Free Charger the Soldier by Lea Tassie Page B

world
and escape the ice that would eventually have killed them all."
    He took a sip of his coffee. It was cold now,
but he was too excited about the map on the stone monolith to care.
"Suppose, though, that a group stayed on Earth, survived the ice
age and built ancient sites like Gobekli Tepe, with nothing more to
go on than stories of times past, stories of Atlantis? War, famine,
and time erased all traces of Atlantis until Plato rediscovered
it." He rose and paced back and forth, the way he used to do in the
lecture room. "Then the church, realizing the knowledge revealed by
Gobekli Tepe threatened their hold on power, decided to bury the
site and redirect everyone's attention to a story of a flood and
Mount Ararat."
    "So Atlantis really existed?" asked a student
after a long pause.
    "All traces of that time were ground under
gigantic ice sheets, and only these outposts survive. I expect we
will find more places like Tepe soon." The pain in his knees forced
him to sit down again. "What really fascinates me is the discovery
of the Red Deer cave people in China. These humans are so different
from what has been discovered about other hominids of that time
that they might almost be a separate species. They didn't seem to
interact with the other people of 12,000 years ago. They apparently
stuck mostly to themselves. So I ask you, could these have been the
descendants of the mythical Atlantis?"
    The students all had puzzled looks, which
amused him. They were finding it difficult to keep up with his
thinking.
    "These Red Deer cave people found in China
could easily be a race of xenophobic humans who wanted nothing to
do with the other groups of people." He tapped his index finger on
the table surface. "I would contend that any group of advanced
humans left on Earth, after others of their kind rocketed off into
space, would want very little to do with people they might perceive
as primitives."
    Another young female student spoke. "So this
place was not built by aliens, but may have been built to
commemorate humans who left Earth behind and became aliens. But
where did they go?"
    "I'm not sure I'm right," Opinhimmer said. He
didn't want to mislead the students into thinking he had all the
answers. "I have no idea where they would have gone, or if they
even existed. We need to research more of the site before we can
have any hope of a real answer. Nevertheless, I will add this
little piece of information. I have a colleague who was working on
Stonehenge a few years back and made a startling discovery. I'm
sure you have all heard of Nicola Tesla; he did work on the
properties of electricity traveling great distances through
wireless transmission. Well, it turns out that my friend in Britain
came across some old writings in the basement of one of the museums
and, after much study, found that Stonehenge was thought to be a
type of electrical transmitter."
    "Wow, Professor, this is really getting out
there," said a student with a disbelieving expression.
    Dr. Opinhimmer continued, hoping to shore up
his argument. "What made it all conceivable was the discovery of
what were thought to be mistakes in the construction of Stonehenge.
My colleague found additional pits or small pot holes that were
assumed to be there as locking mechanisms for the upright stones,
but were found on the opposite side of the cap stones from where
they should have been." He wrapped his hands around his coffee cup
to stop himself waving his hands around like a lecturer. "What he
discovered, according to this old manuscript, was that if one
poured a mixture of mercury and other, dissimilar liquid metals
into the pits of a completed Stonehenge circle, and those holes
were at certain angles, in an electrical storm the stone circle
created static electricity in huge arcs, much like a Tesla
coil."
    He noted with satisfaction that the students
were all sitting on the edge of their seats.
    "The combination of the dissimilar liquefied
metals creates a weak electrical