CHAPTER ONE
Finally, he saw it. The dark glistening shell that hovered in the middle of the dimly lit room. A cold shiver ran across Nick Raimes’ neck. Over 60 years without any sign of new technology, and now this. A complete ban on anything that did not directly assist in the rehabilitation of the ecosystem, they were the words, the directive they all swore to uphold. Raimes looked through the 6inch thick glass, his eyes narrowing.
The overhead downlights had been dimmed. Ambient light from the computer panels gave an eerie sterile glow to the viewing room. Raimes glanced at them. Each panel showed a different readout, all ciphering through diagnostics. He didn't understand what they all meant, that wasn't his job, he was there to contain, control and assess.
“We have told the team they are analysing a relic piece of technology.” A voice faded in as Raimes drew his attention back.
“It was found in the east sector but we have told them it was in the badlands,” the voice continued.
Raimes turned, beside him was a man in his mid 30’s, clad in a faded white coat. His name was Walters and he had worked with Raimes for some time now. Raimes had met him the first day he took over the recovery and assessment team for the Capital. Since then they had a somewhat direct and, ‘no bullshit’ relationship. Walters was one of the few that understood Raimes’ directness and they functioned well together.
“Just tell me what it is,” Raimes said flatly.
Walters pushed a pair of thick-rimmed glasses back up the bridge of his nose and flicked through his notes, “We don't know exactly what it is, it appeared three nights ago. We only detected it because of surveys we were running. We are just lucky the team that saw it first knew to call us immediately.”
“Where are they now?”
“Contained, all they know is it's a relic and they all know the protocol for these scenarios,” Walters answered.
“It’s been emitting the same signal since it landed. We have the cryptologists and the comms guys working on it. We’ve managed to decipher a handful of symbols from the transmission but they don't make sense,” Walter said.
“Do you think it’s trying to communicate?” Raimes asked.
“To be honest Sir, this isn't anything we have seen before. Even the cryptologists can only understand a handful of these, well, symbols. And, they may be wrong.” Walters held up some of the print outs. “All we know is that the signal is gravity-based.”
“Gravity based?” Raimes questioned.
“It uses gravity like we use radio waves. That’s why we put it in the chamber, to try and dampen the waves.”
Raimes gave a curious look. Walters knew containment was a priority. They had run drills for scenarios involving relics from before the revolt. Contain, assess, eliminate or adapt.
“Is there something inside?” Raimes took one of the print outs and looked at it. It was nothing he had seen before.
“We think so.”
Raimes looked at him impatiently. Seeing this, Walter continued, “We can’t scan inside it, we can barely see it. The scans show some materials on the surface that we can recognise, but they are mixed with others we can’t. It makes it very hard to use our equipment.”
Foam spikes protruded from all the walls and ceiling like a cave full of black stalactites and stalagmites. He thought it looked similar to the mouth of some creature wreathed in sharp fangs. There was a circular area in the middle of the room that was the only flat surface. There the object hovered approximately two inches from the floor.
The object itself was barely visible, Raimes could only see a small ripple distortion, like imperfection in a glass window.
“It’s sort of oval-shaped.” Walters gestured to the screen on his left. On it was an infrared scan. It was glowing in the rough shape of an egg. “We believe it’s shaped like that for space travel, possibly it's somehow related to its propulsion.”
“What does it use for propulsion?” Raimes asked.
“It seems to be powered by gravity. It uses it for communication, propulsion. It somehow uses what’s around it and also generates it. That's why we can’t see it per se.” Walters answered.
Raimes looked back at the object.
“The distortion,” Walters pointed, “It comes from the field, essentially it bends the light around it.”
“Bends the light?” Raimes asked.
“It’s called gravitational lensing, basically it means as light moves past it, it’s pushed and curves around. So what we are seeing is the light from behind it, and a small amount of distortion,” Walters said.
Raimes looked at him, “You’ve lost me.”
“Try to think of it this way,” Walters grabbed a pen and a piece of paper, he drew two lines, “you have a stream of water, the water is moving downstream, that is the light we see.” He drew some more wavy lines in between the first two.
“Ok,” Raimes said.
“You’re standing here, downstream,” he drew a small stick figure at the bottom of the page. “Now, if you place a rock in the stream,” he drew an oval in the stream, “This rock will ‘redirect’ the water around it because it has mass.” He looked at Raimes.
“Ok,” Raimes said, with a blank expression.
“The water is the light we see, the rock is the object, the water acts the same way light does with the object we found. Somehow that object is generating enough gravitational mass to bend the light around it.”
“So, how is it doing that?” Raimes asked.
Walters shrugged, “We don’t know.”
“What do we know?” Raimes said, frustrated.
“We know it's here for a reason” A woman's voice came from behind them. Raimes turned. A tall brunette was standing in the doorway, a lab coat loosely hanging over a blue jumper.
“And you are?” Raimes turned fully to face her.
“Dr Abigail Ellis,” She walked forward, a hand reached out. “I'm a Soil Specialist from the outer farming districts. I was brought in with the others.”
Raimes looked at her hand and then reciprocated, greeting her with a stern handshake.
“Why do we need a Soil Specialist?” Raimes said, puzzled.
“We gathered anyone we could find that could help us,” Walter answered, “We don't have meteorologists anymore, the guys we have looking into the languages are translators. We just don’t have these professions anymore.”
Raimes examined Ellis for a moment, “Have you been briefed?”
“I've read what you gave us when we arrived,” Ellis answered.
“And?”
“You’re trying to play this as an artifact you found in the badlands, something from before the revolt… It’s not.”
“Excuse me,” Raimes frowned.
Walters walked forward with his hands turned outwards, “You’ll have to return to the other miss.”
“Doctor,” Ellis retorted. “And, that object is not from this planet,” Ellis continued, looking at Raimes.
“You have to leave,” Walters continued.
“What else do you know?” Raimes asked, bluntly ignoring Walters.
Ellis looked at Walters and then stepped around him, “You employ me to study soil, earth, water, air, pollutants. Part of that is monitoring radiation levels, both natural and man-made. That,” Ellis pointed at the screen to the right, “has been exposed to galactic cosmic rays,” She continued. “It’s right here in the briefing document.”
She held up the clipboard opened at a page she had circled and written notes across. “It’s what we used to see all the time during the NASA missions.”
“You released that?” Raimes looked at Walter.
“We didn't think,”
“No, you didn't,” Raimes looked at him sharply.
“We haven't had a space program for over 100 years,” Walter answered.
“No, but you still have records and reports,” Ellis said.
“How did you?”
“It doesn't matter,” Raimes cut Walter off. “Please, continue.” He gestured to Ellis.
“When we used to travel in space. Our vessels and astronauts would be exposed to space radiation. There are three types of radiation that make this up. Particles trapped in our magnetic field, particles shot into space during solar flares, and galactic cosmic rays.”
“That’s what you are saying this has been exposed to?” Raimes asked, trying to keep up.
“Yes, and they are from deep space.”
“Did we know this?” Raimes asked Walters.
Walters gave a shrug, “We only just figured out the gravity thing.”
Raimes gave a stern look. Walters was right, they never dealt with situations like this before. Most of the skill sets needed hadn't even been considered for over 60 years.
Raimes looked back at Ellis, nodding for her to continue.
“They are high energy protons and heavy ions from outside our solar system, so yes. Deep space,” Ellis pointed at the object. “That thing, whatever it is, has been in space long enough to have a pretty strong reading.”
There was a moment of silent reflection between Walter and Raimes. Raimes turned and looked back through the window at the translucent shimmering.
He grunted and then returned his attention to Ellis. “So, Doctor. Why are you here?”
“I was invited,” Ellis said.
“No, why are you here, in this room, when all the others who were invited are still in the briefing room reading the reports.”
Ellis grimaced, “Curiosity.”
Raimes grunted again, “Well you better make yourself useful.” He gestured with his hand towards the chamber, “Why do you think it has a reason to be here?”
“Why else would you construct something like this?” She answered.
“What do you mean?” Raimes responded.
“It took humans thousands of man-hours, billions of dollars, and God knows how much energy, materials, brainpower to get us to the moon. That's a fraction of what it would take to create an interstellar vehicle,” Ellis said.
“That doesn't mean it's here on purpose, it could have crashed, or it's damaged,” Walters said.
Ellis looked at Walters, “Your report says there were no signs of impact.”
“That’s correct,” Walters said.
“So it didn't crash,” Ellis answered.
“It could still be damaged,” Walter said, “We found some material around it, like an exo-shell. Sort of rocky, metallic material. Maybe a shield”
“Maybe it was for protection? Maybe something hit it and broke it off, damaging the inside shell.” Raimes said.
“I doubt it,” Ellis looked back into the room. “Look at it, it looks perfectly functional to me. If it were damaged I don’t think it would still be emitting that field, and we would see something that indicated it was malfunctioning.”
“So what’s your point Dr.?” Raimes said.
“My point is, form follows function. You don’t use that much resources to send a toaster into space hoping it arrives somewhere with life.” She smirked.
“Obviously it's not a damn toaster, “Walters snapped.
Ellis turned back, “I think it’s right where it wants to be, or at least, where someone wants it to be.”
“So who sent it then?” Raimes asked.
“We know some of what it's made of, and everything else we haven't ever seen before. Even before the revolt.” She walked back to the glass, “So, that plus the radiation tells us it's outside of our galaxy and it has picked up elements along the way,” she turned and gave a small smile, “And of course there’s the gravity signal.”
“I think we need to work on your definition of classified,” Raimes said to Walters.
Walters gave a shy look and another shrug, “We didn’t think.” He stopped not wanting another reprimand.
“The waves it’s emitting, have you found any communication from it?” Ellis asked Walters.
“Yes, we have. We believe it uses gravity for propulsion, and for communication.” He answered, “We don’t know how yet.”
“Clearly beyond our technological limits,” Ellis said. She put her hand on the glass.
Raimes looked at Walters.
“Fascinating,” Ellis said, “you can feel it.”
“The room helps dampen the signal, but it’s still strong enough to penetrate the glass. It’s slowing down,” Walters said. “When we found it the waves were fast and stronger, but over the last few hours, it has slowed. That's how we were able to scan it for the signal.”
“Fascinating,” Ellis repeated. “Can you read it yet?”
“No, we have people working on it now, but so far we can’t make any sense of it.”
“Hmm.” Ellis took her hand off the glass.
“Tell me about where you found it,” she said, scanning the monitors.
Walters looked at Raimes for approval. Raimes nodded.
“We found it in the Eastern sector. An excavation team came across it. We had no indication of it entering the atmosphere, no evidence of impact, as the report said. It was just hovering there, out in the field.”
“And it looked like this, with the distortion?” Ellis asked.
“Yes, we believe it’s gravitational.”
“Gravitational lensing,” Ellis cut him off. “Fascinating.”
“Yes,” Walters said, disgusted. “We don't know how it's emitting the gravity it uses but it is. And we think it seems to be the key to how it travels, communicates, and well, the way it looks.”
“Could be an element we don’t know about, energy source, anything,” Ellis said.
“Could be,” said Walters.
“What would you have us do with it then?” Raimes said, watching Ellis.
“I’d like to try and U-pd date it, see if we can figure out how old it is.”
“What’s that?” Raimes asked.
“Uranium Lead Dating, it is used on space materials to find out how old they are.”
“We can’t get close enough to get a sample. The field also repels anything that comes more than a few inches from it,” Walters said.
“I can use the material that came off it when you found it, do you have it?” Ellis said.
“Yeah, we have some,” Walters said.
“But what about what’s inside? How do we figure that out?” Raimes said.
“Maybe we just have to ask it?” The corner of Ellis’ mouth turned up slightly with a smirk.
“Walters, give Dr. Ellis what she needs.” Raimes turned and walked out of the room.