The Golden Record (Stranded, Part 5)

Read Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4

The scene I see when I wake up feels almost familiar. Glass everywhere I look. But this time, it seems a lot more professional than the greenhouse Rick put me in.

Rick … I can see him sitting on a chair right outside my cube. He holds his head in his hands and appears exhausted. I try to call out for him but only a choked sound. It lets him react anyway.

”How are you feeling?”, he asks, visibly relieved as he walks up to the glass and puts one hand on it. I clear my throat.

”I’m okay I guess.” My voice is rough but I can speak. ”At least breathing works again. What happened?”

”I brought you to the government facility I used to work at”, he starts explaining. ”They took you in and immediately knew what to do. It seems like you’re not the first one of your species to visit us, although it has been kept a secret. Your luck I suppose, they needed a special kind of medicine for you. Our meds would have killed you.”

”There are no reports of my people visiting earth before!” I’m shocked. Until know I had been absolutely sure that I’m the first one of my species to set foot on this planet. An awful thought enters my mind. _@suesa

”Did they ever leave earth?” I want to know. Rick appears visibly distressed.

”Only one out of the five that were brought here. It was a whole shuttle of them that crashed in the Alps. One died on impact. Another one during transport. Two caught different kinds of sicknesses.”

”And the fifth?”

”The fifth survived and was able to fix the ship. He left earth about ten years ago. Did he not return?”

I shake my head. It’s clear to me which ship he’s talking about. The first Earth mission was a huge failure as the gravitational pull of the planet had been miscalculated. We had just assumed the crew had died on impact and nobody had been looking for them.

The one who tried to return probably died in space. Alone. Repairing a spaceship is not easy.

”Will I be allowed to leave?” I ask.

”They promised me to let you go when you feel better. Right now you’re on strong medication and I wouldn’t recommend leaving just now.”

For the first time since waking up, I register the needle that’s sticking in my arm. And … in one of my wings? I’m amazed, the humans clearly studied the dead bodies of my fellow explorers and found out that the wings have their own immune system, similar to the blood-brain barrier they have.

I allow myself to relax. It appears that nobody wants to hurt me, at least not at the moment.

”I assumed they would want to ask me questions”, I tell Rick. ”But you are alone, where is everyone?”

”I insisted that they’d leave you alone as much as possible. Didn’t want them to get ideas and start experimenting on you, even though they promised not to. But I know them. Scientists. They just can’t resist. I was like them once, ethics becomes secondary when you want to accumulate knowledge.”

”And you don’t want to know anything anymore?”

”Oh, tons of stuff. But I try to avoid hurting others in the process of acquiring it. And with you, I can just ask. Which reminds me, there is one question I didn’t ask you before but that baffles me a bit. Do you feel well enough to answer?”

”Sure”, I chuckle.

”The scientists here have translators similar to the one you had with you in your helmet. That’s all nice and stuff but … how can that thing even exist? I only know such things from science fiction shows. They didn’t want to answer, said it’s classified.”

”They probably just don’t understand the mechanism”, I scoff. ”The translation is based on a very sophisticated AI, the people here presumably only copied it.”

”I understand. But how did your AI learn our language? And why English, out of all languages?”

”Oh, our translator knows exactly 55 languages from Earth. We also have one system that can produce written English.”

”But how?”

”You sent it to us. Don’t you know?” I’m astonished that Rick doesn’t seem to know what I’m talking about. ”Didn’t your government send out a big golden disk with a lot of information into space? Images, music and, most importantly, languages.”

His eyes grow wide as he seems to understand.

”You found Voyager?”

”If that’s what you call it, yes. It was just floating there and our sensors detected it. Very impressive I must say, although incredibly dangerous. The Splerions could have found you first and killed every human on earth.”

Rick swallows hard.

”Did you also find the Pioneer plagues?”

”I don’t think so, no. Did they also contain information?”

”Not as much, but there’s a description of our location and two images of humans on that thing.”

”Well, the Splerions haven’t found it yet. Maybe they won’t ever find it.”

”Let’s hope so”, says Rick.

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Sources:

The Golden Record

Mission Status Voyager 1 and 2

The Pioneer Missions

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Picture taken from pixabay.com

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