They
Came. “I don’t understand why John needs me to see this,” Milling sighed as
the black Hummer roared down the road along the side of Runesdale Mountain. “He
knows I don’t really care about this stuff”.
“I wouldn’t complain,” John chided.
“Not too many people will ever see these kinds of things. Eh?”
As the vehicle skidded around the
corner, their destination loomed in the distance, the United Nations Aerospace
Observatory. They rolled up to the first checkpoint, swiped their ID cards, and
continued on to the parking building. Milling pulled into the parking spot and
stepped out of the SUV, grabbing his revolver from the glove compartment.
“You really need to carry that thing
around with you?” John questioned.
“If I need it, I have it,” Milling
replied gruffly as they strolled over to the glass elevator. Another swipe of
Milling’s ID card sent the domed elevator soaring up above ground level. The
elevator shot up past the roof of the garage and hundreds of kilometers of
forest was revealed resting along the horizon.
The door pinged and John said “Let’s
go,” as they walked out into a decontamination chamber. It scanned them, and
then opened the door, revealing the Voyager monitoring deck.
“John, Milling!” Roland yelped from
across a brightly lit corridor.
“Hello, Roland,” John and Milling
responded in eerie unison. They both glanced at each other surprised.
“Come … come,” Roland exclaimed excitedly
as he led the partners over to an expensive looking control monitor. “You got
here at the perfect time. We only have 5 minutes left until we receive the
voyagers camera feed as it crosses the boundary of our solar system and it gets
turned on for the last time!” Roland exploded, obviously unable to contain his
excitement.
“THIS
is what you dragged me 700 kilometers from my client to see?” questioned Milling
annoyed.
“Cheer up Mill, it will be
interesting,” John interrupted. “This is what Roland does for a living”.
Roland wasn’t listening, as he was
scrambling around his station making sure all of the calculations were correct.
As the large projector screen at the far side of the vaulted room lit up with a
large timer, Roland squealed with delight, 11 hours of waiting finally coming
to fruition. He pressed some last minute buttons and turned some last minute
knobs as John and Milling observed from a distance.
“He`s nuts right?” John asked
innocently.
“How could he not be, in this line of
work?” Milling chuckled.
“Here it goes!” Roland said, the
screen counting down from 10.
Milling checked his watch, and saw it
was 10:09 AM as the projection changed to the dense speckled black darkness
that John recognized as space. “Whoa,” Milling uttered as the universe lay
before him. All of the scientists in the room were frantically capturing every
pixel of video that the satellite had captured.
The projection changed angles, and
the sun was revealed. Everyone oohed and ahhed in delight.
“Reeee!” an alarm activated suddenly.
“What’s wrong?” Roland began
panicking.
“The starboard solar panel is gone!”
a scientist chirped from across the room. Suddenly the screen shuddered
violently, and the camera angle starting whipping around in all directions.
“Oh God” Roland gasped in complete
and utter disbelief.
Shards of metal whipped past the
camera and it captured the main satellite body floating past, collapsed in on
its self. As the camera finally began to slow down, the view settled on the
blackness of space. Except it wasn’t all black. Not by a long shot. Large
squares of pure white began appearing behind the wreckage of the voyager, like
computer screens changing colour. A single green light erupted from the centre
of every white square. Then the feed went black. The entire room sat in silence
as Milling realized what this meant.
“It, it hi-it something…” Roland
muttered.
“SSSSCCCCCRRRRREEEEEEEE!”.
Milling clutched his ears in pain as
an ear splitting noise rippled through the air itself. “AARRGGHH!” he yelled,
but his scream was drowned out by the noise of everyone in the room yelling in
complete pain.
Out of nowhere black and white images
began flashing in his mind, looping together over and over for what seemed like
forever. He saw a large circular island covered by immense spires and massive
domes, towers, and surrounded an ocean. It seemed to be inhabited by people not
unlike modern people going about normal lives.
Then the images focused on one man,
an individual clad in large plates of intricate armour and a helmet. The man
reached towards a cylindrical podium that held a mechanical device and placed
his hands on it. Immediately his body disintegrated into dust, and the entire
continent erupted into Armageddon. Flashing lights followed by giant walls
sprouted out of the water surrounding the island.
As the inhabitants of the island
looked around in utter horror, a beam lit up the dark sky, seemingly emitting
from the horizon itself. A pulsating shock wave began emitting from the end of
the beam, coating the island in a shallow, pale glow. The domes began to
shudder and the towers began to twist, both creaking under immense strain.
The sky erupted in strange symbols,
the likes of which Milling couldn’t understand. A strange face with large eyes
and a slit-like nose and mouth appeared among the clouds. Then the pulse wave
erupted from the beam removing every particle of oxygen from the area. Every
person clutched their throats in horror as their lungs collapsed, and they were
flattened, their bones shattering under the pressure of the vacuum.
In 10 seconds every person was dead,
and the buildings, which had seemed so indestructible and mighty, simply
disintegrated and sunk into the ocean taking the hundreds of bodies with it,
never to be seen again.
Then an image of hieroglyphs flashed
before Milling`s eyes, followed by Chinese, Italian, French. Language after
language flashing past, seemingly trying to figure out which he could
understand.
Finally English stopped in the image.
It stated a simple, yet sinister message. “Atlantis. Was. Ours”.
Abruptly he woke up as from being in
a trance. “AAAHHH!” Milling screamed, scrambling to un-holster his revolver. He
saw the other scientists get up and scream similarly. “What the hell was that!”
someone screamed.
‘Atlantis was ours’ you say, Milling thought, helping John off the floor.
Atlantis was yours?
Then it really started. The entire
building groaned, and the floor seemingly moved beneath their feet. A large
section of wall collapsed, crushing a walkway and flattening a dozen
scientists. Milling and John rushed over to help when they noticed what was
transpiring outside. A giant explosion erupted in the distance, setting a
hundred acres of forest ablaze, and sending fiery projectiles tumbling in all
directions.
Beyond the wails and tones of various alarms,
John saw something strange. Through the hole in the lab`s wall he saw trees in
the distance begin twitching and bending seemingly on their own. Then they
fell. A massive trench opened up beneath half of the forest, sending anything
in the area crashing down into the abyss.
As John gaped in horror, something
started rising from the far horizon. Shooting up into the atmosphere, a
monolithic gray structure covered the distant sky.
“The hell was that silver stick
falling from that tower?” John asked quietly.
“That my friend,” Milling replied, “was
the CN tower.”
The entire planet was transformed. Forty-two
hours later, at 6:46 AM, Milling was checking his HAZ-MAT suit`s oxygen supply
aboard the gunship.
“Everyone put on your suits,” a voice
blared over his earpiece. As he stepped into the suit, the gunship rocked
gently.
“We seem to be receiving some major
interference from the structure,” John observed. “I guess we`ll only be able to
communicate through short wave HzFm frequencies.”
“Mmm hmm,” Milling grunted.
The gunship doors slid open revealing
ground zero of the gargantuan tower. The squad hopped out, careful not to
puncture their suits. Milling held his revolver in front of him, scanning the
structures base. “All clear,” he said.
As the group inched closer to the
wall, a large arch opened up, showing a corkscrewing hallway leading up. They
crawled skyward without incident, for what seemed like hours. Then Milling came
to a door.
“Sshh,” Milling whispered holding up
his hand to signal his group to pause. He took one hand and reached towards the
door.
“Wirr… ching!” the door sounded,
startling the group. A life-size blue outline of a hand appeared on the door.
Milling glanced back towards his nervous squad, and placed his hand on the
shape.
“Woosh.” The door slid open, and a
limp body crumpled out onto Milling. “JESUS CHR-!” he screamed, and scrambled
back into the hallway on all fours.
“Freeze!” John ordered. He knelt over
the naked grey body, and felt for a pulse. “It`s dead,” John said, and ordered
the squad into the room. An ambient light illuminated the strange rectangular
chairs filling it, sitting in front of thin screens. And within these chairs
laid dozens upon dozens of similarly mummified and limp bodies, their huge
black eyes sunken back into their skulls, and their necks bent over to the side
at unnatural angles.
John took out a metered device and took
samples of the air. As he reviewed the reading, his eyes lit up. “I think I know
what killed them,” he said softly, and the squad gathered around. “There seems
to have been a LOT of Uranium concentrated within this room. Now there`s
nothing. Hardly even residue left.”
“What are you saying?” another squad
member asked.
“What I’m saying, lieutenant is that
we took away their power source. The base of this here structure was once a
uranium mine. Without uranium they couldn’t breathe. Now they`re dead”.
Milling turned to him and said, “A
man is born alone and dies alone; and he experiences the good and bad
consequences of his karma alone; and he goes alone to hell or the Supreme
abode. This, my friend, is the consequence of being sentient. This is the
reason why we will never know the answers to life`s greatest enigmas. We have
doomed ourselves to ignorant bliss. We doomed us”.
4 years and thousands of hours of
research and studying led to more questions than answers. The only thing human
kind knew was that we were the reason our creators were non-existent. The wall
that the Voyager struck was simply a switch that once activated signaled “The
Architects” that human kind was ready to meet our designers. Except they died
before they could answer our questions. Of course, we also figured out that
they survived off of uranium. That, was all we as a species could decipher.
~End of act I~
They
saw. “It`s a class 7 you say?” the captain questioned. “I thought the scale
went up to 5!”.
“That’s what I thought too. The
Architect structure must be gigantic,” the corporal said.
“Well, we don’t have time to argue.
Let’s go!” the captain ordered.
His squad finished up fastening up
their diving suits and prepared to drop off the small boat and submerge into
the dark, Pacific Ocean.
“3,2,1!” the captain shouted, and all
7 men dived off the side of the boat. They followed a guide line attached to
the boat`s hull and slowly made their way down to the ruins below.
“Radio check,” a man said and the
squad responded. Slowly, they made their way down, careful to avoid any debris.
“40,000 years old…”, the corporal
said before the captain called for a cease of communications.
“ I have a visual on a blue light!” a
soldier reported.
“Me too”, another man responded.
The men could see the light and the bottom
of the ocean and prepared to approach the submerged structure. “Everyone report
in. the visibility isn’t good”. “I.F. 1”. “I.F.2”. “I.F.3” “4”. “5”. “Me”, said
the captain.
“Where`s 6?”. The squad looked around. “Where
could he b-“.
Suddenly an amplified scream erupted
from their earpieces and they all jumped in horror. “AAAHHHH”!
The captain saw a franticly
struggling I.F. 6 being dragged away from the guide line towards the ruins.
“BACK TO THE SURFACE NOW!” the captain screamed. The remaining 6 men hooked up
to the line and began to climb. One after another they rose from the sea floor
towards the surface.
“This is dive boat 1”, a man`s voice
crackled over their speakers. “I read you as surfacing”.
“Call for backup! Anyone! There`s something else down here!”.
“Like a, a uh shark?” the sailor
asked.
“AN ARCHITECT”!
“Roger that”.
As they neared the surface, safety
seemed close. The corporal looked up at the boat when the water surrounding him
began to vibrate. “Huh?” he muttered. Bubbles began rising around them as they
neared the surface. The blue light from the structure grew more powerful.
“Stay there!” the sailor yelled over
the communicator.
“Halt”, the captain ordered and the
men stopped.
“Just st-!” the sailor repeated as
the communication line went silent.
The men looked up, as something
radiating extreme light soared above the surface of the water and detonated.
The sailor`s body was whipped into the water above them and as the men panicked
his charred remains floated past.
The captain began to inch up the line
towards the boat when it began to look bigger. “UNCLIP NOW!” the captain
hollered as the boat began to come right for them. The men immediately
unclipped and swam to the side.
The boat sunk past into the dark
abyss. “Lets go,” the captain said quietly. The glow emanating from above the
surface was excruciatingly bright. The squad carefully broke the surface and
was surrounded by fire. For hundreds of kilometers all around them a wall of
emblazed horror existed.
As the team began to panic, the
captain checked his command tablet and looked up horrified. “North America is
gone”.
~End of act 2~
They
Conquered. “What do you mean stay calm? North America is a charred
hellhole, the Bermuda Triangle is launching missiles at both poles, the Dragons Triangle is floating 400 feet
above the ground, and apparently the Great Pyramids were built around ancient
bio-weapon containment silos! Not to mention every country is in a mass panic
and all communications between the countries have been cut out thanks to other
various Architect technology and the destruction of every satellite orbiting
the Earth!”.
“Surely, our situation couldn`t get
any worse”, the secretary of defense reasoned.
A telecomm on the President`s desk
chimed. “Hello?” the President asked as he picked up the receiver. He violently
replaced it after listening for a few moments. “God d****t Jim! You jinxed us
again. The entire freaking moon opened up and apparently now it’s a giant space
cannon”.
“Oh”.
“It seems we have no other choice
Jim. Activate operation Solis Maximus”.
The secretary walked over to a large
electronic panel on the wall and punched in a few numbers. The office`s wall
slid open to reveal a winding, white staircase. The President followed him down
it until they could hear the frantic conversations of the hundreds of survivors
echoing up the stairway.
The two men walked out into the
gargantuan bunker and slipped through the crowd, coming to a stop in front of a
locked door. The President scanned his eye and the doorway opened up. The men
both sat down on chairs in front of control panels and began to type.
The secretary pulled up an intercom
and spoke into it. “Attention flight crew. Prepare for final evac. I repeat,
prepare for final evac. Set course for Enceladus.”
“Roger that,” a voice responded.
A long beep sounded alerting the survivors. A voice
over the sound system said “All inhabitants report to cryostasis chambers.
Situation is Uniform Romeo Golf Echo November Tango. Situation is urgent.”
The man`s voice was replaced by a continuous air raid
siren, which pierced the bunkers still air.
“It`s done,” the President said, as he got up and
began to make his way to the ISS Arcam`s bridge. The survivors were all rushing
to be put in cryosleep to await the ships arrival to Saturn`s moon, Enceladus.
As the Ship`s Architect technology reversed engineered
pulse motors began to fire, the Arcam`s hull broke through the ground above it,
and it rose above the charred remains of what was once Canada. The 40,000 foot
long vessel shot off into the smoke filled sky, and broke through the
atmosphere.
As the
President looked back at the molten planet, the ship sped into the darkness of
space, narrowly avoiding the Moon`s subsequent attack. The president sat back.
His work was done.
~End of
act 3~
They
began again.
For 300 years humanity drifted through space, destined to recreate the world once
again.
In the final automated descent onto the small moon`s
surface, the last survivors of Earth were reawakened. Stepping on their feet
for the first time in three centuries, they realized that the cryosleep had
taken its toll. Within time, they overcame the initial horror of their new
sickly grey skin and thin frail limbs. The masks worn in cryosleep also elongated
the skulls of the users and widened their eye sockets as well.
Over a single
month the first colony was established, and life began again. The discovery of
major uranium deposits underground caused it to become the power source for the
colonies, the side effects including darkened pupils.
Eventually, the Enceladites became immune to the
uranium`s effects. They began to breathe it, and over time began to depend on
it.
When they had
advanced enough to explore areas outside our solar system, they left the moon
and traveled for a close and similar galaxy. They established massive
installations and complexes on a planet, and its moon.
Eventually, the native alien life began to evolve due
to tests done by the colonists. The mammal-like creatures became bipedal and
were sentient in time. The colonists went underground, and created a trip wire
at the edges of the solar system to alert them when the natives were ready to
meet their creators.
Civilizations arose and for thousands of years, the 2
races lived happily, one unknowing of the other. Unfortunately, the uranium
found there began to be mined by the natives, and since the colonists were
underground, they couldn`t stop it.
They locked the installations, and disabled all
communication with the outside world. They sent out messengers to stop the
mining, but they were killed, and the colonists withered away. Eventually all
that was left was their mummified remains, trapped in abandoned buildings. Only
the trip wire would expose the native`s true origins. They continued along
their path, until they began the cycle over once again. The End.
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