The Pyramid of the Apocalypse

THE TABLE OF AGES IN GENESIS totals 10,324, while the two ages of destruction according to the Maya total 10,331—a difference of seven years.

It came to me in a dream. I saw myself adding the figures and obtaining that result. When I awoke, I could scarcely believe that it was true…

b. The Flood, the Bible and Atlantis

According to Genesis, God gave life to Adam and Eve on the sixth day of creation. Nine generations later, faced with the corruption of the world, he sent the Flood. The waters prevailed upon the earth for one hundred and fifty days. Noah, however, was saved by the voice of God—or was it a prophecy?

Here the Bible contains a key confirming the 5,165-year cycles. Genesis 5 recounts the descendants of Adam and Eve down to Noah and, in impressive numerical detail, describes the age at which each descendant fathered a son and the age at which he died—or, in Enoch’s case, vanished into heaven. The following table shows those dates:

Chapter One. Stefano

And God answered me: I am going to reveal to you what is about to happen. Write it on clay tablets so that it can be read fluently. It will take a while to come true, but do not despair. The time has not yet come for all this to be fulfilled, but I assure you it will come to pass without fail. Habakkuk 2:2, Old Testament

1

San José, Costa Rica, December 17

Flying in an airplane, five thousand feet above the ground, ready to plunge into the void with your life depending on a piece of cloth... this kind of thrill was irresistible to Stefano Della Croce. He had just turned forty, but still felt—and was sure he acted—as if he were twenty.

When the pilot gave the command, he looked at his instructor, nodded, and jumped with a big smile on his face, ready to enjoy this incomparable feeling of freedom.

Arms outstretched, the wind in his face, his heart pumping with adrenaline, he plummeted at two hundred kilometers an hour, prepared to live the moment intensely and wring every ounce of joy from it.

However, as he had been doing almost obsessively for some time, his mind drifted away from the present, reviewing—as if searching for a way to change things—the series of events and circumstances that had led him to that moment among the clouds.

First, he relived the moment twenty years ago, when destiny marked the course of his life.

As a young freshman, confused about his future at a time when no one knows what they want, he attended a lecture at his university by the famous archaeologist Lawrence Miller. The talk about pyramids was suggestive and engaging, and awakened a long latent curiosity in Stefano. It meant a break from his routine of mathematical formulas, calculus, algebra and physics in his engineering career, chosen for the promise of a good job market. At the end of the lecture, he sought out Miller to clarify doubts and reinforce points he found intriguing. This elusive and busy man received him with great affection and invited him to lunch, ignoring others vying for his attention. The archaeologist treated him as if he had known him forever. After hours of conversation, the unthinkable happened: Miller offered him a full scholarship to study archaeology at the University of New Mexico. Months later, he was a student there.

The years flew by, as time does when you are doing what you love. After graduating, Stefano worked on projects all over the world. He was passionate about archaeology; he saw it as a window into true “humanity.” The best definition he ever found for his vocation was given by the Swedish writer August Strindberg: “Archaeology is a modern science; one could almost say it is a disease of our time. And there is a danger in it, because it proves again and again that human folly has almost always been the same.”

Yes, Stefano knew very well—he had seen it firsthand on the excavations—that people tend to do the same things and make the same mistakes over and over, everywhere!

He was no exception.

Although everything was going well in his professional life, and he felt fulfilled, in his personal life, he had hurt the people closest to him with his mistakes, and not just once. His mind paused—it always did—when he stopped thinking about archaeology and focused on that turbulent part of his life. He returned to his skydiving, felt the wind on his face and looked at the others who, like him, were floating in the air, approaching the point where they would open their parachutes.

His thoughts drifted again back to a moment five years before, when his life became irreparably complicated.

After a brief relationship and a surprise pregnancy, Stefano did what he thought was “honorable” and married his girlfriend, even though he did not love her. Although he adored the fruit of this relationship, his little Samantha, he soon realized that married life was not for him, as he liked women too much.

A combination of his constant travel and time away from home, along with his six-foot height, strong and athletic build, and an “academic” look that attracted attention, conspired for the first of many infidelities to occur after only a few months. Although guilt plagued him for weeks at first, he never regretted it. Worse, he began to enjoy the thrill it gave him, without being able to explain why, to the point where infidelity became a pattern.

Stefano sinned, and he sinned often, indulging his desires without hesitation for years.

His daughter grew and was now a beautiful and very intelligent four-year-old who brought him indescribable happiness. His enormous love for her made him want to change. The repeated clandestine and casual encounters did not give him any of the happiness he felt when he was with his daughter; on the contrary, they always left him empty, full of guilt and sadness.

So he tried to regain control of his life and his instincts, and at the beginning of that long and intense year now coming to an end, he wrote his resolutions, the first of which was: “Give my daughter a stable and happy family; the family I never had.”

To spend more time with her and avoid the temptations of his lifestyle, he accepted a position at Florida State University, which meant moving to Miami and distancing himself from excavations, adventures, and women!

But in the end, things only got more complicated.

Archaeology... Archaeology has always concluded that the main reason for wars and the fall of empires is a primitive instinct we call lust.

One day in late January, at the beginning of the semester, a late-arriving student interrupted his Civilizations with Pyramids class: a muse with long dark hair, clear eyes, and the body of an Amazon. The attraction was instant and mutual.

Esther was from Argentina, and her musical accent, long and perfect legs, and a certain je ne sais quoi that emanated from her pores filled his life with desire and sensuality.

The woman was impossible to resist—she was intoxicating—and as the weeks went by, things got complicated: for the first time in his life, Stefano fell in love. Although he tried and tried and tried to control himself, he failed. Esther was a force of nature he wanted to control and possess!

But one full moon night, while reviewing the alphabet with his daughter and telling her stories of ancient civilizations, which she, despite her young age, found fascinating, he thought he found the strength to make the decision that would change everything.

“I can't abandon my daughter; I know this suffering too well. My father abandoned me!”

The next day, in a Fort Lauderdale café that had become their secret refuge, he ended his relationship with Esther and asked her to stop seeing him, to stop loving him. Amidst sincere tears, he explained his reasons. but she was not going to make it easy on him!

“Heaven has no rage like love to hatred turned,

Nor hell a fury like a woman scorned.”

These lines from William Congreve's poem “The Mourning Bride” summed up the unexpected turn his life took when he arrived home two days later to find Esther in the living room talking to his wife.

In the midst of tearful faces, both his marriage and romance ended in the worst possible way. He knew that he had ruined everything and that his relationship with his daughter would be changed because of his mistake.

Alone, without a wife and without a lover, spending a month meditating on the meaning of things without coming to any conclusions, he decided to rebuild his life. One Saturday in May, he bought a plane ticket for two hundred dollars and flew to his native Costa Rica to begin a new chapter.

Seven months later, descending in freefall at four thousand feet and preparing to pull the cord on his parachute, he knew he had made the right decision.

As he landed, with adrenaline pumping through his veins, he saw the man in the distance. At first, he thought it was a trick of the mind, but then he focused clearly. It was him.

Stefano knew his life was about to change again.

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