by Dan Haronian
"Looks like some kind of secret writing."
He scrolled, stopped in few places and tried to make sense out of the text, but nothing made sense.
Seven days will rise confuser, see them will small outcast, all rises he will see, remember how arrived from there, they all confused the one the special, the one that sees to depth like father, will those who see him blind to see his glory, sleeping days are sometimes eight
"What do you make of this?" I asked and he nodded.
"Nothing. It looks like a scrambled text."
"So someone, a hundred or so years ago, sent this shuttle into space with our name on the walls and scrambled information so that it would crash here?" I said.
"Yes. I know it doesn't make sense," said my father. "The names of the files are in Seragonian, but the text is in Naanites. Besides Daio, Dug, and me who else knows both languages? I can't believe there was ever someone here who understood Seragonian and Naanite."
"You don't know what was here a hundred years ago. No one knows. Maybe this shuttle was sent out from here by Seragonians who came for the minerals."
"So you think that few hundred years ago there was a culture here that scrambled information, and had the capabilities to build something like this?"
"Why not?"
"I don't know. There is no hint of anything like that in the histories of Naan. There is not even a scrambled narrative. Nothing."
"Anyhow, if this text is scrambled then there is no chance to unscramble it," I said.
He didn't respond. I stood up and paced around the room a bit. "I'm going out to get some air," I finally said.
I went down the stairs and stepped outside. Mampas was in the sky. I walked over to the horses. On my way over to them I called my mother and updated her. I didn't tell her about what we’d found. I didn't even know how to explain it. The only thing that was clear was that our name was on the wall, and that it opened the terminal.
Suddenly I felt threatened. What was our name doing there? I tried unsuccessfully to convince myself that the name Plaser was really popular on Seragon, but it didn’t make sense. Of all places in the whole galaxy why would this shuttle crash here in Naan, where the name Plaser belongs to the only ex-foreign people? More than that, it flies over the heads of two of them, and they are the ones that eventually find their name on the wall and open the terminal
It sounded crazy, and I began to worry that something horrible was about to happen.
I took our bags and went back to the shuttle. I set up the tent next to the entrance, and placed my father’s mattress inside, even though I knew he would insist on sleeping outside. I went out to get some fresh air but the scent of the soot was everywhere. It was weaker inside the shuttle, so I decided to spend the night there.
"What did you find out?" I asked when he finally came out of the shuttle.
He stretched a bit. "Not much," he said. "Maybe things need to settle down a bit. Maybe it will be clearer in the morning."
"Nothing will be clearer in the morning, except for this glade and the fact that they will come here with their heavy equipment to tear the shuttle into pieces.
"I'll ask them to defer the demolition,” he said. “I need more time."
"Maybe they can cut out the room and move it to the city," I said.
He nodded. "I guess."
"If you don't mind I think I will sleep inside," I said.
He raised his eyebrow dismissively. "I have some crackers and fruit," he said opening his bag.
"I have soup powder," I said and emptied my bag.
We lighted the small, gas powered cooking unit that was always in my father's bag, and warmed some water. A few minutes later we sat on the edge of the mattress and ate crackers with soup.
"Are you sure you don't want to sleep inside?" I asked trying to push my thoughts onto something casual.
"Why sleep inside when you can sleep outside?"
"Because of the smell," I said.
"The smell doesn't bother me."
"Of course," I mumbled.
"Is everything ok with you?" he suddenly asked.
"I'm fine," I said and sighed. "I think I'm still shocked."
He nodded. "I was asking about your life in general."
I look at him surprised. "Why, did mom tell you something?"
"Your mother didn't tell me anything. Why, does she know something I don't know?"
"Nothing special. I had an idea I wanted to talk to you about." I hesitated for a moment and then I added, "but we are here playing with the riddles instead."
"I'm sorry this thing is sucking me in. I don't know why."
"You have nothing to be sorry for. Not when our name is there on the wall." He nodded.
We were silent for a while and then he said, "So you have a new idea?"
I nodded. "Something that will improve the chosen’s productivity."
He sipped from the soup and said, "I thought we were very productive. What is there to improve?"
I didn't want to discuss it. It was very important to me but I didn't think my mind was clear enough to discuss it.
"I'm not sure about it myself," I said eventually, but immediately regretted my words. If I wasn’t sure then why was I asking to talk about it? "I’d rather talk about it some other time," I promptly corrected myself. "When my head is clear enough."
"I understand. I'll be happy to talk about it whenever you're ready."
"How about tomorrow night at home?" I asked and he nodded.
"It was Raban," said Carr to Heneg when he entered the control center the next day.
"Raban?"
"He left this morning, but Sosi still there."
"It's the second day already," said Heneg and looked at the central screen. "What is the old man doing there?"
"Maybe his wife kicked him out of the house," said Carr with a grin and pointed at the secondary screen. "Look at this."
Heneg look at the screen and asked, "What is he carrying?"
"A bed," said Carr. "This is from this morning. I think he's settling in."
Heneg shook his head. "That weirdo lived for several years alone in the mountains. The whole City of the Chosen was built around his tent. I wouldn’t be surprised if we suddenly heard him saying that this shuttle is a sign from the heavens that he needs to start a new city around it."
"A hovercraft is coming," said one of the technicians. He switched the view on the screen to the view from one of the Flyeyes hovering above the area. It soared away above the tree line and the glade looked smaller and smaller. After the hovercraft landed it dove in between the treetops and focused on the hovercraft’s door.
"It’s Su-Thor," said Heneg when he saw her going out of the hovercraft.
"Is she moving in too?" wondered Carr.
Su-Thor stepped out of the hovercraft and looked at the shuttle remembering Raban's excitement when he told her about the password that opened the terminal. "Plaser, simply Plaser, not something close or similar, the exact spelling. It is written on the wall of the shuttle," she remembered him saying. She didn't believe him. She thought that he was probably leaving out a few details and doing his best to be dramatic in order to cover for his father who hadn’t been home for two days.
Sosi stepped out of the shuttle and walked towards her. Su-Thor offered him her cheek and he kissed her.
The moment was captured by the Flyeye hovering overhead
"Can you hear what they’re saying?" asked Heneg.
"Not with this model," said Carr, "but I can focus on their faces. We have software that reads lips."
"So, you've found yourself a new hobby?" asked Su-Thor.
"I don't know what I’ve found," said Sosi and pulled at his beard. "It looks as if the shuttle originated here somehow. And it's not a hobby."
"You're the only one who still cares about this shuttle. Everyone else has moved on."
"You will think differently after I'll show you what I have found."
"I already saw. I was here b
efore, remember?"
"You have seen nothing," said Sosi.
Su-Thor shook her head at this.
"Give me a chance," he said and gestured towards the shuttle.
"The shuttle came from here?" asked Heneg. "Are you sure that is what he said?"
Carr cursed under his breath and said, "It's not definite. He touched his beard as he was speaking and we couldn’t see his lips clearly enough."
Carr ran the video again and the program said in a calm voice. "It looks as if it came from…" then several options appeared for completing the sentence: here, there, and where.
"The way he structured the sentence must mean it came from a surprising place. I think he said from here."
"How is that possible?" wondered Heneg. "What was here three hundred years ago?"
Su-Thor walked into the room and gazed at the bed underneath the lenses. "I see you are making yourself at home," she said.
"Musan insisted," said Sosi. "He won’t let me sleep outside."
She looked at the graphics on the wall and walked towards them searching for the name.
"You see it?"
She moved her hand along the curves. Suddenly she opened her eyes wide and moved her hand along with the letters.
"Exactly," said Sosi.
"I wouldn't have noticed it if I didn't know what to look for."
"Raban did," he said proudly.
"Naanite is in his blood," she said and stepped back from the wall to see the graphics from perspective. "He tells me this was the password."
"Yes."
"Just like that? Without prerequisites? Without teaching the terminal anything?"
"You don't believe me?"
"Maybe the shuttle picked something up just before crashing," she said.
"And someone drew this on the wall just before the crashing, and jumped out without leaving a trace?" continued Sosi.
"I guess you're right," she said and gazed at the wall again.
"We didn't interfere with anything. We didn't teach the terminal anything. I didn't even see the name on the wall until Raban entered it in. I have no idea how he made the connection between the two."
Su-thor walked towards him. "So what did you find in the terminal?"
"That is the interesting part," he said and sat down in front of the terminal. "We found Naanite text. Look at this for example," he scrolled down. "The first paragraph talks about some wisdom. It is called Onimin and I think everything thing else is somehow related to it."
"Wisdom? What you mean by wisdom?"
"I don't know. What is Onimin?" He browsed through a few pages. "I have reviewed very little of what is here, but it all looks the same."
Su-Thor paced the room. She looked at the lenses on the ceiling and said, "Tell a riddle hide a trace, solve a riddle find a treasure."
."The writing is very similar to what we know, but the text is meaningless," said Sosi. "Look here," he pointed at the screen as she approached.
Will not land will not sleep unless trees receive it like the Books dense pages, rejected other not one of brothers.
"Maybe it's related to the crash," said Su-Thor.
"Which makes it even odder," said Sosi. He pointed at another paragraph and read:
Seven world destroyed by man confusion, blinding will be of his own doing, they see nothing but blur image of real all confusion from pride and vanity, no one care of followers future, new would will be lost by confusion, he will see the way for saving world number eight
"And this one that looks similar."
Seven days will rise confuser, see them will small outcast, all rises he will see, remember how arrived from there, they all confused the one the special, the one that sees to depth like father, will those who see him blind to see his glory, sleeping days are sometimes eight
"It's like someone put these letters together randomly," she said.
"Yes, but still there's something here," said Sosi. "Maybe ‘confuser’ or ‘confusion’ is referring to information scrambling or maybe to a scrambler."
"I think you're letting your imagination run wild."
"Maybe," he said and looked at the screen. "Maybe it's all my imagination or maybe there is something here."
"What is ‘rise confuser’?" She asked.
"Seven days," said Sosi. "Maybe it's the rise of Mampas."
"Well, I know Mampas is confusing to you, but what does it mean here?"
"I don't know. Maybe it's information scrambling on Mampas. Maybe it's the fact that we don't really know when dark nights happen. It's also kind of scrambling."
"What is ‘small outcast’?"
Sosi shrugged his shoulders.
She sighed and walked towards the wall. "I don't know what to tell you. I don't believe there is a hidden message here but I agree that it cannot be a joke. It would be the most expensive joke ever." She turned to him. "What if someone sent it over here?"
"You think someone sent it here so we would discover it?"
"Have you thought of that?"
He looked around him. "Yes, I have. Look at this place. Have you ever heard of a shuttle with such a room? Not only did it survive the crash, but it's intact."
"But what is its purpose?"
Sosi frowned, "I think we'll discover that in this text."
"This is crazy."
"It's crazy no matter what," he replied.
"So we need to decipher it? Like it's a quiz?"
"I don't know. Maybe there is something in this text, a secret or a message."
Su-Thor raised her eyebrows. "What message?"
"It's hundreds of year old shuttle. Nobody knows where it’s from. There are no signs of people and the only thing that is worth our attention is this text. I don't see anything more reasonable than to assume there's something in them."
"So someone put this text in this shuttle and sent it into space to crash here, just now, especially for the Plaser family."
"Yes, something like that," said Sosi hesitated.
"Doesn't that sound completely insane?"
"Completely."
"Maybe if you find out where it came from things will make more sense."
"The text is Naanite, the chairs, the door, and the stairs are meant for the feet of short people. These lenses are similar to those in the cave. I have no doubt it's from here."
"Can you check to see if there was a shuttle like this here a few hundred years ago? What things were like here back then?"
"I don't know if there's anything reliable in the network from that long ago. Maybe in some hidden databases."
"I don't know how to get to hidden databases,” she said emphasizing the word, "but I can check the network.” She walked over to the bed and sat down. “So are you planning to stay here until you resolve this mystery?"
"I don't know," he said and looked at the screen. "I have to understand what it means."
"Have to? You have to do nothing."
He shrugged his shoulders. "What if it's a warning of something terrible to come? Maybe we have to understand it or else something terrible will happen."
"Nothing terrible will happen," said Su-Thor in an uncompromising tone. "If someone wanted you to know that something terrible is about to happen they could have done it in much clearer way."
Sosi nodded, pulled at his beard and gazed at her. "You want to spend the night with me here?" he asked.
She poked at the lumpy mattress that passed for a bed. "You want me to sleep on this?"
"We can sleep outside if you’d prefer?"
"I'm done with that, thank you very much. I’ll stay here with you for couple of hours and then I'm out of here."
He looked back at the screen. "You want to help me with this?"
Su-Thor nodded and said, "I'm willing to try."
"We need to find a way to get inside the shuttle," said Heneg after Sosi and Su-Thor disappeared back inside. "Even though I don't think anything terrible is happening in there I still want to know."
"I ran
a search for information about the shuttle," said Carr. "Three hundred years ago, other than a primitive mining operation, there was nothing here. Not even a city."
"That contradicts his thought that the shuttle originated here," said Heneg.
Carr raised his eyebrows. "I guess." He played back the surveillance videos the Flyeyes had captured earlier in the day. "Take a look at this."
As the Flyeye flew quickly over the shuttle Carr suddenly froze the image and magnified a small area in the picture then improved its sharpness.
"What is that?" asked Heneg.
"They looks like windows," said Carr. "The technician on duty discovered it by accident when they reflected light back at the Flyeye."
"Windows? Are you sure?"
"It looks like it."
"What could be their purpose?"
"Maybe to allow light inside," said Carr. "These windows are at exactly the level of the ceiling of the room near the edge of the stairs." Heneg lifted an eyebrow and shook his head. The shuttle was so old that it was difficult to make sense out of things. "Was it customary to include such windows in shuttle design three hundred years ago?" he wondered aloud.
Carr frowned. "I don't know. I guess we can check.” He paused, waiting for Heneg to grasp the importance of the windows.
"Do you think you can land a Flyeye on one of the windows without them noticing?"
"That's the idea, sir. We can try. Even if they'll hear something we'll still have time to make it disappear without being spotted."
Heneg rubbed his hands with pleasure. "Let's try."
Carr called to one of his technicians. The man walked over to him quickly. He motioned toward the screen and said, "Land one on a window."
The technician's smiled and immediately sat down in front of the terminal. He maneuvered the Flyeye into a position just above the lenses and touched the screen exactly where he wanted it to land. The Flyeye dropped fast and pulled up short right above the lenses. The technician focused on one of the lenses, shifted the Flyeye’s position a bit to hover above it, and closed the distance gradually. It landed with a slight bump.
