Thursday, 8 January 2015

Campus Two - Into the Field



(Picture Credit - Starship Troopers Header by freakinrobot dot com)
 
In "Campus" my friends and I suddenly found ourselves on a mystery campus learning a lively curriculum. Then we found we were on the moon of an unknown gas giant planet. Could anything stranger happen? Well of course…


OMG. Here we go again!

I awake on a bunk-bed, somewhere amongst rows and rows of bunk-beds. This vast dormitory is well-lit by electric lighting, but there are no windows.

Where the hell are we?

Alarms are sounding. Lots of moans and groans everywhere. It is clear that many people are being awakened at once.

Last night I went to sleep in my room, in the residential hall, just as I had for months. It had been a great shock for some of my friends and I to find ourselves on some mysterious campus on the remote moon of an unknown gas giant planet. But we had adapted. We had cooperated with our “student guides” and got stuck into some deep study. When they asked us to go through regular “assault courses” like army cadets we had accepted the challenge.

But now, just as we are accustomed to campus life, I find myself here!

“Get up all of you!” shouts someone loudly.

I’m wearing some sort of thick suit! It whirrs mechanically, exaggerating all my movements.

“Grab your helmets! The Captain is waiting to Brief you all! Head for the door! Come on you idle lot!” continues that voice.

Once out of the bunk I see the main door, a long way down the aisle. I am glad to see all my friends too, even though they are wearing the same cumbersome-looking armoured-suits.

Presently The Captain stands before us all, in a great hall and makes his address.

The Captain: “Welcome to The Intrepid, Troopers. I am sorry that your transition here was so sudden, but you will have to deal with it. This is the finest Star-Battleship in the fleet.

We are now in orbit over the planet ‘Mordant’, home-world of our enemy, a race of evil aliens known as ‘The Sligs’. You must have wondered how you came to be on The Campus. Well I can tell you now what happened.

A few years ago The Sligs invaded and conquered Earth. All of you were enslaved, but they wiped your memories so that you would not be aggrieved. Every one of you here was put into cold-storage for future ‘use’. But we the rebels managed to thwart their plans for you. We ‘kidnapped’ you all and eventually brought you to The Campus. Now you are ready for the most important mission in the history of Mankind: to take out The Sligs on their very home world…”

The Captain outlines our mission. Before long he releases us and we clamber onto countless space landing-craft. All too soon I have my helmet on as I run along a wooded, alien plain towards those dreaded Sligs. Talk about a “Star Ship Trooper”! I wish I’d played those computer games now. “Shots” are being fired all over the place. The battle lasts for hours. Must fight this exhaustion and keep going.

Suddenly I’m falling! I land with a heavy bump. There is a yell. It’s Sarah! All is quiet.

“Over here Sarah!” I shout.

It is evident that we have both failed to see this crevasse and fallen straight down the thing. I crawl through the shrubbery, bruised but not broken. And I find Sarah! Her piping voice is unmistakeable. The battle continues above us as we try to climb back up into the fray.

Then I see something. Further along the crevasse: looks like a great piece of cloth, with bumps underneath. I point this out to Sarah. We decide to go down and take a look.

As we sneak round some bushes we see that it is a whole gathering of cloths. A head appears! It is human!

“Oh My God!” yells Sarah.

Instantly about six heads spring up from beneath the covers: all women and children.

Child: “Sligs!”

“We ain’t Sligs!” I yell, “We are human.”

They clearly have guns pointed at us.

A woman: “You must be Sligs. Your uniforms…”

Sarah: “You are the Sligs. This is your home world.”

Same Woman: “Do we look like Sligs?”

Impulsively I free my helmet and remove it.

“Do we look like Sligs?” I ask.

A collective gasp is released by these people.

Another woman: “You fools! This is not the Slig home world, this is Earth! Oh My God, don’t you see? You’ve been killing your own people!”

Sarah removes her helmet and speaks: “I’m so, so sorry. We had no idea. They told us we were invading the Slig home-world.”

I now notice it is quiet above. But further down this tight little valley I see battle-suits approaching us, in Slig colours.”

“So they are human?” I ask, pointing.

They all nod.

“Sarah, let’s get out of these things, now! We’ve got a lot of explaining to do.”

As we struggle to get out of our armoured suits, with the children helping us, the first Woman addresses us: “I’m Eve. Welcome to The Resistance.”

The soldiers appear.

Eve (to first soldier): “Look, they are human! Will you raise your visor and show them you are human too? They will not believe me.”

The soldier raises his visor, and the expression on his face is priceless.

Mission accomplished. For now.

 

Paul Butters

Earthquake



(Picture Credit - Earthquake by ExtinctionProtocol NZ)


What a shock! An Earthquake in England. Even a small volcano. An unexpected event after millions of years of almost complete stillness. Buildings fell, people died, and for quite a while there was chaos. Many stories to tell.

The epicentre of all this carnage was somewhere up in The Yorkshire Dales. This earthquake left one particularly massive scar: a deep ravine revealing the interior of The Earth. It was here that an even more amazing story was soon played out.

Once all the dust had settled, Tim Torrance and his team of scientists and cavers set out to plumb the depths of that crevasse. Their objective was simple: to find out exactly what was down there. It was estimated by geologists that many millions of years of our past would be revealed to the scientific world.

Tim had to keep that great objective in mind as he made his way down this sheer cliff-face like a tiny money-spider slipping down a skyscraper. The cruel wind kept buffeting him savagely as he dangled precariously on those ropes. What a relief when he reached the bottom, even in that impenetrable blackness.

Presently they were “all correct” and ready to explore this abyss. Well, it turned out to be more of a deep gully actually. Geologists took many samples as they made their way along one side of the rift.

“These rocks are about two hundred thousand years old. That’s as old as Mankind!” purred one of the geologists.

Their head-lamps showed them the way as they crawled along the bottom of this seemingly endless Hades.

Suddenly a surprise! A Multiple Reflection! Like a star-cluster their head-lamps were reflected back at them! Metal! A wall of metal.

They hurried closer to that wall. Then all gasped. It was the wall, well the “hull” actually, of an ancient-looking spaceship! There was no doubt about it. All its projections and curves, its thrusters and antennae. Definitely a “spaceship”. Oh My God!

It was Tim who went first, walking right up there to examine the hull. The others soon followed.

Somebody yelled! An eight foot high door had slid open. Tim shot over to see for himself. They were dazzled by the lighting from…an airlock.

“Bob, Anne, Dave come with me!” snapped Tim, mustering his best “leader” composure. They collectively nodded and followed him in.

“Oh No!” exclaimed Anne as the door closed behind them.

“Oh My God!” she then half-screamed as the inner door opened.

“Welcome Visitors,” boomed a computer-like Voice from all around them, “Please enter the Embarkation Room”.

“Shall we?” queried Bob.

“Yes, follow me. We have to trust it,” replied Tim, firmly.

“How come it speaks English?” asked Dave.

The “computer” replied instantly: “I am the ‘ships computer Dave. Call me ‘George’ if you will. I am equipped with a ‘Universal Translator’ which works by, if you don’t mind this, reading your thoughts and all the language you carry in your heads. ‘If you don’t mind’ – ah – I accidentally made a joke there.

You don’t even smile. Ah, I see, you are bothered…”

Instantly the outer door slid open.

“There. You have complete freedom of choice. But you are welcome to come in. I have had to wait over two hundred thousand years for this.”

Within minutes Tim and the others found themselves on “the bridge”, standing before a huge screen. They were interrupted, however, by a low roar and a shaking of the floor beneath their feet.

“Do not worry my friends,” purred George, “I have just started my engines to produce electricity for full functionality. Nobody will be affected. I have also sent up a beacon, to contact my Users.”

Sure enough, a minute or so later one of Tim’s team dashed in, with a graphic account of that probe flying up out of the crevasse. But they were soon interrupted.

“I have contact with my Users,” announced George, “Our President will speak with you now”.

The great screen crackled to life and was filled with a sky-blue background.

Oh my God. We are about to speak to some Alien President!

A clear picture sprang into being. And there, before them, was the image of a young Man.

“Hello my friends. I am President Tegrin, speaking from the planet ‘Eden’, your ancestral home-world. It is wonderful news, to re-establish contact with you after two hundred thousand of your years,” boomed the voice, all around Tim and his party.

“Home World?” queried Tim, “I thought this was our home world, here on Earth. What do you mean?”

“Ha!” replied Tegrin, “I’m afraid, Tim, you require a history lesson. Our Original Home-World was called ‘Heaven’, though not to be confused with the Heaven of your ‘God’. Eden was inhabited later. Then we sent a mission to your ‘Earth’ as you call it. The spaceship you stand on, called ‘Discovery’, ran into trouble and had to crash-land. Its crew evidently used the escape-pods.”

“How do you know all that?” demanded Tim, “We’ve only been in contact a few minutes.”

“It must be so,” declared Tegrin, “Discovery’s scanners clearly show that you have exactly the same DNA as us!”

“If I may interject,” boomed George now, “My logs confirm, Tim, that the crew indeed ejected over the continent you now call Africa.”

Everybody gasped. The implications of “Africa” were all too obvious.

“But,” continued George, “I must point out one major difference in your genomes compared with those of Eden, you people of Earth. Before they used the escape-pods, Captain Adam had his crew genetically ‘made-mortal’. He assessed that, being stranded on Earth they would have to breed, but he didn’t want them to overpopulate the planet…”

“That is correct George,” interrupted President Tegrin, “We of the ‘League of Planets’ are all immortal. Captain Adam dutifully followed procedure by sacrificing his immortality, along with the rest of his crew.

But enough of history. We have shocked you and your crew enough for one day, Tim. I repeat, yes, you and all that you call ‘Mankind’ are indeed descendants of Captain Adam and his team. George, there is ample room for you to fly all these good people to the surface, ready for them to introduce you to the authorities there. If that’s okay with you Tim?”

“That’s fine,” agreed Tim, “I think we’ve more than accomplished our mission.”

“Good,” concluded Tegrin, “And, if you wish, Tim, George may then make you or anyone there who wants it Immortal, as a gesture of our good faith.”

“As The President says Tim,” affirmed George, “It is a painless procedure. A few simple gene rearrangements. Your wish is my command. I think you had better call in the rest of your team first though Tim. We have a little flight to take.”

Tim complied.

 

Paul Butters