No. He had to rephrase the question. The complete analysis of all symbols could wait. If they managed to escape the ocean, they would once again have access to all the computing power on Earth. Right now, it’s not important to be able to read the entire library. We just need to find something that helps us get out of here. Martin thought about communication. If the beings that created the columns are still present, they might be able to help us. I have no idea how these beings will do it, or if they will actually want to. Yet, he clung to this straw.
“Watson, how does the required time change, if we limit the analysis to ten predetermined semantic units?”
“Analysis will be partially finished in t plus 3 hours.”
Martin hit the armrest of his seat with his fist. Yes! That is something we can work with.
“We think of a short message, let Watson translate it, and then build a column ourselves,” he explained to Francesca.
“And you think that will be useful?” She seemed doubtful.
“I hope so. If the purpose of the columns is to record information, and the symbols are more than decoration—which it looks to me like they are—then they must be legible to the beings that created them. I have no idea how, but that’s not important. Maybe they see in the X-ray spectrum, or have radar sensors in their head, whatever. If we place a new column with our message, we might establish a channel of communication.”
“And what do you want to say to them?”
“We visually show them how we are doing and what we are planning,” Martin said.
“And then?”
“No idea. If we are very lucky, they will notice our message. Imagine that an invisible alien would like to communicate with us, but it does not know how. Then the creature realizes it could paint a cross on your forehead. That would be an obvious sign, and you would pay attention. That is what I’m hoping for. If we’re even luckier, they will answer us somehow.”
Francesca gave him a look of mixed disbelief and anger. “This is supposed to be your solution? You hope an alien will help us, although we don’t even know if it exists?”
Martin shrugged. Yes, this is what I hope for, he thought, but did not say anything. I can understand that Francesca is outraged. However, she has not had the same dreams I have experienced.
Three hours later, Watson had finished the message. Martin was already inside the suit at the SuitPort. He separated the suit and went to a storage compartment for an empty pressure tank. Then he used a special tool, a kind of can opener, to remove its top and bottom. This made the tank look like a miniature column. He wondered where he should place the column. Maybe in front of the other columns, at the edge of the forest? There it will be clearly visible, but it might also be ignored. Or, maybe between two columns in the first row?
He placed the copy directly at the forefront of the forest, where two columns had a large gap between them. Then he started to scratch the symbols determined by Watson into the steel. They were not raised like the original ones, but they still had a three-dimensional structure. This work took some time. Now and then he compared the symbols with the ones shown on his arm display.
He was almost done when Francesca spoke to him via helmet radio.
“Ahem, Martin,” she said. “Take a look behind you. You notice something?”
He turned around, but did not notice anything besides the column that had already been there earlier.
“Below, look below.”
The helmet had a limited field of view. He had to lower his head to look at the ground. Directly ahead of him, maybe twenty centimeters from his boots, a new column was growing.
“It wasn’t there earlier, was it?” Martin started to sweat.
“I compared the area with yesterday’s images,” Francesca said. “Back then, the ground was completely smooth.”
He bent down and touched the stump that reached the height of his ankles. There were raised structures, so the same process seemed to be responsible for both the growth and the inscriptions of the column. Is this even possible through a natural process? What have we found here? He licked his lips.
Francesca asked, “Could you take a sample when you are finished?”
“Okay. I will be back inside in ten minutes. Neumaier, out.”
Ten minutes were not enough, and getting out of the suit took additional time. Francesca waited for him, picked up the sample container via a separate mini-port, and started the analysis.
“Take your time. I’ll have the results waiting for you.”
Martin felt like a kid at Christmas waiting for his presents. He was so excited his bladder hurt. What would the monitor show them? How soon? He noticed Francesca’s cheeks were flushed.
“Watson, display analysis of sample,” she commanded.
The main display revealed a landscape populated by two different kinds of single-cell organisms. This was at the bottom of the sample container under high magnification. The creatures moved through the water by rhythmically changing the shape of their cellular walls. When Martin took the sample, he must have also picked up some inorganic material. The single-celled organisms moved to the tiny clump and remained there. Then they approached the center, where they paused again. They emitted a minuscule quantity of some material, the composition of which Watson had not yet analyzed.
Martin noticed his hair stood on end. We are watching the metabolism of an alien form of life. Yet it was much more than that—the single-cell organisms, even though they were of different types, were working together, like ants. They all cooperated to build a miniature version of a column in the center of the sample container.
Age of Questions, Pentahedron
There is:
The I.
The not-I.
The not-I.
(Pause)
The not-I’s.
The all.
The not-all.
A reader.
A reader of the I.
A story.
A story of the not-I.
The Mar-Tin.
The questions.
The intentions.
The feelings.
The discrepancy.
The curiosity.
The curiosity.
The curiosity.
There is not:
The I’s.
There will be:
Dreams.
Change.
Adaptation.
Expansion.
December 22, 2046, Valkyrie
They had enough oxygen to last for another six or seven days. Martin tried not to imagine what problems still lay ahead of them. On paper, the plan looked like this: three or four days’ journey to the Tiger Stripes, one day for surfacing, half a day’s march to the lander, and one day in reserve. They would never again see the Forest of Columns. Martin hoped they had initiated something that would help them—even if it is just an entry in the archive of a strange being. They had watched these exo-creatures in the container until they died from lack of energy supply. This is a perfect example of symbiosis, maybe of a symbiosis with a hidden goal. Ants also seamlessly work together in a colony, but they just fulfill a purpose, the survival of the colony—they don’t have an intention. The task fulfilled by the single-celled organisms is not purposeful because it does not help them survive. Therefore, Martin thought, it must be intentional. Francesca agreed on that point. It had an intention that somebody or something had formulated, had come up with.