The Spiral Road Read online

  The Spiral Road

  By Kevin Kinnen

  For Amanda, of course…

  1

  Hot, dusty air blew into the open windows of the battered old Land Rover, doing little to make things any cooler, and much to coat the sole occupant in a layer of mud. This ancient, interior portion of Australia was well-baked, having been left to weather longer than almost any other place on the planet Earth. Kenny Bakerson, in spite of his average name, was almost as dark as his Aborigine cousins. Most from his mother’s side, but more than a couple from his father’s. He’d had a fairly Western upbringing in Melbourne, where they lived in a little suburb outside of the city proper. But his grandfather, on his mother’s side, had always made sure he carried a part of his heritage, in the form of the stories and tales of the Aboriginal people. He’d taken Kenny hiking and camping often when he was younger.

  Now that he was moving into his thirties, still searching for the right woman and career, maybe a place to settle down, Kenny felt he needed to take some time to sort himself out. He thought that he wanted those things, but a part of him tied deeply to the past wanted to wander, experience new ways and places. He didn’t know what to do next, so he had decided to take some time to go on an extended camping trip in the bush. He was not going to let himself be fooled into calling it a walk-a-bout either, as he intended to stay relatively close to ranger stations and reserves that were fairly well patrolled. He knew well what kind of trouble even hardened bushmen could get into, in the unforgiving territory. He was only equipped and rationed for a short stay of a couple of weeks, but he had brought along high-quality gear. His grandfather taught him a lot of things, one being the value of western technology in the form of waterproof, lightweight, high-durability camping equipment.

  He smiled to himself in the rearview, the mirror barely containing the white-toothed sparkle he used on the girls in the clubs around Melbourne, and on the beaches where they flocked in sunburnt splendor. He had plenty of friends, and though he loved his mates, it would be good to get away from their chattering and noise. Two of them had gotten married in the last year, were now covered in diaper smell and throw-up, and had effectively driven Kenny from their homes in his desperation to avoid the litany of complaints. Yet they smiled sappy smiles at the little rug rats which he envied, wanted to feel a part of as well. He was becoming the Old Man of the group; a fate he didn’t feel was warranted or deserved. This trip he was going to sit and stare at a horizon and decide whether to cross it, or find some daft bird he felt he could stand for the next twenty years or so. There were even a couple of likely candidates already, he thought, remembering his last trip to town with his pals. That little honey-skinned doll from Sydney staying with her aunt for the fall; she wouldn’t be leaving until well into the winter. He would be back in plenty of time, he told himself.

  He drove on for hours, heading to the check-in station out near the Ayers Rock public use area. His thought was to start there, and hike his way back along the old trails, deeper and deeper into the desert. He would camp near a waterhole he knew of, and take in the silence. Try and find a path forward he could commit to, and take some steps. He had foundered in college, only pulling a couple of years and still eight credits shy of a basic degree. He had been working at various jobs, once a pest control tech in Melbourne for one of the bigger companies, but he didn’t do well in the corporate scheme. His customers loved him, enough to invite him to stay for lunch or tea, but his bosses rather frowned on him for just that tendency to say ‘yes’. And truth be told he had hated the work itself, those poor bugs were just doing their jobs as far as he could see. Bloody stupid people leaving trash everywhere was most of the real problem.

  Dust and dry breeze blowing, he continued merrily down the highway, the Land Rover rattling under the shuffled playlist in his earbuds.

  Two nights later, Kenny was awakened by something he had never experienced before: a real earthquake! He was in his sleeping bag to prevent getting stung by scorpions or ants, and his fire had long since burnt to embers. It was quite chilly, but not frosty. The camp was in a scree of rocks above the watering hole, and he panicked for a moment thinking one of the deep-set boulders might roll loose. Unable to get his bearings, he and his equipment bounced along the ground, as several more sharp waves lifted and dropped everything in the area by a few feet. Although he was technically on a ‘hill’ the entire area was flat as a pancake, other than small outcroppings and the burgundy silhouette of Ayers far behind him. The watering hole was actually a small eroded cut in the landscape, more of a clogged drain than a spring. Sure, they occasionally had subliminal quakes around the coast, most of which were triggered by offshore events. He wondered why the hell an earthquake was occurring here, near the interior?

  As abruptly as it had begun, the quake shut off, leaving him spread-eagled on the dirt, his sleeping bag tangling his legs. Extricating himself, he listened to various birds and animals calling out, awakened or disturbed as he had been. Insects, however, had fallen completely silent, something he found even more disturbing. Standing, he looked around his now darkened camp and could discern just a hint of dawn on the horizon. Looking back towards Ayers he saw nothing but the faint bloody smear that was the top of the rock at sunrise. Turning to look down the cut at the waterhole to see if it was blocked, his eyes reported a dark bluish-grey smudge in the gloaming. Far out on the plains beyond the cut and this pile of stones, something sat in the predawn darkness. Something huge, with a shape like the top of a giant dome, now loomed where there had been only empty plains and scrub brush. Kenny stood and strained to make out details, but it just looked like a lump. He would have to pack up and hike closer to get any details.

  He thought about texting one of his mates to see if the quake had been felt near his home, but he dismissed the idea. His friends wouldn’t appreciate being bothered this early, and it was likely not to have gotten that far, it hadn’t felt, well, deep if he had to put it that way. More like a surface ripple. He was more interested in that enigmatic blob out on the flat. He got to work packing his gear as the day broke, stealing glances over the surrounding rocks at the plains and the lightening sky. He loaded his entire camp, instead of just taking the daypack. He didn’t know if he would be staying closer to it or if he would be leaving the area entirely. More quakes would make up his mind in a hurry! Within a half hour he had gathered most of his gear and was sipping coffee brewed on the remains of his fire. Eating a protein bar for energy, he put out his fire, raked the coals and hoisted his large pack, and set his just-filled canteens over his shoulders.

  “Time to see what you are…” he spoke aloud to himself as he left his campsite and started towards the odd mirage, or whatever it was.

  The closer he got, the bigger it was. Not just big like in a building, but big as in ‘mountainous’. He couldn’t get his mind around what he was seeing so he just kept walking towards it. The ground he was covering was flat in the main, but full of small rises and gullies, rocky patches, scrub brush and dry debris. But there was no way he was going to miss the thing, it seemed to stretch equally away to either side in front of him. About halfway he stopped for a drink, and to take some pictures for perspective. He figured he had already hiked three kilometers, and had easily that to go before he got to the edge of...whatever it was. His old iPhone7 in hand, he snapped a few hi-def shots, and used some of his data allowance to post them to his Facebook page, using the satellite connection app for a small fee. It was the only way he could get a signal way out here. Putting the phone away, he returned to slogging a serpentine path.

  The last kilometer he started to encounter regular rises of recently disturbed soil and rocks, increasingly higher and more disturbed as he approached. He was close enough to m
ake out the details of the object, or rather lack of any. To his eye it appeared as though someone had dropped a smoothed, oblate river rock, almost flat on top, into a sandbox. It looked imbedded into the soil to about the same depth as it protruded, assuming the bottom shape was the same as the top. It was a dull, steely dark grey in color, almost black in highlight, not quite reflective. It looked to be generally round. And it had to be at least twenty kilometers in circumference, and easily half a kilometer high! It looked like nothing he had ever seen, even in movies. What had looked like a slightly domed disc was clearly just half of the object, the rest having forced the soil out into concentric rings around it!

  He hiked the rest of the way before turning left to follow the ridgeline of the closest ring, right next to the massive wall. He was looking for markings, windows, something familiar, or barring that, an alien landing party. He didn’t think the human race had much to worry about from aliens who could build something like this. He didn’t believe for a moment that a nuclear bomb would do much to this thing, and people who could make something so massive should be far beyond us, and so wouldn’t likely care about stealing our planet, water, or women. What he wanted was something new, and look what fell out of the sky into his lap! His grandfather had had the right of it, find your place in the universe and the universe will find you. His grin stretched so wide it was hurting his face!

  “No way? C’mon, mate, you’re having a dreamtime vision, this can’t be real…” he found himself muttering phrases like this to himself as his adrenaline kept ramping up in waves. He was moving along the rim, which towered over him by twenty meters or so, almost vertical. He still had yet to see any features, bolts, seams or any sign of technological marking. It looked like it had been grown, or congealed, there were no tool marks anywhere. For all he could tell, it was just shiny, metallic looking rock. He moved close and took out his bush knife. Scratching at the surface, he found that he couldn’t make a mark, but that it seemed soft like a metallic rather than brittle like rock. He wondered for a moment if this could BE a rock, some form of meteor that melted into this shape on the way through the atmosphere. But then he realized that if something this big had hit like a true meteoroid, there would not be an Australia left. Something with this much mass would have punched a hole through the bedrock into the magma, leaving a giant crater where the interior had been.

  On a hunch he held the compass in the knife handle up next to the thing and watched with some amusement as the needle spun wildly in various directions. “Ai-yep, lodestone.” he said out loud. The material was clearly affecting the local electromagnetic field in some way. He kept walking around the perimeter, covering another kilometer before he saw a sort of a dimple appearing around the rim. It seemed to bow inwards until he could see the few meters back into the recessed semicircular opening. It arched over his head. The rim appeared rounded, smooth. Soil had washed back into the dimple, allowing an almost perfect alignment with the center of the inset. And it was there Kenny focused his attention as soon as it became visible, his pace increasing in spite of his heavy pack. For where the soil washed against the strange metallic grey rock, there was a flat circular wall, about a quarter or so buried, at the center and heart of the dimple formation. On that wall was a symbol, one Kenny Bakerson had grown up with, learned at the foot of his elder, and to him it was as clear a sign set before him as any could be.

  In bas relief, on the face of what had to be a door, was the symbol of the Spiral.

  Five hours passed, and late in what had been a long and exhausting day, Kenny was honest enough to admit he was not smart enough to open the door, or it didn’t want to open. He had cleared away half a ton of sandy soil and rock. He had looked for buttons, levers, indentations, handles; there was nothing on it other than the spiral. The entire circular door was revealed to be around four meters high and wide, had no visible seam, and was the same material as the rest of the machine, as he had started to think of it. The raised spiral design in the center was identical to the ones his grandfather had shown him in the bush, marking special places. Kenny was sure he had seen the same design on some documentaries, the spiral appearing in early art, from multiple peoples around the globe. This could not be a coincidence. It didn’t feel like a craft, one that beings inhabited. To Kenny, it seemed empty and hollow, although he had no basis to develop that conclusion or support it. He stood sweating in the cooling evening, wondering if he should set up camp first or call someone out to look at this.

  University folk would eat it up, provided they and the press got here before the military could clamp down on it. Come to think of it, they probably would anyway. The more he thought about it the more he realized that the first people to show up would probably escort him politely off of the premises. That is, if he didn’t wind up in a holding facility somewhere until they figured out what this thing was, and if he had been exposed to anything. He shook his head for a moment at the modern world, dust falling from his dark locks.

  His phone! He had been so bemused; he had not thought to check responses from his post earlier that day! His friends would be going nuts, seeing those pictures and then hearing nothing from him. He kept his phone in local mode most of the time so as not to eat up the battery, and his solar charger was built into the top of his backpack, so it had a full charge but had not linked up with the satellites to get his messages. They and his family knew not to expect to hear from him except in emergency, so the posts would have alerted them to something unusual. He dug out and powered up his phone, selecting the satellite app and using it to connect to the local cell grid, expecting a flood of texts, and notifications.

  He had one, a notice from his cell carrier that his text service had been suspended and to call a number. That is not right, not right at all, boyo, he thought, knowing he had paid his bills up to date before leaving last week. Not that he owed much, a simple life was easy to pay for in Australia, even around Melbourne. He tried to connect to his home page only to get a ‘server unavailable’ error. Now that was getting him a bit upset, social media made so much money that those sites almost never went down anymore. He kept trying to log into the web and finally got a Google search page, and the rest of the net seemed to be fine, no huge news stories of giant falling river rocks. He went to his cell carrier page but could not log into his account, he kept getting random numbered error messages. Confused, he sat down and leaned back against the door, looking into the median distance at the stars beginning to show around the edge of the sunset. From this angle, he could see back towards the Ayers Rock area, although he didn’t have a good line of sight leaning back and he was just enjoying the moment, the adrenaline wearing away. He absently stowed his phone away in his pack and pulled it up beside him to rest his arm over.

  One of the stars near the horizon broke away and moved from the distance it had been pinned to. He glanced that way, and thought for a second it was a UFO, but this moved in a steady advance, barely crawling higher and not deviating to either side of his viewpoint. Then he felt it, more than he heard it, the heavy whumping subliminal beat of a military chopper. Behind it, more lights broke over the horizon, and he sighed. Standing, he leaned his head against the great spiral design on the door, tracing the ridges he could reach with his hands. “Open sesame, my friend, I am about out of time…” he whispered, not expecting the door to open for him, nor anyone if it wanted to stay closed.

  That was why he was so surprised when the door simply dematerialized, and Kenny Bakerson fell down the slight slope below him, into a crystal palace.

  2

  “Jenny? Have you seen my pico?” he called downstairs. His wife yelled back at him, “Calling it!” about the same time as his pillow buzzed. He smiled to himself, knowing he could always count on her to get him off to a good start. Gil reached over the king bed and fumbled under the comforter and pillows for his bracelet. The Wearable was the latest gadget, and he had gotten it for his birthday just last month. It was neat tech, everyone had one version or
another. The bracelet had a pico-projector unit that displayed on the skin of the forearm, linking one to their phone or tablet. It used a set of proximity sensors to operate devices remotely, even play games or make video calls. He straightened the tie on his designer suit. a nice dark olive green, nearly indistinguishable from black. He chose his brown shoes, setting off the orange tie and pale yellow shirt.

  “Heading out, where will you be this afternoon when I get off?” He spoke quickly, but warmly, as he treaded down the stairs into the foyer and then through the kitchen. On his way he bussed his blonde, pretty wife of eight wonderful years, taking a travel mug of coffee from her small hands. “Oh, probably working on the deck, potting. I have to run to the store sometime today, I thought I would ask Deenah if she wanted to have lunch, after.” She smiled at him and adjusted his hair, moving the curls around just so over his brow. It was her good taste to blame for both the product in his hair as well as the modern styling. His preferred haircut had been the flat-top when they met, and she had told him in no uncertain terms that she was tired of seeing scalp, about seven years ago now. He realized he had been thoroughly trained, and smiled some more. Grabbing her around the waist with his free arm, he moved in for a longer, slightly coffee-flavored kiss.

  “I hope you have some time this evening to unwind, maybe a glass of wine on said deck, enjoying the fruits of your labor?” He grinned at her the way he knew she could never resist and slid a hand down to her lovely little butt, inside the sweatpants she was wearing, to make his meaning clear. “Stop that now, you have to get on the road or you will be late, Mr. Banker.” Jenny giggled, while nuzzling his neck and straightening his tie. “And you will be that much later home to me!” She did nothing to remove the hand from her posterior, so he grabbed a quick squeeze and headed out to the garage. “Love you, babe!” he called over his shoulder, her response of ‘love you’ commingling with his.