Tag: history

Quarantined Sol: The Last Message from Earth

WRITING PROMPT: Humanity makes contact with an alien species. They ask us only one question: “We have not seen a starship leave this system for one of your many other colonies in 227,591 local years. Have you quarantined the system?”

The scientists verified the transcription once more. Captain Mapstone looked more concerned than when the text was initially shown. For the first time since the discovery of the galactic travelers she was fumbling for words.

“Could you ask them to clarify the statement? I… Could…” she trailed off, eyes fixed on the display.

“Yes, sir.” A technician returned the prompt back, simply asking, “Please clarify.” They waited for what seemed an eternity as the signal relayed. Text displayed, scientists ran the linguistics again, the captain’s brow furrowed again.

“Captain, their leader has offered only that our planet appears to have cut off communication millennia ago, repeating that same number. No ships, no signals for that span of time until around 140 years ago. Likely a reference to the first radio experiments in the 19th century.”

“Understood.” She looked at the rest of the team, each as perplexed as her. “Alright, folks. We’re in uncharted waters. I’m assuming this isn’t part of the manual we were provided?”

A bespectacled scientist stood from behind their computer, “No, sir. We… we don’t have guidelines for this potentiality.”

The moment hung, the cursor blinked on the communication monitor. “Well, shit.”

Bellowing from the back of the crowded command center, “I KNEW IT!”

A cacophony of spinning chairs as all the staff looked to see the source of the shout, though some were already collectively rolling their eyes in recognition. “I fucking KNEW it!”

Standing with his book in hand, Forgotten History of the Ancient Space Age, triumphantly held aloft. The thorn in the side of the scientific community. He walked, rather, he stomped forward to the captain’s station. “You all laughed, you all discredited, but when they arrived you called me anyway. Now I get the confirmation I needed after all these decades that I WAS RIGHT!”

The captain’s shoulders fell, a hand gripping her face and massaging her temples. “Of course. It had to be the ancient aliens thing. I should’ve known.”

Dr. Vladimir Plutonium, whose real name he refused to acknowledge, stepped up practically toe-to-toe with the statuesque captain. He all but whispered now, “I told you.”

“We have yet to confirm your theories Vlad, but-“

“That’s DOCTOR Vlad to you. May I now, finally, offer my suggestions?”

“Pending my approval, yes.” The captain stepped back to avoid the stench of the old man’s breath, waving a hand to the team as an offer to begin.

“Question number ONE!” With flamboyant gestures he slammed the book down, swung his leather messenger bag around his rotund body, and withdrew a weathered notebook. Bits of paper flew out like leaves falling from a tree as he flipped open to a tabbed page in his tome, revealing a scrawled list. “What was the last communication from our ‘colony’?”

The captain pondered for a moment, then nodded to the techs who typed the query into the console, the translation output, the linguists confirmed, and it was sent to the ship in orbit. While they waited, each face glued to the monitor, the captain leaned over to sneak a peek at the tattered book in Plutonium’s hand. He saw the motion, slamming it shut before she could make sense of the writing on the page. He glared over the rim of his glasses, shoved them back up his nose, and returned his gaze to the screen as the translation began.

“It says that they were opting out.” Confusion once again gripped the room. “Apparently just that, one immense broadcast to not be disturbed.” The linguist offered the nuance, but another tapped his shoulder, leaned in and whispered in his ear.

There was a kerfuffle amongst the group deciphering the text. The captain looked over to the lead scientist who shrugged and walked over to suss out what was happening. More text appeared on the screen.

“Sir, they’re sending over a recording of the last broadcast.”

The captain leaned onto the console, “Let’s hear it.”

Computers spun up, trying to interpret the content of the message being sent, rifling through digital file structures, applying advanced cryptographic techniques, trying to restore some semblance of understanding to the recording sent.

“Do I get to ask my next ques-“

“Not right now, doctor. Let’s get this figured out first, or do you not want answers to these questions?” The captain locked eyes with the stout scientist, just as the main screen displayed a play button. “Is it ready?”

The recording started, a distinctly human voice, but a completely alien language. The room fell silent, the recording played a second time. A message from beyond the known history of man. Each of the interpreters feverishly attempting to decode the language as the aliens offered the literal translation as a guide.

“Wait, I know this.” Offered Vlad, who was still frozen from the moment the recording first played. “I know THIS!” Russian gibberish spewed forth, he rifled through his bag for another stuffed notebook, again littering the floor around him with bits and pieces. A bold linguist shushed him, the slav flung back Slavic curses, then returned to flipping through the messy journal.

His face suddenly alight with joy, he lifted the notebook and pointed at the drawn glyphs on the page. A Polaroid fell from the spine as he shoved the sketches in the captain’s face. He buried his beaming face back in the drawings as the captain bent down to retrieve the photo. A dank looking cave wall, with the caption below: “New Zealand, 1997”. The same glyphs partially covered by moss, weathered by eons.

He looked up at main screen, demanded they play it again. His finger followed along with the glyphs he’d meticulously recreated on the page. “I can’t believe it. They really told the aliens to ‘fuck off’.”

The linguist team had stopped their commotion, waiting for the captain to pull her attention away from the photo and the exuberant scientist before her.

“He’s right, sir. That’s the crude way to interpret it, but effectively that’s what the recording says.” The lead scientist nodded to Plutonium, standing proud. “Literally: ‘We no longer wish to be in league with the federation as they seek to extract our resources and doom our planet, and all the life upon it, to death. To prevent further intervention, we have released a plague on our world to which all life native to this land is immune, but will be catastrophic to our overlords and their peons. Be warned, any attempt to interact with the natural inhabitants of this peaceful world will be interpreted as an act of war and will be met with disproportionate response. Leave Earth alone or suffer the consequences.’”

Inspiration Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/WritingPrompts/comments/1i2a58n/wp_humanity_makes_contact_with_an_alien_species/

Jenolan Caves Revelation: An Enigmatic English Inscription from the Depths of Time

WRITING PROMPT: Scientists from the NSW university recently explored some of the oldest chambers of the Jenolan caves, the oldest cave system in the world. At the bottom, they found an inscription 300 million years old, it was written in English.

I stood in shock. This must be vandalism. It had to be.

A guide moved closer, everyone was aghast and staring blankly. It had to be vandalism, I reassured myself. All the experts in the room could barely do anything but stand, mouths open.

We had passed through an incredible amount of chambers, some of which had inscriptions from various written languages, but most were ancient, usually dead tongues. Somehow that made more sense than what we saw before us. Yet, here we were, staring at a wall miles into the earth, with old English etched into the stone.

I was the first to revivify and move. Wiping the sweat from my brow and reaching for a flood lamp. Another guide gently moved their hand to prevent me. From the chamber behind us an elder from the local Wiradjuri people stood at the threshold of the passage. He looked at all the faces pointed in the same direction, then matched their collective awe when he saw what drew their attention.

This area had been blocked for at least as long as they had shared their stories. Still, I couldn’t think of any other solution than simple vandalism. All the sonar information had been correct, the chambers spanned even further than we’d ever imagined. So it would only make sense that someone might have found their way in, maybe even gotten stuck, and etched this into the wall.

The geologist shook loose and walked up to the letters, reaching forward warily, and then quickly retracting his hand. He instead grabbed a magnifying glass, turned on the ring light, and moved in close.

“It’s got all the hallmarks of something very old, but this chamber has been closed off for centuries, right?”

The elder had moved fully into the space and the guides repositioned themselves to give him room. His voice was deep and gave little room for doubt, “This cave has been mapped by generations of my people. But we have never seen any of these chambers. This one or the last several kilometers we’ve walked to get here.”

Switching out the magnifying glass for a small spoon-like scoop and jar. “I really want to take a sample,” he said, looking to the elder expectantly, respectfully. “I want to at least check the patina, maybe there’s-“

The elder outstretched his hand, resting his palm on the wall below the inscription.

I backed away. I don’t know why. Maybe too many Indiana Jones movies. I lined up my camera and started to snap as many shots as I could. The exposures were slow, but the elder was practically a statue, communing with the stone. Out of habit I looked at the shots, saw one that was stable and in focus. The elder sighed, moved away, and nodded at the rock hound.

After a slight motion on the last of the punctuation, distinctly a period ending a sentence, he tapped the scoop into the jar. He gleefully hurried off to the other chamber where the testing equipment is setup. The elder looked into the vast, dark space. One of the guides followed his gaze and aimed a light further into the chamber. It was so immense that the other end of the chamber wasn’t visible even with the powerful flashlight.

“Have you heard the stories of deep time?” He said, to everyone and no one. “All things will outlast us… or so they go. There is a story I had heard when I was a boy, passed down by an elder living out his last days. I was so young. I had respect for his tales, but this one I remember because it seemed like what Americans like to call a ‘tall tale’. We see how the world changes over time. That the change means that you can only stand on the land today, but it will not be the same land tomorrow. But his story told of a place where time stood still.”

He walked forward, the light on his back and the darkness before him. The guide followed, casting a great shadow ahead of the elder as he descended further into the chamber. I readied my camera again, the lit figure, the inky black before him. A legendary image, I had to capture it. As I shot the first picture the elder froze. My camera was all but silent, was I being too loud?

“In this place, according to our oldest stories, one could travel through time without fear of the land or the sea consuming you. In this place, you could spend your time in meditation and learn the secrets of the universe in peace. From there you could tap into the deep spring within all of us, uninterrupted by the changing nature and chaos of our world.”

He was now standing over a raised area on the ground. Stalagmites encircling what appeared to be a seat. Even from the drip patterns in the previous chambers I knew that this must be an incredibly ancient pedestal, a throne really.

“From this place one could travel eternity.” He turned around and pointed at the walls. The guides now pointing flood lights at every surface in view, revealing thousands of inscriptions in a huge variety of languages. More than any of the other chambers we had passed through to get here.

“From this seat you could learn the true nature of infinity.”

We stood in reverence for what felt like a lifetime.

Guides came into the chamber, the catalyst to return us all to the present moment. With the lights in place I could finally document the text that changed my perception of time. I setup my tripod, carefully aligned the focus, and snapped the now iconic image of English words written on a rock wall millions of years before:

“In ye hearts of men, seek ye balance ‘twixt mind and spirit. Neither thought nor faith alone dost lead to truth, but together they doth illuminate the path to virtue.”

Inspiration Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/WritingPrompts/comments/1egxkjg/wpscientists_from_the_nsw_university_recently/