbol. It’s a timer that has advanced six minutes in the five minutes that we watched it; it’s on its way down to all zeros.”

Fredrick sat down and went into a trancelike state. Someone came over.

“No,” said West, “leave him be.”

The CIA came back on, “Have your craft clear the area; we have a Super Stealth inbound at a thousand miles an hour. The President has authorized a tactical nuclear strike. 10 minutes to arrival.”

“We’re already clear, but the strike won’t work,” answered East.

“It’s worth a try.”

A while later, Fredrick looked up from his reverie.

“What did you see?” asked West of Fredrick.

“I saw the blankness of… no Earth… and a dim vision of a woman walking in the dark with a flashlight through a forest overcrowded with trees… that’s all, sorry.”

West addressed the room: “No sorry, Fredrick, for that’s what we have to do. Who do we have that can approach this thing that so much disrupts human functioning?”

Prof offered, “Cyn-thea, on our ToeQuest team, has often reported on her numerous episodes of this disturbing nature, and has, apparently, acclimated to them.”

East, looking dejected, said “We may never get her there in time. It will be a long trip through the ice palace.”

West sighed, showing little hope in his visage, but suggested, “Find her and get her on a Supersonic Transport.”

“No need,” said Profpat, “she lives near the target area in a quaint cabin in the wilderness. Um, I like to get to know all the ladies. In fact, she’s been following our progress here and is getting ready.”

“Holy smokes, it’s about time we had some luck”, said West. “Send our Ninja copter to pick her up. Has its crew recovered from the onslaught against reason?”

“The copter is on its way, Master, and the crew is fine.”

“Our tactical nukes went nowhere and plopped dead into forest somewhere. An ICBM is now on its way.”

“It won’t work either.”

“Find a snow-tread and take Cyn-thea in as far as you can from the closest approach. Maps with routes are on the way.”

“They are? Oh, I’ll get right on it.”

A few moments passed in silence.

“She’s probably going to have to walk the last few miles alone, sir; too dense for a snowmobile and too close for anyone else to survive…” reported the Geographics leader.

“The ICBM and all its multiple warheads malfunctioned. What have you guys got for me?”

West replied: “We’re going to have a ninja driving a Snow-Cat through the submerged forest, with a strong-willed lady on the back. We’re going to drop it as close as we can, put it through the treetop canopy of snow, and hope for the best. We should be off and away toward the forest in about an hour.”

“You’re kidding.”

“It’s what we came up with. Do you have anything better?”

“No, we’re at a loss. And now we have a quake near the San Andreas fault. California may soon become an island.”

Time seemed to be passing the world by as everyone sat and fidgeted.

The black ninja Helicopter picked up Cyn-thea at her front door and was off for a 45 minute journey over the ice. When the crew started seeing blips and spots in their eyes, they headed back a bit and hovered over the canopy. Some of the crew got out, stepping gingerly, but found the footing firm and used a large pick and shovel to dig through the canopy, making a hole large enough for the Snow-Cat to be dropped through.

Cyn-thea and her escort followed, down a rope, into this forgotten world of icy darkness and silence, although a dim light filtered through in places. There was little snow on the forest floor, more like a thick frost. The headlights shone ahead through the stillness It had become a subterranean world. Ice crystals adorned the trees. Some small wildlife darted about. ‘Eerie’ was not enough word for it.

The Snow-Cat was soon off and following the GPS signal for a seven mile trip, it barely squeezing through some of the gaps in the trees. They still had communication with Oahu, but it was was slight and fading with their every advance. 45 minutes passed. There was one hour left.

Trouble. A wake of nausea swept over them and prompted them to take their next dose of seasickness pills, but the meds weren’t helping any more. They spotted some shapes in the snow and dusted them off, and soon radioed the TOE Center, as they had been doing periodically.

“Hello, Cyn-thea,” answered Grandmaster East. “Wherefore art thou?”

“We’ve covered four miles somehow in this entangled forest. We are finding skeletons on the ground, some human and some animal. And I see many more up ahead.”

East replied, “I’m afraid that all who wandered and entered there have perished; probably scared to death. It’s up to you, Cyn-thea.”

“The world needs me, and I need me,” she said, clicking off the radio. They drove on for a while, sometimes having to traverse over the bones of the many unfortunates.

A haze of distorted being soon enveloped them after another mile, sending their brain-traffic neurotransmitters spinning, struggling to maintain control. They tried hard to ignore the visions and emotions washing over them, straining to focus. She had been here many times before, cleansing the intrusions, but it was new to the driver and he soon began his collapse, the Cat burrowing into foliage of a bush, whose color was ever-during green, the renowned color of sanity.

He stood up, then fell again. She dragged him back a few hundred feet, where-at he revived a bit, but looked groggy. Her gestures directed him back whence they’d come. He resisted, loyal to the mission, although quite unable to proceed. They tried the radio, but it had gone silent.

“It is for me to walk the last miles alone, my friend.”

Finally, he agreed and headed back.

Back at the TOE Center: “We’ve lost contact.”

Cyn-thea retrieved the SnowCat and drove on, the forest getting denser, her hallucinations increasing by the minute. The visions were now accompanied by horrible sounds. She was hearing the workings and meanderings of her own affected brain and mind, something never meant to be heard and endured for very long. She drove on quickly, the branches whipping her, until the forest became too dense for the snowmobile. She got off.

The shards of early man now appeared, formed, and then shattered, as the primitive brain stem began failing in its task to sort out human-radiated reality from all else that was out there. She was no longer totally Sapiens, but Homo Habilis, then Erectus, and now Handyman.

Taken aback, she fell to her knees, overwhelmed, and began to focus on the outlines of the trees and branches, desperately attempting to bring her mind to attention, an old trick she’d learned, to quell panic attacks, but this was the last frontier of horror, even considering what she’d been through in her life.

Somehow she got up and continued walking, now privy to all of earth’s invisible radiation, but soon adapted, learning to put much of it out of her mind. She could even hear the noise of thermal vibrations as she moved on.

Cyn-thea next felt the actual emotion of death and dying via suffocation, but, again, through previous practice, noted that she was indeed still breathing in and out, and so she waved death’s ebon form aside. Waves of adrenaline now swept her body from head to foot, and she nearly fainted, and sat down, in case she did faint, not wanting to bang her head on a rock.

She arose slowly, to avoid the hypotension of quick-rising blood pressure. Her heartbeat had to be around 180 now, and this actually helped her along, but too much of this and she would be no more. 20 minutes left.

Cyn-thea stopped and meditated, trying to focus on nothing to quiet the intrusive thoughts, as she’d learned to do. It didn’t work here as well as it had elsewhere, so she switched to another, alternate method, which was to watch the maddening thoughts go by, as if in a parade, but not taking in or entertaining any of them. They appeared, marched across, and exited stage right, all unattended to by the witness, her,her consciousness, for she was now sitting in the audience, way back in the back row. As for some thoughts that wouldn’t leave at all, she colored them them dim and grey, and as such they dissolved into a fog.

She got up, her heartbeat perhaps now down to 140, but many night-mares and their foals were still passing on by, as wide-awake dreams. It was almost too much. Her very self was beginning to disintegrate, she desperately trying to hold on to that last bit of logic in a back corner of her mind somewhere, a mind that was being overwhelmed with unreality. She stumbled on, heading in the direction of increasing sickness, her only means of navigation. What’s that?

She turned off her light, for there was a glow in the distance. That was it. Ten minutes left.

The pressure upon her sense of self grew worse as she approached the glow; logic’s last gleam was fading, for life’s last light was now upon her. She was only ten feet away when waves of confusion washed all thinking away. She fell forward a few more feet and collapsed. So close. She didn’t know it yet, but she had entered a zone of safety, one that perhaps the device itself needed to be free to function unaffected by its own emanations.

Her head spun round and round as consciousness returned, another familiar sensation, but one that was never very pleasant. Four minutes left. The mental disturbances were gone now, but she still reeled from their ravages. She felt cold for the first time, then freezing. Her body had been overloaded, its thermostat not functioning anymore. It took her a minute to regroup; she’d known cold winters before. She willed her body to function.

She stood up and faced the alien device. There was a switch. She turned it off. The glow-lights dimmed, and the machine began to fade, then to oblivion went. Was it really happening or was it hallucination? She reached out her hand to where the device was, and felt nothing. She lay down to surrender to the night of death and fell asleep in the crystal palace, her tomb.

Back at the TOE Center, all looked to the clock: there were 3 minutes left.

As the countdown neared zero, nearly everyone tensed.

East looked at West. “It’s been fine, this life.”

“Indeed.”

At zero, nothing happened.

The CIA called and reported, “The tremors have stopped, but for the earth settling back in. All emanations have ceased. It’s over.”

Cyn-thea awoke, her cheeks flushed and pink with bloom, but she knew, she knew, that it was but endorphins flooding her brain and body, one last gift from the Angel of Light that is given to the dying, so that the darker Angel of Death could not soon approach one so fair… She closed her eyes, drifting back off, towards the netherworld, but then felt some snowflakes falling on her cheek. But it can’t snow in here, she thought…

The Ninjas above were hacking through the ice canopy with pickaxes, showering her with a cooling spray where she lay in her crystalline cathedral. A bright light shone through the hole above, and a rope came down, followed by some black forms. They wrapped her in blankets of electric warmth, then placed her in a harness, and she was lifted up and into the heated heaven of the helicopter.

The TOE Center erupted in cheers, having watched on screen.

“What happened?” inquired the CIA Chief, a few minutes later.

“She turned it off with three minutes left, and the alien thing just evaporated!”

“Just evaporated? That’s it? She just turned it off, three minutes early, not even near zero?”

“This was not an 007 movie.”

“Ah, but you only live twice: once when you’re born, and again when you stare death in the face.”

“Perhaps mankind will take some pause from this, valuing life more,” said East or West.

“Yes, indeed. Perhaps it has scared the Hell out of everyone. I’m still not sure what to make of all this.”

“Not all things are knowable. We looked for the device, afterward; it was gone; there was no trace, but you do have a video of it.”

“Well, thanks for your help. I don’t know how you did it, but you sure pulled this one out of your butts.”

“Great anal-ogy. I’m afraid we don’t really know how we did it ether.”

“It’s beyond me. Now, about the news media and that alien thing; it never happened.”

“Ha, yes, I guess it never did, for it’s no longer there.”

[DragonFly]

Epilog

Poet to poet, Austin and Cyn-thea rendered the details of Cyn-thea’s journey, he visiting her in the wilderness, into the final TOE-CIA report, through the highest power of language: poetry, one that tries to flesh the truth in living words finely dressed.

Later, using the Grandmaster’s pass, he filed the account, after all had read it, into the tube of Secrets of That Which Never Happened, one that led to the vault, twenty miles down into the earth. He noted the maintenance stairway beside it, where none had ever gone, and looked in, the master knew he would, to see it spiral down into Neverland. So strangely compelling it was that Austin ventured down, underground, beyond all sight and sound…

To learn the Secrets, what IS and ever WAS,
One must brave the crypt and ghost of cause…

So, into the deep, he went, without pause,
To look down, ever down, no self to keep,
Through birth, death, and the shade of sleep,
Through paths unkempt, underswept, to the deep,

Through the cloudy strife
Of this hazy life,
Past the realm of the things which seem or are,
Even o’er the steps of the remotest bar.

Down, down! Where the mind whirls round and round,
Down, down! As the ear draws the sound,

As the eye the light,
As of the dark the fright,

Beyond all death, despair, love, and sorrow,
Past yesterday, today, and tomorrow,
The body’s guide but the spirit of the soul.

Down, down! Through the fog, the not, and the void;

Down! Where reigns the night and the air is thin,
To where sky and stars are not, but within,
Where the radiant have not their throne,
Where there are some pervading, all alone.

Down, down! To the fathoms of the cryptic;
Down, down! Where substance slept with arithmetic,

Toward the spark yet nursed by embers,
To the first and last that Life remembers,
To seek the gem that shines, the wealth of mines,
The jewels so treasured by thee and thine.

Down, down! We guide thee, we must carry thee;
Down, down! We’re illumination beside thee…

Fear not the proof; it’s the beauty of truth.

Here, the enigma of the immortal
Is undone and unloosed, through life’s portal—
The Theory of Everything mortal,
The Idea That we open the door to.


Crystal Memories

From Spring to Winter, 2013

From her hilltop cabin of logs, Cyn-thea
Recalls the ice, once in her veins, the freeze;
Lo, Canadian lilacs have bloomed, at last.

Nature Springs from Winter’s tomb,
The bloom already in the seed,
The tree contained within the acorn.

Crystal fragments remain, sharp memories
Of the ventures in which she shattered not.

Surging sprigs sprout from the soil;
Spring showers make the Summer flower.

All the seasonings arrive at her door,
For all things come round to those who observe.

Summer wakes from Spring’s dying kiss,
Blooming when the rose does,
Sunning after the Spring’s running.

She could never be too warm,
She’d endured the frost;
The kaleidoscope revolves: life’s cycle.

Summer reigns upon the land,
Eventually fading in the night.

Life’s second bloom shines upon middle age,
Colors her mind, the rainbow’s shimmering.

Autumn Falls as Summer leaves,
Harvesting its sum of days,
Seconding the rose of Spring.

The hearthstone fire glows heartily with her self
As she stokes the flames of the wondering soul.

The smile meets the tear;
Fall’s embers last through December.

It snows atop the trees, ne’er falling in,
Entombing a spring that waits for the miracle.

Ice winds stalk the weed flowers,
The ghosts frosting the dead stalks,
Snow crystals barring all that grows.

She’s in the cabin safe, snug, warm, and whole.

Winter is death cooled over;
Melting snows feed Spring waters.

[grandpa]

Epilog

Poet to poet, Austin and Cyn-thea
rendered the details of Cyn-thea’s journey, he visiting her
in the wilderness, into the final TOE-CIA report, through
the highest power of language: poetry, one that tries to
flesh the truth in living words finely dressed.


Later, using the Grandmaster’s pass, he filed the account, after
all had read it, into the tube of Secrets of
That Which Never Happened, one that led to the vault,
twenty miles down into the earth.

This either falls short of my understanding or my understanding falls short of this, or both. It sure is nice to me, though. It sounds sacred and meaningful, like the black boxes of airplanes. You MUST go inside the vault! Come across to the other side...

Grandpa h.