Short Stories

The Artefact

It was our farthest fantasy, our greatest desire, our only hope. But it was also out of our reach.

The Artefact.

At least that's what the public called it. Scientists, however, referred to it as EO-4. Short for Extraterrestrial Object 4, the name identified the Artefact as the fourth object we'd located not from this planet. And I was determined to find out what it was.

Adjusting my lab coat, I entered the EO lab in which the Artefact was stored along with the other objects that had been fascinating people for decades. A cracked dark stone of some kind made from elements not found on earth, EO-1, was in the first case. The second case contained EO-2, which was an earthen metal lunchbox with a transmitter inside. EO-3 was the least exciting for the imagination, just a wire that came from inside a brick. I had already examined all of these other objects multiple times, with little to no information gained throughout the process. All I cared about was EO-4.

I approached it in its case near the back of the room. The difference between it and the others was that EO-4 was much more spectacular to look at. It was a perfectly designed cube made from what appeared to be the same stone as EO-1. Jagged gold marks lined the outside of this cube, glowing in the dim light of the room. On the top face of the cube, words written in a script I did not recognize taunted my stubborn brain. I hated the idea of a problem I could not solve.

Lucky for me, my team had been assigned the honor of working on cracking the code of EO-4. I had chosen to show up an hour early to get my own private look at the Artefact without everyone else's ideas clogging my brain. The lab was empty, and I had decided to keep the lights off to prevent anyone from learning about my presence in the lab and joining me.

The Artefact seemed to call out to me as I stared into its case. I slipped an antibacterial glove over my right hand to ensure I would not contaminate the Artefact and opened the case using my left hand on the scanner.

"Access Denied."

I sighed, having completely forgotten that only my right hand would register on the scanner. The glove snapped as I removed it to free my right hand. I jumped, startled by the sudden noise, and tripped backwards over a stool, falling on the floor and untying one of my shoelaces.

"Getting a head start, huh?" someone asked from the doorway. I looked up to see my assistant, Cristi, with one eyebrow raised looking at me sprawled on the floor.

"Yeah, I guess."

She chuckled. "Need a hand?"

I graciously accepted and cleaned up the mess I had made with a bit of her help. It only then dawned on me that she had also showed up way before the scheduled start time.

"What brings you in so early?" I asked.

"Well I thought I might have a lead on the script on the top of EO-4. Each symbol obviously corresponds to a letter, right?"

I nodded my head, as that information had been laid out in our work session the day before.

"So I was looking at the letters, right? And it almost looks as if whoever wrote this was trying to write some sort of earthen script. So I went to my InterFace at home and scanned in one of the symbols. It connected me with a bunch of linguists who were online and one of them said it looked like really sloppy handwriting for the Japanese symbol "life." I know it seems far fetched, but maybe these aliens have really bad handwriting and write Japanese?"

After the hours of work poured into deciphering what was assumed to be an alien language, I found it kind of hard to believe that aliens were trying to communicate with us in sloppy Japanese script. But I trusted Cristi and decided it might be smart to test her idea, no matter how far fetched it seemed.

She pulled up the stool next to me and we opened up my InterFace Pocket to scan in another symbol. She connected me to the same linguist who again recognized the symbol as sloppy Japanese handwriting. Needless to say, my mind was blown.

About half an hour later, Cristi and I had translated the sentence on top in its entirety. We stared at the sheet of paper laying out in front of us with the translation the linguist sent us scribbled on top.

"Your planet is not healthy and you're starting to care, you want us to help you return the clean air. So now fill me up with the key to life, and I will show you how to end your endless strife," I read.

It was true that we were looking for an extraterrestrial savior. Many governments, including that of Japan, had attempted to send messages to aliens through long distance transmitters that could reach billions and billions of miles. Nobody has thought a message would reach any other source of life for at least ten years, but it appeared that we had all been wrong.

Cristi was the first to speak again. "Should we call in the rest of the team?"

"We don't have time. We need to fill this up with oxygen!"

I rose quickly from the stool, knocking it over in the process. I ran to the case the Artefact was contained in and scanned my way in, not bothering to put on a glove, I ran at full speed out the door. However, me being my clumsy self, I tripped over my untied shoelace and fell to the ground. Maybe the Artefact wasn't as sturdy as I had thought or maybe luck just wasn't on my side. Either way, the Artefact tumbled across the floor. It crashed into a wall and promptly shattered.

I scrambled to get to the broken Artefact on the floor and reached for the broken remains of what could have saved our planet. On one of the shards, I saw a fragment of the riddle that was once printed on top of the perfect cube. It read, in its jumbled Japanese script, "Not care. Now endless strife."

It was then I knew our planet was screwed.

Yes, I was fired from my job doing scientific research at InterFace tech. Yes, everyone has hated me ever since. But no, I will not stop trying to piece together what the Artefact was and how it could have possibly saved us all. I tell you this story now, looking down at the piece of the Artefact that I had pocketed that day. I've discovered that if you hold it in the light it appears to glow. And in that glow, a new script lies between the pieces. Now all I need is to find the rest of the Artefact, and maybe, just maybe, I can still find a way to save the planet. That is, if it doesn't die before I complete my task.

For the Sci-Fi contest called The Artefact.