Dan, the Pink Vespa, and the Moon in the Shadow of Heracles, conclusion

a message in a bottle flung across the stars.


bands of yellow, brown, orange, and charcoal form a cliff wall, an erstwhile riverbed from a time before humans were even a glimmer in a paleolothic rodents eye. surely fascinating from a geological standpoint on it's own, but that is overshadowed by two pecular features the cause dan to jump and cheer and do a heel-clicking jig not unlike that of a toothless prospector in an old western upon striking a rich gold vein. or at least he would have don that were it not for the risk of severing or crimping the vital tubes and cables that make up his life support apparatus. upon this wall was embedded a round metal plate. and on this plate, in metals of differing colors, was etched a simple dilineation of landmasses and oceans. it looked like earth, but the continental configuration and shapes clearly read it as another world. by was of coincidence some of the landmasses bore vaguely similar shapes to those of some of earths own, but clearly this was a representation of a wholey different, yet amazingly earthlike world. this on it's own would be the discovery to best any previous discovery of humankind, and yet two feet down the wall from it, more modest in apearance but more intriguing in implication, was an artifact that made that plackard apear merely a token by comparison.

the rock, melted and fused into shape (by some chemical solvent if the strangle mineral flows were any indication), an archway. peeking through Dan spies a distant light at the end mirroring the archways shape. a tunnel with vaulted ceilings! it should not have surprised him that a distant alien race would come to many of the same basic conclusions about practical architecture as humans had, but it did. Dan mused for a moment about his first travel abroad, and how it wasn't the differences between cultures that had amazed and inspired him so, but rather the unexpected similarities. in a way, one expects different peoples to be different that oneself, but to find that thousand of miles away, and now billions at least, that even then people are the same, well, in strikes one with awe.

after estimating the width and height of the tunnel Dan mounted his pink steed and drove it onward down the chute. as he rode the forward lights of his helmet caught jewels embedded in the seamless solid stone of the corridor. the seemed to represent stars. perhaps a map of the distance traveled to create this feat. as he approached the tunnels end his map indicated that he was reaching the other side of the mountain that this tunnel had been drilled into. yet it opened into a room with large windows giving a breathtaking view of another lake. he could see that this mountain formed a sort of bay for the lake water. in a way, cupping the lake in. inside this room were two large columns, dusted white with some sort of chalk. he felt unqualified to venture a guess as to what it might mean, but supposed that the ultimate meaning was as a greeting to whomever might find it. on the walls and ceilings were painted images the equal of any renaissance chapel in Italy. they seemed to display various historical events, yet also seemed to express a primitive technological capacity. with haste, Dan pulled a small wheeled device not unlike a remote control car from a compartment in his vespa. setting it on the ground, the tiny machine roamed the room to catalog every square inch of it with a small camera and chemical sensors so that it could be thoroughly analyzed when it got back to earth. after it had finished dan took small scrapings of the paint and placed them in small ziplocks that he then placed into another plastic bag.

he pondered the images. the beings in them were bipedal, like humans, but had a strange 'S' shaped posture, as if leaning back but keeping the head straight. at rest, the characters seemed to recline on their hands, similar to a crab-walk. Dan presumed that perhaps they evolved from four legged creatures that walked on their backs. their skin came in different tones, but generally rooted in a pale blue. of course, not knowing how long this has been here, the colors had probably faded, making it impossible for him to gauge what the actual colors were.

Dan wandered through an archway that opened out into the shore of the bay. littered upon the ground were hundred of tiny mechanical devices, almost insect-like with legs and mandibles. some were embedded into the dirt which had melted around their carapaces into solid stone. these devices must have excavated the tunnel. others had dried paint clogging up nozzles on extra arms. those must have painted the room. before him a sea of dead machines, each with a specific function to create what he had seen. he picked up all he could in his bags, which barely scratched the surface.

as the day threatened to turn to night he got back on his now-maroon vespa and zipped back on through the tunnel. this time he turned on some brighter lights and saw that in fact the tunnel represented a timeline. it's words he could not read, but it's images showed a history as long and tragic and fascinating and hopeful as that of his own species. without the luxury of examining it more closely (but with the little photo recorder following behind to be picked up later by the copter) he took in as much as he could. the timeline ended without any apparent universal symbol of catastrophe, such as an explosion or the like, but end it did. finally, in black letters on the ceiling he only now could see. strangely it was the english alphabet, but in a bizarre permutation of an old script, as though they had learned it from transmissions hundreds of year prior and could not quite replicate it accurately. it was thus also rather misspelled, but the words were fairly clear: "IS WAS OF US. NOW IS FOR U"

he rushed back to his capsule, contemplating what he saw. to his best reckoning dan guessed that this civilization sent robots to record their history for those civilizations that may survive them. but what of "WAS"? were they gone? did they send this mission out with their civilizations dying breath so that they would not be forgotten? to live on in another's history? and what about the english? he stopped the vespa and brought up an image he took of the placard. the continents on it actually did look somewhat strange. he flipped the image upside down. it WAS earth! the continents were still somewhat malformed, but it was definitely earth! "FOR U", of course! this was for earth to know! they must have figured that one of these moons would likely be the first bodies beyond our solar system to be explored, so they planted this here. but the room had an ancient quality to it's art and design. it represented no post-electronic technology. maybe this was a facsimile of a great artifact of their civilization, reproduced for our eyes.

he got back to the capsule and frantically sent messages across the network. as an after thought he checked his inbox. FROM: Julie Pearson: "you'll never believe what I just found..."

perhaps another of their seven wonders? Dan waited with baited breath for the rest of the crew to log on.



authors note:
let me know if you think I got too "explainy" there at the end.