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Eve's discovery - chapter one

The Pod Canary

By Hywel LatimyrPublished 2 years ago 8 min read
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Nobody can hear a scream In the vacuum of space Or so they say

When in the void The screams within vibrant And the silence violent

Always being nocturnal Forever neglected Pain of never

Pointless sadness With no one's close safety To cry for your sacrifice

To whomever picks this up, that was an example of a Troddan. It was a poetic form invented by Emily Alice Jane Troddan in 2043, she was a former poetic laurite in a land called United Kingdom. I use use to practice poetry to better my English writing skills when I was learning the language.

I needed the learn it for my training, it was mandatory. I still remember learning that word; my English teacher on Interexchange himself taught me it. It was just a simple discussion about why I was learning English. I wonder how he did with his life in the end? I remember when he told me he why he took two weeks off work, for his wedding and honeymoon. I wonder if he ever did have kids.

Sorry if you catch me drifting away from the point of this log, or whatever this is I'm writing. The truth is, I'm board. That's why I wrote that poem. I have already accepted my death, I was a canary after all. But as my vessel drifts through the void, my boredom grows larger and larger. The stars are indeed beautiful, the shining lights traveling past their source's lifespan to illuminate the darkness. But I've seen them enouth times already.

The nearest star's light, that star being Jericho, is still twenty five years away if I were to travel at the speed of her radiance. Her nearest planet that I could land on, even further away.

Perhaps one day if you're reading this, you would have managed to reopen the wormhole. But by that point, I will be long dead. Time isn't a set pattern, it's a dimension. That's something I discovered whilst I was out here.

My mission was to fly through the wormhole and to discover what was on the other side. I was a canary, and I took the opportunity gladly. I knew what could happen and I accept this slow demise with grace. When the wormhole shut, I carried on the mission regardless. My three crewmates all took their own lives in fear. I can't blame them, I sometimes with I had that conviction. Their names were Roland Williams, British; Valentina Costa Guzman, Spain, and Ramesh Patel from India.

I still remember tales from my grandparents, about how their grandparents lived under a repressive regime that denied them of their religion. They were Catholics in a nation where only the supreme leader was holy. One of the cardinal sins of Catholics is suicide. My grandparents made me promise them that I would never commit such a sin. They were protecting me in their own way. They didn't mind that I took an interest away from religion, just that I didn't sin my way into hell.

Is this hell? The inferno I was always warned of? Earth almost became an inferno, more than once. I did expect the inferno to be much warmer than this. But then again, I myself have committed the same sin Eve committed. Just as Eve ate from the tree of forbidden knowledge, I flew through a wormhole in search for knowledge the universe had kept forbidden from us. Have I been deceived in my life? Was I always expected to die?

Either way, here's the truth. The theories were correct, time is a dimension. Is it the fourth, fifth, sixth? I haven't got that answer. But I can tell you, that yes, time is a dimension. I have the proof. From Earth, the observations from this point indicate that I am currently 15 million light years away, still in the Milky way but nowhere near the centre. Still in the outskirts, like we are. In terms of scale, I basically made a stroll from one street to the next, if even that.

From our observations from our position, we saw something strange. We're 15 million light years away, yet when we looked back at where out solar system should be, we noticed something strange. We released the telescope and set it to focus on Earth. But the world didn't look as it should have 15 million years ago. Africa and South America were still attached to each other. We spent so long going over the data again and again, but there it was. We were indeed only 15 million light years away. Africa and South America split during the era of the dinosaurs.

It took a while for us to come to terms with what we had just accomplished, the first humans to travel through time. The wormhole wasn't just a manipulation of space fabric, but also a manipulation of space time.

Everyone I ever met, knew or could have known, doesn't exist yet. Caesar, Qin Shi Huang, Elvis, Jesus, Muhammed, the Buddha, Bolivar, Tchaikovsky, Yi Sunshin, Darwin, William the Conquer, Alexander the great, Kim Il Sung, Rameses, Mozart, Michael Hamilton and Leonardo di Vinci - I predate them all.

Did anyone cry when they dug up the bones of Pompeii? I am now a pile of bones buried beneath the forgotten city. So many names have been lost to time, and so shall mine.

Thus ends my final entry. The oxygen levels are low, I'm forced to drink my own urine now and I've no food left. I wonder what will take me first? Dehydration or suffocation. It is my punishment to following the pursuit of knowledge, and I will pay for my crimes with honour.

Amie finished reading Eve's log for what must have been her one hundred thousandth time by now. To her it was scripture. No one knew who 'Eve' was, her name truly was lost to history. People weren't even sure if she was indeed a woman. The mission it was referring to was kept secret from the public's eye, only a few select people even knew of the mission. It took humanity 700 years to re-open that wormhole, and now it was her gateway.

Since those 700 years had passed, all information of the mission has been destroyed. As if they knew that Eve and her crew were facing the punishment for discovering forbidden knowledge. Only Eve's log and the three crewmates half de-composed bodies were evidence of Eve's discovery.

By the time they reached the vessel, in Eve's time some 20 million years must have passed. Her body was never found. Some say, she would walk amongst the void after her log had ended, as a sort of penance for her sins. Accepting her fate in the inferno.

Amie saw Eve as her own personal hero. The first time traveller. It was Eve who inspired Amie to become an explorer herself. When she landed a job aboard the Eve Canary, she couldn't believe her luck.

Amie had since climbed her way through the ranks, now the captain of the Eve Canary. In times of uncertainty, she read Eve's log for inspiration. Even in the depths of despair, Eve pushed through with her mission and refused to die until her knowledge was passed on.

Amie now had her own discovery. After 25 years of her long and fulfilling career, her moment was finally about to arrive. Her ship made contact with an extra terrestrial ship. They were flying out towards a meeting point, an asteroid that was between two unusually close solar systems called Solar's edge.

They were now so close to Solar's edge, that through the telescope, Amie could see the vessel. It looked just like the ones from the old works of fiction. A circular dish shaped vessel, but unlike the books of old, this vessel must have been twice the size of Eve Canary.

Amie was now calm, collected and controlled. She was ready to emulate her hero and voyage into the unknown for the pursuit of knowledge. She was getting ready to format a message to to the foreign vessel, when all of a sudden the foreign vessel sent their message first. For the first round of messaging, Amie had chosen to use both music and mathematics to communicate. But when she saw the message, she froze still. So, was this what Eve must have felt when she looked back upon earth, she thought to herself.

The message was written in an old version of English, similar to the style that Eve wrote it. But what struck Amie the most wasn't the language used, but rather, the familiarity of what was written.

"Hello, it will only be around 30 of your home planet's hours until we arrive at the asteroid. We are honoured to be meeting the creators of this language. We enjoyed your people's music, they brought us a strange feeling of friendship between us, they were so similar to our ancient rhythms"

Amie wondered not why the message was written in English, but rather why they were so honoured to meet their founders. Would they be disappointed to find that Amie wasn't herself a native speaker? Deciding to instead focus on her mission, Amie set herself to work. She had thirty hours to brush up on her classical English speaking skills.

Sci FiShort Story
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About the Creator

Hywel Latimyr

I kinda suck at writing but I enjoy it

Anyway, here's a dumb little haiku:

The gunslinger draws

His opponent does the same

oh dear, they both died

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