Genesis Read Online Free PDF

over the
years, and the last real significant mining activity had occurred during the First
World War when it was mined for its high grade zinc to be used the war effort.
After the war, it had been closed up with a large pile of rocks and boulders at
the entrance, awaiting use at some point in the future when the price of zinc
would rise, thus justifying the expense of removing the material from such a
remote site. By the time the Second World War erupted, newer sources of zinc
had been discovered, and with cheaper extraction and delivery costs of the raw
materials to the factories, this zinc mine had been long forgotten. Forgotten
by everyone except his grandfather.
    Christopher and his grandfather had spent
two summers removing rock and ruble by hand, carefully and discreetly, always
cautious of rockslides and always cautious to hide their progress and make it
look as if the old mine was still sealed up completely. Not that anyone ever
came to check. The mine was both remote and forgotten.
    Christopher’s feet walked through a large
puddle of water. He had reached the halfway point. He took a piece of chalk out
of his pocket and scrawled something on the rock wall, then continued on his
way.
    Following the mineral vein, the mine was
not straight, nor was it level. It made turns and dips, the largest dip long
ago having filled with water from some unseen spring. It was the freshest water
he had ever tasted, and it was always cold. The water was perfect treat on a
hot summer day after a long hike up the mountain to do help his grandfather
with his work inside the mine.
    What exactly his grandfather was doing was
well beyond the grasp of Christopher. His grandfather wasn’t exactly the open
book sort of guy, and he kept a lot of secrets. Whenever he asked, he always
got the same reply.
    “It’s need-to-know, and right now, you
don’t need to know. Besides, you can’t even begin to comprehend it.”
    Initially, he argued with his grandfather,
who would simply retort with some mathematical theorem and then stare at the
floor of the mine and mumble under his breath for hours.
    Fair enough. As long as someday he was
brought into the loop, he had thought. Typically, he would just bring a book to
read and would sit at the entrance of the mine, officially on guard duty, but
mostly just absorbed in whatever book he was reading at the moment. His
grandfather liked him to read non-fiction books, mostly field guides and plant
identification and survival manuals, but he was also ‘forced’ to read the
classics—something else he had fought at first, but then actually found himself
enjoying more and more with each novel he completed. He paused for a moment,
briefly sad that he could not remember the last time he actually sat down and
read a book. How times have changed.
    The last dog-leg turn to the left. The end
of the shaft would be just up ahead. His instructions were simple. Leave the
lamp, with plenty of fuel, at the end of the shaft, and then return to the
rendezvous point. Simple enough.
    The shaft ended abruptly, in a perfectly
vertical wall of deep black granite. Christopher could see the chalked
notations of various equations scrawled on the wall in his grandfather’s handwriting.
He smiled. On the ground, at the base of the wall, a pile of rocks formed a
small cairn. Each time his grandfather had come to the mine, he had carried
with him a rock or mineral of some sort that he had collected over his years of
travel and put it into the pile. This cairn some two thousand feet into the
center of the earth had rocks in it from all over the world. Feldspar, limestone,
talc, quartz, jasper, fluorite…rocks and minerals of every kind.
    Christopher set the ship’s lantern down and
turned and walked back into the darkness. He would have no light on his return
journey, something he was prepared for. Allowing his eyes to adjust to the
darkness of the mine before going back outside would only help him. And he
needed every