The discovery

 

For many years mankind has been asking the same question to which no answer has been given yet, “Are we alone in the universe?” While this question remains unanswered we often forget to question what would other life forms look like or what kind society would they live in. Most speculators suggest that if there are other civilizations somewhere in the Universe, they would possess a technology far more advanced than our own, in turn suggesting that alien civilizations may have already visited our planet in a time when our unawareness of technology’s potential would make us see visitors from other worlds as beings from heaven. But perhaps the most important question that mankind should be asking is if we are mature enough as a species to be seen as equals by a society that has had more history than our own. In other words, are we ready to join those which at a given time we would have seen as gods?

 

It is the mid-22nd century and humanity’s presence would not be limited only to Earth. The Moon and Mars were at this time colonized by humans, being that the Moon was colonized mostly by Russia and the rest by China and on its surface there were several colonies which were created in the last hundred years to mine Helium 3, a valuable resource abundant on the Moon and which can be used for energy production.

One century of history has always been enough to completely change the shape of global political geography. Just as the 20th century was enough time to see the beginning and end of the Soviet Union, as well as the fall of the English and French empire, the 21st century would see the end countries such as the United States or the United Kingdome and new countries such as the Republic of Scotland, the Republic of California or United Korea would come to existence and the Soviet Union would never return but the Russian Federation would once again be a communist state.

Despite these changes, mankind has continued to evolve in technology and numbers, consequently leading to our need to expand the borders of our domains to other worlds. But despite seeing other worlds our question as to whether there are others out there or not has still not been answered, until now.

 

Not too far from a Russian colony and near a huge crater, a lunar vehicle was parked. Two Russian cosmonauts wearing orange space suits walked away hastily from the vehicle and approached the edge of the giant crater.

“What do you think it was?” asked one to his colleague.

“I have no idea.” answered the other.

“I think we should go back to the car because we have to return to the base soon ...”

“Wait, I can see it again!”

“Where?”

“Right there.” he said pointing to a small light reflected from the Sun and coming from the crater rim.

“It must be a tool that someone forgot here.”

“But there are no footprints here, no one has been here before, I think we should figure out what it is.”

When the two cosmonauts finally got to the source of the light, they discovered that it was a kind of metal plate buried in the sand. The two began to clean the sand to find out the size of the plate, but it seemed to have no end, it looked larger and larger as they were cleaning it until marks carved on the plate began to appear, revealing drawings that resembled symbols. They continued cleaning it until they stopped when the plate was five square meters uncovered, revealing it to be a wall of something big and buried in the crater rim, but what was astonishing was that the lines drawn on the board represented the cuneiform writing system.

“My God, it is cuneiform!” one of them said, quite amazed.

The two looked at each other and then looked back at the wall to observe the writing on the huge metal wall that they had discovered. One noticed that there were two parallel and vertical lines spaced five meters from each other.

“I wonder what these two lines are.” he asked.

“I do not know. It seems to be a plate separated from the rest of the wall.” said the other, approaching the lines.
The lines came from the ground and disappear under the dirt above which was still covering most of the structure.

The cosmonaut approached the middle part between the two lines, raised his right hand and rested its palm in the middle of the two lines. After five seconds at that position the plate suddenly moved up and disappeared, revealing to be a door five meters wide and five meters high, and behind it there was only darkness. The two cosmonauts were startled and took a step backwards.

“How did you know this would happen?” asked the one that was just watching.

“I did not know. I just wanted to feel if there was some vibration or heat.”

“I think we better go back and inform the others.”

“I agree, I won’t go there at all, who knows what can happen?”

The two returned to the vehicle and the door closed slowly behind them.

 

 

Arrival at the Moon

 

Twenty five years had passed since the discovery on the Moon and it has been kept a secret since then. A spaceship, similar to a space shuttle, approached the Moon, its design resembled a space shuttle but with cargo bay doors half the size and on the back of the ship, and with round windows on its sides. On both sides and on the left wing the ship had the Texan flag and the name Texas on both sides and on the right wing. The ship was transporting several equipments to the Moon and there were only four people aboard, two of them were the pilot and co-pilot and the other two were passengers. One passenger was a male South African computer engineer in his late thirties and his name was Julius Malema, and the other was a female biologist in her mid twenties called Rachel Baretich and she was from the Republic of Cascadia, which was a country formed from the union of the former North-American states of Oregon, Washington and British Columbia. Both passengers had flag patches of their countries sewed to their uniforms’ left shoulder, being that the Cascadian flag consisted of three horizontal stripes, being them blue, white and green from top to bottom, and the drawing of a green Douglas fir tree in the center.

Julius woke up and, facing the window, the first thing he saw was the abundance of stars. The room where he slept was very similar to the first class of a commercial airliner, with the exception that it was much shorter, having only ten seats and a thin corridor which passed between them. One significant difference was the several bars on the walls to help passenger and crew locomotion in zero gravity.

“Good morning, Julius.” Rachel said, surprising him from her seat across the corridor.

“Oh hey, Rachel right?” Julius asked, turning to her.

“Yes, you fell asleep right after the launch.”

“Yeah, I wasn’t prepared for this trip.”

“Neither was I.”

“But you flew from Seattle to Johnson Space Center in Houston, while they dragged me all the way from Johannesburg.”

“I understand.”

“So tell me, do you know what part of the Moon are they taking us to?”

“I asked the pilots but they don’t know.”

“I can’t imagine how we can be useful at place that has only a bunch of Russian and Chinese mines.”

“I don’t know, but it must be really important for them to just send us directly there without any stops on the way.”

“When will we get there?”

“We still have a day ahead.”

“That will be boring.”

“Don’t worry, people make much longer trips when they go to Mars, I never heard any complaints.”

“Yeah, I guess you are right.”

 

The orbital space station

A day had passed and the shuttle was much closer to the Moon as it approached an orbiting space station. Julius and Rachel were at the cockpit with the pilot and co-pilot watching the approach. All they could see was a small cylinder at the distance.

“What space station is that?” Malema asked to the pilot.

“It’s the Chinese space station, Hou Yi.” the pilot answered.

“Chinese?” the Cascadian biologist asked. “I didn’t know the Chinese had a space station orbiting the Moon.”

“It’s their first, it is still under construction.”

“But with so many complete Russian space stations orbiting the Moon why are we going to a Chinese one?”

“Secrecy is needed, we can’t take you two or the cargo to a space station crowded with civilians and we can’t land directly on the Moon with this ship so we need to dock on a space station so you can descend on a lender. Now I have to ask you two to go back there and get ready for the docking procedure.”

“Sure.” Julius answered.

The two returned to the back of the ship and the co-pilot followed them to help secure them on their seats.

The shuttle approached the space station, which was a modular space station physically resembling the International Space Station in most parts. The docking process was very slow and it was finalized with the shuttle’s roof docking to one of the doors of the space station. Julius and Rachel watched everything through the windows, so they had a good time to admire the Chinese space station. Bellow the station they could see three lunar landers docked. The landers had the traditional crab like shape of the Chang’e 3 lunar lander but were much larger.

After a waiting for some time the doors were opened and the passengers were free to enter the space station where they were greeted by a Chinese taikonaut at the entrance who introduced himself as the one responsible one for the station, he made a quick tour of the space station and ended taking them to the habitation module, where they would wait for the right moment to land. The landing was scheduled to happen in six hours.

Having passed almost six hours the taikonaut came back to the habitation module to take them to one of the landers. Another taikonaut was waiting for them just at the entrance of the lander. This other taikonaut would be in charge of piloting the lander to the Moon’s surface in case the automatic pilot failed. After a short introduction they all entered the lander and prepared for the departure witch happened a few minutes later. The lander detached from the space station and began its descent to the Moon’s surface.

Arrival at the secret base

The lander slowly lowered to the surface of the Moon and after some time their destination was in sight.

“Look down at the direction the lander is heading.” the taikonaut said, pointing at a window on the lower side of the lander. What they saw was a base on the side of a crater, its shape was not clear but several straight tracks could be seen stretched away from it like a spider web. The tracks were used to move landing platforms from and to the base. The lander arrived at the base and landed on a platform on a track far from the crater. Once the lander had landed the platform was dragged all the way to an area under the base, which was a kilometer away from the landing site. Once at the base the platform stopped right under a roof, positioning the lander’s top hatch half a meter below a hatch on the roof. The platform slowly rose until the two hatches were connected, attaching the ship to the base.

“OK, let’s get moving. Put your weight shoes on so you don’t hop when you walk.” The taikonaut said.

The three put on their shoes, waited while the pilot opened the hatch above them and once it was opened, faces were seen on the other side, and the men above lowered a ladder for them to climb. After exiting the ship, the two were greeted by a man who awaited them on the other side of the door, carrying a tablet on his left arm. The man wore a gray suit and on the suit’s left shoulder was the old Soviet flag, which was adopted after Russia became a communist nation once again.

“Welcome to Korolev lunar station. My name is Gennady Konovaltsev, I am a Russian diplomat and I am the one who selected and brought you here.” the man said, as he extended his right arm to shake their hands. “Follow me.” he began walking through a corridor and the two followed him. As the two walked down the corridor Julius noticed some of the base crew from time to time, each one with a different country flag on their shoulders.

“We haven’t yet had any explanation as to what are we doing here.” Julius complained, as he walked.

“Your questions will be answered once I gather the rest of the people to brief you at the same time.”

“Rest of the people, there are more people as confused as us?”

“Certainly, most of them are scientists.”

They arrived at a door and the Russian diplomat opened it, revealing a small bedroom with a closet.

“Julius, you will wait here and soon I will be calling you for the meeting. Meanwhile you can dress the suit on the closet, it was made especially for you and you must wear it on the base. Do you have any questions?”

“No, not for the moment. What if I need something?”

“There is a red button on the wall, it’s the intercom, you can call the base operator and she will provide you with what you need.

“OK, thank you.”

The Russian diplomat left, taking Rachel to her room. After that Julius opened the closet to check the suit, it was similar to Konovaltsev’s suit, but with Julius’s measures and the South African flag on the left shoulder.

About an hour latter someone knocked on the door while Julius waited on the bed. When opening it he saw a brunette Cuban woman, he could tell her nationality by the country flag on her shoulder.

“Good afternoon sir, my name is Camila. I shall take you to the meeting room.” she said, with a Spanish accent.

“Very well.” answered Julius.

The two arrived at a meeting room with several other people there talking to each other on their seats around a long table.

“You can choose a seat and wait. Konovaltsev will be here soon.” said Camila.

“Thank you.” answered Julius.

Once Camila left Julius looked around and spotted his Cascadian friend, who was talking to a middle aged man and immediately noticed him and interrupted the conversation to call him. “Julius, over here.”

As Julius approached to sit next to the two he glanced at the flags on the uniforms around to check the nationalities which were present. From the old countries he could recognize the flags on China, India, Syria and Iran. From the younger countries he could recognize the flags of Scotland and the United Korea. Once he approached the two he sat next to them to join the conversation.

“This is Julius Malema,” she said to the man, who had the Indian flag on his shoulder. “and Julius, this is Prakash Karat, he is an Indian mathematician.”

The two shook hands and Julius continued. “Mathematician?”

“Yes.” Karat answered.

“On the Moon?”

“They wouldn’t tell me why but I have a suspicion, it might involve aliens.”

“Why do you think that?” Julius asked, surprised.

“I wrote a book on how to communicate with aliens using mathematics in the event of contact with an alien civilization. Plus, all the people here have strange professions which fit perfectly to this theory.”

“That is impressive!”

“Indeed.”

The conversation continued for a few minutes until Konovaltsev arrived accompanied by a man in his mid thirties with the flag of California on his left shoulder, this man sat on a chair as Konovaltsev walked to a big screen at the end of the room. “Hello everyone.” greeted the Russian diplomat. “I don’t need to introduce myself since you all already know me. I will answer all your questions about this base now. Some of you have already been working here for some time and already know part of the secret, but for those who arrived recently I’m going to reveal everything from the beginning.” He turned off the lights and with a remote control in his hand he turned on the screen, showing a picture of the door discovered by the cosmonauts twenty five years earlier.

“About twenty five years ago two Russian cosmonauts were passing near where we are right now looking for a new area to mine helium 3. They discovered on the edge of this crater a metal wall which was later revealed to be the entrance to an immense and unknown underground base. The idea that there were much more advanced civilizations out there brought fear, so the Russian government thought it was best to notify several other nations of the discovery in order to accelerate the researches and developments. It was concluded latter that the base is as old as the creation of writing on Earth.” later he showed an image of the cuneiform writing that the first cosmonauts had seen. Many were shocked to see the image. The next image was of the construction of the Korolev lunar base. “The Korolev base was built over the alien base to study and hide it. The surface portion of the alien base is only a small portion of it and underneath the ground there is an enormous machine that activated by itself with the presence of men and ever since then it has been activating once a year.” the next image showed the old writing all over a wall on a long corridor. “The cuneiform writings located within the alien base explain in a very primitive way that the machine creates a wormhole which connects the Moon to another world, we do not know its star system yet. The writing also tells us that on this other planet there is a sanctuary left for us and that we have the freedom to use this sanctuary as we desire as long as we respect our brothers. We deciphered a lot from what we could find on the base but could not understand some parts.” Everyone was impressed and looked at each other in shock. Next, Konovaltsev showed an image of Earth and he continued “Very little do the writings reveal to us about the creators of this base, and we don’t even know what they look like. What the writings do tell us is that they are space explorers which came here from very far away and a long time ago they found our planet which is abundant in life forms and among these life forms the human beings were the most intelligent and civilized of all, but despite knowing how to make fire, tools and clothes we had not developed writing yet.” The next image on the screen was of present day tribes. “The Builders, as we call them, decided to interfere with humanity by teaching us to develop a new writing system.”

“For many years the idea of sending a team of explorers to this mysterious planet was considered absurd, due to its risks. Only this year have the leaders of all the nations involved in this project decided to allow us to send a team through the wormhole to explore the new planet. You have all been chosen from a list of hundreds to form this team that I will lead to explore this planet. We will only have one month to do so, for reasons unknown that is the length of time the Builders chose to open and close the wormhole for the roundtrip. A ship provided by the Builders travels to the planet when the wormhole opens a first time and back when it opens a second time.”

“The reason why we were worried about sending a team was because we still don’t know exactly what we may find there. We tried to send automated units there before but every time they go through the wormhole they shut down. We couldn’t send trained animals as well because the doors built by these Builders can only be opened by human hands, as we noticed so far. Fortunately we had the idea of sending mechanical machines through the wormhole, rather than electrical machines, and we could film the other side with film cameras.” The next image was of a planet with its oceans and atmosphere being violet and its continents being greenish blue.

“This is the planet to where the wormhole always leads. We call it planet Bacchus, which is the Roman name of the god of grape harvest, which you may all know by his Greek name Dionysus. We gave this name because the colors of the planet remind us of grapes. The planet’s atmosphere is less dense than the one on Earth, for that reason its color is violet. The low pressure of the atmosphere makes it inappropriate for humans.” Next he showed images of the surface of the planet, which was covered with millions of gigantic truffle looking fungi. The bigger ones’ color were a mix of green and blue, while smaller ones attached to the big ones were white. “These fungi cover all the land on the planet,” Konovaltsev continued. “so far we could assume that the white ones are younger and when they are big enough they drop from the bigger ones and grow independently.” the following image showed part of a planet with red continents and a blue ocean. “Planet Bacchus is actually a moon and it orbits around this planet, which is half the size of Jupiter, we call it Juno, wife of the Roman God Jupiter. This planet is not for us to visit since we cannot survive in its gravity and we guess that the ship won’t take us there.” The next one was an image of two stars, one being blue and the other being yellow. “Planet Juno orbits these two stars, they are unknown to us so far, we call them Romulus and Remus. Together both of them emit a lot of electromagnetic radiation.” Switching to the next image they saw an asteroid. “This asteroid seems to be the only or largest Bacchus satellite and there is another alien base within it, apparently automated too. This base is responsible for opening the other side of the wormhole. Once we go through the wormhole, that asteroid is where we will arrive. We named this asteroid Ampelos, who was friend of the god Bacchus.” he then switched to an image of space with many stars. “Since the discovery of this base we have been trying to recognize this star system by analyzing the stars seen around, but unfortunately we couldn’t identify it. The inscriptions tell us that the planet is located near the center of the Milky Way.” latter they all saw an image of a cigar shaped vehicle entirely in black, it seemed to be parked on a wide canal shaped track. “This is the ship developed by the Builders, which is responsible for transporting us from the Moon to Bacchus. She was perfectly design to accommodate human beings and has an area proper for humans to stay during the trip.” he showed the next and last slide which showed two inscriptions which were part of the full wall inscriptions. “We still don’t know what all that the Builders have provided us is about and we also don’t know what the Builders look like, but the Builders ended the message with two very enigmatic instructions: ‘Once you are in the sanctuary

Impressum

Verlag: BookRix GmbH & Co. KG

Tag der Veröffentlichung: 16.11.2020
ISBN: 978-3-7487-6463-2

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