Discovering Voyager 1

Discovering Voyager 1

  It was too late to be back at work, but judging by the call Aled had received it was a situation better looked at sooner than later. He kept himself awake with the radio, its exotic rhythms droning out with the hum of the engine and the gentle throbbing of the gravitational displacement generators that held the vehicle miles above the smog-hidden ground. He soared across the city with the other streams of traffic that persisted to dart between the colossal buildings, even at this un-godly hour.

  He came into the zone of Uran’s grand university, its century-old domes and minarets bespoke of a finer architecture that had been neglected for the efficiency of the rest of the planet-wide city. The research facility loomed ahead. Aled reared his car up to a near vertical climb to the very top of the grand building. The blinking lights of the parking dock invited him to level off, and slide into the grasp of magnetic connection ports.

  Greban waited for him at the far end of the parking lot. He fidgeted with the enthusiasm of a man who had achieved a great feat. Aled stepped from his car, glancing over his shoulder as the automated system carried it away into the racks of cars.

‘Couldn’t have waited till morning, Greban?’

‘Afraid not, sir. I assure you it will be worth your time. Please, follow me.’

  ‘A scavenger ship traced it approaching orbit at the beginning of the week. They retrieved it as it stabilised and brought it straight to us after inspecting the nature of it.’ Greban explained from behind his console in a dark corner of the room.

 Aled stood inspecting the object being lit by the small and only light source of the room. They didn’t want too much light in case of causing damaging reactions with the materials of the object. It was large, obviously metal but highly battered and weathered from its voyage through the depths of space. It consisted of a mane body, with the remains of a crumpled disk on the top of it. Metal rods stuck out in all directions. Aled brushed away a layer of dirt from the side of the main body. The metal beneath had corroded to some amount, and there was a faded image of a blue disc with a red chevron going through it.

 He looked up to Greban.

‘This thing is old. Thousands of years old. Have you managed to date it?’

‘Over  seventy thousand years old. We’re lucky it was out there in space so it didn’t have to go through atmospheric weathering.’ The other answered.

‘Composition?’

‘Mostly a primitive form of steal. Got traces of gold and plutonium from the inside.’ Greban grinned.

‘Plutonium? Is this thing safe?’

‘Of course, pretty much dead by now. Counts are far below background radiation. We assume it was used as a fuel source for whatever function this had.’

‘Alright. Opened it yet?’

‘We were waiting for you.’

  Aled turned to the tool bench at the side of the room and took a plasma saw. He aimed it at the panel. It burst into life with a sharp beam of energy, boring at the metal. He got to the end and clicked the device off, prising the panel from the thin thread that held it. Inside was a series of instruments and dials, in the midst of which was a large gold disk, intact over the tens-of-thousands of years that it has existed.

Its surface was engraved in a series of lines and circles in a strange, disjointed design. At one part a series of lines extended out at different lengths from a centre point, each line broken up by a variety of perpendicular line.  Beneath the longest of these lines were two conjoined circles with a defined centre and single point on the circumference.

‘What is it?’ inquired Greban.

‘I don’t know. This looks like a simple solar location map,’ Aled said pointing to the extending lines.

‘These circles could be diagrams of hydrogen atoms. Look.’

‘Is it a way of communication?’ Greban ask as he took it. He inspected both faces of the disc and ran his finger along its edge. Satisfied with what he was looking for, he separated the two sides of a disk, revealing a second that was incremented in shallow groves.

‘Yeah I think it is. Look at the diagram on the case,’ pointing at a disk above the extending lines. ‘It shows how to play it, the hydrogen diagrams help with understanding it.’ Greban answered himself.

‘Brilliant. Figure out how to play it, I’ll keep looking on the object.’

Greban jogged off back to a helper in the corner, sending him off to study the disk. Aled returned to his plasma saw and removed the next panel. He pulled at the metal, revealing a gold plaque. He observed the image engraved on it for a moment. The tool in his hand dropped to the ground as his grip grew limp at the sight.

‘Greban!’

‘What?’ the other asked as Aled removed the plaque.

‘It’s us.’ Aled muttered.

‘I beg your pardon?’

Aled flipped the plaque around so Greban could see, the light glint peeling off to reveal the star map of the disc, another hydrogen diagram, a series of different sized disks with an arrow pointing to a rudimentry drawing of the foreign object, and the image of a man and woman.

‘It’s man made. We sent it all those thousands of years ago.’

‘I don’t believe it. Does—does this mean we found it? Our home world?’

‘I believe so. I think these circles are the solar system. The third planet away from the star. That’s where the arrow points to.’

‘By the council! We found the origin of man!’

A young scientist burst into the room.

‘The disk, sir; we got it working.’

The three scientists sat in a dark room gazing at a single screen, while a second churned through the many possible star systems that the hints on the disk led to.The first image to appeared, drawn on in vertical lines formed by the analogue system. It started with a black circle on a white background, as a sort of calibrating image. It then proceeded to play strange tunes representing the music of the past people. It was organic, flowing in a way that their contemporary music had gone beyond. Lyrics of ancient languages sang along with some of these songs. As it chimed on “a country boy named Johnny B. Goode Who never ever learned to read or write so well” Greban leaned over to the young scientist beside him and whispered ‘Any luck on the star system yet?’

‘Not so far. Seems to be struggling to find it.’

Accompanying the music was a series of images, starting with photographs of planets ranging in size and colour. A particular blue planet took the attention of the scientists. It showed a drawing of marsupials, evolving into apes, and man. Images of ancient man and his culture appeared, baring their strange fashions and behaviours. Paintings, cars and buildings and much more were shown. With pictures of natural landscapes and alien creatures came the sounds of the organic world, almost frightening to the contemporary scientists who had been raised in a world of technology and metal. Aled and Greban were totally engrossed over the awesome display before them. The young scientist looked at the screen with the star system.

‘Oh dear God no!’ He gasped.

The other two snapped their gaze to him. In unison they demanded ‘What?’

‘The star system—it’s gone.’

‘What? How is that possible?’ Aled scorned.

‘It was destroyed in the Galactic War centuries ago. It’s not there.’

‘No. No!’ Aled cried. ‘They finally went and blue it up! The maniacs! The damned maniacs blue up the one thing we’ve been searching for this whole time!’

‘Aled—’ Greban tried to comfort.

And then the music on the record stopped, and was replaced by a firm voice. The computer whirred as it translated the forgotten English to the universal language of the Galactic Unity.

“We cast this message into the cosmos. It is likely to survive a billion years into our future, when our civilization is profoundly altered and the surface of the Earth may be vastly changed. Of the 200 billion stars in the Milky Way galaxy, some--perhaps many--may have inhabited planets and spacefaring civilizations. If one such civilization intercepts Voyager and can understand these recorded contents, here is our message:

This is a present from a small distant world, a token of our sounds, our science, our images, our music, our thoughts, and our feelings. We are attempting to survive our time so we may live into yours. We hope someday, having solved the problems we face, to join a community of galactic civilizations. This record represents our hope and our determination, and our good will in a vast and awesome universe.”