(This story was written in response to the Tell a Story to Me: Hollow Earth contest sponsored by 
An act of kindness during a strange incident in 2019 paid off bigger than Tarik DuSable expected in 2035.
In September of 2019, while Tarik was an exchange student in Bali, Anak Krakatoa decided to imitate its infamous volcano parent. The “son of Krakatoa” erupted, and generated a tsunami. It was not big enough to threaten the entire Indian Ocean, but it was big enough to kill Tarik and everyone with him on the shore. He was stunned to see someone running down the shore toward the certain death he was fleeing.
Yet the tsunami never hit: a great wave from shore rolled out and neutralized the tsunami. When Tarik looked back, there was a woman coming out of the water, who made it above the water line and then collapsed. Tarik turned right around to go to the rescue, and carried the injured woman to the resort and to the physician there.
The woman was athletic, of fine shape, and of a caramel hue close to that of Tarik's fiancee. She was young, perhaps a little older than Tarik, and beautiful of face also, with strong cheekbones, full lips, noble forehead, and wavy black hair. Her features suggested strong hints of northern Africa, the Olmecs of South America, and also of the Tuscans of Italy. Yet, there was something more as well.
The woman opened her eyes – huge and black – and met Tarik's gaze. To his surprise, she spoke English, although with an accent he could not place.
“Thank you,” she said. “My family and I will repay you, when the time comes.”
“Oh, I don't need you to do that,” Tarik said. “My father always says virtue is its own reward.”
“My father says that also,” she said in her deep, silken voice, “but where I am from, virtue still means more than it does in your tongue. It still means strength, and glory, and honor in action.”
“All right, young man, this young lady needs to rest awhile,” said the physician. “Looks like just some serious bruising and exhaustion, but still I need to observe and she needs to rest.”
“I'll check on you in the morning, Miss –?” Tarik said.
“Ieda,” she answered. “Thank you, Mr. DuSable.”
Tarik did not remember having mentioned his name, but it had been a strange day, and so he thought nothing more of it.
Miss Ieda fell in with Tarik and his classmates as she continued her recovery, and was a great deal of help to them and their projects. Tarik himself was studying oceanography, and he noticed that Miss Ieda was very interested in all the modern discoveries and accomplishments in the field. She often suggested lines of inquiry that proved profitable to his studies.
One day, someone made a joke about a famous oceanic legend: the fall of Atlantis. Miss Ieda had not been amused. Privately, she asked Tarik to summarize what he knew, and he told her: according to the Greeks, Atlantis had been a civilization of very advanced, powerful people who neglected to give homage to the gods or kindness to their fellow men. So, their island sank in a single day.
Miss Ieda had considered this, and given a heavy sigh.
“Still. Three thousand years have passed, and that is still the story.”
She sighed again.
“I take you as an intelligent young man, Mr. DuSable. The most important thing is to learn to ask the right questions. That was the one thing that Socrates did not lie about. It is necessary to inquire into what is told to you as fact, if you do not have the facts in hand to confirm it.”
Miss Ieda's black eyes had flashed with a fire Tarik had never seen before.
“What if the Greeks lied, Mr. DuSable?”
“Well, most legends are sort of made up.”
“You are not understanding the matter seriously enough. I take from your name and accent that you are from North America.”
“Yes, Miss Ieda.”
“You are familiar with the history of the world, I know.”
“Yes.”
“So, you know something about the European societies modeled after the ancient Greek society?”
“Yes.”
“How often do they tell the truth about non-European civilizations?”
Tarik had been brought up short by that question.
“Your great-great-great-grandfather's name was Jean-Baptist-Point Du Sable. He was a Haitian, from a country despised by Europe – but how often do you hear the story that Haiti was the only country in which African slaves threw off the heel of Europe, and that your great-great-great-grandfather was the founder of the city of Chicago?”
“Once in a blue moon.”
“So, let us return to Atlantis, and the mindset that every civilization not Greek must be made out to be barbarian, in order to justify Greek conquest and subjugation of the world. What if the Greeks lied, Mr. DuSable, about one nation they simply could not conquer? ”
“I suppose it would fit the pattern of history since,” Tarik said. “Yet there is evidence that some kind of island did sink around the places the Greeks point to in their legends.”
Miss Ieda narrowed her eyes.
“I am sure you are familiar with the 'scorched earth' theory?”
“Yes. When a people's homeland is invaded, they often pull back and take everything of value with them.”
“Suppose the Atlanteans simply left, and sank their own island behind them to keep anything the Greeks might want out of their hands?”
“Possible,” said Tarik. “Yet the question is, where would they have gone?”
“Now that is a good question,” Miss Ieda said. “Like I said at the beginning, it is important to ask the right questions. For your life's sake, as a son of Africa, and of Haiti, and of Jean-Baptist-Point Du Sable, and of the United States of America, learn to ask the right questions.”
Tarik remembered that conversation in the years to come. For he would marry, and have a daughter, just in time for the Second Great Depression to hit the world.
During the Second Great Depression, the United States deteriorated into a violence-ridden shadow of its former self. Many Black men with skills and determination decided the time had come to capitalize on their value to the world and get out. Tarik wept on the last day he glimpsed the gutted hulk of the city his ancestor had founded, on Dec. 31, 2026.
“Tomorrow is Emancipation Day,” his wife Khati reminded him. “173 years to the day of the Emancipation Proclamation, tomorrow, we are getting free of all of this!”
Mrs. DuSable had no intention of looking back. She settled in to life in Tuscany easily, and was glad to see her husband resume his work and come home somewhat cheerful to her and their daughter Kandace.
However, Tarik's heart was heavy. He kept looking for the right questions to ask, and the right answers. He would find them in 2034, by which time he was glad for something that happened in 2032: a freak accident had claimed the life of his wife and daughter while they were visiting relatives in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Tarik never thought he would be glad about it, until he found out the deep secrets of all that had been happening since 2020... the plan by world elites to destroy the foundations of civil society and decimate the world's population, and what was up next: World War III, set to start in 2035.
Tarik went to his computer for the last time on Dec. 31, 2034.
“Tomorrow is Emancipation Day, 182 years to the day,” he said to himself. “I'll die a free man, doing what is right.”
The kill order went out for Tarik DuSable on Jan. 1, 2035. His IP address was traced, after he had sent all the information he had to every surviving news and social media outlet in the world.
Tarik was waiting for the end when the beginning knocked on his door. It was Ieda, clad in purple linen.
“Come with me,” she said. “It is time for me, and my family, to repay you.”
“You'll be killed for even being seen here with me,” he said.
“The tsunami couldn't kill me,” she answered, “so I hardly expect the machinations of these little wannabe world-beaters to do so. Come.”
Tarik stared, but his feet got to moving. He stared at the guided missile that passed up the street as he and Ieda passed down. His feet kept moving, even as there was a massive explosion behind him.
“Congratulations, Tarik DuSable,” Ieda said, “ a man unbroken by a wicked world, whose record in the world has now been purged by fire. Perhaps they will tell 3,000 years of lies about you too, but it need not be your concern.”
Ieda led Tarik to an elevator going down to the local subway.
“You have done all you can for the world, Mr. DuSable; now, it is time to go.”
“Go? Go where?”
“Now that is a good question. Come with me to the answer.”
Into the elevator and down – down past the subway entrance after a little jolt, down into such darkness as Tarik had never experienced. Now that his eyes were of no use, his nose picked up Ieda's scent: warm cinnamon and Mediterranean flowers combining with a touch of musk. The fragrance fit the woman: very beautiful.
Still, this was not the time for such considerations; the elevator at last stopped, and there beside it was a little craft of some kind.
“We are now in the Subterranean Watercourses,” she said. “My people have explored them throughout the world, and can go anywhere by this means.”
“Your people?”
“I am an Atlantean,” she said. “The Greeks lied, Mr. DuSable. We are not dead. Hardly so.”
The little craft opened up, and out stepped a tall silhouette.
“My younger brother, Radhames,” Ieda said. “He is our pilot.”
“Mr. DuSable,” said the silhouette, “thank you for looking out for my sister, 16 years ago. Now, we will look out for you.”
“Let us be going,” Ieda said. “Stromboli is restless; that watergate will only be opened for so long.”
Stromboli was the ancient name for the modern Mt. Etna, of Italy. Tarik remembered reading how Jules Verne had written that some explorers' journey to the center of the earth had ended prematurely as the watercourse they were on had been carried up and out of that ancient mountain. But that was fiction... just like Atlantis was a legend … right? So was the Nautilus ... but Tarik found himself in the co-pilot seat of a little submarine with a huge front window.
“Ieda usually sits up front,” Radhames said, “but, you may as well, Mr. DuSable, because you'll have to see to believe, and you have a lot of believing to do. Strap yourself in, because we are going, now!”
Radhames was an immense caramel-colored man who appeared about ten years younger than Tarik, with black hair and an infectious smile he showed as he passed his fingers over his instruments. The little craft shot off into the darkness with a mighty, musical hum.
The little submarine swooped to the left and to the right, with the kind of speed one might only expect in a race car. Radhames was so relaxed he could have been cruising down the Autobahn in a convertible on a summer's day. Tarik could not tell whether he was more terrified, or more amazed, as bubbles and black walls of stone streaked by.
Finally, Radhames cut power, and the engine sank down the scale to a low hum as the little craft surfaced in what appeared to be a great stone vault.
“You were right, Ieda: Stromboli is not very patient today,” Radhames said. “Still, we are here in time. Are you firmly strapped in, Mr. DuSable?”
“If I weren't, I'd be in serious trouble by now.”
“Just checking.”
Radhames hit a button, and Tarik blacked out in the sudden drop. The waters were vacuumed through the watergate far, far below the ancient mountain, leaving space for the firegate to reopen and lava to fill the space in time for the next eruption.
Tarik came to himself lying on sweet-smelling grass, the warmth of something like sunlight caressing him. He turned over, and then rubbed his eyes, and then realized that indeed he was seeing what he was seeing. For there was the sun, red-gold and huge as at sunset, but glowing in a cloudless, starless night sky, almost touchably close. Not 93 million miles away. Not even 93 thousand miles away.
There came the odor of warm cinnamon and Mediterranean flowers, and there stood Lady Ieda Malinke, now styled as befit her as a member of Atlantean nobility, her wavy black hair set off with matrix opal and the belt of her purple robe studded with noble black opal and trimmed with white.
“Copernicus was right in that he knew the earth revolved around the sun,” she said. “What he did not know was that in the same manner the earth circles its lamp in the heavens, it revolves around its lamp in the center, its burning heart, without which it would die. Not even the sun of the heavens can warm a dead hulk, but, this sun here – this is the life of the earth.”
“I must be dreaming.”
“Rather, you have been released from the nightmare that my ancestors knew the world would become,” Lady Ieda said.
“Who are you? What are you?”
“I am an Atlantean by nationality. I am a human being, like you, but still in communion with the ancient knowledge that was lost to the rest of the world when our ancestors departed it. For one example: modern civilization did not rediscover the circulation that is in the oceans and the reality of geothermal energy until the 19th and 20th centuries. We have had that for 4,000 years. For another example: we knew the atom could be split, and energy derived from that, 3,500 years ago.
“Then there are things beyond example, such as how the firegates and watergates of the circulation of the world work together in the Subterranean Watercourses, and the building of crafts to navigate those watercourses. Things beyond example, such as understanding and controlling all manner of physical energy transfers in Creation.”
“So if you could do all that, why did you leave? The Greeks and all the rest never could have beaten you!”
“There were two terrible dangers. The first was the prevalence of Greek ideas. That, because of their campaign of Hellenization of the world, we could not stop. Our children had to do commerce in that world. We knew that if they were ever seduced into giving up our secrets to those of that mindset of having the whole world as slaves to one people, the world would be lost under the heel of whoever learned our secrets. Secondly, we might have beaten the Greeks, and perhaps the whole world, into submission, but not without becoming exactly what we hated and were fighting against.”
“So instead...”
“Instead, we gave up the upper world to retain our souls, and founded Atlantis of the Inner Sun. Look over there.”
Tarik followed Lady Ieda's gaze, and saw a great marble city, delicately blushed pink in the light of the Inner Sun, with flying crafts going to and fro around the city, and water crafts pulling up to the shore by it. The city, and he, were on the coastline of a great interior sea, whose dark waters sparkled red and orange and gold until they reached the horizon, under the Inner Sun.
“Does it ever set?” he said.
“No. There is no night here except as we seek night. Every home has a series of comfortable bedrooms beneath it for the purpose.”
“Must make growing crops a snap – no seasons either?”
“The earth tilts still on its axis; there are still winter, spring, summer, and fall, although the differences are very mild. Some plants we shade to give a deeper winter to them, and others we simply let enjoy the weather here.”
“No storms?”
“Oh, we have storms here, but of the electromagnetic kind,” Lady Ieda said. “The Inner Sun and Outer Sun are very much in communion, and if the Outer Sun is having sunstorms, the Inner Sun will be perturbed as well. Hence, every building has a lightning rod attached for just such emergencies.
“What do you all eat?”
“Come and see – you are to be my family's guest at supper tonight.”
Thus into the city, like traveling forward and backward in time at the same moment. Overhead, flying public transportation kept zipping by on all its routes, but below, the layout and the atmosphere of the city were ancient, as if the Tuscans and the Moors had decided together on an civic engineering project – gracefully curved arches and domes with massive columns on all the public buildings. All roads in the city led to the north side of the thriving city center square, where people of different shades and tongues exchanged both goods and ideas in the warm light of the endless day.
A great building on the west side of the center square was the mirror image of one on the east side.
“The one is the Court of Law, Justice, and Equity,” Lady Ieda said, “and the other is the House of Commerce and Public Investment. They are mirrored in every city because in Atlantis, there is no conflict between any of those interests. This is not to say that we do not have problems like any other human civilization, but that we do not practice division in essentials.”
On the south side stood what appeared to be a modest palace.
“That is the House of the Republic,” Lady Ieda said. “The House of the Republic is by the square so that every day, the representatives are reminded of who they represent. My father, Mansa, serves on the city council, and will be meeting us shortly.”
Just then, the city council adjourned, and its members came out of the House of the Republic – 21 members, varying in race and color through the rainbow of humanity. Most were of mature age, but about a third of them were young men and women. They wore robes of blue and white linen, with a trim of purple denoting members of the nobility.
One man struck Tarik's attention immediately, owing to the way his deep mahogany skin glowed against his shock of dense, wavy silver hair. This was Lord Mansa Malinke. He was still in conversation with a council member older than himself, listening respectfully as she spoke with him, and then adding his commentary. She smiled at last and said something humorous, and his deep-voiced laughter echoed across the square.
“That's where Radhames gets it from,” Lady Ieda said, as she chuckled at Tarik's smile.
Lord Mansa's hearing was keen. He darted his black-eyed glance in his daughter's direction, and then excused himself from the rest of the council members as they too began to head for home.
Lord Mansa strode over to his daughter, and, seeing a purple lily growing in his path, plucked it up and put it in her hair, tenderly.
“There,” he said. “That lily needed to be right there.”
“Oh, Papa,” she said, and chuckled as they embraced.
Then, Lord Mansa turned to Tarik, and pleasantly surprised Tarik with the same warm embrace.
“Welcome, Mr. Tarik DuSable,” he said, “to Atlantis of the Inner Sun. Thank you for what you did for my daughter, 16 years ago.”
“Oh, it was my pleasure, sir,” he said. “I didn't expect quite this reaction, but ...”
“One never knows,” Lord Mansa said, “what one good deed will grow to. Come! Feast, fun, fellowship, and rest – all is prepared at my home, dear honored guest!”
Across the square from south to north, and onto one of the roads through the city – Dholbar – while Lord Mansa pointed out the sites to see until they passed into what looked like a great park, full of hanging gardens of flowering vines. Lord Mansa parted the vine curtain at a certain place, and Tarik and Lady Ieda stepped into the front yard of the large, beautiful Malinke family home in Dholbar.
The yard was full of children, who stopped their play the instant they saw their grandfather and aunt and came running. Following behind them was a gorgeously aged woman, copper in hue with salt-and-pepper hair and black eyes, robed like Ieda and with her smile.
“My mother, Lady Nefertari,” Ieda said.
“We just met twice in 16 years, and I'm already meeting your mother?”
“They insisted, Mr. DuSable. We have many, many adopted Atlanteans like you, people who have proved their virtue in deeds of honor toward humanity, at great sacrifice to themselves. Many Atlanteans have also died above in the last 3,000 years, when they were at a moment of great human tragedy that they could avert with their knowledge.”
“That's what you were doing with the tsunami.”
“Yes. You came to help me, so I came to help you.”
That raised a good question in Tarik's mind, which he asked Lord Mansa after the rest of the family had gone to bed.
“Yes, Mr. DuSable, we are still concerned with the rest of humanity. Our knowledge of how the earth actually works, already great 3,000 years ago, is far greater now, and added power means added responsibility.”
“There is a whole world war about to start, with nuclear weapons, under the Outer Sun.”
“I know,” Lord Mansa said. “Yet no society has the resources to maintain itself properly and also attempt to run the affairs of the world system. That is why, when the time of temptation came to Atlantis, our ancestors chose home over hegemony, a tactical retreat instead of a fatal victory. We have maintained this stance by necessity both to ourselves and the world. Yet should it occur that the survival of the human race requires us to work in force again under the Outer Sun, we will do so.”
“I was glad when occasion came for my family to repay you, and how it came. It would be greatly to the advantage of all humanity if we were to combine your modern knowledge of the present state of the Outer Oceans with our knowledge of the Subterranean Watercourses and the gates of water and fire between them.”
Lord Mansa chuckled.
“We humans are kind of stubborn when it comes to destroying one another, but it is kind of hard to have a world war when the world refuses to cooperate any longer – and 70 percent of the world is water!”
Great bells began to go off in Tarik's heart and mind.
“You were chosen to be here, now, Tarik DuSable, before the world began. It is not the Creator's will that the human race perish, so, we had to be brought together, here, under the light of the Inner Sun, for the work at hand. Rest yourself tonight, and take what time you need to adjust to life here – and then, to the work!”
Photo Credit: Jongsun Lee on Unsplash; color adjustment for the Inner Sun look by Deeann D. Mathews, the author