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CHAPTER 50

January 7, 2100 (Earth/Proxima timeline)

Proxima b, aka Fintidier

“As far as we can tell, there’s nothing wrong with them.” Yoko Pearl pointed out the last graph in her slideshow to the team.

“Really?” Charles Jesus whispered under his breath and to no one in particular. He had been expecting to find some disease or something. Charles had called an all-hands meeting, including the crew of the Samaritan who were connected virtually. As the ambassador from Earth, he, by default, had become the leader of Proxima One Embassy—at least that’s what they had been calling it. He figured that at some point they’d have to come up with an official name like the United Nations Embassy to Fintidier. But for now, Charles was fine with Proxima One Embassy.

“Doctors Nkrumah, Polkingham, I, and the medical team all agree. There is no known, or unknown and detectable, pathogen we can find, no genetic anomaly, nothing. The genetic makeup of the Fintidierians is identical to our own—which is miraculous, by the way—and suggests identical or connected origins. Even the local animals and plant life we’ve been able to sample show identical genetic origins, although they’ve evolved to slightly different species. There was a clear genetic origin for both our planets that, well, must have been from the same genetic samples. Our immune systems are slightly different due to evolution on separate planets, which is to be expected like the animals and plants evolving differently. Dr. Kopylova has something to say about that, but before he does, I have some other, very interesting news.”

“Don’t keep me in suspense.”

“As you knew before we left, life here is similar to that on Earth, but an independent parallel evolution creating humans so similar to us is a near impossibility. You are familiar with the basics of evolution, and you know that human reproduction creates children who are the combined product of the genes of their parents. These combinations are unique enough that genetic testing can confirm your identity perfectly, and the threads of these genes can be traced back through generations over thousands of years. Since genetic testing began we have created massive databases of genetic data for us humans, and also virtually all the other remaining species on Earth.

“Using this technology, we can determine whether you and, say, Dr. Gilster share a common ancestor, and can also estimate how long ago they lived, up to several thousand years back,” she said.

“Go on,” Charles prodded.

“We now have a Proximan genetic database too, thanks to samples we have taken. We compared it to our own Earth human database, and some of those samples suggest we share a common ancestor from about 50,000 to 75,000 years ago, most likely somewhere in Asia. Ancestors who strike out on their own to create a new line in a new place are called ‘founders’ in genetic terms.”

“You said some of the samples suggest a common ancestor. But not all, then?”

“Well, some may have founders older than that, up to two hundred thousand years ago or longer. But those with Asian ancestry are more closely related. Much more closely.”

“But how is that possible?”

“Honestly, we don’t know. We are starting to sequence as much of the flora and fauna here as we can, to see if it also relates to those on Earth. Maybe then we will have a rough family tree of sorts.”

“Thank you, Dr. Pearl.” Kopylova’s face appeared on the large data screen in the basketball gymnasium they used as the all-hands assembly location. Kopylova was currently on the ship at geostationary orbit above them, using the scanning electron microscope there. The team had yet to transport, unpack, and install the one meant for the lab at Proxima One—soon, very soon, there was just still a lot to be done.

Charles listened intently and made mental notes of who was on the surface and who was still on the ship and for what reasons. He understood the need to man the ship with at least a minimal crew, but if there was an issue of not getting equipment moved down in a timely manner, then he might need to suggest some prioritization. He’d give it time and see if the scientists figured it out for themselves. He listened as Kopylova continued.

“Doing a pathogen screen, and an immunity analysis, I’ve identified the disparate pathogens between us and have a vaccination protocol being developed for us and the Prox . . . uh . . . Finitidierians. The vaccine should be ready in a couple of days in a quantity enough for us and several hundred of the Fintidierian volunteers to come onto the complex. While none of us are currently infected with primary sickness, and the fact that we’ve been quarantined on the ship for almost seven or ten years relative, it is possible our immune systems are constantly defeating something within us that could be deadly to them and vice versa. We know that lower and microgravity exposure can weaken the immune response to certain Herpes viruses, like Shingles, for example. There are others that might become transferrable under certain intimate contact with the aliens . . . uh, Fintidierians . . . I don’t know what to call them. So, I suggest we implement the vaccine protocols as soon as possible.”

“That is good news, Mak,” Crosby chimed in virtually. “Right, Commander?”

“Agreed,” Rogers replied. “We’ve been wanting to do some exploration, even to remote areas that aren’t populated, but the excuse we get from the Fintidierians is that they want to maintain the general isolation and control any exposure that may occur.”

“I didn’t realize. I’ll push that,” Charles said. “Dr. Kopylova, is it possible to spread something to the Fintidierians if we traveled to an unpopulated area?”

“I don’t see how,” Kopylova said. “What are you thinking?”

“Commander Rogers, could you conduct manned recon in the OSAMs without being detected by their radar systems?” Charles asked.

“Hahaha!” Victor Tarasenko laughed out loud and the screen switched to his face. “What radar systems? They have not invented them yet. Or maybe, they have the idea in a lab somewhere, but there are no radars being implemented on this planet or we would have detected them with the satellites.”

“Okay, then. I’ll authorize away missions for data gathering as long as we stay out of sight, to unpopulated regions, and as long as we don’t get caught. I’ll have to deny ever having given permission to you if the secretary general asks,” Charles said. “So, be prepared for a public slap on the wrist if you get caught.”

“Understood, Mr. Ambassador,” Commander Rogers replied. “Been there and done that.”

“Is there some place you’d like to go?” Charles asked.

“Not me,” Rogers replied. “My job is to go where ordered.”

“Yes, there is!” Dr. Alma Jones’s face appeared on the screen as she stood in the bleachers so everyone in the gym could see where she was. That wasn’t actually necessary as much as tradition. Their individual AIs would quickly handshake and point out the locations of whoever they were looking for. Old habits sometimes took a long time to filter out of culture.

The AI drone flying silently in the gym readjusted itself to get a better view of her for the video conference. Charles noted in the bubble he could see above her head through his contacts that she was an expert in archaeology, archeoastronomy, theology, and anthropology. Of course, she would want to go exploring the planet.

“Dr. Jones?” He motioned for her to continue.

“Yes, look at these satellite images here.” She waved her hands about a bit and then tossed something toward the main screen set up at half court. “Here, see? Look in the southern region here of this continent.”

A globe of Proxima b, Fintidier, appeared and she started zooming in on a southern continent on the planet’s side farthest from their equatorial island continent. As the satellite image zoomed in, an area of heavy foliage appeared. It looked like one of the deepest, darkest jungles from anywhere in Africa or South or Central America on Earth.

“This jungle region here shows no signs of current habitation. Exhaustive infrared searches show only animal life and no human population. There are no roads, footpaths, dwellings, farms, or anything. It is currently, completely uninhabited. However, when we apply the foliage penetration filters in this region here, and overlay the lidar depth data, as well as the infrared data, we can see that there was clearly an ancient civilization here hundreds, maybe thousands of years ago,” Dr. Jones explained. “At first, I thought it would be easy to find stories about this ancient civilization in the library data the Fintidierians gave us. I wanted to know—and still do, spoiler alert—who were these people? We’ve collected a significant library of Fintidierian history books. We scanned them and have had the AIs go through all of them looking for any reference to this culture. There is none that we can find. According to the history that we’ve been given, this continent has always been uninhabited. Nonsense.”

“What are you thinking about this, Alma?” Rain Gilster asked. “A lost civilization or something?”

“Well, Rain, honestly, I just don’t know. But what I do know is that from all, not some, but every single one of the history records given to us by the Fintidierians, there is absolutely no reference, zero, zilch, nada, to an ancient culture on this continent.”

“Maybe they’ve yet to discover them?” Dr. Raheem Ramashandra suggested. “There is still debate about the age of various cultures on Earth.”

“Yes, this could just be a new discovery that our technology has enabled,” Dr. Jones offered. “But it might not be. All I can say is, perhaps there are clues there as to where these people came from. If we know where they’ve been . . . ”

“We might figure out where they are going?” Charles asked.

“Right,” Jones agreed. “But there’s more to this story.”

“More?” Charles asked.

“Yes, there is. Dr. Jenda actually had the idea,” Dr. Jones replied. “Tanya, would you mind?”

Charles looked as the screen changed to a tall, slender, black woman with very silky-smooth skin. Her eyes were a piercing ice blue. He didn’t have to look at his AI for her name because she was the kind of woman that when a man met her, he remembered. She had all the features of a runway model or a movie star. To top that off, she’d been nominated not once, but twice, for the Nobel Prize—once for economics and once for mathematics. Dr. Tanya Jenda from Tobago. Her expertise was economics and statistics and the history of macroscopic economies.

“Yes, thank you,” Dr. Jenda said in a very mild voice. “After hearing Dr. Jones’s discovery of this lost culture, I started thinking about our own history. Such locations always drive and fuel manifest destinies. Treasure hunters, thrill seekers, explorers, and the like always fuel the next economy. Just look how much economy we created with our insane adventure.”

“Hahaha!” Charles chuckled to himself quietly. “You ain’t kidding there.”

“Where are the ancient artifact hunters, the gold rush seekers, the explorers looking for treasure? If they were attempting to fly there, we would see runways nearby. So, they must be using naval vessels to go there if there are exploration activities in this area, right?”

“That makes sense, doesn’t it?” Alma Jones added.

“Yes, it would make sense,” Dr. Jenda agreed. “So, we looked for increases in naval-based economies in the southern hemisphere going on trade routes, exploration routes, or anything in this direction. There is nothing. Next, I took all of the satellite imagery data we have taken since arrival and had the AIs mark all naval traffic, as well as all aerial traffic. Granted, their technology is slow and it will really take several months more to map with certainty, so I needed more data. Therefore, I also had a library search done on all forms of traffic lanes noted in their history, literature, and even mythologies—of which they have few. I have here a map compiled from all their traffic. The blue dotted lines are current paths and expected trajectories. The red dotted lines are from current maritime law data. The green dotted lines are from historical documents. The purple dotted lines from literature. And the yellow dotted lines are from mythology.”

“That’s an impressive bit of work,” Victor Tarasenko said, a bit too loudly.

“What on earth?” Rain agreed.

“What are the odds of that?” Dr. Renaud asked.

“Very good question, Dr. Renaud,” Dr. Jenda replied and continued. “Clearly, you have all noticed that according to this data there is no traffic to this region out to at least one thousand kilometers’ radius from these ruins. This is what appears to be a quarantined zone or an off-limits zone for whatever reason.”

“What the hell?” Crosby’s face appeared on the screen briefly.

“Exactly.” Dr. Jones stood again as Dr. Jenda sat back down. “Thanks, Tanya. I’d have never thought about that approach. Brilliant investigation. But there’s more.”

“More?” Charles was so intrigued. He was on the edge of his seat at this point. “Please go on.”

“Once we figured this part out. The fact that there is an off-limits zone in the southern hemisphere of this planet that is almost two thousand kilometers in diameter is absolutely fascinating and clearly deliberate. For comparison, this area is a little larger than three million square kilometers. Texas is about six hundred and ninety-one thousand square kilometers. This spot is about four and a half times larger than Texas! Alaska is one point seven million square kilometers or so. The spot is almost twice the size of Alaska! Why? What happened here?”

“What did happen there?” Charles heard but didn’t bother taking his eyes off Dr. Jones to see who it was. This was absolutely fascinating and riveting.

“At this point I asked Victor to do a very detailed intelligence data sweep of the region,” Dr. Jones continued and then held out a hand pointing to the intel specialist. “Vic?”

“Yes, uh, thank you, Dr. Jones.” Tarasenko stood and started talking. “Following her direction, I started at the center of this circle and began a push-broom sweep with all sensors of the area. We now have data of this region down to centimeter accuracy across the spectrum. First, sensors show no signs of radioactivity or any such major catastrophe. What it does show us is this, right here. You can see scattered in large areas—larger than soccer fields, many of them—where the earth has been disturbed and then filled back over as mounds that are now grown over by vegetation. There are no spoils piles.”

“Pyramids?” from the audience.

“Ha! That is what I thought I was finding.” Tarasenko’s Russian accent rolled the words together. “But nyet. They are graves. Massive, massive, mass-grave sites. And there are many tens, maybe hundreds of them.”

“Grave sites! That many?” Dr. Faruq, theoretical physicist, asked.

“Dah, yes, and maybe there is more of them.” Tarasenko nodded his head in the affirmative. “I am still looking at the data. As of right now, the number of grave sites, and the size of them, I can’t be certain of the depth, but each of them are roughly rectangular pyramid shapes about one hundred meters on a side and at least fifty meters tall. Ground-penetrating radar suggests they are equally deep with a twenty percent error, perhaps. The volume of a rectangular pyramid this size is about three hundred thirty-three thousand cubic meters. If it is equally deep then the volume is six hundred sixty-six thousand cubic meters. A human body is about zero point zero seven five cubic meters. Allowing for dirt falling in, and sloppiness, we can say a body would take zero point one cubic meters of volume. This would mean that in each of these grave sites there are approximately six point six million bodies. Counting all the known sites suggests hundreds of millions of bodies and maybe as much as a billion or more!”

“Jesus Christ!”

“Allah be praised.”

“Holy shit.”

“So now you see.” Dr. Jones stood up, motioning a thank-you to Victor Tarasenko. “Now you see. Something, horrible, cataclysmic, dangerous, I don’t know what, happened there. We must go there and see what happened. It might be a clue as to why these people are dying off. Maybe it happened before.”

“Maybe there was a disease like the Black Plague in the Middle Ages?”

“Well, we will not know the answer until we go there and investigate. There is nothing about this in the Fintidierans’ literature, history, politics, culture. Nothing. They have either forgotten it or covered it up. Since there are actually no travel zones, it smells of cover up,” Dr. Jones finished. “Ambassador, it’s a clear imperative that we go and investigate this location.”

“I’d like to take a team there and investigate with you.”

“I’ll volunteer to go!”

Charles listened as most of the team discussed going and what might be the cause of such mass death and then what reasons there could be to cover it up. He listened for a few moments and then stood.

“Alright, let’s hold it down a bit,” he said. “First of all, the contents of this meeting are to be kept completely confidential to Earthlings only. I cannot emphasize this enough. Until we have more information, we had better not let on that we are investigating something that could be at the very heart of this culture’s deepest, darkest history. We could start an interstellar incident. Hell, they might just come kill us for our troubles.”

“We have to go. You realize this, right, Charles?” Jones pleaded with him.

“Calm down.” He waved a hand at her. “Of course we have to go. We have to find out what happened on this world and make sure it doesn’t happen to us.”

“So, we’re going, then?” Jones asked again for affirmation.

“Commander Rogers.” Charles turned his attention to the SEAL.

“Yes, Ambassador?”

“Can you get a team, handpicked by you and Dr. Jones, geared up so that they would be protected from alien bears and snakes and the like?” Charles asked. “And ready for God-knows-what-else in the event something happened?”

“I will gear them up, as you say, sir, with a security team,” Rogers replied. “We can protect them. And we can get in and out without being seen.”

“Okay then. Do it. But don’t tell me about it until afterward.” Charles held a finger to his lips with a grin. “Understood?”

“Plausible deniability, sir. Understood.”

“Okay then, on to the next front. Let’s please shelve the discussion of this bizarre and fascinating discovery until we complete our business of the day here.” Charles moved an icon in front of him. “Dr. Burbank and Dr. Gilster, you two are up.”

“Go ahead, Rain,” Roy said. The camera jumped to him briefly and then back to Rain. Charles was glad to see Dr. Burbank integrating into the team. While there was still a quietly routed suicide watch notice about Roy, there was nothing official other than everyone was worried about him.

“Right. Okay, Roy.” Dr. Gilster stood so the drone could find her easily. “Roy and I have been reworking the long-range communications capability and we’ve succeeded. This morning, our radio astronomy assay was brought online, tested against known radio stars, and then pointed at the Sol system. We, after some fine-tuning, detected the communications beacon being transmitted from there. We decoded it. As you can imagine it was a repeating loop wanting to know if we could read them and instructions on what frequencies to find looped letters-from-home data dumps. There are also news feeds and so on in the loop. We’ve started full downloads and have routed them to all the appropriate public folders on our network.”

Rain paused to let that sink in. There were sighs of relief, various cheers and applauding, and a few shouts of “Amen!” She nodded in agreement and could see a noticeably big expression of satisfaction and happiness from Roy. He was already updating his three-dimensional model of his daughter.

“The secretary general was right. From the top line of the news feed, it is clear that the Emissary left Earth about four and a half years ago, just after we went into cryo after our midflight physicals.” Rain let that sink in too. “I’ve been looking through the data for the ship’s roster along with other information. My AI has put together several days’ worth of video feeds and tomes of information that we’ve missed. It will take some time to get through all of it and that hasn’t been my main focus anyway.”

“What has been?” Crosby’s face appeared briefly on the screen.

“This.” Rain tapped at more icons before her and the screen changed to a spectrum analyzer waterfall page. “Roy and I found this.”

The waterfall chart represented an area from one to ten gigahertz. Just to the left of the middle of the chart was a peak sticking straight up far above the background noise. There were two smaller peaks on either side of the central one. Rain zoomed in on it just a bit and placed a window box over the main peak. It then zoomed in and spread the peak into what now appeared as a bell-shaped, or Gaussian-shaped, curve that modulated up and down and had ripples changing on the bell-shaped line. The curve looked like a faster rippling sinusoidal function bent upward into the bell shape. The faster smaller ripples changed in frequency and amplitude.

“This is coming from the general direction of Earth, but it is much, much closer,” Rain explained. “And I’m sure any of you space jockeys online can recognize it. If I apply the blue-shift filter to it and then add a narrow waveform frequency modulation filter, we get this . . . ”

“ . . . Samaritan, this is the starship Emissary from Earth. This is Captain Alan Jacobs of the United States Space Force on adjunct assignment to the United Nations. We are currently inbound to Proxima. Please respond. ETA at current rate of closure is ninety-three days . . . ”

The room cheered again.



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