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Singing Rose
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Seconds had lapsed into minutes. Those minutes begat hours. Soon, a whole period of time passed. Thirty-six hours, in fact. Unfortunately, longer than expected, but not enough to deter the spirit of Feather.
Interestingly, he had spent most of it alone. After all this time, he grown accustomed to working without the prying eyes of others. Now, the expectation of someone other than himself made him nervous and he had to spend his time locked inside of the bridge to work.
Yet, all that would come to pass. Feather called the meeting over the intercom. His voice shook with the excitement of one thousand children on Christmas morning, so much so that the message had to be repeated in great excess. This wouldn’t have been so bad if it had been a time other than 4 AM.
Feather was literally on the edge of his seat when the Oligarchy arrived, ready to stand erect whenever he threw the last remaining social conventions out the window.
“Alright! Alright! Okay. Alright. Okay.” He paused before adding, “Okay.”
Beginning was the most difficult part of this task. He wanted to just start off with something other than the beginning, but procedure was procedure.
“Alright. Life. We know its on the planet, but to what extent? That’s why we sent the probe and that’s what we’re going to find out today.”
He played the video. The crashing through the atmosphere made it choppy, though Feather was proud to state. “It held up better than I expected. There was a 2% chance that it would break apart or lose functionality, either in the atmosphere or upon impact. Luckily, neither was the case for both probes.”
“Oh! Yeah. This one is the one we aimed toward that railway outside of the city. Prevailing headwinds sent it off course slightly. Interestingly, to the northwest as opposed to the southeast. Analysis suggest that this is just as usual on the planet itself. Might have been an interesting wind front or something. I’m not a weatherman, by any means.”
The video continued to show it all flying faster and faster toward the ground.until it suddenly jarred and floated upward slightly--a parachute deploying. Below, they could see the railway. Two lanes of rail traffic, one leading into and the other leading out of the city, with deciduous forests and farmland surrounding it all. He paused the video and zoomed in on the image of the city, the pixilation obscuring it. The original image exists alongside of it, but at this size, it’s difficult to make out.
“This is the best image I could get out of the city. It’s clearly industrialized, as you can note by the smokestacks. Some of the building also appear to be stacked... Like a ziggurat. Given the pyramid’s size, scope and the expansiveness of the city, this is probably one of the oldest civilizations on the planet. The fact that they managed to hold onto political power for what could be centuries if not a millennium or two is astonishing in and of itself. The closest Earth ever got was Rome, and that‘s if you count Byzantium.”
“Now, as you can clearly see, you’ll notice that even the newer building follow a similar motif; its as if it’s the bastard lovechild of Germany‘s brick expressionism and Mesoamerican architecture, with its intricate designs and ’stepped’, wedding cake-like bu buildings. The structures themselves never seem to exceed five or six stories, so they haven’t started to use steel for construction. The roadways are small and narrow with the exception of a few thoroughfares, so the likelihood of automobiles or trolleys is almost non-existent.”
Feather pressed play on the video again and it continued to fall to the ground below slowly. Grumbling, the old man pressed fast-forward until it reached the ground, the camera aiming up at the sky now. As it continued to fast-forward through the day until it arrive at one particular place. He pressed pause and revealed a remarkable still image.
“This is our alien race.” He paused for dramatic effect. “They look kind of like ant-eaters, don’t they? Whatever they are, they‘re clearly mammalian. The girl has boobies. Fuzzy boobies. They’ve also developed a sense of modesty, albeit still scantily clad. I’d imagine the clothing most of us are used to would heat them greatly. The male looks to have gold around his neck. Could be wealthy, but he could also be more of a commoner. We don‘t know how rare gold is on this planet.”
“What interests me most about the picture is the gun. It has a musket-style end on the barrel, suggesting that they haven’t discovered rifling yet. What’s curious is the circle in the middle of the gun. I have no idea what it could mean, actually. Clip, maybe? I’m not a firearm guy. I’m attuned to the guns on my ship.”
“There’s also rectangular eyes on the male, which only begs the question on why an ant-eater man would have goat eyes and why the females wouldn’t have it. Could be an evolutionary trait developed during their hunting and gathering phase, giving them a wider look at the fields or whatever.”
Feather pressed play on the video once more. They seem to look at it intensely for nearly fifteen minutes before the male figure jumps and shoots at it with his gun, destroying the lens and effectively ending the video.
“Probe worked in some capacity, but mostly for data and it covers what we already know. It’s an earth-like planet. Air’s fine. Water’s fine. Soil’s fine. Gravity’s fine. Bacteria and viruses are similar to our own. It continued to operate in this capacity before all contact was disrupted six hours before this meeting started.”
“If you have any questions or comments about this probe, speak up! Otherwise, we’ll move onto the next one.”
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