The Alignment Ingress by Thomas Greanias Read Free Book Online Page A

for weeks. It was already January 27, 2013, and no wrap was in sight for Hank Johnson. There were fewer visitors now, and fewer pings on the virtual tripwires around camp. Even tourism director Garamba’s local security guys showed up less often.
    The rains, however, did offer him some breathing room. Now he could concentrate on his research. Inside his trailer, Hank listened to the drops drum on the roof and reviewed his Google+ social media streams for crowd-sourced intel about the Queen of Sheba’s mines.
    His G+ leaks had paid off big time. People who thought they were playing a game in Ingress were a lot more useful than constipated academics or rung-climbing analysts who were afraid to embarrass themselves. The posts created supercharged collective thinking. One woman named “Linda B” had put everything together in a single post. She thought that the Queen of Sheba went to King Solomon for advice.
    Why Solomon?
    Solomon was known for his wisdom, but he was also known for his wealth. Jerusalem sat at the end of a trade route that would much later be known as the Silk Road. It was a center of trade. Solomon was the richest as well as the wisest man in the world, and in his Proverbs implied the two were related through some metaphysical alchemy.
    Which could explain the mythological object known as the “Philosopher’s Stone,” which could turn lead into gold.
    The philosopher’s stone wasn’t a rock. It was a ruse.
    Hank instantly considered the concept of banking—what the ancients called hawala. Solomon’s “wisdom” for the Queen of Sheba was how she could “multiply” her gold by leaving it with him, like many other nations probably did. The Royal Bank of Solomon probably functioned as a safe money laundry between the Egyptian kleptocracy and the vicious Assyrians—charging interest on all the gold and being paid in gold!
    What could be more magical in the Queen of Sheba’s time than multiplying gold? That had to be the business she conducted with Solomon in his Temple in Jerusalem.
    And yet, Hank knew there was more to this alchemy than financial witchcraft. After all, if the Temple Mount wasn’t the mother of all XM deposits, and if the Ark wasn’t some kind of power cube device, then what on Earth wa
s
?
    Exotic matter had to be behind the alchemy.
    Hank now suspected that XM was the invisible link between the Queen of Sheba and King Solomon, the secret behind his gold and her mines.
    In short, a portal. A very special portal. Right here, nearby.
    The ultimate question was who or what exactly was on the other side of this portal, generating this “ordered data” in XM. Not one bone in Hank’s body believed these so-called “Shapers” were angelic beings, let alone gods. They were, however, entities with an agenda.
    Whether it was for good or evil remained to be seen. But if the Shapers had wanted to destroy humanity, they could easily induce humans to destroy themselves. So far, however, he hadn’t noticed any violent intentions from the Shapers.
    The only thing anybody knows is that the Shapers want something from people, and that nobody knows what it is.
    Hank decided to give his G+ streams and endless speculations a rest and turn his attention to his private communications from Calvin at Niantic. Several emails in, however, he could sense between the lines that something was wrong.
    Something big has gone south at Niantic
, he thought
. Something Calvin’s not telling me. But maybe the kid will.
    Hank put on his rain poncho and stepped out of his production van into the downpour of the jungle. He slogged through the mud to a nearby tree and looked up to see a soaked-to-the-skin Rosier hiding inside a camouflaged UNI Tent.
    “Hey, Rosier, wanna come in from the rain?”
    A few minutes later his hugely embarrassed “tail,” wrapped in a blanket and cupping a hot mug of coffee in his hands, sat shivering in the trailer.
    “We don’t have to tell Niantic you blew the tail,” Hank told