[Original Novel] The Eternal Mysteries of Vril, Part 9

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Previous parts: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8}

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I couldn’t continue in that state, but Neil filled in the gaps. “Flugscheiben. Haunebu. Or ‘vimana’, depending on who you ask. Most of them were manufactured for World War Two, but only a scant few were ever deployed. When it became obvious the Nazis were losing, the Vril-ya...re-evaluated the wisdom of their already tenuous alliance.”

I knew it. I knew this was something to do with all that shit. My skin crawled, and I asked what a more advanced species would want with the Nazi regime. “Their shared interest in eugenics, for one. They also agreed, more or less, on what the end result should look like. Proponents of the alliance among the Vril-ya believed that perhaps we could one day become their equals, by shaping ourselves into their likeness. That’s as close as the Vril-ya ever got to progressive ideals.”

It was flat out insulting, and I said so. He shrugged. When I asked how those craft access the surface, if they are actually capable of flight, he said matter of factly that the hangar doesn’t open up to the surface world at all. “They were manufactured, then stockpiled here after Stalingrad. The only channel into or out of the hangar leads to the inner Earth.”

The what now? Even having seen all of this, every time he opened his mouth something new would tumble out that I felt certain must be a load of bullshit. Inner Earth? The inner Earth. What else could it mean, except what it sounds like?

He confirmed it. “I don’t blame you. Think about how fundamentally impossible many human engineering projects would seem to a chimpanzee. Remember also the energy density of Vril, without which excavating the interior of the Earth and disposing of all that molten ore discreetly would’ve been impossible.”

Would’ve been? “It IS impossible” I insisted. “You’re talking shit now, I’m sure of it. The Earth can’t be hollow. Gravity doesn’t work that way.” He let me huff and puff before adding “...unless you have the means to generate and control gravity.”

Oh. Of course, artificial gravity. How foolish of me. Still, I was hardly in a position at this point to second guess him, however deranged any of it sounded. Standing on a moving walkway, amid what look for all the world like alien ruins, does have that effect.

So instead of disputing it, I just asked why. “To hide themselves from us. It would make more sense if you could read their literature, get a sense of their culture and mindset. Where humans have always been innately exploratory and expansionistic, the Vril-ya do so only when there are practical reasons to. Securing more resources for example, or living space.”

He gestured over his shoulder at the looming mechanism with the concentric rings. “By ensuring they continue to receive outside energy, we also ensure that they don’t need to come to the surface for that. Whatever their hearts desire, we bring it down to them, so that they never have any reason to leave the inner Earth, or the various subterranean colonies carved out of its crust, such as the one we’re in now.”

I asked what happens if ever they become discontent. If they should run out of some resource, or living space. He smiled weakly, and when he next spoke, it was in an almost wistful tone. “It will be the most important day of human history...as well as the last. They will do to us what we have done to every species on this planet less intelligent and capable than we are.

They will spread into our habitat, displacing us either by fear or by force. Keeping some of us to study, exterminating the rest wherever it is easier to do so than to ignore us. In this way, the last surviving communities of humans may persist as something akin to vermin.”

I asked whether they have some definition of a legal person, and why humans don’t qualify, being that we’re conscious and self aware. “Those are criteria designed by human beings, for human benefit. It is not by coincidence that humans just exactly satisfy them. But if you can, try to conceive of modes of cognition higher than consciousness. Greater than self-awareness.

Vril-ya, in possession of these qualities, naturally define them as the criteria for personhood. It is a standard we regrettably fail to meet, and as a consequence are something like fauna to them. They only don’t eat us because we’re apparently rather bland.”

The picture he continued to paint never got any better. It seemed the very best we could hope for was to placate them, which by the sound of it is what he’s been up to down here all these years. Him and all these other robed weirdos. That still didn’t explain why he’d lure me down here, along with the other girls.

Before I could ask about that part, we arrived in a comparatively modest circular chamber. There were no lights here, save for faint golden illumination coming from beneath an immense circular emblem carved into the floor. The same one on my ring.

Because of the darkness, I nearly stepped in the pool until Neil stopped me short of it. A sort of moat around the giant emblem carved into the floor, it looked to be perhaps six feet across. The emblem itself was at least twenty feet in diameter by the looks of it.

The robed figures took up positions around the perimeter of the pool, then receded away from it into darkness. In order to observe discreetly, I assumed. I followed the example of the rest of the girls, taking up positions immediately around the edge of the pool. They all then began to disrobe.

I stared at the darkness where I knew Neil stood, clutching my robe tightly shut, face turning red. My gaze darted about the room in search of any alternative before at last I surrendered to the situation. This can’t be what it was all for. I might’ve suspected that before I saw the saucers.

After dropping my robe, I mimicked the others, stepping into the placid pool of surprisingly warm water encircling the emblem. Even after the water line covered everything essential, I still felt self conscious, wondering if the robed perverts watching us had their phones out to record it all.

I could only barely make out their silhouettes in the shadowy recesses of the chamber. But then, all of a sudden, they stepped into the light...with drums. All except Neil, that is. He bore a narrow horn fashioned from the same pale golden metal as everything else that I recognized as a clarion.

A few began beating their drums, establishing a beat that the rest gradually added to as they joined in, one after the next. Sharp, shrill, militaristic sounding. It irritated my ear drums something fierce, but that was only the start. When Neil began blaring on that damned horn, it became impossible to so much as hear myself think.

The other girls all posed in a particular way, arms outstretched as if waiting to receive something. But what? The question answered itself as the emblem in the floor split apart. A cool mist emerged, and I smiled, imagining they’d set up a fog machine for effect or something.

Those thoughts were halted, and obliterated, the moment one of them rose into view. The emblem was only some sort of hatch concealing an elevator shaft. The creature which ascended up out of that shaft upon a platform similar to the one I rode to get down here was almost impossible to understand the sight of.

My mouth hung open, and I don’t doubt that my pupils were dilated. I still don’t know how to express it in a comprehensible way. I’ve seen uncommonly beautiful people before. Supermodels, some of them who were still in their early twenties but had nevertheless undergone top shelf plastic surgery.

They almost don’t register as real people. Some primal part of the brain rejects them, simply because they look totally unlike everybody else you’ve ever seen. The...thing before me, mist wafting about its ankles, exuded the same uncanny valley type effect.

It was just so absurdly sculpted. Absolutely every little line was completely perfect. Every proportion, save for the fact that it looked to be around eleven feet tall. Skin so pale I could see veins in some places. Hair certainly blonde, but a pale shade which closely matched the metal everything of theirs seems to be made of.

The musculature was beyond compare. Not overbearing, like some roided up body builder, but just exactly right. I couldn’t have told you what the perfect balance was until I saw it with my own eyes. Like a living statue of a Greek god.

I nearly concluded it really was a statue until it moved. The part of my brain still struggling to accept it as a real person underwent a nauseating, lurching shift as it did so. Its every little movement was uncanny. Like CGI or something. Photorealistic, but so alien to all of my life experience until then that it was brain melting to look at. Like witnessing an alien, a live dinosaur or something of that nature.

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^{Stay Tuned for Part 10!}