The reflective albedo of each had lowered, making navigation around these planets problematic, since their original charts and records no longer coincided with the repository’s data. The ship’s galactic hologram was updated, but there was no possibility of interpreting the actual physical or chemical changes without years of analysis. Certain of the crew were tasked with immediately preparing and launching probes to all the affected bodies, and the occasional vibrations from a launch could be felt.
Hour after hour, as they orbited Mars, they were unable to contact any of their populace. As they had come down towards their homeworld, they again and again attempted contact with their bases, satellites, and outposts. Nothing was detected save the automated challenge and response encrypted transmissions initiated by their ancient tools. The underground cities were silent. The canals were vacant; the water that once flowed in abundance evaporated by the odd physics of The Wave. Nothing moved. The sky was abandoned, save for their scouts.
The T’truggl of the Urkses Beatnoy-Klardn moved his appendages in an agitated fashion, which for the Martians[3], was the equivalent of weeping. The crew was stunned and equally affected by the realization that they had come across limitless space, on a trip that had taken over a hundred years, and none of their kind was left to welcome them.
Every Martian, on every planet in the Solar System, was gone.
“We were alone. Where, I could not say, hardly imagine. All was black, and such a dense black that, after some minutes, my eyes had not been able to discern even the faintest glimmer.” –
Jules Verne
Chapter Two
For almost five years, the Urkses Beatnoy-Klardn had orbited Mars. During that time, there were the usual research and resupply efforts that were established routine for the crew. The T’truggl had allowed various away parties to explore different cities and installations, in the hope that some remnants or clues could be found that gave an indication as to the fate of their fellow Martians.
Their mastery of super-science required and produced a logical objectivity in these creatures that bordered on indifference. Yet, when seized by the mating frenzy, or during their molting or metamorphic states, they could feel and emote intensely.
Usually, during these private events, a provision for segregation was made, so as to not distract the other crew. Selection criteria for most space vessels was regimented and structured to produce the minimum interference with ship operations. However, the inevitable lengths of these voyages, the close quarters, and the nature of all species need for the propagation of their lineage demanded that acknowledgment of this biology was made.
The Martian spacecraft was designed for journeys that averaged between two and fourteen light-years of travel. The engines and other gravity warping technologies provided an acceleration that, if maintained for two years, would allow an approximate speed of sixty-four percent of the speed of light.
Relativistic effects were felt, in that time spent on the ship seemed to pass as normal. But the elapsed time of flight was usually fifty to eighty years of ‘real’ time; Ship time was a mere fourteen to eighteen months.
A fifty-year trip was initiated under constant acceleration for five years, then a period of ‘coasting’ occurred, with constant velocity at 0.64357 lights. After an Einsteinian time of forty years of this, the ship was inverted and decelerated for five years. During these journeys, the various tasks assigned were carried out with routing precision. The necessary stores for hygiene and sustenance were consumed, and the detritus recycled for use in other manners on board. Most of it was used as mass for the gravity mitigation mechanisms.
The inhabitants of the Urkses Beatnoy-Klardn continued their research and studies in a relatively dispassionate manner. The data was collected, recorded, collated, stored, and catalogued according to protocols and taxonomies developed over a hundred-thousand-year period, millions of years before the first Australopithecus Afarensis emerged from his cave.
The Martians had built great cities on Mars. They had excavated the intricate canal systems, and, as the planet’s water supply had diminished, realized that space travel was their only choice for racial survival. There came millennia of advances, coupled with the inevitable conflicts and mistakes. The entire populations of their major cities were lost when the first fusion reactors were built. The tremendous cost in lives and equipment was part of their rationalization that the global ecological changes that were occurring - because of increasing solar output - could only end in extinction, save for the continued application of pure science.
Martian leaders maintained a united effort to explore and colonize the nearer celestial bodies. Many pioneering vessels had been launched into space and were never seen nor heard from again. Deimos and Phobos were captured, hollowed out, and defensive installations placed for protection against spaceborne threats.
Powerful weapons were mounted on space platforms, and as the Martians moved further out, on the moons of the gas giant planets. A base was built and sent to orbit Neptune. The effort was incredible, taking over five hundred years to achieve.
The survival of the Martians was dependent on a total understanding of the consequences of inaction, social misalignment, and the projected outcomes of the increasing output from the Sun. There was little in the way of social unrest. Culturally, the Martian creatures were social, excepting mating, molting, and metamorphosis (the dreaded “3-M’s”). They had developed an appreciable talent for engineering and architecture, but also harbored an intense passion for music and art that, although repellent to human eyes and brains, was patronized and actively pursued by almost all of them. The Martian youth were all coached and tutored in the production of creative artifacts. Coupled with the superior intellectual vocations of mathematical analysis, statistical interpretation, and tonal awareness, they endlessly challenged their minds. A holistic approach to learning and education meant that only the infirm or injured Martian would not attain full self-actualization. Their long life spans allowed for experiencing and indulging in many diversions as well. They did not have any mechanism for extending their lives and were similar to the ant or bee in the way they supported their collective.
Violence on a personal level had been weeded out over the millennia. Evolutionary forces were much different than those on the Third Planet. The local flora and fauna served primarily as decorative or food roles, and eons of cultivation and selection had narrowed the indigenous Martian life forms down to a few thousand variants. Schlorgs, drurglers, sky-salps[4], and many other animals were harvested by the Martians.
Eventually, replicator technologies were developed that used quantum states of matter and energy to synthesize sustenance. The animals were no longer used as food, and wild herds were mainly left alone. The Martians did not even bother with preservative efforts since the ecology was primarily symbiotic in nature.
Once naturally grown and harvested foods had been supplanted by replication, the Martians explored ways to assure the continuation of the raw materials, rather than farming other species.
The Martians, of course, probed the inner Solar system as well as the outer. Many journeys in the early days of exploration were targeted to the Third Planet from the Sun.
The most recent forays to Earth had occurred in the early history of Humanity. [5] Almost 25,000 years before humans had discovered fire, the Martians had seeded the various planets and moons in their vicinity with probes and alarms. These were intended to not only collect data but in some ways alter the evolutionary pathways towards favoring Martian life. The projects used biological agents, nanometric contaminants, and genetically modified specimens to force outcomes in directions that might produce raw materials for Martian use.
The Martians, of course, were observed and encountered by the early inhabitants. Noting that many of these tribes were not being led or directed in a logical fashion, they sought to instill and develop an ordered society. Approaching the problem of creating a viable civilization with a distinctly Marti
an perspective, however, did not bear the expected fruit.
For one thing, the Martians were (for them) appalled at the level of violent behaviors exhibited by their wards. Entire tribes would be killed off by one angered individual. Infanticide was rampant, and the indiscriminate mating habits of humans led to disease and sickness in whole populations. Mammalian hygiene was as alien to the Martians as the fact that they were literally excreted as a worm-like larval entity is to human beings. Disgusted by the entire situation, they decided that, in spite of themselves, the proto-civilized animals that chased each other to extinguish entire lineages would be rescued.
Many decades of choosing and removing these people began. Select specimens were transported to Mars, via spacecraft. There, vivisection might occur. It was equally possible that the specimens would be merely caged and maintained for their entire life span. Experimentation commenced, and humanity was carefully scrutinized, biologically, physically, chemically, and especially psychologically.
Hundreds of years of this led to the establishment, on Earth, of Martian bases of operations. Using their technologies, and knowledge of advanced physics, the Martians enlisted the aid of the varied humans to create pyramids, ziggurats, and monolithic architectural structures. Landmarks were built for the interplanetary fleets, both those supplying and those collecting the materials that foretold the creation of human civilization. The newly formed societies were provided with Martian-bred leader castes. These chosen were privy to particular sciences of the Martians, and would use their knowledge to reduce those who stood in opposition to them.
Mythologies and legends were inculcated, and rudimentary recording tools used to disseminate these tales.
The Egyptians, the Celtics, the Druids, Sumerians, Aztecs, Mayans, Atlantean and Lemurian races, the Native Americans[6], the Toltecs – all of the famously notorious ancient civilizations were bred and released into an unsuspecting population of agricultural nomads. Situations were deliberately manipulated to assure a scarcity of resources, and weapons made available to create one-sided outcomes. The vanquished were made slaves. The victorious were allowed to trumpet their conquest.
Civilization had arrived on Earth, at the end of a bloody sword, forged on Martian soil.
Now, five thousand years later, the descendants of these same Martians looked out over their telescopes and instruments at Earth.
Since their arrival five years earlier, all efforts had been focused on discovering what had happened to their race. No transmissions had been detected; a few cryptic clues inferred that it was possible that a large portion of the Martian population had left Mars several decades prior to The Wave’s arrival. It was hoped that the acceleration and trajectories would allow a large enough window for escape that they would indeed survive and regroup.
The Martians did have some problems that were going to impact their decisions regarding the Earth. In point of fact, there had been some deep rifts among them concerning the exploration of dark space, hinging on the immense time spans involved. It was argued that the earlier ships might be overtaken in time by spacecraft utilizing the inevitably superior technology that was bound to be invented given the Martian propensity for super-scientific research.
The rift led to large segments of the Martians emigrating to the gas giant installations. Once there, they achieved some independence from the home world. They built more ships, venturing farther out into uncharted space. Ultimately, interstellar ships were constructed, and colonies set up around Alpha and Beta Centauri, Barnard’s Star, and other systems within a light-century of travel.
The Urkses Beatnoy-Klardn had been built at one of the farther interstellar outposts, over two-hundred years earlier. Its voyage was one of scouting. It was equipped with the most advanced, at that time, sensors and monitors possible for detecting the energies and vibrations on the sub ethereal and low-band quantum radiation bands. Now, its primary detectors were pointed at Luna.
For the last year, intermittent transmissions were coming from the dark side of the moon. Normally, this would have been of passing interest. There were automatic systems in many ancient structures on Earth, transmitting whatever they had been programmed to send lost centuries in the past. These would have typically been gathered by antenna arrays on Phobos and Deimos, and passed on to Mars, for analysis.
But, the past year’s intercepts were odd in a very distinct manner. They were in an older Martian dialect, and not well-crafted. They emanated from Terran transmitters, it was noted. Individual signature variations that were caused by altered signal amplitude and frequencies indicated that the transmitter was not of Martian design, nor construction.
The information once deciphered, spoke of a condition of chaos on the surface of the Earth. But these were coming directly from Luna. The inescapable conclusion was that some survivors of The Wave had managed to escape as far as the Moon. They were descendants of the Terrans that had been captured and bred on Mars, eons past.
They had suffered Regression, and many had vanished because of The Wave’s odd tachyon cloud immersions. They had left the Earth in two space arks, built using a primitive form of the Martian nuclear rockets. One of them had crash-landed on the back side of Luna, and the crew had been somehow insulated from the full effects of the Regression. The other ark was at a Lagrange point, and under attack from Earth forces, although of limited impact.
The inhabitants of these arks were most certainly members of the global Elite that the Martians had inserted and nurtured over thousands of years. They knew the rituals, many of the codes, and the philosophy of the Martian Overlords. They had provided their supplication and made the blood sacrifices necessary to invoke the correct sub ethereal connections.
More importantly, they were aware of the presence of the Martian Scout Vessel, the Urkses Beatnoy-Klardn. They were actively trying to contact them for assistance in returning to Earth, to reclaim their rightful place as the Elite leaders of humanity.
But, thought the T’truggl, they had no idea that, within only a few short weeks, the seven-thousand space ship strong, heavily armed Aldebaran Martian Battle Armada, led by Vice Admiral Gnoff Ptork, would be returning to the Solar System, to take back the home world from the traitors that had exiled them.
THE END
About This Series –
“Terminal Reset” takes place in a Universe identical to our own, but the impact of The Wave changes everything. The physical effects from it passing through Earth are devastating in a way that no one had ever seen before. The ramifications of this cause worldwide upheaval. The governments of the world react in standard fashions, but there are many complicating factors. Former leaders attempt to regain power, and new antagonists arise. The religious implications, coupled with a global food shortage create the conditions whereby new arrangements are made, to ensure survival. Nationalistic positions are realigned, and new political structures are formed.
We welcome your feedback and suggestions. We hope you have enjoyed the first book!
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[1] Editor’s Note: Earth travels through space in many directions at once. The planet revolves on its own axis, completing a circuit in approximately twenty-four hours. Annually, it orbits its star. All the while, the solar system follows its own trajectory as one of the systems orbiting outlying spiral arms of the Milky Way Galaxy, which is expanding away from Galactic center. The collapse of the Black Galaxy set up the mathematical certainty that The Wave and the planet Earth would at some point in time intersect in space. But, the nature of The Wave, with its otherworldly physics, meant that paradoxical events would transpire in a sequence that Einsteinian and relativistic space would not consider ‘normal’. For instance, even though the effects of The Wave seemed to an observer to only transpire over a period of several minutes, the reality was that Wave Space altered space-time in a manner whose exact parameters were indeterminate. The Reader should have an implicit understanding that the follow
ing events describing the intersection of The Wave and Earth can in no means be represented in a typical linear time-line, nor is there a particular order to which one must adhere in attempting to follow the narrative. The important thing to grasp is that these changes occurred globally, and would last far after The Wave and Earth no longer converged.
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[1] Deimos is the human word for the name of this orbital structure, long thought to be a moon.
[2] Again, a human language conceit is being allowed.
[3] Martian is another term that is being used for its convenience to the reader. The actual pronunciation of the ‘word’ for a ‘Martian’ cannot be performed in any tongue of Earth, as humans lack the three prehensile tongues and other vocal and special organs that emit heat and scent. Additionally, ‘Martians’ do not hear in a manner that is analogous to human beings. The hollow bone and non-muscular supporting structures are more like cockroaches, or lobsters. (They don’t look even remotely like those particular animals.) As such, their senses are highly developed in ways that are truly alien to the human experience.
[4] These are, again, translations to ease the understanding for the Reader, and do not even vaguely resemble the actual ‘Martian’ language taxonomy for these species.
[5] For the sake of convention, further descriptions of Terran or ‘Martian’ events, artifacts and histories will use ‘human’ terminology, such as BC or AD for historical reference, etc.
[6] Native American is used here in its North American definition.
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