Captain’s Log: AU 32

Location: Ship in a stable orbit around the 3rd planet from the Star, AS 1575X, in Andromeda Galaxy

Purpose: On scout missing to look for the planet suitable for settlement

It has been 32 years since humanity had escaped the planet Earth for good. Centuries of civilisation depending on the natural resources meant that by 23rd century, surface of the Earth resembled the cities after World War 3. Mighty Jungles and raging rivers had disappeared from the face of the earth, only to remain as display sets in the art museums. Winds blowing at near Cat 5 hurricanes swept everything on the surface with relentless energy.

In desperation, mankind came together to build the spaceships the size of the cities and went out to space one by one. I was just barely a teen when my parents pulled me onto one of those ships. Leaving Earth, I could see the surface as no different from the sister planet, Mars. Barren brown color of sand from Sahara has taken over most of the surface with the Oceans only small lakes. Once a blue planet, third rock from the Sun, had became a dust ball.

Over the years, some of those ships went to settle at planets near the Solar System with a few of them on the moons of the outer giants. However, the ship I was on was destined for the one specific location in Andromeda galaxy. The planet found to be most similar to the Earth itself. It was orbiting its Star almost exactly the same Orbit as the Earth orbiting the Sun. It also radiated with chemical components necessary for life and signs of liquid water on the surface.

The journey itself had been a hard one. Many of us died on the way but we persisted and now we are less than 1 year from the planet we had travelled nearly 30 years for. I, myself, had rose from the deckhand to the rank of Captain in those years.

“All look goods Captain. Shall we land?,” asked Dio, my chief scientist on the scout ship.

“Any sign of intelligent life?,” I asked again.

“No Captain, if any intelligence down there, they would be only the animals we used to put in the zoos long ago,” replied Dio.

“Ok. Then lets land near the green patch at the center of the island there,” I put my finger on the glass pointing exactly where I wanted the ship to land.

Neva, my navigator, steered the ship to align with the spot where my finger was pointing and the ship descended into the atmosphere. We had the initial view of the atmosphere during the descent and found it to be identical to the Earth’s atmosphere’s composition during the early 20th century. Most important of all, scanners detected the air to be just the right amount of human to breathe.

As the ship near the landing spot, we could observe the ground with our own eyes instead of relying on the data from the scanners. We could determine many of the details such as non-intelligent animals, and plants similar to what we have studied in the underground labs on Earth. The ship landed without mishaps on the ground as we prepared to step onto the planet for the first time.

Although we had made countless measures of the air surrounding the ship to feel safe enough, protocol demanded that we took every precaution we could afford. Those include portable oxygen tank and mask, protective body suit, ammunition for protection. Took us a while before everyone had their gears checked and re-checked again. As the captain, I stood as the first man in the line to be out of the door with my crew behind me. So, I ordered the doors to open and went out of the door with excitement as the first man to step on the celestial object.

“All checks OK, Captain,” reported my chief scientist once we’re out in the plain. “Can we unmask?”

“OK, but I will go first. You know what to do,” I replied and prepared to remove my mask. As my mask came off, I held my breath for a few seconds before taking in the full lung of the air from the new planet. It was the freshest, most wonderful feeling I have ever experienced. I could imagine if Earth was like that during my great grandfathers’ times and wondered why would the humanity destroy everything till we had to escape from Earth. As I looked up, the sky was blue, with white clouds coming in from the corner of my eyes.

It was the sight that I had only seen from the movies. Men and women strolling by the parks and having a picnic besides the lakes.

“Go ahead. Remove your masks. I am fine, ” I said. In no time, we were all looking around the sky as children who had recently arrived at a new place.

“Captain. Look here. This look manufactured” said my navigator while pointing out a spot behind bushes.

The rest of the crew rushed towards the spot where he was pointing and stared at an odd metallic object on the ground. One of them bent down to pick up an object, only to stop by me before touching it.

“Stop! We do not know if the item is safe for us to touch it,” I continued. “Neva, go get the scanner and identifier from the ship. I want to you to do an analysis before anyone touches it. Understand?”

“Yes, sir!,” replied my crew in unison to the order.

Neva turned back and ran towards the ship to gather the equipment, and the rest stood still around the object. Our mission was to explore whether the planet can support humankind, and had less than 50 hours till the main ship arrived, so I had to gave the second order.

“We will not stand here and wait for Neva to be back, are we?,” I looked at the crew and asked with a smile.

They looked at each other in guilty looks and scattered around to look for more clues. Soon, one by one, all the crews had found bits and pieces of objects made by intelligent life forms. Neva came back with scientific equipment, and we examined the first piece behind the bush. We confirmed our suspicions after a few reports generated by the scanner. The object was non-natural, detected  higher radiation than the natural background, but would impose no health risk to us.

It was the same for the rest of the objects found and soon we reached a conclusion. An ancient civilization made those tens of thousands of years ago, based on the carbon dating. They must have left the planet like we did to Earth to start a new life. Would Earth also would renew itself once we had abandoned it?

“Sir, look here. This seemed to be part of a signalling unit. If we can decode it, we can understand what happened here,” said Neva while examining an item.

“How would you do it,?  Asked Dr Joseph, our chief medical officer. “An alien civilization made these objects thousands of years ago,”.

“Here, as on Earth, and everywhere in the universe, the most abundant element is Hydrogen, Dr. This would use the Hydrogen as the base for the communication if they were any intelligent,” Neva continued his explanation. “And we are only a galaxy away from Earth, which is like across the table if the whole Universe is the size of the Solar system. We have left nowhere at all,”.

“Give me a few minutes,” concluded Neva while looking for equipment in the bag.

Soon, we found out he was right. The technology wasn’t that different from our understanding of transmission and more important for us; it was receiving a signal from the planet. So where is the transmitter?

If there was a signal,  there must be a working transmitter somewhere on the planet. And it would have to be close to our location, based on the signal strength that we could detect. I gave an order to search for any clues around the landing area, leaving Neva with the examination of the rest of the artifacts. I looked down at my watch to remind myself of the time we have before the report back to the main ship.

“Captain, I found something,” shouted Dio. He was standing behind what looked like a tall tree in the middle of the bushes. We hurried towards the spot and followed our eyes to the spot he was pointing at. It was a metallic bar coming out of the ground like a door handle. Perhaps it was the door to the underground where the aliens stayed hidden from the surface?

“Shall we pull it?,” asked Dio.

“Why not? If there is still any intelligent life on this planet, they would already have detected us now,” I replied with the resigned voice.

It took a few of us to pull and stared at another door beneath it. But the door below has a lock, a glass screen, similar to what we would know as hand-print authentication. It would be impossible to find a perfect hand-print of an alien and the conclusion reached was that we need to blast our way in. The only issue was that we didn’t know what kind of defense mechanism that had been installed and we wouldn’t want to be blamed for any destruction that resulted from our actions.

It might have been instinct or plain silliness, but saying nothing, Dio placed his hands on the glass. And a few seconds later, lights flashed from the sides of the door and it slid away into the earth, leaving us staring into a black hole.

We glanced at each other face, wondering what exactly happened. And all of us, with open mouths, stared at Dio, who was looking at his hand. He must have known of the implications of what he has done, didn’t he?

“What the heck happened here? Why? How?,” I asked.

“I don’t know. I guess I wanted to see what would happen if I place my hand on it. I didn’t know…,” said Dio in his weakest voice I heard from him. It sounded as if he didn’t know whether to celebrate or apologize for his actions.

“Dio, you are not an alien, are you?” Neva asked softly, “No. But how did you know?.”

“Guys, lets sort this out first. Then we shall ask questions. Agreed?,” I interrupted before it became a series of questions and answers while keeping track the time remaining before the main shop arrived at the orbit.

We shone lights into the hole and found it went down deep into the core. The whole thing reminded me of an ancient myth that I had read while I was still a child on Earth. It was a myth about a girl who was having a garden party, saw a white rabbit and followed it down a hole. It must have been a myth, for everyone lived underground long before I was born. The surface of the Earth was too dangerous for anyone to survive for more than a few minutes with no heavy suites of shelters and tanks.

One by one, we descended the “rabbit hole” and so on, found ourselves in a small room with another door blocking our path. Dio instinctively put his hand on the glass panel on the side and once again, the door slid into the earth to reveal a giant underground chamber. In front of us, there were buildings of varying sizes under the dome on the top of the chamber.

We strolled along the buildings, Nevo scanning the materials as he passed by, and soon we reached the center of the city. And that was where we stopped because it was the sight that we had seen many times before on the History Channel and in museums. In the center of the city, there was a pyramid.

Neva spoke first. “There is a pyramid,” while pointing both his hands towards the building in front of us. The size and the shape of the pyramid became clearer as we pointed our lights onto the building. It was enormous, but then so were the rest of the buildings. The immediate conclusion was that the residents of that place themselves were large. But there were no statues or pictures that we could see.

“Yes, we could see that Neva. But what is it doing here?,” I replied after gathering my thoughts. We had enough of surprises to last for our lifetime, perhaps several lifetimes, since we had landed. Finding a pyramid in the middle of an underground alien city didn’t have a profound effect on my nerves as expected. Then another surprise came to us from Dio who was inspecting a building at the roadside with the scanner. He was looking closely at what appeared to be an entrance door from far.

“Captain, look here. The hand print on this building,” He shouted us to direct our attention to the spot where he was using the scanner on the building at the side of the road, “Aren’t they having 4 fingers with opposable thumbs?” The image was not clear but with a closer look, the imprint gave the impression of a human hand, albeit larger. We had discovered alien species that could be considered as intelligent, but none had the body shaped like a man. We had long assumed that the opposable thumb was uniquely human, but the image on the building proved otherwise.

“Neva, can you pinpoint the original of the signal?,” I turned around to asked Neva.

“There,” was the one-word reply from Neva.

“Where is there?,” I replied.

“The pyramid, Captain,” Neva looked up from the receiver, he was holding to face me. He looked as if he had seen a ghost, an alien ghost.

“The pyramid? Which part of it?,” I asked while taking a big gulp. That there was a pyramid in front of us was shocking enough, but it was alive and sending signals? “, But we didn’t notice any signals before we landed, right?” I tried to recollect the time before we took the shuttle down to the planet. If there was such an unusual signal detected, we would have flagged it out by one of hundreds of sensors on the scout ship.

“No, Captain. I checked the scanned logs on the ship to be sure. There were no signals coming anywhere from the planet. The only probable explanation is that the signal sent out was too weak. It must be thousands of years since it started sending signals.” Neva tried to make sense of the abnormality in front of him with his rational brain. For someone with a reputation as one of the brightest in the Space Corp, the whole thing must have been a nightmare.

“Then the source of the signal?,” I continued my quest for the answers with the unfinished question.

“Everywhere, captain. The signal is coming from whole pyramid!,” whispered Neva. He stared at the scanner screen, but we could see his lips were trembling from excitement as he spoke those words. We gathered closer to Neva and looked at the screen he was staring at to him, a scanned image of an entire pyramid, glowing like an X-rayed image of a burning charcoal. At its peak, the signal would have filled the entire underground cavern like a second sun. I wondered if the long-gone residents of this planet could sense the signal as we humanly could see the specific bands of light with our eyes.

“If the pyramid is the source of the signal, then the roof must be,” I wondered aloud.

“Yes. It must be the amplifier,” continued Neva. “This whole setup is a one big communication room, so as to speak,” He stood up and waved his hands around the dome above. “And it is pointing at one specific location in the universe that we could relate to. That is..”

All of us gasped at the implication of that sentence without even having to listen till the end.

“.. Earth,” Neva completed his sentence by himself, though all of us knew by then what he would say. The implication of the findings was beyond any of us. We were not merely at an alien planet to escape our dying planet, but we have returned home. Earth was the alien planet which we colonized and assimilated with native species thousands of years ago. That would also explain great many things such as why we could open the locks with our hands and why there was a pyramid in the middle of the alien city underground.

As we looked around with the new knowledge, the buildings, architecture reminded us of the greatest cities on Earth during the early 21st Century such as New York, Shanghai, London. We found and landed on the planet most suitable for mankind other than Earth, not by chance, but because we originated from it. The thought of it shook us to the core, and we stood silent, unable to move from our spots. Then an alarm sounded, and it was from my belt. I had set the alarm to ring 10 hours before the main ship had arrived in orbit and it had activated.

“OK People. Remember, our goal is to find out are there any dangers to colonizing this planet. Let’s focus. I want everyone to move and spread around for any clues. There could be defense mechanisms to prevent any intruders.” As we increased our pace and gotten closer to the pyramid, we heard various noises in our head. At first we thought the noises were because of the signals emitting from the pyramid, but as we got closer, we realized that they were human thoughts, our own thoughts in our heads but heard by all.

“So, now we can read each other’s thoughts?,” asked Dio incredulously.

“Yes, it would seem so. And I might explain why,” replied Neva. “We are now at the edges of the glow that coming from the pyramid. That might explain a lot of stories and myths about these pyramids in ancient Egypt.”

“That god built them and somehow the gods can do miracles? That’s nonsense. No such beings as gods,” retorted Dio for whom religion was of his gun.

“I don’t think we have time for this discussion. I want everyone to keep moving and scanning,” I interrupted the argument before it could distract us from our primary mission. Our goal must be the survival of those on the main ship. We rationed the resources just for the trip and I knew I couldn’t hold them for too long in the orbit. As the Captain of the ship, I would have to decide in less than 10 hours. Investigations into myths and legends could come later.

But the strange happenings to our bodies increased as we walked closer to the pyramid. Not only the voices in our head, our visions also blurred into double or even triple vision. We had to pause every few steps to re-adjust our sights, each of us seemed to be suddenly suffering from cross-eyes where we turned our head to right but seeing objects from the left and vice versa. We finally retraced our steps as the experience was getting worse. It was back to normal by the time we have dragged ourselves to the midway between the main entrance and the pyramid.

“What happened?,” asked Dio, who still sounded like a drunken man.

“Here is my opinion, if Captain is OK with that,” said Neva while shaking his head left and right. He was excited by the whole episode from the beginning and I wouldn’t be surprised if he was the one to crack the mystery. I supposed I could give a few minutes or so while we tried to regain our balance.

“Go ahead, Neva. You got 10 min,” I said after taking in a long breath.

Neva cleared his throat. A usual practice of him to do so before giving a long speech. We gathered he could link the events with the idea that he was having in his mind and would offer it to us. Then the ground shook suddenly with such violence that we were flung about like sweets in a jar. Lights appeared on some buildings. It was as if the planet had woken up from coma.

Was it because of our venture near the pyramid? We didn’t have time to discuss as we were trying to balance ourselves to reach to the exit. Eventually, the planet stopped shaking, and we successfully climbed up the ladder to the surface. Once we were there, we sealed off the entrance as if hell was below it and gave a quick smile at each other for being alive. Then we waited for Neva for his unfinished explanation.

“Well, Neva? What was it you were about to say?,” said Dio, though, trying to catch his breath. Looking at the heavy breaths taken by the rest, I wondered if I should have a word with the ship’s chief doctor when I got back.

“OK, here is my 2 cents. The pyramid we saw below is it,” said Neva.

That was his explanation? The pyramid is “it”? What exactly is “it”?

“You remembered when we approached the pyramid, we started hearing and seeing things that physically impossible? Well, we were getting merged, if that is the right word to use.”

“Merged? You mean like all of us were becoming one specific entity?,” I asked, still unable to make head nor tail of what he was saying.

“Yes. Merged. Becoming one. All of us were hearing each other’s thoughts, seeing what the rest was looking at. We were losing our self,” continued Deva. “And that is the purpose of the pyramid. It is a conversion of many to one. It is a transportation, communication device, all in one.”

“What are you saying? The pyramid is the transportation device, and it is merging us?” Dio wondered aloud.

“Yes. Think about it. We have been looking for little green men and their spaceship for as long as we have existed. But where are they? If the civilization is advanced enough, why need to travel with a physical spaceship? Even for us, once there was an internet, we started communicating everyone by sitting in front of a monitor, No?”

“So you are saying, these aliens abandoned their physical bodies, joined their minds into a single network and travel to anywhere in the universe using the pyramid?” asked Dio.

“Yes, yes. That’s it. What we experienced was really an out-of-body, that’s what people used to call it a long time ago. We became one. I could feel what all of you were looking, seeing, smelling and so on,” Neva paused for a breath as he continued his explanation.

“But the signal was pointing at our planet, Earth,” I interjected.

“Yes. Our Earth. Remember the pictures of pyramids from ancient civilizations in the museum? Those were the corresponding pyramid to this one here. Use those, aliens, or us human, can travel across light years in a matter of seconds. And came out as a physical being the other side. Gods of the ancient legends,”

I glanced at my watch while the explanation was still ongoing. We were less than 5 hours away from the main ship. They must be close enough that could see the planet with naked eyes. I would have to send the long-awaited report soon. And we were no closer as to finding out more about the planet. Time was running out.

“And our arrival to the planet had activated it,” finishing Neva with his speech.

“What? Activated? When?” asked Dio.

“Yes, activated when we approached the pyramid,” Neva repeated the last point.

“So the ground was shaking,” resumed Dio. “The pyramid waking up from a deep sleep?”

“Yes. That is the only conclusion I can think of. But what else will this mean for this planet, I do not know,” replied Neva.

Just as we were gathering our thoughts on the events that happened to us, the ground shook once more and collapsed, revealing the dome beneath it. Then it glowed. Initially, bright red then turned to green and blue as it became brighter. Eventually, the light became focused on a single spot, roughly where the pyramid was and went out into space like a torchlight in the dark cellar.

To our horror, the light went into space just as the main ship was reaching directly above us. It was so sudden that we could not warn the main ship in advance. We could only see the ship enveloped by the light and slowly disappeared from our sight within a few seconds.

“What happened?” I asked with my mouth opened wide while trying to reach the ship’s intercom by repeatedly pressing the Comm button on my watch. However, there was nothing but static noise. It was as if someone or something had sucked the entire ship into the black hole. Neva looked up after staring at the scanner. There was no trace of the ship, carrying over a million people, from our eyes nor from the machines. It melted into the dark space between the stars.

“What happened to the ship?” asked Neva while retaking his scanner for the umpteenth times. He looked up into the spot where the ship was and then looked down on the screen in front of him. He couldn’t believe the screen or his eyes. The ship the size of a small city, carrying over a million people disappeared within a blink of an eye. Even after what they had seen, the technology to perform such a feat was still far beyond what they could imagine. Ability to transform such a large chunk of matter to energy was unthinkable. In theory, yes, but not in practice.

My heart squeezed tight at the thought of the ship. I was the captain, but I couldn’t do anything. Perhaps, I might have caused the events by approaching an unknown object, the pyramid. My goal was to land and reaffirm the safety of the planet for the main ship to land, but somehow got caught in the excitement of the events to forget the original goal. By doing so, I became the Captain without the ship. And the ship no longer had its Captain.

“Neva, can you track the current location of the ship?” I spoke first. They needed my leadership skill more than ever. I required all my trainings and experience for us to get out of the situation we were in. Staring at the sky won’t bring back the ship. We needed to first locate the ship and then bring it back. As soon as I spoke, Neva went to work. It took him a few minutes, infinity by his usual standard, before he looked up to the rest with an answer nobody was expecting.

“I can’t find it anywhere. The ship had disappeared from our universe.”

“How can a ship this size could disappear in an instance? Check for outer galaxies,” said furiously, while walking around  in frustration. First, the landing, then the signal which led to the underground chamber, the pyramid then now my ship had disappeared. The series of events were making less sense than I could take and it was affecting my mood, to put it mildly.

“Can someone give me the answer what happened to the ship?”

“It is simple, really. It is nowhere,” replied Neva. Maybe he was having the inspiration once more.

“Explain,” said I.

Neva went into his usual explanation to us, which we thought was no longer than his usual. I will summarize it for recording as if I were to write everything he said, it wouldn’t finish before the end of the next Century. The main gist of our subsequent conversation as follows,

“Captain, it is the signal coming from the pyramid,” said Neva.

“The signal? You mean the signal that could somehow merge us into 1 individual and pointed at Earth?” I asked.

“Yes. That signal. Basically, it is transmitting the data, but the other side doesn’t respond. We had destroyed the pyramids on Earth a few Millenium ago. The only pyramids remaining are manmade.”

“OK. So where is my ship? Where are the people?”

“It traps them in another dimension, or so, from what we can understand. They exist, but not exist at the same time. We cannot detect them because according to us in this universe, they no longer exist. They were transmitted or transported into another dimension, waiting for the receiver from the other side.”

I sighed. “So the only way to bring them back is to,”

“Resurrect the pyramids on Earth,” completed Neva.

“How? How can we go back to Earth now? There isn’t any other way?” I scratched my head furiously. Losing the ship with a few million people wasn’t bad enough, but now we had to go back to Earth, a galaxy away, to bring them back? Those millions of people put their trust and lives with me and then they disappeared into nowhere. That would make me the worst Captain in history since Edward John Smith, the Captain of the Titanic.

For a long time, we sat under the tree, or so we thought and mulled over the mystery handed to us. It seemed so long ago that we landed on this planet when, in fact; it was less than 10 hours from then. It depressed us, to put it mildly. Then Dio shouted in his unusually excited voice.

“I got it. Can’t we reverse it?”

“Reverse? The signal?” asked Neva.

“No, not the signal. The pyramid. It is a transmitter, right? But can’t it be changed to a receiver?”

“Captain, it is possible and it might reverse the object in transmission as it is no longer transmitting. Is that what you are thinking?” asked Neva. “, but there are risks.”

“Risks? You mean the ship might never come back to this universe?” Dio asked.

In theory, the idea might work. But it was anyone’s guess. It had never been tried before on traditional transmission and definitely not on an alien technology such as the pyramid. We weren’t even sure what it was. We called it transmitting because that was the only way that we could relate to it. Maybe it was something else. It seemed like we were gambling with a million lives at stakes and I didn’t like that for one bit.

But I was the Captain and I must decide and fast. Not just the ship and the million of lives but also our own lives. Our food rations were for only a few days and we won’t be able to think without starving ourselves. The situation was dire no matter which direction I looked at and it depressed me. The rest of the team also must have noticed my mood as we all sat under the tree. I had to do something.

“You mentioned about reversing the signal, bringing the ship back?” I asked Dio. The conversation needed to continue or else we would have gone mad.

“Yes Captain. In theory. But how we can do this to an unknown technology such as this, I do not know,” replied Dio. He sounded as depressed as I was. I could see the sign of desperateness in his eyes.

“Maybe, if we go down to the pyramid again to observe the surroundings, we might have a better chance than just sitting here?” asked Neva. He was right. We need to move our butts or else we too would be out of food and out of minds soon. We owed the people on the ship with their lives. With that realization, we stood up, dusted our clothes, and made our way back into the stairs down to the underground chamber.

Second time, we found the trip down much easier. Maybe we were used to it. But soon, the pyramid was within our view and unlike our first trip; it was glowing so brightly that we had to wear glasses. The light also shed many of the buildings easier to explore as we could observe them much more clearly than the first time with our torch lights. To our surprise, although we should have expected it, there were writings on the walls of many buildings and they were like the Egyptians’ Hieroglyphic but not the exact symbols. Dio was an expert in ancient Earth’s history, but he gave up shortly after trying to read some texts. But if we were to solve the mysteries of the pyramid soon, we would have to decipher those texts soon.

“Hey everyone! Look over here. Don’t the texts here reminds you of anything?” Dio’s excited voice rang along the dome. We hurried towards the place he was standing and look at the texts on the wall. They seemed strangely familiar to us all but somehow couldn’t recall a definite answer to it. Then Neva spoke up.

“I know. They are a mixture of unknown symbols with an ancient Indian language called Sanskrit!” Neva shouted.

We had found our own Rosetta stone.

Both Neva and Dio went to work immediately. Each of them took their turns, scanned the words and paired the respective words in the Alien language of Sanskrit. Thankfully, Sanskrit was heavily utilized in the latter half of the 21st Century for its linguistic roots corresponding to the fields in Artificial Intelligence. In no time, they cracked the code and programmed the scanners for translation. At that moment, we still had not solved the issue, nor had any ideas on the writings on the walls, but we were at least closer to the truth.

“So what do the words mean?” I asked. Seeing them scanning the texts and looking at the scanners made me curious as to what they were reading. I wished we brought more scanners so I could take part in it, but then was also glad we brought more than the bare minimum.

“This is not their planet,” said Neva.

“Yes. This is only a transit,” continued Dio.

“So where are they from?” I asked both of them.

“Another galaxy? Another dimension? Who knows?” shrugged Neva. “The texts are repeating the same information again and again. How to transport to another location from here. And how to treat the natives of this planet,”

“Natives?” I asked.

“Yes, these people are not the native of this planet. They called themselves as travelers. The writings told stories of how they landed on this planet eons ago, infused their genetics with the natives and built the pyramids. Then they left elsewhere. I am assuming their next destination was our home planet, Earth.”

“So what were they, what were their goal?” I asked, still didn’t catch the whole story. “They took over the planet and the natives and then left? What about plundering the resources of the planet?”

“Maybe, I am assuming a lot here. Maybe they were not intelligent. Maybe, they themselves were doing what ‘it’ designed them to do,” interrupted Dio. “Have any of you heard of the term called ‘Space Chicken’?”

“Space Chicken. Oh, yes. I remember it from the Academy. You mean the robot that travels across the universe and uses the resources to multiply itself?” asked Neva. Being one of the top graduates, the other being Dio from the Academy from his cohort meant that Neva was a walking, talking encyclopedia. His “elephant” memory helped a lot. He could recall facts and writings that most students in the current Academy would not even remember after midterm examination.

“What if they  were Space Chickens?” replied Dio with another question. “They came here and all signs point to the fact that they built the pyramids on Earth. So, what else am I missing?”

If this would be another of their unending arguments, I had to stop them there. Having two of the brightest graduates meant I acted more like a teacher than a Captain whenever we were by ourselves, like in that instance. They would often start an innocent discussion and either side would not give up till I had to come in between them as the Captain of the ship.  But in the situation we were in, there wasn’t time for such a discussion.

“Ok guys, let’s focus. What does it matter if they were Space Chickens or space dinosaurs? We need to bring back the ship back to where it was before it disappeared,” I raised my voice but made it louder for my last word. “Now!”

“We know, but this point is important. If they were Space Chickens, then no matter how intelligent they seemed to be, they were still robots. There must be a manual somewhere here.” said Dio while looking at the walls from building to building. I finally understood the point of the aliens being Space Chickens.

“So we are looking for the manual, huh? Let’s spread around and look for it. What does it look like?” I asked Neva while trying to make sense of both the alien and ancient terrestrial language on the wall. I silently cursed myself for not paying attention to the linguistic course in the Academy and relied on the Universal Translator (AKA UT) for my communication needs. And my communication officer on the ship, Hari Krishnan, was not in the party that landed. It too was my call to exclude her, and I was feeling much regret for that decision. She would have been the perfect person for that task as one of the last remaining Sanskrit speakers from the Academy. But we had much more urgent issues to resolve than regretting over the past decisions, although I must admit all of them were mine.

Neva didn’t reply to my question, and neither did Dio. Both of them were too absorbed staring at their scanner screens. I could see texts scrolling at a furious pace on the screen, translating the alien signs using the known words from the Sanskrit. It would take an hour to translate an unknown language with pairing from a known language, but Sanskrit is such an expressive language that I would expect it to take longer than normal.

“Got it!” Neva shouted. Dio immediately painted his face with the disappointing look. I could feel the intense rivalry between my two best officers.

“Ok Neva, go ahead. How do we bring back the ship?” I asked.

“It is… How do I say it?” said Neva.

“Say it out loud. We have no time.” I barked. He should know the situation we were in and still gave me a half-hearted answer. Maybe I should send him back to the Academy when everything is over.

“Well Captain, one of us has to go into the light to get to the ‘switch’ to reverse the transmission. This would, according to the translation here, would bring back the ship. But..”

“But what?”

“I think he would say that person is stuck at the other side. Captain” Dio continued the sentence looking up from his scanner which apparently just completed the translation.

Once all of us took the implication in, silence fell on us like a giant boulder crushing the ants. Stopping the transmission would mean that one of us would have to be a sacrificial lamb, if successful. But whether the mission was successful, he would be stuck on the other side of the signal and could never come back.

“Why don’t we send ALICE?” ask Dio. ALICE was our main scouting robot and built like a small chimp. It was the most advanced robot we had, and I explicitly brought it with us on this mission for such purpose, highly dangerous missions. I would rather report a loss of one of the most expensive machines we had than any of the two men in front of me.

“We can try, but I do not believe ALICE would be suitable for this mission. Once we are on the other side, it would face us with unknown and would need to think on the spot, a unique human trait.” said Neva. “And from our own experience, non-biological communication would be possible.”

“So it all boiled down to which of us would have to be the hero,” murmured Dio.

“I would go. I am the captain. It’s my call.”

“But we need you more than any of us, Captain. And Neva has his family on board. I would go,” objected Dio. Neva didn’t say a word, but looked down at his feet the whole time. We were certain he was torn between his friends and the unborn child on board. The choice was clear. Dio would be the only going into the pyramid to save us all.

“Let’s prepare for the trip, shall we?” Dio broke the silence with a cheerful tone.  It was a one-way trip, and he knew it. But he, like the rest, knew there was no other options but to risk it all. We weren’t sure if the instruction from ages long would still work. Perhaps, the machinery had been upgraded, the owners evolved into more advanced forms and had abandoned their project. We would never know, but we had to risk it all. Would Dio even know what to do at the other end, if he ever got there? Questions without answers echoed in our minds as Dio packed for the journey into the unknown.

All in all, Dio looked calm and serene. Only God, if there ever was one, would know what was going through his mind as he started his walk into the light surrounding the pyramid. Neva and I looked as he slowly melted into the light and disappeared from our sight. Both his personal tracker and our scanners showed no known biological entities nearby, but we knew better. Dio was both in the light as well as in our hearts.

Suddenly, the lights changed color into orange, then to red. Soon, it changed again to several unknown colors never been seen by humanity.

Then the whole show halted just as it started without warning. Colors merged into the green light as it was before. We stood firmly on the ground like statues with our mouths opened wide enough for the ship itself to be emerged from them. I had to force a slap myself to make my body move from the events that just taken place right in front of me. Something had happened since Dio went into the light. Could he had brought back the ship like we intended? The static noise from the scanner suddenly echoed through the silence.

“Look, Captain. There is something in space directly above us,” shouted Neva.

Without saying another word, we both ran towards the exit door and climbed the ladder like two monkeys to reach the surface. It was still bright, with the orbiting star nearly touching horizon, but there was still enough light for us to see with our eyes what had suddenly appeared above us.

It was the ship. The same ship that disappeared right in front of our eyes recently. Dio had done the impossible. The cap-comm on my belt, the communication device for the ship Captain to the bridge had also become alive once more. Then we heard the voice which we had been hoping for.

“Captain, what just happened to us? I felt like I just woke up from a dream, ” said the voice from the other side. It was Johnnie, ship’s chief navigator. Neva and I looked at one another and started dancing and shouting with the energies of two men who had just found the secret to immortality.