In the Beginning: Mars Origin I Series Book I

by Abby L. Vandiver

  “I don’t know, Justin.” He sounded confused. “What happened?”

  “The manuscript.”

  “The manuscript?”

  “Yes. The manuscript.”

  “Okay,” he said, “let me think this through. There is about a billion years difference in each of the planets’ development, Mars being ahead of Earth.”

  “Right.”

  “And, there’s evidence of water on Mars, which means it could have sustained life.”

  “Yes.”

  “Human life?”

  “Yes.”

  “Sooo? What?”

  “So, this is what the manuscript is all about, Mase. It tells the story of what happened during those billion years. Without the manuscript we would not have ever known, we would have never found out what happened on Mars when it was ahead of us in its development. When it was a planet capable of sustaining life. That’s the story in the manuscripts.”

  “Okay, Justin, I got you. Now. Shush. Let me read.”

  CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

  Mase flipped through the pages of the notebook and settled back in the big armchair. I saw his eyes scan across the pages and his lips move as he quietly read my writing. I closed my eyes and saw every word. I could have recited it right along with him as he read.

  I have always been too critical of my writing. Poring over each word and every sentence trying to use the right words, to use a vocabulary that was far beyond my common knowledge. In every sentence wanting to write something that all would admire and praise me for, perhaps to contribute to my futile existence. Mostly though, my writings are scattered thoughts, perhaps to match my scattered wits and this scattered reality. But this must be written, not for literary accolades or as the handbook or bible of the multitudes of today or of tomorrow, maybe never to be read, but so that it is known and written down.

  I opened up my eyes, got up and walked over and stood in front of my French doors. It was getting dark out now. The stars in the night sky seemed to wink at me.

  Gazing out into the heavens, we need not think it vain to feel our existence is solitary, that there is no one else out there. For we know it as true. For millions of years we have been alone. God has told us there is no human life other than our own. And we ourselves have searched the heavens.

  Life is singularly ours.

  There are stars in the blackened sky that light our way across the earth, across the seas, across the galaxies. Let me be that beacon to those who seek the truth, which come after me, so that they may find their way. Their way perhaps, back home.

  I turned on the floodlights to the flower garden. Anxious about Mase reading the “little history” I dug up, I began to pace.

  I am a self-appointed historian, reciting the foundations of human life, not its actual beginnings, but life as we have seen fit to continue it. For now it is our duty to perpetuate this life, for we alone possess it and we alone have destroyed it.

  It had not been my designation to write of this transformation but I felt compelled to do so. It was necessary that our descendants have some record of their origins.

  I was privy to all of the activities of the move to the new earth. I know how it unfolded from the beginning. Complete knowledge was given to me and only a few others. I was, of course, not there in the beginning as it was millennia before my time. But I was there at the end, watching as right before my eyes the end of one world and the beginning of another unfolded.

  What would I do with my knowledge? There were no provisions to make a record. No knowledge was to be saved - not even for the new planet. But I could not take it to my grave. Silently, I must give it to those who will come after us. Those who would never know this earth as their home.

  I was compelled to write. To forewarn those that came after us not to take the course we, their ancestors, had taken. To give our history, alas, their history and to calm any fears that our descendants may have on the chance they return and find the ruins of this civilization, or rather the beginnings of their existence.

  First, know that God created man and placed him on this earth and it was the earth whose place was the fourth from the sun.

  And know it is true that God created the heavens and earth and all that is within. We knew that we did not create life but we are the ones that have made it continue, we have made it thrive. Was it God’s divine intervention that made us know what to do? Or what it the god inside of us?

  Perhaps, in our minds they had become one and the same.

  God Help Us.

  It was necessity that first forced our minds to expand, and it was this expansion that built our grandiose arrogance borne through our cherished accomplishments. We excelled in industrial technology, quantum physics, and genetic replication - scientific advancements that led to global obliteration.

  Is such a mind one of superiority?

  What will become of us?

  God help us.

  “Why are some of the words in red?” Mase looked up from his reading. I stopped pacing and came over and looked down over his shoulder.

  “Those are words that really didn’t have an English equivalent, so I had to use context clues to figure out the word.”

  He must have gotten to the words “industrial” and “quantum physics,” I thought.

  “So, you made them up?” He looked concerned.

  “No. I used context clues to determine what the word should be.”

  “Yeah. Okay.” He went back to reading.

  Our vast knowledge that we once embraced as a conquest over even God has awarded to us, the victors, a prize of genocide. We have dealt ourselves the hand of death, yet our arrogance appears to be unscathed.

  I hovered over him for a little while. He read intently, running his fingers under the words as he went along. I hoped he understood what I translated.

  God Help Us.

  Our arrogance and negligence soon far surpassed our compassion and even our common sense. Once we thought we wittingly held the knowledge of the universe, the secrets to life, in our very hands, yet, it seems, we have only outwitted ourselves.

  This land, our home, is now dry and desolate. The temperature is rapidly dropping and the absence of water has become commonplace. There have been changes in the gases of the atmosphere that surrounds our planet and it has changed our once blue sky to a rusty-colored warning of our terminal existence. The arrival of our sun’s light, that once resoundingly enveloped the horizon at sunrise, no more gives us hope for a new day but has only become a dismal reminder of our calamity. Perhaps, it is best that we must live out our last days underground.

  God Help Us.

  Oh how we have wept! Our tears could once again fill our empty oceans. We are constantly confronted with the sadness that our efforts to save our planet may be too late.

  As I started pacing again, tears began to well up in my eyes.

  Must we wait in our ruins for God to redeem us?

  The sadness of our people, the sickness that they have had to endure, the desolation of our land, all evidence that this planet cannot sustain life again.

  But now there have come murmurings among the people that perhaps God, in His infinite wisdom has made provisions for us. We had hope. He would rescue us.

  Yes, we possessed the knowledge to release ourselves from this catastrophic event. There was another home that we could take. A planet that was able to sustain human life, to perpetuate our life. And we reasoned that we would take it into our own hands. We will insure the survival of the species. We will learn from our mistakes. We will have a new home. We will continue.

  Here begins the embodiment of our fascination.

  We looked again to the third planet - this time not as the manifestation of our ego, but as the hope of our dying planet. The hope of a dying people. We would take destiny into our own hands and with it we would create the perfect world.

  Surely this was not chance that the third planet followed in our footsteps? We had played with the planet’s resources b
efore. We could without much effort make the planet suitable for us. We will populate the planet with life. Our life.

  It was decided, all were to be of one kind, one people. For we have found that difference breeds hatred. They were not to be given the knowledge of the ages.

  We would create the perfect world . . .

  Ah, we would give them all they needed to continue, but such a small amount of what we are. We shall be silent on that vast and infinite knowledge that we have obtained, that has led to our destruction. They must find that on their own.

  God help us.

  And now our greatest fear. Would our descendants, how many millions of years from now, fashion such technology to return to this wasteland? Return and find that they are us, and we are them?

  We cannot hide or destroy what is left, nor can we hide the evidence left on the new planet. We contemplated on some explanation. And for that record, this is how it all began.

  This is the story of our migration.

  CHAPTER FIFTY

  “Mars?” Mase looked up from his reading.

  I stopped pacing and came over and sat in the chair opposite where he sat.

  “What?”

  “Mars?” he said again. “The man who wrote this was on Mars?” He seemed agitated.

  “Yes.”

  “A little green man - - big head, emancipated body, slanted eyes and spindly limbs man from Mars?”

  “Oh, my goodness no!” I started laughing. “They were humans.”

  “So give me this in a nutshell.”

  “You mean what you read? I -”

  “No. Stop, Justin,” he looked me straight in my eyes. “I mean a paragraph, a hundred words or less, no more. Succinctly, I’m using that word again. Tell me what this whole thing is about and then - - well, then I have lots,” an amused look came across his face, “and lots of questions.”

  “Okay. I can do that, although you haven’t read much -”

  “See, already too many words. A hundred words or less.”

  I took in a deep breath. “Man originally lived on Mars. Man that looked like us. Was us. Same DNA. Highly skilled. Technologically superior. Decided to play around with the earth, small “e,” next door. Played with gene technology - created huge animals and people. Played with the earth’s resources – changed the climate, changed topography. Lived and played among their creations, leaving evidence of their technical prowess. Then, destroyed their planet by some kind of nuclear disaster. Decided to move to the third planet to save mankind. History of man starts all over again. The End.” I let out an exaggerated exhale. “Succinct enough for you?”

  “So the guy who wrote our history, as it were, in this – manuscript, scroll or whatever you wanna call it, was sitting on Mars and then had it brought down to Earth and put in a cave by the Dead Sea with the Scriptures of the Old Testament?”

  “I’m not sure if that’s exactly how it happened, but yes, that about explains it. I don’t think it’s the original because you would think if they can move to Earth they wouldn’t write on papyrus. I don’t know though, you know maybe the original was lost. Or maybe this information was passed down orally before being written down. I really don’t know.”

  Mase just stared at me and said nothing.

  “You know,” I figured I should keep talking, “It’s funny, I remember when I was in school this author - - what was his name? Erich von Däniken. He wrote a book, Chariots of the Gods? He wrote that alien astronauts visited Earth thousands of years ago and were responsible for the pyramids, the Nazca Plains lines . . . Oh, maybe that’s what Courtney was talking about - - lines on the ground.”

  “What?”

  “Courtney told me that her archaeology professor was talking about lines on the ground. Maybe he was talking about the lines and figures of the Nazca Plains.”

  “Justin, what are you talking about? I’m trying to figure out about men from Mars and you’re talking about some lines on the ground.”

  I laughed. “No. It’s all relevant. I promise. Anyway. This guy, von Däniken, wrote that the crew of spaceships realized that the people on Earth could support intelligent life so they impregnated the primitive inhabitants – the cavemen – and that’s how intelligent life came to be on Earth.”

  “And how is that relevant? Did they impregnate cavemen or rather cavewomen in the manuscripts?”

  “No.”

  “Are you sure about that because if these manuscripts are right, spaceships did land here and spacemen did supply advance technological information, just like he said.”

  “No. It’s not the same. The visitors weren’t “aliens” and the inhabitants of this earth are the same people who perfected the technology. Don’t you get it? The ‘men from Mars’ were the only people that ever inhabited Earth. No people were here before they got here.”

  “Yeah, I really don’t get it. Not yet. But just the same, maybe that Von guy knew what he was talking about. Maybe he knew about the manuscripts.”

  I rolled my eyes.

  “Or,” he said, maybe he didn’t know about the manuscripts. Maybe just like his book, this is all a figment of someone’s imagination. Maybe these manuscripts are not really anything to get worked up over because it never happened. People have had ideas like this all along. There have been lots of authors that wrote of ancient astronauts or about space travel. Maybe this is just another story.”

  “Not hardly.” I was getting kind of upset. “The author who wrote these manuscripts didn’t write fiction or how he envisioned it to be. This is fact.”

  “And you know that this is fact, huh?”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “Okay, Justin, right now I won’t even ask you why you believe all of this. We’ll just make the assumption that it is true for the sake of argument.”

  “For the sake of argument? What the heck are you talking about? This is true. Why don’t you believe it?” I couldn’t see why he wouldn’t believe it. Maybe because he just read part of the translation.

  “I am not saying whether I do or not. At least not yet.”

  “Well, you just need to believe it. We need to learn from this. Learn our history and learn how to save our planet from the same fate. History repeats itself.”

  “Yeah, and maybe if they hadn’t messed up we’d still be living on Mars.” Mase started laughing.

  “This is not funny.”

  “Yeah, I’m not laughing at this. Not really. I was just thinking if this is true, those guys on Mars were acting like they were sitting on Mt. Olympus somewhere.”

  “Gods’ are exactly how the author describes the mentality of Man at that time. Their arrogance, their feelings of superiority was larger than life, larger than God. They knew their species was unique. Not to be found anywhere else in the universe. They were the most intelligent beings anywhere and they wanted to rule everywhere.”

  “Yeah. I guess that’s right. But we’re headed down that same road, trying to rule everyone and everything. Destroying our planet. And we evidently don’t know as much as they did,” Mase said. “But when it comes to those manuscripts, you gotta wonder how much of what was written actually depicts what happened and the sentiments of everyone else. Did they feel the same way?”

  “You know, Claire said that to me once.”

  He chuckled. “Oh yeah?”

  “Yeah. She wondered how much of the dialogue in the history books was given just for the drama and how much of it really depicts how they really were and what they really felt.”

  “So, what? I’m thinking like Claire now?”

  I laughed. “That’s a scary thought.”

  “You know, one thing you can know for sure is no matter what you dream up or predict for the future, wondering how it will be, or trying to piece together the cultures of the past, there is one constant,” Mase said. “Human nature. No matter how advanced a people become, or rather how advanced or primitive their technology is, the people are the same. They don’t change. From millennium to millenni
um, and apparently world to world, people are still people and nothing can change that. We all still need and want basically the same things. We have insecurities, we have weaknesses. We are born and we die and ultimately we don’t have any control over those things.”

  “I can remember looking at old pictures, life from the Old West, or from like the early 1900s, and I wondered what was in their heads. You know?” he said. “Like what kind of things did they think, what did they say, how did they act - - react to things. You know? How did they feel? But it’s no different, Justin, from what we say today. How we act or how we feel. Looks like people are no different whether it was a man who lived a million years ago on Mars or one that will live a million years from now on whatever planet man will inhabit.”

  “Oh, so are you conceding that Man did live on Mars?”

  “Oh no.” He held up both his hands, a chuckle escaping from his throat. “I am definitely not saying that. But whoever wrote this manuscript, from what I’ve read, could have just as easily lived today - - right now. I understand that the words - the translation, is yours. But the thoughts are his and they’re the same as the next guy, you understand what I mean?” I nodded my head. “So, changing the subject, have you ever heard of any concrete evidence of extraterrestrials visiting Earth before this manuscript?”

  “Ha! Now that I found the manuscript, everything I ever heard is concrete evidence of extraterrestrials coming to Earth.” I said. “But, like I said, no one ever believed those people. Although now, they’ll have to believe after they see that these manuscripts explain all of our ancient mysteries.”

  CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE

  We sat in silence for what seemed like a long while. I didn’t know what Mase was thinking. I was thinking that I was glad to be talking about this to someone. Even if that someone still didn’t quite believe it as truth.