At first this approach had seemed promising.
Two small capsule containers were detected deep in bedrock on opposite sides of the planet yet on their recovery they contained just a small amount of black granules. The metallic capsules themselves had been left undamaged but the residual contents were valueless. Even our technology could not tell us what the black granule residue might once have been.
Then we found something. A frail looking damaged metallic container and within it several crude storage devices consisting of magnetic tape containing sound recordings.
We listened oh so carefully to the sounds we were able to pry from the devices. There was sound with an apparently musical inclination that we simply could not translate into anything that had any meaning for us. References to: “lovin ya baby” and “shake your booty” and endless repetitions of such were totally lost on us. Even though we had the best known universe translators. Also we could make no sense of a small bound collection of parchments called “book of jokes.”
“Someone’s toying with us,” I said. This time my communication was not a telepathic one to all of the expedition. Rather a crude non telepathic verbalization to only the senior executive officers gathered around me. “Undamaged time capsules with nothing in them except small amounts of black granules. A time capsule with pure rubbish suggestive of cultural pygmies inconsistent with the possession of thermonuclear weapons?”
“They, the architects of whatever happened here, could still be watching events now?” asked my head of security utilising the same form of communication that I had.
Frankly I didn’t know. If they were I suspected that we were being observed from afar. Something we did may have triggered an awareness. Perhaps even the use of the time cameras. There were people in the Universe that resented the use of time cameras making our archaeological expeditions sometimes unpopular.
Just at that moment something came through at the telepathic level to all of the expedition. It was so faint a telepathic signal that some of us detected it and some did not. Though it registered on our communication systems.
It was laughter, laughter as we understand it and might occasionally engage in.
Somewhere – someone or something had the temerity to be laughing at us. I decided that by our standards it was a mocking, derisive form of laughter.
Try as we might and with all of our highly advanced technology we could not detect the source of the deriding telepathic laughter. Nor in all the time we had been here had we been able to determine anything at all about the nature and identity of those who destroyed this world.
Perhaps the author or authors of that laughter thought that we might pack up and leave this world in sheer frustration. We did no such thing.
Instead we redoubled our efforts to find out something more about those who once called this world home. Something aside from the fact that they may have had thermonuclear weapons and may have been cultural pygmies.
It took time but in the end we finally found something of this civilisation. A large time capsule buried very cleverly. Such that even those who mocked us from afar had apparently not uncovered it.
The capsule was made of an unusual bio metallic compound that approximated the security of a grade 3 force shield. Something that I was pretty sure was probably beyond whoever once lived here. Had someone or something else acted in the past to preserve some record of this world’s indigenous civilisation?
The capsule’s contents appeared totally undamaged. Among them audio and audio-visual recordings made on slightly more sophisticated storage devices than we had encountered earlier. Also physical writings contained on bound collections of many pieces of parchment. Also there were a range of artefacts and scientific and technical items in the capsule.
We gleefully distributed these materials among the expedition for examination. It was a most productive time.
Later we stood astride the very highest point of the waste land that was this world and we listened for a very long time to the various literary and musical works that we had uncovered in the time capsule.
My Deputy Expedition Leader wanted to undertake an audio to telepathic conversion but I cautioned against it. Somehow it didn’t seem right. Not on first listening – perhaps later for the benefit of the advanced races that I knew would be interested. We could preserve the original medium but also have the works in preserved telepathic form. Yet I knew instinctively that something would be lost in the translation.
I do not know who or what destroyed this civilisation. Or whether they or someone else attempted to cover up what was done here. However I do believe that someone or something else entirely intervened to preserve the time capsule that we ultimately uncovered. To preserve some record of those who lived and died here.
As the commander of a major Treen archaeological expedition these matters are ultimately not my responsibility. Yet we are not an insignificant race and at our disposal are quite formidable law enforcement and military agencies. At my request some of those agencies will be here quite soon. They are all very good at what they do and I believe they will get to the bottom of it all.
Our archaeological work here is not yet done and we will cooperate with our military/law enforcement agencies when they arrive.
We tirelessly scour this world for whatever else we can find of those who once lived here and called this world home.
I am eternally grateful to whoever made it possible that the Multiverse will be able to share in some aspects of the race that was extinguished here. Most particularly in their literary and musical works. My first impressions that they might be cultural pygmies were quite wrong of course.
Now the Multiverse can share in the great literary works of the likes of Proust, Joyce, Melville, Shaw, Tolstoy, and Homer. Also it can rejoice in the great musical works of the likes of Grieg, Beethoven, Vivaldi, Bach, Wagner, Chopin, and Mozart.
Though we have not yet finished here and may yet find more – what was uncovered thus far in the single time capsule has been enough for me to pronounce this archaeological expedition an unqualified success.
End
Losing Contact
It started when the Galactic Net went down for good.
It’s not as if I was ever going to be able to physically go and see my alien friends out there so it was disappointing to lose the only means of contact I had with them.
I had wondered sometimes about the mysterious virtually omnipotent creators of the Galactic net. It had all seemed too good to be true and I suppose it was.
Never mind I told myself I still had all my friends right here on good old Earth itself that I could keep in touch with via the local Earth internet.
I couldn’t have been more wrong. Not long at all after the failure of the Galactic Net the Earth internet stuttered for a while before going down permanently. Whether that was related to the Galactic net failure I don’t know.
“Why don’t you just go out and see your friends?” an older neighbour had asked me. “As people used to do in the old days?” That was well enough for him but when you are as disabled as I am you tend not to get out that much. Even with all the modern technology at your disposal. For me it’s just too much of a hassle. Too embarrassing even.
The deterioration and eventual failure of television, radio, telephones and indeed all forms of telecommunication occurred soon after the collapse of the Earth internet. It was eerily progressive. First we lost interactive television then we lost 3D then incredibly we were reduced to ancient black and white television. Even the black and white became progressively more unreliable.
My disabilities had caused me to shun direct face to face contact with others. The Galactic Net and Earth Internet had been my way of interacting. My life wasn’t looking so good.
Then there was a more general failure of all electronic equipment. As if we had been hit by some kind of massive electro-magnetic pulse. The electricity supply went down but came back increasingly intermittently. This inevitably affected mo
st of the equipment that helped sustain me. Pushing me back into a very basic, threadbare, stone age type of existence. As I suppose it must have done to others. It was a degree of sensory deprivation beyond my experience.
I was so mired in my own problems I hadn’t really thought much about anyone else. I hadn’t even thought how the rest of the world might be getting on as I now had basically no way of knowing. Was this a world wide phenomenon or just local? At first I thought someone would call around to check on me but no one ever did.
Had the aliens who created the Galactic Net – caused all of this? I wondered. Had they set things up only for it all to fail? The failure of the Galactic Net leading to the failure of untold planetary internets which in turn led to the failure of the telecommunications systems of untold worlds? Something working its way down the system rather than up? It seemed highly unlikely. My mind searched for other explanations of what had happened here.
On top of all that my eyesight failed. It had been one of the few parts of my body that didn’t require some form of assistance. Eventually all of my other limited senses failed me. In part because of the lack of power for the equipment that sustained me.
I could no longer see, hear, smell, or even touch/feel anything.
At this time I was reminded of the philosophical idea that only one’s mind was sure to exist. Close to the end I came to realise that this was the truth of the matter. There had not been any superior alien grand scheme. Instead all these things, these external stimuli had been created by my mind in an attempt to deny the truth. That the only thing that existed was my own mind.
I took great comfort in this and went deep into my own mind in search of memories.
Eventually I lost all consciousness.
Sometime later
“This one is interesting,” commented the alien “not your normal victim of the galactic failure at all. Surviving much longer than most with crude mechanical drip fed long life liquids. A time camera scan of past mind activity suggests the individual went inwards on itself. Rejecting its entire environment. It may have been physically forced to do this.”
“Interesting and unusual but not without precedent,” replied the alien’s companion. “We have come across it elsewhere. Individuals who, in the crisis, came to believe self was all, that their own individual minds were all that truly existed.”
“Here on this world Earth they called it Solipsism!”
End
Triumvirate Judgement
After the judgement was handed down Joy and I headed for the only place we could think of. The only place on Earth that offered just the faintest hope of sanctuary. We were both thankful that the place we were headed to and its reclusive occupant were not generally known. Otherwise hoards might have flocked there.
“How long will it be before the judgement is carried out?” asked Joy.
“There’s absolutely no way of knowing,” I replied. “It could be nearly instantaneous or it might be many months. For the worlds already judged there has been no uniform set time.”
“Yet never more than a planetary rotation of their sun, for any judged world?” queried Joy. It was a rhetorical question.
A part of me, well actually pretty much all of me, was angered by the sheer imperiousness of the three judges. The triumvirate of elemental beings chosen by the self appointed even more imperious Universe Court. One elemental from our dimension, one from the so called ‘central” dimension and one from the lifeless dimension. Each of them entities as old as their respective dimensions.
“What gets me,” said Joy “is that these judges, these elemental beings sent to judge us don’t actually carry out the sentence themselves.”
“Oh noo!” I replied “that would be beneath them. They would never dirty their hands in such a manner. Those who will carry out the sentence the Suppressor/Punishers of the Universe Court are lesser beings, though destroyers of worlds for all of that.”
As we approached the sanctuary I reflected on the being that lived here. Orin we called him. The only alien currently resident on Earth and the only alien that we knew of who had lived here for any length of time.
By human standards a gentle giant. He had reminded me of nothing so much as one of the sky fathers that existed in Earth mythology. An Odin or a Zeus. Yet I knew he was neither. For all of the resemblance I knew him to be something quite different from a mythological Earth sky father.
For those few who knew of him it was understood that he was a traveller and also a benefactor, of sorts, just now resting here on Earth for an indeterminate time. Those that knew of Orin were certain sure that he had done some things to help us though he had not interfered very often.
In a quiet moment not so long ago when only we two were present Orin had told me he was the son of parents who were each the sole survivors of their respective races. He did not name these races and I have never told anyone of his revelation. Nor did I ever raise the matter with him again.
As we approached Orin’s rambling home deep in the Himalayas – we saw him approach us through a gap in the mountains atop a flying horse. It was in truth a most magnificent sight. The beast was larger than the most powerful Clydesdale or English Shire Stallion I had seen and bore wings. It was no creature of Earth for all its resemblance to a horse. Had he transported it here? Or perhaps even created it here?
“You know of the judgement mighty one?” I enquired.
“Yes Garth, it was unfortunate.” Orin communicated in his unusual, perhaps even unique way, a combination of verbal communication, telepathy, and something that seemed to come from within the soul. I noticed that he used the past tense in his reply as if the sentence had already been carried out.
“Can you help us?” asked Joy. “Please,” she added. It was an impassioned if short plea. I realised that she was trembling and crying a little. I had never seen her like that. Even when the judgement was rendered.
I do not know what we expected. There was clearly something about Orin – a hidden strength and power that we had not yet been fully witness to. That said I could not see how he could possibly thwart the will of the triumvirate of judges and ultimately of the Universe Court. No matter how corrupt and ultimately how evil that court might be. Here on Earth, at least, we had never heard of anyone or anything stopping a triumvirate judgement from being carried out.
“I have never been on a world at the time a judgement was made, or the sentence imposed,” Orin responded. “Yet there was an injustice here at the most basic level.” Again he spoke in the past tense as if the actual sentence had already been imposed.
“How do you propose to stop the judgement,” I asked Orin hopefully. “The Suppressor/Punisher entities are an unstoppable force.”
“Oh them?” Orin seemed to be chuckling “I’m afraid they have already departed this plane of existence.”
That was all we ever got out of him about the fate of the Suppressor/Punishers of the Universe Court. We saw that Orin had spoken the truth as indeed he always did.
“Does this mean the elementals, the triumvirate judges, will come here and carry out their sentence themselves?” asked Joy.
Orin was definitely laughing now. Quite a hearty laugh – indeed a very human sounding laugh.
“I rather doubt it,” Orin continued to laugh “the elementals would never dirty themselves in such a fashion and in any case never pick on anyone their size. Just to be on the safe side though I was planning to move on from Earth but I think I might stay here a little longer.”
I realised then that the high sounding Universe Court and its triumvirate judges were just possibly not all they were cracked up to be.
Just before I died Orin was still with us on Earth. The sentence contained in the triumvirate judgement had still not been carried out. The judgement was sort of left dangling there. It hadn’t in any way been rescinded and I suppose was still legal in some sense.
No elementals or Suppressor/Punishers ever came this way again. At least in my life time and
we had heard that the failure to challenge Orin’s actions had led to a gradual diminution in the authority of the Universe Court.
I had a feeling that they had more to worry about now than little old Earth.
End
Return of the Benefactor
Canberra, Australia
2234
“I had a dream last night,” I said. “My father was in it. We did things together that we might have done had he lived.”
“How old were you when he died?” asked Robyn.
“Only 3 months,” I replied. “Though of course I’ve seen countless 3D videos of him.”
“Did you ever participate in the memories implant program?” asked Robyn. “Used in conjunction with the new dream corders the results can be startling.”
“It does not produce anything remotely like what I dreamt last night,” I replied knowingly. It was a very long dream – it seemed to cover all of my life up until now. We did a lot of things together.”
“Some could find that upsetting,” offered Robyn “to wake up and realise what might have been.”
“I do not feel that way,” I replied “I am simply very grateful for having glimpsed some of what might have been. Who knows but that I may yet dream some more of my father.”
“There can only be one explanation for such a phenomenon,” offered Robyn smiling more openly than I had ever seen her smile. “He is back!”
“Are you sure?” I was whispering now “I know there were reports of such things when he was here before.”
Robyn and I were both old enough to remember the Benefactor. Though we were children then. We remembered the goodness he brought. We remembered too the anger we all felt when the Elementals came to try to stop his activities on Earth. A confrontation that proved inconclusive. Even though Elementals and Benefactor left Earth afterwards none of his works were undone. Indeed the help continued for a time afterwards as if he were helping us from afar.
A Collection of Science Fiction Gems Page 15