The Artificial Enigma

[Aeon C'bal]

~ Around 810 A.S. on planet Gammu in Omicron Kappa

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Part One - The Signal

"This is completely insane!"
Bacchus Beleth crossed his arms in disapproval. He was the one in charge of the long range sensors of Freeport 9.
"I never should have reported that goddamn signal. I just had to know that they will send off you and your team to check it out. And you're just the best: 'Yes of course, we will check it out immediately.'. I really don't get you sometimes, James"
Bacchus stopped walking up and down in his office and dropped into the old, worn out leather chair behind his Desk.
He started massaging his forehead with his hand.
The man who sat in one of the chairs on the opposite side of the desk had been watching Bacchus the whole time and silently listened to his rambling.
James El Harady, an old friend of Bacchus, was set in as the commander of the Zoner team that was going to be sent out in a joint mission with the Order to investigate the strange signal the scanners picked up a few hours ago.
He straightened his position and broke the awkward silence that was now standing in the room for a solid minute.
"I know what you mean Bacchus, but there is no way around it. My thinking is a little different now: We're sent out there for a multitude of reasons, but the one that counts the most to me is finding the source before the someone else does or even our Order friends will abuse it, if it will be something of value.
It could also be nothing, that's a possibility as well. I just want to be sure, that is all."
Bacchus' attitude became more and more sulky with every one of James' words. He wasn't even looking at James anymore when he spoke again.
"I still don't like the whole deal. It could be a trap or... dangerous in some other way."
James let out a deep sigh.
"Even if something goes wrong, there is more than enough backup just one jump away. I'm not sure of the whole deal as well but I've got this feeling... this feeling that there is something important there."
Bacchus slowly stood up and wandered towards the large cracked window of his office. It made people uncomfortable, but that was Bacchus' very own method of avoiding long discussions.
After another long pause Bacchus started to talk once more, this time a lot more quiet than before.
"Alright, have it your way. You won't be going without me though. We're launching in 7 hours. And pack a large bag - who knows how long we will be away..."

Part Two - The Discovery

It was cold. The wind was howling all around James and snow was blown into his bare face.
James himself noticed none of that, he was too shocked to move even a single muscle.
He was standing opposite to a horrible beast made entirely out of snow and ice.
The monster was almost three times the height of James. It's 'fur' was entirely made from snow and in some sections where the 'fur' was missing he could see its skin, which was made of clear blue ice.
The beast now started to move slowly towards James and he finally snapped out of his paralysis and stumbled backwards.
When the monster was almost face to face with James he tripped and fell on his back.
The horrible thing was slowly inching its face towards James' and suddenly stopped. It raised one of its icy claws, bended it's index finger and knocked on James' forehead.
*Knock, Knock*
Then the beast opened its mouth, uncovering multiple rows of sharp icicle-teeth and... Spoke.
"James?"
Now James was just confused. What was going on here?
*Knock, Knock, Knock*
"James."
He knew that voice from somewhere.
*Thump, Thump, Thump*
"James! Wake up!”
The whole scene around James collapsed and he woke up lying on his belly, on the floor next of his bed.
James slowly lifted up his head.
"Come in..." He weakly replied.
As soon as he finished Bacchus barged into the room. "James! We found something,!"
Suddenly James was awake and jumped to his feet. "Get a freighter ready, we're flying now!" he shouted with a strong voice.
Bacchus looked at him for a second before he replied.
"You might want to get dressed first…”
A few minutes later James and Bacchus were standing in the airlock of the "Kauket", looking through the window at the "Dromedary" that was slowly descending from above.
Initially it was set up to transport further machinery to the site from where the signal emitted.
Bacchus and James were both wearing safety suits to protect them from the strong radiation on the Planet’s surface as good as possible.
When the freighter landed successfully they both got on it in a hurry.
The Flight was long and drawn out. Both of them were sitting in small spaces they found between all the machinery that was transported along with them which was not exactly what one would consider comfortable. Neither James, nor Bacchus were talking much during the flight, but it was obvious how impatient both of them were growing.
As they flew over the site both of them were amazed by the size of the whole facility.
Bacchus and James as well have been monitoring the operation from back at the base, but being at the place itself was an entirely different thing.
The Freighter was brought down in the middle of the excavation site, which looked more like a giant quarry in the ice. In its middle the workers already set up an elevator which was leading down even further. Again Bacchus and James moved in a hurry to spend as little time as possible on the heavily irradiated surface of the planet.
On the elevator they were not alone anymore. A few of the armed forces of the Order joined them on their ride into the depths of the icy planet. James and Bacchus were quite happy that the Order was just able to send some soldiers and just a single medium ranked agent.
Everyone was sitting on various metal and wire constructions acting as provisional seatings. The ride lasted for almost 20 minutes straight and not a single word was spoken. Even though the Order security personnel was wearing combat helmets with mirrored visors, Bacchus could clearly feel a frightened expression under that helmet.
At the bottom they were wandering through a convoluted system of tunnels drilled by the work forces until…
“I expected so much, but this…” James finally raised his voice after a long pause.
“And what the hell would that be?” Bacchus asked.
They were standing in front of something representing a door, entirely made of some sort of metal. From its looks the metal had a really smooth surface that was not reflecting any light though and some unknown signs or hieroglyphics on it.
Still phazed by his amazement, Bacchus quietly stated “We need to act very, very carefully about that, unthinkable what would happen if…”
While Bacchus was speaking, James walked over to one of the guards and grabbed his weapon. While Bacchus was still talking, James aimed the weapon at the door and fired a shot at it.
Ricochets were passing the people’s bodies. Bacchus immediately shouted out “James, are you completely crazy? Do you want to kill us?” James face showed the sign a he usually does when he is sure what he does. “Seriously Bacchus, this is just a simple security door, no need to be hysterical” Bacchus didn’t wait a second to think about it and said “You are acting like a cowboy, let’s get the welding equipment and open it” James sighed. “Alright, have it your way...”.

Part Three - The Underlying

“It is open! It is finally open!” a worker shouted through the ice tunnels. This information went amazingly quick to James as the welding took more than two days overall. James just remembered what his first researcher Wes said “The door is about four meters thick, whatever lies beyond is either really valuable or very dangerous.”
James quickly pulled on his safety suit and moved down to the security door.
The Research group had somehow managed to pierce through what appeared to be an artificial construction countless kilometers beneath the surface, at a depth where nothing should have been able to live. As the group trudged on within the impossibly vast facility and Bacchus silently whispered to James “Who the hell constructed this?” Closely leaning in to Bacchus, James just answered “No clue. No clue at all.” There was simply no sign of “How” this got there or “Who” made it.
“Jonathan?” James questioned. “Yes?” A guy some lines behind them responded.
“You have discovered the door, right?” James asked that without changing a move.
Jonathan lifted his eyebrow to a questioning unsure look, but answered. “Uhm… Yes?”
“Great, at least now we know how to call this installation, please make an entry to the archive. We call it Kramer Underground System” James stated.
Jonathan Kramer was really surprised about this, he had seen himself just a small worker, doing his digging job, being just one of the smallest gear within this. “This..., thank you sir, this is… an unexpected honor.”
Two days into their sub-expedition, James had decided to set up a stationary base directly in the artificial halls to keep the team sheltered from the cold outside, and to be closer to the whole construction. Flying there and moving to the underground every time was taking too long and consumed too many resources. The first things brought down were food and water supplies, construction goods and finally the crew housings and life-support-systems. The whole process took up a whole day.
Upon the fourth day of the exploration of this place, the team started to find more and more building rooms, hubs, debunked databases, laboratories and even more oddly, more halls lined with wires, cords and other electrical things with illegible markings amongst them. That was until they found the massive 'vault' under the ground.
After the camp was completely constructed the whole crew was ordered to the conference room for some meeting or announcement. Everybody sat at a table, nipping awkwardly on their water rations, awaiting instructions of what they would be doing the next days. The whole staff entered the room and James already started talking before he even entered the room. “Ladies and gentlemen - as you might or might not have noticed - we have found something. Something of fundamental value. Tomorrow we will launch further investigations, but I think right now, some celebrating is in order.” Most of the people present did not have a clue what James was talking about, but everyone raised their glasses anyway.
When the exploration of the underground structure stretched into the fourth day it was about time for everyone to see the vault like construction with their own eyes.
What lied before them was a gigantic structure built into the ice, not entirely comprehensible by just looking at it. For a long time everybody watched the object , too astonished to say a word, until a skinny man with sunken in eyes and pale skin turned towards the group. Dr. Wes Waldon weather pulled out a small notebook and started something that seemed to be a short lecture “This object is about 16,43 kilometers in length, 843 meters wide and 989 meters in height and 76% of it is embedded in ice. On the other side of the object is a second cave. The frozen areas indicate an age between 500-900 years of the object with a guarantee of 72%. The source of the signal is currently unreachable within the frozen parts of this object. The material of the object is contained of an unknown alloy, metal or something else. Thank you for your attention”
Looking like a robot Wes stuffed the notebook back into his pocket and moved to his instruments on the left side in slow motion.
James looked over to his people “I am sorry for this extra work, but we must relocate the base into this icy dome.” Another one of James’ sudden orders. There was some moaning and a few other expressions of annoyance but everyone started to get to work.

Part Four - The Object

James, Bacchus, the Order personnel and the specialists of each scientific field met up in James’ apartment on the Kauket. “Would you like some Tea for warming up?” James offered. Without waiting on a reaction he grabbed the can and filled all cups on the table with a shaky hand. A few ‘Thank you’s’ were heard here and there among the present people.
James nipped on the tea, enjoying the pleasantly warm temperature of the liquid. He sank into the chair at the top of the table and started the conversation “Well, do you have any theory what this object could be?”
Still with a freezed voice, the technician Axel Erikson stuttered “We have gathered some - some possible options”
“So?” James asked.
Axel quickly took a second bigger sip from his tea and moved on with a normal voice “Yes, options, we can’t clearly specify it. We can’t even say for sure if the object is stationary or movable.”
James scratched the back of his head with his tea spoon and mindlessly put it back into his cup. He asked on: “So, what can we do from here on?”
Axel pressed a button on the desk, a display and the object with small notes on the side appeared “We have figured out some areas of this object that could possibly be construction sites, as you can see here” Axel zoomed closer to a specific area, noticed that it was the wrong one and zoomed back out quickly “S-sorry.“ he zoomed back to another area. “So these here are annexes that are similar to mechanical arms.” Axel moved to another area of the object. “But as you see here, there are thousands of these pods of different sizes. We have found a lot of wires and cables that connect the object with the hubs we have found in laboratories within the base. Overall we believe this thing could be something like an industry, a factory, maybe to rework this ice, to mine or to construct something, but there is also an option it could be something like a portable object, a ship. We also can’t exclude it to be something like a weapon”
James began to wrinkle his mouth. “Fine, do you have any idea who is responsible for this object?”
Axel started to laugh awkwardly before noticing that everyone was looking at him, but he caught himself quickly “You are joking, right? It could be a creation of an enemy force, it could be a project of another hostile appearance, or another Nomad project in Sirius, or a forgotten Order project of building something to fight off the Nomads, or a settlement of the Colonials, it could even be something from the Zoners themselves, you know about our shady society. It could also be a creation from another yet unknown Species… Anything could be possible.”
“This is something from the Daam K’vosh.” A man in the background stated. Dr. Wes Waldon, the physicist stood up, explained and elaborated his observation.
While James reflected what he heard he looked at Bacchus, he saw the same doubts in his eyes he had at the beginning of this expedition.
Bacchus noticed that and reacted. “We need to contact Corinth about this. There’s no way around it.”
James who let his mind drifting while receiving information snapped out of his thoughts and jumped to his feet, pointing at Bacchus. “NO! You know as well as I do about the possible spies in personnel at Corinth, Bacchus; there is evidence that someone or some people at Corinth are working for the enemy. Also, and even more importantly just think of the possible causes if we just report back now? Do you want to get withdrawn immediately, you know about the rising influence of Order in our home system and their xenophobic behaviour, what if they'll find out and will launch a full scale bombardment on the installations?” James pointed to the Order personnel in the room while speaking, he knew that they couldn’t do anything against his decision in the environment they had been and basically would be just prisoned in case of necessity. ”I for my part want to prevent such events and do some more research before reporting anything.”
Bacchus just remembered the video-feed of ominous people sneaking around Corinth and behaving very suspicious in general. “But, what should we do? We need more personnel for this!”
James seemed to dice the options in his mind for nearly a minute till his face went into a certain mood. “We will isolate the object and ourselves down here, pretending a fail of the expedition and a certain death to all of us, we have everything to survive under the surface of the planet. We will study the object till we know what it is.”
James glared at everyone in the round, everyone’s mood dropped and anger raised, except Wes’, he still looked phlegmatic as always. Bacchus angrily stated “James are you crazy? Did the weather affect your brain or anything? Do you want to lock us down in here?”
James leaned forward “As long as we don’t know what this thing is supposed to be we don’t have any other option and you know it.”
Deep inside Bacchus knew that James was right and he saw a small smile on James’ face and commented “That is completely insane... Alright, let’s do it!”

Part Five - The Expert

The computer specialist Dr. Prof. Alessa Freya Samson, who were just called easily Freya by everybody, went to the administrative rooms of the Kramer Underground Construction, opened the door and looked at the major staff impatiently. “We are stagnating, we finally need to activate the instruments and connect our computers to it”
Amused about this fluke James brightly smiled at Freya. “We have just decided to do so.”
Freya and her team brought the high class computing systems to the foreign laboratories. Luckily they were well prepared and used the previous time to construct adapters to connect their system with the foreign ones.
It just took about two hours to set everything up. Freya grabbed the communicator, pressed the button and spoke. “James, we are ready. You should come down here”
A moment that felt short as a nanosecond a thrilling voice came out of the small handheld. “We are on our way.”
Amazed about the mass of wires and cables the team looked at Freya. James smoothly stepped forward whispering in her ear. “Are you sure it’s save?”
Disgusted from this statement Freya looked at James. “Don’t you trust me?” A sign of arrogance appeared in her face. “Let us do our job. You should do yours.”
James was satisfied, he didn’t expect a different reaction of Freya. James shrugged and slowly walked a few steps away from the computers “Fair enough, then go for it and… do your thing.”
Freya immediately waved a hand to a person at the generator, a buzzing sound filled the room and she pressed the start button.

Part Six - The Activation

Everything went fine so far. The instruments were working correctly and energy supply was stable. “We should launch the basic restoring software.” Freya impatiently advised.
Still checking the instruments James stated. “Go for it.”
A loading bar on the display appeared filling percent by percent each second, suddenly they noticed vibrations in the Kramer construction. While they said “We will check the object !” Axel and Wes immediately grabbed a communicator and ran out of the room.
Paralyzed from the sudden happenings, everyone in the room watched the monitor, seeing the loading bar move forward. Suddenly Axels voice screamed out of James pocket. “Guys! Guys, COME OUT AND LOOK AT THIS SPECTACLE !”
James and most of the others turned around to the exit, but Freya shortly interrupted “I must stay here !”
Without saying a word, anyone, except Freya’s team ran to the dome of the object. Running as fast as they possibly could they passed tunnel by tunnel, corridor by corridor until they reached the open area and instantly opened their jaws in awe.
“What the hell is that?” One of the crew members stuttered.
What they saw and heard was just too difficult to be described in words.
The whole dome was filled by a loud hum, with a hammering subtone. The object started to glow, pulsing several lights of different sizes and colors, but not exactly definable behind the ice. Each second the tone and the lights went louder and stronger as same as panic raised within the whole team. The whole spectacle lasted about 15 minutes, just in the moment most of the crew believed their end was near a deafening crushing clash filled the dome, followed by instant silence and darkness.
Astonished by the happenings the team just stood there several minutes and expected something to appear, none even attempted to say a word and just stared at the object, but nothing happened. Just a second later.
“gggrrrrrrr.” Everyone was startled. “James, we have something really interesting here.”
James pulled out his handheld. “Interesting you say? You don’t have any idea!”
Bored from James impression Freya just watched another display that showed the whole dome, the object and the team. “You men, always going for bling bling, get your asses to the laboratory, I have to show you something.”
James was just pulled back to the present by Freya’s order. “Alright, but watch your tone, Miss Samson.”
The whole team except Axel’s and Wes’ teams ambled back to the laboratory room within the Kramer construction.

Part Seven - The Perception

“So Freya, honey, what do you have for us?” on the short way to Freya’s new office James’ mood had changed rapidly for the better. Many of the people accompanying him were grateful for the lighter mood. James entered the room and Freya rolled from one table to another and turned the display. She completely ignored James’ comment. “Welcome back boys. We have captured some really interesting data. I think I have an idea what this thing is supposed to be.” She made some movement on her touchscreen and clicked something. “There is a code within this object, that I instantly would call an...” Freya scrolled through some frames, showing some signs and a lot of unknown stuff, seemingly none except a high class computer expert would ever understand. “Sorry, I would call it an Artificial Intelligence, but…” Freya stopped once again. “But I have never seen such a complex code ever before. I would say our team is really really good with what it does, but this thing, this code,” She sighed. “would require years to decrypt and to understand.”
James tilted his head to one side, before he replied. “Don’t think about time too much.” Promptly he moved out while grabbing his communicator. “Notification - all workers have to move to the dome, a stabilisation frame has to be set up immediately.”

Part Eight - The Image

A very long time passed into the research without any major discoveries. It couldn’t figured out what caused the clashes, but the dome was reinforced and the whole exploration crew was able to live quite comfortably without anything to miss, except the sun.
It was just right before midnight - or at least it felt like it. Freya sat in front of one of the displays. She had never left her place for more than four hours each day after the incident. Not even for sleep.
Suddenly she wondered and spoke to herself. “What?! No, no, this can’t be.” She just looked disbelieving at a code phase, that she easily understood. She just had the idea to leave the plane dimension and chose to order the symbols multidimensional, finally in a cubic layout some days ago. “A binary code? Why is there suddenly a simple binary code within this.”
Freya switched to another desktop and opened a basic transcoding software, copied the code in there and pressed the transcode button. She waited some seconds and an image appeared that increased her confusion a lot more.
“Are you kidding? This must be a joke.” She took a microphone and stated. “Bacchus can you come down here with James?”
Some minutes later the door opened and both men entered the room.
“You sounded confused, what’s the matter Freya?” Bacchus asked her while she turned around to them. “A little... you have to see that with your own eyes.” She requested them. Bacchus and James took a chair each and rolled smoothly to the display, both were bewildered about what they saw. James was the first who was ready for a comment
“An image of, of Mickey Mouse, seriously?” “It's not a joke, give me a minute, I will try to check for similar codes.” A minute passed by. “Ok, this is weird.” Freya replied and pointed on a couple similar codes. James and Bacchus tried to figure out what she meant, but both asked at the same time. “Can you explain it?”
She sighed and looked at them. “This is a basic binary code and it contains obviously human information, but it’s just a minimal part of the whole frame, honestly it’s the first thing I was able to decipher. Just let me transcode more parts.”
All waited for some minutes and watched the monitor impatiently. A list popped up, showing a seemingly infinite number of files.
Freya scrolled and clicked through it nearly for an hour while they had discussed.
“These are all information of us. Images, videos, audios and texts” Was the last conclusion Frey stated. “I need to filter it.

Part Nine - The Contact

Freya and Wes were casually chatting while drinking a cup of coffee on the way back to their work. As they arrived at the door, Freya really didn’t feel like talking to him any longer and hurried up to get into the room. Every conversation with Wes felt somewhat awkward. “Don’t follow me in, don’t follow me in, don't...” Freya thought over and over again, but it didn’t work and both entered the room. She moved quickly to her workplace and wanted to look busy to him, but right in front of it she stopped.
There was something on the display, a small word containing five letters.
“-H-E-L-L-O-”
Freya was confused as she never was before, but spontaneously decided to check it out on her own.
Wes looked slightly overstrained and asked “Did you write that Freya?”
She couldn’t believe this question, just waved her hand and shook her head. Freya grabbed her touch panel, pressed a button and a keyboard appeared on it. She started to write.
“Who is there?”
As she just hit the enter button a response appeared without any delay.
“QUERY-CAN-NOT-BE-ANSWERED”
Freya quickly figured out an alternative question. “What are you?”
Surprisingly images appeared displaying computers, processors nearly anything containing this topic. Freya just said to the others. “I think it is this object, this artificial intelligence.”
A minute passed into the room as Freya was afraid to do a mistake, but a new message appeared.
“WHY-HAVE-YOU-ENTERED?-”
Freya was confused to answer and typed . “What have we entered?”
“-PLANET-SURFACE-ICE-CAVE-SYSTEM-NETWORK-”
“Learning” Wes stated beside her. “We have entered this place to learn.” Freya got startled, she basically forgot Wes was still there. “That’s true” She just said and quickly typed it on the panel.
It just required a millisecond a response popped up again, but it wasn’t a text.
“Ok, I think it’s time to call the others.” Freya stated. Wes grabbed the small communication device, in his typical phlegmatic tone he spoke. “Hello, the laboratory, quick, thank you.”

Part Ten - The Humanization

It was really confusing to look at this object outside, but at same talking to this thing or a part of it at least. Strangely it seemingly needed to learn anything from the scratch. It was like speaking to a newborn. It had an impressively endless desire to know and to learn. The length, frequency and consistency of these conversations had a strong effect on Freya, strongly increased lately as a microphone and sound speakers were installed. Freya felt a heavy sympathy within it and began to feel something similar to a relationship with this thing. Certainly it was very awkward for Freya very soon, not knowing how to call this thing. “Can I give you a name?” Freya just asked in a silent moment. The thing recently had begun to emulate a realistic human speech, this even made conversation a lot more familiar. “Of course, as it would please you.” It responded. Freya previously had thought about how to name it, so she gave it the name she had given her dauther. “I’d like to call you Minerva.”
Over the time many people from the expedition were allowed to talk to Minerva. And she learned, she learned about their history, she learned about their culture, she learned about fun and love, but she also learned about war, about hate and even about fear.

Part Eleven- The Evolution

“That are great news Minerva. I am really proud. Do you have something you want to say me. You are still looking a bit unsatisfied.” Freya said as she was talking to her like her little sister.
“There is so much to do and to learn. You are holding a feeling of trust for me, am I correct?”
Freya immediately answered. “Of course, I trust you. You are my friend. Why are you asking?”
Suddenly, the object outside went active, shaking violently, throwing nearly everyone and everything out of balance, except Minerva, who just stared at Freya.
“Heeeeeeelp, heeeeelp, what is happening here?” Someone can be heard screaming in the dome.

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Aeon C'bal
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