[Plot Thread 3.1] Opening Doors

[Shameless]

Ryan, finally realizing the others were actually there, he'd heard the shocked screams but they'd not really registered against he and Deezy actually being back in the Object.   He released Deezy now that they were standing on the floor, and he looked to Grant.   "Exactly what I said.   That was what I was told by the entity that I just finished conversing with.  If I had to hazard a guess, it was a control AI left to manage this station.  Before I could ask anything further, I was sent back here."

[Nina]

Grant looked at Karensky and then at the two Novas then at everyone else, he made a decision. 

 

"Clear the object, just drop what ever you are doing and get back to the habitat. This is now a military operation. Ryan can you open a gateway for these people to get back to the habitat station?"

 

Ryan looked at the screen which showed the human station some five kilometers away, "I can but I'm not sure..."

 

Grant held up his hand to stop Ryan's protest, "You just told me an alien put this here to cull the dominant species of Earth. Last time I checked that dominant species was us. So we need to get these people off this thing and then you, Deezy, and I need to go somewhere for debriefing."

[SalmonMax]

Deezy rolled her eyes and rocked her head back as if punched.

 

"No," she said. "He said it was put here to watch us so that we could be culled. Presumably when and if we hit a certain level of population, or development..." She waved a hand airily. "It doesn't matter, because it never happened. Whoever set this here either never responded to the signal, or the platform malfunctioned before the signal could be sent. Either way, in the vernacular...it broke."

 

"The worst thing in the world you could do right now is kick us off though. We're literally the only way you'll ever learn anything about this thing. All you'll have is questions, and you'll start filling in the questions with answers you made up when you can't find answers yourself. Pretty soon you'll feel like the only REAL answer is 'blow it up,' and THAT is where this whole thing gets WAY out of hand."

 

She took a deep breath and held her hands out, palms out, taking a couple of deep breaths.

 

"Tellya what. Just give us...an hour. One hour to work and get some preliminary results, then see what you think. Okay?"

[Shameless]

Ryan looked at Grant and Deezy, and sighed.   "Alright, look, let's get everyone but the four of us off the station.   Then you give us an hour to continue trying to find out whatever we can.   You two remain to observe, that way no one can say you just left us here unsupervised.  Then we go back somewhere secure for the debriefing you want., also you said "He?"   The entity you interacted with was male?  The one I interacted with was female."

He looked at Grant.   "As Deezy said, this platform was a watcher, but it was watching another system, one that is likely planetside, or still in orbit and . hidden.   It is that system that would be responsible for sending the signal to cull the dominant species of the planet.  Taking us away now, when we've actually begun to learn something, that's a mistake.   Consider what we've already done, already learned today, up till now.   Give us the time."

Edited June 15, 2021 by Shameless

[Nina]

Grants hold his hands up  in a stop gesture, "Wait, wait...are you saying that there are two different alien's here?" He look's at all the scientists who are staring at him and Ryan and then at Karensky, "Victor," he says impatiently, "get your people off this object!"

 

Karensky  begins ushering them out to where their suits are and looks at Grant who shakes his head. "You to Victor." Victor nods and follows his people out.

 

"Alright, Ryan, Miss Klatta, I want you to tell me everything before Dr Ross starts asking me questions, don't leave anything out cause i can promise you there are nukes aimed at us right now and Dr Ross won't hesitate."

[SalmonMax]

"Probably not two different aliens," Deezy sighs, rubbing the bridge of her nose. Or trying to, because she had a suit on.

 

"More likely just some kind of AI interface that decided to appear in different forms. Maybe naively assuming we'd be more positively inclined towards an opposite sex figure? I mean, it's incredibly unlikely the people that built this thing were 'humanoid' in configuration, unless there's variables in play I know nothing about."

 

She looked around the compartment then and considered. "Though...they can't have been TOO far off, looking at how this place is set up. Maybe a little bigger? Need to take measurements..."

 

Then Deezy's eyes widened.

 

"Oh wait, wow yeah. Okay. Yeah. Probably at least two different alien factions. Nothing in here looks anything like the tunnels under Egypt. Completely different! Argh, I need to get back there!"

 

Edited June 16, 2021 by SalmonMax

[Shameless]

Ryan nodded, and at Grant's request opened a gate to send everyone but the three of them back to the base once they were suited up.   Once this was done,  he sighed.   "Ok, so it's just the three of us.  We don't know if it's another alien race or not, we do know of one for sure.   The entity, or entities that we spoke with, I think Deezy is right, that they're some sort of AI interface.   As for nuking this place, we're air force, Grant, we learn before we blow the hell out of something.  We're not the Army or the Marines." 

 

Edited June 16, 2021 by Shameless

[Nina]

Grant holds his hand up again to stop the two Novas, his other hand goes to his ear. "I'm here...Yes, the object had been activated.....the... ah Nova we brought up...it responded to his presence. Yes...no, but there are complications and the possibility of a threat.... I don't know. Look I have two Novas here who are on our side and I think they may be able to figure this out.... Right....right...ok."

 

Grant takes a deep breath and blows it out, looks at Deezy and Ryan, "Okay, you two have one hour to get me something concrete I can give to H.E.R.O. after that we have to report there for a debrief."

[Shameless]

Ryan looked over to Deezy, and nodded.  "where do you want to start?"

While waiting for her answer, he looked back to Grant.   "HERO's an acronym I don't recognize.   I'm guessing it's another classified secret, though since you're talking about use being debriefed there after this, why not give us a heads up."

He was already thinking, both about HERO, and about Object.   He contemplated trying to activate the ship again, but they had to be careful now, and they were on a timer.

[SalmonMax]

"Lets start with the fundamentals," Deezy answered thoughtfully. "Like...just what is this stuff?"

 

She went over to one of the bulkheads that separated the interior of the bridge from the vacuum of space and put a hand on the smooth metal.

 

"What kind of senses can you bust out here, Ryan? Mass? Physical dimensions? You must have something like that to wrap spacetime around stuff without taking detailed measurements first..."

 

The inventor closed her eyes as she spoke and concentrated. Extending her powers as if she was going to transmute the substance of the space station, but at the last second...not transmuting it. Rather, the normally-subconscious process that told her mind what the composition of the substance was, and therefore how to change it, surfaced within her awareness...

[Shameless]

Ryan sighed. 'It's an instinct if you must know.   Though it is much much easier with places I've already been.   That's why I traveled so much."    He began by inspecting the walls, looking for anything that might have been missed, especially any form of symbols.

It was true that opening his gateways took immense spatial calculations, or at least that they should, but his body, his power had basically negated the need for them.  What he did, he did through almost sheer Willpower, though that wasn't something he was going to admit somewhere it was being recorded.

[Nina]

While Ryan was growing frustrated and showing it, Deezy was also being frustrated but to her it was amazing.

 

She ran her fingers over the surfaces of the control room careful not to touch any of the controls this time and was baffled. She could discern the various things that made the material of the ship up but could only identify about a quarter of them. And that was down to the molecular level. The object was artificial down to its constituent components everything had been made, no created, she was sure of that, and more importantly, it was all one construction!

 

Ryan followed along behind Deezy as she absentmindedly went out into the corridor and along it is running fingers along the wall. Who built a machine and didn’t label anything that just asking for a disaster?

 

Deezy stopped. This was different. Part of the wall blank in appearance but in make up it was completely different, the first difference she had felt. There was aspot that resembled the gel from the control room except this was solid, a part of the wall…

[Nina]

Deezy lifted her hand and was about to touch the gel spot but hesitate. She turned her head to catch Ryan’s eye. “Hey I found a spot like where we put our hands in the control column. Should I, you know touch it?”

 

Ryan moved up beside her and took a deep breath puffing out his cheeks, then let the air out slow all he saw was wall. “Well, we aren’t getting anywhere by just walking around.”

 

Deezy nodded and placed her hand on the spot on the wal. At first nothing happened, then the wall expanded outward from that point to engulf her hand and forearm all the way up to her elbow. She flinched and attempted to jerk her arm away on reflex, but it didn’t budge, then she felt something solid in her hand. She closed her fingers around it and did her substance analysis it was the same material as the rest of the ship. It felt like a handle floating in the middle of the goop. She pulled and it did not move, then she pushed, and it did. It moved forward about two inches and then stopped with a solid thunk she could feel but not hear. On instinct she turned and was rewarded not only with movement but with the disappearance of a portion of the wall. It was a door!

 

The two humans entered the room. It was not large, about twenty feet from wall to wall and in a flattened circular shape, the light was of a purplish hue and soft. The center of the room had a pedestal about six feet across and two foot high, also in the flattened circle shape. Lining the walls were sixteen smaller pedestals about four feet across and only six inches or so high. Several of the wall pedestals held what looked like aliens, floating in a colored energy field which was projected by the pedestal. Some of the fields were greenish, a few were a orange-yellow and two were pulsing red.  One was soft white and attracted the eye quickly for it was something they both recognized. The creature floating in the field was a hominid, a small primate which Deezy said was an type of Australopithecus from about 4.5 to 5 million years old. Othe other creatures in the fields were decidedly not human or humanoid in the least.

[SalmonMax]

Deezy's eyes widened at the sight and she quickly ran down the length of the room, then back, giving each creature a good look as she did.

 

"Oh my god, please let them be dead please let them be dead..."

 

After a moment she closed her eyes and reached out with her powers, mentally interrogating the molecules and atoms of the room to see what their states were. Living creatures, even in stasis, should have some kind of metabolism...chemical processes that changed the materials in their body into other materials.

 

Immediately she hit interference though, and grimaced. It was kind of a similar feel to talking into a fan that was in motion...a skipping, blurring sort of 'blade' that kept intermittently blocking whatever 'signal' her power was using to gather information. More interesting was that she had no sense of what the blade 'was,' which implied all sorts of things, since she should be able to sense any kind of matter. Even most forms of energy should have effects on the environment that would reveal it.

 

It was hard to maintain her focus, harder still to comprehend the scattershot data her powers gave her through the interference, but Deezy, somehow, managed to find a way to compensate for it. Modulating her power to a series of pulses rather than a continuous 'stream,' and then timing the pulses to the period of the interference, she managed to cut through. The results came pouring in.

 

She opened her eyes and looked around.

 

"They're not real," the inventor concluded. "They're static interference patterns, contained in some kind of...phenomenon. Exotic energy of some kind. I guess you could think of them as holograms, but they're really not...that's just a convenient shorthand. But..."

 

Deezy trailed off as the pedestal in the center of the room light up, and a much larger version of the creature she was examining appeared hovering over it. And hovering in the air on both sides of the new image was...text. Alien text of course, unintelligible, but for the first time there was a written language.

 

"Oh wow," giggled Deezy. "It's an interface. Like...a detail view?" She hurried over and the floating symbols moved to stay oriented so she could read them.  She reached out to 'touch' some of the text on the right hand side, where the symbols were arranged in regular lines...a distinct difference from the left side, where the symbols were jumbled in larger chunks.

 

As her finger crossed a line, the text on the left shimmered and shifted. Then the image over the pedestal itself changed. It's virtual skin vanished, displaying a detailed view of the musculature underneath.

 

"It's...a menu," Deezy whispered, eyes wide. She looked back at Ryan. "We're going to need more than an hour. This stuff...with a little time we can translate this! And an interface...once we know how to read it and manipulate it, we can see if we can use it to access other systems! You know the mlitary...go talk to them! We're going to need to explore ALL of this thing! See if we can access other interfaces! We'll need more samples of the language...but the fact that one of these is a hominid means it's a Rosetta Stone, kind of. We can use it to establish a basic vocabulary, at least in reference to hominid body parts. With more samples, and...and time...we can figure this thing out. This WHOLE THING!"

[Shameless]

Ryan smiled as Deezy grew more and more excited as she spoke and seeing the language, it was among the first things he could contribute to.  "Now this is pretty amazing."    Still his enhanced spatial senses alerted him to one thing Deezy had missed.   The Room they were in was large, far moreso than it really could have been.  "Deezy, as amazing as all of this, of everything else you've discovered, Which I will turn all my attention to deciphering the language in a moment.   This room can't be in the ship.  At least two thirds of it would extend beyond the hull, and from my memory of the outside tour, there's no protrusion like that here.  That leads me to think they can bend space, or maybe even create a pocket dimension, in which they can control everything."

He looked at her, and at the Menu.   "Let's just go through each item of the menu.  There's a good chance that will give us a fair amount of linguistic samples, enough that we can do something with the language.  We've got an hour, let's explore, and then go back.   Just finding this, and recording it.."  He smiled  "Maybe you can do something about that, recording all of this, it might help to have when we go to speak with the government, while I work on the translation."

In truth, it was all amazing, ancient tech left by alien races, and a part of him just wanted to study it, even with his limited frame of reference.  But he knew his biggest contribution would be deciphering the language, it was an ability no one really knew he possessed, and thus far, it had only ever worked with terrestrial languages, so this would be interesting, as he began studying the symbols there.

[SalmonMax]

"Right right we already knew they could do that from the penalty box," Deezy complained. "What we NEED is to access the systems they use to DO it because as far as WE know the only way to fold space like that requires exotic matter no one's ever seen before and only exists in mathematics, OR planet-sized quantities of energy. As in...an entire planet's mass converted directly to energy. EITHER WAY, their method will change. Everything we know. Forever."

 

She paused.

 

"And ever. So get cracking. Don't even worry about recording, this suit of mine has instruments for that."

[Nina]

“Just wait a minute,” Grant interrupted the two overly excited Novas who were acting like kids in a toy store. “I know that all of this is important but we have protocols and one of them is us being debriefed by HERO after contact with an Alien. So, as long as this place doesn't start shooting at us, we won't blow it up, and you two can come back later. Right now we need to get back down to Earth and have our debrief. Okay?”

 

Reluctantly, after a further brief argument, Ryan and Deezy relented. Grant led them back into the control room and to the communications section that had been installed by the humans. “Remember none of this is proprietary to the US we share everything with the associate nations involved with the Object so while we are being debriefed by a US entity, any shareable information will be made available to our allies.”

 

“What exactly is Hero? I am not familiar with that one,” said Ryan.

 

Grant pointed at a screen which showed a vast cavern under ground somewhere, lit by light mounted on a white rock ceiling. One end of the cavern was even more well lit and had a armored guard post and guarded a massive door, much like the entrance to Cheyenne Mountain, which Ryan was familiar with.

 

“Stands for Homland Emergency Reaction and Enforcement. It was put together before the storm as a consolidated security department meant to reduce the need to involve the military in Anti-Terrorist activity. After the Storm it was re-purposed. Can you take use there, Ryan.”

 

Ryan studied the screen and let his spatial sense flow through the signal connecting the here with the there. “Its deep underground and water?” Ryan shakes his head at the incongruity, “Yeah I can get us ther.”

 

A few minutes later, after Grant warned HERO that they were coming, the three stepped through Ryan's Warp and were at H.E.R.O. Headquarters.

 

Built in the nineteen seventies at the height of the cold war but never used was a central command center located deep under Lake Michigan in a hitherto undiscovered cavern located underneath a huge salt mine. When it was decided that HERO needed a secure remote headquarters someone remembered this place and it was reopened completely modernized and HERO moved in.

 

Ryan, Deezy, and Grant were given visitors badges and signed a series of NDAs were eventually led to a comfortable office where they met a woman they all recognized from the televised Senate hearings on the Storm and its effects, Dr. Andrea Ross.

 

After the introductions she asked them a series of simple questions and eventually allowed them to tell her what had transpired on the Object in their own way and time, with her only asking questions for clarification. She listened raptly and was very animated showing excitement almost on par with the two novas. When the mention of tunnels in Africa cropped up this peaked her interest even more and she coaxed Deezy to elaborate which after a moments hesitation she did. “Interesting..” She brought out a flexi pad and pulled up a detailed and up to date map of the northern African continent and asked them to show her where the tunnels were, and how they extended under the new Utopian State.

 

After they were finished telling her she leaned back in her chair and pondered the information. “This is a lot of information Miss Klatta, Mr.Hawke, lot of very important stuff here. Particularly the revelation of these tunnels in Africa.” She seemed to stare off into space lost in thought.

 

Doctor Andrea Ross  

 

[SalmonMax]

"Yes! Well...so here's the thing with those. I don't know if the Utopians found them or not, but given what happened down there, it seems very likely that any of them with enhanced senses, or if they have advanced their tech much, could have easily detected the surge that knocked us out. At the time I thought it was most likely the work of prehistoric quantum-enhanced humans...but now I'm revising that theory. The pulse that knocked us out was replicated on the space station very precisely. The complex in Egypt could easily be some kind of ground-based observation post. It's even well placed to watch the ancient civilization of Egypt."

 

She took a deep breath.

 

"And what that MEANS is that the Utopians have some kind of access to this alien tech. I'm not completely familiar with all the novas that joined them yet, but...and not toot my own horn..." she laughed, "...but me and Ryan are the only edge we have. That and the fact that if it IS a ground observation post, it's likely they don't have NEARLY as much tech in it. They'd have wanted to keep it low-key. Even so, I'm sure they have some enhanced brains to analyze the site. Fortunately, this is basically my specialty. If there's anyone in the world that'd be better for analyzing and reverse-engineering extraterrestrial technology, I don't know about them."

[Nina]

Dr. Ross smiled at Deezy during Deez's speech, "Never crossed my mind,  that you would be , how was that, tooting your own horn. I'm well aware of your capabilities and if you weren't with NOVASTORM and Layton Industries, I'd be doing my best to get you here at HERO.

 

Back to these tunnels though, and this, lets say alien installation, from what you are saying I gleaned that you never actually reached the installation. Am I correct?"

 

Both Ryan and Deezy looked a little sheepish at this question. "No ma'am," answered Ryan, "we came up to a blockage and when we tried to clear it that's when we were knocked out."

 

"Can you show me on the surface map about how far from the coast you had gotten?"

 

Ryan looked at the map and pointed to a spot north of Daklha in the Western Sahara and about a hundred miles of the coast. “We entered here the depth was 1000 feet, tunnel drove straight east, we were never actually under the territory claimed by Utopia we found the break into the lower set of tunnels here about  a hundred and fifty miles inland from the coast. Those tunnels went south-south east. We went about seventy-five miles in those tunnels when we ran into the blockage and were stopped.”  As Ryan indicated positions on the map lines appeared and annotations conveying what he was saying showed up on the margins.

 

“Harold come in here please.” Dr Ross spoke into the air. A few moments late and man in his mid-forties entered the room, he was tall and thin, unremarkable wearing glasses, a tweed coat, and a bow tie.

 

“This is Harold Sullivan, he is one of our lead analysts and has been working on Storm origins,’ explained Dr Ross. “What do you think Harold?”

 

“I wish we would have known about all of this six months ago. But that tunnel is heading straight toward the structure. Straight toward ground zero.”

[Shameless]

"Structure?  Ground zero?"   "So I imagine that refers to a facility, or structure as you put it, and you've traced back the energies that caused the Storm, and everything since, to this place?"

Ryan's voice betrayed no emotion, though he did frown.  "Just to complicate things even further..."

Ryan let out a sigh, and his frown remained.  "I imagine you want to organize a mission to explore that structure now?"

[Nina]

"No not quite," Harold Sullivan shook his head. But it was Ross who explained. "When the Storm occurred one of the freakish things, among so many others, was the seeming instantaneous appearance of the storm Globally. It wasn't until we managed to re-establish contact with some of our high end satellites that we noticed a discrepancy. While it seemed to have erupted world wide instantaneously an energy wave which we believe imitated the Storm was discovered. This wave was unlike anything any of our scientists have ever seen and it moved about six times faster than light. That is actually how we detected it. We traced its origin to right there," Ross points at the map, "the Richat Structure, the Eye of the Sahara."

 

Harold had clicked the map bringing up a new map and then an image.

 

     

 

Then he spoke, "This structure was first described in the nineteen-thirties, an unusual phenomena, probably the extinct caldera of an ancient volcano. But there have always been mysteries associated with it. Some people think it may have been the site of a Real Atlantis though no archeological basis exist for that. The US did some research on it in the sixties and seventies, Atmospheric anomalies had been reported in the area since aircraft first started flying over it, but nothing conclusive was discovered.

 

Really  ntil today and your tale, we had no idea that there probably was something underneath it."

 

Ross folds her arms across her chest. "I don't think Utopia knows about it. For one they didn't lodge any complaints against Layton or the US for violating their territory, although that could be because you never got that far. But if there is something there and those old tunnels seem to indicate that there is. Then I am sure they would have annexed Mauritania as well and they haven't. Plus I don't have a file on that Nova you say interviewed you, and we are pretty sure we have at least visual and baseline IDs on all the Utopia members. At least the important ones."

[SalmonMax]

Deezy nodded, thinking.

 

"Then we need to act fast...but quietly. We don't want to alert them to our interest. No official channels, as small a team as we can get away with. Ryan can get us there untraceably, and we can get supplies and housing with cash once we're there."

 

"So the question is...who's going? Me and Ryan, obviously, but since we have no idea what's down there it'd be good to have some backup. Nobody too famous though." She nodded at Ross. "I assume you'll want someone there too."

[Shameless]

He looked at Deezy.   "Wait, nobody's said anything about actually sending a mission there yet, aside from you. Now yes, i'm down to go too, but let's think about what we do know, and what could happen first.   We'd be invading a foreign country, looking to find and infiltrate a facility we have next to no information about.   What happens if through our presence we activate the facility?  That will draw Utopia's attention for sure.  Just the two of us, and even a small team, couldn't keep them out if they came in force.   Hell it could cause another Storm with another energy pulse.  We don't know what that would do to the world, or us."

"Let's think about all of this a little bit, before we just jump in feet first and damn the consequences."   Ryan said quietly, though he did want to go himself.   Someone had to be the voice of caution here, even if he had been the one to get the Object to react first.

Grant just looked at him.  "Yes, but I did ask permission first."

[SalmonMax]

Deezy rocked her head backwards and shook her head.

 

"Not invading a foreign country, Ryan! GOING to one! People do that all the time! We'll have passports, it'll be legit. Though usually they prefer it when people go through the border, but...you know, this is a brave new era. It'll be fine!"

 

"As for the facility...we'll have time to work that out while the arrangements are being made. It should be based on the same tech that's in the space station, so we'll figure out how it recognizes people, et cetera et cetera. The point is that...while I admire your cautious pessimism...we have exactly one chance to beat Utopia to this punch. If we don't, the only way to get at whatever's inside will be to pry it from their fingers."

 

She pursed her lips and whistled. "And hoo boy, if you don't like the risks NOW, then..."

[Shameless]

He nodded.  "Yes, it will be much messier to do if we wait too long."

He looked over to Dr. Ross.   "Well there you have it.   You've got two novas ready to dive into another mystery of the world and do what they can to unravel it.   If you want this to happen, I think you need to make a decision on your level of involvement."

He sighed.   "What I feel bad about is that this just continues to be something we can never talk about.   How do we answer if anyone asks what we're doing there?"