(From the "Blair Report, Volume 2)

Elisa's textbooks were extremely complex. The detail of the narratives left nothing to chance. I hadn't taken any of the Maintenance Guard courses and it was all new to me.

Elisa had once mentioned the "Great Purge" and I launched into its search among the thousands of documents that appeared in her computer.

I finally found a description, although a reduced one. It seemed that something was being tried to hide that embarrassed the Galactic Federation. The story succinctly described the capture of minorities on all the planets of the Federation and their transportation to Earth where then all life had been wiped out.

It ended with a description that, after years of war, those responsible for the great genocide had been arrested and brought to justice.

They were the Chief of the Secret Police, the Head of the psiquiatric Association, the Chief of the Justice Department, the Head of the Galactic Bank, in addition to the Supreme Ruler of the Galactic Federation himself at the time. All of them were tried and sentenced to be sent to prison and remain alive as long as possible.

This may seem strange to the human way of thinking, but even then, it was known that a dead criminal was a spirit free to occupy another body and continue his criminal career.

All of them were enclosed in caves within a mountain and linked to life-sustaining systems that would keep their bodies alive for millions of years in order to imprison their consciousness.

Nowhere did I find a description of the place of the prison, but it seemed logical to me that they should be imprisoned on the very planet they had destroyed. But where on Earth?

A legend caught my eye. In the North Atlantic, about 760 km off the coast of Africa, crossed by the parallel 17 West, there is an island called Madeira. In its southeast area is a valley that flows into the sea, where the village of Machico is located.

About 2.5 km to the interior of the island there is a complex of four caves, called "The Cavalum Caves". These caves are excavated in basalt rock and are classified geologically (for lack of better explanation) as lava tubes, totalling about 590 meters in length. These caves are so named after the legend of the "Cavalum", a devil in the form of a huge horse with bat wings that sets fire through the nostrils, and who was imprisoned in the caves where even today his protests of anger and despair are heard. Legend has it that it was the forces of good that imprisoned him there after he tried to destroy the world with storms.

Cavalum 1                                        Cavalum 2                                        Cavalum 3                                        Cavalum 4

There is no trace of either equipment or human bodies there. If these were really the prisons of four individuals, then perhaps the lava that geologists talk about has razed everything without a trace.

But it also means that the prisoners are now free...