The Alien Artifact 8

by V Bertolaccini

  The atmosphere was warm, evening for so early in the morning, and the ground had warm rock, and he gasped at how hot it might be in the day, and there were desert sand regions nearby that were identical to the hottest deserts on the Earth, and he smelt odors in the air from what had to be volcanic gases, and going by the reactions of the others he was sure it could be toxic gases.

  He realized that his spacesuit had the capacity to analyze it and determine what it was, and he quickly checked and was surprised that it was marked as unknown, and they just breathed it anyway, as it was weak and their oxygen supplies would run out if they never, and he realized the distance they traveled, and why it had taken so long, and that they had traveled from the direct center of the universe to the most distant, and he wondered if it was possible to guess the distance, and size of the universe.

  The sun rose swiftly, and he was surprised at how fast the sky changed color and a crimson sky engulfed them, and he realized that they were on another world, and at a point nobody on the Earth would ever see, and they had gone far further than anyone would, and he had originally believed that nobody would even see another solar system or step on another world.

  Orwell was fascinated in the worlds, as well as the other astronauts, as he was the science officer, and as a scientist, seemed to examine the world, and he was sure he was thinking of a way to escape from their voyage through the universe, and its dangers increasing, as they were surely going to get it soon, if everything went the way it was going, and if there was no chance of returning to the Earth why not find the best place, and even though it was so barn, and empty of life, it had air and surely water, and he also spotted rain type clouds behind him.

  Was this world good enough to live on? It was better than the vast dangers of the last worlds, and again he wondered why they had been put there, and he realized that there had to be something buried away there!

  He lurched forward, and moved over to where there was a cliff edge, and instantly saw a panoramic view of an area of landscape, with a mass of gray stone stretching out, and he moved further along where loose rocks went down in a slope, and he considered going down to the lower ground below and he balanced on the edge of it.

  A cold breeze blew across his face, and the rustle of dry dirt came from beside him, and as the sun rose he looked back at the last region of space vanishing into a blue sky, and he wondered what existed beyond the universe, which he was sure was there, and he could not imagine anything for some reason, and he wondered if it just vanished into no existence.

  The figures of the other astronauts shifted over to him, after talking about it, and where they should go, and Orwell moved over to his side.

  They studied the contours of the rocky hills and mountains, and in parts of it where sand stretched out, with them looking for signs of life and plants.

  “Well, it looks like water over there!” Orwell announced, to his great surprise, calmly scanning the shapes in the land.

  “Where?” he gasped, searching for where it was.

  Orwell pointed over to the side, where he had not really looked, and he saw water shinning, which had looked like flat shiny rock or something.

  “That’s water! What makes you think it’s water?”

  “I can tell! And I can see the sky around it …”

  They decided to go down the hill, across it, and their feet rhythmically crunched into stones, and they breathed fast.

  A light gray rock plane mostly filled up the landscape directly below, and they went to it, and he saw pockets of what looked like water and vague splashes of red in places, which looked like water and vegetation.

  When they reached the ground at the bottom, where the light gray rock plane went out at their fronts, he examined chunks of stone that covered the ground of the world.

  The planet had large areas of its surface smashed into pieces of shrapnel. The rocks were scattered through the lengthy rock plane zones, and round holes perforated the stone in the form of large potholes.

  In the silence of the cool morning he felt the sun and heat start to increase, and he watched the land stretch out across their front, and the gray shingle rocks become thinner at their front.

  The large holes surrounded their front, going deep into the ground, which looked strange, and they kept examining them wondering what the hell they were, and when they ignored them, and started to look for other things, a distant low pitch tone of something came from some distant place, like some inhabitant of the world had been watching them and had reacted.

  They rushed through the last of the shingle and arrived at the flat rock of the rock plane, and they walked there properly, unimpeded in their spacesuits, where their heads darted about, looking for traces in the landscape of any signs of life – and anything that would indicate the presence of anything that they would encounter.

  The strangeness of the place bewildered him, as it never actually had much, and he wondered if there was something missing from the place, with it being located so far away from the rest of the universe.

  Their figures cast deep shadows against the rocky background, as the sun accelerated up into the sky, and their glances looked for nearby water.

  His gaze went out across the rock plane, which went away out to faraway mountains, near the skyline, and he examined a small nearby red patch, out in the rock plane, for a long time, and he realized that it was not as far from there as he had thought.

  He sniffed the air as the wind blew from where he was looking, and out from the rock plane, and he thought he saw the shape of something moving, and he stared in disbelief, and tried to explain the confounded shapes of the smashed rocks about it.

  Orwell showed him some large holes in the ground nearby, hidden behind a small hill, and they rushed over to them, and as they approached them they all saw the holes had the same unusual shapes, and up close they saw that they went deep into the world below, and he was unable to see the bottom of them.

  He automatically lowered his head to the ground, over a hole, and listened for sounds, and any sound, even a crackle of stone, and stood up and thought about it, and realized it was not as new looking as it looked!

  What could make such a hole? Was there something on this world they should see, and should they avoid direct confrontation with it? Could it even be watching him there?

  While he moved away, Orwell stopped at the edge of a nearby rock pile, and he went over and found him standing examining a blob of reddish slime, and they watched its veins take blood through its slimy shape, and they allowed it to slither down into a crack in the ground, and they watched its organs vibrating as it vanished out of sight, and went into the ground and rock.

  While they walked away, going across the rock plane, a loud shriek came from there, and in the thin crack in the rock he saw its shape, and wondered what the hell it was.

  They cautiously shifted on, across the hot plane of rock, to a red patch, and their vague view of it increased in clarity, and a waterhole became visible at its center and to their surprise the red color was miniature red forms of thin plants, like cactus, growing like grass around its perimeter.

  They sat and rested at the small waterhole, and watched a gust of wind whirl a cloud of sand up and into strange shapes.

  To Cronenberg’s surprise he saw the horizon was altering and darkening and the sun was quickly going below distant mountains, and he realized it was turning dark already, and they were away out there, and he had wanted to return before it got dark, and he wondered if it was dangerous there.

  In the end they decided to stay, as there was water, and they could see everything about them, and it had to be safer, and it turned dark fast, and darker than he had imagined, and the night sky was totally empty of stars!

  At times he wondered why they had even gone there, and been left on the desolate world, in the remote stars, on the boundary of the universe – with such a dark, moonless, and starless sky, where there was little – and out of nowhere an explosion blasted out across the a
lien world night, almost making them jump out of their skin, and look everywhere, and look for cover, and protection!

  All they could see were rocks smashing and exploding out and showering the ground of the rock plane in the darkness, at a nearby region they had come from, and he recalled the deep cavities he had seen in the ground there, and their strange shapes, and tried to explain what had created them, and he realized how powerful it was, and that its forces had smashed the rock to pieces.

  It was like it was something smashing its way out the depths of hell, crawling up into the upper world in the dark desolate world!

  With a final blast it smashed its way through a pile of solid gray rocks, sending up splinters of rock and dust across the ground, and its loud thundering thuds blasted out into the silent world, on the brink of existence, at the furthest reaches of the universe, and it rushed straight towards them, like an earthquake, making the ground about them furiously shudder from its force.

  Its black shape rushed wildly over the rocky plane seeking, and ready to pulverize any life form that it sensed, and anything that crossed its path, and the ground pounded and shuddered furiously, and they froze, hoping it had not seen them, and as it approached them they saw the beast’s red glowing energy formation, and red devil features, and their minds screamed in horror, and they were astonished to see the universe exploding away, and it with it, and them blasting through a gateway, going further out, and taking them to another destination.

  Chapter 24

  The Outer Universe

  At first they could not comprehend anything and form mental recognitions of their surroundings, and Cronenberg conclusively wondered if it had accidentally killed him and sent him to some form of its afterlife, and examined what was there, and considered if they were still in one of the sections of the gateways, and considered what would happen if they were trapped there, or their consciousnesses were, after them being killed there, and he examined everything about him in as much detail as he could and saw his entire field of vision full of celestial whiteness.

  His spacesuit faceplate automatically shaded the light as far as it could, and though it was still blinding he saw things about him!

  After some time his eyes adjusted and he saw his legs, below his spacesuit, and them looking like they were hanging over nothing, and he tried to feel what was below him through his thick spacesuit boots, but could feel little!

  There was an intense glow below, creating the intense light, and he was unable to see virtually anything, and he checked the surrounding temperature in his helmet, and it was normal, and he checked if his surrounds had an atmosphere, and it was normal, and he examined the blinding light beaming up at him.

  He felt some pain in his eyes, and knew that they had to find somewhere to shelter, and he felt tears pouring down from his eyes as they reacted to the intense light, and he was sure that it could blind him, and he searched around to see where they were and where they could go, and saw little, and decided they should move away and try and find somewhere elsewhere.

  The place was like heaven and he occasionally heard the others give gasps at it as they marched away as fast as they could, in a direction where there looked less light.

  It was incredible and he could not see or feel anything below him and everywhere else was white, but not blinding like from the entire region below, and he searched through it seeing nothing anywhere, and stopped occasionally frustrated at their lack of progress of discovering a way to get away from there, and wondered how long they could survive there, and wondered if he would die there wondering where the hell he was.

  For some reason he thought his size had decreased, and he continuously measured himself, and he wondered if the gateway had shrunk him, and he considered if it was the lighter gravity, and he finally felt the ground with his spacesuit glove detached, and discovered it was some sort of energy force.

  Away in the distance he finally saw something shift out of the light and he studied it gasping, for a long time, and they rushed on, silently trying to grasp what was there, and even tried to listen to the strange ground with his ear.

  At a closer position they saw something large going across the horizon, and at more closer position they realized it was land, and he felt ecstatic, after what had happened, and he thought of it like being a castaway out in the sea finding land, or an island, and he increased his speed and they finally rushed over the land, and climbed up an area of sand, like a beach, until the light was out of view, and they rested, and allowed their eyes to return to normal.

  It was incredible he had never seen anything like it, and he wondered what sort of world it was, which had an energy that glowed brightly and was solid, and had areas of land, and he wondered if it was some form of early world of the universe, and that the land was normal matter and the other an early form of it.

  When their eyes recovered from the bright light, and they had rested, they climbed a hill behind them, and they saw an astonishing sight and the world beyond that was more immense than he could imagine could exist and its horizon was flat and went out hundreds of miles all around his front, and there was no real distant curve, and the horizon disappeared into hills and mist hundreds of miles away, out in the distance, and they could not explain how it could be that way, and he wondered if it was a flat or square world, and they just explained it as being an early form of world that had less gravity and an immense size, and he considered if the energy they saw below it filled the entire world, and the energy had little gravity.

  They spotted large regions of water and what looked forms of vegetation, and they rushed over to the nearest area with water, and had a last look at where the massive central energy was.

  Many miles away, he saw types of volcanic phenomena, which looked strange and he and Orwell studied it with interest, to check it and they considered if the stuff given out from below was the same as normal matter, and they examined the ground more and more and found it had unknown substances, but was basically normal soil and rock.

  The incredible thing was there no sign of a sun, and they never realized what could be constantly lighting the sky, if was a sky, as it just glowed like something else, and the rain clouds and mist formed far below it.

  The first plant was found by Orwell, buried away in rocks, and they examined it and tasted it, and they were sure it was edible, and left it until they checked what else there was to eat.

  At times, as they shifted on, constantly examining everything around them, and on the horizon, seeking answers, he was sure the world was far more than a natural occurrence and had been created by something incredible, and he was not even sure it was a race of beings, and constantly considered different forms of things.

  What type of inhabitants could build and live on a place such as it? Had the creators of it actually lived there?

  Yet why was there no sign of their existence, and why had it just been built in such a natural state, and not a highly advanced top layer and with structures, but what if it had been built for something else, which they had not yet seen, and the ground was not its proper state, or what if it was to be populated by some species in the future, and he wondered if the creators were in fact inside its interior, and that the outer shell was there to protect it.

  He thought of the colossal size of it and what could be buried away below, and he then realized that it could be built by anything for anything!

  The horizon was astoundingly strange all about them, and not quite the same as any world they had been on.

  Finally, after climbing a large hill, they spotted complex artificial lines of silver marking the surface of the energy shell below, in the almost blinding light of the energy shell there, in a vast flat region at the other side, where there was no land, and they sat studying millions of patterned lines that were mathematically perfect, going out into the distance, at every angle, like a complex circuit, with thousands of different objects the silver lines entered, and they studied it trying to discover what its proper use was, and anyt
hing that matched it, and none of them recognized it, and Cronenberg studied it going up to the bottom of the hill below, and tried to see where in went in the ground, and realized that there had to be something under the hill they were on.

  They remained there, hidden away, waiting to prove something existed there, and that whatever it was it was still functioning, and they detected it activating in different places, and they wondered what had created it, and they finally left, and as they went to go down the other side of the hill Cronenberg took one last look there, wondering what he had missed, and saw a blinding flash from a large object within it, and a streak of light shot over a silver line, and he saw it glow and thousands of lines of it shoot all about it, carrying out a task, which he unsuccessfully tried to identify.

  After days of journeying across the vast world they realized there definitely was no night or day, and he wondered if had a dark side that was covered completely ice and snow, and they checked the world continuously wondering what they were missing, and they finally came to the remains of an ancient civilization in a large valley, where there were the remains of structures everywhere, and they realized that it was of an entirely different race, and that they had to have been like humans as their structures were almost identical, and they realized the value of it, and that there might be something of great value there, if they ever returned to the Earth.

  When they arrived at the first structure he felt the hot temperature at the area, and felt it coming from the ground, and the energy shell below, and he realized that they had to have deliberately built it there for it.

  They strolled through the sand in the streets and buildings, and found the remains of furniture and other objects, and wondered where the race had gone as they had clearly left all their objects and possessions.

  Gently breezes blew sand and bushes over the sand covered streets and between buildings, and he saw the sand everywhere, and bits of metal from old vehicles that had rusted away, and the remains of other objects.