<< PERSONAL LOG >>
AUTHOR: Dr. Riza Beleke
LOG ID: #419
Timestamp: 12,784 CC. Day 124
Vessel: Kythera SK-071
Location: Prion-A, Sashin RHS
SUBJECT: The Anomaly that Marked Me.
The med-techs called it “persistent dermal luminescence”. The biologists called it “an unclassified symbiotic biofilm”. Physicists shrugged and muttered that it was a performative tattoo. A cry for attention by a physicist with nothing to show for all of her “academic potential”.
The scar on my cheek is the only thing that told me I wasn’t crazy. An itch that will always remind me of that day.
It wasn’t the resequencing treatments that’s kept me young throughout the years- they are just sandbags slowing a tide that’s already tearing me apart. This… vitality… is just a side effect. An echo of the storm that passed through me that night on Cintri.
Kaal and I didn’t just find a drone. We found a hole in time. A tear that reached through the Concesus Calendar and to a time before humans ever left their origin system.
When we were 10 years old, Kaal and I went out at night, as we often did, playing tag with our torches and exploring our surroundings. But on that night (12,131 CC . Day 87), we found ourselves exploring unfamiliar territory.
By then, the entirety of Cintri had been mapped, and what we stumbled upon was a city. Ancient. With no lights or signs of life- Just the well-preserved architecture of an unknown people… If you can call whoever built it all “People”.
As we walked around this abandoned city, completely in awe of what we were seeing, we noticed a bright light appear two hundred metres or so away- suspended in the air. The shadow of its vehicle disappeared before we could see beyond the vanishing glare, and as curious children, we hunted for it throughout the darkness. Hours on end searching near every rock. Every tree. Every structure, until I eventually noticed it floating within the troughs of one of the buildings.
Sleek, triangular, and automated with no visible means of propulsion or energy being exerted- We were in awe at the small, head-sized vehicle that floated through the troughs of the city as if it were searching for something. It paid us no attention and didn’t hide itself upon being seen the second time; it just kept flying. Searching.
Anti-gravity technology wasn’t discovered until 12,412 CC, and even to this day, an AG drive cannot be compacted to such a small size and comes with a host of heating a cooling issues that are yet to be solved. The smallest, most advanced drive is currently 10 metres x 12 metres, and it was a technological marvel. It can only provide 2 leaps before recharging and consumes enough energy to power a small city for weeks.
But this drone used its AG system continuously, for hours on end with no visible convection. It… It shouldn’t be impossible.
As children, we chased the light, but as I’ve aged, the city itself has become a marvel of its own. Like the relic of an ancient society that I cannot fathom, the structures had no entrances. No roads. No layout that would suit the living standards of a society, modern OR ancient, it all just… (Sighs) It just doesn’t make any sense.
We watched the drone for hours as it guided us around the city, on a mission we couldn’t quite fathom. When Kaal gave in to his curiosity, he touched the drone. There was a sharp buzz and a noise so loud that it sounded like a ship reentering the atmosphere. I still remember the bolts of bright, black lightning that struck Kaal on the chest and me on the cheek before we woke up back in the familiar forests of Cintri.
Each of us with a new scar on our bodies that marked the occasion.
It didn’t hurt, but it itched.
When we told the Elders about what we had seen, they chalked it up to the playful imaginations of children, and when we returned to the location the next day, it was the same as it had always been. The forest to the East of the villa.
No ancient structures. No drone.
Kaal died within the next year. Complete cellular degradation. The doctors of Cintri couldn’t quite figure out what had happened, but they were much too underfunded to deal with the regular needs of Cintri citizens, let alone a medical anomaly.
I’ve spent six hundred years and a fortune in credits trying to find the other side of that tear. But the more I’ve searched, the less I’ve found. If I want to continue my search, I need to get my hands on more credits, again. So I got a job at a new company named KYTHERA Research Labs as a lead archaeologist. It pays well, but hopefully it leads me closer to what I really seek. The truth.
My memories of the past stick to me like the hauntings of a ghost that my soul can’t escape.
It doesn’t hurt… It just itches.
END LOG – Riza Beleke, Prion-A