Make IT Real! by Sander R.B.E. Beals (good books to read for young adults TXT) 📕

clock has a chance to do so. Around five, so there is still ample time to go through the process of waking up and greeting the new day. Since the girls won't be up until around seven anyway, I grab the guide from my suitcase and start to read. I love Douglas Adams, as a writer I mean. His particular sense of humor makes life more than bearable. Not twenty minutes from where I was, I fall flat on my back in laughter: just imagine building a priceless computer, having it compute for seven and a half million years, only to come up with a single answer: '42'. Hilarious!

But the Answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything isn't just arbitrary: Only last week did I find out just how 42 is different from any number ever devised by man. Watch this:

42 = 2x3x7, which are 3 of the first four primes.

Any integer non-multiple of 7, divided by seven yields a repeating fraction ending in 142857 ad infinitum.

Same for division by multiples of 7, e.g. 14, 21, 28, etc.

142857 has 42 in it starting from the 2nd position

142857 has 14 and 28, which total 42.

142857 has 57-1-4-2-8 which also totals 42.

142857 repeated is also the summation of all the multiples of 7, e.g. 14, 28, 56, 112, 224, etc.

142857 is the second-most abundant repeating sequence in integer division space, after 000000.

So maybe 42 is the answer, who knows?

Silently, I thank All that Is for all the blessings that this day will bring, and of course for the two most important ladies in my life, Valerie and Jane. They are probably waking up in the room next door, excited about today's excursion to the pyramids of Giza. I envision that today will be a memorable day, and go through the process of getting ready to enter the world outside my hotel room door. Not enough beard to warrant a shave yet, so I skip the foam and razor exercise, using the saved time to take a hot shower. Not that I'm not already hot, but after the hot streaming water my skin will be better equipped to deal with the hot air that is characteristic of Egypt. Also, I love the feel of the water streaming through my mind, washing out all the energetic dirt that clings to it from thinking too much. Ah, you think it can't? Just look up the research of Dr. Emoto, and be amazed at what water can and can't do! A fresh set of clothes completes the ritual, the guide in my back pocket, and I knock on the dividing door to the girls’ room. Valerie calls for me to come in, and I find the two girls dressed to kill and ready to go. We take the elevator downstairs, to the luxurious dining room, where a breakfast buffet is set. The girls fill up their plates modestly, and I stick to just coffee. Yesterday's late dinner still has my stomach indicator set to full, so there's no need to start eating right now. We find ourselves a table for three, and discuss today's actions. "I hope the guide has an interesting story to tell", Valerie remarks. She is easily put off by boring stuff, looking for new info all the time. Jane hopes that it's allowed to take pictures inside the pyramids, she's dying to fill up her camera with lots of images. I quietly laugh at that, since I put a four gigabyte memory card into the Sony. With the three megapixel mode she's using, that will last her about ten thousand clicks in the compressed JPG format...

Around nine, we meet Gina in front of the hotel. The hotel minivan takes us and some other people through the busy Cairo traffic to Giza, the place where building for life (and beyond) was perfected. Amazing to see how these buildings are still largely intact, even after all these thousands of years. The guide greets us, and does a head count. She wants to make sure none of us remain lost inside the marvelous stone structures. Flashlights are distributed, just in case anyone is dumb enough to stray from the crowd, and end up in the unlit tunnels that also still exist there. Seventeen tourists follow the guide towards the biggest of the three pyramids, and an odd little synchronicity catches my ear: Alan Parsons' Pyramid seeping from the headphones of one of the other guests, as we enter the pyramid. We follow the guide down the entrance corridor, and then up to the Grand Gallery.

Jane is busy snapping images, when she notices an irregularity in one of the walls next to the pillars. I watch as she cautiously touches the spot, and steps backwards when a segment of the wall slides inwards and out of the way, revealing a downward corridor starting about halfway up the Grand Gallery. She quickly looks around, only to find out that nobody seems to have noticed the barely audible sound of the stone sliding into place. She looks at me, then shrugs her shoulders as if to say: "What shall we do?". I studied the internal layout of the pyramids beforehand, and realize that this is a corridor that isn't on any map. We'll probably never get a chance like that again. The guide sure as hell won't go exploring it if we show it to her. I quickly draw Valerie's and Gina's attention, and the four of us sneak off into the corridor while the rest of the group seems to be completely engulfed in the fascinating story the guide is telling about something further up the gallery. As we enter, flashlights in hand, the big block of stone starts to move again, removing any trace of where we went.

The girls seem somewhat frightened, now that our point of entry appears to have vanished. "Smell", I advise them. They look at me puzzled, still not capable of finding the way out. I explain that the air in here is far less stale than the air in the normal corridors of the pyramids. Therefore there must be a source of fresh air somewhere, and hence, a way out. We continue down the sloping stairs, prepared to meet whatever is out there (or should I say "in there"?).

The corridor seems to go on for quite a while, but just as we are about to give up hope, Jane points out that there is a light at the end of the tunnel. We finish the remainder of the corridor double-time, only to arrive at a structure oddly out of sorts with the rest of the pyramid. It is a tall spherical chamber, with a circular floor and ceiling. Above our heads, in the center of the structure, is the source of the light, which is unearthly to say the least: it looks gaseous, perfectly spherical, and seems to emit no heat. The light it does emit is pleasant to the eyes, even if you look straight into it. The "wall" of the chamber, being the spherical surface between the flat floor and ceiling, is decorated with what seems to be a map of some kind, like an inside-out globe. But I do not recognize any continents from the surface we just left behind. "Inner Earth!", Gina exclaims: "This is a map of Inner Earth.". I know what she means, but the girls seem somewhat surprised. I mentioned the fact that Earth might be hollow to them before, but they never really believed it. Gina, being the most knowledgeable on the subject, explains in more detail: "Earth is said to not be a solid metallic globe, but a hollow sphere with a relatively small sun at its core. The inner and outer surfaces are joined at the poles, where large holes are said to exist. If you look on the Internet you will find several stories, books even, of people who claimed to have been there. They invariably describe a civilization that is many years ahead of us, and that lives in peace even though there are many different species down below." Valerie looks around the inside of the globe and exclaims "They've done it again! We're locked in.". I look around, to where we entered the sphere, but the entrance is gone. Just at that moment we feel a barely perceptible sensation of falling. It seems the entire chamber has just started moving downwards, as if someone pushed the basement button. "I guess we're about to visit Inner Earth. This must be the elevator that will take us there.", Gina says in a voice that can't quite hide her excitement.

Jane seems highly interested in the ceiling of the chamber: "Dad, I wonder where those footsteps on the ceiling came from.". She points at the prints that match the ones that can be found on the floor. I have my ideas about how those got there, but decide to show them by demonstration: "How high can you jump?", I ask her. She doesn't answer, but bounces an impressive meter off the floor. "Wow! Didn't think I could do it that high", she says upon landing. I explain how, since we are sinking into the Earth's surface, the effect of the land masses on all sides of us actually lessens gravity. In fact, gravity isn't lessened, but is working from all sides instead of just the floor. Before we reach the inner surface, the gravity will again be pointing to the floor, which at the moment is our ceiling. So effectively, we will be weightless for part of the trip. My whole explanation seems to be wasted on the girls' ears: they are already trying to jump higher and higher....

Gina and I watch their antics from below, until the point where the lack of downward force lifts us into the air too. The girls are on the walls, where the slightly off-centered gravitational pull keeps them sticking to the wall like flies. Gina was on the edge of the floor, and so flies past the light in the center. Having stood at the center of the floor, my flight takes me right through it. "Dad, look out!" Jane yells, but she can do nothing else but take my picture as I enter the luminous sphere. My whole body tingles, but other than that I'm not adversely affected. I land softly on the ceiling, head first, and do a roll to arrive at a normal position. It takes a while before all the ladies are on the ceiling with me, which has now become the floor. "Guess we now know how those footsteps got here." Valerie says...

After another fourteen minutes, we sense the elevator coming to a halt. An opening appears, leaving us a way out of our enclosed space. “Age before beauty!”, Jane smiles and gestures to the exit. Gina and I proceed, with the beauties following us into the beautiful landscape. I turn as I leave the exit corridor, seeing our metallic globe rest gently between the foliage. As soon as we all are on Terra Firma, it sinks back into the ground. A circular shutter of an unknown, translucent material seals off the opening, so we can't fall in. Jane is already looking around, now that the scenery looks more familiar. She runs around, and jumps over a fallen log. “Hey, I can still jump higher here than I can back home!”. I explain to her that we now have part of the planet over our heads, which accounts for gravity being markedly less than on the outside. As it is a clear day, we can see for miles around, and confirm that we are indeed on the inside of the globe: the smoky sun is doing a high noon performance vertically above us, and whichever horizontal direction we look in shows us the same upward slope before the haze in the distance obscures the further view of the internal surface.

Facing the direction we took when