Going Bold

A broad mirror smooth polished basin made of something resembling white marble was thrust into the ground at the center of a small clearing. The basin formed a parabolic shape and centered at the focus point was a 1 meter diameter sphere of water that looked to be far deeper than 1 meter. Water seemed to emerge out of the sphere in all directions as if the universe itself was wringing water from the fabric of reality. The emerging water ran down and around the sphere before plummeting down into the basin in an eerily smooth laminar stream, the basin itself slopped over its sides and the water then ran together forming the stream that Andrea and Lin had been following.

“That is very odd looking, I imagine creative use of space warping machinery could make this, but achieving this effect should be drawing absolutely appalling quantities of energy, and there’s no sign of any of the usual machinery needed to hold this sort of aperture open.” Lin commented

Andrea started to circle around the ‘fountain’ keeping to the edges of the small clearing “While this could be a natural phenomenon, my instincts are inclined to assign an artificial nature to something this geometrically regular and out of place in its surroundings.” Andrea began narrating her impression as she continued to trace a path around the object, adding her personal impressions to the high resolution scans being taken by the mini-drones that were joining her in orbiting the bizarre structure.

Lin meanwhile was busy pouring over the huge quantities of data flooding in from the mini-drones, still no out of place chemical, or radiological, traces but even here at the apparent source of the stream it was noticeable that the fungi were not growing nearby, forming the clearing around the edge of which which they were currently navigating. The most suspicious potential culprit was the anomaly from which water was emerging. Neither Lin, nor Andrea when asked, could think of what exactly it might be, beyond perhaps some extreme warping of the fabric of space time. Though Lin was careful to remember that making any assumptions this early in the investigation was both unwarranted and could dangerously narrow an investigator’s perspective. More information was needed and both Lin and Andrea knew that meant getting closer.

“Hang on a second Lin” Andrea reached back and tugged a small collapsible baton from it’s holder on her uniform, “We could use this to probe into the water and through the aperture a short distance, lets just adhere a micro sensor package to the end, let the binding glue cure for a few minutes and it shouldn’t have any issues getting in there since I can just plunge it in manually.”

Suiting action to words Andrea assembled their impromptu probe, spending about 15 minutes using her chemical synthesis organ-implant network to make a strong waterproof adhesive and print out a basic micro sensor package before quickly combining it all and waiting for the curing process on the adhesives to finish. While Andrea was occupied with that she pulled out an energy bar and rare element tablet from her hip pouch to make up for the expenditure on the fabrication. After eyeing the ostensibly normal water Andrea shrugged and decided to play it safe drinking from her canteen, they still weren’t sure why the fungal life was avoiding the water so why take chances if she didn’t need to.

Soon their new probe was ready and Andrea made her way closer to the anomaly. “Here it goes, let me know if I need to change the angle I’m moving it at or anything.” Telescoping the baton out to a bit over 1/3 of a meter Andrea grabbed the handle firmly and slowly brought the tip of the probe to what appeared to be the surface of the bizarre sphere, fortunately the parabolic basin wasn’t much greater in diameter so she didn’t need to lean out awkwardly, instead Andrea stood as far back as possible with the probe held out with her arm straight as she just touched the surface gingerly. When nothing seemed to happen other than disrupting the water flowing over the ‘surface’ Andrea pushed a bit more and the probe slid into the sphere, feeling exactly like she’d just gently pushed it into any other body of water with a strong current, the probe kept wanting to swirl around, but Andrea had no difficulty holding it in place despite having her arm at full extension.

“So far the sensor is telling me it’s in clean fresh water with no remarkable contaminants, I didn’t even get a noticeable distortion as it passed what seems to be the edge of the phenomena.” Lin reported

Andrea pulled up a feed from the probe in the human visible spectrum “I can see light that seems to be originating from outside the other end of the anomaly.” Andrea walked around the perimeter of the sphere a couple of paces keeping the probe at a constant depth pointed towards the center. The view swung around confusingly as they did so, appearing to be moving around pointing out from the surface of the far end of the spherical aperture.

Suddenly both of them spotted movement in the feed from the probe something darted into the water towards the probe the bizarre view of the underside of a splash was soon obscured by what appeared to be an oddly colored and unusually proportioned human hand that shot past the viewpoint of the probe before the baton was wrenched hard, nearly being torn from Andrea’s grasp. Whoever they’d seen was pulling on the improvised probe and while she was fighting to keep a grip on the baton Andrea was dragged closer to the surface of the water sphere. “Let go Andrea!” Lin urged.

Letting go of the handle Andrea watched as it was rapidly pulled into the sphere to vanish. “Better to lose a disposable probe than risk an unplanned trip through the anomaly.” Lin commented. Andrea readily agreed “You’re right Lin. Shoving body parts into familiar warps in space is already a bad idea, let alone unfamiliar ones. Besides it looks like we’re still getting a feed from the probe sensors, so giving it to our new friend on the other side should let us look around quite a bit more.”

While they were waiting for their mysterious new ‘assistant’ to pull the sensors and baton out of the water and show them something more interesting, Andrea and Lin began the job of placing signal repeaters to link up with their base camp. A discovery this significant justified a change in plans even if it disrupted the scheduled mission hand over. They knew Jorge and the team he was bringing would understand and agree. To minimize delays the duo proceeded along a more direct path back towards the entrance to the large mushroom forest cavern. They only had the standard load of half a dozen repeaters but Lin estimated that they would be enough to get the signal to the surface and then they could quickly synthesize a seventh by cannibalizing a mini-drone to get the signal back to their camp. While Andrea focused on the trip Lin kept an eye on the feeds from the other side of the anomaly.

After the nearest was steered back to land on Andrea, the remaining mini-drones were left in the cavern to continue mapping the surrounding area and look for hazards, again under Lin’s supervision. They could always use the dedicated fabrication equipment back at camp to make even more. Moving around on a largely unexplored world without mini-drones to scout is generally considered a risky move, but together they decided that they’d learned the region well enough and that the trip to the camp was short enough that they could take the chance. It wasn’t strictly by the book procedure, but then again the Surveyor Corps didn’t recruit people who were by the book sorts.

As Andrea reached the opening of the tunnel to the surface Lin took in the view from the baton tip camera as it finally swept clear of the churning water and swept over glistening gray surfaces that formed smooth curving walls which glistened wetly and glittered as flecks of some reflective material caught the unsteady light that illuminated the pool’s chamber. The source of that tremulous illumination soon came into view and drew an excited exclamation from Lin.

“Wow!” Lin called out. “I think we might have first contact with a tool using alien species.” This claim was exciting enough to grab Andrea’s full attention and caused her to pause in her hike back to their camp to check out what had Lin so excited. As she expanded the camera feed to fill more of her field of view Andrea could indeed see what appeared to be a pile of clothing, and a faltering lantern of some kind, by the edge of the pool and whoever had grabbed their probe was clearly heading in that direction.

“Hopefully they’ll put the probe down at an angle that will let us get a proper look at them when they go to grab the rest of their stuff” Andrea commented. “...aaaand they set the probe down facing the wall.” It’s not all bad Lin consoled her “We’re still getting plenty of useful data on the wall’s composition and so forth, but it’s not terribly exciting.” Sound wise they were only picking up the expected splashing, rustling and echoes accounted for by the strange being’s movements. The lack of immediate visual interest and absence of potential language cues soon had Andrea minimizing the feed from the probe and muting the audio before resuming the trek back to camp.

Andrea clambered down from the plateau in which the cave entrance was hidden and entered the forest. As the dense foliage of the alien forest began to close in around them Andrea spoke. “Hey Lin let’s start planning out and setting up the equipment to test the safety of passing through that anomaly ourselves. I think I’m going to use my discretion as an officer of the Surveyor Corps to pick the world through that anomaly as our next assignment, we needed to pick a new one anyway and there’s no way I’m letting someone else be the first to check out the other side. Assuming we won’t be horrifically mangled by passing through of course.”

Being just as driven to explore the unknown as her partner, Lin readily agreed. “I can’t wait Andrea, a whole new world to explore and we might be the first known humans to make contact with intelligent alien life, there’s no way I’m missing this chance.” In her usual efficient manner Lin was quick to propose their next steps. “I know there are some existing test protocols for spatial anomalies that we can apply and we can probably work up a few more to account for the oddities, we’ll also need to send through a more comprehensive sensor package to run the usual pre-landing environmental tests for new worlds.”

The two explorers continued to plan out the details of the preparations they needed to make for this new journey as they made their way through the oppressive heat and humidity of the Ristulan forest. Andrea’s brisk walking pace paused for a moment, cocking her head as she heard a familiar bellow of rage in the distance. It faded fairly promptly as the apparently still quite livid Farrous went charging off, presumably having been crossed by some fresh interloper to it’s territory.

“Whew! Glad the big guy isn’t coming back for a rematch.” Andrea commented as she resumed her course towards their camp, picking up her pace. About 10 minutes of jogging through the undergrowth later and the signal strength indicator on Andrea’s HUD had reached a level indicating a signal booster was needed. “How about you get us some altitude by climbing one of these trees, while I get the parts ready to rig our mini-drone into a signal booster.” Lin suggested. The telltale gurgle of Andrea’s synthesis organs going to work let her know that she was about to be feeling a bit bloated as she climbed. “Ugh, I hate mixing physical activity and using my chemical synthesis organs. It always makes me feel a bit ill.” Andrea grumbled. Despite her burgeoning discomfort Andrea began to rapidly ascend the massive pillar of a tree.

“No Way!” Lin’s sudden exclamation caused Andrea to fumble her grab for the next branch, leaving her dangling a couple of stories above the ground as she nimbly twisted around to regain a solid hold on the tree. “What!? What is it!?” Andrea asked, looking around urgently and running through her sensor feeds for possible threats. “That being on the other side of the anomaly looks a lot like a human!” Lin enthused.

Both relieved and excited Andrea secured herself on a sturdy branch and switched over to the feed from the probe. Sure enough what came into sight was not just humanoid but very human looking. Androgynous, tall, and slim the sensor’s ranging abilities indicated they were nearly 2.5 meters tall with shoulder length brown hair that hung loose, still damp from their plunge into the pool. Currently the being in question had moved to the wall of the chamber sitting down and resting their back against it. They appeared to be furiously scribbling something in a physical notebook. Every so often they would glance up and examine the pool and the probe with eyes that appeared hazel in the dim and inconsistent light.

“Well we’ll need to do all sorts of testing, but they sure do look uncannily similar to a traditional human.” Andrea hedged. One of the key lessons hammered into prospective Surveyors was to not rely on assumptions in alien environments, particularly when something appeared familiar, extra caution about assuming behaviors and properties was advised. Beyond some basic ranging, temperature, humidity, and pressure sensors the impromptu probe had a fairly simple camera and an unimpressive microphone. So until better equipment, or some other currently hidden indicator revealed the subject to be non-human it would be best practice to assume they were an unknown species anyways.

As they examined the mysterious figure, they finally seemed to be picking up something interesting on the mic. It appeared that mumbling to oneself while note taking was at least one trait that this being shared with certain humans Andrea and Lin had met. Unfortunately nothing the microphone picked up was intelligible enough to identify, not even to recognize it as an unknown language. The figure seemed to finish their frantic scribbling with a flourish and leapt to their feet striding rapidly over to the probe disappearing out of sight before the whole view lurched and started to move. It seemed like they were about to get a view of what was outside the pool chamber.

“Wait a second Lin, how far away from the anomaly do you think the probe can go before we lose signal?” As Andrea finished her question the answer became all too apparent, as the view from the probe went black. “Not very far at all, it seems” Lin responded dryly.