The Atlantis Gene (The Origin Mystery 1)

“You and Andrew are not the only ones.”

Before Kate could speak, Qian continued with an unexpected strength in his voice. “Your enemy is the same group that burned that monastery 75 years ago and the same that will unleash an unthinkable evil very soon. That is what the tapestry depicts. Understanding it and the journal are the keys to stopping them. I have clung to life for 75 years, waiting, hoping the day would come when I would fulfill my destiny; and yesterday, when I learned what had happened in China, I knew it had come.” Qian reached inside his robe, and with a frail hand, offered Kate a small leather-bound book.

He motioned toward the tapestry. “What do you see, my child?”

Kate studied the richly colored images. Angels, gods, fire, water, blood, light, sun. “Some sort of religious depiction?”

“Religion is our desperate attempt to understand our world. And our past. We live in darkness, surrounded by mysteries. Where did we come from? What is our purpose? What will happen to us after we die? Religion also gives us something more: a code of conduct, a blueprint of right and wrong, a guide to human decency. Just like any other tool, it can be misused. But this document was created long before man found solace in his religions.”

“How?”

“We believe it was created from oral traditions.”

“A legend?”

“Perhaps. But we believe it is a document of both history and prophecy. A depiction of events before man’s awakening and tragedies yet to come. We call it the epic of the four floods.” Qian pointed to the upper right-hand corner of the tapestry.

Kate followed his finger and studied the image — naked beasts, no humans, in a sparse forest or an African savanna. The people are running, fleeing a darkness descending from the sky — a blanket of ashes that suffocates them and kills the plant life. Just below that, they are alone in a barren, dead wilderness. Then a light emerges, leads them out, and a protector is talking to the savages, giving them a cup with blood in it.

Qian clears his throat. “The savior knows that he cannot always be there to save them. He shares a cup with his own blood to protect them. The first scene is the Flood of Fire. A flood that almost destroyed the world, almost buried man in ashes and tore all the food from the world.”

“A creation myth.” Kate whispered. All major religions had some form of creation myth, a history of how God created man in his image.

“This is no myth. This is a historical document.” Qian’s tone was gentle, like a teacher or a parent. “Notice that man already existed before the flood of fire, living as beasts in the forest. The flood would have killed them, but the savior merely protected them. But he cannot always be there to save them. And so he gives them the greatest gift of all: his blood; a gift that will keep them safe.”

In the back of Kate’s mind, she thought: The Toba Catastrophe and The Great Leap Forward. Blood. A genetic mutation — a change in brain wiring — that gave humanity a survival advantage, helping them brave the sea of ashes falling from the Toba Super Volcano 70,000 years ago. The Flood of Fire. Could it be?

Kate skipped down the tapestry. The scene was strange. The men from the forest seemed to have transformed into ninjas, or spirits. They wore clothes, and they had begun slaughtering beasts. The scene grew bloody, the horrors growing with every inch of tapestry. Slavery, murder, war.

“This gift made man smart, and strong, and safe from extinction, but he paid a great price. For the first time, he saw the world as it truly was, and he saw dangers all around him — in the beasts of the forest and in his fellow man. As a beast, he had lived in a world of bliss, acting on his instincts, thinking only when he had to, never seeing himself for what he was, never worrying about his mortality, never trying to cheat death. But now his thoughts and fears ruled him. He knew evil for the first time. Your Sigmund Freud came very close to describing these concepts with his id and ego. Man transformed into a Dr. Jekyl and Mr. Hyde. He struggled with his beast-mind, his animal instincts. Passion, rage — no matter how much we evolve, man can’t escape these instincts — our heritage as beasts. We can only hope to control the beast inside us. Man also longed to understand his waking mind, with its fears, dreams, and questions of where he came from and what his destiny was. And most of all, he dreamed of cheating death. He built communities on the coast and committed untold atrocities to ensure his own safety and seek immortality, in his deeds or through some magic or alchemy. The coast is the natural place for man; it’s how we survived the flood of fire; sea life was our food source when the land was scorched. But his reign was short-lived.”

Kate surveyed the next part of the tapestry — a great wall of water, just behind a chariot on the sea, which carries the cup-bearing savior from the flood of fire.

“The savior returns and tells his tribes that a great flood is coming, that they must prepare.”

“Sounds familiar,” Kate said.

“Yes. There is a flood myth in every religion, old and young, around the world. And the flood is a fact. Around 12,000 years ago, the last ice age ended. Glaciers melted. The planet’s axis shifted. And sea levels rose almost 400 feet over the entire time period, sometimes rising gradually, sometimes in destructive waves and tsunamis.”

Kate studied the depiction — of cities falling to the wave of water, of throngs of people drowning, of rulers and the rich standing and smiling at the water, and at the very end, a small band of people, dressed in humble clothes, venturing inland, to the mountains. They carried a chest of some kind.

Qian let her consider the tapestry for a long moment, then continued. “The people ignored the warning of the flood. Man had mastered the world, or so they thought. They were arrogant and decadent. They thumbed their noses at the coming disaster and continued with their wicked ways. Some say God is punishing man for killing his brothers and sisters. One tribe heeds the warning, builds an ark, and retreats from the sea, into the mountains. The flood comes and destroys the cities along the sea, leaving only the primitive villages inland and the scattered nomadic tribes. A rumor spreads that God is dead, that man is now the God of Earth. That the Earth belongs to them for them to do with as they please. But one tribe maintained the faith. They held to one belief alone: that man is flawed, man is not God, that humility is to be truly human.”

“You were the tribe.”

“Yes. We heeded the savior’s warning and did as he commanded, we carried the Ark to the highlands.”