by Boris Mosso
—Professor?
—Yes, Captain.
—You’re saying, we were looking for, as if you had been there.
—Well, I was part of that first search expedition and the incursion in the deep space also, which coincidentally found the capsule floating in space, four hundred years ago; Captain Lancar’s expedition. He was just a young boy then.
—How old are you, Professor?
—Four hundred thirty-five years old.
—The surprised buzzing was unavoidable.
In Espacia and its system, the medical nanotechnologies, the biomechanical and robotic implants, and later, the development of veins, arteries and organs’ growth, genetically compatible to patient’s genome, lengthened life to one hundred eighty years. With the cell manipulation developed in the following millennia, aiming to slow down the degenerative processes, it even reached to two hundred fifty years for the Espacians, whom responded better to the manipulated cell reproduction technologies; before the genetic drastic modification in the unborn, implanted fifty years ago, and the results expected were that from there on, the Espacians could live close to one thousand years.
Then, Renar, before the people’s astonishment now present, decided to take the floor.
—Don’t worry, Professor, you look very good for your age. Please continue.
Lena, within her amazement, was about to smile, but she contained herself.
—Like I was saying, our second expedition in that era with three spaceships, reached the Lumina Galaxy’s mixed area, in the blurry galactic edge after traveling eight years.
We tracked System X in the insides of the galaxy leaping from system to system, following the invisible trails left by the mysterious capsule in its voyage… but without any other result for another four years.
After that, we came back to Espacia, coming back twenty-two years after the original departure in one spaceship only, a Black Star. Despite the failure of our search, we spotted a very promising area on the edge of the galaxy on the other side of the spiral; at eighty thousand light years further than where we were. We found it using the astronomic observatory on board of the spaceship at the end of our flight time, when our survival abilities in space were running out.
At that point we had less than the exact amount to return to the Astral Galaxy. To begin the return home in that moment… wasn’t an easy decision. We didn’t all agree at the beginning, although it was best in the long run. We were forced to ration food, extract water and other resources from different planets and asteroids along the path of the endless, tortuous and dangerous way back.
At that time, I thought we were going back to the Lumina Galaxy shortly, to go around that area of interest hovering at the end of the journey, we never did it.
We ran into a Solarian System very different from the one we left when we departed. The First Councilor from that era, Isa Delarian, who made that expedition possible once she assumed her position… had died tragically during our absence. And without her… everything was lost… everything.
Trivian was impacted by the attendants, in an indefinable way, but he pulled himself together after glancing at Renar.
—Afterwards, the new Espacia’s Councilor elected in our absence, considered that another voyage would be too dangerous in view of the miserable state in which we returned. The decision was settled moreover arguing that it was a useless loss of lives, time and resources. We opposed greatly, the scientists and scholars’ group who gave a good portion of our career to this. Despite that, we weren’t heard. All this coincided with the troubled times in which the Baltar larger moon and our colony in planet Bolden, wanted their independence from us. The Solarian System was tense for several years, until the purpose finally prevailed, reasserting the systemic dominant emblematic government’s status, for the past millennia.
When calmness returned to the Solarian System, scientific priorities were different and the return of another incursion to the distant Lumina Galaxy, wasn’t reconsidered. In those times the spatial leaps’ technology wasn’t as sophisticated; only one hundred light years could be obtained in each maneuver. The decoy procedures and reconfiguration of coordinates by leap, took years of exhausting and risky journey. None of us who returned…were ever the same again
It was an unknown universe. We were forced to improvise routes that no traveler in the galaxy had ever traveled before; even now, this spaceship moves and leaps through hyperspace, as anything ever seen before. According to what I’m told, this Vector can perform quantum leaps up to ten thousand light years in one maneuver; one hundred times more than the big spaceships at that time.
Officer Estrader stepped in:
—Professor Trivian, currently, only the robotics and the explorers sustain that maximum space atop leap rank, at one hundred light years per operation. All the spaceships, even from the Nimide and on up, travel up to three thousand light years at once. However, just recently, we have the capacity to move at ten thousand light years per leap, and these two Vectors belong to that beginning generation.
—Thanks, Officer Estrader. Do you see, Captain?... Maybe it would have been different with these new quantum and navigation technologies. I don’t know.
—I understand, Professor, but I think that now it will be difficult as then, to comply with the objectives. It’s true that this Vector and its escort have important quantum leaps technology improvements concerning those times. But we’re in the middle of a destruction struggle and apart from that era, we don’t have much time to recover the object.
—I know.
—Professor, if this devise can really help us save our civilizations, we must find it before it’s too late.
For a few seconds all gazes became gloomy. Lena realized that she hadn’t directed the conversation adequately.
—Doctor Zenda, did you read this code or outdated language found in the primitive capsule? What can you tell us about the truthfulness of the writings and scarce images protected under this language?
—It took that era’s linguists and archeologists twenty years to understand and decode that dead language, lost in time and space, given that we didn’t have any linguistic reference from which to begin with, added to the fact that the files found contained extensive information gaps. Those files were dramatically deteriorated to the point of spending a couple of years in their restoration only, using the best reconstructive microscopic nano robots and synthetic molecular connections’ technology, available at that time.
Based on what was learned throughout all those years, several sections from the files were able to be decoded with images and two-dimensional sequences, incomplete that is. That’s why we now have some images of their world and the object. We didn’t find visual physiological references from System X’s inhabitants, nor from many other things. We didn’t find or were able to recover any sound at all either, by which we don’t have the slightest idea of how that language is spoken.
At that point, Captain Fromdert stepped in respectfully with a question.
—Excuse me, Doctor Zenda, I don’t understand. Is it assumed that you decoded this language? That you understand it, isn’t that right?
—Yes, Captain Fromdert, it is so. We were able to decipher the writings and identified it and were able to make some sense from their signs and handwritings. But it’s very different to know each letter’s sound and in what way it harmonizes or spoken in a sentence. In other words, the phonetics.
—Then we can read it, but we couldn’t speak it or understand it if someone spoke it?
—That’s right, Captain Fromdert. What we linguists can’t do either, is to say whether the history told in those files are truthful or not.
Lena wanted to hurry the issue at that point of the narration.
—Professor, now more mysteries haunt me than at the beginning. Why didn’t you think in Lumina’s explicit unreachable area, three hundred seventy years ago, to return to the search of the object?
Renar stepped in determined at
that point. The opportunity to approach the subject with scientific and exact basis was presented.
—If you allow me, it’s time to hone the astronomical concepts regarding that. In that era, Professor Trivian, along with other star archeologists and astronomers, all with very brilliant minds, reconstructed so to speak, the tiny spaceship’s flight history. They had to consider the speed and registered course at the time it was found, binding those figures to thousands of gravitational influences from the nearby bodies in their pathway, etc. Heavenly bodies that weren’t there anymore nor in the same position inside the Lumina Galaxy; there are multiple factors. We’re talking about hundreds of four-dimension equations filled with uncertainties.
—Is that what you do then, Mr. Renar?
—Yes, it is. As a basis, we use the information provided by my old colleagues as a basis. Then, currently, other scientists and star archeologists took this over six months ago and took off in its search following Terilian. They ended up adjusting an old and complex model from the spectrum’s options. Since the beginning of this history, scientists have watched the Lumina Galaxy and its exterior systems.
—Why the exterior systems, Mr. Renar?
—Because a unique and very specific galactic localization reference was found in the capsule, which placed the mentioned system in the exterior or somewhere somewhat close to Lumina’s spiral edge, which is indeed an immense portion of space to track. Considering the galactic discs’ thickness of ten thousand light years…
Lena immediately remembered what the First Councilor said about the information that kept the search of System X going.
—But that… still gives us an endless range of possibilities; a megalithic one. If we additionally consider the galactic diameter of one hundred thousand light years, we’re talking, after all, about three hundred thousand light years of circumference to cover.
—That’s how it was at the beginning. In the past months we were able to limit the area in issue much more, comparing them with the updated astronomical maps.
—How so, Professor?
—These past three hundred fifty years since our second return to Espacia, haven’t passed in vain. A countless group of star archeologists, gravitational physics, theoretical physicists from the multiverse strings, applied dark matter and dark energy calculators, added to the best star heterogeneous expansion astronomers, we could find in the Solarian System, were dedicated to this all this time, generation after generation, to find this system. Just as Renar said a moment ago, we haven’t stopped looking for Lumina… never.
—Did you see something specific that time?
—Yes, allow me to explain. From the beginning, we considered the shifting of Lumina’s galactic spiral’s arch portion, product of the rotation of the same, and we then proceeded to find that spot from which the capsule emerged into the deep space before that galactic rotation.
—Did you say, the galaxy’s rotation? How long did the capsule remain drifting?
—If you allow me, I’ll finish with my explanation first and afterwards we’ll get to that.
—Very well.
Lena began to suspect that she wouldn’t hear good news.
—Thus, at the beginning, we determined a total of eighteen solar systems as prospective places for the capsule’s departure, considering its rocky planets, the gaseous world and the distances to the middle of its suns. Now, being closer to Lumina each time, from the Vector’s observatory we can compare and include into the program, the gravitational moons’ influences from these planets and the existing rubble at the distance within each system, the ones that orbit captives of the solar gravity, at distances up to a couple of light years from the main star. Something that during hundreds of years we couldn’t achieve, disabled by the unmeasurable distance between both galactic bodies.
Later, we’ll process the information in the models’ star dynamic or star archeology predictive regressive directional programs. The results will be cleansed later using the modified algorithms’ multipliers, transient through the star spiral. Ultimately, we’ll travel to some ten or eleven systems at the most. Something insignificant, if we consider that Lumina has more than two hundred thousand million suns. As you see, our search will be approachable from the Espacian exploration point of view, using these technologies.
The holographic floating over the table separated and enlarged a section of the galactic spiral in reddish colors, highlighting eighteen suns marked with very bright lit spots.
Everyone observed the star maps extremely bewildered, since the target area was a third away from the galaxy’s front part to where they would arrive in a few weeks, according to what was programmed.
—Professor, are you sure that the star map provides the distances and speeds at full scale? Your area of interest is too shifted to the right. According to this, the Lumina Galaxy rotated one third over its own axis from the capsule’s departure. That can’t be…
Estrader almost stepped in over Lena’s words; by that time, his still position and kind smile had completely disappeared. The knowledgeable engineer already suspected where it was coming from; the Vector’s navigators also frowned at that point.
—Professor Trivian, if the capsule moved at two percent speed of light and was intercepted at one million light years from Lumina when it took the same route we’re performing now, but inversely, then, how long was it floating in space? How did it reach that linear speed? How is it possible for it to have traversed such huge distance?
—Adding the conditions explained by Renar just a moment ago, we calculate an enormous travel time. We should consider the Lumina Galaxy orbits completely over its axis, each three hundred million years.
Estrader stopped just when he was about to speak, as Lena stepped in before, interrupting Trivian with an emphatic tone:
—Professor, you’re going to excuse me, but I don’t understand where you want to go with this; something doesn’t add up here. Answer Officer Estrader’s question once and for all. Could you do it? Why is the shifting of the search so meaningful?
The lesser rank Officers approached little by little to the meeting table, paying complete attention, intrigued to see the unsuspected course the conversation was taking. Lena noticed that one of the STF’s Officers, whose name she didn’t know, stared at Renar; while Professor Trivian looked disappointed, since he didn’t expect such an apprehensive reaction from the Officers present.
At this difficult time, Renar stepped in determined to set the real figures on the table; otherwise, everyone was going to be upon him. He feared the Officers’ group’s reaction but understood that hiding or delaying the delivery of that information, would bring worse subsequent consequences.
—Captain… simply said, the capsule was traveling nonstop through space during one hundred million years, until it was rescued by Professor Trivian.
Lena grabbed her head and was about to curse badly. The attendant’s surprised exclamation was noisy and massive. Renar continued speaking without paying the least attention to the group’s reactions, trying to finish the heated meeting as soon as possible:
—Upon arriving to Lumina’s galactic spiral’s edge in some three more weeks, a long leaps journey into hyperspace will take us surrounding the one hundred thousand light years arch, although already getting deep into the galaxy. That way we’ll reach the area that was in front of our own galaxy one hundred million years ago. The search itself will begin from there.
Drexiliander was the only one able to ask one more question.
—Then, the one third rotation of the galaxy is real?
—It’s real, Officer Drexiliander. During one hundred million years, the Lumina Galaxy rotated a third over its own axis.
Lena couldn’t avoid becoming prey of utter despair now, after concluding that it was almost impossible to find traces from such an old civilization. A quick glance at the pale faces of her crewmen, was enough to understand that she wasn’t the only one. After her conversation with De Kraun, she ass
umed many years of travel, but nothing prepared her for this; she cussed him out again in her mind for not having warned her.
—Professor Trivian, which is our galaxy’s oldest known civilization?
—The Trodians from the Lender System, in the hundredth third Astral’s quadrant, at some twenty-eight thousand light years from the Solarian System.
Upon hearing the Professors’ first sentence, Lesir couldn’t stop from letting out a nasty exclamation that fortunately only Gander and Blesten were able to hear.
—Damn bastards… Fuc… Trodians.
The STF’s Captain gave a cold and stern look at the Special Forces hardened soldier. Lesir shrugged his shoulders upon seeing himself visually reprehended by Gander and with his arms crossed, he leaned back on his seat showing his discomfort.
Trivian, without noticing the situation, continued with his response:
—The Trodians are currently a very diminishing and conflictive society, however, it was a splendid, balanced, sophisticated and peaceful culture once. They keep registries of writings and intelligent activity, metal tools and city’s construction, shown in their designs, which date from thirteen million Spatial years ago. It’s the oldest registry of intelligent life alive of their intelligence level, through writings and complex architecture in the Astral.
—The Trodians? very well, but tell me Professor, which is the oldest species manifesting any kind of intelligence? Nothing sophisticated, who was the first one to stand and light fire, or build something with their own hands? If it is what they must have to take care of their things. I don’t know if you understand me…
At that point, Doctor Zenda stepped in:
—Well, the Mardan Planet’s inhabitants who came alive, primarily evolving from silicon spirals’ amino acids, not from carbon like us. However, according to their own historians, the members of that telepathic beings’ breed, with thin bodies and multiple strands as limbs, have been living on that frozen planet with a physiological shape and intellect, manifested in caves’ drawings or in the fabrication of very basic and primitive tools, for twenty million Espacian years. With noticeable evolutionary changes registered at that time, on their bodies and intellectual capacities up until today.
