What has gone before: A harsh reckoning with the truth bugs devouring about 4 million humans and erasing the knowledge of these truth corrupted humans from our existence. Are there still rational humans that have open inquisitive minds that enjoy the science and evidence of things? Does this make a difference? Read on ……
EPISODE 3
Edge of Truth
November 13
After five days the Truth Bugs had their fill. Blue and white starry gossamer’s hitched rides on the last of the Suns reflected shortwave bounce back to space, and on towards destinations unknown to humans at least.
A person had to be in just the right place at the right time to see this gossamer ride. On Oceans edge looking just to the left or right of the Sun rays they appeared as misty fountain plumes, almost as rainbow refracted light.
A few humans did notice. A couple of quiet achievers in two SETI astronomers that is. Dave and Barry (last names withheld for confidentiality), known as the Darry twins to workmates. These two – inseparable since MIT days. Always joint research, published papers and both held equal Beer can swilling record from the early days. They were both happily married, both with two kids and both married women from the same family. Obscure it may be, but they lived at exact opposites of town. Enough of these two inseparables and their most desired to be private lives.
Nine days earlier at the start of their sunset to midnight shift, bored (which is not unusual at SETI) with another night of sorting satellite noise from radio signals appearing to be derived from Proxima Centauri. “Will this finally be proof of Aliens once we clear out all other possibilities of radio waves?” Barry muttered to self while contemplating the many times Dave and he had discussed this ongoing conundrum and sometimes till well after midnight.
Radio chatter with a difference had spiked alarms. The WAV patterns appearing to be like human speech, not all but bits, fragments never to be connected, but the stream was continuous, not your average satellite or Earth radio feed, but bouncing through all the sensor arrays with origins on Earth. Gone it was in a few minutes.
Barry insisted the stream was directed to the Moon, Dave insisted to Proxima Centauri. Both agreed it was strange indeed given the reports of the day of people trying to eat themselves and being put back together by mystery bugs that appeared to disappear on the ether. They presented the observations to the Boss, who agreed for them to focus on this unexplained chatter.
The next few days realised similar chatter, not as intense as day 1, but still there and always gone with the end of sunset. A rough theory was postulated and a decision made to drive 45 minute to Pigeon Point Lighthouse just before sunset for observation. Would the spectrometers, magnetic and standard, pick up anything?
Darry had almost lost their plume view with the Sun disappearing to night embrace. A few vague sparkles were still visible to the squinting eyeballs but could have been just too long peering near the Sun. Excited they were with a big gut feeling that they had watched the impossible just happen. Neither spoke during the drive back to the lab and monitor room. Did what they see and what the instruments record reconcile with their ten day old observations?
SETI reached, they head in, a silent anticipation leading to urgency of plugging in to validate results. Watching, waiting, but not for long with confirmation of some unique light diffraction appearing on the screen. Just as quickly as it appears, it glitches and streamers of blue and white are running up the screen and didn’t stop until it decided to. Darry’s check and cross check – no data left. Magnetic spectrometer plugged in – as before it picks up anomalies to local magnetic fields as intense bending from the norm. Just as quickly it glitches, blue and white destruction on the screen before them.
Dave rips the power cords, hard shutdown not ideal. Blue and white still streams and then stops. Equipment back on, all data gone and all systems operating normally with a quick backup check revealing zero as if what they had witnessed never happened. But it had, just that none would believe without clear evidence.
At least they had the previous nine day’s data, or so they thought before Barry’s checks added to the increasing mystery with nothing to see as if the observations never existed. Nothing to provide proof, just verbal observation and hypothesis that will never stand up to any peer scrutiny. Gone.
“But we know what we saw”, the Darry’s exclaimed in unison. Dave followed up with ” So what? No evidence is no evidence. We know what we saw Dave, not exactly amateurs are we? But you are right. Oh well at least we didn’t get bored to death teasing satellite noise out of those far space emissions.” No more to be said from these two practical boffins and back to the normal they went, the still dedicated but frustrated Darry. From then on, forever watchful for certain signs. Maybe one day……
November 16
Artemisis 3 (A3), the first landed manned mission since Apollo 17, now parked in the deep shadows of Aitken Basin on the far side of the moon.
For Astronauts Smith, Jones and Leibowitz(1) this landing had proven to be far more difficult and dangerous than all simulations and experience had envisaged.
Halfway through the final descent in the space of 7 seconds the landing program stopped, started, stopped and started again. Landing thrusters coughed and wheezed as if they had caught a cold. Leibowitz’s glance out the window observed what appeared to be fog enveloping the lander from the moon up.
A couple of quick blinks revealed clear conditions outside with thrusters and lander program operating just right. He really wasn’t sure of what had been seen and quite unsure of what he had heard in that 6 seconds. This interface between light and dark played around with the optics. His fellow astronauts while sceptical, could not completely discount his observation with almost catastrophic failure of the lander itself. Mission Control, while relieved the mission was back on track had no observations or data which only added to the mystery.
A few hypotheses were thrown around. Could they have been caught in a Moon fountain – “Transient Luna Phenomena”? It was the only thing that made a measure of sense, but given they were busy at commencing final landing approach, that focus was placed on the backburner for debrief much later.
November 18
Jones is focused on the task at hand, vacuuming up the quite abrasive talc like regolith. As tradition dictates, every mission must sample the regolith, with Adkins Basin sampling to confirm the mineral riches potentially present there.
Jones trips, propelled forward and half glides/falls to a lightest kiss face plant ten metres away, in the process losing grip on the vacuum extractor. Smith, step jumps to the scene with Jones now upright, trying to de-smear his faceplate. The more he wipes, the more the moon dust sticks to the back of glove and helmet as if statically charged.
Shallow panicked muffled breath over the intercom – “I can’t see a thing, this damn dust….”, tails off to silence as Smith manages to de-smear enough for Jones to see. “What happened? I look away and look back and you are sprawled over here. Where is the dust sucker”? Smith barely concealing the behind faceplate smirk.
“Don’t know, there are random rocks buried in that moon powder, must have tripped on one of them”. Jones starts to pull the dust sucker line tether, only to have it easily float to them without the World’s most expensive vacuum cleaner attached. After desperate seconds, tripped boot print location is found but the search proves to be futile.
Jones kicks out a frustrated boot flick at the regolith stirring up the powder to ever so slowly fan up and out. It seemed to be attracted to his faceplate and again in a more considered fashion he wipes off enough to see Smith catching something shiny suspended in the gossamer dust. It being the tether ring of the dust sucker. “Huh?”, best materials, tested and true connections. It should be attached to the sucker but it refused to be found.
For both, limited air supply restricted them to no more than a few minutes more to ‘play’ “find the dust sucker”.
Both startled out of contemplating this sucker game, being interrupted by Leibowitz in the lander sounding unnaturally loud officially reminding them of five minutes air. He went on, “The suckers lost, just get back here sooner than later, have something to show you. We have more than a dust sucker to concern ourselves about”.
In they go, outer hatch sealed, Leibowitz all the time telling them to hurry. “Here, check this out”, as Leibowitz replays the external camera of Jones’s trip event. Slowed down, it appeared as if the regolith had bubbled up, propelling him forward, not the rock trip as Jones suspected.
View just catches the sucker drifting down towards the dust and appears as if dust fingers reached up and hauled it to the grey below. All three astronauts startled as the replay starts breaking up, blue and white crazy script acting like Pacman, devouring the feed until gone. Urgent chatter from mission control asking if problems at their end as video feed glitching badly. They confirm the connection to the satellite is good but visuals are an issue.
Nagging memories of something that as soon as Jones tries to focus are as easily forgotten. Inside of nose is itchy and a finger is sent to explore its inner confines and in the process itching seems to dissipate. Finger pulled it out and observed what appeared to be a grey smear on his finger-tip, while background pins ‘n’ needles starts to creep up the finger from the same tip.
They all look at their hands, startled as suits were fully sealed, and all with varying degrees of grey smudged hands and fingers with random soft grey blotches, no more than the size of a 10c coin overing parts of their suits. They knew that none of this grey stuff should be onboard like this.
Leibowitz’s ear lobe was getting desperately itchy and impossible to ignore. His hand bringing grey smudges away from the ear and no matter how much rubbing he did, they refused to be wiped off. Smith, looking and feeling far more absent than usual, noted a dark spot obscuring his vision. He blinked and it was no more.
Even more surprising than the disintegrating photo feed is the combined observation of the grey smudges proceeding to slide down and off their faces, hands, suits and gear to seemingly melt into the deck and gone! “What was that? What was what? What just happened?” Being stated in panicked unison and then all three remembering that they were prepping for lift off, not quite recalling what their last science sampling was for or indeed what happened in the last 14 seconds. No matter, focus on getting back to the orbiter.
Leibowitz, wondering about the shopping list he left for the wife, hoping she wouldn’t forget the pastrami. He was hanging out for ‘real’ binge food. Mission Control reminds them of need to prep lift-off countdown. Buckle up and video feed restored. “Was it ever gone? What a stupid question”, Leibowitz mutters to himself while system checks are continued.
Countdown to launch commenced….in 30, 29, 28… Leibowitz was too focused on his launch task and trying to stop salivating at the thought of pastrami sandwich to snap a glance at the external monitor screens. If he had, he would most likely have screamed. Silent grey of regolith was foaming up over external parts. Ignition, engines appear to be sluggish as if moon gravity had tripled, launch thrust was there, shuddering, moving at what felt like millimetres per hour, then snap as if thrust from a catapult.
Out of control rock n roll that after what felt like minutes but was only seconds settled down to a timely rendezvous with the orbiter. All three shaken but alive and secure. Target Earth locked in. Chatter with Mission control immediately after launch and advising that everything normal at their end. Discussion ended and so did the astronaut’s memories of those first few launch seconds. The more they thought and less was remembered.
As they are pulling away from the Moon orbit, the three chanced to look back at the dwindling twilight moon glow, unmistakable light band and streamers appear to move in the late glow. Photos were snapped. Conversation had about Apollo 17 and what they had reported on back in December 1972 and they settled in for the ride home.
Silence of Truth
November 20 2020
Grey dust settles back to the Moon surface, satiated, de-sensitised and to sleep within the Moon’s blackened silence. Regolith is forever patient as it has been for the 4 Billion years it has been doing, building and waiting for its time of truth again.
4.246 light years away, a ship comfortably parked in the chromosphere of Proxima Centuari’s Sun receives the last data stream from the regolith Truthers. From there, information streams of the un-truth humans brains go out across the dark matter gravitational lenses and lattice to “Unicorn”(2) black hole, looping through birthing galaxies exhaled from other black holes via the dark matter highway to a Galaxy far far away. Humans know it as GN-z11 (3). Suspended in the black hole at its centre is a place, planet shaped and long term home base of Zdog12 Inc. To locals it is simply “Kosong” (4).
Chatter of sorts celebrates the efforts by those on their far-flung Earth moon watch post. They know the unique nature of the Earth inhabitants to argue and to ignore fact in the face of overwhelming evidence. Repeated over the Centuries, getting more extreme, the more knowledge gained, greater the separation from reality some have become.
Learning they have and always, from that moment of seeding the matter of future humans roughly 4 Billion years ago. They applied that learning to the ongoing seeding and building of more Bubble Universes, planets and life. Had always been a quandary to those designing and compensating the seeding matter engines as to what went wrong with this first attempt to diversify Universal life.
Impatience and frustration they had never known until humans evolved to Homosapien. A rapid learning curve it had been and still was. Was it worth these newly formed anxieties, to keep on resetting a planetary wide consciousness?
There was some relief in knowing that for now the truth has been reset, that planet Earth has some breathing space to heal. For how long? Even they cannot predict but will continue to watch as they always have done. Next time will they act or just let these crazy humans self destruct? Maybe next time will be the “line in the sand” moment and gone they will be.
After all Earth is an insignificant dot in Space among the trillions of dots within the observable universe. Only Zdog12 and the watchers will know that it is no more.
Stay tuned for Episode 4 landing on June 26th – Truth is out there, somewhere …
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