2142- In Orbit Around
Pluto
Sarah handed the journal back to Jack. “I don’t get it. He doesn’t
seem to talk about it anymore after that.”
He set the book down gently on the nightstand. “He never
mentions it again. Really, it’s one of the few actual loose ends in his
journals. I’ve always assumed that they either found a simple explanation or it
just wasn’t all that important. They had so much other stuff to work with that
maybe it was something he couldn’t waste any energy on.”
“But now you think you have the answer?”
Jack smiled. “I have a theory, at least. Let’s say you’re
the Omegans. Highly advanced race, traveling the universe, checking things out.
You land on a backwater dump of a world, the inhabitants extremely un-evolved
from a technological standpoint. But you see some potential in them and
befriend them. So you share your beliefs, your culture with them. This includes
your mythology, your religion, you name it.”
“Where are you going with this?”
He continued. “You tell them of your version of the
afterlife, and the natives buy into it.”
“You’re starting to worry me.”
“I’m getting there. So you’re advanced enough as a species
that you can travel across the galaxy. But what happens if you die a long way
from home? How do you find your way to the afterlife?”
Sarah rolled her eyes. “Umm… you don’t because there’s no
such thing.”
Jack held up his hand. “Hold on, hold on. They believe
strongly, remember? So perhaps wherever they go, they construct a way for the
dead to enter Erestia. And on Earth, they leave it in the hands of the natives
that they liked so much.”
“It’s official: you’ve gone completely insane. Jack, come
on! You’re suggesting that space aliens crossed the galaxy, befriended a tribe
of Native Americans, and left them a key to Heaven when they took off. And for
the last hundred plus years, those same aliens have been showing up and killing
us in droves.” She paused to take a deep breath. “I’m starting to really regret
sleeping with you, because I’m probably going to have to shoot you.”
“Have some faith. I know it sounds crazy, but think about
this: the first attack was in 2018. Only a couple of years before that, Earth
scientists fired up the largest supercollider in history. Things got a little
crazy. There were dimensional breaches reported, small singularities cropped
up, strange frequencies began showing up on the electromagnetic spectrum… there
were some fundamental changes in our relationship with the physical universe at
that point.”
She cut him off. “And you think that when this stuff was
happening, the gateway or whatever that the Omegans left here got knocked offline.”
“Offline? Hell, there could have been an incursion! Our
experiments could have punctured Erestia and done it damage. If twentieth
century Earth people had discovered that Heaven had been invaded and/or damaged
in some way, how would they have responded?”
“By nuking the shit out of whatever did it.” She rubbed her
temples. “I can’t believe I’m buying this shit. I must be crazier than you.”
“That makes me feel better, oddly.”
“So why still come back here after all this time? They could
have just turned the entire planet into rubble and forgot about us during the
first period.”
“Only one answer to that: the gateway, or the pieces to it,
must still be here and active. They must be trying to find it so they can close
it permanently and get it away from the insanity of the human race.”
“Suddenly I can’t blame them.”
“I can; they’re still bastards. The tricky part is that when
they eventually get what they want, I have zero doubt that they will try and
reduce Earth into a new asteroid belt. So we have to beat them, and beat them
decisively, at the same time sharing a goal with them: shutting down this
gateway. Once we win, we can’t leave them any reason to come back. The Erestia
thing has to be loud and public.”
She sighed. “I hate to ask, but do you know where it is?”
Jack stood and stretched. “I was thinking about it as you
were reading. The Omegans have concentrated their searching of the planet to
various areas over their various occupations. The only thing I could really see
that these places have in common is a large number of museums. So the door to
Erestia must have some sort of physical component. True or not, they must
assume that archaeologists have found however many pieces there are and spread
them out. It’s a logical assumption.”
It began to sink in for Sarah. “But we know where at least
one piece of it was… back in 2019.”
“If we can get close to home, we might be able to jack into
the databanks and follow where the stuff went when Steven Keys and his group
were done on the island.”
“How do you propose we do that without taking on the whole
damned Omegan armada?” she asked, finding herself uneasy about the potential
answer.
Jack grinned. “By getting us invited to dinner.”
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