Space for Evolution

by Zurab Andguladze

  Medea had seen countless similar splashes in recent months. She pressed the “Erase” button without hesitation. The next perturbation had also happened on the Saturday. The third message was also about trash. Glancing at the fourth’s comment, she erased it immediately. The same happened to the fifth, sixth and seventh signals.

  Medea already felt annoyed with these messages; they didn’t report anything. They might as well inform her that Earth was continuing to revolve around the Sun. Looking at these senseless and identical records, Medea realized that she actually just wanted to see which signal corresponded to the impact of the meteorite on the antenna.

  In the meantime, the Saturday mail ended. She started examining Sunday.

  It is just so much noise on Saturday, and there are only two entries on Sunday. Is this their day off, heh? Can I just delete them all at once and leave only the last one that came on Monday? She thought briefly, then marked Sunday’s messages and pressed the delete button. The comment of the first message popped up and disappeared from the list instantly.

  The second message didn’t vanish as quickly as the previous one. On the contrary, the window that appeared above it took up an unusually large amount of space. Medea, with her awakened curiosity, didn’t have time to read it. In the next instant, a huge white inscription appeared on the suddenly blackened screen, seemingly switched off:

  “8-3-2492, 11:59:59, a signal has been received from the constellation of Corona Borealis! Erase command rejected!”

  Medea froze. Along with this, her heart also stopped. The next moment she felt that she had hit her face against an unopened sliding glass door. Then her stomach went cold and she forgot to breathe. She was lost in time and space!

  What should I do? The only thought paralyzed her. She looked thoughtlessly at the screen. Finally she cried out in a high, icy voice, “Johan!”

  The next moment she heard a dull thud and then the sounds of hasty steps. Meanwhile, the computer asked, “Recode the received file into a modern format?”

  Medea didn’t know what to answer, although she must have been told about it in those short courses. Having got no answer, the machine reported: “Recoding of a copy of the original file has started. The original message will be retained in memory unchanged.”

  “What happened? Why are you screaming in that voice?” approaching, Johan asked her worriedly.

  The old man entered the room and saw a picture that scared him: his unnaturally petrified wife, without blinking, was staring at the screen. She seemed to have turned into a wax statue. Johan took a few more steps—he wanted to go up to her and ask how she was. But then, he involuntarily glanced at the monitor. His casual gaze should have left the screen immediately, but instead it stuck tightly to it. The reason for this was the incredible inscription that he saw there:

  “Reports of the fifth expedition. This package includes all the previous reports that were not sent for technical reasons, which will be described in detail at the end of this message,” said the first paragraph.

  As soon as he realized what he had seen on the screen, a thunderous blow immediately deafened him; he felt sweat instantly cover his forehead.

  It was impossible! Was it really true? Questions rumbled like incessant explosions in his head.

  Meanwhile, a list of files appeared on the screen:

  1. Characteristics of the planet

  2. Landing

  3. Creation of the colony

  4. Creation of earthly life

  5. Creation of cultivated plants

  6. Creation of domestic animals

  7. Farm status: ready for humans

  8. Creation of humans

  9. Beginning of training

  10. Housekeeping

  11. Completion of training

  12. Latest information

  The old couple looked at the screen speechlessly. Medea still sat with frozen gaze, and Johan was screwing up his eyes in doubt.

  “Okay, hit ‘‘Creation of human’’, although I think this is someone’s joke. Maybe even Jacob did it,” he muttered.

  The veracity of such a message looked extremely improbable. Only that hope, which gives a person the determination to undertake even the most hopeless pursuit, didn’t allow the old man to ask his wife to erase the message, which strongly resembled an ordinary prank to him.

  Medea, who still hadn’t regained her ability to think, silently fulfilled her husband’s wish and opened the corresponding folder. The document began with a description of biological processes. When they read the first lines about the long and detailed biochemical sequences, Johan immediately demanded, “Let’s skip this, anyway we won’t get it. Let’s see the very end. If we are being played, we need to learn it right now.”

  Apparently, because of her excitement, Medea pressed the wrong line. As a result, only the output appeared on the screen, informing them that in total thirty human units were created.

  “Units, hmm,” Medea repeated the word from the computer.

  But then, the letters disappeared from the screen, and instead pictures of thirty babies appeared. The photographs changed to show how the children were growing. When the explanatory text was replacing the images, the retirees immediately flipped through it.

  And finally it came—a moment of real excitement. A group photo of all the colonists brought it about. Strong and handsome young men and women, dressed uniformly, with similarly short hair, looked at them confidently and a little dreamily.

  Medea and Johan had long studied the content of the SQP project. So the old people immediately recognized the building in the background: it was a lander with an open hatch and a parabolic antenna on its roof.

  Although it was not the image of that apparatus that had fascinated them, but the extrasolar people. The couple immediately realized that they had never seen such open and firm expressions. They’d become the final proof for the two earthlings that they were seeing the inhabitants of a distant planet! Their faces were free of all the fears, superstitions, premonitions, cunning and humility that live in the eyes of the people of Earth. It was obvious that they knew for certain— there was nothing above them, because they were sapient beings.

  Johan looked at the screen with immeasurable joy in his heart and understood: this picture was incomparably more beautiful than one he could ever have imagined!

  “Do you see this?” At last, Medea shouted to her husband as loudly as if he had lost his hearing aid. But Johan never needed it; he heard everything without it.

  “Yes, but why are you screaming? Of course I see people on the new planet, but that was the plan, wasn’t it?” he said calmly.

  The woman looked at her husband in amazement, who had walked away from her, sat down in an armchair and continued to carefully examine the beautiful color picture. Next moment he seemed to lose his mind. He started to scream and shake his fists. Medea jumped up, ran to her husband and hugged him.

  The chair couldn’t stand two plump bodies. At first, it leaned back and then fell to the floor together with the two pensioners, who were distraught with joy. Johan continued to shout, “Aaa-ah! It came true! Great forces of nature, I lived to see this! Thanks! Thanks! Thanks!”

  Someone rang the doorbell.

  “Come in! Everyone come in!” the man and the woman screamed in unison with each other and with the full force of their lungs,“ Look at the miracle!”

  First the front door slammed, and then their giant neighbor, Jacob, appeared on the threshold of the room. Out of habit, he mockingly asked in his stentorian bass, “Why are you shouting in here? Ah, I get it, you are welcoming the aliens."

  He expected, as usual, to throw the elderly couple into confusion with his wit. But the retirees seemed to be completely insane. They didn’t pay any attention to his words and only pointed their fingers toward the computer.

  Jacob looked around in bewilderment. Then he went further into the room and actually looked at the computer. In an instant, his gaze was welded to the screen. Ther
e was something unusual there. Who were these people? What strange hangar was behind them with an antenna on its roof? And after all, why were his neighbors going crazy?

  In the next instant, the guess, like a sharp blade, pierced his mind—he understood the essence of the image on the screen! Jacob very slowly retreated to the wall, leaned his back against it, and then slid down along it to the floor without a sound. His black skin turned gray. His playful arrogance disappeared instantly and without a trace. He looked at the photograph of these unfamiliar, beautiful people, and didn’t even notice that tears were rolling from his eyes…

  Chapter 98

  Clara Rickey sat on a terrace, on the second floor of her house. The woman was trying to relax after her working day. In the thickened dusk, with a cup of tea in her hand, she followed her unguided thoughts. She took another sip and leaned against the back of the sofa.

  Rain drizzled, but here, under the roof, she felt even cozier because of it. A car drove into their quiet dead-end, illuminated by street lamps, and stopped by the house opposite. She involuntarily glanced at her watch. She thought that the neighbor was late and wondered what bookstore worked until nine o’clock in the evening.

  Clara raised herself a little and set the cup down on the table next to the sofa. Her thoughts wandered aimlessly, as they always did during rest, although now they had one place to return to from time to time. A day had passed since the celestial rock had broken the telescope and finally shut down the SQP project. Of course, it had in fact long ceased to exist, but the previous day Clara was surprised to find that before the accident, she, without realizing it, had turned out to have retained some inexplicable hope in relation to this ancient plan.

  It looked especially ridiculous for a scientist of her rank. She should have forgotten about the project a long time ago, but instead, she still couldn’t get it out of her head. Like an inveterate gambler who keeps putting off finishing the game, waiting for the lucky number to finally come upon the roulette wheel.

  At that moment, the telephone lying on the table buzzed and interrupted her thoughts. Clara sat up again and took the device. She looked at the screen and hesitated straight away. For some reason, those old people were phoning her, and a conversation with them was the last thing she wanted now. Moreover, Clara couldn’t even figure out why they might want to call her. Wasn’t she done with them? What did they want? Their money back? Or maybe they’d enjoyed being famous and wanted a new deal? Um, she thought, it was completely absurd. Without realizing anything, she sighed and pressed the receive button.

  Medea’s wrinkled face appeared on the screen of her phone. The scientist already wanted to say “Good evening,” but didn’t manage to do it. Medea interrupted her immediately and with the resoluteness inherent to the elderly she said, “The report of the fifth expedition has been received!”

  After these words, the old woman stared at the scientist with unblinking eyes. Clara immediately realized that she was being given completely erroneous information, because the radio telescope was broken.

  Apparently Medea foreknew her doubts and so explained: “The signal came on Sunday, before the accident!”

  It was already becoming something worthy of being treated more seriously. Clara rubbed her cheeks with her free palm. Medea waited patiently. Clara sighed and asked cautiously, “Does this signal inform us about the conservation of the expedition?”

  Medea smiled warmly and replied, “It reports that a human colony has been created on the second planet of the Rho star system, in the Corona Borealis constellation. Its inhabitants named their planet Neia!”

  Clara continued to see her interlocutor on the screen, and at the same time stopped perceiving her presence. Not only Medea’s face, but everything around her had ceased to be real. It seemed that life had turned into a dream, in which objects and people appear and disappear inexplicably. The world was somehow altered and now it said that aliens already existed. But this was only possible in a dream, wasn’t it?

  “Clara, do you understand me?” at last, she heard a persevering question.

  Medea’s voice brought Clara back to reality. Immediately her doubts flared up with renewed vigor. Unlike the amateur retirees, she, the head of the astrophysics and space research department at the State Committee of Science, couldn’t be so easily brought to believe such overwhelming news.

  How is this possible? Internally shrunk, she asked herself, and spoke aloud, “Are you sure?”

  Her disbelief kept enlarging, like an inflating universe. With each passing moment, one circumstance became increasingly important: not true specialists, but people who had nothing to do with astrophysics, were reporting to her about such a great event.

  “We have forwarded the message to you,” Medea replied.

  “Okay,” said Clara, thinking hard. “Now I’ll look at your message, and then contact you and tell you what to do next.”

  She had barely finished these words when a man appeared on the screen instead of Medea.

  “Good evening, Clara,” he began with a friendly smile, “I want to remind you that, according to the agreement, only my wife and I have the right to be the first to introduce the extraterrestrial settlers.”

  “To introduce them? Um, is it really that important now…?” She couldn’t remember his name because of the excitement: “Oh, yes, yes, sorry, I’m a little shocked, I’ve lost touch with reality,” she explained with an apologetic smile, finally realizing that the agreement really meant a lot to people who had spent a big chunk of their retirement savings for the sake of this moment.

  Clara Ricky wasn’t going to steal their laurels. As soon as she entered her home office and turned on the computer, her heart pounded again madly. Left alone, she felt that her fear of disappointment had increased even more, in spite of it seeming already impossible. What if these people were wrong? This question overshadowed any other thought in her mind.

  Before sending a copy of the report to Dr. Rickey, the old couple had deliberately moved the group photo of the Neians to the top of the file. Therefore, this image appeared before Clara’s eyes first. As she scrolled through the file, her gaze grew tenser and her features seemed to turn to stone.

  Clara Rickey, an experienced scientist accustomed to soberly and coolly assessing all kinds of “achievements” of the pseudo sciences, still resisted the incredible truth that had fallen on her. But her disbelief grew weaker with every new pixel showing on the display!

  Why were these young people wearing the same white clothes? Why was that girl holding two branches, and why are the leaves on one of them orange and trellis-like? Clara felt that her heart had reached the verge of breaking. What was this hangar with an open hatch and a plastic ladder? Wait, but this… it couldn’t be! But it was!

  “Yes!” Clara let out a shrill scream. “Yes! That’s the lander! And this… this is us on an exoplanet!”

  Chapter 99

  By noon UTC on that August day, the earthlings had already been warned many times that there would be a very important announcement related to the mastering of space. Those interested in the topic perceived this news with perplexity. What mastering was the media talking about, if all that humanity currently owned in space were some worn-out communications satellites?

  At the appointed moment on the screens of their receivers they saw Medea, dressed in a dark green jacket and skirt, a beige shirt and pumps of the same color. Johan stood beside her, dressed in a gray suit, a navy blue shirt with a light gray tie, and black lace-up shoes. The anchorperson—a young slender lady in a white dress, with an oval face, big black eyes and slicked back hair, accompanied them.

  This trio stood in front of a large screen. The host spoke, and a corresponding translation followed her words in every country. She introduced the elderly couple as people who’d taken it upon themselves to continue the ancient SQP project, the name of which stands for Space for Evolution.

  Before speaking, Medea and Johan gathered their thoughts for a few second
s. In preparing this announcement, the television workers had tried to write an opening speech for them, but the elderly couple had turned down the offer.

  “We are in charge here, and everything will be as we say,” Johan cut them short. “It was the two of us who changed everything.”

  With this the debate about the introductory speech ended abruptly. Therefore, Medea now began her information in the way she wanted—without a long foreword and prehistory. Now they didn’t matter, because this event didn’t need to be praised or exaggerated, it was the greatest itself:

  “The Space for Evolution project, launched over four hundred years ago, has achieved its goal. Its fifth expedition found a planet that was a twin of Earth, suitable for human habitation.”

  After that, the group photo of the young people appeared on the big screen, and Medea accompanied it with another stunning announcement, “People are already living on this planet, and they’ve called it Neia!”

  As soon as the woman said this, she looked at her husband, Johan.

  He nodded and spoke up, already calmly, as he and his wife had had a lot of time to harness their emotions, “Now you will see the inhabitants of Neia. You will meet the dwellers of yet another New World, in the order of their birth.”

  A young man named Ama appeared on the screen first. Over the next hour, people learned the names of all the Neians. They introduced themselves via short video clips, in which they greeted the dwellers of the planet of their ancestors. After listening to these salutations, the people realized that another accent of human speech had appeared in the universe.

  And then Medea reported next amazing achievement. She turned to the presenter and asked her to show the very first clip, and stop it at its beginning, when the colonists were standing motionless, as if they were taking pictures. Again Ama appeared on the big screen in the studio. Now viewers from all over the world were looking at his photo.

  Medea said, “Now, please put on the screen the photograph that I asked you to include in the list of materials that were intended to be shown today.”