Free Oracle by David Wood, Sean Ellis Page A

stone that might have been granite or gabbro, and almost as tall as Jade herself—failed to buoy anyone’s spirits.
    “ Jupiter or Saturn?” Sanchez asked with all the enthusiasm of a grocery clerk asking about a bagging preference.
    “ Hopefully Saturn,” Jade replied, trying to sound upbeat. “That would mean we’re close to the edge.”
    They could no longer see the golden orb at the center. Without a light source, it had been swallowed up completely, though Jade suspected that even if it had been illuminated, it would have been a pinprick of light. The chamber was that vast.
    “ Do you think this cavern is natural, or did they dig it out?” She had hoped to engage Sanchez or Acosta with the question, but Professor answered first.
    “ Probably a little of both. They found a natural cave and made it bigger. Unless I’m mistaken, we’re not under the pyramid any more. That might explain how the entrance we’re looking for remained hidden for so long.”
    “ If it even exists,” mumbled Acosta.
    “ It exists,” Jade insisted. “They had to have a way to get those spheres in here.”
    Professor seized on her assertion. “Jade, about the spheres. When you tried to move the Earth stone—”
    “ Please. Let’s talk about something else.”
    “ That’s not what I meant. Were you able to move it at all?”
    She shook her head . “I don’t think so. As soon as I tried…”
    Professor nodded. “It was more than just contact. We were all close to the spheres. I’m sure I must have touched them at some point. It was only when you tried to move it that something happened. And it didn’t move.” Jade realized he was looking at Dorion.
    The physicist shrugged, but Jade again sensed that he was intentionally holding back. “If we are dealing with some kind of dark matter field, it would affect the density of the object, making it more massive than it would appear.”
    “ Which raises a lot of questions about where these spheres came from in the first place, and how the ancients were able to move them into position.”
    “ I don’t know about dark matter,” Sanchez said, finally warming up to the discussion. “But the spheres themselves are very reminiscent of those found in Costa Rica.”
    Jade nodded, making the connection. Although spherical representations were mostly absent from Mesoamerican cultures, there was one significant exception. The river valleys of Costa Rica were litte red with enormous stone spheres, more than three hundred of them, the largest of which measured over six feet in diameter. The spheres were unquestionably artifacts of a human civilization, but beyond the fact of their existence, little was known about them. Most scholars attributed them to the extinct Diquis culture which vanished with the arrival of Spanish colonists, but their purpose and the means by which a primitive culture had successfully crafted nearly perfect spheres using only stone tools remained a mystery. UFO enthusiasts often pointed to the spheres as evidence of alien visitation, while others speculated a connection to Atlantis. Given her own recent adventures, Jade could not completely discount either idea. Indeed, an Atlantean connection might explain why the Dominion—assuming that’s who Hodges was working for—had taken an interest in the investigation at Teo.
    “ That’s a long way to roll a stone,” Professor remarked. “Costa Rica is fifteen hundred miles away, and there’s a lot of rough country in between.”
    “ They would not need to transport the stones,” Sanchez countered. “Just the people with the skill to make them here.”
    “ Or it could be the other way around,” said Jade. “Maybe the people who made these spheres went south when Teotihuacan was abandoned. It’s worth looking into…when we get out of here.”
    As if responding to the forcefulness of her statement, the floor of the cavern began sloping up in a gentle curve , which abruptly became a wall. The stone was