4 Dec 2007
Final Destination, Chapter 7: August 6, 3094
“Ok, Al, let’s go over this. We’ve been here for almost two weeks now.”
“Nine days, to be precise,” the computer replied.
“Right – nine days. So what have we learned?”
“It would appear that this base is the only surviving artifact of the people who once inhabited Larson’s Folly,” Al said. “The probes I have released have found no other artifacts, debris, beacons, messages, or spacecraft.”
“How far out have you checked?” I asked.
“I have examined everything within a two light-year radius, Miles Porter. I could not have missed anything smaller than a shoebox.”
“I’m glad we’re not looking for shoes, then,” I said. “But keep going. What else have we learned?”
“You were able to get the door open, after some effort, and began an examination of the base itself. I could not join you inside the base so that is where my knowledge ends.”
“Some effort is right; it took three entire days. The mechanism was fried so I had to short-circuit the door and connect it directly to your power supply to get it to open. It was not an easy task.
“Anyway, Al, you’re right: this base is all we have to go on. That is the bad news. I had hoped to find a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow but it turns out there aren’t even any leprechauns – just a pot. The good news is that we do have the pot and it might yield a few clues.
“The best news of all is that the data core of the research station seems to be relatively undamaged. We should be able to read its data and possibly find out what happened. If we are correct and this is a research station then there may even be some research files on that data core, which would be a huge find. It may be tricky to restore the data but I know you can do that: there’s an entire chapter on it in that manual of yours.”
“Very good, Miles Porter. Bring me the data core and I will do what I can.”
I was beginning to feel somewhat optimistic.
Three hours later I wasn’t feeling quite as optimistic. “What do you mean, you’re having trouble reading the data?”
“The server that you obtained for me, Miles Porter, was heavily secured. If you will recall, the people on this planet kept very careful track of their research. They guarded it with the utmost secrecy and took great pains to encrypt their secrets. The data is on this server is both encrypted and damaged at that. You are asking me to decrypt damaged data to which I have no key. That is an almost impossible task.”
“Wonderful,” I said. “Just wonderful. Isn’t there anything you can find out? Anything at all?”
The computer paused. “There are some sections that stored unencrypted data and a few facts can be gleaned from that. For instance, it would appear that this facility was called the Spatial Mechanics Laboratory.”
“Ok, that’s a start. Are there any unencrypted notes?”
“There are a few. Here is the most recent one that I have been able to recover so far.”
The computer loaded a document onto a nearby console. It read as follows:
The planet Larson’s Folly was hit with a stellar shockwave at 7:14am on March 28, 2815 A.D. According to instruments, the planet immediately broke up and suffered tremendous devastation: the atmosphere was blown off the planet, the ocean boiled away, and all life on the plant was destroyed. There is no indication that anything has been left alive on this planet.
This base happened to be on the opposite side of the planet from where the shockwave hit and it survived relatively intact, although part of the lower floor has been destroyed. Based on local gravity readings, this base is now floating on a fairly large asteroid and is no longer a part of the planet; indeed, the planet itself has been broken up into a host of small asteroids. The planet of Larson’s Folly is no more.
Posted by AI unit Charlie on March 28, 2815
“Amazing,” I said. “That’s exactly what we are looking for, Al. Keep searching through that data core and let me know if you find anything else.”
The pieces were beginning to fall together. “Tell me, Al, are any nearby stars missing?”
“Yes, Miles Porter, there are a number of stars that are missing in this area of space. To anticipate your next question, this phenomenon can be traced back to a single source. It would appear that the star ZMX-10343-D, located approximately one light-year away, was detonated at some point in the past. This produced an expanding spherical debris field that was centered on the old position of that star.”
“What do you mean by detonated? Do you mean it went supernova?”
“No, Miles Porter. Had it done so there would have still been some remnant of the star left. In this case something instantly converted the star’s entire mass into energy, and that energy expanded out in all directions and created a wave of plasma that moved at the speed of light. The plasma wave obliterated anything it touched within a radius of 10 light-years.”
“Ah. Yes, I can see that. Do you know what caused it?”
“No, I do not.”
“So a star one light-year away blew up,” I said, “and it generated a plasma field that traveled at the speed of light in this direction. That means it would have taken a year to get here. Right?”
“Right.”
“Do you suppose that the people on Larson’s Folly knew in advance that their doom was approaching and, perhaps, managed to escape?”
“I can’t answer that question,” the computer replied.
“Then let’s find the answer.”