wayward wanderer Broken Ship III

    Jobe, the misfortunate space wanderer's wayward voyage found him in the air again. But this time in his anti-gravity suit. Kaleidoscopic lights in the ionic green of flashing lights a mile below fascinated his hypersensitive intrigue. His curiosity and expectations of encountering intelligent life forms induced his slow descent.

    "Descend, his telepathy instructed. The suit's antigravitational mechanisms soundlessly responded. "Strobe lights. I wonder. Out here? Weird. Can't think . . . fathom what the heck could cause such an event. Amazing."

    He felt a mix of apprehension and curiosity  What do I have to lose? The fear of death was dim enough to ignore. "I either die in this, or live on. I'm gonna die sooner or later anyway. If I run into benevolent life forms, maybe they can get me back home. So it's worth the risk."

    His speaking voice was muffled and sounded strangely disassociated from himself, as if some outside entity was talking through a chamber into his helmet.

    The stars twinkled in in the green atmosphere above. He noticed no plants. No trees or shrubs. Nothing moved below.

    No birds. No clouds. Only mineral. Only atmospheric gases. Light and dark. Molecules and photons. Horizon. Topography. Geometric landscape filled with inanimate forms, but for the unidentified, as yet strange strobing lights below.

    His aerial speed of descent monitored on his holographic field of vision together with myriad mathematical data. His subconscious picked up most of it.             

    The gravity suit was pretty much performing autonomously except for responses to his biorhythms pertaining to bodily functions and cognitive stimuli. In other words; the suit was programmed to ensure his survival independent of his own decisions, something he could not override unless he destroyed himself with the suit. In order to achieve this, he would have to manually unlatch his intake port. At this point he had no death wish. Besides self inflicted euthanasia could easily be achieved by many other means. “I’d have to override the spiritual programming to self destruct, God. That’s not something I would ever wish to do seeming as I belong to you. Your will be done in these matters, not mine.”

    At an elevation of 2,000 feet he could discern the lines of geometric patterns indicative of intelligent design. “Not that nature isn’t driven by intelligence,” he was addressing himself as well as his Creator. “But obviously these lines are positioned in patterns using right angles or 90 degree vertices with no significant deviation. The bulk of them anyway. There’s many of less degrees, but you get the picture. Right Nature?”

    “In other words these are man-made, I mean of higher intelligence.” He chuckled inwardly finding himself amused by his soliloquy. “Aliens? I’ve never encountered any unless we’re talking non-documented people back home crossing borders illegally.”

    The suit paused suspended at this point offering him an undisturbed view. “What are we doing?” No response. He had disabled the suit’s application for dialogue with human interface.

    “Descend.”

    The suit followed mechanical suit in obedience. The flashing emittance emanated from an obliquely opaque dome that appeared countersunk to its paved surroundings. Its central pivotal point of spin was according to the data on his vision field, 360.14 feet of radii, followed by unending digits.

    It was at this point that Major Jobes decided to ascend and take a perch of anonymity from an escarpment located approximately 1.45 miles, (followed by unending digits).

From there, he reasoned, adequate shelter for further reconnaissance would seem suitable.

    There was a distinct unsettling feeling about the rays of light emanating from the narrow band at the dome’s base.