It's the middle of my attempt to do a full week of posts, so of course I'm taking a short cut with the Space Guys. This is really a new part of the adventure, but for now, I'm keeping the numbering and table of contents at the end. And hey, I worked in the Marz building!
The voyage of the Janus went on for months after passing Uranus, but the boredom and isolation that had fallen over the crew never returned. There was laughter, singing and a return to games, music and books that they had long declared themselves tired of. The morale was further improved by the appearance of one more orb in their path. “We didn’t announce it in the mission plan because we weren’t sure of the alignment,” the captain said. “You are seeing the paraplanet Pluto, within the orbit of Neptune.”
They did not pass as close as they had to other planets, so it did not appear on the porthole. Still, it was near enough to take turns looking at the orb from the communications tower during their closest approach. It was white beheld with the naked eye, mottled gray with hints of brown when viewed with magnification. Jason and Alek spent their turn talking with Old Yuri.
As Pluto receded, the captain made another announcement. When they gathered, he looked unusually solemn. Jason noted that he stood side by side with Professor Futura. “I have just received approval from Gaia to give a special briefing,” he said. “It should coincide with simultaneous broadcasts on the Homeworld and Mars. Moxon, load the disc.”
Moxon took out a disc with the markings of sensitive material. Jason realized that it was the same one that had been played for the mission briefing. The officer flipped the handling caddy before loading it in the video record player. The first image that came up showed the sigil of the Union of Nations and the stylized rocket of the space agency. Jason instinctively put an arm around Alek at the sight of what appeared next.
At a glance, it looked like a crystal, with four major sides subdivided by corrugations and protruding multitiered buttresses in place of its corners. Then the camera’s focus shifted to show its surroundings. It was the Southlands of Mars, not far from Hellas Basin. The object reared up from a level plain at the foot of the ice caps which dwarfed it. Even on that enormous scale, it was obvious that the object was immense, certainly as tall as the Janus was long, quite possibly even taller than the bygone Empire State tower it was compared to. It was evident that it tapered up to what looked like a cupola, topped by a dome and a tall, narrow spine that looked like an antenna. The focus shifted again, and Professor Futura came into view. He wore an archaic pressure suit with a dome supported by a square frame. He looked visibly younger, but only by five or ten years rather than more than Jason had been alive.
“I am at the foot of the Structure,” the Professor said. “All observations confirm that it is an artificial object intended for habitation. From corrosion and geological evidence, it is at least 1,000 and not more than 2 million years old. Preliminary findings further indicate that it was constructed by and for organisms comparable to humans in all major characteristics. We have entered and partially explored the lowest tiers of the structure through several compromised or unsecured entrances. Our efforts have been hampered by repeated equipment failures associated with electromagnetic anomalies from the structure. In particular, we have been unable to reach or enter an evident control center in the spire. I have determined that any conclusive investigation will require an exterior ascent and likely forced entry. I have prepared to affect such a breach. I will be accompanied by my wife, Irena Futura, who is recording this film. The rest of the party are under orders not to follow or allow others to enter.”
The film showed a small party climb up the exterior of the building with a series of rocket-assisted grapnels. The ascent culminated in the entry of the cupola through an already damaged window. There was an evident skip to an aerial shot of the cupola. There was a flash from the cupola, seemingly no more consequential than a glint of sunlight, until puffs of smoke erupted at the base of the spine. The spine listed and then toppled, momentarily filling half the frame before the camera and presumably the aircraft veered away. The camera zoomed in again, on a figure waving from the damaged window. There was another skip, showing the tower from a distance. It collapsed in smoke and flames, as ice and debris cascaded down to cover it.
Futura spoke up. “My wife and I spent 17 hours inside the spire of the Structure,” he said. “I brought no cameras or recording equipment, only limited writing materials. We spent the first 11 hours examining the lower superstructure, which I ventured to describe as the Globe. In the twelfth hour, I breached a possible control center at the meeting point of the dome and the spire. We found a series of computing stations, several of which were functioning and partially operable. These proved to be primarily for calculation, and thus a source of our most detailed information on the Builders’ numerical characters and mathematical system. After 4 hours of investigation, I attempted to use one of the higher-level stations. This activated a self-destruct mechanism which ultimately collapsed both the Structure and a large section of the polar cap. The device simultaneously sealed the entrances to the control center. Over the course of 47 minutes, we successfully escaped, and were rescued by our expedition’s hovercraft.”
The gathered crew gaped, except Donald, who scowled. “I spent the next 36 hours assisting my wife as she drew her observations of the structure from memory,” Futura concluded. “On my advice, the existence of the Structure was placed under highest classification, known to a few thousand individuals over time. A select few have been given access to our recordings and data, including a number of members of this expedition. A much smaller group have examined our drawings, which have remained in my possession. Three of them are here, Tanya Plotnikov, Mehmet Eskandari and Aleksandra Kapek Freeman.” Jason turned to Alek, who gave him a vaguely embarrassed smile.
“Hold on,” Donald said. “Here’s what I’m hearing. You found the first evidence of alien intelligence in the Solar System, from before regular people figured out gunpowder. So, you went in alone, didn’t take any pictures, and made the whole thing blow up. Then at the end of it, they took your advice and let you keep the only records that mattered.”
Tanya spoke up. “I reviewed the raw feed at the time, when I was consultant for Union intelligence,” she said. “Every decision Colonel Futura made was justified. There were extreme difficulties with equipment failure and unexplained lighting anomalies every time the expedition attempted to photograph the Structure interior. One of the technicians was almost killed trying to collect a sample of material. There was ample evidence that these difficulties were caused by active interference from the Structure itself. It had to be further assumed that a second expedition would be met with even stronger countermeasures, if the structure did not self-destruct. An individual or very small party without electronic instruments was the best chance we had.”
“Okay, so what do you have
to show for it?” Donald said. “A few drawings of what you can remember?”
“The full report has over
500 drawings,” Alek said coolly. “Every one that could be checked against
independent data was accurate within 0.5%.”
“Sure,” Jason said. “But
why keep it secret until now? There’s more, isn’t there?”
“I had to consider several hypotheses,” Futura acknowledged. “All of them implied that the entities who built the Structure were very concerned that no other species or culture would be able to imitate their technology or identify its origin. Perhaps it was for their own protection. Perhaps it was for ours. Perhaps the two are one and the same. But Dr. Capek, excuse me, Dr. Freeman, and Dr. Plotnikov can explain that better.”
Alek stepped forward, smiling. “Thank you, I am proud to report my findings,” she said in her flat voice. “I prepared this report as an appendix to an earlier analysis by Mehmet and Tanya. Of course, their work is already quite comprehensive. I have only added what is useful to comment on.” Behind her, a canvas screen was set up with a microfilm projector. It showed the first in a long series of photographs and drawings, each of the latter as painstaking as a Greek statue or a Dutch still life. They showed almost gothic entryways, spacious corridors and atria, compact cells and storerooms, elegantly simple light fixtures, abstract patterns that seemed to be artwork, and here and there an interactive control surface, from doorknobs to instrument panels. Several drawings showed keyboards with as few as 8 and as many as 24 keys, most of them bearing sigils that looked like a wheel or a star, with varying numbers of arms and more arcane dots, circles and rings at the center. There was even a pair of lavatories, each comprised of a line of self-contained stalls that held a slot toilet in the floor and a showerhead above.
“Now, the central and repeated finding of both Futura’s report and the later analysis is that the Builders of the Structure were very similar to humans, biologically, mentally and even culturally,” she said. They came to a series of drawings of what could only be the dome of the Globe. This proved to be meeting place roughly the shape and nearly the size of Shakespeare’s amphitheater. There were regularly spaced signs with more of the sigils. “Their evident mode of locomotion is that of a bipedal vertebrate, their reproduction bisexual. Their height can be extrapolated as between 1.2 and 2.1 meters. Their geometry, numbering and architecture are based on multiples of 4 and 12, common to terrestrial cultures despite the biological fact that we have ten digits. The use of primary colors in their art further implies a similar visual range.”
She straightened. “In fact, this correspondence is altogether anomalous,” she said. “Consider all the ways an extraterrestrial species might differ from humans. They might be half our size, or half again. They might have six fingers on one hand and three on the other. They might have eight limbs instead of four. They might be color-blind, or able to see spectra beyond human vision, especially if their native star was of a different type than Sol. They might have entirely different senses, like the echolocation of a dolphin or the electromagnetism of a platypus. This requires a reconsideration of the Structure’s origin. That is borne out in one more anomaly… Almost every trace of writing was removed from the Structure.”
With that, Tanya stood up. “What Dr. Capek has mentioned is a central finding of our report, though we do not necessarily endorse all of her conclusions,” she said. An image appeared of what could only be shelves, completely empty. “To begin with, there was extensive evidence that printed records other media had once been present, only to be removed. This was unremarkable. We might do the same, if it held instructions for making gunpowder or the atomic bomb. Yet, there were many cases where completely innocuous inscriptions had been removed or defaced, including the lavatory. This was not explicable. There are dozens of languages and scripts of human origin that have never been translated beyond the most rudimentary level, if at all. The only reason they would have cause for fear is if mere comparison with other scripts would tell us something they did not wish to be known.”
She brought up a series of images of signs from the Globe. “It was only these characters that we were allowed to see, most likely because there were too many to remove, and perhaps because they were too intuitive for definite conclusions. Even so, there are certain similarities with known symbology. The swastika. The mandala. The Yin and Yang.”
“Yeah, and the Mercedes
Benz logo,” Donald said, as one of several three-spoked sigils appeared. “So
what? Are you saying these are aliens who talked to cavemen, like in the silly
old magazines?”
“No,” Alek said with a
smile. “I am saying they were humans. From Earth. And they knew we were
coming.”
Table of contents
Part 7: Alternate universe pop culture!
Part 10: The domestic disturbance!!!
Part 12: The inevitable geography lesson!
Part 15: The bad guy backstory!
Part 17: The alternate history!
Part 18: The weapons exposition!
Part 19: The alternate history Captain America!
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