by S. W. Ahmed
Maginder communicated some commands to the screens, after which they shut down and disappeared. “It will be done,” he said. “Now come, Mr. Zemin, there is much for you to learn and adjust to.”
As Marc stood up, the chair he was sitting on vanished into thin air, along with the table and the walls of the small room they were in. Losing the support of the table, his pocket watch automatically fell back into his hands. He placed it in his pocket and followed Maginder.
On the control deck, Marc could see Mendoken aliens everywhere, rapidly floating from point to point, manning stations with different kinds of instruments and 3D screens. Each station was circular by design, with one alien standing in the middle. With their multiple arms and their 360 degree vision, they could easily operate equipment all around them at the same time.
Marc observed how some of them were configuring flight paths and other ship functions, swiftly swaying their arms and moving their fingers. Their pace of work was so much faster than that of humans!
Maginder took him up to the top level of the deck through an elevator. From this level, he could clearly see into outer space in all directions. The entire ceiling and external walls of the deck were completely transparent.
“Meet Petrana Kraisen 62145685,” Maginder said, pointing to a Mendoken alien manning a nearby station. “She is one of our main pilots.”
Petrana was surrounded by a collection of navigational paraphernalia. She looked just like the other aliens – he couldn’t tell what about her appearance was feminine. Maybe it was the hat, which was pink in color.
“Petrana will keep you company during the journey, and answer any questions you might have,” Maginder said. “Once you are ready for rest, let her know and you will be shown to your quarters.” With that, he disappeared down the elevator.
“Please sit, Mr. Zemin,” Petrana said, as a seat suddenly appeared next to her. Her voice sounded feminine, but had the exact same monotonic style as Maginder’s.
Marc sat down. These aliens evidently never sat down themselves – everywhere he looked, they were either standing or floating from one point to the other. There was no other seat anywhere in sight.
“Thank you, and please call me Marc,” he said.
“Very well, Marc.” After observing some data appearing on one of the many screens in front of her, she said, “We are ready to leave now.”
She communicated silently with another Mendoken manning a larger station nearby. The ship then started moving without a sound, just as that Mendoken touched several points on a big 3D screen in a sweeping motion.
“My goodness!” Marc exclaimed, absolutely stupefied. He felt no gravitational pull backwards, nor did he even feel a single bump or vibration. Yet the huge Earth, all this time covering much of the view outside, shrank into a tiny dot in an instant and disappeared from view. The Sun was rapidly shrinking into just another small star in the sky. The other stars ahead and above began to look like long streaks instead of dots.
“How fast are we going?” he asked Petrana.
“Currently only 337 million miles per hour in your units of measurement,” she answered, looking at some data on a screen and performing some conversions in her head. “We have just begun accelerating.”
“Wow! Wouldn’t our racecar drivers want a piece of this!” He stared enviously at the controls Petrana was operating.
“Racecar drivers?”
“Never mind. How fast can this ship go?”
“The maximum speed is 500,000 times the speed of light.”
He whistled. “How do you go faster than the speed of light? Through other dimensions?”
“Brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr. No, Marc, travel through other dimensions is forbidden. We use the same 3 dimensions you see around you.”
Marc realized Maginder was right. He clearly did have a lot to learn about science and engineering from these creatures.
“However, we cannot accelerate to full speed until we exit your solar system, in 63 minutes,” Petrana added.
“Why not?”
“You will soon find out.”
Chapter 8
In its first hour of flight, the Mendoken ship passed close by Jupiter and Neptune. But due to the tremendous velocity it was traveling at, Marc wasn’t able to catch a view of either of the planets. That didn’t bother him too much, though. He was far too excited about everything that had happened to him that morning. Even though he had hardly gotten any sleep during the night, he didn’t feel tired at all. He was wired and energized, and full of curiosity about the Mendoken. He kept firing one question after the other at Petrana, who patiently responded each time. But much to his frustration, the most frequent answer was “you will soon find out,” or “you will learn in due course.”
The few facts that he did learn included the following:
The Mendoken are one of four major, advanced species in the Glaessan galaxy, or “Milky Way” as humans call it. Almost a fifth of the galaxy is under their control. The three other major species, known as the Aftar, Volona and Phyrax, control large sections of the galaxy as well.
The solar system that Earth belongs to is in Mendoken territory. The Mendoken have a strict policy of non-interference and no direct contact with species not considered advanced enough to join the galactic community. That includes humans and all other living things on Earth. The Mendoken have explored every corner of their region of the galaxy, and have studied every species on all inhabitable planets and moons. That is how they know so much about Earth and humans. Some of them are well versed in human history and behavior. Petrana and Maginder are among them, which is why they were chosen for this mission. Those Mendoken who interact with other species carry translator devices that can automatically translate the words spoken between them and beings from the other species.
All in all, there are at least a billion intelligent forms of life scattered across the galaxy on all kinds of planets and moons, most of them oblivious to the existence of life on worlds other than their own.
“Be prepared for a shock,” Petrana cautioned, after exactly 63 minutes of travel. The ship had reached the edge of the solar system and had slowed down. The stars outside had shrunk from long streaks back to familiar white spots in the sky.
“What do you mean?” he asked.
Instead of answering, she pointed out in front of her into space.
No amount of warning or explanation could have prepared Marc for what he saw. The sky, the universe, was falling apart. Or was it? No, it was more like a gate opening up, a monstrous, square shaped door in space, sliding away in front of the ship to reveal something beyond. Was it another universe in a different dimension? No, it couldn’t be – the Mendoken said they didn’t touch other dimensions. So what was it?
He strained his eyes to look past the opening gate. The sky beyond looked brighter, much brighter than the space they were in. He could see many, many stars, many more than the stars in the sky he was used to seeing. It almost felt like he was catching a peek of the very center of the galaxy itself, where the concentration of stars was much higher than it was here at the edge of the galaxy.
“What is this?” he asked, totally baffled.
Petrana looked at him. “What do you know about what your people call ‘dark matter’?”
“Dark matter? It’s all the matter in space that we can’t see, but we know is there anyway. Because if it wasn’t, then there wouldn’t be enough mass to keep the galaxies together. They would literally fly apart.”
“And do you know how much mass in the universe is attributed to dark matter?”
“I’m not sure. The number keeps changing in scientific circles. Last I heard, there’s about 5 times as much dark matter as there is visible matter. Then there’s dark energy as well, which takes up an even larger amount. All in all, I think dark matter and dark energy combined make up more than 95% of the total energy density in the universe.”
“In other words, 95% of the universe you humans cannot see.”
> “We can’t see it because it is invisible, no?”
“Most of it is. But some of it you cannot see because we do not want you to.”
Marc’s jaw dropped in surprise. “You mean…”
“We created a filter around your solar system, to prevent you from observing our worlds and our activities. While dark energy, as you humans call it, does exist, there is actually no such as thing as dark matter. There are just more stars, planets, moons and many other types of natural objects in our galaxy.”
“You mean all the stars we humans have always seen in the night sky constitute only a small percentage of the stars in our galaxy?”
“Yes, around 10%.”
Marc was alarmed. “Why would you do such a horrible thing? Why would you cage us in like that?”
“It is not caging, Marc,” Petrana said calmly. “We have to do it for our protection, and for yours. Your people are not yet ready to join the galactic community, if they ever get that far. There are very few species that successfully make that step. Too often we have seen a civilization reach its peak, and then annihilate itself with the technologies of its own creation. They fail to reach the right balance between the need for progress and the ability to be satisfied with the way things are, between the inherent instinct to increase one’s own possessions and the desire to benefit others.
“Imagine if your people, given how they are today, knew of our existence and tried to interact with us. Imagine some of your political and military leaders trying their utmost to get their hands on one of our battleships or planet destroyers. Imagine the damage they would cause to themselves, and to other worlds and species in the process.
“No, we cannot afford to take such risks, nor can we teach the billion species out there how to lead their lives. They have to learn their lessons by themselves. Some of them make it, most do not. Only time will tell what will happen to yours. The day may yet come when we will make formal contact with your people and lift the filter.”
Marc took a moment to digest these statements. “What if we come up with the technology to travel to the edge of the solar system ourselves first? We’ll bump into your wall, and all will be exposed.”
“If your people ever get to that level of technology without destroying themselves first, then they will have already passed the survival test. By that time, we will be ready to lift the filter.”
“But now I know everything. I can tell others once I return to Earth, can’t I?”
“We would not have taken such a risk, if we had not already obtained sufficient evidence that we could trust you,” she said simply.
Apart from the fact that nobody on Earth would ever believe him anyway, he realized. People would think he had finally gone completely bonkers.
The ship glided through the gate and on to the other side. The gate slid shut and disappeared into a black wall that he could now see emerging behind the ship. It was the wall of a shell, a shell created for the sole purpose of encasing and blindfolding humankind. Could it be that people had always lived in such an illusion, ever since the first humans had turned their eyes towards the night sky?
It was so hard to believe, he thought, yet so simple in concept. It was no different than putting a goldfish in an aquarium, or raising a tiger in a zoo from birth. The goldfish would never know of a world outside the confines of the aquarium, nor would the tiger ever live to see the jungle. The Mendoken apparently didn’t place any more importance in humans then humans did in animals. At least the Mendoken didn’t kill humans for food or for fun, though, or use them as beasts of burden.
“Welcome to the rest of the universe,” Petrana said calmly.
It certainly was a sight for sore eyes. Whichever way he looked, Marc could see big stars, medium size stars, little stars, all very close to each other. Colorful nebulae could be seen everywhere in all shapes and sizes, as well as a number of very bright spots in the sky that had to be supernovae. It was as if the entire galaxy had suddenly been compressed, forcing all its constituents much closer to each other. The background color of the sky seemed to be more of a deep blue, not the pitch black he had seen all his life. This was probably due to all the light emitted by the heavy concentration of stars in the sky.
But that wasn’t all. Even the space close by was filled with matter. There was a brown colored planet not too far away with multiple moons around it, an entire world on the outer edge of their own solar system that humans had no knowledge of. Then there was a large asteroid field to the right. Ahead on the ship’s path lay what looked like a space station. Hundreds of ships were docked at ports jutting out from it, and others were moving away or towards it. Some of them looked like the ship he was on, while others were smaller or larger with different kinds of shapes.
Evidently space was busy and crowded, not the vast emptiness humans saw in the sky every night. All those expensive investments by SETI organizations and others on Earth to locate and contact aliens had been in vain. The aliens certainly were there and were even watching and listening, but they had purposely chosen not to respond. The Fermi paradox, which brought to light the contradiction between the high probability of the existence of alien civilizations and the lack of observation of any by humans, was finally solved.
“That is Selcher-44328,” Petrana said, pointing to the station ahead. “It is our regional outpost that, among other things, monitors your solar system and maintains the shell around it.”
Describing the station as huge would be quite an understatement. It had to be almost the size of a small moon, and was shaped like one too. Except that it was split into two identical halves, with open space between them for a major thruway. The ship was headed right down that thruway, slowing down considerably as it passed in between the two colossal hemispheres. Marc noticed a sunflower-shaped planet destroyer docked on one port nearby. Perhaps it was the same one that had loomed so menacingly above Earth just over an hour ago. Even that monstrosity was dwarfed by the size of this station.
The ship didn’t stop at the station. Instead, other, smaller ships came alongside and docked with it for momentary periods of time while it was on the thruway. Petrana explained that this was for stocking supplies and shifting personnel. This method was quicker than requiring the ship to park at a dock itself.
After 15 minutes or so, the thruway passage was complete, and the last of the small supply ships undocked from the ship.
“Now we begin the journey to our central star system,” Petrana announced. “It will take 53 hours at maximum speed.”
The stars in the sky were transformed into streaks of light again, this time growing much longer as the ship kept on accelerating to full speed. Given how the sky outside the filter had a far higher concentration of stars, it really looked like the heavens were lit up everywhere in white light.
“The Milky Way has finally earned its name,” Marc thought, smiling. He turned to Petrana and asked, “Tell me, how do you Mendoken even create such a gigantic filter that can span around a whole star system?”
“It is a self-replicating membrane made of a synthetic material called silupsal. We only have to create a small section of it, set the perimeter coordinates, and supply the energy it needs to grow quickly by itself.”
“How and when do you decide where to place a filter?”
“We observe all star systems for any signs of intelligent life on their planets and moons. As soon as we detect any, we place a filter around that system.”
“So when did you place the filter around our system?”
“500 million Earth years ago.”
“Whoa! How long have you guys been around?”
“The Mendoken have existed as a civilization for 3 billion years. Our total population today is 7.6 quintillion.”
Marc did the math in his head – that was 76 followed by 17 zeros, or 7,600,000,000,000,000,000! But with a fifth of the entire galaxy under their control, he doubted space was an issue for the Mendoken.
“So how does this membrane
work?” he asked.
“The membrane is intelligent – it can understand commands. We program it to automatically allow the passage of natural phenomena such as comets, but prohibit the passing of any objects created by intelligent life forms. Controlled gates such as the one we just went through are the only way for ships to pass from one side to the other. The filter also prevents those inside from seeing any stars, planets, space stations or ships that indicate the presence of life in outer space. It further reduces the perceived size of other galaxies to match the perceived size of our own galaxy from inside the filter.”
“So, in reality, each galaxy is 10 times bigger than what we humans see them as?”
“Between 5 and 10 times bigger, usually.”
“What about clusters of galaxies, and superclusters? Scientists on Earth have always wondered why they are skewed along such weird skeletal lines, with large areas of emptiness in the middle.”
“Well now, that is a different story altogether. But that is for another time, Marc. I need to attend to some other duties now, and you need to get some nourishment and rest.”
He protested, of course. There were still so many questions he had. But that did no good. All it accomplished was a mild admonishment from Petrana that humans had much to learn in the ways of patience, one of the many reasons for their backwardness.
Another Mendoken promptly arrived to lead him away. Her name was Hildira Biederum 65871209, and she wore an orange hat. She led him down the elevator to the lowest level of the control deck, where they boarded a small vehicle. It was tall enough to easily fit a standing Mendoken, and wide enough only for two. It had the basic shape of an egg, most of it transparent to provide full views of the outside.
Hildira took the helm, while he stood next to her. The vehicle lifted from the ground and drifted into a tunnel. Soon they were zooming down the same busy highway he had come up in, back to the city of buildings and gardens that constituted much of the inside of the ship.
