Do You Hear Us?

We have known for hundreds of years that it is coming. The never-ending cycle, the monster out there in space passing near our orbit every three thousand six hundred years and of those passes, four out of eight times, mutilates our civilizations, one of those times destroying it completely. 

Unlike civilizations on other worlds (we are aware of two and in contact with one) we are not permitted to advance our race. If allowed to develop for a million years, who knows what we might become? But we will never have this time, being given only about ten thousand eight hundred years of development before another long stage of periodic destruction and finally here it comes again – the annihilation of our world. 

And once again, we start afresh in the mud and caves, desperately hunting for sustenance from other equally devastated species.

"It is your job," my horrid Queen says before dispatching me to Alkebulan, the continent of jungle and plains to the east, where man first began, "to send a message to future generations once they climb out of the mud and caves." 

She is, as usual, mildly intoxicated by her drugs, lackadaisically sprawled on her silken divan piled with pillows. She always manages to let the visitor see much of her famously restructured body when like most of us, she will soon end—the one good thing about all this and that is not saying much. We are the only nation left on Terra that has actual royalty as head of state. In reality, she is a dictator.

"I want them to know what we were. That we did exist. That they are not the first. Do you understand, Jerek? Leave them a message that will survive."

"I understand," I reply, backing away slightly.

"Are you taking your wife with you?"

This question irritates me. Meritanyan penetrates me with her insatiable eyes. She who will have anyone she wants, male or female, sometimes even animal.

"I want no one but my wife," I state impatiently. Who the hell cares about sex now when we are all to be destroyed? The woman is unbearable.

But she surprises me for once. "Valinder!" she snaps, and a tired looking servant appears out of nowhere. She prefers to use human servants over android or robotic. "Get me the box."

Apparently, he knows what she means, scoops something up from a nearby decorative table and hands it to her. 

She opens the little jeweled thing and hands me a tiny capped tube. "For you and your beloved Klinok when the time comes. And extra for your son and his spouse."

While I already have prepared for the end with something that will take us out immediately and painlessly, I do appreciate and am surprised by her kindness. "Thank you." And I accept her gift.

"I realize," she says, "that undoubtedly you already have something, but this—and trust me on this—will do the job better. Remove the fear almost immediately, even give you euphoria, and then gently end you. It is the best I can do for you, Jerek. I know what you think of me, but in spite of that, I have always loved you. And now I give you leave to let the future know that we existed."

In spite of my hatred, my eyes sting with tears as I leave her. 

________________

First, I set up a community of architects, linguists, astronomers, physicists, anthropologists, engineers, biologists, and more with all the necessary support staff for everyday life. Much of this latter is artificial or cyborg though we have many volunteers. We have twenty years to complete the project. Until now, we have tried every way possible, even with remote alien support, to destroy the object of our coming destruction or at least to alter its course, but nothing we could do was successful. We understand our fate now and all that remains to us is the hope of communication with the future.

My son Apinaza is a communications expert in his own right and starts off the planning discussion once we have the conference hall set up. Sixty experts are present from Cathay and its nearby islands, Bharatvarsha, Ereba, Abya-Yala, Lemuria Islands, and other places, Alkebulan of course and my own country. They are a morose bunch, which should be expected, though as time will tell, they are not above laughter and joking around. They have brought their families with them, knowing they will probably not be returning home. By the time we are finished with the project, we will likely regard each other as true family.

Apinaza speaks. He is a beautiful man of golden tan skin, thick black hair, and sharp brown eyes, at this time eighty years of age. I myself am a hundred and twenty-three.

"Our job, as you have all been apprised, is to build a message to future humanity that will survive the onslaught. It has to endure through fire, bombardment, tidal wave, and flood, and it needs to let them know the time of this disaster. They will not speak our languages. Pictures can certainly describe things but remember, these can easily be destroyed. The point of this message to the future is to tell them that an advanced civilization existed before theirs and undoubtedly many before that and that theirs too will probably end up destroyed just as ours is about to be."

A woman from Cathay raises her hand. Her black hair is long and silken and contrasts well with her deep red attire. "One can only hope that unlike us, they will find a way to travel faster than light or create ships that will bend the fabric of space. We have not had enough time."

"We could have achieved that if we hadn't severely limited AI," declares one of the engineers.

"And if we hadn't done that," says a biologist bitterly, "we would have ceased to be human or possibly even to exist!"

"It is an old argument and now a waste of our time," I interject. 

"What we might really hope for," says an anthropologist from Bharatvarsha, a very old man, probably near to two hundred, "is that they may accomplish those things as we partly have, but actually locate another world to inhabit."

"One that is open to population," says the Cathay native bitterly, "and not closed to us."

For we do have friends of a sort on an inhabited planet, the Faldarians, but they do not have room or interest in taking in immigrants. For one thing, their atmosphere is not the right proportion of gasses for human life. For another, their spiritual and physical way of life prevents overpopulation or any interference with the balance of nature on their world. They are extremely strict about reproduction and respect the right of their animal and plant life to balanced proportions of land and resources. There is just no place for those such as we on their planet.

"We cannot be angry with them," I say, and no one argues the point, though I know there are those who resent the Faldarien position.

Bringing the subject back to hand, architect Rubsa from Ereba says, "We need to build something that will withstand all elements over fourteen thousand years and the only thing that will do that is hard stone. The structure will have to be very large to withstand possibly half of it being buried in mud."

People around the table murmur. There is no denying this statement.

"A full half?" asks another architect.

"Maybe not half, but at least a third," says Rubsa. "The avalanche comes down fast, a relentless pummeling for at least five of the seven days of the passing. And with that, the swirling of the oceans, mass tidal waves circling the planet. One has to account for that. A vast sea of mud."

"So, anything inside the structure will be flooded," I say.

"That is correct," Rubsa agrees.

"What about hermetically sealed chambers?" asks someone from the Lemurias.

"We can try," says one of the engineers. "One hopes that the future inhabitants will discover them. Though to fully protect them, they will be deeply hidden."

"How will we let them know when we existed in relation to their own time? Remember, no language will be understood, no pictures will survive."

People murmur among themselves and finally one of the astronomers says, "The positions of the stars. That can tell them the exact time in their prehistory."

"Excellent," I say.

Several thousand years before, there had been disputes over searching deeper for hidden information from human history with endless intervening wars and petty grabbing of one nation over another when it came to sharing artifacts. But eventually, this settled down when astronomers discovered the hereto unrecognized planet and general reason prevailed. And then we sadly discovered, in a great dig in Cathay, the horrifying truth.

A cynical chemist friend of my son's stands up. I do not remember her being invited to join our group. "Why are we bothering to do this?" she asks. "Wouldn't it be better just to let humans begin again and grow as they wish instead of depressing them with the doom hanging over their heads?"

I sigh. "Leena, what are you doing here? If you don't want to participate, then please leave. We did not know for certain about the cycles ourselves until three hundred years ago. We developed at our own pace as will the next civilization. And once some of us learned the truth, the majority of humankind would not listen. So, in no way did it 'depress' them or stop their natural evolution. And if we had not known, those of us who believed it then, we would not have developed the generation ships, our only chance at technological survival. So, your argument is pointless and we don't have room here for it." 

She shuts up and sits down. Apinaza leans toward her and whispers something. She is very beautiful and though he is married, I do not begrudge him any degree of happiness at this point. For some reason, his wife chose not to come at the last minute.

"Please, all of you, get together and discuss and we will return to this room in five days. Your goal includes determining what materials, particularly for coating, will help to preserve what we construct. Astrophysicists and astronomers, work with the architects to let the future know the time when we construct the message. And bless you all. You are the last heroes of our human kind in this cycle."

The Queen has blessedly left me alone without her usual frequent and annoying communications, though I know she will eventually visit the project. When she does come, she surprises everyone by quickly departing for the lush Australis. Not long after, we hear that she has drunk her favorite alcoholic beverage and then accepted an injection from her concubine to pleasantly conclude her life. By direction, she is cremated, not wanting, she proclaimed, to risk any far future scientist finding her bones and studying her DNA. 

In spite of our long sometimes friendly enmity, I experience a deep sadness at her passing. She was a seemingly endless dictator, making sure that her sycophants "won" every election, keeping an army of android soldiers to guard her living quarters and threaten any dissidents. She ran simultaneous wars, at least three going at any one time. It was said that she had lovers murdered once she tired of them, claiming that she gave them new identities so that they could move wherever they chose. Of course, no one believed her. But she was so powerful and had so many strong backers that no one on the globe could stop her. And yet, I know that she loved me. Not in a sexual way, though perhaps she wouldn’t have minded that sort of attachment, but more like a beloved child. I do not believe that I loved her back and yet why do I feel this sorrow?

"Shit and vomit," exclaims my wife when I express this. "She was a monster! Maybe it is a good thing that the future will not remember us. Atlantis has been nothing to be proud of."

I disagree. We have much to be proud of. "Klinok, what other nation contributed so much to the generation ships? Without our crystals to run them, they would never have been sent out. It is our only hope of preserving human knowledge this time."

"How do we know that previous civilizations did not do the same," she counters. "How do we know that humans do not live somewhere on another world right now?"

What she said is true. "I hope that they do. And it goes without saying that I hope our dear daughter's group makes it somewhere hospitable and safe to live and flourish."

But neither of us have much hope on that score. Our only alien friends are too far to help the ships and implied in their last communication that most inhabitable worlds they know of are already inhabited. I try not to think about our people being led to an apparently friendly landing only to learn that they will be used for food, experiments or slavery.

Naturally, I do not say this to my wife. But is she thinking it too? 

On all our media, some of it pumped into our heads twenty-four hours a day if one chooses to be multiple implanted, we are hearing over and over that the monster planet is racing towards us. Groups from each nation have prepared potential safe havens for survival, but nothing can be counted on. 

"The best chance," Professor Chan of Cathay announced over a century earlier, "is a finished off and well supplied cave in a very high mountain, in the Himalayas for example. Potentially, this site could escape the fire and vast tidal waves. Of course, afterwards, you will have no civilized world to return to. You had better have with you many fertile young people to begin breeding. You will need to establish a food supply. You will need everything."

"Underground," says a beautiful chemist from Lemuria. "We have built extensive tunnels and structures. I am certain that you all have. Many have already sealed themselves in, my children included." Her voice quivers.

This woman is kind enough not to resent my leading the undertaking, though my queen has attacked her country numerous times and indeed, for no discernible reason, was planning to obliterate that nation before we were certain the monster was headed this way. War of any kind then became pointless.

"Flooding though," says an engineer. "I still don't fully understand how you maintain the oxygen supply with no access to the surface?"

"Seriously?" she replies. "How did you do it on the generation ships?"

"From electrolysis, using electricity from crystals to split water into hydrogen gas and oxygen gas," explains my Atlantean colleague, Anika Compre.
"We have done that too," the Lemurian says.

"May all survive who have done so," I declare.

Why hadn't I joined an underground city? I certainly had the credibility to get Klinock and me into one. Well, those who were have already sealed themselves in. There would be no more openings. And I felt an intense need to engage with this project now, to somehow let future Terrans know the truth. Besides when the end comes, I will have lived long enough. By now we understand that the recycling of souls is an actuality and I will undoubtedly return in some far future or possibly to somewhere else in the universe. I am sorrowful but tired. Klinock feels the same. We have enjoyed seventy-seven years together and are grateful.

The meeting adjourns with people moving off into their various working committees and labs and I return to my quarters where Klinok and I eat and rest in peace. I am comfortably sure that if anyone can, Rubsa will build a structure that will endure the onslaught. He is one of the world's top architects. 

Klinock now asks me something she has wondered about for decades. "Why did you never sleep with the Queen? Even if you had not desired to, she could cause anyone to do whatever she wanted."

Our android has created and serves a fabulous meal, which we enjoy after temporarily shutting him down for privacy. 

"I venture to think that she felt safe with me. I did not feel safe with her, but she did with me. She did not want to complicate or soil this feeling with sex. I was a refuge to her and she wanted to keep it. Besides, I was not attracted to her. Even so, if she had wanted me, I would have had no choice."

"I am grateful," Klinock says, smiling.

"Even should I have been made to obey, it would not have affected my feelings toward you."

"I understand," she says, "but I am still grateful."

After a pause, she asks, "Why did she not go to one of the underground cities and speaking of those, why don't those people just emerge after the onslaught and rebuild the world?"

A question many have asked.

"I am going to tell you something that not many know, Klinock. There is much evidence that there have been many underground cities from a former civilization. They do not let us see or communicate with them. We only see the occasional vehicle emerge from undersea or from a seemingly solid mountain. My guess is that when people move underground, they spend much time and energy building their new world and once they have it running smoothly, they end up preferring it to surface life. They have no desire to start up again in the surface mess. In our case, it will take years for the seas, continents and weather to settle down. There will be very little left but mud, rocks and churning water and whatever animals manage to survive. A few humans will make it and begin again, in caves, then rough huts, then primitive cities here and there. It will be thousands of years before mass communication and advanced technology are established. By then, our underground cousins will have evolved into something different, even possibly alien to us now. Will the new ones meet the old underground civilizations? Who knows?"

"I love you," said Klinock. "It will be an honor to die with you."

Rubsa and his team create their message to the future. Three giant pyramids in line with the star system "Birds of Mindora." Where that system was when the devastation began will tell the future generation that we existed and when we ended. Of course, they will have a different name for that system and will have to study the night sky to figure out which one it is.

"There is always a danger," Rubsa says at our final meeting after the great pyramids are finished, "that repairs on the structures by subsequent cultures will be used to date them, giving a false account of their time of construction. Recovering the exterior, for example. But that is something we will have to leave to fate."

The ninth planet draws predictably near in its far-flung elliptical orbit with its enormous spinning cloud of red dust and boulders, and after Klinock and I drink wine and swallow our pills, it will bombard our beloved Terra until all human construction and most life, human, plant and animal, is beaten down and destroyed. Until there is no further evidence of what we have been. As will happen every twenty-five thousand two hundred years now and to come.