by Lea Tassie
But, with the discovery of what was at the center of all that is known, things almost immediately spiraled out of control.
The first task assigned to the young female and her team was to visually record what they found, but it was soon realized, that as distant as they were from the center, they were still too close to determine individual shapes. All the missing mass of the galaxy was here, the answer to a mystery that astronomers had long been trying to solve. The speed of the orbiting stars and the associated gravitational force proved that there was far more mass in the galaxy than could, so far, be seen or detected by any means. And here it was: a mass of dark matter so incredibly huge that the ship's crew, trained as they were, found it impossible to comprehend.
The ship was commanded to 'back up' until a clearer picture could be had and, a few months later, with enough space gained, the first image was recorded. This particular mass, enormous in scale, hung dark and foreboding before them. But the image they had gained was pointless. At such a distance, almost no definable details could be achieved. The object appeared only as ambiguous blackness. The next command was then implemented, and the great ship started a course forward, returning to the center, with the goal of extracting a sample.
The crew of this craft had determined that the god mass was a solid object and could be landed upon. It held no gravity and so posed no threat, but it had blocked all attempts from space to analyze its composition. Gauging the distance to the surface was difficult, but not impossible. The crew settled on a rather low technology to determine how to find a solid point to land their craft. They simply jettisoned some cargo in the direction of the mass. Following the falling object at some distance, the ship took six months of Earth time before seeing the cargo container finally impact the surface.
After the craft had made contact with the surface, a crew of hominoids set foot on the surface and began drilling for core samples. To Harris's dismay, the first three-person team that tried gaining a sample was completely absorbed into the surface they stood on. After several attempts and the death of eighteen crew members, including the brilliant young female, the next logical step was to leave the surface and try instead to get a sample from orbit. Members of the crew rarely communicated; they were designed to simply follow programming set out by their command structure.
In orbit again, they launched a small probe at the surface. It buried itself deep into the mass, cut a sample, then retracted, all within a few seconds of being launched. It headed back to the ship. The black mass actually appeared to flinch and, at the point of impact, a welt began to form. This bump became a rounded hill, then grew to the size of a mountain, which tore itself from the surface and began approaching the Grays' spacecraft. This round black mountain, in comparison to the god mass, was very small, but to the crew it looked the size of a planet. The next command executed was for self-preservation. The ship turned and sped away, back toward Earth, back to the time-locked Grays. The black sphere pursued, but at a much slower speed. The hominoids in the spaceship returned to stasis.
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Dart speaks to Reader:
Yes, you're right, the distance from the Galactic Center to Earth is very great. Even using the Grays' advanced drive, it still took better than five hundred thousand years to make the trip. They could travel near the speed of light with their standard drive system, but this was too slow to travel the vast distance between the center of the galaxy and Earth.
You want to know about the advanced drive? All right, listen closely.
Repeatedly the ship would re-emerge into known space, find another quantum-entangled particle somewhere in the direction they wanted to travel, and recreate themselves at this new destination. The Grays had long known the best way to travel the void was at the quantum level, even though it meant destroying and recreating themselves in the process.
The process was quite simple, however. They linked a particle they had to a particle at the destination where they wanted to go. Because this distant quantum particle was the opposite charge to the particle they had, it was considered binary. The particle they had was 'one,' the particle where they wanted to go to was 'zero.' The universe is vast, but not empty; matter exists everywhere. The Grays sent information to the binary particle to first attract matter with which to build a four-dimensional printer in space.
The printers? The old three-dimensional printers that humans developed a long time ago could print out a non-living three-dimensional object. The four-dimensional printer the Grays used produced living, thinking objects. That was the center of their drive system, and once the link was established, it could begin printing the information sent to this distant location. In this case, the Grays were sending exact information of the entire structure of the ship and its crew.
No, that's right, matter can neither be created nor destroyed. But it can be rearranged. So, to keep the universe in balance, the information the Grays sent resulted in the destruction of the object they had. But with the information sent, the object they had was dead anyway.
The Grays soon discovered that after creating the printer at the destination they wished to travel to, it was more efficient to create the objects they needed from the matter found at that destination. Fractal geometry was the basis of this reasoning; it made little sense to send matter great distances, when matter was already at the point where they wanted to be. They would thus recreate the ship and crew at the destination, and go on to the next destination.
You want to travel somewhere that way, Reader? Perhaps you'll get the chance soon. But first, we must finish the story.
Yes, I'll try to remember about the dog, but we don't have much time.
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While out of stasis, Harris and some other hominoids had questions regarding the god fragment they now possessed. They were programmed to carry out tasks for the Grays, which meant they had to be relatively smart and, naturally, this included a heightened sense of wonder. Thus, curiosity drove the hominoids to begin experimenting on the god fragment. The ship contained several advanced technologies which they could use to study and explore its properties. The groups took turns, each spending a year conducting studies, then reviving other members of the crew to continue the study. Over the years, they managed to unlock the mystery of the god fragment.
When the great breakthrough came, the awakened crew decided to land on what was later named New Eden, a planet relatively close to Earth. They decided to place a team on New Eden to continue studying half the god fragment. The rest would re-enter stasis and continue, with the other half of the fragment, back to Earth.
The god fragment was sentient; this was the shock of the hominoids' discovery. It did not speak or think, but it could create. Like a tree creating seeds which fall to earth and grow new trees, like an insect that through procreation creates more insects, like bacteria that create more bacteria, the god fragment created life. It could be given any piece of matter, even a dead and desiccated leaf from a tree and, through contact, bring that leaf back to life.
Now the hominoids realized that the power of immortality was the true goal of the Grays. The center of the galaxy was the force that created life. But what was the huge, black, spherical object that had left the center and was pursuing them?
Harris himself had to return to Earth for he was one of the directors of the ship, not an ordinary crew member. He would tell the Grays that the members of the crew left on New Eden had perished in the first attempts on the black mass. The Grays wouldn't care who had died as long as they got the god fragment.
The team that remained on New Eden scavenged what parts and technology they could from the ship, hoping the Grays wouldn't notice the losses. This team consisted of four members, three females and a male. They had shelters and enough supplies to live on New Eden for several years, giving them a chance to create a colony and get a foothold on the world.
But the male member of the team soon succumbed to illness and died. The three women decided to subject his body to the god fra
gment. Subjecting inanimate matter, devoid of consciousness, to the god fragment created life. However, to subject a once living and self-aware being to the fragment created a monster bent on rape, murder and cannibalism.
With only one woman from the team left alive and hiding in a cave from the monster that stalked the planet's surface, she carved a small primitive statue of the god she prayed to. Though she and the other hominoids were advanced in technology, their understanding of art was still at the level of early Neanderthals and Homo erectus. She prayed in hopes of escaping the fate the other two women had suffered.
Her prayers were in vain.
Many hundreds of years later, one of the children of New Eden, who fancied herself an explorer, discovered a small statue of a woman in a cave. Most people in the settlement thought someone had played a prank on the little girl, but she was sure it was very old. She had no idea how right she was.
When the Grays re-entered Earth's time stream in the 1700s, coinciding with the arrival of the ship from the center of the galaxy, things began to change. The news about the pursuing black sphere disturbed the rogue Gray group, and it was decided to speed up the evolution of humanity to ensure that an army of followers could be created in time to defend Earth from the god sphere. Thus began the Industrial Revolution, an explosion of technological development. Sometimes humanity wandered off course, but a few well-chosen hominoids from the returned spacecraft, placed at key points in humanity's technological growth, soon brought them back to focus on the Grays' goal.
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Dart speaks to Reader:
The venture to the center of the galaxy, of course, had been a mistake.
Why?
To look for evidence of a creator flies in the face of reason, and is the height of arrogance. No one with a true understanding of reason and science would ever think it possible to test for the presence of god.
Yes, I know I told you that the Grays were brilliant. And so they were in many ways. They were far advanced in technology but, like humanity, this rogue group had a superstitious fascination with discovering a creator. Perhaps they thought a creator would give them more power. Humanity fell for this line of thinking many times in its history and, as still proves true, only a being blinded by faith could reason that such a quest was credible.
What happened to the black sphere following the ship?
Oh, it arrived eventually. But when it did appear in the solar system, humanity paid the price for the arrogance of the Grays.
Chapter 5 The trigger
Dart speaks to Reader:
The event I'm about to relate happened roughly seven thousand years ago, in about 2350 BCE. After that we're going to leap ahead to 2030 CE, when the aliens invaded, which caused Henry to become Charger, who went on to change the history of Earth and humanity.
You want him to tell this story?
I have to remind you, Reader, that Charger doesn't talk much. He's too busy creating history. You'll have to make do with me.
Am I a hero? Oh, Reader, don't be flippant. Who would ever regard me as a hero? A skinny guy in a wizard's hat and cloak? Do I look like I could save the world?
Well, yes, I do know quite a lot. But sometimes I wish I didn't.
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It had been thousands of years since the great city of Mahoud sailed the inky blackness of space, only to crash into the rogue tenth planet of Earth's solar system. The survivors adapted their mighty technology to thrive inside the black heart of the carbon planet, Alcazaba, changing human physiology into the small black beings they became. However, one male human of old Earth, Si Shim, had been saved intact, to be sent back to the home world someday to discover whether it would be possible to return.
That time had come and Si Shim was revived from deep cryogenic sleep and prepared for the task ahead. Using their most recent technologies, they placed him back into deep sleep and sent him, along with a programmed Tasker robot, in a ship with gravity drive back to Earth. For many, many years, the small ship traveled through dark space until it found its way to Earth. As the ship moved silently through the clouds that blocked the view from below, Si Shim revived and discovered that humanity had indeed survived.
However, the humans were still dirty and primitive and obviously hadn't advanced much since the time of Mahoud's exodus. The other, gentler humans of differing genetic physiology had perished, their remains discovered in the Neander Valley of modern day Germany.
After many months of observation, Si Shim decided to land his craft and interact with these primitive distant cousins. Some humans had clearly built a significant culture with towering structures of triangular design in deserts and in some deeply forested locations. But it was the people in the south of what was later known as Britain who most intrigued the lone man. They appeared stoic in nature and primitive in intellect, and he doubted that they understood the nature of the massive subterranean power source beneath their gigantic stone ring.
The fact that they had built a stone circle on top of an unusual underground energy source fascinated Si Shim. His craft had detected the energy source but obviously these people were unaware of it. Curious, he decided to dress himself in the clothing of the local people and try to learn their language. It was quite a trial for him to discover how to hunt animals in the local fashion, skin them with sharp instruments, and then process them into acceptable forms of clothing, but he succeeded.
The tribe's people were cautious, but welcoming to the new stranger who appeared at the edge of their village, dressed in garb that seemed somewhat foreign. The tribe quickly discovered that he could not speak their language, but within a short time, he had learned enough to get by. He soon became a friend of the village chief.
"Fair day, friend," Si Shim greeted a young woman who was busy grinding wheat on a stone wheel. He was returning from his daily walk into the wilds of the forest, where he secretly recorded information into the computers of his small craft. He'd been in the village for a year now and had learned much.
"And you, sweets, this day was especially quiet without your face," she replied and stopped her grinding to wipe her brow and flash him a broad smile. Her eyes lit up every time they spoke, and secretly she was fascinated by the stranger, subconsciously grooming her clothing and herself to look attractive. She did not know that Si Shim was in love with a young male named Eric of Amesbury, son of the village chief.
He entered his small hut, constructed by his new friends, for he had no skills of his own to offer the tribe, and began reviewing all the artifacts he had gathered. Five funerary pots, three tiny copper knives, sixteen barbed flint arrowheads, a kit for knapping flint, and metalworking tools, including cushion stones that functioned as a kind of portable anvil, and some boar tusks. There were also a black stone wrist-guard and two red wrist-guards, a shale-belt ring, and a pair of gold hair ornaments. Si Shim turned the artifacts over in his hands, studying them, seeking to gain more insight into the mindset of these people.
Eric entered the hut and greeted his lover. "Hello, my friend, I see you still fondle this trash. Why the longing for my father's possessions?"
"I hold a passion for your people, my friend," Si Shim replied as he put the goods into a bag made of animal skin and tucked the bag under his bed.
"I hope your passion includes me," Eric said.
These two played a dangerous game, for it was not acceptable behavior for men to be intimate and even worse for men of such an age difference; Si Shim was twice Eric's age. Si Shim was expected to join with a girl of the tribe to help cement relationships between the tribe of Amesbury and the tribe of Si Shim. But he had other plans. He would return to his own home and take Eric with him.
"With the passing of the new moon, I will be traveling back to my people, my friend. I ask that you take this long walk with me," Si Shim said.
"I would travel the heavens above with you, friend," Eric replied.
"That is good to hear spoken, though heaven is a distant road to travel." Si Shim rose f
rom his small bed, walked over to Eric, and gave him a warm embrace.
The young girl that Si shim had spoken to earlier, carrying a small snack to entice Si Shim's interest in courtship, appeared at the doorway, only to find the two men in each other's arms.
Shocked and rejected, the girl turned away quietly and decided to speak with Eric's father, the village chieftain. The two men did not notice her arrival or departure.
Later that morning, the village chief, enraged, sent armed men to Si Shim's hut. The two men were dragged before the chief, who had them executed immediately. Two graves were dug near the stone rings of the village and Si Shim, with his treasures scattered about his body, was buried as an Amesbury archer. Eric was buried not far from him and village life went on, the two men quickly forgotten.
Si Shim's spacecraft sat dormant for a number of years until the Tasker's programming kicked in, based on Si Shim's probable death since he had not returned for so long. It was time to collect plant samples and human artifacts from other areas of the planet. Soon the craft must return to Alcazaba, when the small black planet did its single orbit of the sun and was closer to Earth than it would be again for hundreds of years.
Any Tasker was capable of carrying out such tasks, for they flew ships to asteroids and planets to mine for materials needed by the Mahouds. Each had in its chest a complex mechanism which directed and controlled it. Thousands of years in the past, when Mahoud left Earth, one of the original robotic guards had been accidentally left behind. A few hundred years before Si Shim reached Earth, the remains of this guard were found by some Greeks. They didn't know what the controlling device was for but they were inspired by the cogs and wheels to create from it an astronomical calculator. It, too, was lost but eventually found around 1900 in a shipwreck off the island of Antikythera in Greece and therefore called the Antikythera Machine.