All That Sparkles is Not...

  I reply “Fascinating, but is there anything of use to us in the system?”

  “Stacks of it. There are whole libraries of information, like the plans to this place, the status of their production systems, the air scrubbing statistics, you name it, it all seems to be here.”

  “Anything about our friend here?” I nod in the direction of the being below.

  “Probably, but it will be a case of identifying the particular records and understanding exactly what has been recorded. Wow would you believe it I have found the generic door locking routine. Whoever wrote this was good, they have commented every segment.”

  “Don’t mess with that routine, we don’t want to open any doors that it would not be safe to open.”

  “But there is a double latching system.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Well there is close the door, the first part of the routine and then the locking part, looks like this actually engages a secondary catch in all the doors to prevent them being opened again.”

  “Are you saying, that if the second part were somehow disabled, the doors would close OK…”

  Rachel finishes my sentence, “but they would not lock, so you would be able to slide the door open again.”

  “Can you amend the routine?”

  “I can comment out the second part of the code, but if I remember rightly, it has to be recompiled, I don’t know if I will be able to find the compiler.”

  “See if you can comment out the locking part.”

  “Are you sure there aren’t any bad implications of doing this?” Rachel asks.

  “Not a hundred per cent sure, but we haven’t encountered anything so far, that is harmful to us that should be locked away.”

  “Apart from possibly our friend down there, he is a total unknown.”

  “Ah but if he doesn’t know that the doors are unlocked, he will most likely go on previous experience and assume he is locked in. Any chance that the machines will spot what is going on?”

  “Again like you said about our friend down there, if they don’t suspect there has been any change, why should they doubt that a door that always locks itself suddenly does not.”

  “What about the system itself, will it report that you have been messing around?”

  Rachel pauses a moment before replying, “Like I said there appears to be no security.”

  “Go on do it.”

  Rachel busies herself with making the changes and as she exists the screen, the system prompts her. “Clever, it asks if I want to compile and debug.”

  Two further taps and a brief wait, then another screen is displayed with some facts and figures being rapidly displayed. “Good gracious it worked!”

  Rachel taps a few more times and announces, “It has gone live.”

  I just hope the machines do not spot what we have done.

  Rachel taps away at the screen for a bit longer, whilst I resume observing our alien friend. The skin is kind of grey with a hint of green about it. I note that as well as him having four arms, he does not have legs, but instead, his trunk seems to terminate in curved areas the bottoms of which touch the ground. I see him moving around and similar to that giant slug like creature, the movement is induced by bulging and contracting muscles. As the being swings around, I note that the trunk of the body, tapers outwards so the base is wider than the top, where the being’s waist would be. This presumably gives him greater stability. The whole entourage is retreating now and heading towards one of the exits.

  I turn my attention back towards our guide and note that it is heading round to our side of the hill, presumably curious as to what we are up to. I warn Rachel, who taps the screen a few times and the starting screen is displayed again. She closes he maintenance hatch and we commence our descent of the hill, so that by the time our guide has clear sight of us again, we are well down the hill. I can see Anile amusing himself running his hand through a patch of turbulent water in the pond below. We soon join him.

  “Wondered where you two had disappeared to.”

  By the time our guide comes back in sight again we have briefed Anile on what we found. Rachel also updated me that she had not been able to find out anything about our alien friend.

  “Follow me.” is the invite issued by our guide and we obediently follow.

  ~~0~~0~~0~~

  Chapter 13 – What is going on?

  We find ourselves back at the canteen.

  We scoop up the moss onto platters and avoid the portions of giant slug as we did at breakfast. This time however we note there are some metal strips, that look something like a slightly curved knife. Perhaps the sight of us scooping up the food with our fingers was just too much for our hosts to take.

  We sit at the same table that we had breakfast at.

  As I look down at my platter, I notice something that looks a bit odd, small black dots. I wonder if the robots have accidently included some nutrients or something else from the production plant, with this batch of food. I push some of the dots around with the curved metal strip, they roll easily, like ball bearings or tiny marbles. I somehow expected the movement to be rather stinted and jerky. I examine the dots more closely and sure enough they appear to be uniformly round.

  I look up to see Anile is already tucking into his platter. I feel like I have to make an urgent decision, to alert him or say nothing. “Anile, I don’t think this batch is safe to eat, there is some sort of contaminant on my platter at least.”

  Anile stops’ scooping the food up and asks, “Contaminant, what sort of contaminant?”

  “I’m not sure, but these black dots here, round the edge of the plate, could be nutrient or something else from the production plant, but in either case I’m not sure that it’s safe to eat.”

  Anile sounding annoyed says, “What black dots, I can’t see any on my platter.” He pushes it towards me.

  I point towards the small black dots on my platter, “These here and around here.”

  Anile seems fascinated now, he takes the metal strip from me and pushes some of the dots around, “They move too easily to be soil particles and they have a sheen about them that reminds me of beetles, maybe they are insects. Shame we haven’t got a magnifying glass.”

  “How about this?” Rachel asks, holding out her phone.

  “You didn’t bring that with you?” I ask and then realise how stupid my question was.

  Rachel ignores me and to Anile she suggests, “You can use the camera and zoom in, like this.”

  “Great! Good thinking.” Anile sets the platter down on the table and sets about examining the black dots.

  We wait patiently.

  Anile exclaims, “They must be insects, they are moving!”

  I say, “I wonder if you have eaten any of them. Are there any on your platter?”

  Anile switches his attention to his own platter. After a long silence, Anile exclaims, “Heck there are hundreds of the bloody things crawling all over the food. Yuck, to think I have been eating them!”

  Rachel asks, “Can you make yourself sick? There’s no knowing what bacteria and the like they are carrying.”

  “I don’t know, the thought of having swallowed them in the first place makes me feel bad enough.”

  Anile and Rachel move to one side and Rachel coaches Anile on techniques to induce sickness. I wonder why she knows these things. You think you know someone well until something like this happens then…

  Anile is sick, time and time again. To make things worse, Rachel is still encouraging him.

  Our guide now appears to be concerned, it approaches Anile and Rachel at speed and asks, “What is meaning?”

  I explain, “Anile has eaten something that may be harmful and needs to get rid of it.”

  “What is meaning of harmful?”

  I pick up my platter and point to the black dots, “See these small dots here, it looks like some insects have make their way into your food production units.”


  “What is meaning of Insects?”

  I feel helpless not knowing German equivalent words for these things, I look at Rachel, but she is still busy tending to Anile. Then it comes to me and I say, “Not good iols.”

  “These not iols, we production them to protect.”

  I cannot believe my ears, “What you made them to protect us iols, what against?”

  “Just so, made them, for your protection.”

  Is there no limit that these machines will go to in order to safeguard us? First they lock us in our rooms, then escort us everywhere, now this, they try to so call protect us by feeding us some sort of non-Biological insect. The dreadful thought then crosses my mind, these black dots would be manufactured for a life form that is probably so vastly different to us that their very existence in our blood stream could cause untold damage. Thoughts of the video that we had seen earlier at the arena come back to me, the fighter who had been injured, his blood had congealed like foam. Who knows what these things could do to us. All sorts of horrible images come to mind.

  I ask our guide, “How do they protect us?”

  “I am not able to sagen.”

  “You are not able to say…”

  Our guide launches into, “Just so…”

  I interrupt with, “Does that mean you refuse to say or you just do not understand the question.”

  “What means refuse and question?”

  This is so frustrating, like talking to a child who questions the meanings of your words all the time.

  Rachel comes to my rescue, “Refuse means verweigern and question is frage.”

  “Just so. I understand the question but I do not have the antwort.”

  “Would the Director know the answer, anwort?”

  “Just so answer. The Director will have the answer, but you understand, question I.”

  Rachel looks at me and says in a whisper, “I just do not know if Anile has got rid of all of those things, who knows what damage could be done by them.”

  “Precisely, the same thoughts have been going through my head. Did you eat any?”

  Rachel replies, “Hungry as I am, luckily no. We need to get Anile home as soon as we can.”

  “Agreed but first we need to find out what those black dots are.”

  “You heard our guide, it doubts that the Director can explain them sufficiently for us to understand.”

  I reply, “We just have to try and get some more information.” I turn to our guide and ask, “Can you take us to the Director?”

  “Follow me.”

  ~~0~~0~~

  Phil is watching football on his laptop as Gavin enters the office, Phil asks, “Any luck with the parts?”

  Gavin holds up a bag, “All here, I even got an extra regulator, just-in-case. How’s the game going?”

  Phil replies, “To be quite honest I’ve not been that interested, I haven’t seen defence as rubbish as this in ages, usually goals are something to get excited about.”

  “Oh there have been some then.”

  “Yes but not in our favour, I can assure you, when the defence is this rubbish, it feels like they deserve to get beaten. I keep finding myself lookin’ at the clock in the corner of the screen.”

  Gavin puts the bag on the bench and says, “I told you not to start a countdown timer, makes the time seem to go even slower, how long anyway?”

  Phil gets up and walks over to the door way, pops his head through as if checking to see if anything has changed, he replies, “only an hour until pick-up time and just over 30 until delivery of the new power smoothing device.”

  “According to your clock it’s about 34 hours.”

  Phil walks over to the fridge, “You want one?” Gavin shakes his head, Phil resumes, “Ah but that’s closer to 30 than 40.”

  “Call yourself a scientist?”

  Phil retorts, “Engineer actually.”

  “Even so, doesn’t accuracy come into the equation somewhere? Hopefully the team will have found the place so interesting they are not back yet. Let’s just hope that they have found some friendly natives who are giving them the deluxe royal tour.”

  “You make it sound like a holiday.”

  Gavin smiles, “Well who knows it might be?”

  ~~~0~~0~~

  When we get to the main dome again, the Director is not on its podium. Anile, Rachel and I look at each other, the three of us wondering if the pleasantries are now over, have these machines tumbled the fact that we are not their iols?

  To add to our unease, our guide simply announces, “We wait.”

  Anile does not look at all well. Rachel is fussing over him, she encourages him to sit on the edge of the podium, but Anile says he’s fine. The machines around us show no reaction to us, it is almost as if we do not exist, just like when we first arrived.

  The minutes tick by.

  Rachel asks our guide, “Does the Director know we are here?”

  Our guide simply repeats, “We wait.”

  I nervously glace at the display on my suit sleeve. The seconds reliably counting up. I do some quick maths. I point to the display and whisper to Rachel, “nearly 30 hours.”

  Rachel says, “We have to get back to the place that we arrived at, as we need to get a message back home.”

  Frustratingly our guide says, “I do not understand. We wait.”

  Normally our guide would explore the meanings of words it does not understand. Now it is just blanking us off. Suddenly it hits me, maybe they have discovered the changes that Rachel made to their system and we are no longer considered as their friends but as enemies, but surely we would have been arrested or whatever these machines do to enemies.

  We wait.

  Chapter 14 – From bad to worse

  We waited for ages, an hour to be precise.

  Rachel says, “Where is the Director? We need to see the Director quickly.”

  Our guide simply repeats, “We wait.”

  We are taken by surprise as behind us we hear, “I have been besetzt. I understand there is a problem with your food?”

  “Yes, but more important than that, we have to get back to our arrival place as we have to get a message back home.”

  “You need to go, to go where?”

  “Er, arrival place, is er, Ankunft place.”

  “Just so, but why go there?”

  “We need to tell those at home that you have the home land ready.”

  “How can you do this?”

  “Er we have a comms device at our arrival place.”

  “Why you not bring here?”

  “We were told not to, in-case there were problems.”

  “problems, probleme?”

  “Yes quite so.”

  “What problems?” asks the Director.”

  “Well, this place may have been invaded and the place may no longer be intended for us.”

  “What meaning is invaded and no longer intended?”

  “Er, let me see,” Rachel is silent for a moment, then continues, “Ah I have it, invaded is oover-fallen, nicht mayer best-im’t.”

  “Just so, but why would unfinished structures, be of concern?”

  “Oh, I see what you mean, oover-fallen, you think that means to fall over, no it is not that meaning, oh how can I put it?”

  Anile suggests, “Taken over?”

  “Thanks, that might do it,” says Rachel, then she turns to the Director and says, “Oover-nomen.”

  “This all sounds seltsame.”

  Rachel like an automatic translator says, “strange.”

  “Just so, strange indeed. So you need to go to your place of arrival to use device to talk home”

  Just then Anile announces, “Sorry guys but I do not feel at all well.”

  Just before he collapses onto the floor we see that his skin has gone bright red, like he has an extreme case of sunburn or some form of allergic reaction.

  ~~0~~0~~

  Phil is pacing up and down the lab roo
m, whilst Gavin is bent over the bench soldering away. Gavin looks up and says, “For goodness sake Phil, you are going to do nobody any good by exhausting yourself, I know you are frustrated, but we have another 31 hours to go before the power supply arrives. In the meantime we are best concentrating on trying to get this communicator working. Even if we cannot get the team back, if this baby works we can keep in touch with them. Can you check the calculations again of the signal that we need to generate to get this thing to generate the appropriate signal tunnel. Only I’m getting to the point now where I am going to need to commit the final components to the board and if I get it wrong we could be looking at something more serious than a small hole in a wall.”

  Phil replies, “I have checked the figures twice already.”

  Gavin looking worried, replies, “I need to be one hundred per cent satisfied before I turn this baby on, that the back exciter does not collapse and blow off my hand or something like that. I’m OK with the electronics but the detailed maths, I’m hopeless, Anile is better than me at all that.”

  “You have a point I concentrated on the maths for the forward component, and just assumed that the back exciter maths would be OK as it is just scaled down. I think I’ll put something on the lappy as I’m doing it, to relax me. Is it really a whole 31 hours still to go, have we really got to live through another 31 hours?”

  “Sorry Phil, but the answer to that one is yes. If we can keep busy it will pass quickly. I think I’ll complete the circuitry and grab a bit of shut eye, before checking it all out and testing.”

  “It seems like we have so much to do before we can actually help them out there.”

  “Well there would be no point in blasting a great hole in the main kit out there just because we want to do a rush job on this baby.”

  “Very true, best to take a steady pace and be assured that this device will work. I wonder what they have found out there?”

  ~~0~~0~~

  Rachel is mopping Anile’s face with the damp cloth that one of the machines had brought her. She says, “Well I can’t leave him here and in this state we can’t take him with us.”

  I look at the sleeve of my suit again, we have now been here for 32 hours, “But we must get back to the tunnel, Phil and Gavin will be worried about us, we have gone well over our agreed return time, even if we depart right now it will take us many hours to get back there, even travelling on one of these machines.”

  “Who knows what those little black dot, like things are doing to Anile, he seems to be in such discomfort, I just do not think he would survive such a journey.”