A visionary fantasy and spiritual journey into a subterranean advanced civilization
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What would you be willing to sacrifice to protect the ones you love?
Tia Violetta is about to turn 30. She lives barricaded away with her paranoid father, Haddon, who has shielded her from the world and her true heritage.
What Tia doesn’t know, is that a sinister AI, known as SIM, has enslaved humans on Earth.
And SIM is hunting her.
Tia and Hadden are descendants of Helio Tropez, a subterranean safe haven where all inhabitants possess special abilities. And, Tia bears the mark of Pentada, along with four other women in her family that she never knew existed.
Together Pentada have special powers to annihilate SIM and save humanity.
Just before Hadden dies, he sends a telepathic message to his younger self to time travel into the future to save Tia.
But by doing so, young Hadden starts a chain of events that sends them on two different timelines.
They must confront dangers in the subterranean and surface worlds to unite Pentada.
And only two possible outcomes await humanity.
Will it be ascension to a higher dimension, or complete annihilation of life on Earth?
A visionary fantasy and spiritual journey into a subterranean advanced civilization
-------------------------------------------
What would you be willing to sacrifice to protect the ones you love?
Tia Violetta is about to turn 30. She lives barricaded away with her paranoid father, Haddon, who has shielded her from the world and her true heritage.
What Tia doesn’t know, is that a sinister AI, known as SIM, has enslaved humans on Earth.
And SIM is hunting her.
Tia and Hadden are descendants of Helio Tropez, a subterranean safe haven where all inhabitants possess special abilities. And, Tia bears the mark of Pentada, along with four other women in her family that she never knew existed.
Together Pentada have special powers to annihilate SIM and save humanity.
Just before Hadden dies, he sends a telepathic message to his younger self to time travel into the future to save Tia.
But by doing so, young Hadden starts a chain of events that sends them on two different timelines.
They must confront dangers in the subterranean and surface worlds to unite Pentada.
And only two possible outcomes await humanity.
Will it be ascension to a higher dimension, or complete annihilation of life on Earth?
Prologue
Hawaii – December 21, 1960
If Hadden Violetta had learned anything in life so far, by the ripe age of twenty, it was to act on his intuition…even if he risked losing everything. That day, stealing a plane felt worth the risk.
The sun had just edged over the horizon, a mere sliver of golden light in the sky. His face was tanned from afternoons of working out on the beach. His Air Force uniform was worn and soiled. The smell of cheap mulled wine hung around him, following him like a curious shadow but always half a step behind. Leaning against a blackened ironwood tree, he took a shaky breath to compose himself. He wiped the sweat from his brow, bounced on the balls of his feet, rolled his shoulders, and broke into a sprint through the underbrush.
Emerging from the shade, the trees spat him into the muggy, petrol-filled air of the air force base. He darted from shadow to shadow before taking cover behind a discarded container. Peering around the corner, Hadden watched as the ground crew finished preparing the plane and huddled to chat amongst themselves. Right on schedule, a truck arrived at the entrance with a new shipment of supplies. As predicted, the ground crew left the plane unattended to help unload the shipment. With a skeleton crew left to cover the morning’s shift, most of the crew were still sleeping off the Christmas party hangover. Those still on their feet either hadn’t slept well or hadn’t slept at all.
The F-100 Super Sabre now stood alone, its canopy open. Hadden looked in both directions, then broke cover. He sprinted across the runway, hoisted himself into the cockpit, sealed the canopy shut, and donned the pilot’s helmet. Even without a photographic memory, he’d have known what to do. The countless hours of training had made the process of running checks a second nature, his hands moving from switch to button without so much as a hesitation. As the engines roared to life, the ground crew looked up, startled. The pilot emerged from the latrine with a confused expression, his eyes darting to and fro between the ground crew and his no-longer-idle aircraft.
As Hadden thundered down the runway, the crew ran for the airfield, waving their arms. As the jet lifted him into the air, the base shrinking into the background, he breathed a sigh of relief. Once he entered the cloud cover, Hadden activated the cloaking device in his amethyst, but he couldn’t tell if it was working. To. Be on the safe side, he deactivated the radio signal. No one could stop him now.
In the distance, Makapu's lighthouse jutted majestically against the azure sea. A humpback whale breached in the distance, and Hadden barrel-rolled in response before dropping low over the water. The whale breached again, splashing down in great plumes of foam. Hadden smiled. He felt free, even if just for a few rare moments. He began a gentle climb until he reached five thousand feet, then veered north-east, leaning hard towards the Big Island. The jet engine vibrated in his chest as he leveled out the plane.
As he cruised through the atmosphere, faces appeared, as they often did, in clouds and seascapes. Today, his mother’s star-drenched eyes appeared in the swirls of indigo below him. Their last conversation haunted him, still echoing in his ears. His decision to join the air force had torn the family apart, but this meeting could change all that and undo any wrongs against his family and those he loved.
His hands trembled on the controls, and he shifted, taking a breath to calm down. He searched through his memory banks for the story he needed – a tale about his father flying through a vortex that warped time, blurring the edges of one reality with another. It was a story that felt so real it was as though he’d experienced it himself.
Few people in the Air Force ever talked about these anomalies. Places like the Bermuda Triangle remained an unsolved mystery as far as civilians were concerned, but Hadden knew better. All those from where his father had come from knew about the places where you could travel between timelines and dimensions. A well-kept secret in one world was common knowledge in another.
He scanned the horizon until he saw it: the tubular cloud that marked an underwater volcano with a stargate. As he neared, the instrument panel became increasingly erratic, dials leaping like fleas. Instead of pointing to the magnetic north, it spun before locking on to the true north. His breath quickened as he unfolded the handwritten note. It contained four images, a date, and a set of numbers.
For four nights in a row, he dreamt the contents of that note. The first night was an image of the tubular-shaped cloud near Kilauea Volcano, also known as the Hawaiian vortex, with the date 21 December 1960 – the winter solstice. On the second night, he saw a city with skyscrapers and a tower that had a flying saucer on top of it. In the distance, a snow-capped mountain had towered above that city. On the third night, he dreamt of a house with a dome. It stood near a miniature Statue of Liberty. On the fourth night, he’d seen the time-space coordinates. The realisation had jolted him awake, covered in sweat. If this mission proved successful, it went against all-time travel regulations that had ever existed, but he had to do it anyway.
Gripping the controls tightly, he held the jet steady, pushing it to max speed, then plunged into the centre of the great cylinder. The cloud swallowed the aircraft whole. Inside, flashes of fork lightning erupted all around him. Thunder shook his ribcage. Swirling black clouds formed a tunnel ahead of him. As the propellers strained against the magnetic pull, sparks flew from the engine. Still, the plane glided forward as if on a frozen lake. His hands clenched the steering shaft, the plane shuddering so hard that metal plates started to separate. When the tailpiece erupted in a fireball, his breathing caught in his chest. He pressed his neck against the headrest, tucked his chin to his chest, brought his elbows in close and yanked the ejection lever.
The canopy flew off, and the charge beneath the seat fired, launching him clear of the plane. Seconds later, the chair fell away as his parachute thankfully opened. He watched in anguish as the jet flew into the distance, trailed by a cloud of black smoke. As he fell into the abyss, his stomach churned. Wind screamed in his ears, and sodden clouds engulfed him in the pitch dark. Hadden prayed for a soft landing.
When the clouds parted, the moon hung full in a starry sky. A landmass covered in silver skyscrapers sparkled in the twilight, most of them standing taller than anything he’d seen before. One looked like a flying saucer on top of a tower, just like in his dream. He manoeuvred his parachute away from the buildings and towards a nearby beach park. In the distance, the white cap of Mount Rainer looked on over his hometown. He recognised it, but Seattle had exploded in size, sprawling as well as stretching skyward.
Yet, despite the immensity of the city, it seemed quiet, the roads void of cars. He splashed down into Puget Sound, fifty meters from Alki Beach Park. Freeing himself of the chute, he swam to the familiar beach with the miniature Statue of Liberty. Crawling out of the water, he looked down both ends of the shoreline. Not a soul.
Dripping wet, he hiked up the rocky beach to a picnic bench. On the table, a newspaper was wedged between slats. Hadden held it up to the moonlight, squinting to see the date. He let out a breath and ran a hand through his hair. “It worked…” he muttered, spinning around in a circle, trying to see what this new century looked like. “2010. That’s… that’s unbelievable.” A few blocks away was the house with the dome. He shook himself off and started heading towards it. It’s why he’d come, after all. He’d been called, summoned to the future to meet someone, and that’s where he’d find them – the person who had sent him the message.
His seventy-year-old self.
Throw in time travel, complicated family issues, and a simulation program that wants to take over the world, you have this addicting book. Helio-Tropez by CM Rieger is primarily about a family coming back together. Tia Violetta in the span of one night discovers she and her father are from a race of aliens that came to help make Earth a better place, but something happened that caused them to go into hiding while leaving others at their enemy’s mercy. Now she has to navigate this strange new reality and discover who she really is.
While reading this book I was reminded of the Matrix movies, a person who wakes up one day to find out their world is being run by controlling simulation program. Granted this particular story doesn’t happen in a virtual world, but the concept appears to influenced by it. Along with the main character awaking unimaginable powers suppressed by an overreaching power in order to save their newly found community.
Tia isn’t the only relatable character in this story, the mysterious Addy who has a connection to Tia finds himself navigating this secret world along with her, but is a bit more informed on what she should except. As they develop and form connections with their newly found community, the two find out how much they need each other to save the others like them while awakening their suppressed powers. These dual journeys through time and space and the mind shows people how sometimes they need help to discover what they can be. As well as finding out how to go about questioning everything a person has ever known and that it doesn’t hurt to go it alone. The family support system Addy and Tia discover is what helps them get through their powers and new realities.
Overall, I think Helio-Tropez is a good story for those who enjoy hard sci-fi with a strong emphasis on family bonds. However, the large amount of unique terminology that sometimes took more than a few pages to fully explain was off putting. Other than that issue, any reader would find themselves in a struggle to even put this book down.