Asterius Planet
The ocean was beyond rocky hills.
“No wonder I could smell sand and salty water in this damp air” the pilot thought pausing for a moment on top of the rocks, watching the breathtaking view.
The beach was a white strand of silver and transparent pebbles, appearing like scattered pieces of round glass and marble. Above the purple water the sky was changing to silver light green. Inside the water, luminescent creatures were flowing with the swinging soft waves, glowing like billions of little stars in perpetual motion.
The ocean was a fluid reflection of the vast universe, an abundance of colors and lights, as if the galaxies were poured upside down.
Swimming in that water felt magical. The purple flow would sometimes turn light blue and transparent, so clear that he could see the rocks and sand dunes on the bottom of almost twenty meters depth. The little sparkling stars were slipping through his fingers as he slowly paddled the waves and the colors spread on his skin like an oily painting with fluorescent hues. The peace and serenity of the place washed away any worries or exhaustion as he emerged from the water calm and rested like a new-born baby. Even if the ocean was unknown and it could have been dangerous to swim so far away from the shore, he felt as if there was safety in the waves, there was certainty in the swirling dots of light, glowing in the purple vortex of endless motion.
Walking along the beach he encountered something unusual: a group of huge broken pillars, some standing halfway in the water, vertical to the sky, some rolled down on the beach. The marble pillars seemed too well rounded; the cylinders were arranged in hexagon formation, too symmetrical in shape and size to be a random result of natural storms carving some rocks. The pillars seemed to look like the remains of something intelligent creatures would do. Rony touched the surface of one of the pillars. Time had covered it in yellow salt, but the smooth polished trace of intentional modification was still obvious.
Rony returned to the camp with many questions in his mind.
If there had been an intelligent presence before their arrival, what happened to them? Why had they abandoned the planet?
“Did you find the ocean?”
It was Nicole, the nurse.
“Yes, I found it” he answered. “It's not far, just over that hill.”
“Is it good for swimming?”
“It's great.”
She stopped in front of him, noticing something: his frown.
“What's wrong?”
“I don't know... I found something disturbing. I don't know how to interpret it.”
“Show me.”
They went together to see the pillars on the beach. At the sight of the multitude of colors and sparkling purple water, the nurse was immediately enthusiastic.
“Wow! I've never seen anything like this!”
She ran towards the waves, plunging her hand in the foam and touching the swirling little stars like a child discovering the universe.
The others had heard them talk and were coming over the top of the hill.
“Amazing!”
Everyone was fascinated by the view. They came closer.
Rony pointed to the broken pillars in hexagon formation.
“Look at that! What do you think it represents?”
The group approached the marble columns with caution.
“It could be a temple.”
“That means it's ancient.”
“It might have been a landmark building or some monument.”
The pilot listened to their opinions and then decided to speak: “Whatever it is, the main question remains: where are the authors and what happened to them? Why aren't they here anymore?”
Everyone was silent for a few moments.
“How do you know they're not here anymore?” Sheena asked thoughtfully.
“They wouldn't have sent us to colonize an already inhabited planet”, Evgheni argued.
“I think it's best to ask the control tower about this”, the computer expert spoke objectively.
“Good idea, Yuri. They'll know the answer.”
Rony clicked on the chip behind his ear. It beeped and lit up, feeling hot for a second. The burn used to make him anxious, but he had gotten accustomed to the anticipation and the certainty of the reply. The tower never failed to reply. Never, not even once.
“Yes control tower here. What's the matter?”
He recognized Vera's voice, but it was difficult to sense any emotional infections in her tone. He felt uncertain of himself after finding out she was a real person. He felt he could make mistakes and change her impression or upset her – had she been just a robot he wouldn't have cared, but her being a person made him more self conscious and it significantly increased his wish to do well and have a better dialogue. For some unexplained reason he was suddenly more attentive and talking to her didn't seem as easy as before. He tried to maintain his composure: “I'm calling from the base 12 camp Greenhouse. This is pilot Rony.”
“Yes Rony, I know who you are. Stop presenting yourself, you called me and I know your frequency. What's your question?”
“I found something on Asterius surface. It looks like the remains of a building or a monument on the beach.”
“Can you send me an image?”
“How?”
“Activate the camera in the chip. Blink twice while you keep your hand on it and it will send me the neural signal from your brain, with the image of what you've seen.”
He did as instructed and then heard her voice again.
“Okay, I received the image. I'll make a short inquiry and get back to you with a precise answer.”
He waited. The others were watching him.
“What did she say?”
“She said she'll look into it.”
“That means they don't know either.”
“Let's wait. Maybe they do know.”
Rony heard her announcement in his ear.
“Control tower coming in.”
“Shh, shut up” he whispered to the others.
Vera spoke nonchalantly, with an abundance of details: “Here's what I found about the remains of the building. It used to be a landing site for some civilization hundreds of thousands of years ago. The form of life is unknown. The only remains are the pillars – the blue prints of the landing sites. Everything else vanished, including the living beings. It is possible they are still on Asterius planet, in another form and they changed shape and dimension when they passed through the cluster of light. As you know, the galaxy we're in is about to cross paths with the Alpha State cluster again. It does that because the two spin around each other and every hundred thousand years they actually cross paths.
When that happens, matter becomes unpredictable and it changes, under the vibration of the two fields altering everything when they merge. We don't know the complete effects yet. We're preparing for the ascension level when energy overcomes matter. That's probably what happened to the former inhabitants of Asterius: they ascended to Alpha State.”
“That means they simply vanished.”
“Exactly, if you see it like that. But you also know nothing ever really vanishes in the universe, it only changes the way atoms and energy are arranged. It simply transforms or it goes somewhere else.”
“That leaves the question what will happen to us.”
Vera was silent for a few seconds. Then she said calmly: “We'll evolve.”
Rony wasn't surprised by it. He just said: “You have an answer for everything.”
She didn't comment. It was a personal observation and she didn't elaborate when the dialogue took a personal turn. He turned the chip of. There wasn't anything else to say.
He stared at the glowing stars in the water and wondered if the sparkling creatures were the former inhabitants of Asterius. For a moment, he felt as if their swirling moves were whispering something, trying to make sense of the waves. The impression went away in a few seconds. The blue moon was almost touching the horizon line. Rony seemed to wake up from the reverie.
“Let's go” he said to the others. “I'll tell you at the camp what I heard from the tower.”
After telling the crew the news about the perspective of crossing paths with the Alpha cluster and not knowing what could become of them, or what the ascension meant, or what happened to the inhabitants before them, everyone was troubled.
“We're doomed”, Evgheni said. “The minute I see the plants successfully appear in the greenhouses I'll ask for a transfer out of here. I'm not gonna wait around to dissipate into the cluster of light. One month and I'm back on the satellite!”
“Damn, and I thought this was supposed to be a new life, in a better place...”
Nicole mumbled to herself. “Now we'll just turn to dust.”
“You don't know that”, Rony intervened.
“Come on, Rony! You brought us here to disintegrate!” Evgheni argued.
“I don't think the tower control told us the truth. They probably know what happened to those before us”, Yuri said. “But it's a version they can't disclose because it's too frightening for us and we wouldn't agree to remain here.”
“And damn right we don't! I'm the first to leave!”
The bio-engineer was losing his calm, pacing around in the tent like a lion in a cage.
“You can't leave the camp, we hardly got here”, Sheena tried to reason with him.
“I don't care! I'm leaving as soon as they send a shuttle for me. They must send it! Rony, you have to take me back to the satellite.”
The pilot watched them and wondered about the tower's intentions.
Sheena touched his hand gently.
“Rony... do you think we're an experiment to them?”
His eyes were looking at the dark sky outside the tent, where the blue radiant moon had emerged on the other side of the horizon, glowing brighter than in daylight.
“What I know for sure is that they are going to be in the same situation as us.
It makes no sense to expose themselves to something that would mean the end. If they know something, it's not exactly the worst we can imagine. It's probably something they can't explain to us right now.”
“Do you trust the control tower?”
The psychologist seemed to trust him and was waiting for his answer, to decide how to face the unknown future. He knew that most of the crew would stand by his decision, relying on it. It was a big responsibility: he had brought them there and he had to give them motivation to keep staying and achieving what they had come to achieve.
He looked at them. He remembered the relentless determination in Vera's voice and her amazing intelligence.
“I trust the tower”, he answered calmly. “I'm staying to see what happens.”
“Then I'll stay with you”, the psychologist said without any regret.
“What the heck... I might as well finish what we started”, Nicole joined the party. “It could be fun.”
“I guess I'm staying too”, Yuri spoke, shrugging innocently. “It might be interesting from a scientific point of view, to find out what's going on with that ascension phenomenon. I guess it's once in a lifetime opportunity.”
Evgheni was annoyed by their resolve.
“Damn, you're a bunch of crazy lab rats! You'll be fried like monkeys on a wire.
Once in a lifetime you say? Sure! I'm not staying!”
He left the tent.
Rony stood up, but Sheena grabbed his sleeve.
“Let him go. He's just angry, but he won't leave. There's no shuttle taking of from Asterius right now.”
Yuri looked at them a bit confused.
“Guys... what are we going to tell the kids?”
Sheena shook her head.
“Oh, the kids... I forgot... They're coming tomorrow!”
“So? You're the psychologist. What do we tell them?”
She sighed.
“Of course, the truth. We'll tell them the truth. But not as soon as they arrive, we'll give them time to adjust to the camp first.”
“That's another way of lying to them.”
“It's not lying. It's delaying the moment of truth until they are ready for it.”
“Great! We'll wait until we're swallowed by Alpha cluster and then when they see their arms flying of, we tell them hey kids, guess what, now we play the game of disintegration.”
“That sounds terrible, Nicole. You don't know if that's what's waiting for us.”
“But nobody seems to know for sure.”
“So life is unpredictable. We chose to come here. We must be brave enough to face it.”
“It's easy for you to say, Yuri. You're a scientist.”
“And you aren't?”
“I'm trained to save lives and cure illness, not sit around waiting for the sky to fall...”
“Calm down, Nicole.”
Rony left them talking and went outside. He needed time to himself, to think – away from the crew's anxiety or arguments. He needed to think and look at the sky.
He stepped in the dark, glancing at the glowing moon. The white dust from Asterius surface was a pale shade of gray in the night. Rony kept staring pensively at the vast space above. There were no clouds and the stars, the nebulae and countless distant galaxies were visible in their cold greatness, expanding to the infinite space in dots of colorful mist. A day on Asterius had only 20 hours. The neon sun would rise and set in a pink stripe horizon, while the blue moon was always there, day and night.
Rony looked at the blue globe. “Were you lying to me, Vera?” he asked her in his mind. “Can you hear my thoughts? Do we really evolve?” For a moment, he felt as if the moon would glow brighter. He almost could sense her presence in his mind, he could have sworn she was able to hear him thinking. But then again, he knew it could be only his imagination projected on a mysterious distant sky. He asked anyway. “What's around the corner, Vera? Do you know?”