Visions from the Crystal Skulls

Present time: November 9^th,1976

The way I remember it was this: the musk that permeated the museum held remnants of the olden times,with tiny dust particles manufacturing and holding bits and pieces of years pushed to the side to make way for the new. But the new wasn’t displayed in the museum.

Forlorn I am now, exiled from my beloved dust particles that so tightly held my hand in comfort and delusion each day I worked tediously and fastidiously at the museum as chief curator.  Forlorn I am now, as I sit in my jail cell, contemplating how filthy these dust particles are: the ones that float from cell to cell, from dirty inhabitant to dirty inhabitant. Accurately it has been fifteen years this time tomorrow, three forty-three in the afternoon, November tenth, 1976.  For fifteen years the impish dust particles in this jail house have been rotating like the signs around the zodiac: one cell, one sad constellation – a story once heroic but now lost in shapes downplayed to toys for a child’s mind. We’ve regressed but not as innocently.
           
I’ve told you of my entrapment here.  I’ve told you how I feel.  Now, I will tell you what crime it was that I committed, which has transplanted me into this horrendous, isolated jail house.  I will tell you as it happened, with no pieces left out, and you will see.  It is story itself that can be put in display at my now abandoned museum. 
           
But no, that will never be, as this will be a secret, between you and me.

Fifteen years ago: October 12^th, 1961
It took years and years, but finally I have collected all thirteen of them from various countries and cultures.  So many sacrifices I had made to obtain all of them in such pristine condition.  So much of my time has been dedicated to feed my undisclosed obsession with these crystal skulls, and I know with as much certainty as there are stars in our universe, that I will finally unleash the truths that they possess.

These crystal skulls are wondrous things, capable of such powers as cannot be held by the human race alone, and yet, they are here at my fingertips in the basement of my museum of ancient and natural history.

It is after hours and I stand alone here to conduct an experiment, one of which no one knows about, for if they knew what I was doing and how I came about to doing it (and most importantly from where I have stolen these skulls,) I would be in grave danger. 

But the doors are locked.  Patrons have left.  Employees have been sent home.

As a young man, my closest friends had laid in text books. Archeology, engineering, history, physics and astronomy (and even astrology) – I have studied them all under the yellow clamp light in my cluttered room.  I have studied these subjects with hunger the same as that of a beast.  Madly I bent over the volumes of texts,reading the works of scientists before me, and synthesizing my own theories,one of which I will now test to see if it is true, which I know, will be.

I bring over the thirteen cases onto the table and one by one, I open them.  On the table, I place the twelve smaller skulls in a circle and in the center, like the pupil in the white of the eye, I place the largest skull, which so happened to be the thirteenth one I’ve stolen.

Next,I bring over an invention of my own, which I call the<a></a>Photon Beam Shooter, a powerful forbidden gun glued together by various metals,rubbers and other materials and powered by an even more forbidden accelerator,the blueprint and physics of which had taken me half of my life to engineer.

But now, finally is the moment of truth. From a bird’s eye view, I aim the Photon Beam Shooter at the top center of the thirteenth skull.  Procured from my meticulous studies, I have found twelve shafts inside the thirteenth crystal skull.  Those twelve shafts, without a shadow of a doubt, must be there for one specific reason and that reason is this: so that once the photon beam enters the thirteenth skull in the middle,it will run through the twelve shafts inside the skull and then outwards, hitting the twelve other skulls surrounding it.

From that point on, it is all guess work.  Who knows what will happen once all thirteen skulls are united by a thing of the stars, light?
I pull the trigger and the beam shoots into the middle skull, right at the apex of it.  Then, like the rays of the sun,the beam is split into twelve and they spew out of the middle skull and hit the twelve other skulls, each dead in the center on the forehead.

What happens next is magical and fantastical, mythical yet palpable, astronomically unbelievable.  The thirteen skulls glow a deep blue and they begin to tremble ever so slightly.  Suddenly, they grow ever brighter, so bright that I am awfully doomed to be blind. But I will not hold back.  I have waited so long; to not witness this event would be a sin against my personal principles in scientific and ancient pursuits.

Suddenly,the skulls’ trembling ends, and all thirteen of them float five to six feet in the air over the table and give off a pulsating, zinging sound: Zzzzzzz-zzzzzzz-zzzzzzzzz-zzzz.  It is a sound similar to an electrical current running through air, splicing atoms, yet it feels like my pounding,racing heart.  This thing that is happening is both out and of me.  A mighty curious thing that holds me humbled and ravenous as I am rendered wholly mesmerized.

Then,above the skulls shoots out a kind of mock television, only, it is slightly transparent.  It is, I quickly deduce,holographic. My eyes widen and my mouth opens in awe.  The skulls are showing me a vision I will never lose to the merciless dogs of oblivion.

I see the assignations of people in power; I see world-wide calamity with floods and floating vehicles and broken trees; I see weapons far more explosive and dangerous than my Photon Beam Shooter; I see dismembered bodies and the crying innocent as well as man-hunts; I see sad faces looming over newspapers.

I have seen enough.

When my heart could not take it any longer, there is one last vision shown to me; it drags me into its secret and creates in me a feeling of advancing enlightenment.

In it, I am standing outside of Earth, and the moon, bright and white with its light reflected from the sun, is grazing to my right.  I seem to be floating freely in space,feeling nothing but my continued racing heart, my inner heat.  The Earth is blue and blotched with patches of white clouds.  Above the Earth there is a flying ship of advanced mechanics I have never seen before; it is headed toward my dear terrestrial planet, just south of the equator.
Swiftly,I am teleported to the earth.  There are tribal people in minimal clothing and they speak a language foreign to my ears.  They don’t see me, but they see something else.  It is that same flying ship that I saw entering the planet’s atmosphere from outer space.  The people gaze at it, gather together and yell and jump, punching their spears into the air and drumming their drums, as if welcoming a god.

*****

“Halt!  Stay there; do not move!”

The vision is gone!  The crystal skulls float back down on the table, and they no longer glow their bright blue.  I look around, and several police officers are now with me in the basement of my museum, with their guns – more powerful now than my Photon Beam Shooter because of their potential to kill me – are pointed toward my torso.

“What’s going on here!” shouts an officer.

“Gentlemen,I can explain!”  Yet I panic and attempt to run out of the nearest window.  Easily,however, they suppress my weak attempt to escape this unfortunate misunderstanding and I am handcuffed.  “The crystal skulls!”

“Jackson,get the skulls, and be careful.  We could use these as evidence!”

“I have a right to know how you found me, officer.”

“It was easy, Mr. Bradford.  There was blue light emanating out of your museum and folks around the area called to notify us about it.  Now tell me, what are you doing with these skulls and where exactly did you steal them from?  You’re desecrating them, aren’t you!”

“Nevermind that officer, the vision, there was a vision, you must believe me!”

“Come on guys, let’s get this crazy nut in the car and bring him in for questioning.  You have a lot of explaining to do, Mr. Bradford.  We know you stole these skulls.  We have our tips and our sources, but now, we have our evidence AND a possible weapon of mass destruction to boot!”

They walk me to their cars and I see each of the thirteen skulls being carried in plastic bags into the trunk of one of the police cars.  There was also a crowd gathered outside my museum.  “That’s Mr. Bradford! … I knew he was crazy!… that thief; he’s the guy they’ve been searching for in the papers! … and I thought he cared a thing or two about history!  He probably wanted to hold them for ransom!”

I cry and I plead as if for my life.  “Please,don’t take me away from the skulls.  My whole life was dedicated to them.  The vision; there was a vision – you’ve got to believe me officers.  I am not the thief you think I am.  I stole them, yes, but for a good reason, I swear… the vision! . . . .”

Present time: November 9th, 1976
And yet, I remain here locked up, charged with theft of stolen artifacts and the possession of a weapon of mass destruction. They see me and my top-secret (yet not so secret anymore) intelligence as a threat to society, when really, who am I? A former most avid museum curator on the surface, but a scientist and believer deep within.

They did not see the vision I saw, so tangible yet intangible as it was, and shown only to me.  Here I am, wasting my days counting the dust, biting my tongue until now. I could have been a prophet, a savior, and I knew there was no easy way of going about it.

The crime I committed may have been the crime of the century, but not because it was criminal in any illegal, immoral sense, but because it would have made an impact in ways so enlightening to the very society who has locked it all up.

The irony bites the dust.