by Todd Fries
The Major was able to collect reams of data about the nature of this material, but since they’d returned, he’d been given no information about those readings and assumed that once again he was locked out of the process. Did they find any new elements that were unknown to science, or did they reveal anything about the mystery of its construction? He would give anything to find out, because if it worked, then Jin didn’t die in vain.
The bottom line was that he suggested that Jin disable the circuit board. If he’d left things alone or trusted the Major, nobody would have died. The circuit board was designed to delay the explosion until they were safely in space. Without it, there was no way to activate the timed delay. Without it, someone had to stand next to the device and press a button, instantly activating the bomb. What a waste.
Now he found himself in a small apartment in Area 51, waiting out his life as a dead man. In order for their ruse to succeed, everyone had to die in that explosion. They couldn’t return to their old lives without the Chinese finding out, so when he finally returned with SM1, he was relegated to live out his life as a non-person and dead to the rest of the world. And so like a prisoner, he wandered this little city under the Sun, reflecting on the grand scale of his life and wondering what more he could have done and what more was yet to come.
After all, he was only 65. He was in extremely good health, fit and vigorous and most would have pegged him as being in his mid-fifties. He was good looking and caught the eye of many women as he wandered the shops and galleries. But he wasn’t interested in any of them. Oh he flirted from time to time, but his one and only love had been Natasha, but the Lord had taken her years ago. There could never be another woman in his life and at his age, he wasn’t about to start over. He had much to do, but no place in which to do it.
Most of his life had been spent at various dig sites around the world and he was never in one place for more than a year or two at a time. So the thought of being trapped here, unable to do the work for which he was trained was an affront to his sense of exploration and discovery. While he would have liked to complain, he stopped himself, knowing he had already achieved far more than anyone could hope for in a lifetime and the thought of whining about his current situation, only lead to more guilt and shame.
But his mind kept coming back to the fact that he still had time and he still had his health. It was human nature to grow and learn. It would be like asking a trained Olympian to lay in bed all day, never being allowed to train or compete. Even if that athlete already won gold, there’d still be that longing to push forward. So how does one simply turn off ambition and desire? It wasn’t so easy to do.
He consoled himself by remembering all the things he accomplished in life. He started his career as a military pilot in the Soviet space program and by 1975 had already been in space, testing their LK (Lunar Craft) in orbit. When he was ordered to join the Americans for a secret mission, he got the chance to excavate and document an ancient alien construction that defied all logic and reason.
During the Orion 1 mission, they were able to translate the language and measure the elements of the materials used to construct it, but not before the sacrifice of one man. He travelled to Mars and then to Earth’s nearest stellar neighbor - Proxima - where he landed on a planet designated as Proxima b.
It was here he made discoveries that dwarfed everything that came before. He was the first man to travel outside the solar system and the first to land on and explore an exo-planet. In addition, he made it back alive and with the ship intact, delivered it to Area 51 where it currently slept in a hangar; out of sight, but not out of mind. So for him to complain about his current situation was egotistic and selfish. He could never reveal his unhappiness to anyone. He was too proud and too honorable to allow any such notion to escape his lips. As far as anyone else was concerned, he was happy and content to live out his days, remembering past glories in safety and comfort.
As for SM1? He thought about her often. It was the most perfect vehicle ever constructed and there was nothing like it anywhere else. Running on cold fusion, it had unlimited power and could bend space in such a way as to allow it to traverse great distances between stars in hours or days. When spanning a large void, it would create a ripple effect in the fabric of space, skipping across the crest of each wave like a stone dancing upon the water.
Using three pulsars as fixed points of reference, the craft could navigate space as easily as a sailing ship could navigate the sea. It was a model of simplicity that said a lot about its creator. During his brief command of the ship, he was able to land on Mars and then bridge the gulf between Earth and Proxima as easily as driving his car across town. If he hadn’t experienced it himself, he never would have believed it and he often wondered if the scientists on Earth believed it. For all he knew that ship was never flown again and he wondered why after all this time.
He realized there were larger issues in play. This was so much more than just a vehicle for transport. It was a power plant with unlimited energy. It was an indestructible tank and a stealth ship. It was also an ark that contained the literal Word of God, so what were they supposed to do but study it and wonder at its far reaching capabilities. The very walls themselves were a living and breathing user interface that could perform a wide range of functions, all of which he discovered on his own.
Everything he learned about her came from trial and error. He would experiment with a function and determine its purpose and then move on to the next puzzle and by solving enough riddles, he was able to control the ship and travel to distant points without much effort at all. By doing so, he put himself and the ship at great risk, but in the end his gamble paid off. If he had failed, the world would never have known or understood SM1. She’d have been lost forever.
So if his government hadn’t flown her again, there were probably good reasons. It was probably better to be safe than sorry and by taking the time to unravel the mysteries of SM1, they might better understand how to use her and in time, duplicate the technology. But for now, he was on the outside, just as he was after his first mission in 1975.
Nickolas pulled out a chair and rested at the kitchen table. In another hour, a flight would arrive from McCarren airport in Vegas, loaded with ‘day-workers’ on Janet (Just Another Non-Existent Terminal) airlines, and today’s newspaper would be unloaded and dropped at his front door. He would read about news in the real-world while he sat here and lived out his days in anonymity.
What he really wanted was help make Jin’s death have meaning, but the science of elemental analysis was way beyond his knowledge. There were many men, far more capable that he to decipher the atomic structure of SM1 and so unless they came to him for help, he would continue to probe General Reynolds for information, because he wasn’t going to find it in that paper that just landed by his door. That much was certain.
THE REPORT
General Reynolds (Samuel) raced down a long hallway, examining a brief that was given to him to study. He wondered why they called it “a brief” when the thing was almost too thick and heavy to carry. It was thousands of pages and he grunted at the thought of military efficiency. Nothing was simple and if it was possible to write 4000 words on how to hammer a nail, the bureaucracy layered within this agency was totally capable of making it the most complex operation in the world.
He nearly bumped into some contractors as he crossed an intersection in the corridor and excused himself as he continued his journey. The fallout from Nickolas’s adventure had been dramatic. SM1 was drawing the attention of everyone, including the highest levels of government and it was everything they could do to keep this thing under wraps. Generally, even the President wasn’t privy to everything going on at Area 51, but this was unprecedented. When Bill Clinton became President, he asked for files related to Roswell and Area 51, but was denied. This started an effort by Laurence Rockefeller to pressure the government to disclose any classified documentation regarding aliens and UFO’s. Known as the Rockefeller initiat
ive, it failed to open the doors to Area 51.
In fact, both Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter talked about UFO’s and aliens before being elected, but remained strangely quiet on the subject while holding the office. No President had ever been allowed to visit the base because they had no reason to know and any such visit would draw unwelcome attention to a place that didn’t officially exist. Anything related to this operation was on a “need-to-know” basis and unless there was a strategic or compelling reason to discuss an on-going project, it was off limits to everyone. This included the President of the United States.
He remembered Ronald Reagan had been the most vocal, addressing the United Nations General Assembly in September of 1987 in which he said; “Perhaps we need some outside, universal threat to make us recognize this common bond. I occasionally think how quickly our differences worldwide would vanish if we were facing an alien threat from outside this world.”
General Reynolds understood that Reagan was on the right track, but for the wrong reasons. It wasn’t an alien threat from outside that would bring the nations together, but a universal challenge to expand the human race into the cosmos. This was the crucible in which all antagonistic obsessions would burn into the common conscience of the nations, forcing them to work together for a common cause, more noble than anything that came before. Even the space race of the 1960’s would pale in comparison.
This space craft was far different than anything the base had experienced in the past and the President had to be informed. Once he was in the loop, his next actions were all that Samuel expected. There was immediate bureaucracy and red tape and everything came to a halt. A committee was formed to study the political and social aspects of the technology and to determine how and where it might be used. There was only “one” of SM1 and anytime a resource was limited, the value went up tremendously. Now every government agency was fighting for a piece of it.
He paged through the dossier and there were no limits to the suggestions and plans. The military saw it as the ultimate stealth fighter and published a very good case for using it to control world affairs and to defend national interests both at home and abroad. The engineers wanted to take it apart so that they could “reverse-engineer” the technology. The astronomers wanted to explore the Solar System in detail, collecting rocks and samples and searching for life in places like Titan, Europa and Enceladus. The Moons of Jupiter and Saturn promised the best environments for alien life and he couldn’t argue with their logic.
There were those who wanted to go back to Proxima b, not only to explore, but to start a colony with the intent of protecting the human race from themselves. A species living on two worlds had a better chance of survival than one living on a single planet long term. How many times had the Earth experienced extinction events that reset the clock on life time and time again? If humanity was to preserve and protect itself, colonizing an exo-planet offered the greatest chance of success.
As he reviewed each summary, he realized how complex this all was and why he needed to consider so many opinions. In each case, the subject of secrecy was debated again and again. If word of this got out, there would be a line from here to New York with people wanting to escape the planet. Regardless, there was also a political component. Even in the absence of public oversight, this project couldn’t be perceived as an Anglo-Saxon effort that disregarded the vast diversity of the human race. If this ever did become public, there had to be evidence of social inclusion. Men and women, children, black, white, brown and from all nations and creeds.
In the report he found complex calculations for the minimum population required to achieve effective genetic diversity. Studies on the long term emotional effects of being in a dark environment every day, or the physiological impact of being separated from home with little chance of returning. There were a thousand ideas to consider and only one space vehicle.
When he looked at the risk analysis of each idea - that was even worse. No matter how he sliced it, the impact of losing the ship would be catastrophic to any constructive agenda. Not only in space, but in the process of trying to study the technology. If it was damaged beyond repair during the reverse engineering process, how could anyone justify that when weighed against the value of reaching distant points in space? Or if one took the ship to a distant point and it was lost forever, how could that be justified against a missed opportunity to study the vessel? It was one big conundrum. Damned if you do and damned if you don’t.
His arm was getting tired, so finding a table in the cafeteria, he poured himself a cup of coffee and continued to read the report. In it were a host of ideas on everything from storing food and supplies to generating power by building a nuclear reactor on an alien world. It was as if every scientist on the planet was putting forth an opinion on how to best use this vessel and it was overwhelming. One option included “scheduling time” just as they do on the Hubble Space Telescope, giving everyone an opportunity for study, but this wasn’t a time-share. It would be like handing over the controls of a Boeing 747 to a group of novice pilots, intent on using it for their own pleasure.
In his opinion, this had to be controlled from the start. A committee was never going to manage this in the way it should be and if he offered no other suggestion, it would be to assign a strict overlord, capable of handling this important relic and overseeing every aspect of her service. After all, this wasn’t a group project. It was a unique piece of history and by all practical standards – divinely inspired and constructed.
How could he forget about that one? The theologians even had their own section dedicated to the spiritual considerations regarding this ark, as they liked to call it. It was their supposition that this vehicle was a space ark, designed to transport humans to other worlds as part of a divine commission to subdue space. They referenced Deuteronomy 4:19, in which the Lord stated:
“And when you look up to the sky and see the sun, the moon and the stars—all the heavenly array—do not be enticed into bowing down to them and worshiping things the Lord your God has apportioned to all the nations under heaven.”
The key meaning being that the universe had been given to ALL the nations and this ark was the means to an end. A God-given end. By all practical purposes, they had the strongest case for using this limited resource. They seemed to know how it was built and why, and even claimed to understand the reasons for its discovery and why it was critical to this point in history. In fact, it looked like they had all the answers and when compared to the meandering narrative of the other scientists, was actually well defined and organized and he marveled at the wonder of it all.
In normal circumstances their voices would have been ignored, but there was no ignoring the message received from Voyager 2 back in 2010. The Voyager 2 spacecraft was just leaving the influence of the Sun. This was on April 22, 2010. It was almost 9 billion miles from home and entering the heliosphere, the magnetic bubble that surrounds the solar system, and as it breached the barrier, NASA started receiving a binary message that mission scientists couldn’t decipher. It was like nothing they had ever seen.
To be safe, the engineers put the spacecraft into safe mode so that they could trouble-shoot the computer, but everything checked out fine except for one system. This was unusual because it was later determined that a flipped bit caused the issue, but if that happened, it should have affected the entire spacecraft.
Also, the flipping of just one digit suggested that some unknown party intentionally interfered with Voyager 2’s on-board computer. Binary bit flipping had been used by hackers in the past, but the distances involved made this highly unlikely. Hackers didn’t have access to the huge antennae needed to send or received those signals. In the end, these data format problems were recorded, but never decoded until Hannah Saunders came along.
Hannah was part of the second mission to the Moon (Orion 1) and using images and text found at the site, she deciphered a complex language in which each symbol was encoded into 3 parts. In addition they found a libr
ary full of books that contained large volumes of information, written using these new symbols. She later determined that these books were actually the bible and when this language was converted into binary code and compared to the message received by the Voyage probe, the following message was revealed.
“When you consider My heavens, the work of My fingers, the Moon and the stars, which I have set in place, what is mankind that I am mindful of them, human beings that I care for them? When you look up to the sky and see the Sun, the Moon and the stars-all the heavenly array-do not be enticed into bowing down to them and worshipping things that the Lord your God as apportioned to all the nations under heaven.”
Given the nature and timing of the message, it was hard to dismiss as random bit-flipping. This was a detailed missive that quoted scripture directly from the bible and couldn’t have been unlocked without the discoveries at Stellae Mysterium. While the scientists wanted to ridicule the findings, they had little evidence to support their doubts and were unable to come up with any other theory as to how or why the message was transmitted. Given the connection to the triune language of the builder, they were forced to consider it and nobody was able to dismiss the unrelenting evidence. The message itself was no longer in dispute.
The argument now centered on the idea of God sending a message to mankind. This wasn’t something the agnostics could get their heads around and why he was now looking at this thick, heavy report sitting on his table. If this was a gift from God and if the command was to apportion space to all the nations, that responsibility now fell upon him to execute the order. No. It fell upon the people of the United States of America. He paused again. No. The people of the world. He had to get used to thinking way beyond himself and consider the ramifications for everyone.
