Proxima Trilogy: Part 1-3: Hard Science Fiction

by Brandon Q Morris

  Adam dives all the way down. The object is as flat as a flounder. He touches it. It seems to be made of metal. On the sides are the remnants of six legs in total. Aside from lacking two leg-attachment sites, it reminds him of a scorpion’s body that had its legs and tail torn off. And indeed, he then sees something like the remains of a tail at one end of the body. Obviously, though, this is a technical product and not an animal. Was it perhaps constructed by his Marchenko, the real one? If it was not made by aliens...

  Adam examines it from all sides. If it once had a tail, there must be data connections into the now-severed body part. Perhaps he could find out what this thing saw? It looks like Marchenko 2 did not take the time to do that. This might give him an advantage. He would prefer to test his idea right here and now. It won’t work in the water though, due to short-circuits.

  Adam looks through his tool bag and finds a piece of thin plastic with an area of about one square meter. As a test he blows some bubbles of his breath into it. Perfect. The material is airtight! He puts a piece of scrap on each of the four corners. Then he fills the plastic completely, creating an air-filled dome. This is going to be his workshop, even though handling things inside there won’t be so easy.

  First he gathers his tools outside the dome. He needs at least two cables and a universal adhesive. In the tool bag he finds a longer piece of insulated wire, from which he cuts two pieces. Then he looks for possible data connections at the rear end of the strange object. He identifies five metallic points that could serve as contacts. Therefore he cuts off another three pieces of wire. Within the dome he will have to connect these to the contact points, using the universal adhesive. While he does not have the greatest view of his work area, he manages to do it. The adhesive has to harden for 30 seconds. Then he checks his work. The wires are firmly attached.

  Now the actual evaluation can start. He takes the universal device from his arm. It has two external inputs hidden under a waterproof cover. He must only open this cover in the open air, meaning inside his improvised tent. Then he has to connect two of the five cables extending from the end of the object with the external inputs, hoping to read some data.

  There are ten possibilities of connecting two inputs with two of the five cables, if the order does not matter. He checks these ten variations in a minute—without any result. Just to be sure he repeats the tests, but nothing happens. The object seems to be completely dead, even though he sees a small amount of heat radiating from it when he uses the infrared view. Perhaps it needs all its energy to preserve its data? It should be possible to change that. He still has enough energy in his suit batteries to give this thing a bit of it. By now he is convinced that his Marchenko, not the aliens, created this object. He imagines extraterrestrial technology as something much more exotic than this odd-looking thing.

  He diverts part of his suit energy to his universal device. Of course that runs the risk of damaging sensitive data circuits that might have been designed for a lower voltage. Yet Marchenko probably was efficient in designing this thing, with little difference between power and data circuits. The only real risk would be that no energy gets through. Adam once again tests every cable combination. On the fourth try electricity is flowing! Now he needs to be patient. Would 15 minutes be enough to make the electronics of this object work again? He waits anxiously for something to happen. He hopes Marchenko did not encrypt the information in such a way that he won’t be able to access it!

  Adam shifts his feet nervously. He needs to keep his hands inside the little air-filled tent so he can’t move very much. Is he just imagining it, or is the suit heater not as effective as before? Yes—he feels the cold rising from his feet. Then he checks the oxygen supply. He shouldn’t run out of air, as the building is right above him.

  Please, Marchenko, let me access your data, he thinks. I need every advantage I can get, because Marchenko 2 is not an easy opponent! Adam looks up into the darkness. Somewhere up there are Eve and Marchenko, unaware of the danger threatening them. It is 14 minutes, so he has to count to 60 one more time. At that moment his universal device vibrates. This means that it must have received data. It has worked! He would like to pull it out of the tent right away, but first he has to remove the cables and carefully close the waterproof cover. He concentrates on working slowly and carefully. He must not spoil things now.

  Finally he can attach the device to his arm again. He looks at the screen.

  “Hello Adam,” it reads. “It’s me, your Marchenko. I am inside here.”

  May 9, 19, Eve

  “ISU 4?”

  The sensor unit at her right turns towards her.

  “I would like you to lead me to where I first met ISU 2.”

  “Sure.”

  Eve stands up. She does not have much luggage. All she needs are her universal device, the toolset, the remaining food, and the water bottle.

  The ISU slithers ahead of her. Eve recognizes the corridor she came through before, with ISU 2. The trip had been long, because they first used an air duct. If something in this building awakens now, and it wants to get to the control room, it wouldn’t choose this cumbersome path, so she feels relatively safe.

  Soon they reach the spot where Marchenko was damaged as a result of his deliberate interference with the ventilation system fan. She misses him. He would certainly know what to do now.

  They should never have separated. The disaster started when she and Marchenko decided they had to press two buttons on opposite sides of a large dark room, simultaneously. Could they somehow have avoided that? It is always easier to think about such things in hindsight. They probably could not have gone on, however, and they would have had to turn around and leave the building empty-handed. It would have been a disappointing outcome, but they would have stayed together.

  “Watch out, the floor is damaged,” ISU 4 warns her.

  Eve is startled. She has to be more careful. On the other hand, so what if I get injured? It doesn’t really matter... does it?

  She stops because she realizes she can’t understand herself anymore. If nothing at all matters, why didn’t she just stay in the control room, calmly waiting for whomever or whatever might show up? There must still be a tiny bit of will to survive left in her, which interfered with that decision.

  She hears a scraping noise and flinches. However, it is only the sensor unit waiting for her. She had better hurry.

  Now she sees the entrance of the air duct. Luckily, she can reach it with no problem. There is no lighting in here, yet Eve notices that it is getting brighter. This must be her infrared sense, which she wasn’t even aware of a week ago. On the way here it had been considerably darker. Temperatures seem to be rising inside the entire building.

  After another ten minutes the sensor unit stops.

  “ISU 4, what is going on?”

  “You met ISU 2 at these coordinates.”

  Eve looks around. She does not recognize this place, but that’s no surprise, as she is inside a wide, uniform pipe. “Thanks, ISU 4. So you can’t help me any further?”

  “I can’t show you the way you came to this spot.”

  That is only logical, Eve thinks. Marchenko would not have given her such an answer. Yet she should not measure the primitive software of the sensor unit against the same AI standards.

  “Fine. It would be best if you come along. When I get to a fork in the road and don’t know which way to go, the two of us can explore both directions.”

  The ISU does not answer, but it follows her. As if it could read my derogatory thoughts, Eve thinks, and then feels bad about mentally denigrating it. After all, this unit would sacrifice itself for her at any time!

  The darker it gets, the harder it becomes for Eve to estimate the time spent and the distance covered. The pipe leads downward and seems to be turning in a spiral. Just as she has become used to it, there is a longer straight section. Eve cannot see its end. It seems odd to her that the complete structure should even fit inside the building. But mayb
e the darkness is deceiving. Shortly before the end of the straight sections she sees the path branching. She cannot remember this split, let alone the direction from which she came.

  So this is the moment. “ISU 4, you check out the right corridor, I will take the left one. If you find the sleeping chambers, return to me as quickly as possible.”

  “What do the sleeping chambers look like?”

  Eve describes the tall room, including the thousands of aliens sleeping in the honeycomb-shaped compartments.

  “These details should make identification possible,” ISU 4 confirms, then serpentines off.

  “Just a moment,” Eve calls out. The unit turns back to face her. “There is a drop of about two meters at the end of the pipe, so be careful.”

  “Thank you for this information.”

  “And good luck with your search.”

  “I will try to minimize the parameters of luck during my search.”

  “Sure,” Eve says.

  The sensor unit turns around and disappears into the right corridor. Eve listens to the tapping and rustling sound so typical for its snake-like motion, until she can only hear the humming of the life-support system. Then she starts out herself. She should not be surprised that she feels much lonelier now, but that is the case. She should have brought more—maybe all—of the ISUs along.

  The corridor changes directions several times. It almost looks as if the designers put in some special effort toward the end. Now the way is leading slightly upward again. Eve can’t remember the way here being so irregular. On the other hand, she can see considerably more than a few days ago.

  After ten minutes a soul-shaking scream echoes through the pipe. Her heart leaps, and she stops briefly to steady herself against the wall. The source must be far away, but even though the sound is muffled, her hair stands on end. Eve wipes the sweat off her brow. Was she this sweaty earlier? She hadn’t noticed. And had the increasing smell—a stench by now—been present before this point? Perhaps she became used to it in the sleeping chamber, but now she needs a new adjustment phase.

  The end of the duct arrives faster than she expected. She discovers the ventilation opening in time. Eve stops and listens, telling herself she is waiting for the ISU. The corridor that ISU 4 is exploring obviously has not yet reached an end.

  She admits she is actually afraid of the exit. She places a small pile of material in front of the ventilation duct in order to better pull herself up if necessary, but a quick escape will be difficult once she is down in the room. The horrifying scream came from far away, but who knows whether there might be a second extraterrestrial waiting for her down here? That’s nonsense, Eve, she tells herself, they can’t know that you are here.

  Eve resolutely steps to the edge of the opening and carefully slides down. Yes. She has definitely found the right path. She sees her large backpack with the sturdy interior frame. It is still where she put it to help her climb up here before. She quickly reaches inside. The remaining food supply she’d had to leave behind is still there. Very good—she will survive a few more days.

  She looks around. To the left, where she discovered the control panel for the honeycombs, a light is on. Close to the panel the wall has opened. Eve walks over there. Instead of the wall she sees a smooth surface with a vertical gap in the middle. Is this some kind of elevator? But where are the buttons? The thing, whatever it is, had not been here a few days ago. So she is definitely no longer alone in this building. Her hands tremble, so she presses them against the smooth wall.

  The extraterrestrial is obviously not right here, she tells herself, trying to calm down. Did he change anything else? She notices something on the control panel for the honeycombs: A green symbol is glowing at half height. She has no idea what it means, but she has to make sure. The stench seems to be less overpowering now, or perhaps she is already used to it. Yet while she is walking upward, the intensity of the smell increases again. Then she passes the dead alien she took out of his chamber. The putrefaction has advanced considerably. She has to avert her eyes to keep from vomiting. Then she notices an impression in the wall of the capsule. Somebody must have hit against it with a heavy tool, using full force.

  A few levels higher—she has stopped counting by now–she finds the empty chamber. The couch has been pushed outside. So the creature whose scream she heard must have come from here. She imagines the extraterrestrial standing in front of her, more than two meters tall, with a wide, barrel-shaped body and strong load-arms. He would be able to squish her like a louse. Would he want to? Perhaps not, if they had the chance to have an unbiased meeting first. Yet now he has seen his dead comrade, for whose death she is probably responsible, and if he has reached the control center he knows what a terrible thing she did to the entire system. Even if the alien is a pacifist, his first reaction will definitely not be friendly. How would she react in such a case? She and Adam and their Marchenko had punished Marchenko 2 for his attempted murder by sentencing him to eternal solitude. Yet she is to blame for the death of an entire nation, or what is left of it.

  Eve sits down next to the empty chamber, leans her head against the wall, and closes her eyes. Adam, what would you have done? Marchenko, don’t you have any advice for me? She remembers how Adam was caught in the pit with the giant spider. At least he did not hide from it. And it really isn’t like her to try to dodge the unavoidable. I have lost my way, she thinks. I am in the wrong place here. I have to return to the control center, no matter what is waiting for me there.

  She wonders whether she should rest for a little bit longer. Yet that would only bring back her doubts. No, she has to go now, but first she needs to replenish her water supply. She climbs all the way back into the chamber. Unlike the last time, no dead body is in her way. She quenches her thirst and fills the bottle. Then she walks back down the path. She tries once more to get the strange elevator going, but she still does not find any control buttons.

  She will have to take the familiar way. She steps on the backpack again and pulls herself up. There she almost steps on a metal obstacle. The object scurries out of the way. It is ISU 4.

  “Oh! ISU 4, what are you doing here?”

  “I waited for you after fulfilling my task.”

  “And why didn’t you keep on following me?”

  “The task only concerned this air duct.”

  “Sure. Thanks. Let’s return to the control center. You first.”

  “Understood.”

  May 9, 19, Marchenko 2

  The past few hours have been the cruelest ones of his long life. They were worse than the time he had to spend alone in constant darkness, and more humiliating than the moment when two humans, barely out of childhood, defeated him. That scream alone! Marchenko 2 has no idea what a creature might look like that utters such a scream, but the image he comes up with is more horrifying than reality could ever be. He visualizes a cross between a velociraptor and a lion. He thinks of a carnivorous dinosaur because a part of the scream can be heard in the ultrasound spectrum, and the lion would add the necessary bass, the deep grumbling that needs a large resonant body to develop. And what is he doing? He is lying around, growing feet. He cannot look for the source, and there is something even worse: He is defenseless.

  However, that will be over soon. Marchenko 2 will have four sturdy legs, two of which he can also use as arms. He can decide which ones to use for what, as all four limbs are designed with sensitive finger-like digits. Nor do they lack strength. He could lift 100 kilos—if he had a stable platform, because he only weighs half that much. He can certainly deal with Adam and Eve. Would he be able to defeat the other Marchenko? He does not know. He is sure, though, that he has the element of surprise on his side. One other thing is certain: He could never stand up to the creature that uttered that scream.

  It is time to continue this voyage of discovery. He is inside a tall, wide corridor, which confirms his assumptions about the extraterrestrial inhabitants of the building. They might be two and a half
meters tall and equally wide, and they still could walk through here comfortably. They are probably not much smaller, as otherwise the whole design would be inefficient. He must be near a reactor or some similar machinery that would usually be constructed at the bottom of a building. The control center—and there has to be such a place—would probably be considerably higher up, at a safe distance in case of a disaster. While this is a human perspective, and therefore it may be inappropriate here, all intelligent beings would, almost certainly, develop such basic ideas.

  The corridor does indeed lead slightly upward. Whenever he comes to a branching path, he marks the way taken with a sign on the wall. In his memory banks he also generates a digital map, but he has already noticed that he cannot completely trust his length measurements. Space down here is special, and he does not mean a particular area, but space itself.

  Finding the control center won’t be easy. He almost wishes that the scream would repeat itself, as he would then have an appropriate point of reference. What else can he use to orient himself? Marchenko 2 stops and examines the walls. There must be supply lines. The corridors receive indirect lighting. The glow seems to come directly from the surface. Yet this is not possible without energy. There have to be lines that are regulated at some spot. After all, the center must be able to regulate the energy consumption of the building. Or are the extraterrestrials thinking in a totally different way? His scans cannot discover anything. Maybe the surface shields everything. He has to take a closer look at it.

  Marchenko 2 stops. If he continues aimlessly he runs the risk of increasing the distance to the central room. He tries to scratch the wall with one of his fingers, but the material is too hard. Just a moment, he thinks. Within five minutes he changes the finger into a drill. He only manages to penetrate the surface one millimeter before the drill bit is worn out. But that’s no problem. His nano-fabricators have already begun using the material removed from the wall to harden the drill, and will continue to do so. As a result he succeeds in drilling a hole of approximately ten centimeters depth within ten minutes.