I quickly moved past her and went topside. I found Matt in the wheelhouse and strangely for someone who had just solved an ancient riddle he looked rather low-key even perhaps depressed.
Apprehension rose up in me as I asked, "What is it Matt? What's wrong?"
He shrugged expressively, "Well I've solved it, I think."
I stepped up beside him to see that the petals of the star were slightly glowing. I hadn't seen them do that before. Matt picked up the crystal centerpiece and brought it out over open space and let it go. The piece hovered in midair.
Four of the five petals rose up off the chart table and hovered out to fan around the central hovering crystal. Matt picked up the fifth pedal, which was slightly different than the others, another thing of which I hadn't noticed before.
He brought it near to the metallic outer ring of the central crystal and it snapped to the side of it magnetically. He pointed to the four outward petals that floated a foot away from the central crystal.
"These four stand for North, East, South, and West. The fifth petal is your navigational heading indicator, which I'm assuming to be targeted on Atlantis."
Matt leaned close to the central crystal and spoke one word definitively, "Atlantis!"
The central crystal lit up at the spoken name and scrollwork letters lit up in the metallic alloy surrounding the crystal. The text was different than the text etched in scrollwork on the petals.
"The writing is from a later time period, but still of very early Babylonian origin. I was able to translate it roughly." Matt said sounding for all the world as if he was thoroughly unexcited about what was a monumental discovery.
He handed me a tablet and cautiously I took it not understanding the level of reserve that he was manifesting. The words leapt off the page at me as I read them aloud,
"To lovers of wisdom and seekers of the hidden things, I welcome you to the halls of enlightenment. Once they were proud and full of those who sought the wisdom of the angels, who rebelled so that they might come and live among us sharing what it was meant for us to know, but was kept from us by a petty and jealous God, who would have us live our lives out in ignorance and fail to attain the immortal knowledge of the first angelic rebel, who saved the world from a corrupt power-hungry dictator of a God. The halls are no longer proud, because of the actions of a jealous God, but wisdom is still to be found as well as power. Power to become a god of your own making. Listen to one who became mighty against God and king over all the Earth. Adopt the ways of the seed of the first rebel and you like me will be enabled to make great effort in our common war against God so that we might be free and constrained no more and able to kill even the very concept of one God as we all will become gods of our own making and thus free to choose our own way. Our ally in this fight for freedom and quest for knowledge is Satan and all his angelic host along with the spirits of those mighty ones who came before. Pledge your soul to him as a fitting sacrifice and we shall win as we reject God's authority over us. I, Nimrod, mightiest upon the Earth and greatest of all kings have spoken. Bind yourself to the path of knowledgeable enlightenment and the sea lanes will be opened up unto you, even as they were to me and I became great and if you are worthy so can you."