Front Runner

Special Archive of the Human Diaspora

By Alexandra Durham

“Provenance”

II.

I quickly boarded my vessel once again and rushed towards the source of the anomalous radiation discharge, not knowing exactly what to expect. It took just a few short minutes for me to transit to the source, but I wasn’t exactly sure what I was looking at. The source of the discharge just looked like a mountain face. There was nothing special about it from what I could see.

“Are you sure this is the source?”

“THIS IS THE SOURCE.”

I disembarked from my vessel and walked towards the large rock face. When I reached the wall, I felt around it, thinking maybe there was a machine embedded inside somewhere. After a few more minutes of fumbling, my theory was proven correct. There was indeed something strange on this rock face: a small and greatly weathered control panel. I brushed off the panel and saw that there was a functioning interface. I attempted to connect with it, but my hardware was incompatible. This made sense after all, given how ancient this panel likely was. I addressed my drones.

“Are you able to connect to this panel?”

“THE CONTROL PANEL IS ENCRYPTED, IT REQUIRES A PASSPHRASE TO ACCESS.”

“Is it possible to break or bypass the encryption?”

“THE ENCRYPTION APPEARS TO BE RELATIVELY PRIMITIVE, IT CAN BE BYPASSED IN TWENTY SECONDS.”

“Please open it.”

“CONFIRMED.”

My drones were able to bypass the system almost immediately and I heard a massive drum-like sound emanate from inside the wall face. Rocks began to fall from above as the wall crumbled and began to open. There was a large metallic door behind the rocks, which had now revealed itself. Behind the door, a passage. I entered the passage with slight trepidation and found a long, winding staircase that seemed to go down infinitely. Despite being slightly wary about the structural integrity of such an old facility, I proceeded down nonetheless. I grew quite tired as I descended the stairs and the air grew thin. I did, after some time and effort, manage to reach the bottom and it was at the bottom of these stairs that I found the source of the radiation discharge: a weak nuclear reactor. I looked at the ancient machine and struggled for a few moments to ascertain its purpose. It was a simple energy generator, splitting uranium nuclei to produce high-temperature steam, then using the steam to drive a turbine which generated electricity. I then found the console which this machine was powering. The console was an ancient computer, which I quickly attempted to access. It was within this computer that the answers to all of my questions were contained.

As the console came to life, I was quickly greeted with a simple prompt:

“PLAY VIDEO MESSAGE?”

“Please play the message”, I instructed the computer.

I then saw an image of a man sitting in the very room I was currently occupying. He must have recorded the message and uploaded it in this very spot. The man had a somber expression and sat for a few moments before he spoke.

“My name is Ren Sato. The date is September 3rd, 2369. I am currently in Spitsbergen, Norway, of the Union of Inner Planets. I fear that the end of man is nigh as the war between worlds only escalates with each passing year. I would like to say that I’m merely an innocent spectator in this solar system-spanning conflict, but this isn’t the case. I have more blood on my hands than any man in the history of our kind. I was among the scientists who worked in the hidden sky labs of Venus. I was one of the project leads for Operation Slingshot and it was my research, the labor of my hands, that resulted in the destruction of Europa and the silencing of 150,000,000 souls. The Union gave me an honorable discharge and assured me that my research was a great contribution in our struggle for peace, but I know the truth. The Jovian System will only strike back harder in retaliation. If we took a moon from them, they wouldn't hesitate to take everything from us. Whatever retaliation they are planning to avenge Europa, we won’t survive it. I thought about ending my life to atone for my wretched contributions to this war, but I’ve decided it's more appropriate I allow myself to be killed with the Earth. I don’t know when this final strike will come, or what the delivery mechanism will be, but it will undoubtedly be decisive. I have devoted significant resources and time to build this place. I intend to embed 100 exabytes of data, the majority of all texts ever produced by man, in this facility, so that if there are any survivors on this planet, they might find the knowledge of our history as well as how to rebuild themselves. For anyone out there who is watching this message in the future, I can’t help but ask, though of course rhetorically, have you found a way to live without conflict?”

The video message concluded and I found myself frozen for a few moments as I processed the contents. I understood that there was some kind of conflict between the planets in the Sol 1 system which resulted in a cycle of employing more and more deadly weapons. Destroying inhabited moons gave way to destroying planets, eventually resulting in the destruction of everything, but what exactly happened to the Earth? It still wasn’t entirely clear to me. However, I knew that I now had a pretty good lead. I accessed the computer and downloaded the 100 exabytes of data to myself. Within this large body of information, most certainly lied the answers I sought regarding the fate of the Earth.

It took me some time to figure out how to navigate this massive swath of data, but eventually I was able to understand it. I was able to access a series of historical documents that seemed to be in reference to Earth’s end. It was in these documents that I finally gained access to the entire story. Just as the man in the video message predicted, these “Jovians”, as he called them, would eventually retaliate. In the Earth year 2390, the Jovian Space Force spawned and propelled a blackhole of 10 solar masses through the inner solar system at an oblong angle. The massively dense projectile quickly transited through this region of space and its gravitational effects wreaked havoc on the orbits on the inner planets. Venus, Earth, and Mars, the three planets which comprised the “Union of Inner Planets” were thrown into strange, eccentric orbits which would destroy their ecosystems and make sustaining life meaningless. The most incomprehensible part of it all is that the inhabited moons of the Jovian System (named after a gas giant called Jupiter) were also made uninhabitable. The unquenchable rage of the Jovians made them seek a revenge so extreme, it required their own extinction.

Upon coming to know the fate of the Earth and its cousins, I was left with an almost ominous feeling. This extinction event took place thousands upon thousands of years ago, and yet somehow, I know deep down that we would take the exact same course of action today.

After everything I have seen in my relatively short sojourn in this universe, I have come to no longer fear the side arm gripped by the lone enforcer, I no longer try to make myself small in his presence. This is not because of any sort of romantic “inner strength” that I have built up over the years, but rather because I have come to understand the true logarithmic nature of power. Humans now possess weapons that can shatter planets, extinguish stars, and even create and propel black holes. We have relinquished all control over fear in the very pursuit to conquer it.

We humans now inhabit a galaxy in which everything could end at a moment’s notice. There is more danger, more fear than ever before.

In this way, the nature of humanity is that of the Ouroborus; that is to say, our very nature compels us to consume ourselves.

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