Realms of Sci-Fi

Discovery

"I don't recognize the term," Davin admitted. "What is its current level of integrity?"

"It appears stable despite the damage," engineer Kimmons answered, stepping forward to join the pair near the entrance.

"Very well," Davin decided aloud. "Let's have a look inside."

The archway led to a number of doors, but the center pair were missing while the others were caved in as if kicked by an enormous boot. The main corridor was long and wide. Metal doors three feet in height and half as wide covered the flanking walls in an upper and lower row. Larger doors of wood interrupted the unanimous procession of metal a various intervals all the way to the end of the corridor where it branched to the left and right.

"Vailer," Davin instructed. "Take two members of the team and do a full check. I want a report on ambient radiation levels, possible toxins in the air, and anything you might find about the environmental requirements of the natives."

Lead biologist Vailer turned swiftly and selected the two scientists needed to accomplish the task she'd been given, and they headed down the corridor, each with a scanner in hand.

"The rest of you, divide into teams of two and begin checking rooms," Davin ordered. "Mark the door to rooms after examination to designate them for more detailed inspection or to be ignored for the time being. Keep an eye on your life monitors. I don't want a repeat of last month's incident if someone's radiation seal breaks. Understood?"

The team acknowledge the orders. Before they broke up to start on their assigned jobs, Davin selected one person for his team. "Eskin, you're with me."

The philologist took several steps forward to quickly close the distance as Davin headed for the nearest door. As an expert on literary texts and records, Eskin had been studying the native language since their arrival and possessed the best chance to translate anything they discovered.

"First impressions?" Davin requested.

Eskin looked the room over with its arrangement of desks and display screens. The walls were a bare composite resembling stone. If anything had adorned the walls, it had long ago turned to dust.

"It would seem to be some kind of meeting space, possibly instructional," Eskin theorized.

"Or educational?" Davin prompted.

"It's certainly a possibility," Eskin agreed.

"Let's see if we can get these primitive terminals working again," Davin suggested. He knelt beside the desk and examined the ancient components. Taking a multiform adapter from his belt, he pressed it against one of the fasteners holding the back panel together. The adapter hummed slightly as it changed its molecular configuration to match the indentations on the fastener before it spun in place and spiraled the fastener out of its position. He repeated the process several times until able to lift the rear panel off and expose the inner workings.

"Hardwired circuits," Eskin mused while watching over Davin's shoulder. "Ancient stuff by our standards."

"True," Davin agreed. "However, it did take our own species some time to develop crystalic relays. I wonder what these people would've created if they hadn't been wiped out."

Davin held up a scanner, checking the interior designs of the various components until he found what appeared to be a power source. He had Eskin hand him a portable generator pack, and Davin wired the palm sized device into the alien technology.

"I've got it set on the lowest power setting as we don't want to overload it," Davin explained. "But, you might want to step back."

Davin checked his scanner to find the most likely activation switch and used it. The circuits in the device lit up as power flowed back into them for the first time in countless years. The display screen illuminated in all white for a moment before dissolving into a menu. Seven different options, each written in the alien script, were marked on individual colored bands extending across the display area from the left side of the screen.

"Any ideas?" Davin prompted after Eskin had studied the screen in silence for some time.

"I wish I could tell you more," Eskin lamented. "So much destruction was done during the fall of their civilization, we've only recovered bits and pieces of their languages, and they had several. I recognize this one's type, but I couldn't say what they mean. I'm sorry."

"Don't be," Davin dismissed. "We're out here to learn what we don't know, so pick one and let's get started and see what we can learn."

Time passed slowly but continuously. The other teams reported in, finding similar room layouts and a few spaces defying classification. One room had been constructed with an organic flooring that had long since rotted away, leaving the metal supports and the same composite material found everywhere in the building exposed underneath. One room had possessed numerous chemicals, but the blast damage done to the city during the fall of the native species had shattered many of the containers, mixing them together to create a secondary explosion and fire that destroyed anything of relevance they might have discovered.

"I've got it!" Eskin announced.

Davin came over to see for himself. "What is it?"

"It would seem this is a place of education as you hypothesized," Eskin explained. "The system is badly damaged and old, so many of the files are inaccessible, but I did manage to find this."

Eskin pulled up a page of alien script Davin found just as baffling and incoherent as any other he'd seen.

"Am I supposed to know what I'm looking at?" Davin questioned.

"My apologies," Eskin offered. "This is a breakdown of their language for teaching purposes, most likely to their young."

"If their young can learn from this, can you?" Davin pressed.

"I've been feeding the information into the scanner, looking for correlating patterns in the hopes of finally deciphering their language," Eskin replied. "It worked, and I've input a translation program into their system to change everything visible into our language."

"Good. Very good," Davin praised. "The first thing I'd like to know is who these people were."

"I should be able to find it," Eskin assured him. He shifted through different data files on the alien device, changed virtual locations on the internal drives and looked elsewhere, all the while muttering to himself. "No, that's not it. What about...no, that's not it either. What about over here? No. File corruption. Here? Yes!"

"You found it?" Davin questioned.

"I did," Eskin confirmed. "The natives called themselves humans, and their world was named Earth."