Atlantis Venture - Drone Pt. 01

"Please proceed, doctor," Sterling concurred. "We'll be entering the collective unconscious. Inside, the hunt continues beyond the mask of sanity."

"Embrace the darkness and find the truth," Myla said. "All his defenses are down, and we're going in there to ferret out the bullshit he's hiding." She chuckled. "Who would've thought such a thing was possible, in spite of all the shrinks with their kinks."

"Precisely, my dear," Sterling said with a special flare.

"Helmet attached, monitors on, we have telemetry," the doctor replied. Rapidly, she reviewed the screens, controls and the output data. "We have stability and he's reached the necessary level of stasis for the time being. We're good to go."

"Will he die?" Rusty asked in a whispering hum. Seemingly, her tone had a hint of remorse, maybe regret, or perhaps sympathy. She was like a bumble bee attracted to a fresh flower. Curiosity with detachment, but not without feeling, she wanted to know more. "Will this fry his marbles and cook him senseless?" She drawled distinctly.

"Probably," Striffe answered tersely. "There's a ninety-five percent probability he will not survive this. And yes, if you're thinking about it, we are torturing him. What we're doing, my dear Ms. Rusty, is a unique form of psychic torture." He slowly turned to her and looked deeply into her eyes. "You okay? You've been through a different version. Not unlike the rest of us, although somewhat a milder form, yet we lived."

"It's okay, my dearest," Myla spoke soothingly to her. She too glanced at her scuba chronograph and noted the time sequence. "We pretended we're the celestial kingdom, the pantheon so to speak, and simply listen to the babblings."

"Yeah, yeah, I get it." Rusty sighed and blew out a long breathy hiss. "Naw, I'm fine, we need to do this. Other ways are imprecise, ineffective, or not even possible," Rusty reasoned aloud. "Heck, we'd never get a confession otherwise."

"This is more humane than I would've done," Myla whispered ever so comfortably.

Her echo had an eerie quality. "Yet, my hammer approach could be distracting."

"Aside from that," Sterling started. "I'm not looking for a confession in a particular sense. I'm not interested in punishment so much as I want information. Sometimes, medieval methods have their place." He gave a smirk of a glance to Myla. "On the contrary, I just want to listen to the internal complicity, the thinking process." He drew in a meditative breath. "Let's get the giz flowing, shall we?"

"Psyche genesis in psyche synthesis," Myla uttered with a rich tone of skilled ability and experience. "When the darkness recedes, there's a lot he sees."

"We need to record it and analyze on multiple levels," the doctor added.

"Roger that," Sterling said to her and commenced to explain more to Rusty.

Sleep raptures and captures the body, but mainly seduces the brain's manifestation often called the mind for a more profound adventure. As the physicality undergoes the needed paralysis of repair and rejuvenation, the invisible nature of the mental capacity travels to mysteriously distant places. A trilogy unfolds in very realistic patterns, forming archetypes of inventive creativity. Themes evolve to explain experiences.

"Experience is important," Rusty muttered as she paid rapt attention.

"Experience is virtually everything," Sterling agreed with her. Together, they watched their captive slumber deeper and deeper. "A few more moments, he'll be making a psychic filmography of his life's exposure to a range of interactivity."

"Some have theorized, Sterling my dear as present company included, that this could be called a kind of forensic theology." Myla smiled as the suspect twitched uncontrollably in the chair, as though electric shock had been applied. "An ideology of personal mindfulness, as one tries to make sense of the physical world."

"Yet, in the world of the mind, that's not so easy once you exit the physical realm." Sterling winked at Myla. "He's nearly there. Furthermore..."

In captivity of oneself, the blackened environs constrained the physical in order to unleash the metaphysical. Shafts of light shot from shadowy places, crimson flares flashed, while sepia draped landscapes exposed shaded intentions. As the fright of the journey unfolded, the sensation of terror slid closer. Quiet, ever so quiet, the traveler entered the sphere of self-created minions of thought.

Only the mental manifestations were welcomed in this place. Pure thought, good and evil, were directed to enact the psychodynamic stage play of worldly experiences. By willful neural instigation, all is planned and all is forged in an effort to understand. Of major significance is the strenuous necessity to watch, listen and comprehend. As to the selfishness of fat, bloated and gluttonous selfishness, the atonement has been set in motion. A recompense for the expiation of overcoming the frailty of failures was in the moments that got nearer. Grasping the primal nature of oneself was at hand.

"I believe we have contact," the doctor added with her smooth comfortable tone. She inclined slightly toward Sterling and seemed to invite his attention. "Dr. Striffe, we've reached into the state prior to the preconscious fringe."

"Excellent, and our patient is still gripping his stiffened catatonic state," Striffe said to her and brushed her shoulder with his hand. He followed that with a congratulatory pat on the back. Of which, Myla immediately noted. "Nicely done, we're inside."

"Thanks, sir, we want to, don't we?" The doctor replied pleasantly.

"Clever move," Rusty whispered under her breath to Myla.

"Hmm, fascinating, Sterling," Myla intoned with an elongated hint on his name. She spotted swiftly his hand on the doctor. Her jade green eyes shot him a glance. "Well done, doctor, your expertise is fully noted," she hoisted with a slight tincture of annoyance. "The expression on the patient's face, will that change?"

"Yes, colonel," Striffe added with a particular notation as to her rank. He knew her question was completely meaningless in that she already understands the process. With a smile, he touched her elbow. "He's going to scream in a moment."

"Uh huh," Myla started and gave Sterling a glance. Those emerald eyes could stare through steel plates and melt holes to other side. "And, his demons will surface?"

"Oh yes, that's where they wait, along with other kinds of wicked creatures," Sterling hinted. "Alright, here we go, he's relaxing, and then we get..."

At once, the suspect screamed beyond the capacity of his lungs to absorb the volcanic eruption of anxiety. Fear based tremors raced through his cerebral conduits and exploded over a cascading psychic landscape of macabre horrors. Minions of his mind rushed forward to capture his essence of thoughts and spin the tales he had long created. Murders, rapes and tortures formed the motif of his creativity.

"Help!" The suspect pleaded; his voice ricocheted off the white sterile tiles of the laboratory. "I killed them for the sake of the mission! I did holy work!"

"And, I'm going to kill you for the sake of my mission," Myla murmured as she loomed menacingly behind Striffe. "Well, that is if you survive this."

"Wait for the moment, here it comes," Striffe told them. "He'll want to confess his sins and receive absolution. Then again, his brain might implode."

"We're right on the unconscious vortex," the doctor advised.

"Death to infidels!" The suspect cried out and arched violently upward, only to be contained by his restraints. "Long live the Glaucus Atlanticus!!"

"Ah yes, a pathway to a revelation of sorts," Striffe uttered. "Just when I thought we might be on the road to atonement, we get a battle cry for conquest."

"How typically male," Myla said with a sly smirk. "Oh, and how symbolic, a frigging water slug?" She snarled. "Geezus, that's the archetype? A sea creature?"

"Ain't that called the blue dragon or something like that?" Rusty hinted.

"Very good," Sterling answered gently. "My ladyships, you are both correct." Striffe took a gander at the console. "His vitals are quite elevated, this may not last long."

"An Atlanticus, huh?" Myla reminded. "Related to the Atlantic."

"A species of blue sea slug, yes indeed," the doctor added excitedly as well. "A small salt water mollusk that feeds on poisonous creatures, like the Portuguese man of war. We've used the venom for tranq darts and so forth back at Area-51."

"Fascinating," Myla mumbled in the direction of the doctor and caught a sharp glance from Sterling. "So, that's very interesting. What's the correlation?"

"The allusion is to the others, more or less anyone outside the normal scheme of things in their perception," Sterling started to explain further. "A tiny entity, a group, a faction, fighting a much larger enemy is somewhat the nature of the mythology."

"The small blue slug attacks and feeds on the massive jelly-like blob," Myla said her incursion into the discussion. "Yeah, it's a simplistic egotistical illusion. The so-called infidels are the gluttonous bloated ones. Which, to them in turn, are seemingly over-sized colonies of unbelieving parasites feeding off their right to exist, or whatever."

"Or, at least something foolishly misguided along those lines," Rusty joined in with her southern styled inflection. "Like a bunch flies hanging out in the barn, just plain annoying until set up some fly traps. Know what I mean? That's certainly one point of view. Like opinions and body parts, everybody's got one."

"I guess that sums it up," Myla added with a gracious grin to her friend.

"Uh huh, and what's with Atlanticus?" Striffe questioned. "We've not heard of that group. He tapped his wristwatch, and said to it, "Control, get me everything you find, dig up or otherwise uncover on a group called 'Glaucus Atlanticus', roger that?"

"Aye, aye, sir, we're on it," the control center answered.

"Scientific references aside," Striffe told the operator. "I just want an organizational list and any information about anyone associated with it. Copy that?"

"Affirmative sir, standby, we're conducting a search," controlled confirmed.

"Atlanticus be praised," the suspect droned on, now much calmer.

"Why Atlanticus?" Rusty wanted to speculate further on the assertion.

"The alleged lost continent of Atlantis? There is some ancient reference in middle eastern lore about the mythical island," Myla added to what Rusty said.

"Hmmm, one our continued fascinations back at our Groom Lake facility," Sterling said with an introspective sigh. "If so, it could suggest a metaphorical bridge between the continent of Africa and North America." He looked at Myla. "I'm guessing here. A linkage that could suggest something far more sinister."

"Yes, Atlantis," the captive murmured and stared straight up at the ceiling. "The kingdom will rise again and the sacred ones will rule the cosmos. Slaves!"

"What the heck, Sterling, he's talking like a child," Myla countered.

"Well, in a sense, yes, metaphorically speaking, maybe," Sterling answered. "Hmm, Atlanta, Atlantic, Atlas, and Atalas, all stem from the root basis of Atlantis."

"So, doc, it's speculative at best, and evidence deficient," Myla argued as was her customary practice with him. Both understand the counter balancing process helped them think more deeply. "There is no proof for the existence of Atlantis."

"You are correct my dear," Sterling conceded. "Nonetheless, although physical evidence is lacking, opinionated conjecture is potentially convincing."

"How big a piece of farmland we talking about?" Rusty chimed in.

"Oh, some legends put the land mass in varying configurations," Sterling started to elaborate while the suspect's blathering continued. "From a few hundred miles off the coast of Spain, to a hundred or so miles off the Bermuda Triangle. Could be a good-sized island, say about three thousand miles long to about seven or eight hundred miles wide."

"How much per acre you figure?" Rusty teased them. "Ah, just messing with ya."

"Stupid infidels!" Their captive yelled. Atlanticus to rise, Americus demise!"

To be continued in...

Atlantis Venture - The Drone - Part 2 - A Short Story Based on the Novel - Angels Keep Watch

By Randy Gonzalez