He could, with the power of the Tablet now, shut it all down. Did Miriam know that? Did it matter? Certainly she would kill Diana and Montross then, and take down the plane or use it still for leverage in gaining back the Tablet. Caleb could even imagine in her rage she would kill him, then groom Alexander to use the artifact and try again.
No, there was no way around it. She would have surely foreseen any attack on her directly, so he couldn’t go that way either. Had to…
Wait. Something else he had seen just a few minutes earlier…
The grid. The earth bisected with all those power lines.
He remembered now where this all started, with Tesla’s research. It all brought to mind the Star Wars program, scalar weapons, free energy and…
Wait.
He smiled, slid the Tablet into the appropriate slot on the armrest and hooked his hands into the glove-shaped devices as he set his head back against the cushioned rest with its halo-like crown that fit around his head.
Feeling his consciousness tugged and nearly ripped out from his body, he fought to contain it, fought to control it and focus. He allowed the energy to flow toward the Tablet and from it, and merged with the harmonic tones thrumming through his deepest levels of awareness.
Again he saw the Earth, and again the megalithic sites at those ancient seats of power. Some of them, undiscovered until now, resting at the bottom of the ocean, but still potent. Built to survive time’s ravages, they could still be activated. Turned on, with the flip of a mentally-enhanced switch, through the power of the Tablet merged with his own consciousness.
“You’re right, Diana,” he said as loud as he could. Or did he just think those words and heard the waves of thought-sound reverberate through the chamber? Either way, he knew they had heard. “There is another way.”
Now the visions were coming, stimulated and in such a rush, everything he had ever dreamt about, tried to see and understand about past civilization, the key to so much mystery and confusion…
Civilizations long gone, verdant jungles surrounding the Nile and the lion-headed Sphinx as the great pyramid was under construction… a domed city underwater, another enclave on the moon, a long, long line of spiraling DNA connecting possessors of the Emerald Tablet, back to the dawn of humanity. So many hands daring to touch it, so many minds connecting, then fear and hesitation, hiding these artifacts away, building elaborate safeguards… men and women of power, sorcerers in the woods around bonfires, others in the snowy arctic reaches, another atop an enormous island city…
And now a flourishing time, with civilization dotted by immense structures and towers and connecting bridges; robed figures gliding through marble halls, all looking up — to the star with the tail in the evening sky…
And a pyramid, several pyramids in exotic settings across the globe, all firing single silver beams into the sky…
And those below, watching with calm fascination as something like a film of light spreads across the stars, a barrier against this cosmic foe…
Until the barrier sputters and breaks apart and the beams fizzle. A fight, with the tablet ripped free of its stage, taken, stolen, hidden. And the Earth, now defenseless as the broken off shards of Armageddon veer toward its pull and dive into the northern continent…
Caleb came back in a rush, still seeing the resulting images of destruction and the demise of an earlier civilization, one wiped clean in a massive flood, the source of so much myth and legend.
Shaking off the visions, he understood so much now, and more importantly — he knew what he had to do.
He couldn’t see the Custodian in all the electrical maelstrom outside, but he shouted as loud as he could anyway: “I will save the Earth, but do it my way.”
He closed his eyes, focused and reached out across the world…left his body and was everywhere at once, under the mountains, beneath the rolling waves, in the desert and atop the highest peak. Traveling along the energized routes along the grid, touching and activating the power nodes, the ancient centers designed for one thing.
It happened so fast, this almost simultaneous travel and spread of his awareness across the globe. And then it was over, and in his birds-eye view from above the earth, it was lit up like an ornament wrapped in glittery lights. Now, from dozens of points below rose slender beams, silvery electro-magnetic pillars that extended above the atmosphere and then spread out in concentric circles until merging with the others. Merging and crisscrossing, gaining power like ripples in a pond, expanding, spreading until the world’s atmosphere now had an extra layer.
A boundary, translucent and shimmering, sparking in places.
A shield.
And he wasn’t done yet. A simple thought, a direction to apply just a touch of power coursing through the chair and the Tablet, to the servers and power generators around the chamber. He needed to use precision, not too much, but also wanted an effect.
The pylons exploded and the server banks erupted in a blast of sparks and twisted metal. Right behind and around the snipers, the explosive discharge ripped through the soldiers and shredded them all where they stood, before they could fire a shot.
The conductor cables to the bell overloaded and snapped, roaring plasma fire and electricity. The bell shifted and dropped slightly, but kept spinning like undying corpse from a noose of chains, just now firing off wild energies and photonic colors and hanging precipitously over the abyss.
Fires erupted from computers and technicians burst into flames, howling and leaping over the railing or racing into walls.
Caleb opened his eyes. He disconnected himself from the machine and stepped free, toward Montross and Diana, with their looks of surprise and triumph. He turned his head to Miriam, who stood there looking frail and lost amidst the carnage.
“I bet you didn’t see that coming.”
But even as he said it, Caleb felt a sinking feeling in his gut. Montross and Diana must have felt it too, despite the removal of the imminent threat and the exact opposite of what Miriam had intended. Despite the destruction he had initiated in this unholy room, the closing of the portals and the end to this hell of multiple possibilities and infinite escape, she didn’t look fazed.
She merely smiled as she glanced around the room at last, admiring his handiwork. “I told you I could see all eventualities. And you, dear Caleb, did exactly as I knew you would. Thank you.”
“The blue screen block…” Caleb felt his shoulders grown heavy, his legs weak. “It was you.”
“What are you talking about?” Diana shouted over the din of the whirling bell and the screaming of the remaining men, still on fire.
“I tried to remote view the comet,” Caleb said weakly. “And with all this enhanced power, I should have been able to see how the warning got there.”
“But you got the blue screen of death?” Montross said sullenly. “So they tricked us?”
Miriam waved a hand toward Caleb in a motion of pity — and a trail of gold-plated dust sped his way. “Now, why don’t you really see…”
And he did:
A modern satellite, no markings, just solar panels and the typical landing gear, approaching the comet. It makes a perfect landing just as it comes within its closest pass to Earth. Another flash of light and his viewpoint is back in this very chamber, except the same satellite is here, fitted with the pyramid relic, recently inscribed and perfectly molded to look ancient…before it would be sent on through a larger portal materializing in the air, beyond which could be seen the blackness of space and the twinkling of stars.