The Menagerie 2 (Eden) (4 page)

In the hologram’s center, pulsating in an indescribable color, was an isosceles-shaped construction resembling the ruins they now stood in. It was fractional compared to the entire structure, less than two percent. Yet the pulsations within the schematics indicated that the area was receiving a power source of some type.

“As you can see by this diagram,” stated O’Connell, “the schematic is reacting to the only remnant of the ship that’s still active. The problem is we can’t find the power source. No engines, no cells, reactors or solar panels—nothing. The only thing left is pure energy. But the question is: how do we harness something like that? How do we harness pure energy?” He turned to Alyssa. “That’s where you come in, Ms. Moore.”

“Me? I don’t know anything about physics or science. I just read symbols and decipher the languages behind them.”

“Exactly,” he answered. He returned to the holographic image and, tapping the mushroom cap on the console, was able to zoom in to the pulsating image. “Their written language is printed throughout the ship,” he said, centering on the glowing illustration of the remnant until it was a lone diagram. “It’s up to you to determine their meanings and piece their language together. The writings bear the same likeness to the symbols you discovered in Eden—exactly the same, which gives you the advantage to unlock their meaning in order to open up a trove of scientific data.” 

She looked at the holographic image and touched it with the point of her forefinger. She felt the faintest charge of static electricity, an imperceptible sensation.

“Can you do it, Ms. Moore?”

“Sequencing will take time,” she said. “The symbols may be similar, but languages evolve over time. And in this case we’re talking about an evolutionary change that might have taken place for over sixty-four million years—if it’s the same language at all.”

“The writings throughout this ship are believed to be instructions or captions for the managing crew, but we’re not exactly sure. But one thing is for certain, Ms. Moore. If we can decipher the language, then we can expedite matters. Right now our teams of scientists are having a difficult time gathering the data necessary to reverse engineer this craft.”

Just then the ship began to vibrate, a tremor really, the effects of an aftershock.

“It’s been doing that quite often,” said O’Connell. “But it passes.”

“And how often is often?” asked Savage.

“Two, maybe three times daily.”

Savage could tell that O’Connell wasn’t being completely honest. If the seabed was soft enough and the tremors large enough, then the vessel could pull free from the wall and sink to the bottom of the crater, more than five miles.

Savage gave O’Connell a steely-eyed glare, knowing that government often deceived those by telling them what they needed to hear in order to achieve the ultimate goal, regardless of the dangers involved. There was no doubt in Savage’s mind that they were in a precarious position; one that O’Connell was obligated to risk his life for in order to achieve the means. Everyone on board, he suddenly realized, was expendable.

Time was undoubtedly of the essence.

“In order to aid you in your efforts, Ms. Moore, I had my technicians go through the ship and catalogue every symbol in their given sequences. I hope this will help.”

“It should, yes.”

When O’Connell waved his hand over the mushroom gem, the image disappeared. “Now if you’ll follow me,” he said.

They came to a doorway that was oddly designed. But Alyssa recognized it immediately.

She walked to the doorway and noted the myriad of symbols etched into the framework surrounding the teardrop opening. A vast majority of the cryptograms she didn’t recognize. Few on the crossbar, however, were enough to piece together a meaning.

ALL LIFE UNDER ONE

After stepping back from the door, she appraised its framework.

“Do you see something of importance, Ms. Moore?”

“Don’t you see it?” she asked.

Savage and O’Connell took to study.

The framework had uniqueness to it, something Savage had seen before.

It was an Egyptian Ankh. It was upside down, however, which gave it new meaning due to its positioning. And then she took a closer look at the lettering in the door’s framework by tracing a fingertip along the etched grooves of lettering.   

“Do you know what this is?”

“An Ankh,” replied Savage.

“And this has meaning?” asked O’Connell.

“In Egypt
it’s a symbol of life after life. But upside down it’s believed to be the key to life. The teardrop shape at the bottom is symbolic of the womb. The writings along the framing of the doorway has to have meaning behind the interpretation along the crossbar.”

“You have deciphered the crossbar?”

She nodded. “I’ve seen this script before. In Egypt , inside the steppe pyramids in South America . . . in Eden.”

“And what does it say?”

“All life under One.”

“Does that have meaning?”

She shrugged. “Obviously. But to what? One command? One ship? One place? One God? I’m sure the answers are within the characters in the vertical beam. But I don’t recognize the symbols.” She desperately felt the need to stay behind and study the clues. But on the other hand she knew time was limited. And then: “Do you have these symbols marked down for me?” she asked O’Connell.

He nodded. “Everything has been recorded.”

Then perhaps another time
, she considered.

Before leaving the room she tried to remember their designs of delicate cursive that was truly archaic, and then left the area, hunkering down to enter a doorway that was hardly made for a person of her height.

#

The incline was
slight as O’Connell led them forward. Like elsewhere, the walls were dark and oily in appearance but dry to the touch. The walkway was made of an alien composite that resembled metal grating. The latticework gave off a green phosphorescent glow that lit the way.

“The area we are about to enter,” O’Connell began, “is under the tightest security. You do the job you’ve been tasked to do and say nothing unless it’s to me or to the people who sit behind a bigger desk than mine. And this goes without question.”

At the end of the tunnel an aura of white light appeared from the edges of the archway, beyond that—a pristine white room. The textured walls were gone, the ceilings here high.

When Alyssa entered the area a massive form stood before her, intrusive and menacing with eyes that were blood red, no pupils, staring at her from a head that was bonelike and armored. Its jaw was hinged and protruding, showcasing a bottom row of conical-shaped teeth that were honed to a razor’s sharpness. And its musculature was framed by an exoskeleton that outlined every curve and fiber of muscle, its body completely armored.

Alyssa brought a hand to her chest and felt a sudden hitch in the beat of her heart—a misfire as the creature never took its eyes off her.

Savage grabbed her to steady her balance.

“It’s all right, Ms. Moore,” said O’Connell. “It’s not alive.”

Whatever it was it was a humanoid, a bipedal form about eight feet in height, a bred warrior of its race.

The alien hominid was standing inside a glass-less display case, the creature unmoving. Beyond it were rows upon rows of display cases of different sizes and shapes to accommodate their inhabitants, the rows stretching the length of the entire room which was the distance of an aircraft carrier from end to end.

O’Connell raised his hand toward the cases. “Welcome to the Menagerie,” he said.

Welcome.

CHAPTER SIX

The humanoid stood as still as a Grecian statue within its closure, the creature having been perfectly preserved over time.

Its body was sexless and covered completely by a bony exoskeleton that detailed every muscular attribute akin to the features of a bodybuilder. Its head was scale-like in its texture, with thick bony protrusions for brows and a hinged jaw line. Its wide shoulders and massive chest were heavily armored by the natural accouterments of thick bone, a birthright granted by its DNA. Its right forearm was a formidable weapon, the armor bearing natural spikes that were long and sharp and deadly. Its right forearm was thicker and more massive, more like an inborn shield to ward off blows. This creature, by design, was born to be a fighter of its race.

O’Connell circled the isolation chamber with his hands clasped behind the small of his back. “This is just one of many perfectly preserved specimens,” he commented.

Alyssa reached out to touch it. But the closer her hand got to the creature the more resistance she encountered, the opposition becoming too great until a force repelled her hand. “I don’t understand,” she said. “There’s no glass panel separating us. I should be able to touch it. But something’s holding me back.”

O’Connell stepped forward and looked into the creature’s pupil-less eyes that contained no white. “The third rule of Newton’s Law of Motion,” he stated. “For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. There is an obvious force field that we cannot see, touch, smell or sense in any way. But it exists.” O’Connell brought his hand up to touch the hominid, only for his hand to reach so far before it was unable to reach any further. “Right now there’s an energy field pushing back,” he said. “I can only reach so far before it counters my action with a reaction. It’s a protective shield that surrounds all the specimens. So far we haven’t figured out a way to penetrate or breach it in any way. It exists, even though we can’t relate to it with any of the senses.”

Alyssa took a step closer. “Amazing,” she said. “Its body. It’s a natural formation of an exoskeleton.”

Savage moved beside her with curious study. “And to think that we were arrogant enough to believe that we were the only ones existing on our level when life actually existed elsewhere in much more than the form of a microbe or a bacterium,” he said.

O’Connell went to the side of the chamber. On its base was another mushroom gem. He waved his hand over it.

Three holographic diagrams appeared in the air in front of the chamber, each image displayed side by side of each other. They were well defined and clear. But the holograms were still translucent. On the suspended image to the left was a three-dimensional grid-like pattern of the creature, the rotating likeness reminiscent of Da Vinci’s Vitruvius Man, its arms and legs spread out with alien script and captions denoting certain physical aspects. The second holographic chart was a picture of an unchartered galaxy, the creature’s point of origin. And the third of a rotating planet within that galaxy, surmised to be the creature’s world.

O’Connell pointed to the second image. “We believe this illustration to be its point of origin. It’s a galaxy that none of our astronomers recognize. It’s just one of several yet to be discovered by our means or capabilities.” He hesitated as if mulling something over. And then: “We really haven’t traveled far from cradle Earth, have we? What’s humbling is that we really are insignificant in the scheme of all things.”

Savage reached out with the tip of his forefinger and touched the hologram. The image rippled in concentric waves quite similar to the surface of water after a stone is cast into its depths. And then the image realigned itself, once again becoming still. “Wormholes,” he finally said. “Whoever navigated this craft had to use wormholes in order to get from one galaxy to the next.”

“Precisely,” said O’Connell. “This race obviously used wormholes as easily as we open a door to get to the next room. Whereas we are on the cusp of theorizing that such doorways exist, these images and these creatures, the places they come from, proves all that. There’s no way that a ship can travel from one stretch of the universe to the other and collect all these specimens in a lifetime—in ten dozen lifetimes.”

“Unless they were able to bend time,” Savage completed.

Alyssa looked at Savage and was quite impressed:
Well, look at you. My little scientist
.