Terra tore through debris like it was paper in the low gravity. Her struggles were barely voiced but still audible over the coms, silence still held in the rest of the room. She scratched at the dirt and rocks, her head and stare glued foreword, but the body reaching only the corner of her eye held all her attention, she wanted to turn down the light so she couldn’t see, let the dark fog overtake the image, but the idea of the blackened face haunting her from beneath darkness was even more frightening. She dug as far as she could but it looked as though the entire hall beyond had collapsed; they weren’t leaving the same way they got in. She stepped back from the collapsed archway and caught her breath. She aggravated herself with a futile attempt to wipe sweat from her forehead. Her breathing stopped as she made eye contact with the distorted figure again, she forced herself to push out the fear with her breath and turned away, the back of her neck tingling from its empty gaze.
“Quorbin we need to find another way out of here I don’t think we’ll be able to get…… Quorbin?” Terra looked over to the kneeling figure in the dark olive jacket. Quorbin was less than a foot from the figure petrified in place leaning against the pillar, three of its arms gripping the pillar, claw marks against the stone, the fourth arm gripping the creature’s chest. The face looked upward in its agony, as though it was trying to divine relief from whatever it was that tortured him. Quorbin’s thought was lost in the negative gaze of its sockets, his mind stunned into a stupor trying to understand what he so desperately wished he didn’t have to see. He had imagined a thousand times what it would be like to encounter a true alien race. He had met the races formed by humans who had been forgotten on distant planets, he had seen pictures and interviews with the distant Tufo, had read the reports on the reclusive Claw tribes on the moons of the gas giant even farther from the Sol system. Only a handful of humans had ever actually encountered alien life outside of archeology digs, Quorbin unknowingly began to reach out his hand towards the face of the statue death. He hesitated, his movement freezing as the light from his lantern began to reflect other bodies. His eyes began to water as his gaze finally moved to the other bodies around the room. With every ticking millisecond, his mind formed the noise of their screams louder and louder.
“Qurobin…” Terra spoke gently through the com system as she walked up behind him. Her hand landed on his shoulder, and the distant screams of the dead retreated slowly back in time. His legs would still not move. Terra moved her hand, her fingertips moved gently down the sleeve of his suit, she squatted down for her palm to contact his and intertwined their fingers. Quorbin’s whole body jumped slightly, his head looked back and forth and he closed his grip around Terra’s hand. She helped him up as he sniffed and blinked the water out of his eyes.
“There’s a lot of them, I think some are smaller, maybe younger I…never mind.” He left his grip in her hands and they pulled each other deeper into the darkness, navigating through bodies.
“I think we should try and find another way out of here without tunneling so that we don’t disturb...”Terra looked past Quorbin, one of the bodies had all four of its arms wrapped around something, the object was covered in holes, deeper decay then the rest, it was in some kind of wrapping with a protrusion of…… four little arms… Terra pulled Quorbin away from the sight. “…Without disturbing any of the bodies.”
“Yeah, uhm…” Quorbin sniffed deeper and tried to regain his composure, Terra’s thumb rubbed the top of his palm of their intertwined hands as she waited for him. Quorbin extended his suit controls and brought up the map of what they had scanner so far and sent it to his heads up display. I think this room is wedged between a few of the tunnels, hopefully there’s an exit to each.” Quorbin zoomed in to what had been scanned of the room, unfortunately the advancement of technology burdened Quorbin’s mind this time with detailed scans of every lifeless body in the room on his display. He finally found relief in an anomaly in the room. “There’s something over here.” Quorbin showed the first signs of truly collecting himself, but continued to grip the lifeline of Terra’s hand.
Quorbin kept his eyes as level as he could to ignore the petrified figures scattered among the floor, giving just enough attention to avoid disturbing them as he made his way to what he could extrapolate was the center of the room. The lantern finally illuminated a massive pyramid; its point recessed into the floor with its square base attached to the high above ceiling. Around standing height two layers of stone protruded from the object, even the untrained eye capable of seeing it was controls for something. The light was able to make out some large symbols on the sides of the pyramid high up, the lanterns were already recording images and scans, but Quorbin had them image a full spectrographic analysis for later. He reached out his free hand to dust off the “keyboard” from what he could tell. There was only a light layer of dust, the entire complex had been sealed by the nothing of space, heat and debris didn’t make it in, only darkness. Quorbin heard the ping of readings of his scans.
“Oh man, I know what this is.” Terra gave a surprised look, Quorbin explained. “I should have remembered especially after……seeing them. These are Quardroburians, There one of the space faring races that died out before humanity was even around, they’re known for burrowing miles of tunnels while only having a few surface structures.” Quorbin began looking at his display and tapping keys.
“uhm, do you need your hand back?” Terra asked as nicely as possible, but what she caught of his face made her regret bringing it up. He still however unlaced their hands and began tapping on more keys, the focus of the work calming him. “So we came through all of this just to stumble on an alien dig site that, everybody’s already seen before?”
“These guys were around so long ago that some sculptures and data recording are all we have of what they look like, all other organic matter has decayed since their fall, no one’s ever actually found any bodies, even in…this state.” Quorbin re-focus on tapping buttons his display said may activate the console. He paused for a moment to removes his bag, pulling the strap over his head and handing it to Terra while still inspecting the console. “Can you grab the exodiagnostic?” Terra took the bag but only stared at it.
“Sure as soon as I google what it looks like.” Quorbin let out a faint smile.
“Rectangular thingy with some prods on one side.” He continued dusting and inspecting as she rummaged through the bag.
“Something’s been bothering me about the layout of this place.”
“Their choice in stone wall color clashes with the ambiance of the columns? They might not have earth girl cave decorating sophistication.”
“Oh yeah, funny” Quorbin thought so. Terra handed him the exodiagnostic tool and continued her train of the thought to the jerk. “It looks like this entire complex is carved out of the asteroid, which is unadvised and dangerous. A station like this should have installed walls, there’s really no telling if a big chunk of rock in a debris field is structurally sound or airtight, or covered in micro fissures that could cause pieces to break off, especially if you were planning on mining in it, which granted is an assumption but I can’t think of a lot of purpose for this to be here, the fields too dense to be practical as an outpost, and it’s a lot of effort for a really inconvenient hiding place.” Terra looked over just in time for Quorbin to find a good place to insert the prods of the tool into the console. A red light blinked near its top several times before turning green and steady just as another red light appeared and blinked.
“It looks like everything’s intact but I don’t see any power source that would have lasted, hopefully the exodiagnostic can get power to the right areas we can see if we can access anything. It might work fine but you’d be surprised how difficult it is to navigate a system designed by an intelligence form a trillion miles and a million years away.” As the 5th light turned green a slight murmur developed in the pyramid, dust seemed to literally shake loose from it. Light spread from the diagnostic tool’s base between the mazes formed by the various keys. Finally a small cone in the center of the console sent small lines of faint purple light a foot above it, forming a two foot hologram of a normal healthy Quardroburian, a comforting sight amongst the macabre scene. The figure moved in a loop, its four arms beginning in a relaxed stance, before the upper and lower pairs of arms placed their hands together to form a pair of hand signals, then a flash, and the loop began again.
“This is what they all looked like?” Terra moved closer to inspect the hologram.
“Kind of, that’s the only one we know of so to speak; it’s the same figure in all their statues and holograms.”
“The all looked exactly the same?” Terra found the idea more than a little racist.
“Well no, but this is the only image they every displayed.” Quorbin clarified as he recalled what information he had read or learned in school. “The Quardroburians held uniformity sacred, their home planet had an extremely chaotic weather system which is why their architecture became so based on tunnels. They portrayed only one image of themselves, as a uniform example of how they all should be.”
“So they all had conform to society’s idea of perfection?” Terra had flashbacks of high school.
“I’m not really sure if this is what they found perfect, it was more about being consistent.” Quorbin found more information in a tablet he had pulled out of his bag. “His hand signals have meanings that were supposed to respond to.” Quorbin moved his hand toward the image, about a foot away a blue glow developed on his hands from an unseen source, and disappeared as he retracted it. He had the tablet scan a loop of the hologram, then set it on the console so he could see the responses and use his hands to respond. He voiced them aloud as he motioned. “Ok, so…..peace, and something like, questions, or requests, maybe mercy? Respond with acceptance and giving?” Quorbin was only reading off the tablets database but wanted to try and understand it. Terra thought he just sounded stupid.
The hologram stopped its loop and took a slight bow, before it distorted and began speaking. For the first second it was incoherent, but their com system linked to the database in the tablet and began to translate:
“…….and our gratitude in responding to our signals. While we had hoped our own people would have found us, our scans indicate you are foreign, which weights our hearts heavy that perhaps there are none of our people left. We hope we can count you as friend, since you are not a member species of the (a buzz indicated no translation) we must work under the assumption that you are with us and the other (buzz) races.”
“This is so cool!” Quorbin moved closer grinning like he was a child watching a movie.”Do you realize how old this recording is?”
“I was instructed to ask the finders of our Temple to take on a task; it is a burden that may seem trivial to you, but one of great importance to my people. I will not force its responsibility on you, but my timetables indicate it has been several thousand cycles since our home was lost, and you are the first we have encountered, and may be the last.”
“Well doesn’t that sound grotesquely ominous.” Terra was not as engulfed in the moment as Quorbin. She couldn’t help but feel that the hologram had shifted its gaze at her for a split second as she broke its, well, train of thought it seemed.
“I’m sorry are you suggesting we DON’T do what it’s very kindly asking us to do?”
“Which is?” Terra felt her caution was justified.
“When our home world was destroyed, my people realized it was only a matter of time before our end came.” Terra became very suspicious of the timing of this holograms continuation. “Knowing that rescue would never come, it was decided that instead, our people would try to preserve all our world they could. First they collected all knowledge of my people into a storage device, and then they gathered.”
“Oh God…. Oh no…” Quorbin unsuccessfully tried to bury his face in hands. He knew where this was going.
“My people did not wish to wait for heat loss or deprivation of air to overtake their lives; they wished to pass into the divine underworld without a prolonged death.”
All the bodies in one place, the uniform decay, and the state they were in.
“My people we’re aware of that if they were not found by survivors of our own race, it would be some time before we we’re found at all, and we wanted to make sure there was something left to find.”
“They did it too themselves.” Quorbin held is weight against the console, tried to push out all the horrid images that decorated his mind like a hellish art gallery of nightmares. “Organic bodies might have decayed by now.”
“Despite the immense pain involved, my people decided to undergo (buzz) petrifaction so that when someone did arrive-“
“HOW CAN YOU HEAR US?” Terra’s shout not only refocused Quorbin to the hologram, but caused his expression to change to one of frustrated inquiry that matched Terra’s. The hologram had stopped talking, proving it was in fact responding to the two explorers. Still, it took a hesitant moment, before its eyes moved to meet with Terra’s.
“I have been monitoring your communication channel since your signals began my message.”
“It scanned me.” Quorbin looked at the palms and back of his hands, as though he might spot some residue of the blue light that monitored the hand signals he input. Before Terra could speak Quorbin’s mind processed the illuminated miniature’s existence and responded. “Wait I know what this is, I remember they taught it….” Quorbin closed his eyes for a split second before another snap-point at the hologram caused its proportionally large eyes to flick to Quorbin, its expression a subtle hint of annoyance at the gesture. “They didn’t have concepts of stuff like books, I mean they had writing and all, but information was all passed down word of mouth, so when they developed advanced systems and computers they made the interfaces these kind of projections, it’s how they interacted with technology, with pseudo-A.I. constructs, I’ve never even heard of one so advanced or intact before though.”
“This temple was a laboratory for more advanced constructs as you call them. I was a prototype developed towards the end of my people’s existence, soon after my completion I was asked to carry out my people’s last wishes. I am not however, if I interpret you correctly, pseudo anything, my people prided themselves on creating their first artificial intelligence.”
“Actually though, how are you interpreting us, our language wasn’t even invented till after your race was gone.” Quorbin was ever the curious scientist, almost cutting-off sentences of answers with more questions. The hologram made a face that seemed to portray confusion.
“I assumed you were using this language because it was from the database of Lights.”
“The wha?” Mystery and intrigued seemed to build with every moment spent in the presence of this new life-form. Quorbin was still processing all the possibilities of this short yet profound sentence, but Terra had her own questions.
“Why did you put your temple backslash lab in an asteroid in the middle of a debris field floating through an abyss? And I thought you were good cave builders why make it so insecure?” Terra was still less in the moment then Quorbin, so sarcasm was still seeping from her words as it usually flowed from Quorbin’s. The hologram moved its focus to Terra again, forming another look of confusion.
“I think you have misunderstood. This was the Kaliback Temple complex, located in the mountains of the same name, in the northern hemisphere of my people’s home world.”
“Terra…” She looked at Quorbin as her jaw began to descend, his expression was dry, but still through eyes that had not had time to fully recover from watering; again she realized he had already thought ahead. “Giant debris field in the middle of nowhere, all the pieces moving the same speed because they were made at the same time…” Terra finally entered the moment shared by Quorbin, the moment that even one who had the least regard for history would feel sacred in. “No one could ever find the Quardroburian home world.”
The temperature in the asteroid was in the first 50’s Kelvin. Terra’s suit was lined with multiply systems designed to warm her and protect her from the emptiness of space. If the suit had malfunctioned in this regard, aside from many alarms being set off, and if the safety systems had failed, she would have frozen at a temperature no life form she knew of was meant to live in. Terra knew all this, but in this moment there was chill that reached her to the bone, and she felt cold.
